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Howells, William Dean, 1837-1920

"Familiar Spanish Travels"


I have tried to hint at these, but really one must go to Seville for
them and let them happen as they will. Many happened in our hotel where
we liked everybody, from the kindly, most capable Catalonian head waiter
to the fine-headed little Napoleonic-looking waiter who had identified
us at San Sebastian as Americans, because we spoke "quicklier" than the
English, and who ran to us when we came into the hotel and shook hands
with its as if we were his oldest and dearest friends. There was a Swiss
concierge who could not be bought for money, and the manager was the
mirror of managers. Fancy the landlord of the Waldorf-Astoria, or the
St. Regis, coming out on the sidewalk and beating down a taxicabman from
a charge of fifteen pesetas to six for a certain drive! It is not
thinkable, and yet the like of it happened to xis in Seville from our
manager. It was not his fault, when our rear apartment became a little
too chill, and we took a parlor in the front and came back on the first
day hoping to find it stored full of the afternoon sun's warmth, but
found that the _camerera_ had opened the windows and closed the shutters
in our absence so that our parlor was of a frigidity which no glitter of
the electric light could temper.


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