writing paper and envelopes, pens and pencils, glasses and bottles, crockery and tin-ware.

But the hero of my chapter, impervious to the hurly-burly beneath his window, sleeps imperturbably on. This is Don Pablo Vargas de la Mata, a well-todo, middle-aged merchant of Madrid, who dwells, together with his family, in the Barrio del Hospicio, in a decent street of the same, number seventeen, second floor, left. His family consists of his wife, Doña Eugenia, a stout lady with a commanding voice and matronly carriage, of two charming daughters, Purificación and Julia, between the ages of-but I should be rude to tell-and a son, Felipe, a good boy of eighteen, employed in the Department of Public Works. These, together with a chica, whose wages are three dollars a month, unlimited. hard words, and every other Sunday out, compose the household.

Eight o'clock is struck from the neighbouring churches, and paterfamilias still slumbers, though madam, a conscientious dueña de su casa, and resplendent in a starched linen jacket or chambra, is up and busy with the housework. Her first care has been to rouse the señoritas, who presently join her, with dishevelled tresses, yawning and rather cross, but obedient, for their mother is a disciplinarian. Thereafter Doña Eugenia raps smartly at Felipe's door, and scolds the servant for her backwardness in scrubbing the antesala and dining-room. Antonia -such is the name of the damsel in question-defends herself tooth and nail; but her mistress is equal to the occasion, and gathers readily enough from sundry wet footprints upon the landing, that the girl

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has been downstairs-a fact to which, after a shrill exchange of compliments, the culprit confesses; but it was only, she explains, to speak to the portera. "Pero hombre," argues Madam, " ¿ Vd. ટ que tenia decirle á la portera?" ("What had you to say to the portress?"). Trust a woman to interpret a blush upon another woman's face. The fact is, Doña Eugenia suspects a novio (sweetheart), as she eventually gives Antonia to understand in a few wellchosen words of unmistakable plainness, and sweeps indignantly away to water the flowers upon the drawing-room balcony.

Half-past eight has sounded before Don Pablo lifts his head from the pillow and rings for his desayuno, which he takes in bed. His helpmate brings it on a tray; a small cup of thick chocolate, together with a bollo de leche or bun, and beside these dainties a snack of aguardiente in a glass no bigger than a large thimble. As he sips his chocolate, perhaps he reads the newspaper; perhaps prefers to leave it until later. In any case, nine or shortly after sees him reach his office, where he nods familiarly to the clerk, already waiting, and settles down to his correspondence.

While I leave him to the arcana of his business, Felipe makes a similar meal and is off to work also; while Madam or one of her daughters, accompanied in either case by the chica with a capacious basket, goes marketing (á la compra). This is the paramount achievement of the day; and it needs a strong nerve, stout heart, and eagle eye to enter a Spanish market place, and join battle with its voluble swarms of vendors-Covent Garden multi

plied and translated to Iberia. The verduleras (vegetable-women) are the facile principes of vixens, loud-voiced, unblushing, unreasonable, gross, obscene, and impudent. The most clannish of scolds, a slight, presumed or real, offered to any one of them, is taken up in chorus and dealt with summarily by the whole battalion. Their tongues are shrill and rude, as well as sucias (dirty), and the guardia (constable) whose matutinal martyrdom it is to collect the penny due levied by the Government upon their stalls, is eloquent testimony to the truth of Mr. Gilbert's adage, "A policeman's life is not a happy one." These intolerable and intolerant viragoes seem to regard it as an outrage that anyone should buy or ask a price of them, and upon the slightest pretext pursue their once-intending customer with volleys of gibes and maledictions, till the victim, smarting under their insolent contumely but cowed by sheer numbers, slinks painfully round the nearest corner and out of tongue-shot.

After escaping from these termagants our ladies must needs repair to haunts that lie outside the market; perhaps the tahona or bakery (by the way, a great proportion of the Madrid bakers are Frenchmen), or perhaps the grocer's, fishmonger's, or butcher's. In any case, and whatever the direction in which they turn, they bandy an animated conversation, for business in Spain is always spiced with relaxation. This is as it should be. How "weary, flat, stale and unprofitable" seem London. usages by comparison !

The grocer's wife was de boda yesterday; that is, at a wedding party. Indeed, she looks a trifle pale