Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 28, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 March 1877 — On a Spanish Railroad. [ARTICLE]

On a Spanish Railroad.

In the express trains one meets with dark-haired, dark-visaged gentlemen, who draw their bats down over their eyes and puff cigarette-smoke continually through their nostrils, who converse little, and who only unbend from their haughty demeanor when some beautiful girl, with her lace mantilla draping her fine neck and shoulders, enters the carriage. But in the slow trains one gets even more knowledge of the Spanish populace than he is desirous of acquiring. The Spaniard when he travels appears to fancy that he has an inalienable right to take with him in the same car in which he rides all his household goods and farm produce. A stout farmer, clad in a blouse, a pair of white corduroys, leathern sandals, and a -broad hat with little tassels around its edges, clambers into a compartment already overcrowded. He lianas his nearest neighbor a cage of chickens, deposits a small bag of flour in a young girl’s lap, pulls his growling dog in after him, sets a basket of eggs on an old woman’s gouty toes, scrambles into a fraction of a seat, smiles, makes a hundred apologies, and lights a cigarette. Two or three muleteers, clad in long striped cloaks, per fume the car with garlic. A soldier, with his gun slung over his back, pokes the muzzle of the dangerous weapon into his neighbor’s eye occasionally. one interlards his or her conversation with interjections, and often with oaths shocking to ears polite. If the journey is long, some clever fellow pulls a guitar out of a hag, thrums its strings, hums a ballad in which the others join, laughing and puffing smoke between the refrains, and now and then keeping time bv clapping thoir bauds and stamping with their feet. At a railway station, at Miranda or Burgos, when the train stops to allow the passeugers to refresh themselves, no one hurries at all. Suppose twenty minutes to be the time allowed; every one seats himself solemnly at the long table in the dining-room, and slowly eats and moderately drinks, smoking between the courses. As the twenty minutes’ period approaches its end, the guard rings a bell loudly and calls the senores to the train. A few persons look around languidly, as if astonished at an unusual noise, but they dd not bestir themselves. On the contrary, they settle into their chairs and address themselves to the dessert. When the train is five minutes behind time, the guard rings again, with no better success. After he has rung a third time, and stalking majestically up and down the platform of the station, has begun to feign closing the doors of the carriages, the travelers rise slowly, wrap their cloaks around them with great care, arranging each fold as if they were about to be presented to the King, and, lignting fresh cigarettes, stroll to the train. They stand talking at the doors until the guard pushes them into the compartments, when they glare out at him as if he was guilty of a great discourtesy. —Edward King , in Lip> pincott'e Magazine.