artists who engrave the smaller sort in shops open to
the public eye; and my purpose dwindled to the purchase of a little pair
of scissors, much as a high resolve for the famous marchpane of Toledo
ended in a piece of that pastry about twice the size of a silver dollar.
Not all of the twenty thousand people of Toledo could be engaged in
these specialties, and I owe myself to blame for not asking more about
the local industries; but it is not too late for the reader, whom
I could do no greater favor than sending him there, to repair my
deficiency. In self-defense I urge my knowledge of a military school
in the Alcazar, where and in the street leading up to it we saw some
companies of the comely and kindly-looking cadets. I know also that
there are public night schools where those so minded may study the arts
and letters, as our guide was doing in certain directions. Now that
there are no longer any Jews in Toledo, and the Arabs to whom they
betrayed the Gothic capital have all been Christians or exiles for many
centuries, we felt that we represented the whole alien element of the
place; there seemed to be at least no other visitors of our lineage or
language.

VI

We were going to spend the rest of the day driving out through the
city into the country beyond the Tagus, and we drove off in our really
splendid turnout through swarms of beggars whose prayers our horses'
bells drowned when we left them to their despair at the hotel door. At
the moment of course we believe that it was a purely dramatic misery
which the wretched creatures represented; but sometimes I have since
had moments of remorse in which I wish I had thrown big and little
dogs broadcast among them. They could not all have been begging for the
profit or pleasure of it; some of them were imaginably out of work and
worthily ragged as I saw them, and hungry as I begin to fear them. I am
glad now to think that many of them could not see with their poor blind
eyes the face which I hardened against them, as we whirled away to the
music of our horses' bells.

The bells pretty well covered our horses from their necks to their
haunches, a pair of gallant grays urged to their briskest pace by the
driver whose short square face and humorous mouth and eyes were a joy
whenever we caught a glimpse of them. He was one of those drivers who
know everybody; he passed the time of day with all the men we met, and
he had a joking compliment for all the women, who gla