Or I would like to go back and
give another day to it and come every year and give a day. This very
moment, instead of writing of it in a high New York flat and looking out
on a prospect incomparably sky-scrapered, I would rather be in that
glass-roofed _patio_ of our histrionic hotel, engaging the services of
one of the most admirable guides who ever fell to the lot of mortal
Americans, while much advised by our skull-capped landlord to shun the
cicerone of another hotel as "an Italian man," with little or no
English.
As soon as we appeared outside the beggars of Toledo swarmed upon us;
but I hope it was not from them I formed the notion that the beauty of
the place was architectural and not personal, though these poor things
were as deplorably plain as they were obviously miserable. The
inhabitants who did not ask alms were of course in the majority, but
neither were these impressive in looks or bearing. Rather, I should say,
their average was small and dark, and in color of eyes and hair as well
as skin they suggested the African race that held Toledo for four
centuries. Neither here nor anywhere else in Spain are there any traces
of the Jews who helped bring the Arabs in; once for all, that people
have been banished so perfectly that they do not show their noses
anywhere.
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