Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/187

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THE PIOUS INSCRIPTION.
177

STREET VIEW IN PUEBLA.

gate-way of the public-house from which He was driven before He was born, and into which He has never found official entrance since. When I first saw this gracefully-wrought monogram, on my way to Mexico, over this portal, my heart rejoiced at this rare expression of piety in a tavern. The rejoicing disappeared when I was told that it had been part of a convent, and that was why the sacred letters were here. I found that even Roman Catholics, who put the cross upon every thing, from the bells of the donkeys to the pulqui plant (for you will often see a cross in a pulqui field, two white bits of straw in this shape stuck in the edge of a leaf, that it may be blessed with fruitfulness) have never yet presumed to erect this sign upon a tavern. It only got in here by a change of use. Having got in surreptitiously, may it stay in, in spirit as well as letter! That it is likely so to do will be seen further on.