e it at so low a price that we perceived he must have tacitly abated
something from the visual demand, and when we did not try to beat him
down, his wife went again into that inner room and came out with an
iron-holder of scarlet flannel backed with canvas, and fringed with
magenta, and richly inwrought with a Moorish design, in white, yellow,
green, and purple. I say Moorish, because one must say something, but
if it was a pattern of her own invention the gift was the more precious
when she bestowed it on the sister of one of the architects of the
Escuela Mann. That led to more conversation about the Escuela Mann, and
about the graduate of it who was now a professor in Puerto Rico, and we
all grew such friends, and so proud of one another, and of the country
so wide open to the talents without cost to them, that when I asked
her if she would not sometime be going to America, her husband answered
almost fiercely in his determination, "I am going when I have learned
English!" and to prove that this was no idle boast, he pronounced some
words of our language at random, but very well. We parted in a glow of
reciprocal esteem and I still think of that quarter-hour as one of my
happiest; and whatever others may say, I say that to have done such a
favor to one Spanish family as the Escuela Mann had been the means of
our nation doing this one was a greater thing than to have taken Cuba
from Spain and bought the Philippines when we had seized them already
and had led the Filipinos to believe that we meant to give their islands
to them.

IV

[Illustration: 30 LOOKING ACROSS THE NEW BRIDGE (300 FEET HIGH) OVER THE GUADA-LAVIAR GORGE, RONDA

Suddenly, on the way home to our very English hotel, the air of Ronda
seemed charged with English. We were already used to the English of our
young guide, which so far as it went, went firmly and courageously after
forethought and reflection for each sentence, but we were not quite
prepared for the English of two polite youths who lifted their hats as
they passed us and said, "Good afternoon." The general English lasted
quite overnight and far into the next day when we found several natives
prepared to try it on us in the pretty Alameda, and learned from one,
who proved to be the teacher of it in the public school, that there were
some twenty boys studying it there: heaven knows why, but the English
hotel and its success may have suggested it to them as a means of
prosperity. The student