I
I Find From My Ever-Faithful Note-Book That The Landscape Seemed To Grow
Drearier As We Got Away From Madrid, But This May Have Been The Effect
Of The Waning Day:
A day which at its brightest had been dim from
recurrent rain and incessant damp.
The gloom was not relieved by the
long stops at the frequent stations, though the stops were good for
getting one's breath, and for trying to plan greater control over one's
activities when the train should be going on again. The stations
themselves were not so alluring that we were not willing to get away
from them; and we were glad to get away from them by train, instead of
by mule-team over the rainy levels to the towns that glimmered along the
horizon two or three miles off. There had been nothing to lift the heart
in the sight of two small boys ready perched on one horse, or of a
priest difficultly mounting another in his long robe. At the only
station which I can remember having any town about it a large number of
our passengers left the train, and I realized that they were commuters
like those who might have been leaving it at some soaking suburb of Long
Island or New Jersey. In the sense of human brotherhood which the fact
inspired I was not so lonely as I might have been, when we resumed our
gloomy progress, with all that punctilio which custom demands of a
Spanish way-train.
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