El Hornipipo 



upon us ; she instantly flapped a dishclout in his placid, 

 pensive countenance, and he retired without further demon- 

 stration of his feelings than slightly shaking his ears. 



After supper, when it was dark, we sat by the crackling 

 kitchen-fire. The medico of the place (Ben el Aurin) had 

 dropped in to smoke his cigar by the fire. He was rather 

 a prosaic and sententious personage, who had been in Russia 

 with Napoleon. He inquired about London, which he had 

 understood was "not so large as Paris, and that it was all 

 pedaxos (disjointed fragments), and mixed up with the sea." 

 The women requested to hear us speak English, and then 

 said, " that it was a language which nobody could under- 

 stand, not even the birds. There were Englishmen came 

 now and then from Gibraltar ; there was Don Jos6, a man 

 of great wealth and dignity, he spoke very clear ; he came 

 for shooting- in the mountains with his son ; he was a 

 sastre (tailor) at Gibraltar. There were English came 

 through sometimes who could not speak clear at all." 



It was evident they had no idea of another language than 

 Spanish in the world, only that some nations spoke it very 

 unintelligibly. The daughters wanted to know if there was 

 any dancing in our country. We told them that our nation 

 had no taste or genius for dancing, and never invented a 

 national dance of its own except the hornpipe, which they 

 were ashamed to dance in the first society, preferring to 

 imitate, in a limp and spiritless manner, the dances of 

 foreign countries, for to dance with much energy or grace 

 was in England thought muy ordinario (very vulgar). 



They wished to see the hornipipo danced, and one of the 

 fashionable dances to compare it with ; so I danced what I 

 knew of a college hornpipe, eking it out with fugitive 

 reminiscences of the Highland fling. They clapped their 

 hands to keep time, and laughed, as well they might. Then 



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