Of costume, as Spain is so often painted, there was little; the peasant men wore tall, flat-brimmed hats and broad, blue sashes about their stomachs; the women shawls and woven leggings; the mules and donkeys had trappings of bright-coloured woolwork and often saddlebags with fine woven coloured patterns on them. String-soled sandals were the footwear of the men and of the soldiers: string-soled shoes, alpagatas, were worn by the women and children. The town was moderately alive until eleven o'clock. Very early in the morning the peasants came into the market with their mules or donkeys, then gradually a quiet settled down, a quiet which lasted till the evening. After six o'clock Avila awoke, the business men left their shops, the officers their cantonments. The cadets and youths gathered in the plaza to flirt with the girls who, dressed in gay cottons, paraded to and fro in small giggling and swaying groups. Booths selling cool drinks and ices opened at the corners of the plaza, while wandering sweetmeat merchants sold fried almonds and sugared nuts. There was no woman with a lace mantilla and a high comb, nor any one with a flat hat, embroidered shawl and cigarette; so the cigar boxes are liars.
As one sits at the café table in Spain, life is, perhaps, presented to one in an aspect almost too crude. Lazarus lay at the rich man's gates exhibiting his sores, and the Spanish beggar follows his example. Spain needs no Charles Lamb to write of the decay of beggars. Decayed indeed they are, but not in that sense of which Lamb wrote: in tattered and unspeakable rags they pursue their trade from the Asturias to Cadiz. No dishonour attaches to beggary in Spain. A Spaniard was horrified when Jan told him that begging was not permitted in England.
"What, then, can those do who are unable or unwilling to work?" he asked.
A humble though probably verminous official refuge is provided for the beggar in each town, and, as he tells his clients, "God repays" his small extortions. The Spaniard is accustomed to his beggars, he does not nag at his conscience about them, but it harrows the unaccustomed heart of the Englishman who, taking his modest coffee or Blanco y negro after supper, finds a procession of misery thrusting importunate hands into his moment of quiet luxury. The Spanish beggar has no tenderness for one's sensibility. Each has the motto, "If you have tears prepare to shed them now." Naturally we were their quarry. They presented us with a series of specimens worthy of a hospital museum. We hardened our hearts, as we were afraid of consequences, but after two days, when the beggars, disappointed with us, relaxed their exertions, we gave or withheld alms with the outward serenity of a Spaniard, but feeling inwardly brutal whenever we refused to give a dole.
