The Opelousas courier., 1884-01-26
TRUE SPANIARDS.
Pictures Of h Inhabitants OF Sicily
and SPAIN.

and Spain.
/ remember, a decade ago, sailing
from Palermot to Valencia,t then ~coastine
along, stopping at each port, until, pas
sing the Pillars of Hercules, we came
to the fair city from whence | send
you this. We sailed from Sicily, with
her wondrous soil and climate still, as
it was a thousand years ago, n of the
grandest in the world; where every
thing tells of material prosperity;
where even the constant civil wars
and private feuds, the ever-present
armies of some ruler foreign to her
soil, and seeking only to force from her
fruitful hills and active people the
largest possible tribute; Sicily, which
has never been free since the fall OF
Syracuse, which has borne the armed
heel of n conqueror after another
upon its willing neck, through ancient
as well aSraodern times; a land peopled
by a race of slaves, who have, it is
true, now and again shown the true
servile initinct of revolt, as when in
Messina, they rose, not sword in hand,
but with the secret dagger, and smote
their masters on that night known to
history as the Sicilian Vespers. A vile
breed, yet the men are the most stall
wart of all who people Southern
Europe, and the women might be
handsome had they what they lack,
and lack because the men have nc
manhood the feminine something
that makes women charming and raises
them above the brutes. The Sicilian
is an acute trader, with the instinct
of Phoenician and the Greek for COM
merce; a ~tireless worker, whose fields
bring forth year by year, corn, wine,
oil and fruits in vastly greater guam
titles than the demand of the people
for food; whose steamers are not mono
policing the Mediterranean trade;
whose roads throughout the wild, billy
country, are as perfect as engineering,
toll and expense can make them; whose
cities, though not o boasting the
the million classic days, are beautiful,
clean, well paved, well-lighted, COM
Portable, Astounding in trim parks and
gardens, flowers, trees and fountains.
The man who inhabits this paradise
is a cowardly slave. To tell one of
them he is a thief or liar brings only
a smile of white teeth, a shrug of the
shoulder and a una che voier' The
woman has, it seems to me, lost tie
coquetry of her sex. / have seen car
rage after carriage in Palermo Bling
its load of extensively dressed young
women to walk in the garden near the
arbor, and have noted with amazement
that they were shod with dreadful
mushy-looking shoes of what / believe,
is called black lasting, a stuff some
what like a thick bombazine or alpaca.
These came but to the ankle-bone. On
each side they had triangles of rubber
fabric, to prevent the necessity of fast
ening and a great tag or strap front
Or back with which to pull them on.
They always bulged out where the
elastic came; the strap stuck out, and
The prettiest foot was unsightly to look
upon. Then the stockings, of which
a careless display was freely made,
were generally ill-drawn and w~rinkled;
the skirts hung in places lower than at
the walk was u~ngraceful,
and the freshest young face seen in a
carriage lost its charm before the o
crossed the treshhold of the garden. I
have, in other countries, seen old wo-
men thus. and pitied them as having
lone with life. In no other did I ever
see the young so seemingly Indifferent
% what a proper instinct should teach
hem.
How different is all this from SPAIN
where the men are formal, stately
1ignifed, grave of discourse, courteous
md demanding as their right courtesy
rom others. They are poor, living in
j land by no mean fertile, where the
ack of trees has made each stream by
'urns a Whelming torrent or an almost
.Vateriess bed of sand and pebbles;
where the provinces have never yet
been truly united, and their own name
# La Espanas, the SPANS, is the only
rue one; where faction and revolt and
war have brought unrepaired
'uin; where the changes of the century
lave been SO few as to have the
seemingly behind in the
taste of modern Improvement. But
he race is proud, stern, unbroken in
manhood, truthful by in
tinct and because too proud to lie, a
ace with a future before it because it
] strong. Not wise at self-govern-
nent, and long in accepting changed
'onditions, the spaniard of to-day is
he same as his fathers who marched
Inder Cortez and Pizzaro, the same as
hey who formed the Spanisb infantry