A NIGHT IN A FARMHOUSE 
Rest no one could doubt it when the lady of the house 
and her pretty daughter arrived from an errand and 
found strangers in the house. Dear me, what style, what 
enchanting affectation the pretty maid and her mamma 
put on when they perceived us! With an air of solemnity 
that was really delightful, they each offered the tip of 
one finger for us to shake, and spoke with such affectation 
that their words stumbled one against the other. Their 
vocabulary was evidently restricted, and in order to make 
the conversation elegant, they interpolated high-sounding 
words which did not exactly belong, but sounded grand 
in their ears. It was a trial to remain serious. 
Dinner was served — always the same fare wherever 
you went. Roiled rice (very badly boiled), beans, stewed 
chicken chopped up, pimienta (peppers), fried eggs, and 
Indian corn flour, which one mixed up together on one’s 
plate and rendered into a paste. The coffee was always 
plentiful and good, but so strong that it was quite bitter. 
By the light of a wick which burned and smoked 
terribly from the neck of an ex-medicine bottle filled with 
oil, we enjoyed our meal, watched intently by the entire 
family, silent and flattened in semi-obscurity against the 
walls. The primitive lamp gave so little light, although 
it gave abundant smell, that the many figures were almost 
indistinguishable against the dirty background, and all 
one perceived on raising one’s eyes from the dinner-plate 
was a row of expanded eyes, following the movements of 
our hands, and just under that row a line of white teeth. 
When in a stronger light, it was curious to notice 
criminal characteristics on nearly every face one saw; in 
the servants at those farmhouses one frequently observed 
murderous-looking creatures whom one would not care to 
meet alone in the dark. They were a special breed of 
stranded outcasts who had drifted there; the outcome of 
a complex mixture of Portuguese, former black slaves, 
and Indians. When you realized that the people who had 
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