A Note-Book in Northern Spain

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 Excerpt: ...its mingled sadness and hope; the hope that though the hand that planted it may be taken away, yet one good deed done may be left to thrive upon earth for others, which in Spanish is sentiment and in English is apt to become sentimentality. Two thousand four hundred children form for this day's celebration, and their restless lines stream onward from the earliest hour. The starting point is, naturally, the Piterta del Sol, where the cars are jammed with load after load. Forty thousand persons turn out to witness the spectacle. During the first experiments of this festival some difficulty was found in the management of the great number of little boys, but no mishaps occur usually and the day is one that deserves to be made as much of as it is. Perhaps no spirit of reconstruction could have found a happier expression than the reclaim of this waste with trees, and the day may not be far distant when the summer months will be less fierce for the poor of a city partly surrounded by a forest. The old familiar station cries rise fitfully outside, in spite of the wet, and at each new stop the fat, dripping guard stands with outspread fingers, striving not to look less and less important as his cheerless, soaked figure grows more wet and bedraggled. At the smaller places where the bustle is not enough to drown the voices we can hear, '.Aguardiente--Aguardiente or Agua jresea, rising sharp and harsh through fragments of dismal, dispirited conversations, between whose long pauses the water drips and gurgles. The woman behind the little stand where the white liquor is sold does a good business this cold day. I say at the smaller places, although it would be hard to recall clear impressions of any large places along our route. How the faces stand out a...