fed and cared for, having been taught to pity and never to ridicule or despise personal afflictions.
The housekeeper is supplied with home remedies, that she may give effect to her charitable interest in the sick and miserable. In many places, ladies of high position on a saint's day will unite in giving a dinner to the poor. Each one contributes to the feast, and then, with her daughters and friends, waits on the squalid guests. Theatrical and musical entertainments are also frequently given for charitable purposes.
Poverty, while greatly to be deplored, is not considered a disgrace. Almost every wealthy family has its full quota of poor relations, who in many instances fill the places of housekeeper or upper servants. But at the same time they are provided for comfortably and kindly. Even where means are limited, it is common to see in a household several children outside the immediate family taken from time to time, and cared for by the tender-hearted lady of the house.
Two of the most interesting young people whose acquaintance I made at the capital were the descendants of a humble Indian woman. With her sick babe, only a month old, lying in her rebozo, homeless and unfriended, she trudged through the rain at dusk. A charitable lady, from the interior of a luxurious home, witnessed the scene, and calling the woman, took the babe to her heart as if it were her own. She proposed to her to adopt the child, promising a mother's care. The trust was sacredly kept, and although this lady afterward became the mother of fifteen children, the poor waif was one of the many, and developed into a lovely woman. She married an accomplished gentleman and bore several children, but to the day of her death she knew nothing of her origin.
The religious observances, as well as the customs of the country, are kept up mainly by the women. The men naturally become more cosmopolitan through travel and contact and intercourse with the outside world. But whatever the cause, scarcely a man of education can be found who does not proclaim himself a deist or an atheist.
