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 to the eagle flag, dies down, the music begins
softly and aside. They play airs of old longing and exile; slowly out
of the dark the flag drops down, bellying and falling with the midnight
draught. Sometimes a hymn is sung, always there are tears. The flag is
down; Tony Sevadra has received it in his arms. The music strikes a
barbaric swelling tune, another flag begins a slow ascent,--it takes a
breath or two to realize that they are both, flag and tune, the Star
Spangled Banner,--a volley is fired, we are back, if you please, in
California of America. Every youth who has the blood of patriots in him
lays ahold on Tony Sevadra’s flag, happiest if he can get a corner of
it. The music goes before, the folk fall in two and two, singing. They
sing everything, America, the Marseillaise, for the sake of the French
shepherds hereabout, the hymn of Cuba, and the Chilian national air to
comfort two families of that land. The flag goes to Doña Ina’s, with
the candlesticks and the altar cloths, then Las Uvas eats tamales and
dances the sun up the slope of Pine Mountain.
[Illustration]
You are not to suppose that they do not keep the Fourth, Washington’s
Birthday, and Thanksgiving at the town of the grape vines. These make
excellent occasions for quitting work and dancing, but the Sixteenth
is the holiday of the heart. On Memorial Day the graves have garlands
and new pictures of the saints tacked to the headboards. There is
great virtue in an _Ave_ said in the Camp of the Saints. I like that
name which the Spanish speaking people give to the garden of the dead,
_Campo Santo_, as if it might be some bed of healing from which blind
souls and sinners rise up whole and praising God. Sometimes the speech
of simple folk hints at truth the understanding does not reach. I am
persuaded only a complex soul can get any good of a plain religion.
Your earth-born is a poet and a symbolist. We breed in an environment
of asphalt pavements a body of people whose creeds are chiefly
restrictions against other people’s way of life, and have kitchens and
latrines under the same roof that houses their God. Such as these go
to church to be edified, but at Las Uvas they go for pure worship and
to entreat their God. The logical conclusion of the faith that every
good gift cometh from God is the open hand and the finer courtesy. The
meal done without buys a candle for the neighbor’s dead child. You do
foolishly to suppose that the candle does no good.
At Las Uvas every house is a piece of earth--thick walled, whitewashed
adobe that keeps the even temperature of a cave; every man is an
accomplished horseman and consequently bow-legged; every family keeps
dogs, flea-bitten mongrels that loll on the earthen floors. They speak
a purer Castilian than obtains in like villages of Mexico, and the
way they count relationship everybody is more or less akin. There is
not much villainy among them. What incentive to thieving or killing
can there be when there is little wealth and that to be had for the
borrowing! If they love too hotly, as we say “take their meat before
grace,” so do their betters. Eh, what! shall a man be a saint before
he is dead? And besides, Holy Church takes it out of you one way or
another before all is done. Come away, you who are obsessed with your
own importance in the scheme of things, and have got nothing you did
not sweat for, come away by the brown valleys and full-bosomed hills
to the even-breathing days, to the kindliness, earthiness, ease of El
Pueblo de Las Uvas.
[Illustration]
The Riverside Press
_Electrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton & Co.
Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A._
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not
changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced
quotation marks retained.
Ambiguous hyphens at the ends of lines were retained.
In the original book, each chapter began with a hemi-title page that
contained an illustration, and an identical chapter heading, sometimes
with an illustration, on the next page. In some versions of this eBook,
the second occurrences of those chapter headings have been omitted.
Many of the illustrations in the original book were placed in the
margins, and some of them partly-wrapped around the text. These effects
could not be replicated, so, in some versions of this eBook, some of
the illustrations nest within the text; in other versions, all of the
illustrations appear between paragraphs of the text.
“Winnenap´” was printed with the trailing acute accent mark.