the clash and clang of the band, and
the yells of the people.

Shall I stay another? Perhaps it may be more successful, and--if the new
bull will only bruise somebody! But the new bull is a failure. After all
their attempts to excite him, he only trots round, and snuffs at the
gates; and the cry of "Fuera el toro!" becomes so general, with the
significant triple beat of the feet, in time with the words, all over
the house, that the gates are opened, and the bull trots through, to his
quarters.

But the meanness, and cruelty, and impotency of this crowd! They cry out
to the spear-men and the dart-men, and to the tormentors, and to the
bull, and to the horses, and to each other, in a Babel of sounds, where
no man's voice can possibly be distinguished ten feet from him, all
manner of advice and encouragement or derision, like children at a play.
One full grown, well-dressed young man, near me, kept up a constant cry
to the men in the ring, when I am sure no one could distinguish his
words, and no one cared to--until I became so irritated that I could
have throttled him.

But, such you are! You can cry and howl at bull-fights and cockfights
and in the pits of operas and theaters, and drive bulls and horses
distracted, and urge gallant gamecocks to the death, and applaud opera
singers into patriotic songs, and leave them to imprisonment and
fines--and you yourselves cannot lift a finger, or join hand to hand,
or bring to the hazard life, fortune, or honor, for your liberty and
your dignity as men. Work your slaves, torture your bulls, fight your
gamecocks, crown your dancers and singers--and leave the weightier
matters of judgment and justice, of fame by sea and land, of letters and
arts and sciences, of private right and public honor, the present and
future of your race and of your native land, to the care of others--of a
people of no better blood than your own, strangers and sojourners among
you!

The next bull is treated to a refinement of torture, in the form of
darts filled with heavy China crackers, which explode on the neck of the
poor beast. I could not see that even this made him really dangerous.
The light-complexioned, green-and-silver matador dispatches him, as he
did the first bull, with a single lunge, and--a fall and a quiver, and
all is over!

The fifth bull is a failure and is allowed to go out of the ring. The
sixth is nearly the same with the others, harmless if let alone, and
goaded into short-liv