There Is Like Bargaining At The Open Stands With The Buyers And Sellers Chaffering Over Them; There Is A Likeness In The People's Looks, Too, But When It Comes To The Most Characteristic Thing Of Naples, Madrid Is Not In It For A Moment.

I mean the bursts of song which all day long and all night long you hear in Naples; and this seems as good a place as any to say that to my experience Spain is a songless land.

We had read much of the song and dance there, but though the dance might be hired the song was never offered for love or money. To be sure, in Toledo, once, a woman came to her door across the way under otir hotel window and sang over the slops she emptied into the street, but then she shut the door and we heard her no more. In Cprdova there was as brief a peal of music from a house which we passed, and in Algeciras we heard one short sweet strain from a girl whom we could not see behind her lattice. Besides these chance notes we heard no other by any chance. But this is by no means saying that there is not abundant song in Spain, only it was kept quiet; I suppose that if we had been there in the spring instead of the fall we should at least have heard the birds singing. In Madrid there were not even many street cries; a few in the Puerta del Sol, yes; but the peasants who drove their mule-teams through the streets scarcely lifted their voices in reproach or invitation; they could trust the wise donkeys that led them to get them safely through the difficult places. There was no audible quarreling among the cabmen, and when you called a cab it was useless to cry "Heigh!" or shake your umbrella; you made play with your thumb and finger in the air and sibilantly whispered; otherwise the cabman ignored you and went on reading his newspaper.

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