A STRANGE CALLING.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXII, Issue LXII, 20 January 1912, Page 10

A STRANGE CALLING.

Owing to the widespread illifceraey among tbe poorer classes in Mexico, public newspaper readers have become a feature of Mexican life. Few men of the peon classes are able to x^ead or write. Consequently the '-newspaper reader is ..enabled to earn a living by making the rounds of the drinking places and reciting the news of the day. A certain ahiount of literary skill is required to follow this strange calling successfully; the reader is, in .fact, a sort of peripatetic news distributor. He selects only two or three items which ■he knows will interest his audience. The Oi-izaban l-eader, for example, started with the most important topic of the day. He read an article which discussed the financial panic then in progress in the United States, and the hard times "j it had caused in Mexico through the closing of mines and other enterprises controlled by Americans. Things were improving, the newspaper, and. thousands of Mexicans who had lost employment wouki soon be going 4>ack to work, and earning plenty of money to 'buy food and drink. The reader next selected what journalists would, term a, ''human interest" story. In tragic tones, with appropriate gestures, he entertained his audience with a despatch from Noi-thern Mexico which related how a drink-crazed peasant had set fire to the hut of a neighbor with whom he had a feud, and had shot down his enemy as he attempted to escape. Pursued by | the rurales, the murdered had fallen, rHdled with bullets, after opening iire on his pursuers. This "top of the column's story seemed to Excite intense interest. Leaping down from 'his perch on a barrel, the reader went round, sombrero in hand, and made a collection; then, bowing politely, with a "Bunes dias, senores!' he sauntered off to the

next drinking place