d newsboy seated under one of the arcades was crying his papers;
an Englishman was looking at a plan of Valladolid in a shop window; a
splendid cavalry officer went by in braided uniform, and did not stare
so hard as they might have expected at some ladies passing in mantillas
to mass or market. In the late afternoon as well as the early morning
we saw a good deal of the military in Valladolid, where an army corps is
stationed. From time to time a company of infantry marched through the
streets to gay music, and toward evening slim young officers began to
frequent the arcades and glass themselves in the windows of the shops,
their spurs clinking on the pavement as they lounged by or stopped and
took distinguished attitudes. We speculated in vain as to their social
quality, and to this day I do not know whether "the career is open to
the talents" in the Spanish army, or whether military rank is merely
the just reward of civil rank. Those beautiful young swells in
riding-breeches and tight gray jackets approached an Italian type
of cavalry officer; they did not look very vigorous, and the common
soldiers we saw marching through the streets, largely followed by the
populace, were not of formidable stature or figure, though neat and
agreeable enough to the eye.

While I indulge the record of these trivialities, which I am by no means
sure the reader will care for so much, I feel that it would be wrong to
let him remain as ignorant of the history of Valladolid as I was while
there. My ignorance was not altogether my fault; I had fancied easily
finding at some bookseller's under the arcade a little sketch of the
local history such as you are sure of finding in any Italian town, done
by a local antiquary of those always mousing in the city's archives.
But the bookseller's boy and then the boy's mother could not at first
imagine my wish, and when they did they could only supply me with a sort
of business directory, full of addresses and advertisements. So instead
of overflowing with information when we set out on our morning ramble,
we meagerly knew from the guide-books that Valladolid had once been the
capital of Castile, arid after many generations of depression following
the removal of the court, had in these latest days renewed its strength
in mercantile and industrial prosperity. There are ugly evidences of the
prosperity in the windy, dusty avenues and streets of the more modern
town; but there are lanes and alleys enough,