“A good roomy bag delighteth a Roman, He is never without this appendage a minute; In bed, at the bath, at his meals,--in short no man Should fail to stow life, hope, and self away in it.” The countrymen of Sancho Panza, when on the road, make the same use of their wallets as the Romans did; they still (the washing excepted) live and die with these bags, in which their hearts are deposited with their bread and cheese. These Spanish _alforjas_, in name and appearance, are the Moorish _al horeh_. (The F and H, like the B and V, X and J, are almost equivalent, and are used indiscriminately in Spanish cacography.) They are generally composed of cotton and worsted, and are embroidered in gaudy colours and patterns; the _correct_ thing is to have the owner’s name worked in on the edge, which ought to be done by the delicate hand of his beloved mistress. Those made at Granada are very excellent; the Moorish, especially those from Morocco, are ornamented with an infinity of small tassels. Peasants, when dismounted, mendicant monks, when foraging for their convents, sling their _alforjas_ over their shoulders when they come into villages. [Sidenote: WHAT TO STOW AWAY IN THE ALFORJAS.] Among the contents which most people will find it convenient to carry in the _right-hand bag_, as the easiest to be got at, a pair of blue gauze wire spectacles or goggles will be found useful, as ophthalmia is very common in Spain, and particularly in the calcined central plains. The constant glare is unrelieved by any verdure, the air is dry, and the clouds of dust highly irritating from being impregnated with nitre. The best remedy is to bathe the eyes frequently with hot water, and _never to rub them when inflamed_, except with the elbows, _los ojos con los codos_. Spaniards never jest with their eyes or faith; of the two perhaps they are seriously fondest of the former, not merely when sparkling beneath the arched eyebrow of the dark sex, but when set in their own heads. “I love thee like my eyes,” is quite a hackneyed form of affection; nor, however wrathful and imprecatory, do they under any circumstance express the slightest uncharitable wishes in regard to the visual organs of their bitterest foe. The whole art of the _alforjas_ is the putting into them what you want the most often, and in the most handy and accessible place. Keep here, therefore, a supply of small money for the halt and the blind, for the piteous cases of human suffering and poverty by which the traveller’s eye will be pained in a land where soup-dispensing monks are done away with, and assistant new poor law commissioners not yet appointed; such charity from God’s purse, _bolsa de Dios_, never impoverishes that of man, and a cheerful giver, however opposed to modern political economists, is commended in that old-fashioned book called the Bible. The left half of the _alforjas_ may be apportioned to the writing and dressing cases, and the smaller each are the better.