recreation after returning from school, the various places where whole hours and weeks were passed in ineffable beatitude, making mud saints to be worshipped when completed; or armies of soldiers of the same paste, to feed my pride by the exercise of so much power.
"Towards the southern part of the little territory of thirty yards by forty, was the habitation of the family, divided into two apartments, one serving as a dormitory for our parents, and the large one for the hall of reception, with its lofty dais and cushions, remnant of the tradition of the Arab divan, preserved by the Spanish people. Two tables of the indestructible carob-tree (algarroba), which had passed down from hand to hand since the time when there was no other wood in San Juan but the carob-trees of the fields, and a few chairs of various structure, flanked the hall, while two great pictures in oil of San Domingo and San Vicente Ferrar, adorned the otherwise bare walls; pictures shockingly painted, but most devoutly kept as heir-looms on account of their Dominican habit. At a short distance from the entrance door, the patriarchal fig-tree raised its deep green canopy, which even in my childhood shaded my mother's loom, whose strokes, and the noise of whose wheels, pedals, and shuttles, always waked us before sunrise, announcing that a new day had begun, and with it the necessity of providing for its wants by labor. Some branches of the fig-tree rubbed gently against the walls of the house, and heated by the reflection of the sun's rays, it anticipated the usual season, offering its mellow contribution of early figs to augment the rejoicing of the family on the 23d of November, my father's birthday. I linger with pleasure over these details, for saints and fig-tree were, at a later day, personages of a family drama in which colonial ideas struggled violently with more modern ones. Other industrial resources had their place on
