After a time I wished to try my sister Pilar’s donkey, and I asked her to change with me. The mayor objected. No, no; I must not do it. It would not be right. “What?” I said. “Is it forbidden by Spanish etiquette that I ride my sister’s donkey?” And I insisted. Then the mayor, seeing that I was determined, explained, in angry confusion that we could not change donkeys because our names had been clipped on their tails, so that the people might know who we were! And at the next village I watched the boys come behind us and read our names on the donkeys’ tails before they set up their shouting! I thought it very clever--though such a joke on us--and I soon found that it was typically Spanish. They were very ingenious at playing such little tricks of deception. One of the oddest happened when we were making an official visit to another town, and driving again with another mayor. As we proceeded slowly through a crowded street, suddenly a boy ran into the roadway and dived between the wheels of our carriage. We were afraid that he would be killed, and we shouted to the driver, who pulled up his horses. The boy crawled out between the opposite wheels and ran away, but before we could start on again another boy did the same thing. This alarmed me so--with the fear of running over some one--that I wanted to stop altogether. How could one drive through a town where the children did such mad things? I would not go. The mayor assured me that it would not occur again, but I refused to believe him. How did he know? If these two boys would do it, why not others? Finally, to calm me, he admitted that he had hired these two boys to throw themselves under our wheels. But why? Because we were in front of his house, and his wife and family had wished to have a good look at us, and he had devised this charming plan to stop the carriage under their windows. With a people whose simpler citizens are capable of such subterfuges, you may believe it was not easy to discover the truth of what was going on in the intricacies of Government. The truth, as far as I was ever able to discover it, was this. In Spain there was an elaborate system of what is called “bossism” in the United States of America. But in Spain it had been carried to its final perfection. In every small community there was some wealthy person who controlled the machinery of public administration. He chose the persons who were to fill the elective offices, and the election returns were changed or manufactured to certify the election of his creatures. In office, then, these men obeyed his orders. Taxes were levied, the laws were administered, and justice was dealt out, as he directed, for the benefit and protection of himself and his friends. All the officials, ostensibly appointed or elected to represent the people and carry out the popular will, represented only the “cacique” (as he is called) and obeyed only him.