"I cannot make it appear so," says the Gentle Reader, who has come under the spell of Cervantes. "Don Quixote seems to be wandering through the most romantic country in the world. I can see
| 'The long, straight line of the highway, |
| The distant town that seems so near, |
| . . . . . . . . . . |
| White crosses in the mountain pass, |
| Mules gay with tassels, the loud din |
| Of muleteers, the tethered ass |
| That crops the dusty wayside grass, |
| And cavaliers with spurs of brass |
| Alighting at the inn; |
| White hamlets hidden in fields of wheat, |
| . . . . . . . . . . |
| White sunshine flooding square and street, |
| Dark mountain-ranges, at whose feet |
| The river-beds are dry with heat,— |
| All was a dream to me.' |
"Through this enchanted country it is pleasant to wander about in irresponsible fashion, climbing mountains, loitering in secluded valleys, where shepherds and shepherdesses still make love in Arcadian fashion, meeting with monks, merchants, muleteers, and fine gentlemen, and coming in the evening to some castle where one is lulled to sleep by the splash of fountains and the tinkle of guitars; and if it should turn out that the castle is only an inn,—why, to lodge in an inn of La Mancha would be a romantic experience!"
The Spain of the sixteenth century is to us as truly a land of romance as any over which a knight-errant roamed. It seems just suited for heroic adventure.
Some day our quixotic characters may appear to the future reader thus magically conformed to the world they live in, or rather, the world may be transformed by their ideals.
"They do seem strange to us," the Gentle Reader of that day will say, "but then we must remember that they lived in the romantic dawn of the twentieth century."
N the affairs of the mind we are all "Indian givers." We will part with our most cherished convictions for a merely nominal consideration, such as "for the sake of the argument,"—even when we do not really care for arguments. But let no one be deceived into thinking that this is the end. Renunciation usually has some mental reservation, or at least some saving ambiguity.