cathedrals. There are no ruins. There is none of that mysterious and
haunting memory that peoples the air with spectres in quiet towns like
Ravenna and Nuremberg. And there is little of that vast movement of
humanity that possesses and bewilders you in San Francisco and New York.
Madrid is larger than Chicago; but Chicago is a great city and Madrid a
great village. The pulsations of life in the two places resemble each
other no more than the beating of Dexter's heart on the home-stretch is
like the rising and falling of an oozy tide in a marshy inlet.

There is nothing indigenous in Madrid. There is no marked local color.
It is a city of Castile, but not a Castilian city, like Toledo, which
girds its graceful waist with the golden Tagus, or like Segovia,
fastened to its rock in hopeless shipwreck.

But it is not for this reason destitute of an interest of its own. By
reason of its exceptional history and character it is the best point in
Spain to study Spanish life. It has no distinctive traits itself, but it
is a patchwork of all Spain. Every province of the Peninsula sends a
contingent to its population. The Gallicians hew its wood and draw its
water; the Asturian women nurse its babies at their deep bosoms, and
fill the promenades with their brilliant costumes; the Valentians carpet
its halls and quench its thirst with orgeat of chufas; in every street
you shall see the red bonnet and sandalled feet of the Catalan; in every
cafe, the shaven face and rat-tail chignon of the Majo of Andalusia. If
it have no character of its own, it is a mirror where all the faces of
the Peninsula may sometimes be seen. It is like the mockingbird of the
West, that has no song of its own, and yet makes the woods ring with
every note it has ever heard.

Though Madrid gives a picture in little of all Spain, it is not all