xen that seemed to like being yoked.

[Illustration: 02 THE CASINO, SAN SEBASTIAN, LOOKS OUT UPON THE CURVING CONCHA AND THE BLUE BAY]

When we came down to dinner we found the tables fairly full of belated
visitors, who presently proved tourists flying south like ourselves.
The dinner was good, as it is in nearly all Spanish hotels, where for an
average of three dollars a day you have an inclusive rate which you must
double for as good accommodation in our States. Let no one, I say, fear
the rank cookery so much imagined of the Peninsula, the oil, the pepper,
the kid and the like strange meats; as in all other countries of Europe,
even England itself, there is a local version, a general convention of
the French cuisine, quite as good in Spain as elsewhere, and oftener
superabundant than subabundant. The plain water is generally good, With
an American edge of freshness; but if you will not trust it (we had to
learn to trust it) there are agreeable Spanish mineral waters, as
well as the Apollinaris, the St. Galmier, and the Perrier of other
civilizations, to be had for the asking, at rather greater cost than the
good native wines, often included in the inclusive rate.

Besides this convention of the French cuisine there is almost everywhere
a convention of the English language in some one of the waiters. You
must not stray far from the beaten path of your immediate wants, but in
this you are safe. At San Sebastian we had even a wider range with the
English of the little intellectual-looking, pale Spanish waiter, with
a fine Napoleonic head, who came to my help when I began to flounder in
the language which I had read so much and spoken so little or none. He
had been a year in London, he said, and he took us for English, though,
now he came to notice it, he perceived we were Americans because we
spoke "quicklier" than the English. We did not protest; it was the
mildest criticism of our national accent which we were destined to
get from English-speaking Spaniards before they found we were not the
English we did not wish to be taken for. After dinner we asked for a
fire in one of our grates, but the maid declared there was no fuel; and,
though the hostess denied this and promised us a fire the next night,
she forgot it till nine o'clock, and then we would not have it. The cold
abode with us indoors to the last at San Sebastian, but the storm (which
had hummed and whistled theatrically at our windows) broke during the
fir