to the intoxicating cup for help to bear their load, or to forget that it is on them. But this disgression is getting dry, if it is on drinking. A beautiful trait of character and a lovely custom of the Spanish peasantry appear in their love for parents. They yield to them _obedience_, respect, veneration, and love, after they are aged, and the children are men and women grown. The married children delight to have their parents to direct and govern them as in childhood, and these children even quarrel among themselves to get and keep possession of their aged parents. This trait of character is said to mark a slow country, where the past, the ancient, is held in honor; while progress has no such reverence for old age. Would to God that we had a little more Spain in young America, if it is Spanish to honor one’s father and mother. [Illustration: IN THE ALAMEDA, AT MALAGA.] CHAPTER XI. MALAGA. THE wind blowing from the north-west,—that is, a land breeze, at Malaga, excites the nervous system so much, that in courts of law it is held to be an extenuating circumstance in case of crime. It is therefore of great importance to know which way the wind blows when you are proposing to kill your neighbor or to commit a forgery. In our country we have hardly got to that point, but in Boston, where easterly winds prevail, the phrenologists set up a plea in behalf of the Malden murderer that was quite as absurd as the Malaga weather. In New York, the doctrine of mental and moral disturbance is held to be an extenuating circumstance in crime. And some of our eminent citizens, merchants, bankers, lawyers, doctors, and ministers have united in representing the strong excitement engendered by stock speculation, as an excuse for forgery. From all of which it is fair to infer that the guilt or innocence of a man in the New World, as well as the Old, depends very much upon the way the wind blows.