yone can enter the theatre by paying
the _entrada_, and take chance of finding friends there, frequently
spending an hour or so going from one box to another. All this gives the
theatre more the air of being an immense "At Home" than what we are
accustomed to in England. The intervals between the acts are very long,
and, as all the men smoke, somewhat trying.

Spanish women are great dressers, and the costumes seen at the
race-meetings at the Hippodrome, and in the Parque, are elaborately
French, and sometimes startling. The upper middle class go to Santander,
Biarritz, or one of the other fashionable watering-places, and it is
said of the ladies that they only stop as many days as they can sport
new costumes. If they go for a fortnight they must have fifteen
absolutely new dresses, as they would never think of putting one on a
second time. They take with them immense trunks, such as we generally
associate with American travellers; these are called _mundos_
(worlds)--a name which one feels certain was given by the suffering man
who is expected to look after them.

There are many little details in Spanish life, even of the upper
classes, which strike one as odd. One, for instance, is the perfect
_sangfroid_ with which they pick their teeth in public; but so little is
this considered, as with us, a breach of good manners, that the
dinner-tables are supplied with dainty little ornaments filled with
tooth-picks, and these are handed round to the guests by the waiters
towards the close of the meal. Nor is it an unknown thing for a Spanish
lady to spit. I have seen it done out of a carriage window in the
fashionable drive without any hesitation. At the same time, as one of
the great charms of a Spanish woman is the total absence in her of
anything savouring of affectation, one would far sooner overlook customs
that are unknown in polite society with us than have them lose their own
characteristics in an attempt to imitate the social peculiarities of
other nations that have incorporated the ominous word "snob" in their
vocabularies. It has no equivalent in the language of Castile, and it
is to be hoped will never be borrowed. Nevertheless, a recent Spanish
writer laments the fact that in the race for "_el_ high life" his
fellow-countrywomen "are not ashamed to drink whisky!" We have yet to
learn that whisky-drinking among women is an element of good style in
any class of English society. The idea that Spanish ladies were in t