Spanish Highways and Byways

by Katharine Lee Bates

Or service of some virtuous gentleman,

Or honest labor: nay, what can I name,

But would become thee better than to beg?"

From the Spanish point of view, on the contrary, it is manual labor, not beggary, that stains the escutcheon. A German lady of my acquaintance said to a strongly built man who was pleading for alms, "If you will carry my bag up these stairs, I will gladly pay you." Deeply insulted, he folded his cloak about him with hidalgo dignity, saying, "Madame, I am a beggar, not a laborer." Certain monasteries send out brothers, with plates and bags, on a daily begging round—brothers who may belong to the first families of Spain. The Church is often cited as indorsing mendicancy. Extolling almsgiving as a prime virtue, and itself maintaining a vast number of charitable institutions, it has not yet assimilated modern methods of relief.

A favorite story for children, used as supplementary reading in the schools, is called "The Medal of the Virgin." This is, in fact, a Roman Catholic version of "Fortunatus's Purse." Its small heroine, Mary of the Angels, is an orphan, defrauded by a miser of her rich inheritance and treated with barbarity by the uncle and aunt for whom she is an uncomplaining drudge. But once, in festive hour, they give her five centimos, which this generous innocent promptly bestows on a beggar woman, who holds a baby in her ragged arms. In return, the beggar gives the child a queer, old-fashioned mite of a coin, which turns out to have the Wall Street quality of heaving up a little mountain of gold above itself every hour or two.

Mary of the Angels sallies forth for a tour of the country, pouring handfuls of gold into the laps of the beggars who sit at the church doors and city gates, until she is escorted wherever she goes by an army of the halt and blind singing her praises. At last, having given away such Pyrenees of gold that not a beggar could be found in all the land for a century to come, the footsore little philanthropist begs the Virgin to relieve her of the coin. The Madonna descends in a beam of light, the Christ Child smiling from her arms, yet in the radiant group Mary of the Angels recognizes the objects of her earliest charity. "For I," explains the Madonna, "am the holy beggar from heaven. The poor of the earth give me their tears and prayers, and for such alms do I hold out my hand to all the sorrowful."

Yet the progressive element in Spain is all the more ashamed of the beggars because they are not ashamed of themselves, and a few years may see Madrid swept as clear of mendicancy as is San Sebastian to-day.

Madrid is such an easy-going city that one hardly realizes at first how well it performs certain of its functions. Its water supply, for instance, is excellent, although when one sees the picturesque groups, with those same clay water-jars over which Rebecca smiled on Jacob, lingering about the gray stone fountains, one expects a patriarchal flavor in the liquid. The tramway service of Madrid, everything radiating from the Puerta del Sol, is most convenient, although electricity is a little slow in coming to the relief of horse-flesh. The shops, fairly well stocked, gild commerce with Spanish graces. You accept a chair, you pass the courtesies of the day, the gentleman who serves you, often with cigar in mouth, is seldom sure as to just what goods he has on hand, and is still more rarely dogmatic as to their price.

The tug of war, however, comes in getting them delivered. Ten days before quitting Madrid I bought at one of the best of the librerias a number of books, including several illustrated catalogues of the Velázquez sala. These last were pretty trifles bound in white parchment, and as I intended them for gifts, I wanted fresh copies. "You wish them clean, all of them?" asked the proprietor, with an accent of surprise. I replied that I did, and would moreover be obliged if he could fit them with envelopes ready for mailing. Envelopes he had none, but he promised to tie them up in separate parcels. "And books and bill will come without fail this afternoon?" He looked pained to the heart. "This very morning, señora. You will find them awaiting you on your return." On the third day I sent a note, and on the fifth a boy arrived with the bulk of my purchase, but no catalogues nor bill. I explained to the lad, who smilingly besought me to give myself no concern, that I was on the point of leaving the city for good, and preferred not to go away in debt; but the days passed, and my inability to extort that reckoning became the jest of the household. At last, driven to desperate measures, I went through noonday heat to the store, and actually found that procrastinating bookseller scattering cigar ashes over a little heap of catalogues, while he contemplated the pictures of each copy in turn. "Behold, señora," he exclaimed, as serenely as if not ten minutes had elapsed since our parting, "here I have for you immaculate booklets, stainless, faultless, such as will rejoice those fortunate friends to whom you have the amiability to send them. And I am this instant about to prepare them for the post with inviolate security."