content with all these domestic birds and beasts, they also kept a
horrid, shrieking paroquet, which the old woman was incessantly talking
to, explaining to the others all the time, in little asides, what the
bird said or wished to say, or, rather, what she imagined it wished
to say. There were also several tame young ostriches, always hanging
about the big kitchen or living-room on the look-out for a brass
thimble, or iron spoon, or other little metallic _bonne bouche_
to be gobbled up when no one was looking. A pet armadillo kept trotting
in and out, in and out, the whole evening, and a lame gull was always
standing on the threshold in everybody's way, perpetually wailing for
something to eat--the most persistent beggar I ever met in my life.

The people were very jovial, and rather industrious for so indolent
a country. The land was their own, the men tended the cattle, of which
they appeared to have a large number, while the women made cheeses,
rising before daylight to milk the cows.

During the evening two or three young men--neighbours, I imagine, who
were paying their addresses to the young ladies of the establishment--
dropped in; and after a plentiful supper, we had singing and dancing to
the music of the guitar, on which every member of the family--excepting
the babies--could strum a little.

About eleven o'clock I retired to rest, and, stretching myself on my
rude bed of rugs, in a room adjoining the kitchen, I blessed these
simple-minded, hospitable people. Good heavens, thought I to myself,
what a glorious field is waiting here for some new Theocritus! How
unutterably worn out, stilted, and artificial seems all the so-called
pastoral poetry ever written when one sits down to supper and joins
in the graceful _Cielo_ or _Pericon_ in one of these remote,