MY CASTLES IN SPAIN

GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS

I AM the owner of great estates. Many of them lie in the west; but the greater part are in Spain. You may see my western possessions any evening at sunset, when their spires and battlements flash against the horizon.

It gives me a feeling of pardonable importance, as a proprietor, that they are visible-to my eyes, at leastfrom any part of the world in which I chance to be. In my long voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to India (the only voyage I ever made, when I was a boy), if I felt homesick, or sank into a reverie of all the pleasant homes I had left behind, I had but to wait until sunset, and then looking toward the west, I beheld my clustering pinnacles and towers brightly burnished, as if to salute and welcome

me.

Columbus, also, had possessions in the west; and as I read aloud the romantic story of his life, my voice quivers when I come to the point in which it is related that sweet odors of the land mingled with the sea air as the admiral's fleet approached the shores; that tropical birds flew out and fluttered around the ships, glittering in the sun, the gorgeous promises of the new country; that boughs, perhaps with blossoms not all decayed, floated out to welcome the strange wood from which the craft were hollowed. Then I cannot restrain myself. I think of the gorgeous visions I have seen before I have even undertaken the journey to the west.

These are my western estates, but my finest castles are in Spain. It is a country famously romantic, and my castles are all of perfect proportions, and appropriately

set in the most picturesque situations. I have never been to Spain myself, but I have naturally conversed much with travellers to that country; although, I must allow, without deriving from them much substantial information about my property there. The wisest of them told me that there were more holders of real estate in Spain than in any other region he had ever heard of, and they are all great proprietors. Every one of them possesses a multitude of the stateliest castles. From conversation with them you easily gather that each one considers his own castles much the largest and in the loveliest positions. After I had heard this said, I verified it by discovering that all my immediate neighbors in the city were great Spanish proprietors.

It is remarkable that none of the proprietors have ever been to Spain to take possession and report to the rest of us the state of our property there. I, of course, cannot go; I am too much engaged. And I find it is the case with all the proprietors. We have so much to detain us at home that we cannot get away. But it is always so with rich men.

It is not easy for me to say how I know so much, as I certainly do, about my castles in Spain. The sun always shines upon them. They stand lofty and fair in a luminous, golden atmosphere - a little hazy and dreamy, perhaps, like the Indian summer, but in which no gales blow and there are no tempests. All the lofty mountains and beautiful valleys and soft landscapes that I have not yet seen are to be found in the grounds. They command a noble view of the Alps-so fine, indeed, that I should be quite content with the prospect of them from the highest tower of my castle, and not care to go to Switzerland.

The Nile flows through my grounds. The Desert lies

upon their edge, and Damascus stands in my garden. But there is a stranger magic than this in my Spanish estates. The lawny slopes on which, when a child, I played in my father's old country place, which was sold when he failed, are all there, and not a flower faded nor a blade of grass sere. The green leaves have not fallen from the spring woods of half a century ago, and a gorgeous autumn has blazed undimmed for fifty years among the trees that I remember.

There is a magic in the Spanish air that paralyzes Time. He glides by, unnoticed and unnoticing. I greatly admire the Alps, which I see so distinctly from my Spanish windows. I delight in the taste of the southern fruit that ripens upon my terraces; I enjoy the pensive shade of the Italian ruins in my gardens; I like to shoot crocodiles, and talk with the Sphinx upon the shores of the Nile, flowing through my domain.

It occurred to me that Bourne, the millionnaire, must have ascertained the safest and most expeditious route to Spain; so I stole a few minutes one afternoon, and went into his office. He was sitting at his desk, writing rapidly, and surrounded by files of papers and patterns, specimens, boxes everything that covers the tables of a great merchant. In the outer rooms clerks were writing. high shelves over their heads were huge chests, covered with dust, dingy with age. Everything was indicative of immense and increasing prosperity.

Upon

There were several gentlemen in waiting to converse with Bourne (we all call him so, familiarly, down-town), and I waited until they went out. But others came in. There was no pause in the rush. All kinds of inquiries were made and answered. At length I stepped up. "A moment, please, Mr. Bourne."

He looked up hastily, wished me good morning, which he had done to none of the others, and which courtesy I attributed to Spanish sympathy.

"What is it, sir?" he asked blandly, but with wrinkled brow.

"Mr. Bourne, have you any castles in Spain?" said I, without preface.

He looked at me for a few moments without speaking and without seeming to see me. His brow gradually smoothed, and his eyes, apparently looking into the street, were really, I have no doubt, feasting upon the Spanish landscape.

"Too many, too many," said he, at length, musingly, shaking his head and without addressing me.

So I asked, "Will you tell me what you consider the shortest and safest route thither, Mr. Bourne? for, of course, a man who drives such an immense trade with all parts of the world will know all that I have come to inquire."

"My dear sir," answered he, wearily, "I have been trying all my life to discover it; but none of my ships have ever been there; none of my captains have any report to make. They bring me, as they brought my father, golddust from Guinea; ivory, pearls, and precious stones from every part of the earth; but not a fruit, not a solitary flower, from one of my castles in Spain. I have sent clerks, agents, and travellers of all kinds, philosophers, pleasure-hunters, and invalids, in all sorts of ships, to all sorts of places, but none of them ever saw or heard of my castles."

"I am sorry to have troubled you, Mr. Bourne,” said I, retiring.

"I am glad you came," returned he; "but I assure you,