Creole Sketches/Mexican Coins
MEXICAN COINS[1]
"Sit down, O sunburnt wanderer, sit down! — Well, well! And hence comest thou?"
"I come," he observed with grim solemnity, "from Mexico."
And he laid upon the table a striped blanket, a worn valise, and a heavy leathern bag whose contents clattered like castanets as it struck the mahogany — Mexican gold.
"Why, we thought you were dead — all these years, and not a word!"
"Dead!" he echoed; "yes, I was dead, dead to the century for which I was born, and to modern civilization — dead from 1870 to 1879. I feel like one of the Seven Sleepers awaking to find himself moving in a new age; I have been living in the seventeenth century, and suddenly I find myself in the nineteenth."
"In Mexico City?" we suggested.
"No: in Mexico City one hears at least some echoes from the outer world — no, in Matamoras and Sonora. Mexico City belongs in some respects to the present century; the life of the provinces does not. Time seems to have stood still there for two or three hundred years. The printing is certainly of the sixteenth century; many manufactures are even mediæval; and agriculture is antediluvian. I knew an American who was idiotic enough to attempt the introduction of steel ploughs — he would not have dared to speak of modern machinery."
"And he —"
"Became instantly an object of suspicion and detestation. Had they not their good wooden ploughs, such as were used in the time of Montezuma, and before him? — And why should a cursed Gringo come to them with ploughs of steel?"
"And the money?"
He took a yellow coin from the wallet and held it up. On one side the Mexican eagle strangled its serpent victim; upon the other a naked arm upheld the Cap of Liberty before the open pages of a book, whereon appeared the syllable "Ley."
"They say the coins of a country indicate to some extent its social condition," he said, "See how rude and coarse the milling is compared with that of the American coin. There is a suggestion of the barbaric in it. But I like the eagle better. There is a ferocious grace in its poise which makes the idealized American bird seem stiff and clumsy by comparison — I admire that savage eagle, tearing the serpent to shreds; — but it is a symbolic lie; there is nothing of the eagle in the Mexican and much of the serpent. The whole design is a lie. There is the Cap of Liberty; and yet there is no true liberty of thought and speech in Mexico; — there is the word 'law'; and they have no law; they are sans foi ni loi ni roi. The coin is a braggart like the Mexican. Truly free nations do not boast too much of law and liberty."
"And the Exposition?"
"Ah, bah! — the Exposition! What have they to exhibit? Knives and revolvers and wooden ploughs?"
"Nothing else?"
"Ah, yes! — one Thing! — the one Thing in which Mexico defies competition. I believe I have brought a few specimens in my serape — magnificent specimens — which defy rivalry."
But when he ceased to speak, no answer fell upon his ear, and, turning himself thrice about, he found himself alone.
- ↑ Item, November 3, 1879.