upon the Spanish
landscape.

"Too many, too many," said he, at length, musingly, shaking his head and
without addressing me.

He feared, I thought, that he had too much impracticable property
elsewhere to own so much in Spain: so I asked:--

"Will you tell me what you consider the shortest and safest route
thither, Mr. Bourne? for, of course, a man who drives such an immense
trade with all parts of the world will know all that I have come to
inquire."

"My dear sir," answered he, wearily, "I have been trying all my life to
discover it; but none of my ships have ever been there--none of my
captains have any report to make.

"They bring me, as they brought my father, gold-dust from Guinea, ivory,
pearls, and precious stones from every part of the earth; but not a
fruit, not a solitary flower, from one of my castles in Spain.

"I have sent clerks, agents, and travellers of all kinds, philosophers,
pleasure hunters, and invalids, in all sorts of ships, to all sorts of
places, but none of them ever saw or heard of my castles, except a young
poet, and he died in a madhouse."

"Mr. Bourne, will you take five thousand at ninety-seven?" hastily
demanded a man whom, as he entered, I recognized as a broker. "We'll
make a splendid thing of it."

Bourne nodded assent, and the broker disappeared.

"Happy man!" muttered the merchant, as the broker went out; "he has no
castles in Spain."

"I am sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Bourne," said I, retiring.

"I'm glad you came," returned he; "but, I assure you, had I known the
route you hoped to ascertain from me I should have sailed years and
years ago. People sail for the Northwest Passage, which is nothing when
you have found it. Why don't the English Admiralty fit out expeditions
to discover all our castles in Spain?"

Yet I dream my dreams and attend to my castles in Spain. I have so much
property there that I could not in conscience neglect it.

All the years of my youth and hopes of my manhood are stored away, like
precious stones, in the vaults; and I know that I shall find everything
elegant, beautiful, and convenient when I come into possession.

As the years go by, I am not conscious that my interest diminishes.

Shall I tell a secret? Shall I confess that sometimes when I have been
sitting reading to my Prue "Cymbeline," perhaps, or a "Canterbury Tale,"
I have seemed to see clearly before me the broad highway to my castles
in Spain, and, as she looked up from