Our Fears Were Wiser Than Our Hopes, But We Did Not Know This, And We Went As Gaily As We

Could for tea in the _patio_ of our hotel, where a fountain typically trickled amidst its water-plants and a

Noiseless Englishman at his separate table almost restored our lost faith in a world not wholly racket. A young Spaniard and two young Spanish girls helped out the illusion with their gentle movements and their muted gutturals, and we looked forward to dinner with fond expectation. To tell the truth, the dinner, when we came back to it, was not very good, or at least not very winning, and the next night it was no better, though the head waiter had then, made us so much favor with himself as to promise us a side-table for the rest of our stay. He was a very friendly head waiter, and the dining-room was a long glare of the encaustic tiling which all Seville seems lined with, and of every Moorish motive in the decoration. Besides, there was a young Scotch girl, very interestingly pale and delicate of face, at one of the tables, and at another a Spanish girl with the most wonderful fire-red hair, and there were several miracles of the beautiful obesity which abounds in Spain.

When we returned to the annex it did seem, for the short time we kept our windows shut, that the manager had spoken true, and we promised ourselves a tranquil night, which, after our two nights in Cordova, we needed if we did not merit. But we had counted without the spread of popular education in Spain. Under our windows, just across the way, there proved to be a school of the "Royal Society of Friends of their Country," as the Spanish inscription in its front proclaimed; and at dusk its pupils, children and young people of both sexes, began clamoring for knowledge at its doors. About ten o'clock they burst from them again with joyous exultation in their acquirements; then, shortly after, every manner of vehicle began to pass, especially heavy market wagons overladen and drawn by horses swarming with bells. Their succession left scarcely a moment of the night unstunned; but if ever a moment seemed to be escaping, there was a maniacal bell in a church near by that clashed out: "Hello! Here's a bit of silence; let's knock it on the head!"

We went promptly the next day to the gentle old manager and told him that he had been deceived in thinking he had given us rooms on a quiet street, and appealed to his invention for something, for anything, different. His invention had probably never been put to such stress before, and he showed us an excess of impossible apartments, which we subjected to a consideration worthy of the greatest promise in them. Our search ended in a suite of rooms on the top floor, where we could have the range of a flat roof outside if we wanted; but as the private family living next door kept hens, led by a lordly turkey, on their roof, we were sorrowfully forced to forego our peculiar advantage.

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