toilsomely dragging a hand-cart or shouldering a burden while her spouse
walks idly by and smokes a thankful pipe.

Diminutive donkeys, hardy and hoarse, are in great use, and we hear in
the streets their plaintive and sonorous denunciations of men and
manners. The donkey here seems to take the place of the dog, which in
Holland and Scandinavia is taught the ways of constant and praiseworthy
usefulness. There, with a voluble old woman for yoke-fellow, he draws
the small market-carts about the streets and grows lusty-limbed in the
service. Here, the donkey does duty for both, dog and old woman, and
must develop both muscle and tongue to offset their respective
specialties.


IV.

An afternoon of peace, such towns as Bayonne have earned and gained.
This one has added few notable pages to universal history, but its own
personal biography would be an exciting one. It is worn with adventure,
and old before its time. The quarrelings of its hot youth, the tension
of strife and insecurity, the life of alarms it has lived, have aged it.
They have aged many another city of Europe, and endeared the blessing of
repose.

They were different days, those of the past of Bayonne. These streets
are narrow, the houses stoutly walled, because they were built for siege
as well as shelter. The doorways are low-browed, the stone-lined rooms
little lighter than caves, because every man's hand might rise against
his neighbor, and every man's hovel become his castle. Humanity was a
hopeless discord; individual security lay only in individual strength.