d
withdrawn from contact with a life which seemed to them tainted. But
because Spain has done much in overthrowing her evil rulers and is
struggling upwards towards the light, we expect wonders, and will not
give time for what must always be a slow and difficult progress.

In Spain, everyone is a politician. The schoolboy, who with us would be
thinking of nothing more serious than football, aspires to sum up the
situation and give his opinion of the public men as if he were an
ex-prime minister at least. These orators of the _cafes_ and the street
corners are delighted to find a foreigner on whom they can air their
unfledged opinions, and the traveller who can speak or understand a few
words of Spanish comes back with wonderful accounts of what "a Spaniard
whom I met in the train told me." In any case, no one ever says as hard
things of his countrymen as a Spaniard will say of those who do not
belong to the particular little political clique which has the extreme
honour of counting himself as one of its number. These cliques--for one
cannot call them parties--are innumerable, called, for the most part,
after one man, of whom no one has heard except his particular friends,
_Un Senor muy conocido en su casa, sobre todo a la hora de comer_, as
their saying is: "A gentleman very well known in his own house,
especially at dinner-time."

[Illustration: PAST WORK]

[Illustration: KNIFE-GRINDER]

Ford is answerable for many of the fixed ideas about Spain which it
seems quite impossible to remove. Much that may have been true in the
long ago, when he wrote his incomparable Guide Book, has now passed away
with the all-conquering years; but still all that he ever said is
repeated in each new book with unfailing certainty. Much as he really
loved Spain, it must be confessed that he now and then wrote of her with
a venom and bitterness quite at variance with his usual manner of
judging things. It is in great part due to him that so much
misunderstanding exists as to the Spanish custom of "offering" what is
not intended to be accepted. If that peculiarity ever existed--for my
part, I have never met with it at any time--it does so no longer. When a
Spaniard speaks of his house as that of "your Grace" (_su casa de
Usted_), it is simply a figure of speech, which has no more special
meaning than our own "I am delighted to see you," addressed to some one
whose existence you had forgotten, and will forget again; but nothing
can exceed