Democratic Sentinel, Volume 7, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 28 December 1883 — An Aged Cigarette Smoker. [ARTICLE]

An Aged Cigarette Smoker.

The old chapel is still standing in a fair state of preservation, used for the daily services of the San Gabriel parish ; and there are in its near neighborhood a few crumbling adobe hovels left, the only remains of the once splendid and opulent mission. bn one of these lives a Mexican woman, 82 years old, who for more than half a century has washed and mended the priests’ laces, repaired the robes and remodeled the vestments of San Gabriel. She is worth crossing the continent to see; all white from head to foot, as if bleached by some strange gramarve; white hair, white skin, blue eyefi faded nearly to white; white cotton .clothes, ragged and not over clean, yet not a trace of color in them; a white linen handkerchief, delicately embroidered by herself, always tied loosely around her tnroat. She sits on a low box, leaning against the wall, With three white pillows -at her back, her feet on a cushion on the ground; in front of her another low box, on this a lace-maker’s pillow, with knotted fringe stretched on it; at her left hand a battered copper caldron holding hot coals to warm her fingers and light her cigarettes. A match she will nevet use; and she has seldom been without a cigarette in her mouth since she was six years old. — “H. H.,*‘ in the Century.