Thus far the Arithmetic Man; to whom responds the tauromachian aficionado: That the bulk of this income goes to purposes of charity; that were there no bull-fights, bulls of good race would cease to be bred; that nobody ever saw a horse in a bull-ring that could plough a furrow of a hundred yards without giving up the ghost; that the nerve, dexterity, and knowledge of brute nature gained in the arena is a good thing to have in the country; that, in short, it is our way of amusing ourselves, and if you don't like it you can go home and cultivate prize-fighters, or kill two-year-old colts on the racecourse, or murder jockeys in hurdle-races, or break your own necks in steeple-chases, or in search of wilder excitement thicken your blood with beer or burn your souls out with whiskey. And this is all we get by our well-meant effort to convince Spaniards of the brutality of bullfights. Must Chicago be virtuous before I can object to Madrid ale, and say that its cakes are unduly gingered? Yet even those who most stoutly defend the bull-fight feel that its glory has departed and that it has entered into the era of full decadence. I was talking one evening with a Castilian gentleman, one of those who cling with most persistence to the national traditions, and he confessed that the noble art was wounded to death. "I do not refer, as many do, to the change from the old times, when gentlemen fought on their own horses in the ring. That was nonsense, and could not survive the time of Cervantes. Life is too short to learn bull-fighting. A grandee of Spain, if he knows anything else, would make a sorry torero. The good times of the art are more modern. I saw the short day of the glory of the ring when I was a boy. There was a race of gladiators then, such as the world will never see again,--mighty fighters before the king. Pepe Illo and Costillares, Romero and Paco Montes,--the world does not contain the stuff to make their counterparts. They were serious, earnest men. They would have let their right arms wither before they would have courted the applause of the mob by killing a bull outside of the severe traditions. Compare them with the men of to-day, with your Rafael Molina, who allows himself to be gored, playing with a heifer; with your frivolous boys like Frascuelo. I have seen the ring convulsed with laughter as that buffoon strutted across the arena, flirting his muleta as a manola does her skirts, the bewildered bull not knowing what to make of it. It was enough to make Illo turn in his bloody grave.