It Is Very Modern In Its More Obvious Aspects, With A
Noble Thoroughfare Called The Avenida De Libertad For Its Principal
Street, Shaded With A Double Row Of Those Feathery Tamarisks, And With
Handsome Shops Glittering On Both Sides Of It.
Very easily it is first
of the fashionable watering-places of Spain; the King has his villa
there, and the court comes every summer.
But they had gone by the time
we got there, and the town wore the dejected look of out-of-season
summer resorts; though there was the apparatus of gaiety, the fine
casino at one end of the beach, and the villas of the rich and noble all
along it to the other end. On the sand were still many
bathing-machines, but many others had begun to climb for greater safety
during the winter to the street above. We saw one hardy bather dripping
up from the surf and seeking shelter among those that remained, but they
were mostly tenanted by their owners, who looked shoreward through their
open doors, and made no secret of their cozy domesticity, where they sat
and sewed or knitted and gossiped with their neighbors. Good wives and
mothers they doubtless were, but no doubt glad to be resting from the
summer pleasure of others. They had their beautiful names written up
over their doors, and were for the service of the lady visitors only;
there were other machines for gentlemen, and no doubt it was their
owners whom we saw gathering the fat seaweed thrown up by the storm into
the carts drawn by oxen over the sand.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 14 of 376
Words from 3566 to 3835
of 103320
