We Expressed Our Doubt Of The Man's Knowing So Unerringly
That The Horse Meant Them To Dig Through The Mosque.
"If you can believe
the rest I think you can believe that," our guide argued.
He was like so many taciturn Spaniards, not inconversable, and we had a
pleasure in his unobtrusive intelligence which I should be sorry to
exaggerate. He supplied us with such statistics of his city as we
brought away with us, and as I think the reader may join me in trusting,
and in regretting that I did not ask more. Still it is something to have
learned that in Toledo now each family lives English fashion in a house
of its own, while in the other continental cities it mostly dwells in a
flat. This is because the population has fallen from two hundred
thousand to twenty thousand, and the houses have not shared its decay,
but remain habitable for numbers immensely beyond those of the
households. In the summer the family inhabits the first floor which the
_patio_ and the subterranean damp from the rains keep cool; in the
winter it retreats to the upper chambers which the sun is supposed to
warm, and which are at any rate dry even on cloudy days. The rents would
be thought low in New York: three dollars a month get a fair house in
Toledo; but wages are low, too; three dollars a month for a manservant
and a dollar and a half for a maid.
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