Authors, American -- 19th century -- Biography; Leland, Charles Godfrey, 1824-1903
all her own, that mocked a little at everything: these were part of
the constant freshness which made those who loved her love her so
much. 'If my servants can live with me a week, they can live with me
for ever,' she often said; 'but the first week sometimes kills them.'
A domestic who had been long in her service quitted his foreign home
the instant he heard of her death, and, travelling for thirty hours,
arrived travel-stained and breathless, like a messenger in a romantic
tale, just in time to drop a handful of flowers into her grave."
There came on board of our boat a fruit-dealer, and the old pilot, seeing
that I was about to invest a _real_ in grapes, said, "Let me buy them for
you"; which he did, obtaining half-a-peck of exquisite large grapes of a
beautiful purple colour.
There was a middle-aged lady among the passengers, of whom the least I
can say was, that she had a great many little winning ways of making
herself disagreeable. She imposed frightfully on me while on board,
getting me to mark her trunks for her, and carry them into the hold, &c.
(the sailors disliked her so much that they refused to touch them), and
then cut me dead when on shore. This ancient horror, seeing me with so
many grapes, and learning the price, concluded that if a mere boy like me
could get so many, she, a lady, could for four reals lay in a stock which
would last for life, more or less. So she obtained a bushel-basket,
expecting to get it heaped full; but what was her wrath at only getting
for her silver half-dollar just enough to hide the bottom thereof! Great
was her rage, but rage availed her nought. She did not call old pilots
"Brother," or give them cigars, or talk Malagano politely. She was not
even "half-Spanish," and therefore, as we used to say at college of
certain unpopular people, was "a bad smoke."
We went on shore on Sunday, which in those days always made Gibraltar
literally like a fancy ball. The first person whom I met was a pretty
young lady in full, antique, rich Castilian costume, followed by a
servant bearing her book of devotion. Seeing my gaze of admiration, she
smiled, at which I bowed, and she returned the salute and went her way.
Such an event had never happened to me before in all my life. I accepted
it philosophically as one of a new order of things into which I was
destined to enter. Then I saw men from every part of Spain in quaint
dresses, Castilians in cloaks, Andalusians in the jaunty _majo_ rig,
Gallegos, Moors from the Barbary coast, many Greeks, old Jews in
gabardines, Scotch Highland soldiers, and endless more--_concursus
splendidus_--_non possum non mirari_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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