beds, all nearly unknown. His eye flashed with longings for that goodly land. When will ours be altogether such, and this be like it?
I asked how long it would take to reach the next posta: "An hour?" "Two." "No, one." "Two." He drew out a dollar, and offered to bet. So I had the privilege of resisting no severe temptation, especially as there was not even a watch among us three; and therefore it would not have been possible to prove either true. I had also the better privilege of setting forth the evils of gambling; how it made him lose all his wages, leave his wife and child without bread, and otherwise destroy him. I was astonished at my liberty of prophesying in the unknown tongue, and could almost see how that the love of Christ, without a miracle, under the mighty breathings of the Holy Ghost, could make the disciples speak with other tongues. The Spirit gave them utterance.
The village of San Antonio is reached at length, a blazing speck of white on a low hill overhanging the Rio Grande. It looks almost as pretty as a New England town, as you approach it through the interminable groves of mesquite. But enter it. Only a perpetual fire, a perpetual desolation. The huge plaza is without shrub or speck to mitigate its whiteness. Not a flower to relieve the white heat of the houses. Many of the houses are in ruins. The church has a skull near its entrance, an appropriate symbol of the town.
Yet here I found several things of a contrary sort. There are a custom-house and its officers: for this is a smuggling port, and each nation has its officers to protect its rights, or its claims rather, for rights in customs there are none. People have as much right to carry their wares across the line as to cross it themselves. It looks as if these officers had killed the town, for smuggling was its life.
The place where we had our breakfast was another novelty. It was a casa with three rooms, the first large, with a wide bed in the corner of the American type. All Mexican beds are single. It also had high-posters, after the old American fashion. Its dirty
