Scattered through the throng were several "readers." One half-Indian woman I passed many times was reading incessantly, with the speed of a Frenchman, from printed strips of cheap colored paper which she offered for sale at a cent each. They were political in nature, often in verse, insulting in treatment, and mixed with a crass obscenity at which the dismal multitude laughed bestially. Three musicians, one with a rude harp, a boy striking a triangle steel, sang mournful dirges similar to those of Andalusia. The peons listened to both music and reading motionless, with expressionless faces, with never a "move on" from the policeman, who seemed the least obstrusive of mortals.
San Luís Potosí has many large rich churches, misery and pseudo-religion being common joint-legacies of Spanish rule. Small chance these creatures would have of feeling at home in a place so different from their earthly surroundings as the Christian heaven. The thump of church bells, some with the voice of battered old tin pans, broke out frequently. Now and then one of these dregs of humanity crept into church for a nap, but the huge edifices showed no other sign of usefulness. On the whole there was little appearance of "religion." A few women were seen in the churches, a book-seller sold no novels and little literature but "mucho de religión," but the great majority gave no outward sign of belonging to any faith. Priests were not often seen in the streets. Mexican law forbids them to wear a distinctive costume, hence they dressed in black derbies, Episcopal neckbands, and black capes to the ankles. Not distinctive indeed! No one could have guessed what they were! One might have fancied them prize-fighters on the way from training quarters to bathroom.
There is comparative splendor also in San Luís, as one may see by peeps into the lighted houses at night, but it is shut in tight as if fearful of the poor breaking in. As in so many Spanish countries, wealth shrinks out of sight and misery openly parades itself.
Out across the railroad, where hundreds of ragged boys were riding freight cars back and forth in front of the station, the land lay flat as a table, some cactus here and there, but apparently fertile, with neither sod to break nor clearing necessary. Yet nowhere, even on the edge of the starving city, was there a sign of cultivation. We of the North were perhaps more kind to the Indian in killing him off.
