United States or Ireland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


In fancy she saw him going to the church in company with the prettiest and richest girl in the town, both well-dressed, happy and smiling, while she, Juli, followed her mistress, carrying novenas, buyos, and the cuspidor. Here the girl felt a lump rise in her throat, a sinking at her heart, and begged the Virgin to let her die first.

It is said that with this money, with which vice pays its license, magnificent schoolhouses are erected, bridges and roads are constructed, prizes for encouraging agriculture and commerce are distributed: blessed be the vice that produces such good results! In this first enclosure are the vendors of buyos, cigars, sweetmeats, and foodstuffs.

To offer to the Spanish ladies a plate of cigars and buyos, to extend her hand to her countrywomen to be kissed, exactly as the friars do, this is the sum of her courtesy, her policy. The poor old lady soon became bored, and taking advantage of the noise of a plate breaking, rushed precipitately away, muttering, "Jesús! Just wait, you rascals!" and failed to reappear.

What has been seen is that the natives and Spaniards laymen and religious, men and women use it so commonly and generally that mornings and afternoons, at parties and visits, and even alone in their houses, all their refreshments and luxuries consist of buyos served on heavily-gilded and handsomely adorned plates and trays like chocolate in Nueva Espana.

At Manilla a labourer's pay is a quarter of a dollar a-day, or a little more than a shilling, which is enough to keep him supplied with food of as good quality and quantity as he needs to eat for about two or three days, so that if a labourer or coolie, who has only himself to support, work two days out of the seven, he has enough to supply all his necessities, and can enjoy what is to him a high degree of pleasure and amusement, the training of a cock for the cockpit, sleeping a long siesta, gossiping with his neighbour, and chewing buyos, or smoking cigarillos, quite at his ease, during the rest of the time.

In the parians, or bazars, buyos are sold ready made, and the outfit for making them. The natives of these islands quite commonly use as venoms and poisons the herbs of that class found throughout the islands. They are so efficacious and deadly that they produce wonderful effects.

These are heaped with cigars, cigarettes, and diminutive buyos prepared by the delicate fingers of the maidens. The floor of the house shines like a mirror, curtains of piña and husi festoon the doorways, from the windows hang lanterns covered with glass or with paper, pink, blue, green, or red. The house itself is filled with plants and flower-pots on stands of Chinese porcelain.