The Argosy — page 313: what you’re looking at

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

292 Letters from Majorca. features: whether pale from emotion or by nature, one could not tell. Animated as the shrew, but not so loud, she gave way to tears that would have softened even a Mallorcan pavement. The shrew—old, ugly, and substantial—had a visage inflamed by vindictive passions. The younger woman had a large basket with her, and evidently belonged to the market. Something had gone wrong there. The shrew had cheated her, or threatened murder, or prophesied ill-luck, or declared that her lover would be faithless—a moral impossibility, with such a face and form. Whatever the grievance, the girl was in: despair ; wept freely, wrung her hands, appealed publicly for justice. and protection. We did not wait the end. H.C. impulsively dashed forward, and was about to put a violent termination to the shrew’s existence, when. I forcibly dragged him away. She richly deserved the severest. doom. Boiling over a slow fire was what we should have preferred ; a process, I believe, by cooks called simmering. It would have been lovely to gently simmer her to death; but the consequences to us might have been inconvenient. As we went off, we were greeted with a noise exactly resembling the ‘squabble you have so often heard in “ Faust,” when girls and men rush on the stage and a pitched battle ensues between the opposing: factions. I have always noticed, by the way, that on these occasions. the women are always much more ferocious than the men; much cleverer and more active with their hands and arms. I have an idea that this little bit of acting is very true to life. The market at last. It was crowded with stalls, with buyers and sellers. A great noise was going on. Foreigners can do nothing without noise, which is their keynote of life. ‘They know nothing of “indoor” voices. Who gives out most sound, makes most way. You must confound your opponent by this power of sound much more than by argument. An Irishman has faith in a broken head, and will be convinced by this when nothing else would persuade him. But the Spaniards and Mallorcans, whilst even more noisy, happily, as far as I can see and learn, stop short of bloodshed. The market is held in an ancient square, surrounded by heavy arcades. Everything necessary to human sustenance is sold here. The meat market had no attractions, and we passed it by. The fruit and vegetable market more than charmed us. The latter was picturesque with a variety of brilliant colours ; its Indian corn, pro- fusion of tomatoes—pommes d’amour, as the French poetically call them—and large red capsicums. ‘Tomatoes were a penny a pound, and this will give you some idea of prices in general. We were solicited on all hands to buy; but disappointment, coupled with admiration, followed in our wake. It was different in the fruit market. Here we found great trea- sures and abundance of temptation. conmicloooks (EO) m