I wrote an article once dealing with Maceo and Cuba, whereupon a
journalist from those parts jumped up and called me a fat Basque ox.

The Catalans have also obliged me with some choice insults, which I have
found engaging. When I lectured in Barcelona in the Casa del Pueblo,
_La Veu de Catalunya_ undertook to report the affair, picturing me
as talking platitudes before an audience of professional bomb throwers
and dynamiters, and experts with the Browning gun.

Naturally, I was enchanted.

Recently, when writing for the review _Espana_, I had a similar
experience, which reminded me of my connection with the smaller
periodicals of fifteen years ago. Some gentlemen, mostly natives of the
provinces, approached the editor, Ortega y Gasset, with the information
that I was not a fit person to contribute to a serious magazine, as what
I wrote was not so, while my name would ruin the sale of the weekly.

These pious souls and good Christians imagined that I might need that
work in order to earn my living, so in the odour of sanctity they did
whatever lay in their power to deprive me of my means of support. Oh,
noble souls! Oh, ye of great heart! I salute you from a safe distance,
and wish you the most uncomfortable beds in the most intolerable wards
set apart for scurvy patients, in any hospital of your choosing,
throughout the world.




THIRST FOR GLORY