The silver state. [volume] (Winnemucca, Nev.) 1909-1925, 1912-11-12
A GLIMPSE AT THE
SPORTS OF SPANISH CITIES

In a strange country all the details
of life are interesting, and we noticed
with particular interest that Spain was
a country where the prescriptions were
written in the vulgar tongue instead
of the little Latin in which prescrip-
tions are addressed to the apothecaries
of other lands. We were disposed to
praise the faculty if not the art for
this, but our doctor forbade. He said
it was because the Spanish apothecar-
les were SO unlearned that they could
not read even so little Latin as the
shortest prescription contained. Still,
| could not think the custom a bad one,
though founded on Ignorance, and l do
not see why it should not have made
for the greatest safety of those who
took the medicine if those who put 1T
up followed a formula in their native
tongue. / know that, at any rate, we
found the Spanish medicines beneficial
and were presently suffered to go out
of-doors, but with those evere inJunc-
tions against going out after nightfall
or opening our lips when we went out
by day. 1t was rather a bother, but
it was fine to feel oneself in the classic
Madrid tradition of danger from pneu-
monia, and to be of the dignified com
pany of Spanish gentlemen whom we
met with the border of their cloaks
over their mouths, like characters in a
capa y espada drama
There was almost as little acted as
spoken drama in the streets. | have
given my impression of the songless-
ness of Spain in Madrid as elsewhere,
but if there was no street-slnglng
there was often street-playing by
pathetic bands of blind minstrels with
guitars and mandolins. The blind
abound everywhere in Spain in that
profession of street beggary which |
always encouraged, believing, as | do,
that comfort il this unbalanced world
cannot be too constantly reminded of
misery. As the hunchbacks are in
Italy, or the wooden peg-legged IN
England, so the blind are in Spain, for
number.
The Spanish street is rarely the
theatrical spectacle that the Italian
street nearly always is. Now and then
there was a bit in Madrid which one
would be sorry to have missed; such
was the funeral of a civil magistrate,
otherwise unknown to me, which | saw
pass my cafe window; a most arehl-
tectural black hearse, with a black roof,
drawn by eight black horses, sable
plumed. The hearse was open at the
sides, with the coffin fully showing,
and a gold-lace chapeau brass lying on
it. Behind came twenty or twenty
five gentlemen on foot in the modern
ine~ffectiveness of frock coats and top
hats, and after them eight or ten clos
ed carriages. The procession passed
without the least notice from the
crowd which / saw at other times
stirred to a flutter of emulation in its
small boys by companies of infantry
marching to the music of sharply
blown bugles. The men were hand
somer thar Italian soldiers, but not SC
handsome as the English, and in figure
they were not quite the deplorable
pygmies one often sees in France
Their bugle, with the rhythmical note
which the tram cars sound, and the
guitars and mandolins of the blind
minstrels, made the only street music
/ remember in Madrid.-William Dean
Howells, in the North American Re