the generous hospitality often shown to perfect strangers in
country districts where the accommodation for travellers is bad, when
any real difficulty arises.

It is customary, for instance, in travelling, when you open your
luncheon-basket, to offer to share its contents with any strangers who
may chance to be fellow-passengers. Naturally, it is merely a form of
politeness, and, in an ordinary way, no one thinks of accepting
it--everyone has his own provision, or is intending to lunch somewhere
on the way; but it is by no means an empty form. If it should chance, by
some accident, that you found yourself without--as has happened to me in
a diligence journey which lasted twenty hours when it was intended only
to occupy twelve--the Spanish fellow-travellers will certainly insist on
your accepting their offer. Also, if they should be provided with fresh
fruit--oranges, dates, or figs--and you are not, their offer to share is
by no means made with the hope or expectation that you will say _Muchas
gracias_, the equivalent of "No, thank you."

What is really difficult and embarrassing sometimes is to avoid having
pressed on your acceptance some article which you may have admired, in
your ignorance of the custom, which makes it the merest commonplace of
the Spaniard to "place it at your disposition," or to say: "It is
already the property of your Grace." Continued refusal sometimes gives
offence. The custom of never doing to-day what you can quite easily put
off till to-morrow is, unfortunately, still a common trait of Spanish
character; but as the Spaniard is rapidly becoming an alert man of
business, it is not likely that that will long remain one of the
national characteristics. Time in old days seemed of very little value
in a country where trade was looked upon as a disgrace, or at least as
unfitting any one to enter the charmed circle of the first _Grandeza_;
but that is of the past now in Spain, as in most countries. To be sure,
it has not there become fashionable for ladies to keep bonnet-shops or
dress-making establishments, nor to open afternoon tea-rooms or
_orchaterias_, still less to set up as so-called financiers, as it has
with us. However, even that may come to pass in the struggle for "_el_
high life," of which some of the Spanish writers complain so bitterly.
Imagination absolutely refuses, however, to see the Spanish woman of
rank in such surroundings.

For the rest, the Spanish woman, wherever you meet