In short, nothing happened on terra firma or in the atmosphere of the town worthy of mention without its being tackled by the clever, flowing pen of our merchant. How much work will the future historians of Sarrio be saved by this valuable material, accumulated by one of its most enlightened sons!
With advancing years Don Rosendo Belinchon's letters assumed a character less romantic, we won't say frivolous (for it would not be either correct or respectful to apply such a term to that estimable gentleman); but it was noticeable that the subject-matter was not so much the junketings and recreations of the townsfolk, but something that would tend, directly or indirectly, to forward their moral and material interests. The trades, the schools, the salvage from shipwrecks, the building of a church or a prison, were the matters that he now most frequently treated to his own glory and to that of his birthplace.
One of them, of vital interest for Sarrio, as he maintained, was the slaughter-house. He had not hitherto approached this question, because he knew that his opinion was at variance with that of a large number of his fellow-townsmen. But he considered "that the time had now come to express it without any perambulation or circumlocution."
The letter he now read, the first he had written on the subject, was addressed to the "Progress of Lancia," and it ran thus:
"THE SENOR DIRECTOR OF THE 'PROGRESS OF LANCIA.'
"_Dear_ Sir--The attention now accorded to natural physical science, and especially to the science of hygiene, as the health of places as well as people depends upon it, in view of its great practical utility, the timidity of those who, influenced by an education as erroneous as it was deficient, condemned the study of these great problems, being cumbered with antiquated, dull ideas, is now happily vanishing under the powerful movement of the nineteenth century, rightly called the century of enlightenment."
Don Rosendo's style was always involved. He continued:
"Now that civilization, released from the obstacles that crippled the conscience and the mind, opens a vast field to all, by means of the press, to express our independent ideas and give them forth to the world, trusting in the friendship that you have always accorded me, and in the kindness with which the public has hitherto received the humble efforts of the pen," etc., etc.