of Spain whose names remain as watchwords with her people; but they
have too often stood alone, and were not strong enough to leaven the
mass and raise the whole standard of political integrity. Some of the
highest and best men, moreover, have thrown down their tools and
withdrawn from contact with a life which seemed to them tainted. But
because Spain has done much in overthrowing her evil rulers and is
struggling upwards towards the light, we expect wonders, and will not
give time for what must always be a slow and difficult progress.

In Spain, everyone is a politician. The schoolboy, who with us would be
thinking of nothing more serious than football, aspires to sum up the
situation and give his opinion of the public men as if he were an
ex-prime minister at least. These orators of the _cafés_ and the street
corners are delighted to find a foreigner on whom they can air their
unfledged opinions, and the traveller who can speak or understand a few
words of Spanish comes back with wonderful accounts of what "a Spaniard
whom I met in the train told me." In any case, no one ever says as hard
things of his countrymen as a Spaniard will say of those who do not
belong to the particular little political clique which has the extreme
honour of counting himself as one of its number. These cliques--for one
cannot call them parties--are innumerable, called, for the most part,
after one man, of whom no one has heard except his particular friends,
_Un Señor muy conocido en su casa, sobre todo á la hora de comer_, as
their saying is: "A gentleman very well known in his own house,
especially at dinner-time."

[Illustration: PAST WORK]

[Illustration: KNIFE-GRINDER]