When foreigners walk in and abruptly ask for what they want with an air
of immense superiority, as is the custom in our country, they are not
unnaturally looked upon as _muy bruto_, and at the best it is accounted
for by their being rude heretics from abroad, and knowing no better.

In Madrid and some of the large towns it is possible that the people
have become accustomed to our apparent discourtesy, just as in some
places--Granada especially--spoiled by long intimacy with tourists, the
beggars have become importunate, and to some extent impudent; but in
places a little removed from such a condition of modern "civilisation,"
the effect produced by many a well-meaning but ordinary Saxon priding
himself on his superiority, and without any intention of being ill-bred
or ill-mannered, is that of disgust and contemptuous annoyance.

No Spaniard will put up with an overbearing or bullying manner, even
though he may not understand the language in which it is expressed; it
raises in him all the dormant pride and prejudice which sleep beneath
his own innate courtesy, and he probably treats the offending traveller
with the profound contempt he feels for him, if with nothing worse. A
little smiling and good-natured chaff when things go wrong, as they so
often do in travelling, or when the leisurely expenditure of time, which
is as natural to the Spaniard as it is irritating to our notions of how
things ought to move, will go infinitely farther to set things right
than black looks and a scolding tongue, even in an unknown language.

When English people come back from Spain complaining of discourtesy, or
what they choose to call insult, I know very well on whose head to fit
the accusing cap, and it is always those people whose super-excellent
opinion of themselves, and of their infinite importance at home, makes
them certain of meeting with some such experience among a people to whom