Page:Our Neighbor-Mexico.djvu/349

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FOUR APOSTATES.
337

anticipated, and that its pretensions required. It is a little giant, and is not unlike many another swell who begins his career much bigger than he ends.

This multitude of teams shows the readiness of this country for the railroad, as the level land shows its fitness. There is no doubt that a road, well and wisely made, will be a paying investment from the start.

The city of San Felipe is our first stopping-place. It is a largish town of five thousand inhabitants, dirty and adobe in most of its streets and houses, gayly got up, with colored washes and fancy figurings in its plaza and neighborhood. The time for changing horses allows me to visit the church. It is about eight in the morning, and fifty to seventy-five persons are at worship, while a priest is delivering the consecrated wafer to an altar full of coming and going recipients. At the corner near the entrance is a painting on the walls of the church, with the face of a woman, but habited as a pope, with the triple crown on her head, and two angel boys offering her an open book, on which is written in Latin, "The Word was made flesh."Her right hand is waving authority to lightnings that are diving at the heads of four apostates, who are disappearing under their forked fires, while over them is written, "Qui ecclesiam non audierint, sit tibi Sicut Ethnicus et Publicanus"—Matt, xviii., 17 (Whoever will not hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican). Now who do you suppose that verse and these lightnings were hurled at by that female pope of a church? Arreo, Voltaire, Rousseau, and Lutero. The last was the lowest, as if the quickest to sink into hell. That painting was fresh, and put up by some priest who scented what was in the air, and is getting the people ready to resist its coming. But Luther will be erased yet from those walls, and the triple crown from the head of the church; and those poor sisters, that are only allowed half the sacrament, shall enjoy the whole supper of the Lord in company with the disciples of this Lutero.

The road soon enters a divide, which is rough, though not high nor long. An attempt is made to have a smooth and handsome