Nearly all the popular amusements in Fayal occur in connection with religion.  After the simpler buildings and rites of the Romish Church in America, the Fayal churches impress one as vast baby-houses, and the services as acted charades.  This perfect intermingling of the religious and the melodramatic was one of our most interesting experiences, and made the Miracle Plays of history a very simple and intelligible thing.  In Fayal, holiday and holy-day have not yet undergone the slightest separation.  A festival has to the people necessarily some religious association, and when the Americans celebrate the Fourth of July, Mr. Dabney’s servants like to dress with flowers a wooden image in his garden, the fierce figure-head of some wrecked vessel, which they boldly personify as the American Saint.  On the other hand, the properties of the Church are as freely used for merrymaking.  On public days there are fireworks provided by the priests; they are kept in the church till the time comes, and then touched off in front of the building, with very limited success, by the sacristan.  And strangest of all, at the final puff and bang of each remarkable piece of pyrotechny, the bells ring out just the same sudden clang which marks the agonizing moment of the Elevation of the Host.

On the same principle, the theatricals which occasionally enliven the island take place in chapels adjoining the churches.  I shall never forget the example I saw, on one of these dramatic occasions, of that one cardinal virtue of Patience, which is to the Portuguese race the substitute for all more positive manly qualities.  The performance was to be by amateurs, and a written programme had been sent from house to house during the day; and this had announced the curtain as sure to rise at eight.  But as most of the spectators went at six to secure places,—­literally, places, for each carried his or her own chair,—­one might suppose the audience a little impatient before the appointed hour arrived.  But one would then suppose very incorrectly.  Eight o’clock came, and a quarter past eight, but no curtain rose.  Half-past eight.  No movement nor sign of any.  The people sat still.  A quarter to nine.  The people sat still.  Nine o’clock.  The people sat perfectly still, nobody talking much, the gentlemen being all the while separated from the ladies, and all quiet.  At last, at a quarter past nine, the orchestra came in!  They sat down, laid aside their instruments, and looked about them.  Suddenly a whistle was heard behind the scenes.  Nothing came of it, however.  After a time, another whistle.  The people sat still.  Then the orchestra began to tune their instruments, and at half-past nine the overture began.  And during all that inexplicable delay of one hour and a half, after a preliminary waiting of two hours, there was not a single look of annoyance or impatience, nor the slightest indication, on any face, that this was viewed as a strange or extraordinary thing.  Indeed, it was not.