The Arkansaw traveler. (Little Rock, Ark.) 1882-1???, 1889-02-09

In all the FRESHNESS OF her youthful beauty, with
the smile her lips and the love light in her eyes,
So wrote her brother q wretched, despairing
letter, telling him could not attend the funeral,
that should arrange my affairs, by letter, with
my partner, and leave Immediately for Europe;
| could not for months at least, endure any place
that would remind me of my loss
Within two days l had taken passage on an
European steamer had no thought of where l
was going, or what was doing; il was only
attempt to escape from the intOlerabe burden of
remorse and sorrow which was crushing me. But
1t al. in vain, in England or on the continent,
at Berlin or Frankfort, at Munich or Baden Baden,
on the Alps or among the Swiss lakes at Rome
Paris-it was all the same | looked at everything.
saw nothing / listened and heard nothing the
memory of my dead love followed me everywhere,
until it became at last the intense desire of my
life to solve the mystery of death-to know If there
state of conscious existence beyond the grave,
and II 30 to hold communication in some manner
with my lost Agnes.
After two months OF rapid cratic wanderings
found myself at Madrid. From my boyhood
days had held the most romantic ideas of the old
Moorish ruins of the Alhambra, to which the
genius OF Irving has lent such an enchantment
In last desperate attempt to find something to
interest me l resolved to visit them. One line
afternoon in September, / took the train for
MeDzbar, and the following evening the diligence
set me down at the door of the ho.el Washington
Irving" in the old city of Granada.
For days wandered about the Alhambra,
ploring everything from the great Gate of Justice
with its mysterious hand and key, to the ruins of
the Tower of Seven Floors, with its closed door,
from whence Boabdil, well named eel Zogoybi"
the unlucky, passed out of his splendid palace and
delivered up TO his conquerors the fortress and
kingdom of his fathers from the place where
"one King came In. In triumph"
The other weeping. went away"
| strolled day after day through the court de la
Alberca, with its marble pavements, and enormous
fish tank, through the Court OF Lyons, with its
tragic associations of the assassination of the Aben-
cerrages through what had once been the garden
OF the beautiful Misunderstanding new beauties
each day in the fine architecture the marble pillars
and the exquisitely delicate fligree-w work of the
arcades. climbed the steep winding stairs of the
tower of Comares, which had once been the prison
of the proud old Sultana, Ayxa Ia Horra and her
unfortu nate son; | stood on the narrow gallery
from whence she had lowered Boabdil to the hill
side below, sending him out free, only to have him
return at last to the throne of his fathers and by
his weakness and misfortnnes to lose the magnif-
cent estate which for more than two hundred years
had been the home of his ancestors sat for hours
the terraced roof of the tower, looking out over
the Vega-the valley of the Darro-the airy palace
of the Generalife-and beyond, the snow-clad sum-
mits of the Sierra Nevada, the glory of Grenada,
which from Its exhaustless stores OF snow and ice
furnishes the pure, cold water so highly priced by
the native Andalusians.
Looking down into the courts beneath, thought
of all the changing witnessed there since the
days when, in the full tide of their glory, the
foundations had been laid and the strong towers
erected by the followers of Mahomet; that strange
people full of learning science chivary and daring,
who had conquered every nation from the plains of
India to the Pillars of Hercules; who had swept
like huge tidal wave over Spain, and but for the
heavy blows of Charles Martel at the battle of
Tours, might have repeated in the Occident the
history of their Oriental conquests.
Within their old walls and courts forty thousand
Moors had responded time after tme to the call of
their sovereign until at last the splendor of the
Crescent had paled before the glory of the Cross,
and Ferdinand and Isabella marched in in triumph,
while the remnants of the brave Moors, like
ebbing wave receded from the shores OF Spain.
Here in regal spendor the Castilian monarchs held
court; here Columbus came to plead his cause,