houses, unsutteed relicts, that have not bowed to the new régime. The
shops in this part of the town are less individual than one would
expect, though we find them not devoid of a certain variety. The
specialty of the place is the enameling of gold and silver upon iron.
Jewelry and small articles are made of this ware in elaborate designs
and with great daintiness and skill. Outside of this, San Sebastian does
not seem to have invented any new wants for humanity, and its shops do
not seek to supply any but the old.

The other half of the town I have called international. This is the
section of the hotels, of wide streets and flagged walks, of massy
squares of business buildings, of villas and a park and the bathing
circle. The sea swings around the projecting cape of the citadel into a
deeply notched bay, small and still, and on its edge which meets the
town you find pavilions and beach-chairs and their usual accompaniment
of idling humanity. The Casino stands boldly up, a little to the right,
and in front of it, on the Alameda, the band will play in the coming
summer evenings for all the élite of Madrid.

The fine Hôtel de Londres is large and well kept, and, like all Spanish
hotels, charges on the good American plan of so much per day. One
gratefully appreciates this, after juggling every few days with
disheartening lists of accumulated coffees and eggs and dinners and
rooms and mineral waters and service and _bougies_, and the others. The
infinitude of microscopic book-keeping made necessary by the Continental
system is a thought to shudder at. For the rest, the hotel is only
unsatisfying because it seems in nowise distinctively Spanish. We almost
wish we had chosen a certain other hostelry equally well spoken of,
which, instead of Hotel, had alluringly styled itself a _Fonda_.
Probably we might have found as little there as here that was pure