s the appearance of a mummy, swathed in coarse
yellow flannel, only its head appearing. So stiffly are they rolled up
that I have seen an infant only a few weeks old propped up on end
against the wall, or in a corner, while the mother was busy. There is a
superstition, too, about never washing a child's head from the day it
is born. The result is really indescribable. When it is about two years
old, a scab, which covers the whole head, comes off of its own accord,
and after that the head may be cleansed without fear of evil
consequences. Some English servants who have married in Spain set the
example of keeping their infants clean, and, therefore, healthy, from
the first, and, seeing the difference in the appearance of the children,
a few Spanish women have followed suit; but it requires a good deal of
courage to break away from old traditions and set one's face against the
sacred superstitions of ages--and the mother-in-law!

One wonders, not that Spanish men grow bald so early, and not bald only,
but absolutely hairless, but that they ever have any hair at all; for
after all the troubles of their infancy their heads are regularly
shaved, or the hair cut off close to the skin all the summer. On the
principle of cutting off the heads of dandelions as soon as they appear,
as a way of exterminating them, the surprising thing is that the hair
does not become too much discouraged even to try to sprout again. Funny
little objects they look, with only a dark mark on the skin where the
hair ought to grow in summer, and at most a growth about as long as
velvet in the winter, until they are quite big boys! The girls generally
wear their hair so tightly plaited, as soon as it is long enough to
allow of plaiting at all, that they can scarcely close their eyes.
Young Spanish women, however, have magnificent hair; though they, too,
grow bald when they are old, in a way that is never seen in England.

CHAPTER XV

MUSIC, ART, AND THE DRAMA

One is apt to forget how much the history of music owes to Spain. The
country was for so long considered to be in a state of chronic political
disturbance that few foreigners took up their abode there, except such
as had business interests, and for the rest the mere traveller never
became acquainted with the real life of the people, or entered into
their intellectual amusements. It is quite a common thing to find the
tourist entering in his valuable notes on a country which he has not th