so grisly and ghoulish, indeed, that it is hard to talk about them; so savage in their manners that they might drive the more timid traveler quick away and back to civilization. When any one comes to draw the great bridge from the appropriate point beneath, the sport of the leading citizens is to gather in crowds upon it, and throw stones upon the rocky hillsides, starting an avalanche which makes the artist who has been foolish enough to go there drop his work and run for his life. Still, I suppose, one must pay somehow for the privilege of visiting the most sensational place in Spain. Its wonderful position, its magnificent bridges, its beautiful little valley, where the finest fruit in Spain is grown, its encircling crown of sierra, make up to a certain extent for the discomfort of staying in its horrible boarding-house, among the savage brutes of its population.

For the wonder of its moonlit nights one would accept still greater evils than this. When there is a moon, and cliffs and stream and bridges and road become so many soft

DRAWN BY JOSEPH PENNELL.

GIBRALTAR FROM ALGECIRAS.

shadows in its pale light, and the whole country is veiled in «the still, spectral, exquisite atmosphere,» one is afraid to trust oneself into the mystery that clothes the shadowy land, and there is joy in the fear. It was the same at Granada, I remember; when, in the moonlight, we looked down from the ramparts of the Alhambra, we felt as if we could not trust ourselves to wander in the streets of the dream city lying there, and its fairness appealed to us but more strongly because of the delicious dread of we knew not what. Perhaps in this feeling you have the clue to the elusive beauty which is at once the mystery and charm of Spain.

The capture of Ronda by the Spaniards was weary enough work for Ferdinand and his knights; but the incredible thing is that they should have taken it at all. What has not nature done for its defense? The Spanish conquest is harder than ever to understand once you have been to Andalusia. Ronda, set on the edge of its chasm, you would think safe and firm to defy all the world through all time. But its fate was that of Granada, and of every other Moorish hill-town. Its greatness has long gone from it, and now it too is but a spectacle to be advertised by Murray, to be stared at by the fortunate traveler who does not succumb, as I did in my folly, to an overdose of Southern sunshine and midsummer heat.

On all sides, it may be, such sights were to be seen, such feasts to be enjoyed. But, as I had given up in Seville, so J., when he came to Ronda, was too exhausted to go farther. The Spanish summer is beautiful for those who spend it, as we did so many of its long, listless weeks, in the Alhambra. Indeed, with German Lloyd steamers from New York touching at Gibraltar, I wonder if the unhappy day is not at hand when Granada will become a rival to Bar Harbor and Newport. The Spanish summer is made for sleeping, not for journeying; for rest, not for adventure. The most energetic traveler has but to set foot on Spanish shores in July or August to understand the «Lotus-eaters' » song:

O rest ye, brother mariners, we will not wander more!

And if he can but reach the Alhambra before he comes to this wise decision, we can promise him the loveliest, laziest days among elms and cypresses and oleanders he ever yet has known.

Elizabeth Robins Pennell.

DRAWN BY IRVING R. WILES.

IN THE HOUSE OF PANSA.

X.

WE had undertaken rather a queer affair,

but it was not so queer after all, when Miss Gage was fairly settled with us. There were other young girls in that pleasant house who had only one another's protection and the general safety of the social atmosphere. We

could not conceal from ourselves, of course, that we had done rather a romantic thing, and in the light of Europe, which we had more or less upon our actions, rather an absurd thing; but it was a comfort to find that Miss Gage thought it neither romantic nor absurd. She took the affair with an apparent ignorance of anything unusual in it with so much ignorance, indeed, that Mrs. March had her occasional question whether she was duly impressed with what was being done for her. Whether this was so or not, it is certain that she was as docile and as biddable as need be. She did not always ask what she should do; that would not have been in the tradition of village independence; but she always did what she was told, and did not vary from her instructions a hair's breadth. I do not suppose she always knew why she might do this and might not do that; and I do not suppose that young girls often understand the reasons of the proprieties. They are told that they must, and that they must not, and this in an astonishing degree suffices them if they are nice girls.

Of course there was pretty constant question of Kendricks in the management of Miss

Gage's amusement, for that was really what

our enterprise resolved itself into. He showed from the first the sweetest disposition to forward all our plans in regard to her, and, in fact, he even anticipated our wishes. I do not mean to give the notion that he behaved

from an interested motive in going to the station the morning Mrs. Deering left, and getting her ticket for her, and checking her baggage, and posting her in the changes she would have to make. This was something I ought to have thought of myself, but I did not think of it, and I am willing that he should have all the credit. I know that he did it out of the lovely generosity of nature which always took me in him. Miss Gage was there with her, and she remained to be consoled after Mrs. Deering departed. They came straight to us from the train, and then, when he had consigned Miss Gage to Mrs. March's care, he offered to go and see that her things were transferred from her hotel to ours; they were all ready, she said, and the bill was paid. He did not come back that day, and, in fact, he delicately waited for some sign from us that his help was wanted. But when he did come he had formulated Saratoga very completely, and had a better conception of doing it than I had, after my repeated sojourns.

