dise. I will not pretend (as I very well might, and as I perhaps
ought) that I thought of these things, all or any, as our train began to
slope rather more rapidly toward Granada, and to find its way under
the rising moon over the storied Vega. I will as little pretend that my
attitude toward Spain was ever that of the impartial observer after
I crossed the border of that enchanted realm where we all have our
castles. I have thought it best to be open with the reader here at
the beginning, and I would not, if I could, deny him the pleasure of
doubting my word or disabling my judgment at any point he likes. In
return I shall only ask his patience when I strike too persistently the
chord of autobiography. That chord is part of the harmony between the
boy and the old man who made my Spanish journey together, and were
always accusing themselves, the first of dreaming and the last of
doddering: perhaps with equal justice. Is there really much difference
between the two?

II.

It was fully a month before that first night in Granada that I arrived
in Spain after some sixty years' delay. During this period I had seen
almost every other interesting country in Europe. I had lived five
or six years in Italy; I had been several months in Germany; and a
fortnight in Holland; I had sojourned often in Paris; I had come and
gone a dozen times in England and lingered long each time; and yet I
had never once visited the land of my devotion. I had often wondered at
this, it was so wholly involuntary, and I had sometimes suffered from
the surprise of those who knew of my passion for Spain, and kept finding
out my dereliction, alleging the Sud-Express to Madrid as something that
left me without excuse. The very summer before last I got so far on the
way in London as to buy a Spanish phrase-book full of those inopportune
conversations with landlords, tailors, ticket-sellers, and casual
acquaintance or agreeable strangers. Yet I returned once more to America
with my desire, which was turning into a duty, unfulfilled; and when
once more I sailed for Europe in 1911 it was more with foreboding of
another failure than a prescience of fruition in my inveterate longing.
Even after that boldly decisive week of the professor in London I had my
doubts and my self-doubts. There were delays at London, delays at Paris,
delays at Tours; and when at last we crossed the Pyrenees and I found
myself in Spain, it was with an incredulity which followed me