e of the small Roman coins which formed his stock in trade. The
poor place was beautifully neat, and from his window he made us free
of a sight of Seville, signally the cathedral and the Giralda, such as
could not be bought for money in New York.

Then we set out on our return, leaving unvisited to the left the church
of San Isidore de Campo, with its tombs of Guzman the Good and that
Better Lady Dona Urraca Osorio, whom Peter the Cruel had burned. I say
better, because I hold it nobler in Urraca to have rejected the love of
a wicked king than in Guzman to have let the Moors slay his son rather
than surrender a city to them. But I could only pay honor to her
pathetic memory and the memory of that nameless handmaid of hers who
rushed into the flames to right the garments on the form which the wind
had blown them away from, and so perished with her. We had to take on
trust from the guide-books all trace of the Roman town where the three
emperors were born, and whose "palaces, aqueducts, and temples and
circus were magnificent." We had bought some of the "coins daily dug
up," but we intrusted to the elements those "vestiges of vestiges" left
of Trajan's palaces after an envious earthquake destroyed them so lately
as 1755.

The one incident of our return worthy of literature was the dramatic
triumph of a woman over a man and a mule as we saw it exhibited on the
parapet of a culvert over a dry torrent's bed. It was the purpose of
this woman, standing on the coping in statuesque relief and showing
against the sky the comfortable proportions of the Spanish housewife, to
mount the mule behind the man. She waited patiently while the man slowly
and as we thought faithlessly urged the mule to the parapet; then, when
she put out her hands and leaned forward to take her seat, the mule
inched softly away and left her to recover her balance at the risk of a
fall on the other side. We were too far for anything but the dumb show,
but there were, no doubt, words which conveyed her opinions unmistakably
to both man and mule. With our hearts in our mouths we witnessed the
scene and its repetitions till we could bear it no longer, and we had
bidden our cabman drive on when with a sudden spring the brave woman
launched herself semicircularly forward and descended upon the exact
spot which she had been aiming at. There solidly established on the
mule, with her arms fast round the man, she rode off; and I do not think
any reader of mine would