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Familiar Spanish Travels by William Dean Howells
page 141 of 311 (45%)
is supposed to have hid his treasure. In the mean time we could look
across the low wall that belted the garden in, to a vacant ground a
little way off where some boys were playing with a wagon they had made.
They had made it out of an oblong box, with wheels so rudely and
imperfectly rounded, that they wabbled fearfully and at times gave way
under the body; just as they did with the wagons that the boys I knew
seventy years ago used to make.

I became so engrossed in the spectacle, so essentially a part of the
drama, that I did not make due account of some particulars of the
subterranean six stories of El Greco's house. There must have been other
things worth seeing in Toledo, thousands of others, and some others we
saw, but most we missed, and many I do not remember. It was now coming
the hour to leave Toledo, and we drove back to our enchanted castle for
our bill, and for the omnibus to the station. I thought for some time
that there was no charge for the fire, or even the smoke we had the
night before, but my eyes were holden from the item which I found later,
by seeing myself addressed as Milor. I had never been addressed as a
lord in any bill before, but I reflected that in the proud old
metropolis of the Goths I could not be saluted as less, and I gladly
paid the bill, which observed a golden mean between cheapness and
dearness, and we parted good friends with our host, and better with our
guide, who at the last brought out an English book, given him by an
English friend, about the English cathedrals. He was fine, and I could
not wish any future traveler kinder fortune than to have his guidance in
Toledo. Some day I am going back to profit more fully by it, and to
repay him the various fees which he disbursed for me to different
doorkeepers and custodians and which I forgot at parting and he was too
delicate to remind me of.

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