would keep out. There are beggars everywhere; sick beggars, and sorry beggars, sad beggars, smiling beggars, blind beggars, beastly beggars, old beggars, and baby beggars. There is no escaping them. They follow you along the roads, crawl out in front of you from the hedges, cluster around you if you stop to take a momentary observation. Toujours beggars! You drive up to your hotel—there is a small crowd of them awaiting you. If you hesitate a moment in handing the fare to the driver, they hem you in on every side, whining for “Señor, una limosnita por el amor de Diós” (“A little alms, sir, for the love of God”). A tiny boy of some seven summers explains with dignity that he is not begging for himself—he would scorn to beg for himself—but it is for the little señorita, and he points to a tiny girl of four who looks pleading up at you out of great eyes. A blind man at your elbow commences to scrape out the ghost of a tune on a wretched fiddle, and a filthy segment of humanity thrusts the stump of an amputated arm before your face. It is horrible to the visitor; it is equally repulsive to the Spaniard. The Englishman feels sick and angry: the Spaniard feels sick and sorry. The former bolts into the shelter of his hotel with a malediction between his teeth, the latter thrusts his hand into his pocket instinctively and gives.
THE “SEVILLANAS” DANCE.
A large number of the beggars are children, who are brought up to mendicity as a profession, and they never desert it. They beg, as do their similars in Naples, in Constantinople, or in Colombo, for their fathers and mothers and for the love of God. They are so importunate, so bright, and, in many cases, so pretty that they reap a living wage even from the British visitors. One gets to love these Spanish children—it is impossible to resist them. Their childish dignity and politeness, and their eagerness to be of assistance if the opportunity presents itself, is delightful. I remember well a little chap we encountered at the railway station at Chinchilla, where, for reasons best known to the railway officials, we had to change trains in the middle of the night. He fastened on to us directly we dismounted from the train, and desired to be made of some service. He followed us into the waiting room, and suggested that we should commission him to notify us when our train was due. We charged him with this mission, and so great was his zeal in the discharge of it that he had us out again upon the platform, where we stood, exposed to the rain and the cold night air, for a quarter of an hour before the train arrived. He was very pleased with himself; and when, after bundling our traps into a compartment, he was rewarded with a whole peseta, his gratification was unbounded. He bit the piece between his teeth, and then, approaching a porter who stood near with a lamp in one hand and an open umbrella in the other, he got him to cast the light of his lantern upon it. Then he took another bite at the coin—bad money is not so rare in Spain as it is in this country—and came back to us, and his face was one expansive smile. He climbed up to the carriage window, as we supposed, with Feste’s importunation in his mind: “But that it would be double dealing, sir, I would you could make it another.” But he had only come to place himself at our entire disposal. Were we wanting anything, he would fetch it; did we wish to send letters, or telegrams, or messages, he would carry them. I sent him to get me another pillow, and on his return gave him half a peseta. His delight was humorous. He desired that God would treat me according to my great deservings, that my journey would be a safe and comfortable one, and that my days might be many. The bow he gave me as the train steamed out of the station was quite worth one and a-half pesetas.
Spanish trains are invariably slow, and, as often as not, they are overcrowded. For some reason or other, which I have failed to plomb, the so-called fast trains travel at night, and the times are so arranged that one generally has to leave a place and arrive at one’s destination at about two o’clock in the morning. The Spaniard is a lover of the night, not from poetical or sentimental motives, but because it is only before sun-up and after sun-down that one gets a sufficiency of the much-longed-for shade. Shade is to the Spaniard what gold is to the Jew, or English origin is to the American. Hence the Spaniard rises early and gets through as much work as he can before the heat of the day sets in; hence, also, he makes his siesta as long as he can; and, consequently, he is able and ready to pursue his business or his pleasure far into the night. It is in the cool of the evening in Seville that one sees the promenades full, the highways alive with splendid Andalusian horses—when one sees in one week of evenings more feminine beauty than can be seen anywhere else in a month.
But to return to the railways, and the subject brings to mind the reflections and the prophecy indulged in by Ford when the undertaking was in contemplation:—“Certainly if the rail can be laid down in Spain by the gold and science of England, the gift like that of steam will be worthy of the Ocean’s Queen, and one of the world’s real leaders of civilisation: and what a change will then come over the spirit of the Peninsula! how the siestas of torpid man vegetation will be disturbed by the shrill whistle and panting snort of the monster engine! how the seals of this long, hermetically-shut-up land will be broken! how the cloistered obscure and dreams of treasures in Heaven will be enlightened by the flashing fire-demon of the wide-awake money worshipper! what owls will be vexed, what bats disost, what drones, mules, and asses will be scared, run over and annihilated! Those who love Spain, and pray, like the author, daily for her prosperity, must indeed hope to see this ‘network of rails’ concluded, but will take special care
Seville.
Seville.
HALL OF AMBASSADORS, ALCÁZAR.