It is a delightful book, and not least delightful
in the moments of misgiving which it imparts to the reader, when he does
not know whether to prize more the author's observation or his
invention, whichever it may be. Borrow reports a conversation with an
innkeeper and his wife of the Colonial German descent, who gave a good
enough account of themselves, and then adds the dark intimation of an
Italian companion that they could not be honestly keeping a hotel in
that unfrequented place. It was not just in that place that our delay
had chosen to occur, but it was in the same colonized region, and I am
glad now that I had not remembered the incident from my first reading of
Borrow. It was sufficiently uncomfortable to have some vague association
with the failure of that excellent statesman's plan, blending creepily
with the feeling of desolation from the gathering dark, and I now recall
the distinct relief given by the unexpected appearance of two such
Guardias Civiles as travel with every Spanish train, in the space before
our lonely station.
These admirable friends were part of the system which has made travel as
safe throughout Spain as it is in Connecticut, where indeed I sometimes
wonder that road-agents do not stop my Boston express in the waste
expanse of those certain sand barrens just beyond New Haven.
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