The Argosy — page 312: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

Letters from Majorca. 291 The master of these airy, fairy substances came forward with enviable grace,and gave meachair. Of course he could see that I was not a customer, but a refugee. Gentlemen do not wear frills and flounces, except in pantomimes and private theatricals. As he knew some little French, and I have picked up a few, very few words of Mallorcan, a lively conversation ensued. To a listener, the mixture of tongues and gestures, and the totally new words created, would have been edifying. The rain continued to descend, and he offered me an umbrella with unstudied politeness. If you visit a Spaniard, he will place his whole house at your dis- nosal. If you admire anything in particular, or everything in general, itis yours. You are not expected to accept it, and if from ignorance or absence of mind you do so, you will find that presently he will send for it back again. Nothing is more certain than that in Spain, a friend will offer you everything he has, himself into the bargain ; and it is equally certain that everything has to be graciously declined, him- self included. But when this Good Samaritan offered me an umbrella, it was meant to be taken in good part. It would certainly have been put to the test, had our conversation not outlasted the rain.. He seemed disappointed, evidently wishing to make an occasion for a second visit and a second French conversation. He was good enough to say that it was a lesson to him, who was forgetting his French for want of exercise. Yet, though I have no umbrella to return, I mean to indulge him and honour myself by another call, knowing that it will give pleasure. And in a town where ninety-nine people out of every hundred one meets speak only an unknown tongue, you cannot imagine the pleasure one also receives in meeting the hundredth, with whom it is possible to exchange civilized thoughts in the ordinary way. But to the market—for I am anticipating. The above incident happened after we had paid our visit, and when H. C. had settled bimself for sketching, with a congregation of curious gazers at his elbow. On our way to this market, in a narrow but picturesque street, paved with petrified cobbles, we came upon a shrew. A grand dispute was going on, and the noise and commotion might have been heard from pavement to dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral or St. Peter’s at Rome. An admiring crowd was gathered round the small doorway. A flight of stairs leading to the first floor was lined with women, of whom our shrew and spokeswoman was leader. A young woman and an old one, in the doorway, were evidently plain- tiffs in this trial by female jury: which is as much as to say that prejudice, not right, weighted the scales of justice. Our sympathies were all in favour of the young woman. She was pretty ; neatly dressed, with a coquettish hood that set off her pale COMmichoooks.com