sunrise in the country entered into my plan. I had often seen the sun
rise in the country, but it was necessary to contemplate and study anew
that beautiful spectacle in order to describe it exactly; and early one
morning, long before the dawn, accompanied by two friends, I went to the
hills of Vicalvaro, where we made some good studies, but were very much
frightened by some thieves who attacked us knife in hand, believing we
were people who carried watches."

These words of the author reveal better than we could explain his aim
and method. He is a follower of Fernan Caballero, in so far as he has
devoted himself to illustrate the every-day life of the Spanish people.
The former writer has filled her pages with brilliant pictures of the
life of Andalusia. Her canvas is, however, larger than Trueba's: she
depicts the society of the South in all its grades; Trueba has chosen a
more limited circle on which he has lavished all his care.

The volume of _Rose-colored Tales_ is in many respects the best that
Trueba has produced. The dedication to his wife explains the title and
reveals the author's optimistic views. He says: "I call them
_Rose-colored Tales_ because they are the reverse of that pessimistic
literature which delights in representing the world as a boundless
desert in which no flower blooms, and life as a perpetual night in which
no star shines. I, poor son of Adam, in whom the curse of the Lord on
our first parents has not ceased to be accomplished a single day since
the time when, still a child, I left my beloved valley of the
Encartaciones,--I shall love this life, and shall not believe myself
exiled in the world while God, friendship, love and the family exist in
it, while the sun shines on me every morning, while the moon lights me
every night and the flowers and birds visit me every day."

The scene of all the stories of this collection is in the Encartaciones,
and an examination of a few of them will make us acquainted with the
usual range of characters and the author's mode of treatment. The first
is entitled "The Resurrection of the Soul" (_La Resurreccion del Alma_),
and opens with an account of the village of C----, one of the fifteen
composing the Encartaciones. Here lived Santiago and Catalina, the
latter a foundling whom Santiago's parents had found at their door one
winter morning. The good people, who had always desired a daughter,
cared tenderly for the little stranger, and she grew up with th