d yet mechanical as a doll. After a
moment I grew afraid of her, and went slinking away. After this I didn't
really recover my spirits until I had the satisfaction of hearing myself
addressed as "Cabellero." I was hailed with this epithet by a ragged
infant, with sickly eyes and a cigarette in his lips, who invited me to
cast a copper into the sea, that he might dive for it; and even with
these limitations, the sensation seemed worth the cost of my excursion.
It appeared kinder, to my gratitude, to make the infant dive upon the
pavement.

A few days later I went back to San Sebastian, to witness a bull fight;
but I suppose my right to descant upon this entertainment should be
measured less by the gratification it afforded me than by the question
whether there is room in literature for another bull fight. I incline to
think there is not; the Spanish diversion is the best described thing in
the world. Besides, there are other reasons for not describing it. It is
extremely disgusting, and one should not describe disgusting
things--except (according to the new school) in novels, when they have
not really occurred, and are manufactured on purpose. But one has taken
a certain sort of pleasure in the bull fight, and yet how is one to
state gracefully that one has taken pleasure in a disgusting thing? It
is a hard case. If you record your pleasure, distinctly, you seem to
exaggerate it and to calumniate your delicacy; and if you record nothing
but your displeasure, you feel rather crabbed and stingy. This much I
can say, at any rate, that as there had been no bull fights in that part
of the country during the Carlist war, the native dilettanti (and every
man, woman, and child of them comes under this denomination) returned to
their previous pastime with peculiar zest. The spectacle, therefore, had
an unusual splendor. Under these circumstances it is highly picturesque.
The weather was beautiful; the near mountains peeped over the top of the
vast open arena, as if they too were curious; weary of disembowelled
horses and posturing _espadas_, the spectator (in the boxes) might turn
away and look through an unglazed window at the empty town and the
cloud-shadowed sea. But few of the native spectators availed themselves
of this privilege. Beside me sat a blooming matron, in a white lace
mantilla, with three very juvenile daughters; and if these ladies
sometimes yawned, they never shivered. For myself, I confess that if I
sometimes s