We were most kindly welcomed in one or two
charming homes. Beyond this, so short a visit
gives me no right to speak personally of do-
mestic Hfe. The habits of daily life, as they
appear to a stranger, show the effect of cli-
mate and religion; but I suppose nice people
are nice people everywhere, and the best so-
cial life in Spain is probably much like the best



236 SEVEN SPANISH CITIES,

social life anywhere else. The churches are open
every day, and I think that women go to church
almost daily. You meet in the streets, every
morning, many with their maids, the mistress
with prayer-book in hand, each wearing a man-
tilla and not a hat or bonnet, which, as I have
said, is not according to rule in church.
The bookstores are well filled with good books
and bad; and there is a good deal of activity
in publication. The printing is good, the whole
style of a book being quite up to that of the
Paris workshops.
I was inquiring for an impression of an old
engraving of Murillo, very dear to me from
early associations, when I was told to go for it
to the establishment where it was engraved, the
government engraving office, where they still
had the plate, and still sold impressions.
As the engraving was not much more than a
hundred years old, it showed what an American
I was, that I had not thought of this before.
