part
believe it.

The celebration of the Sixteenth, though it comes every year, takes as
long to prepare for as Holy Communion. The senoritas have each a new
dress apiece, the senoras a new _rebosa_. The young gentlemen have new
silver trimmings to their sombreros, unspeakable ties, silk
handkerchiefs, and new leathers to their spurs. At this time when the
peppers glow in the gardens and the young quail cry "_cuidado_," "have a
care!" you can hear the _plump, plump_ of the _metate_ from the alcoves
of the vines where comfortable old dames, whose experience gives them
the touch of art, are pounding out corn for tamales.

School-teachers from abroad have tried before now at Las Uvas to have
school begin on the first of September, but got nothing else to stir in
the heads of the little Castros, Garcias, and Romeros but feasts and
cock-fights until after the Sixteenth. Perhaps you need to be told that
this is the anniversary of the Republic, when liberty awoke and cried in
the provinces of Old Mexico. You are aroused at midnight to hear them
shouting in the streets, "_Vive la Libertad_!" answered from the houses
and the recesses of the vines, "_Vive la Mexico_!" At sunrise shots are
fired commemorating the tragedy of unhappy Maximilian, and then music,
the noblest of national hymns, as the great flag of Old Mexico floats up
the flag-pole in the bare little plaza of shabby Las Uvas. The sun over
Pine Mountain greets the eagle of Montezuma before it touches the
vineyards and the town, and the day begins with a great shout. By and by
there will be a reading of the Declaration of Independence and an
address punctured by _vives_; all the town in its best dress, and some
exhibits of horsemanship that make lathered bits and bloodly spurs; also
a cock-fight.

By night there will be dancing, and such music! old Santos to play the
flute, a little lean man with a saintly countenance, young Garcia whose
guitar has a soul, and Carrasco with the violin. They sit on a high
platform above the dancers in the candle flare, backed by the red,
white, and green of Old Mexico, and play fervently such music as you
will not hear otherwhere.

At midnight the flag comes down. Count yourself at a loss if you are not
moved by that performance. Pine Mountain watches whitely overhead,
shepherd fires glow strongly on the glooming hills. The plaza, the bare
glistening pole, the dark folk, the bright dresses, are lit ruddily by a
bonfire. It leaps up