"The curate Castro counseled the mothers not to compromise the decorum of their social position, by going in shabby guise into the street to attend mass, it being proper for a family to present itself always in public with that apparel and decency required by its rank; and this precept my mother followed in her days of extreme poverty, with the modesty and dignity that always characterized her actions. These lessons of profound wisdom were a small part of that seed sown by the holy man, and fructified by the common sense and the moral sentiment upon which it fell in the heart of my mother.
"When a woman of twenty-three years she undertook a work not so much beyond her strength as beyond the usual conceptions of an unmarried maiden. The year before, there had been a great dearth of anascotes, (a kind of woolen stuff that resembles serge, much used for the garments of the religious orders,) and from the proceeds of her weaving, my mother had amassed a small sum of money. With that, and two peons of her aunts, the Irrazavales, she laid the foundations of the house she was to occupy on forming a new family. As these scanty earnings were hardly sufficient for so costly a work, she established her loom under one of the fig-trees which she had inherited in her portion of land, and from there, while throwing her shuttle, she assisted the workmen and their peons in building the little dwelling; sold the cloth she had made in the week on Saturdays, and paid the workmen with the fruit of her labor. In those times an industrious woman—and all were so, even those born and reared in opulence—could depend upon herself to provide for her necessities. Commerce had not pushed its products into the interior of America, nor had European manufactures cheapened productions then as now. A yard of unbleached linen cloth was then worth eight reals for the first quality, five for the
