"In the valley is a church whose spire pierces the surrounding canopy of foliage, and is seen above the chestnut and ash trees. In this church they celebrate two masses, one at the rising of the sun, the other two hours afterward.
"We, the young boys of the hamlet rose every Sunday with the song of the birds, and went down to the early mass, singing and jumping over the bushes. The elders of the families attended the later devotions. While the fathers and grandfathers were so occupied, I took my seat under a cherry tree opposite the door, and had a full view of the entire vale till it approached the shore. I was soon joined by four or five young girls with cheeks as blooming as the cherries which hung over our beads, or the red ribbons which bound the long braids of their hair. They would request me to make some verses for them to sing in the evening to the accompaniment of the basque tambourine, when the young would be dancing, and the aged looking on in sympathy with their enjoyment."
Don Antonio was already a poet, though his material sources of information and inspiration were very easily counted. His library consisted of the Fueros (Customs) of Biscay, Samanego's Fables, Don Quixote, a book of ballads, and two or three volumes of the Lives of the Saints. At fifteen years of age (1836), the Carlist cause gathering the youth of Biscay to its side, Antonio's parents not being enthusiastic partisans of that party, sent their son to a distant relative in Madrid, who could do nothing better for the future poet and novelist than employ him in his hardware shop to take down door-hinges, pokers, and frying-pans for his customers.
For ten tedious years did our poet in embryo do the duty of a shopman by day, treat himself the to a book when be could, and spend in study great part of the time that should be given to sleep. Bad business or failure obliged him at the end of the time mentioned to look out for other occupation, and since that time he has been connected with journalism, the evenings still being devoted to poetry and romance.
The ordinary vehicle in which the nameless poets of Spain utter their thoughts to the people is the quatrain, in which the second and fourth lines rhyme after a fashion, the accented vowels corresponding without exception, the consonants when it pleases Apollo. This is what they call the Romance, and in which Trueba has endeavored to improve the taste of the people by a genuine poetic feeling, and perfection in the structure of the verse.
But our Biscayan thought a poet's life incomplete without the sympathy which only a loving and intelligent wife can afford. So he incurred the expense of a household, as well as gave support to his aged parents. Along with laboring at the public press and writing and publishing Los Cantares, he found time to compose his Rose-colored Tales, all concerned with the ordinary life of the country in which his boyhood was passed, and all seen through that softly colored magic medium through which mature age loves to look back to the period of careless hopeful youth. These stories are called The Resurrection of the Soul, The Stepmother, From our Country to Heaven. The Judas of the House, and Juan Palamo. All end happily, all are imbued with the purest morality, and breathe an atmosphere in which live the best feelings of our nature.
While writing the dedication of them to his wife, he was enlivened by the anticipation of a visit they would shortly make to his natal village.
"While I write this, the most cherished wish of my life is about to be gratified. Before the July sun withers up the flowers, the breezes and the flowers of my native hills shall cool our foreheads, and perfume our hair. The venerable man who honors himself and thee in calling thee his daughter, is now going from house to house in the village, and telling the companions of my boyhood, while tears of joy find their way down his check, 'My children are coming; my son is about revisiting his native valleys as lovingly as he bade them adieu twenty years ago.'
"And our father and our brothers are thinking on us every moment, and doing all in their humble means to beautify and cheer the apartments destined for us. Every time they come to the windows, they expect to see my form on the hillock where they caught the last site of me seventeen years ago."