We went very early in our explorations to the House of Pansa, which you find in very much better repair at Saratoga than you do at Pompeii, and we contrived to pass a whole afternoon there. My wife and I had been there before more than once; but it always pleasantly recalled our wander-years, when we first met in Europe, and we suffered round after those young things with a patience which I hope will not be forgotten at the Day of Judgment. When we came to a seat we sat down, and let them go off by themselves; but my recollection is that there is not much furniture in the House of Pansa that you can sit down on, and for the most part we all kept together.

Kendricks and I thought alike about the Pompeiian house as a model of something that might be done in the way of a seaside cottage in our own country, and we talked up a little paper that might be done for «Every Other Week,» with pretty architectural drawings, giving an account of our imaginary realization of the notion.

«Have somebody," he said, «visit people who had been boring him to come down, or up, or out, and see them, and find them in a Pompeiian house, with the sea in front and a blue-green grove of low pines behind. Might have a thread of story, but mostly talk about how they came to do it, and how delightfully livable they found it. You could work it up with some architect, who would help you to keep off the grass in the way of technical blunders. With all this tendency to the

classic in public architecture, I don't see why the Pompeiian villa should n't be the next word for summer cottage.»>

« Well, we 'll see what Fulkerson says. He may see an ad. in it. Would you like to do it?» "Why not do it yourself? Nobody else could do it so well.»

«Thanks for the taffy; but the idea was yours.>>

« I'll do it," said Kendricks, after a moment, «if you won't.»

« We'll see.»

Miss Gage stared, and Mrs. March said: «I did n't suppose the House of Pansa would lead to shop with you two.»

«You never can tell which way copy lies,» I returned; and I asked the girl, « What should you think, Miss Gage, of a little paper with a thread of story, but mostly talk, on a supposititious Pompeiian cottage?»>

« I don't believe I understand,» said she, far too remote from our literary interests, as I saw, to be ashamed of her ignorance.

«There!» I said to Kendricks. «Do you think the general public would?»

«Miss Gage is n't the general public,» said my wife, who had followed the course of my thought; her tone implied that Miss Gage was wiser and better.

« Would you allow yourself to be drawn,» I asked, "dreamily issuing from an aisle of the pine grove as the tutelary goddess of a Pompeiian cottage?»

The girl cast a bewildered glance at my wife, who said: «You need n't pay any attention to him, Miss Gage. He has an idea that he is making a joke.»

We felt that we had done enough for one afternoon, when we had done the House of Pansa, and I proposed that we should go and sit down in Congress Park and listen to the Troy band. I was not without the hope that it would play «Washington Post.»>

My wife contrived that we should fall in behind the young people as we went, and she asked, «What do you suppose she made of it all?»

Probably she thought it was the House of Sancho Panza.>>

«No; she has n't read enough to be so ignorant even as that. It's astonishing how much she does n't know. What can her home life have been like?»

«Philistine to the last degree. We people who are near to literature have no conception how far from it most people are. The immense majority of homes, as the newspapers call them, have no books in them except the Bible and a semi-religious volume

or two, things you never see out of such homes,) and the State business directory. I was astonished when it came out that she knew about Every Other Week. It must have been by accident. The sordidness of her home life must be something unimaginable. The daughter of a village capitalist, who 's put together his money dollar by dollar, as they do in such places, from the necessities and follies of his neighbors, and has half the farmers of the region by the throat through his mortgages-I don't think she 's (one to be desired any more than the daughter of a hundred earls,> if so much.>>

«She does n't seem sordid herself.>>

«Oh, the taint does n't show itself at once:

«Yes; and she had a mother as well as this father of hers. Why should n't she be like her mother?»

I laughed. <<That is true. I wonder why we always leave the mother out of the count when we sum up the hereditary tendencies? I suppose the mother is as much a parent as the father?»

"Quite. And there is no reason why this girl should n't have her mother's nature.»><

"We don't actually know anything against her father's nature yet,» I suggested; «but if her mother lived a starved and stunted life with him, it may account for that effect of disappointed greed which I fancied in her when I first saw her.»>

"I don't call it greed in a young girl to want to see something of the world.>>

"What do you call it? »

Kendricks and the girl were stopping at the gate of the pavilion, and looking round at us. « Ah, he 's got enough for one day! He 's going to leave her to us now.»

