Iron County register. [volume] (Ironton, Iron County, Mo.) 1867-1965, 1882-04-06
Street Scenes in Madrid.

The Madrilenos offer not flat, but
rather an extremely round, contradic-
ton to the general and accepted idea of
the national appearance. Slenderness
is the exception with them. Their city
i forced flower in the midst of noun
tain lands, and the men themselves
rejoice in rotund and puffy look of
success, which also partakes of the hot
house character. They are people of
leisure, and, after their manner, of
pleasure. How they swarm in the cafes,
in the Gate of the Sun-where they keep
up the Moorish custom of calling walters
by two claps of the hands-or on the
one great thoroughfare, Gale de Alcala,
or in the bull-ring of d Sunday! They
are never at rest, yet never altogether
active. They never sleep, IF they do,
others take their places in the public
resorts. The clamor of the streets, and
even the snarling cry of the newsvend
ers-'La Correspondence" or "EI
Denocr0t0-G'-is kept up until the
small hours; and at five or six the rest
less stir begins again with the silver
tinkling of fleet mule bells. There are
no night-howling watchmen in Madrid,
but the custom of street hawking is
rampant in Spain; and here, in addition
to the newsman, we have the wall of the
water-criers ministering to an unanench-
able popular thirst, the lottery-ticket
sellers, the wax-match peddlers, and a
dozen others. The favorite bird of the
country is kind of lark called 0lO7adra,
much hung in cages outside the win
dows, whence they utter-with that
monotonous recurrence which seems
fixed principle of all things Spanish
hard, piercing triple note impossible to
ignore. This loud, persistent ''twit,
twit-twit," resembling at distance the
click of castanets, begins with daybreak,
and gives most discouraging notion of
the Spanish musical ear.
Of course there is home life and there
is family affection in Madrid, but the
stranger naturally does not see great
deal of these; and then it may be doubt
ed whether they really exist to the same
extent as in most other civilized capt.
tails. 1t becomes wearisome to make
salies upon the town and day after
day find so much of the population try
ing to divert itself or killing time in the
cafes and clubs. The feeling deepens
that they resort to these for want of q
sufficiently close interest in their homes.
More than that, they do not seem really
10 DC duuSeu. Even Cnelf language
fails to express the amusement idea; the
most that anything can be for them, in
the vernacular, is ''entertaining Still
the choice of light diversion is varied
enough. Opera flourishes in winter, in
spring and summer the bull-fght; thea
tiers are always in blast; cooking mains
are kept up. Hitherto gambling has
been another pastime, until checked by
the authorities. Not content with all
this, the Madrilenos seek in lottery shops
that excitement which Americans derive
from neutrality-suspicious.. The brightly
lighted lottery agency occurs as fire.
quently as that other indication of dis
ease, the apothecary's window, in Amer
lean cities. People of all classes hover
about them both by day and by night.
Posters confront you with announce
meats of the Child Jesus Lottery, the
lottery to aid the Asylum of Our Lady
of the Assumption, or the National,
which is drawn thrice a month, with
chief prize of thirty-two thousand dol
lars, and some four hundred other pre-
miums. There are many small draw
ings beside constantly going on; not a
day passes, in fact, without your being
solicited by wandering dealers in these
alluring chances at least half dozen
times.-George P. LathroD. IN Harper's
Magazine.