e piano. On Tuesday Cust and Miss B. and
another girl and I went over into Spain to see the meet and we had a
short run after a fox who went to earth, much to my relief, in about
three minutes and before I had been thrown off. There are no fences
but the ground is one mass of rocks and cactus and ravines down which
these English go with an ease that makes me tremble with admiration.
We had not come out to follow, so we, being quite soaked through and
very hungry, went to an inn and it was such an inn as Don Quixote used
to stop at, with the dining-room over the stable and a lot of drunken
muleteers in the court and beautiful young women to wait on us. It is
a beautiful country Spain, with every sort of green you ever dreamed
of. We had omelettes and native wine and black bread and got warm
again and then trotted home in the rain and got wet again, so we
stopped at the guard house on the outside of the rock and took tea with
the officer in charge and we all got down on our knees around his fire
and he hobbled around dropping his eyeglasses in his hot water and very
much honored and exceedingly embarrassed. I amused myself by putting
on all the uniforms he did not happen to have on and the young ladies
drank tea and thawed. This is the most various place I ever came
across. You have mountains and seashore and allamandas like Monte
Carlo in their tropical beauty and soldiers day and night marching and
drilling and banging brass bands and tennis and guns firing so as to
rattle all the windows, and picnics and teas. I am engaged way ahead
now but I must get off tomorrow. On Washington's birthday I gave a
luncheon because it struck me as the most inappropriate place in which
one could celebrate the good man's memory and the Governor would not
think of coming at first, but I told him I was not a British subject
and that if I could go to his dinner he could come to my lunch, so
that, or the fact that the beautiful Miss Buckle was coming decided him
to waive etiquette and he came with his A. D. C. and his daughter and
officers and girls came and I had American flags and English flags and
a portrait of Washington and of the Queen and I ransacked the markets
for violets and banked them all up in the middle. It was fine. I
turned the hotel upside down and all the servants wore their best
livery and everybody stood up in a row and saluted His Excellency and I
made a speech and so did his Excellency and the chef did himself