Page:Our Sister Republic - Mexico.djvu/131

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THE INMATES OF THE HOSPICIO.
125

smile on their faces indicating their knowledge of our presence. In another, boys were at work making shoes, blind girl in the hospicio tailoring, carpentering, and setting type in a regular printing office, and printing with one of Hoe's Washington presses, just such as I "rolled" upon twenty-four years ago, in a country printing office in the then "Far West." In another, girls were sewing, embroidering in silk and bullion, making lace, knitting, etc. In another, young ladies of the first families, who reside with their parents, were learning painting and the highest styles of embroidery.

In another ward, two hundred children, between two and five years of age, one hundred' boys and one hundred girls, belonging to parents too poor even to dress them, were being taught orally, as at the school of San Felipe. All the cloth for the clothing of the pupils, is made within its walls, and all the clothing, and boots and shoes required, are made up by the boys and girls.

The kitchen, as large as an ordinary school-house with us, is floored with glazed tiles of beautiful pattern, and the old Spanish ranges have recently been replaced by English iron ranges, which cost twenty-four hundred