hung over my head or as the graceful knots of ribbon that tied the long
braids of their hair, and made me compose couplets for them to sing to
their sweethearts in the afternoon, to the sound of the tambourine,
under the walnut trees where the young people danced and the elders
chatted and enjoyed our pleasure."

The young poet's parents were simple tillers of the soil, who gave their
son a meagre education. In one of his letters he says that his father's
library consisted of the _Fueros de Viscaya_ (the old laws of Biscay),
the _Fables_ of Samaniego, _Don Quixote_, some ballads brought from
Valmaseda or Bilbao, and two or three lives of the saints. Antonio seems
to have had from his earliest childhood an ardent love of poetry, and in
the passage quoted above he mentions his own compositions. He continues
by saying, "I remember one day one of those girls was very sad because
her sweetheart was going away for a long time. She wanted a song to
express her grief, and I composed one at her request. A few days later
she did not need my aid to sing her sorrow: in proportion as it had
increased her ability to sing it herself had also increased, for poetry
is the child of feeling. Her songs, as well as those I composed, soon
became popular in the valley."

When the poet was fifteen years old the civil war waged by Don Carlos
was desolating Spain. The inhabitants of Biscay espoused his cause, but
Antonio's parents were unwilling to expose their son to the dangers he
must run if he remained at home, and therefore decided to send him to a
distant relative in Madrid who kept a hardware-shop. "One night in
November," says Trueba, "I departed from my village, perhaps--my
God!--never to return. I descended the valley with my eyes bathed in
tears. The cocks began to crow, the dogs barked, the owls hooted in the
mountains, the wind moaned in the tops of the walnut trees, and the
river roared furiously rushing down the valley; but the inhabitants of
the village slept peaceably, except my parents and brothers, who from
the window followed weeping the sound of my footsteps, about to be lost
in the noise of the valley. I was just leaving the last house of the
village when one of those girls who had so often sought me under the
cherry trees approached the window and took leave of me sobbing. On
crossing a hill, about to lose the valley from my sight, I heard a
distant song, and stopped. That same girl was sending me her last
farewell in a