The paper that he thus stored up was purchased by the pasteboard
factories; they gave him from thirty or forty centimos per arroba. The
manufacturers required the paper to be perfectly dry, and Senor
Custodio dried it in the sun. As they tried at times to get the best
of him in weight, he used to place in each sack two or three full
arrobas, weighed with a steelyard; on the cloth of the sack he would
inscribe a number in ink, indicating the amount of arrobas it
contained, and these sacks he held in a sort of cellar or ship's hold
that he had dug into the ground of the shed.
When there was a great quantity of paper he sold it to a pasteboard
factory on Acacias Avenue. Senor Custodio's journey was not in vain,
for in addition to selling the goods at a fancy price, he would, on
the way back, drive his cart in the direction of a pitch factory of
the vicinity, and there he picked up from the ground a very fine coal
that burned excellently and gave as much heat as slag.
He sold the bottles to wine houses, to liquor and beer distilleries;
the medicine flasks he disposed of to pharmacists; the bones went to
the refineries and the rags to the paper factories.
The bread leavings, vegetable leaves and fruit cores were reserved for
the feed of the pigs and hens, and what was of no use at all was cast
into the rotting-place, converted into manure and sold to the orchards
near the river.
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