not the proud phlegm of the Castilians across their
counters. In the principal dry-goods store two salesmen rivaled each
other in showing us politeness, and sent home our small purchases as
promptly as if we had done them a favor in buying. We were indeed the
wonder of our fellow-customers who were not buying; but our pride was
brought down in the little shop where the proprietress was too much
concerned in cooking her dinner (it smelled delicious) to mind our wish
for a very cheap green vase, inestimably Spanish after we got it home.
However, in another shop where the lady was ironing her week's wash on
the counter, a lady friend who was making her an afternoon call got such
a vase down for us and transacted the negotiation out of pure good will
for both parties to it.

Parallel with the railway was a channel where small fishing-craft lay,
and where a leisurely dredging-machine was stirring up the depths in
a stench so dire that I wonder we do not smell it across the Atlantic.
Over this channel a bridge led into the town, and offered the convenient
support of its parapet to the crowd of spectators who wished to inhale
that powerful odor at their ease, and who hung there throughout the
working-day; the working-day of the dredging-machine, that is. The
population was so much absorbed in this that when we first crossed into
the town, we found no beggar children even, though there were a few
blind beggarmen, but so few that a boy who had one of them in charge was
obliged to leave off smelling the river and run and hunt him up for us.
Other boys were busy in street-sweeping and b-r-r-r-r-ing to the donkeys
that carried off the sweepings in panniers; and in the fine large plaza
before the principal church of Algeciras there was a boy who had plainly
nothing but mischief to do, though he did not molest us farther than
to ask in English, "Want to see the cathedral?" Then he went his way
swiftly and we went into the church, which we found very whitewashed and
very Moorish in architecture, but very Spanish in the Blessed Virgins
on most of the altars, dressed in brocades and jewels. A sacristan was
brushing and dusting the place, but he did not bother us, and we went
freely about among the tall candles standing on the floor as well as on
the altars, and bearing each a placard attached with black ribbon, and
dedicated in black letters on silver "To the Repose of This or That" one
among the dead.

The meaning was evident enough,