them. Strawberries, blackberries, and green peas are cheap and good, blackberries fifteen cents a quart, and others in proportion,
MEXICAN FLOWER-GIRL while bananas and oranges, and the fruits less familiar to us, are piled up on the table and forced upon a gorged appetite.
My windows stand open as I write, and the street cries come up into my ears. If I knew Spanish I might perhaps interpret them, but since, although I know English, I never can understand the street cries of New York, I fear all the Spanish I can ever learn will not give me the inside of the calls of the street. I suppose this I hear the most frequently is from the lottery-ticket venders, who stand along the sidewalks, and are the most numerous class of operators in the city. They call the various lotteries the holiest names: Divina Providencia, Virgin of Guadalupe, St. Joseph, The Holy Spirit, The Trinity, Purissima Concepcion, and such like. The most popular of these is that of the Virgin of Guadalupe. The venders wear a badge bearing their number, and for a medio, or six and a quarter cents, you can run the risk of getting or losing from one to ten thousand pesos, or dollars. These lotteries are largely operated by the Church, and are one of its sources of income. The sale of indulgences is another. The right hand and the left rob in the name of God, feeding the poor victims with false hopes of a fortune in this life, and with falser hopes of a fortune, thus acquired, in the life to come.
The morning after my arrival opened, as every morning does here, bright, mild, charming. The bells rang merrily, and my spirits were in corresponding mood. The Church of Jesus drew
