There had come over on the vessel with us, in the cabin, a droll character, an actor in a Philadelphia theatre, who had promptly found a lodging in a kind of maritime boarding-house. Getting into some difficulty, as he could not speak French he came in a great hurry to beg me to go with him to his _pension_ to act as interpreter, which I did. I found at once that it was a Spanish house, and the resort of smugglers. The landlady was a very pretty black-eyed woman, who played the guitar, and sang Spanish songs, and brought out Spanish wine, and was marvellously polite to me, to my astonishment, not unmingled with innocent gratitude. There I was at home. At Princeton I had learned to play the guitar, and from Manuel Gori, who had during all his boyhood been familiar with low life and smugglers, I had learned many songs and some slang. And so, with a crowd of dark, fierce, astonished faces round me of men eagerly listening, I sang a smuggler's song-- "Yo que soy contrabandista, Y campo a me rispeto, A todos mi desafio, Quien me compra hilo negro? Ay jaleo! Muchachas jaleo! Quien me compra hilo negro!" Great was the amazement and thundering the applause from my auditors. Let the reader imagine a nun of fourteen years asked to sing, and bursting out with "Go it while you're young!" Then I sang the _Tragala_, which coincided with the political views of my friends. But my grand _coup_ was in reserve. I had learned from Borrow's "Gypsies in Spain" a long string of Gitano or Gypsy verses, such as-- "El eray guillabela, El eray obusno; Que avella romanella, No avella obusno!" "Loud sang the _gorgio_ to his fair, And thus his ditty ran:-- 'Oh, may the Gypsy maiden come, And not the Gypsy man!'" And yet again-- "Coruncho Lopez, gallant lad, A smuggling he would ride; So stole his father's ambling prad, And therefore to the galleys sad Coruncho now I guide." This was a final _coup_. How the _diabolo_ I, such an innocent stranger youth, had ever learned Spanish _Gypsy_--the least knowledge of which in Spain implies unfathomable iniquity and fastness--was beyond all comprehension. So I departed full of honour amid thunders of applause.