but is intercepted by a youthful and enterprising salesman who has walked into the city from Rio Piedras, several miles southeast from San Juan, with a young pig to dispose of. Mr. Pig has not offered even a dissenting grunt, for the obvious reason that seven hours of travel after the manner of a dress-suit case, with rope wound tightly around his snout, thence northwesterly along said line to front feet, two turns and again westerly along said line to hind feet to the end of line, or one hard and tight drawn knothave left him limp and nearly dead. As the price of pork makes a purchase out of the question, Mammy proceeds. to the meat counter. It is no exaggeration to say that actually a whole beef is waiting her inspection-and right here let it be said, no preference is shown to purchasers: porterhouse, tenderloin, and round steak are unknown quantities. After duly inspecting the meat the purchaser points out the portions desired, and the accommodating butcher seizes the beef with one hand, and with the other, holding a large knife, he hacks off a chunk, the desired amount, each chunk being thrown on a hook suspended from Roman scales until the weights are lifted to a balance with the meat.

This transaction completes Mammy's marketing. Now, for luxurious indulgence, near the entrance to the market is a small stand upon which is exhibited what appears to be a good sized coil of tar rope set on end. Closer inspection, however, reveals the fact that it is chewing tobacco. With a look of satisfaction something akin to that of her American sister approach

ing the ribbon counter on bargain morning, Mammy proceeds to invest the sum of one cent, receiving in return about one-third foot of inch tobacco rope. Applying about an inch to present needs, and stowing the balance away for future demand, Mammy takes leave of the market.

To one who has never witnessed this scene the description must seem ridiculous and much overdrawn; as a matter of fact, the average peon would not make the number of purchases recorded of Mammy, and judging by appearances, the entire contents of the market would scarcely stock the corner of a New York grocery store. It scarcely seems possible, too, that less than fourteen hundred miles southeast of New York City one can step on the shores of a country inhabited by a people many of whom live in Adamic innocence of even the proprieties of life, where Anthony Comstock and sapolio would never survive the first shock of contact, where universal filth and loathsome disease, gross immorality, cringing credulity, and blind superstition comprise the chief attributes of its inhabitants. Thousands of children play about the streets of the cities clothed only in the bronze garb which nature gave them; and the writer witnessed several hundred native men, women, and children bathing in the Rio Grande River at Arecibo, adorned only in the look of complacency which the occasion afforded them.

To-day the same conditions prevail on the island that have existed for over four centuries. One has but to turn to the works of Draper, Haeckel,

White, or Lecky, and go back with them to the fifteenth century, "good old times," for proof. The people are the victims of their own crime-" The Crime of Credulity." Ponce de Leon landed at Porto Rico in 1508 with his forces, to make conquest of the island, and in the name of the Saviour brought the "Tidings of Great Joy at the point of the sword, leaving in his trail the remnants of the Indian tribes so impressed with the great power and might of these Christian gentlemen that they adopted the new religion. To-day the ceremony of marriage is seldom observed among the natives, the ecclesiastical fee making it prohibitive to all but the most prosperous. Formerly, when pestilence arose from the filth and unsan

itary conditions and created havoc among their numbers, the natives flocked to the church to pray that it might cease. Now the United States Government puts in the cities a modern sewerage system and sweeps the streets, and the conditions do not arise.

When death comes, the family of the deceased rent enough space in the graveyard in which to deposit the body. If the tenant's family do not keep the rent properly paid, his remains are dispossessed" and unceremoniously dumped into the bone pile until such a time as a sufficient number of delinquents have accumulated, when his bones are burned to make way for new comers.

Perhaps the saddest and most shocking sight is that of little girls not over