ith spreading vines in full bearing, ran around the four sides of the
building, in the open space of which the dancers were assembled. Gay
lamps of painted paper and rude pine-torches lit up the whole, and gave
to the party-colored and showy costumes an elegance and brilliancy which
the severer test of daylight might have been ungenerous enough to
deny. The olive-brown complexion--the flashing dark eyes--the graceful
gestures--the inspiriting music--the merry voices--the laughter--were
all too many ingredients of pleasure to put into that little
crucible, the human heart, and not amalgamate into something very like
enchantment,--a result to which the Paquaretta perhaps contributed.

Into this gay throng Seth and I descended, like men determined, in
Mexican phrase, to "take pleasure by both horns." It was at the very
climax of the evening's amusement we entered. The dance was the Mexican
fandango, which is performed in this wise: a lady, stepping into the
circle, after displaying her attractions in a variety of graceful
evolutions, makes the "tour" of the party in search of the Caballero she
desires to take as her partner. It is at his option either to decline
the honor by a gesture of deferential humility, or, accepting it,
he gives her some part of his equipment,--his hat, his scarf, or his
embroidered riding-glove, to be afterwards redeemed as a forfeit;
the great amusement of the scene consisting in the strange penalties
exacted, which are invariably awarded with a scrupulous attention to the
peculiar temperament of the sufferer. Thus, a miserly fellow is certain
to be mulcted of his money; an unwieldy mass of fears and terrors is
condemned to some feat of horsemanship; a gourmand is sentenced to a
dish of the least appetizing nature; and so on: each is obliged to an
expiation which is certain to amuse the bystanders. While these are
the "blanks" in the lottery, the prizes consist in the soft, seductive
glances of eyes that have lost nothing of Castilian fire in their
transplanting beyond seas; in the graceful gestures of a partner to whom
the native dance is like an expressive language, and whose motions are
more eloquent than words,--in being, perhaps, the favored of her whose
choice has made you the hidalgo of the evening; and all these, even
without the aid of Paquaretta, are no slight distinctions.

Were the seductions less attractive, it is not a man whose Irish blood
has been set a-glowing with Spanish wine wh