Cervantes wanted to tease his fellow countrymen about reading so many books with stories that could never happen in real life. So he wrote a book of his own about Don Quixote, a foolish old fellow who imagined he was a handsome knight. The poor Don rode all around the country on a rickety old horse dreaming he was rescuing beautiful ladies and fighting imaginary battles for his king. Once he even tried to fight a windmill, thinking it was a giant! Another time he thought a shepherd and his flock were an army! Cervantes' fun-poking book is still read and laughed over by people throughout the whole world. Today, if you were to drive from Granada to Toledo or Madrid, you would pass through Don Quixote's country, La Mancha, and you would see windmills and the shepherds leading their sheep and goats, with all the countryside looking much as Cervantes described it through Don Quixote's eyes. Wherever you stopped for the night, you would see a great walking-around, which begins at 7 o'clock. Every family comes out to join in this evening custom which is called "paseo." Of course the children come too, dressed in their best clothes. But boys and girls do not walk together. Two or three girls will walk by, arm-in-arm, and several boys will walk by, talking together and looking at the girls from the corner of their eyes. In the smaller places, all the older boys walk together in one direction while all the older girls walk arm-in-arm in the opposite direction, or else on the other side of the street. Just as boys and girls don't walk together in the paseo, they don't often play games together either--at least not after they are old enough to go to school. Before school days start, all children play singing and dancing games something like our "London Bridge." They play tag and a favorite game called "Hit the Pot." They put a tin can or an old clay pot on the end of a long stick and blindfold the child who is "It." The others then run around with the stick while "It" tries to knock off the can with another stick. But when they are six years old, all little boys and girls must go to school, and--except in small villages where there are only a few children to study with one teacher--they go to separate schools, so they stop playing together then, too. Little girls jump rope, play with jacks and dolls. Or they play singing games which act out the parts of kings and queens and princesses. Little boys are most interested in games with balls, like jai alai or football. The favorite game of most little boys in Spain is "Torero." In this game they pretend they are bullfighters, who are called "toreros." Every boy in Spain dreams of growing up to be the greatest bullfighter in the world. Bullfighting is one of the most exciting things in life to every Spaniard. [Illustration]