accumulate dust or germs. Moreover, there are thousands of exemplary
housekeepers who throw up the eye of horror to their whitewashed ceiling
at the thought of a foreign person's personal habits, who do not know
what is inside their mattress and never think of looking to see from
year's end to year's end.

In Spain, a country rarely visited by those persons who pride themselves
upon being particular, the mattress-maker is a much more necessary factor
in domestic life than is the sweep or the plumber in northern lands. No
palace is too royal for him, no cottage is too humble to employ him.

He is, moreover, the only man allowed inside a nunnery. Which is the
reason why he finds himself brought into prominence now. He is usually a
thin, lithe man, somewhat of the figure of those northerners who supply
the bull-ring with Banderilleros. He arrives in the early morning with a
sheathe knife at his waist, a packet of cigarettes in his jacket pocket
and two light sticks under his arm. All he asks is a courtyard and the
sunshine that Heaven gives him.

In a moment he deftly cuts the stitches of the mattress and lays bare the
wool which he never touches with his fingers. The longer stick in his
right hand describes great circles in the air and descends with the
whistle of a sword upon the wool of which it picks up a small handful.
Then the shorter stick comes into play, picks the wool from the longer,
throws it into the air, beats it this way and that, tosses it and catches
it until every fibre is clear, when the fluffy mass is deftly cast aside.
All the while, through the beating of the wool, the two sticks beaten
against each other play a distinct air, and each mattress-maker has his
own, handed down from his forefathers, ending with a whole chromatic
scale as the shorter stick swoops up the length of the longer to sweep
away the lingering wool. Thus the whole mattress is transferred from a
sodden heap to a high and fluffy mountain of carded wool, all baked by
the heat of the sun.

The man has a hundred attitudes, full of grace. He works with a skill
which is a conscious pleasure; a pleasure unknown to those who have never
had opportunity of acquiring a manual craft or appreciating the wondrous
power that God has put into human limbs. He has complete control over his
two thin sticks, can pick up with them a single strand of wool, or half a
mattress. He can throw aside a pin that lurks in a ball of wool, or kill
a fly that se