I had long
meant to buy a donkey, and I thought I could make no fitter beginning to
this end than by buying a donkey's head-stall in the country where
donkeys are more respected and more brilliantly accoutred than anywhere
else in the whole earth. When I ventured to suggest my notion, or call
it dream, to our young guide, he instantly imagined it in its full
beauty, and he led us directly to a shop in the principal street which
for the richness and variety of the coloring in its display might have
been a florist's shop. Donkeys' trappings in brilliant yellow,
vermillion, and magenta hung from the walls, and head-stalls,
gorgeously woven and embroidered, dangled from the roof. Among them and
under them the donkeys' harness-maker sat at his work, a short, brown,
handsome man with eyes that seemed the more prominent because of his
close-shaven head. We chose a headstall of such splendor that no heart
could have resisted it, and while he sewed to it the twine muzzle which
Spanish donkeys wear on their noses for the protection of the public,
our guide expatiated upon us, and said, among other things to our
credit, that we were from America and were going to take the head-stall
back with us.
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