Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 40, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 November 1881 — A Spanish City at Night. [ARTICLE]

A Spanish City at Night.

As the shades of evening descend, this whole street, illumined with lamps, torches, and parti-illumined with lanterns, becomes a fairy scene. The cases are then crowded to repletion ; youthful eyes flash love at each other over glasses of snowy Horchatas ; old men sip their spiced cognac and dream of the isles of blessed, and fiery polititians rave and stamp and seem ready to tear each other to pieces. Here a group of artists discuss a picture ; there a couple of padres are trying their hands at cards ; here is a young militaire, fresh from Madrid, covered with spangles and as gay as a peacock ; and there in that corner—can you believe your eyes I the veritable" old beggfu 1 that you just

saw in the street, investing the piesta that you gave him in a nightcap of invigorating cordial. Every rank in society is represented; every variety of color and costume flashes out beneath those brilliant lights, while your ears are assailed by the din of voices, the tinkling of glasses, the sharp click of the dice on the marble table, intermingled with the strains of delicious music. This is De las Siarpes by night. Would you not like to see it ? It is a phantasmagoria of splendor; it is a babel of confusion ;it is a page from the “Arabian Nights’ Entertainments ” supplemented by sundry passages from the “ Hero de la Mancha.”