300 OUTDOOR STUDIES 
shade,—and each alternate word you hear 
seems to be Sexhora. Among laboring men, 
the most available medium of courtesy is the 
cigarette; it contains about four whiffs, and is 
smoked by about that number of separate per- 
sons. 
But to appreciate in full this natural courtesy, 
one must visit the humbler Fayalese at home. 
You enter a low stone hut, thatched and win- 
dowless, and you find the mistress within, a 
robust, black-eyed, dark-skinned woman, en- 
gaged in grinding corn with a Scriptural hand- 
mill. She bars your way with apologies; you 
must not enter so poor a house; you are so 
beautiful, so perfect, and she is so poor, she has 
“nothing but the day and the night,” or some 
equally poetic phrase. But you enter and talk 
with her a little, and she readily shows you all 
her little possessions, — her chest on the earthen 
floor, her one chair and stool, her tallow candle 
stuck against the wall, her husk mattress rolled 
together, with the precious blue cloak inside of 
it. Behind a curtain of coarse straw-work is a 
sort of small boudoir, holding things more pri- 
vate, an old barrel with the winter’s fuel in it, 
a few ears of corn hanging against the wall, a 
pair of shoes, and a shelf with a large paste- 
board box. The box she opens triumphantly 
and exhibits her saz¢zxhos, or little images of 
