To Shorten Their Fiery
Penance By One Hour, Who Would Not Fast For A Week?
On these
anniversaries a black-bordered advertisement appears in the newspapers,
headed by the sign of the cross and
The Requiescat in Pace, announcing
that on this day twelve months Don Fulano de Tal passed from earth
garnished with the holy sacraments, that all the masses this day
celebrated in such and such churches will be applied to the benefit of
his spirit's repose, and that all Christian friends are hereby requested
to commend his soul this day unto God. These efforts, if they do the
dead no good, at least do the living no harm.
A luxury of grief, in those who can afford it, consists in shutting up
the house where a death has taken place and never suffering it to be
opened again. I once saw a beautiful house and wide garden thus
abandoned in one of the most fashionable streets of Madrid. I inquired
about it, and found it was formerly the residence of the Duke of - - - .
His wife had died there many years before, and since that day not a door
nor a window had been opened. The garden gates were red and rough with
rust. Grass grew tall and rank in the gravelled walks. A thick lush
undergrowth had overrun the flower-beds and the lawns. The blinds were
rotting over the darkened windows. Luxuriant vines clambered over all
the mossy doors. The stucco was peeling from the walls in unwholesome
blotches. Wild birds sang all day in the safe solitude. There was
something impressive in this spot of mould and silence, lying there so
green and implacable in the very heart of a great and noisy city. The
duke lived in Paris, leading the rattling life of a man of the world. He
never would sell or let that Madrid house. Perhaps in his heart also,
that battered thoroughfare worn by the pattering boots of Ma-bine and
the Bois, and the Quartier Breda, there was a green spot sacred to
memory and silence, where no footfall should ever light, where no living
voice should ever be heard, shut out from the world and its cares and
its pleasures, where through the gloom of dead days he could catch a
glimpse of a white hand, a flash of a dark eye, the rustle of a trailing
robe, and feel sweeping over him the old magic of love's young dream,
softening his fancy to tender regret and his eyes to a happy mist -
"Like that which kept the heart of Eden green
Before the useful trouble of the rain."
INFLUENCE OF TRADITION IN SPANISH LIFE
Intelligent Spaniards with whom I have conversed on political matters
have often exclaimed, "Ah, you Americans are happy! you have no
traditions." The phrase was at first a puzzling one. We Americans are
apt to think we have traditions, - a rather clearly marked line of
precedents. And it is hard to see how a people should be happier without
them. It is not anywhere considered a misfortune to have had a
grandfather, I believe, and some very good folks take an innocent pride
in that very natural fact. It was not easy to conceive why the
possession of a glorious history of many centuries should be regarded as
a drawback. But a closer observation of Spanish life and thought reveals
the curious and hurtful effect of tradition upon every phase of
existence.
In the commonest events of every day you will find the flavor of past
ages lingering in petty annoyances. The insecurity of the middle ages
has left as a legacy to our times a complicated system of obstacles to a
man getting into his own house at night. I lived in a pleasant house on
the Prado, with a minute garden in front, and an iron gate and railing.
This gate was shut and locked by the night watchman of the quarter at
midnight, - so conscientiously that he usually had everything snug by
half past eleven. As the same man had charge of a dozen or more houses,
it was scarcely reasonable to expect him to be always at your own gate
when you arrived. But by a singular fatality I think no man ever found
him in sight at any hour. He is always opening some other gate or
shutting some other door, or settling the affairs of the nation with a
friend in the next block, or carrying on a chronic courtship at the
lattice of some olive-cheeked soubrette around the corner. Be that as it
may, no one ever found him on hand; and there is nothing to do but to
sit down on the curbstone and lift up your voice and shriek for him
until he comes. At two o'clock of a morning in January the exercise is
not improving to the larynx or the temper. There is a tradition in the
very name of this worthy. He is called the Sereno, because a century or
so ago he used to call the hour and the state of the weather, and as the
sky is almost always cloudless here, he got the name of the Sereno, as
the quail is called Bob White, from much iteration. The Sereno opens
your gate and the door of your house. When you come to your own floor
you must ring, and your servant takes a careful survey of you through a
latticed peep-hole before he will let you in. You may positively forbid
this every day in the year, but the force of habit is too strong in the
Spanish mind to suffer amendment.
This absurd custom comes evidently down from a time of great lawlessness
and license, when no houses were secure without these precautions, when
people rarely stirred from their doors after nightfall, and when a door
was never opened to a stranger. Now, when no such dangers exist, the
annoying and senseless habit still remains, because no one dreams of
changing anything which their fathers thought proper.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 12 of 67
Words from 11186 to 12196
of 67759