THE BOOKSTALL.

ENGRAVED BY C. SCHWARZBURGER.

When we came up he said, "I'm going to run off a moment; I'm going up to the bookstore there,» and he pointed toward one that had spread across the sidewalk just below the Congress Hall veranda, with banks and shelves of novels, and a cry of bargains in them on signs sticking up from their rows. I want to see if they have the Last Days of Pompeii.>>>

"We will find the ladies inside the park,» I said. «I will go with you->>

«Mr. March wants to see if they have the last number of Every Other Week,>» my wife mocked after us. This was, indeed, commonly a foible of mine. I had newly become one of the owners of the periodical as well as the editor, and I was all the time looking out for it at news-stands and book-stores, and judging their enterprise by its presence or absence. But this time I had another motive, though I did not allege it.

«I suppose it's for Miss Gage?» I ventured

to say, by way of prefacing what I wished to say. «Kendricks, I'm afraid we 're abusing your good nature. I know you're up here to look about, and you're letting us use all your time. You must n't do it. Women have no conscience about these things, and you can't expect a woman who has a young lady on her hands to spare you. I give you the hint. Don't count upon Mrs. March in this matter.>>

«Oh, I think you 're very good to allow me to bother round,» said the young fellow, with that indefatigable politeness of his. He added vaguely, "It's very interesting.»>

«Seeing it through such a fresh mind?» I suggested. «Well, I'll own that I don't think you could have found a much fresher one. Has she read The Last Days of Pompeii?>» «She thought she had at first, but it was The Fall of Granada.>>>

<«<How delightful! Don't you wish we could read books with that utterly unliterary sense of them? >>

«Don't you think women generally do?» he asked evasively.

"I dare say they do at De Witt Point.»>< He did not answer; I saw that he was not willing to talk the young lady over, and I could not help praising his taste to myself at the cost of my own. His delicacy forbade him the indulgence which my own protested against in vain. He showed his taste again in buying a cheap copy of the book, which he meant to give her, and of course he had to be all the more attentive to her because of my deprecating his self-devotion.

XI.

IN the intimacy that grew up between my wife and Miss Gage I found myself less and less included. It seemed to me at times that I might have gone away from Saratoga and not have been seriously missed by any one; but perhaps this was not taking sufficient account of my value as a spectator by whom Mrs. March could verify her own impressions.

The girl had never known a mother's care, and it was affecting to see how willing she was to be mothered by the chance kindness of a stranger. She probably felt more and more her ignorance of the world as it unfolded itself to her in terms so altogether strange to the life of De Witt Point. I was not sure that she would have been so grateful for the efforts made for her enjoyment if they had failed, but as the case stood she was certainly grateful; my wife said that, and I saw it. She seemed to have written home about us to her father, for she read my wife

part of a letter from him conveying his «respects,» and asking her to thank us for him. She came to me with the check it inclosed, and asked me to get it cashed for her; it was for a handsome amount. But she continued to go about at our cost, quite unconsciously, till one day she happened to witness a contest of civility between Kendricks and me as to which should pay the carriage we were dismissing. That night she came to Mrs. March, and, with many blushes, asked to be allowed to pay for the past and the future her full share of the expense of our joint pleasures. She said that she had never thought of it before, and she felt so much ashamed. She could not be consoled till she was promised that she should be indulged for the future, and that I should be obliged to average the outlay already made and let her pay a fourth. When she had gained her point, Mrs. March said that she seemed a little scared, and said: «I have n't offended you, Mrs. March, have I? Because if it is n't right for me to pay->

"It's quite right, my dear,» said my wife; «and it 's very nice of you to think of it.»

«You know,» the girl explained, "I've never been out a great deal at home even; and it 's always the custom there for the gentlemen to pay for a ride-or dance-or anything; but this is different.»>

Mrs. March said «Yes,» and, in the interest of civilization, she did a little missionary work. She told her that in Boston the young ladies paid for their tickets to the Harvard assemblies, and preferred to do it, because it left them without even a tacit obligation.

Miss Gage said she had never heard of such a thing before, but she could see how much better it was.

I do not think she got on with «The Last Days of Pompeii» very rapidly; its immediate interest was superseded by other things. But she always had the book about with her, and I fancied that she tried to read it in those moments of relaxation from our pleasuring when she might better have been day-dreaming, though I dare say she did enough of that too.

What amused me in the affair was the celerity with which it took itself out of our hands. In an incredibly short time we had no longer the trouble of thinking what we should do for Miss Gage; that was provided for by the forethought of Kendricks, and our concern was how each could make the other go with the young people on their excursions and expeditions. We had seen and done all the things that they were doing,