"Well, honor is the subject of my story;
I cannot tell what you and other men
Think of this life; but for my single self,
I had as lief not be, as live to be
In awe of such a thing as I myself."
"Two truths are told
As happy prologues to the swelling act,
Of the imperial theme."
"This is the eve of Christmas,
No sleep from night to morn;
The Virgin is in travail,
At twelve will the Child be born."
Cities have not only a certain physiognomy; they have also a
decided mental and moral character, and a definite political
tendency. There are good and bad cities, artistic and
commercial cities, scholarly and manufacturing cities,
aristocratic and radical cities. San Antonio, in its
political and social character, was a thoroughly radical city.
Its population, composed in a large measure of
adventurous units from various nationalities, had
that fluid rather than fixed character, which is susceptible
to new ideas. For they were generally men who had found the
restraints of the centuries behind them to be intolerable--men
to whom freedom was the grand ideal of life.
It maybe easily undertood{sic} that this element in the
population of San Antonio was a powerful one, and that a
little of such leaven would stir into activity a people who,
beneath the crust of their formal piety, had still something
left of that pride and adventurous spirit which distinguished
the Spain of Ferdinand and Isabel.
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