concluded to fall back on Christopher Columbus for a steady diet of talk, cause if it had not been for Chris we wouldn't have been discovered to this day, which might have been a darn good thing for us. But the people here do not recall the fact that there ever was a man named Christopher Columbus, and they don't know what he ever discovered, or where the country is that he sailed away to find, unless they are educated, and familiar with ancient history, and only once in a while will you find anybody that is educated. The children of America know more about the history of Spain than the Spanish children. This country reminds you of a play on the stage, the grandees in their picturesque costumes, though few in number, compared to the population, are the whole thing, and the people you see on the stage with the grandees, in peasant costume, peddling oranges and figs, you find here in the life of Spain, looking up to the grandees as though they were gods. Every peasant carries a knife in some place, concealed about him, and no two carry their toad stabbers in the same place. If you see a man reach his finger under his collar to scratch his neck, the chances are his fingers touch the handle of his dagger, and if he hitches up his pants, his dagger is there, and if he pulls up his trousers leg to scratch for a flea, you can bet your life his knife is right handy, and if you have any trouble you don't know where the knife is coming from, as you do about an American revolver, when one of our citizens reaches for his pistol pocket. Spaniards are nervous people, on the move all the time, and it is on account of fleas. Every man, woman and child contains more than a million fleas, and as they can't scratch all the time, they keep on the move, hoping the fleas will jump off on somebody else. When we came here we were flealess, but every person we have come near to seems to have contributed some fleas to us, until now we are loaded down with them, and we find in our room at the hotel a box of insect powder, which, is charged in with the candles. The king, who is a boy about three years older than I am, is full of fleas, too, and he jumps around from one place to another, like he was shaking himself to get rid of them. He gets up in the morning and goes out horseback riding, and jumps fences and rides tip and down the marble steps of the public buildings, as though he wanted to make the fleas feel in danger, so they will leave him. Seems to me if every man kept as many dogs as they do in Constantinople, the fleas would take to the dogs, but they say here that fleas will leave a dog to get on a human being, because they like the smell of garlic, as every Spaniard eats garlic a dozen times a day. They are trying to teach dogs to eat garlic, but no self-respecting dog will touch it. We have had to fill up on garlic in order to be able to talk with the people, cause dad got sea sick the first day here, everybody smelled so oniony.