represent in the talk
of his Biscayan. Like the Welsh again they strenuously keep their
immemorial language against the inroads of the neighboring speech. How
much they fix it in a modern literature it would be easier to ask than
to say. I suppose there must be Basque newspapers; perhaps there are
Basque novelists, there are notoriously Basque bards who recite their
verses to the peasants, and doubtless there are poets who print their
rhymes: and I blame myself for not inquiring further concerning them of
that kindly Basque banker who wished so much to do something for me in
compensation for the loss of my worthless letter. I knew, too cheaply,
that the Basques have their poetical contests, as the Welsh have their
musical competitions in the Eisteddfod, and they are once more like the
Welsh, their brothers in antiquity, in calling themselves by a national
name of their own. They call themselves Euskaldunac, which is as
different from the name of Basque given them by the alien races as Cymru
is from Welsh.

All this lore I have easily accumulated from the guide-books since
leaving San Sebastian, but I was carelessly ignorant of it in driving
from the hotel to the station when we came away, and was much concerned
in the overtures made us in a mixed Spanish, English, and French by a
charming family from Chili, through the brother to one of the ladies and
luisband to the other. When he perceived from my Spanish that we were
not English, he rejoiced that we were Americans of the north, and as
joyfully proclaimed that they were Americans of the south. We were
at once sensible of a community of spirit in our difference from our
different ancestral races. They were Spanish, but with a New World
blitheness which we nowhere afterward found in the native Spaniards; and
we were English, with a willingness to laugh and to joke which they had
not perhaps noted in our ancestral contemporaries. Again and again we
met them in the different cities where we feared we had lost them, until
we feared no more and counted confidently on seeing them wherever we
went. They were always radiantly smiling; and upon this narrow ground I
am going to base the conjecture that the most distinctive difference of
the Western Hemisphere from the Eastern is its habit of seeing the
fun of things. With those dear Chilians we saw the fun of many little
hardships of travel which might have been insupportable without the
vision. Sometimes we surprised one anoth