The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 49 pages of information about The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction.

The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 49 pages of information about The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction.
the entreaties of that exemplary wife, the three holy Maries remitted the remainder of their flagellation, and retired, leaving Perez senseless on the floor.  Poor Juana was agonized at beholding the state to which her graceless partner was reduced, and hauling him, as well as her own exhausted strength would permit, upon his miserable pallet, washed the blood and dust from his wounds, and watched his return to consciousness with unexampled tenderness and dutiful fidelity.  Perez at length opened his eyes, and said, in the mild voice which was natural to him when sober, “My poor Juana, I wish you could fetch your cousin Pedro to see me; I think I shall die.”  Juana was half distracted at this speech; and running to the next house, bribed a neighbour’s child by the promise of a broad-brimmed straw hat, to shade his complexion from the sun, to run for Doctor Pedrillo.  Pedro soon arrived, and was evidently more puzzled respecting his deportment than the case of his patient.  Sundry “nods, and becks, and wreathed smiles,” and sundry eloquent glances of his bright black eyes, were covertly bestowed upon his fair cousin; anon, with ludicrous solemnity, he felt the pulse of Perez, shook his head, and, in short, imitated with inimitable exactness all the technical airs and graces of a regular graduate of Salamanca.—­“Cousin,” cried he at length, with a sly look at Juana, “I pity your plight—­from my soul I do; but your case is, I am grieved to say, desperate, unless I am informed of the cause of these monstrous weals, bruises, slashes, and chafings, in order that my prescription, may—­“—­“The cause of them,” said Perez, almost frightened to death, “is, having to my cost a saint of a wife.”—­“How! that a misfortune? explain yourself, my poor fellow.”—­“Readily,” replied Donilla, “if that will help to heal me.”—­He then explained minutely the circumstances of the case, concluding thus:—­“Not but what I am, after all, remarkably indebted to Juana, for had she only called the eleven thousand Virgins to her assistance, their zeal would undoubtedly have divided my body amongst them; since, then, my wife has such friends in heaven; I shall henceforth be careful how I enrage them again.”—­Perez Donilla kept to his resolution, and the Three Maries, whom, without doubt, the intelligent reader has recognised through their disguise, lived for many years to rejoice in the blessed effects of a severe, but merited infliction.  M.L.B.

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RETROSPECTIVE GLEANINGS.

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THEATRICAL BILL.

At a play acted in 1511, on the Feast of St. Margaret, the following disbursements were made as the charges of the exhibition:—­

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The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.