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native of Maryland, and had become a mother and a grandmother before leaving the United States.
In Samana she married again and had a second set of children and grandchildren.
These particulars I learned from a daughter of her second marriage, herself a woman of forty.
The aged mother and grandmother came up to Samana during my stay there to make some necessary purchases.
Her figure was slender and, as the French say, ‘bienprise.’
Her only infirmity appeared to be her deafness.
A curious custom in this small community was the consecration of all houses as soon as completed.
This was usually made the occasion of what we term a house-warming.
Friends were invited, and were expected to make contributions of cake.
The priest of the parish offered prayer and sprinkled the premises with holy water, after which the festivities commenced.
The music consisted of a harmonicon and a notched gourd, which was scraped with an iron rod to mark the time.
Cakes and lemonade were handed about in trays.
Grandmothers sat patient with their grandbabes on their laps while the mothers danced to their hearts' content.
It chanced one day that I attended one of these merry-makings.
While the dance was in progress a superbly handsome man, bronze in complexion and very polite in manner, commanded from the
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