

PURIFICATION. 



IN the morning not at the first blush of dawn, 

 but when the sun already mounts the horizon and 

 at the very moment when the cocoa-nut tree unfolds 

 its leaves, the urubus (or little vultures), perched in 

 knots of forty or fifty upon its branches, open their 

 brilliant ruby eyes. The toils of the day demand 

 them. In indolent Africa a hundred villages invoke 

 them ; in drowsy America, south of Panama or 

 Caraccas, they, swiftest of cleansers, must sweep out 

 and purify the town before the Spaniard rises, before 

 the potent sun has stirred the carcass and the mass 



of rottenness into fermentation. If they failed a single day, the 



country would become a desert. 



When it is evening-time in America when the urubu, his day's 



work ended, replaces himself on the cocoa-nut tree the minarets of 



