e over again
to make him keep it. To this hour I do not know how we ever brought
ourselves to part with him; perhaps it was his promise of coming to
America next year that prevailed with us; his brother was returning on a
visit and then they were going back together.

V

Our search for literature in Ronda was not wholly a failure. At another
bookstore, I found one of those local histories which I was always
vainly trying for in other Spanish towns, and I can praise the _Historia
de Ronda par Federico Lozano Gutierrez_ as well done, and telling all
that one would ask to know about that famous city. The author's picture
is on the cover, and with his charming letter dedicating the book to his
father goes far to win the reader's heart. Outside the bookseller's a
blind minstrel was playing the guitar in the care of a small boy who was
selling, not singing, the ballads. They celebrated the prowess of Spain
in recent wars, and it would not be praising them too highly to say that
they seemed such as might have been written by a drum-major. Not that I
think less of them for that reason, or that I think I need humble myself
greatly to the historian of Ronda for associating their purchase with
that of his excellent little book. If I had bought some of the blind
minstrel's almanacs and jest-books I might indeed apologize, but ballads
are another thing.

After we left the bookseller's, our little guide asked us if we would
like to see a church, and we said that we would, and he took us into a
white and gold interior, with altar splendors out of proportion to its
simplicity, all in the charge of a boy no older than himself, who was
presently joined by two other contemporaries. They followed us gravely
about, and we felt that it was an even thing between ourselves and
the church as objects of interest equally ignored by Baedeker. Then we
thought we would go home and proposed going by the Alameda.

That is a beautiful place, where one may walk a good deal, and drive,
rather less, but not sit down much unless indeed one likes being swarmed
upon by the beggars who have a just priority of the benches. There
seemed at first to be nobody walking in the Alameda except a gentleman
pacing to and from the handsome modern house at the first corner, which
our guide said was this cavalier's house. He interested me beyond any
reason I could give; he looked as if he might represent the highest
society in Ronda, but did not find it an adequ