One Pleasant
Starveling Of Ten Or Twelve Entreated Us For Bread With A Cigarette In
His Mouth, And, Being Rewarded For His Impudence, Entered Into The
Spirit Of The Affair And Asked For More, Just As If We Had Given
Nothing.
A squalid little town grew up out of the flying gravel as we approached,
and we left our state coach at the custom-house, which seemed the chief
public edifice.
There the inspectors did not go through the form of
examining our hand-bags, as they would have done at an American
frontier; and they did not pierce our carriage cushions with the long
javelins with which they are armed for the detection of smuggling among
the natives who have been shopping in Gibraltar. As the gates of that
town are closed every day at nightfall by a patrol with drum and fife,
and everybody is shut either in or out, it may easily happen with
shoppers in haste to get through that they bring dutiable goods into
Spain; but the official javelins rectify the error.
We left our belongings in our state coach and started for that stroll in
Spain which I have measured as two up-town blocks, by what I think a
pretty accurate guess; two cross-town blocks I am sure it was not. It
was a mean-looking street, unswept and otherwise unkempt, with the usual
yellowish or grayish buildings, rather low and rather new, as if
prompted by a mistaken modern enterprise. They were both shops and
dwellings; I am sure of a neat pharmacy and a fresh-looking cafe
restaurant, and one dwelling all faced with bright-green tiles.
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