brawny, bare-chested mendicant, squatted
down at a church porch, just outside the
greasy, heavy curtain, and within ear reach
of the great pulse of the organ that jars the
quire, and makes even the vast stone columns
answer with a ghostly echo of Amen—to see,
I say, this brown tough beggar, with his
round head close shaved, as the Andalusians
are used on account of the heat, dining with
supreme content off a pink section of melon,
as large as the bottom of your hat. Here
is a dog, who could pull a bull down by
the horns, drive his knife through a three-
inch plank, yet he nourishes his "robur" and
stamina on half a pink melon, brought from
that moist province, where the mocking
proverb says, "The trees are grass, the earth
water, the men women, and the women—
nothing." Yet on that, or bread dipped in a
cow's horn of oil, and another of vinegar
spiced up with hot green pepper, garlic,
and salt, that dog will toil all day in the
Castle of Solomon copper-mine in the
Cabeza Colorada, where the stalactites are
emerald and amethyst; will sweat at the
olive press or the grape crushing, and wander
home at night, not pale, fretful, and
collapsed, but merry and gay, ready to go
mad at the distant tinkle of a guitar, and to
beat his hands sore keeping staccato time to
the Cadiz cachuca. I who only yesterday
saw an Englishman double up and pack on his
fork for one calm mouthful about four square
inches of red roast beef, think we lay far too
much stress on the necessity of heavy eating.
The Arab, on his rice diet, scourged the
shrinking world. The Roman soldier, on his
sour wine and vinegar bread, mapped out
Europe with his roads. Perhaps to produce
unlimited cotton prints a beef diet is
indispensable; but for what else?

The Spaniard who wears the Moorish
turban still, or its effigy; who carries the
Moorish javelin turned to a stick; who lives
in Moorish court-yards; who uses Moorish
words, blessings, and curses; who covers his
streets with Moorish awnings; who uses the
Moorish boat, and hunts bulls like the Moors
used to, lives still on the rough food of that;
Roman soldier—the bread soaked in oil and
vinegar, the bread salad, so refreshing and
healthy in a burning climate, where the oil
stands for the most ethereal fat you can feed
the stomach flame with, and vinegar for the
destroyer of thirst and purifier of the blood.

Beware, O Spanish traveller, of your
unbridled English appetite: cut not those
stewed quails that smell so of garlic: dismiss
untouched those gravel-walked white fish:
return that brown pad of steak with the
crisp potato wafers and the savoury, brown,
bubbly gravy—all of which, with certain
cameo pats of butter, oval white rolls, crackly
toast, coffee, &c., Don Hieronymo, your landlord,
expects you to eat for breakfast, on
this baking morning, in the great city of
nuts—Barcelona.

You awoke, say, an hour ago, with the hot
air puffing in at your glass door of a window,
fanning the mosquito curtains of your bed
that cage you in, and calling you in a hot,
angry whisper to rise, "or be forever fallen."
Just as you turn in the hot trough of your
bed, the clump of your boots on the tiled
floor outside your bedroom decides you to
get up with a sudden stoic spring and
somersault, thinking of the old sea proverb, "The
man who is always wanting to turn in will
never turn out anything."

The cold floor against your feet acts as a
tonic, and drives you to fresh stoicisms with
cold water, for which you mentally applaud
yourself. You dress, and go down to the
breakfast-room; stopping, half-way
downstairs, to read the following card nailed
against the wall:

VINCENT'S HOTEL OF TANGIERS.
Travellers will find excellent accommodacion and
cookery. The guides and the dogs for the
sportmen.

Pepys' Tangier!—Tangiers that we got in
dowry for Charles the Second with Katherine
of Braganza. I must go there. As I say
this, I button up my coat to express
determination, and suddenly look up and find a
waiter watching me, who, seeing me, smiles,
and calls out, "All raite—all raite. I know
Inglis—the room of the breakfast—primo al
derecho—furst to ze raite. Good evening,
Señor. All rayte, Señor."

You reach "the room of the breakfast," and
find a large, bare, square hall with enormous
windows opening from roof to floor, and
leading to a balcony. Pleasant sounds and
cries steam up to you from the street—
pleasant sounds because new sounds—voices
that lull and soothe you with new hopes and
numb and silence the ceaseless clamour of
the old worm in the heart core—the worm
that never dies. There are cries of water-
sellers and fruit-sellers; of boys with fire for
cigar-smokers and of the jangling tin box of
itinerant mendicants; strings of donkeys of
course; careering horses; a church procession;
an eleemosynary guitar; some street jugglers
that would be hissed in Southampton Street,
Strand, London, W.C., and some stormy
gusty drums belonging to the shining steel
bayonets, whose tops I can just see. Above
all a great Titian sky, billowed with foam-
white clouds.

It is early yet. Still there have been, I
should say, half a dozen breakfasts eaten
already. You can tell this by the dashes
of raspberry-vinegar looking wine in the
tumblers, the glasses of water, the broken
rolls, the dorsal bones, like arrow plumes of the
whitings, the crusted brown water-mark lines
in the chocolate cups, the golden green grape
skins, the testamentary melon rinds with the
Arabic inscriptions all over them, left for
future vegetarian Layards.

Presently, my breakfast—the one I