If this book can look confidently to any one for indulgence, it must be to you, who are, in some degree, responsible for it. Except for the idea of pleasing you, it would never have appeared between covers, but had been, perforce, content with the piece-meal life it has hitherto led in the files of various journals and maga zines. Your responsibility goes deeper, for I can almost assert that yours were the eyes that saw, and yours the hand that set down, much that is here described. If that is n

HAT first week in Seville was a very lonely one. Itwas the rainy and guestless season, when dining in the great hall of the Fonda de Madrid, where we were quartered all alone, was a duty that subdued our spirits like a funeral. Two places were laid for us at the head of the board, which extended its linen-shrouded length through the immense room, and we had not walked to our seats many times before the table began to wear a look of reproach, as if but for us they would take off the white cloth a

HE calle O'Donnell is a little street of Seville, very short, very narrow, and very quiet. For some time we held it in light esteem as a place for the determined sightseer to escape from, but after accident had discovered to us that it contained within itselt the elements of Sevillian life, the O'Donnell rivalled for our attention with the Mercado. Inapproachably picturesque had seemed to us the Mercado—a quaint conflux of streets to the east of the fashionable Sierpes—and a pen-and-ink sketch o

DMISSION into the vie zntime of Seville did not immediately follow the instal lation at Mariana’s. For a week longer we strolled the streets, like the tourists we were, and not like the citizens we wished to become. And for a week longer the waiter of the Café Suizo served our chocolate with the indifference he feels for all transients. But a brighter day was coming, and it dawned rosy clear when one of us remembered enough of his algebra to help the cadet who occupied the chamber behind ours, o

UT Pedro is not the glory of Seville. Not even a city which has no military history would exalt a coward to this place, and the large class of Sevillians—and other people—that can respect a man who offsets turpitude with audacity, turn from Don Pedro to Don Juan when they crown the hero of Seville. But lived there ever a man who deserved to be called Don Juan, with all that name now implies? Or is Don Juan a myth? Call him so if you wish to throw dirt on the city of Seville, but do it from the p

N the prize ring of my mind Honesty and Banter have been fighting out a round. It is over. Honesty is under the rope, and as a result, a countryman in authority at Seville, during our sojourn there, is compelled to sit for his portrait. With the best intentions, 1 cannot keep him out of these pages. He is my King Charles’ head, and, withal, a figure so queer, antic and laughable, that I! may write of him without travesty, easing my conscience by doubting, if, as an original oddity, he is his own

T was still early, so when the young American-Spaniard invited us to accompany him to the house of some friends who were giving amusicale, we eagerly fell in with the proposal. He took the lead, and-we walked through the black streets, here and there aglow with light streaming through an illuminated patio. Before one of these bright spots he stopped and rang the bell. The gate swung back, and the master of the house came in person, and met us midway in the patio. He was a typical Spaniard of the

HE shameless Café Clhantant pretends to mantle a blush for the Café Flamenca of Seville, while the latter looks the other way when her Parisian sister passes by. Into degrees of license I have no intention to enter here, and I seek, by this comparison, only to arrive at the reputation of the Café Flamenca. It is very bad. It is even said to be dangerous. Your old Spanish traveler will ask you if you went to a Flamenca, and when you answer yes—as you love the truth—he will be amazed that you got

RRANTRY frequently led our feet tothe iron bridge that spans the Guadalquivir. The situation is not to be despised; in addi. tion to the wide spreading view it commands, it has a certain charm for the lover of his kind. In the middle of the graceful span he may take his position, and without a great stretch of the imagination (none whatever if he is a native), consider himself to stand in the centre of the world's commerce. On both sides rise forests of mastsof small ships, it is true, sailing v

OW subtile and fleeting are the charms of those abstract things, a square and a street, when you come to write about them! 1 cannot attribute the quality of bad taste to the numerous travelers who call Seville an uninteresting desert ; the city is a quiet plain, with a wonderfulcathedral and a lofty tower to accentuate its general flatness. It makes no more lasting impression on the brain of a rapid traveler than does the landscape on the headlight of a locomotive. To us, however, who lingered a

E had never been windfalls in the precarious fortunes of the guides of Seville. We did not need them to direct our trips that had no particular destination, but always landed us in some interesting quarter. In fact, it seemed that we took more pleasure in losing ourselves than we would have gained from well designed excursions. Qur pride at getting around without them went before a fall one day, when such a catastrophe seemed less’ than ever probable. On this day we had gone to cast a final dist

PRING was coming. Signs were abroad which even northern eyes could read. The orange trees were beginning to look more yellow than green as the fruit out numbered the leaves; the fronds of the palms waved with more queenly grace as they approached in size the fan of Cleopatra. There were days of rain when the air struck cold and damp to the bones, alternated with clear days when the sun shone as if it were already June. On these days the sky no longer wore, as it had done in the past months, the

Y to-morrow the Duke of Montpensier will have returned from Madrid and closed the gates of his San Telmo garden upon us. To-morrow those palms and oran. ges, those walks and avenues will fade into memories, dimly seen like the smile of a woman at a bal-masqué, behind the purple silk of her domino. To-morrow! Ah, let us visit them again to-day. Never did that glorious garden of San Telmo seem as luxuriantly beautiful as it did when we went there for the last time, knowing that it was the last. Wh

HE brilliant spring sun put torpor in our blood, and notwithstanding the presentiment we had of future regret for time wasted, we lay all our waking hours staring at the sky. About this simple act which might have seemed impertinent as well as lazy at home, there appertained in Seville a certain sort of power. For, though we were always. vanquished in the end by the implacable intensity of the light, yet so long as we could look the sky seemed to retreat and its azure grew deeper, like the hue o

E went to Toledo in the winter when visitors are advised to stay away. The weather treated us very considerately, however, and we have no complaint to make of it. The citizens of the capital of the Visigoths are much sharper and colder than the weather. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that the Fonda de Lino—the barrack which outrages the name of hotel—is a den of thieves. It gave us animated beds, it supplied nine meals of beans which we must eat or starve, and it charged Paris prices for bo