CLIMATE, EVIL BEASTS, SCENERY 121 



An old Spanish house built of adobe i.e., 

 bricks made of wet clay and straw, run into 

 a mould, and then turned out to bake in the 

 sun with walls of from two and a half to 

 three feet thick, is the very acme of comfort. 

 The bare idea of having ever again to live 

 in any other kind of a house, once having 

 enjoyed an adobe, presents itself as a woeful 

 prospect. Those who, for the sake of 

 worshipping the little tin god called Style, 

 build them mansions of brick or wood live to 

 rue (in secret) the error of their ways, or else 

 have never lived in an adobe. To remove, 

 either in hot or cold weather, from a clay 

 house to one of brick is to receive an object- 

 lesson not easily to be forgotten ; words are 

 rendered at once and for ever superfluous. 

 The adobe house, then, with its ponderous 

 walls and windows, sufficient in number to let 

 in the winter sunshine without admitting too 

 much of the summer heat, is an abode for 

 the gods provided the gods do not admit 

 to their circle the little tin travesty afore- 

 mentioned, and are also willing to risk the 

 possibility of a volume of muddy water 

 pouring through the flat * dirt ' roof when the 



