The Project Gutenberg EBook of Familiar Spanish Travels, by W. D. Howells

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Title: Familiar Spanish Travels

Author: W. D. Howells

Release Date: February, 2005 [EBook #7430]
Posting Date: July 24, 2009 [EBook

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS ***

Produced by Eric Eldred

FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS

By W. D. Howells

ILLUSTRATED
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
MCMXIII
COPYRIGHT, 1913, BY HARPER & BROTHERS
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PUBLISHED OCTOBER. 1913

TO M. H.

[Illustration: 01 PUERTA DEL SOL--GATE OF THE SUN--TOLEDO]

CONTENTS

I. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES

II. SAN SEBASTIAN AND BEAUTIFUL BISCAY

III. BURGOS AND THE BITTER COLD OF BURGOS

IV. THE VARIETY OF VALLADOLID

V. PHASES OF MADRID

VI. A NIGHT AND DAY IN TOLEDO

VII. THE GREAT GRIDIRON OF ST. LAWRENCE

VIII. CORDOVA AND THE WAY THERE

IX. FIRST DAYS IN SEVILLE

X. SEVILLIAN ASPECTS AND INCIDENTS

XI. TO AND IN GRANADA

XII. THE SURPRISES OF RONDA

XIII. ALGECIRAS AND TARIFA

FAMILIAR SPANISH TRAVELS

I. AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES

I.

As the train took its time and ours in mounting the uplands toward
Granada on the soft, but not too soft, evening of November 6, 1911,
the air that came to me through the open window breathed as if from an
autumnal night of the middle eighteen-fifties in a little village of
northeastern Ohio. I was now going to see, for the first time, the city
where so great a part of my life was then passed, and in this magical
air the two epochs were blent in reciprocal association. The question of
my present identity was a thing indifferent and apart; it did not matter
who or where or when I was. Youth and age were at one with each other:
the boy abiding in the old man, and the old man pensively willing to
dwell for the enchanted moment in any vantage of the past which would
give him shelter.

In that dignified and del