Page:Library of the World's Best Literature vol 19.djvu/522

 Cerojo, who kept a little cross-roads grocery. It is a story of character, the elements of which might he found in almost any country. He finds that the men who <*give life and character to communities in our day are not richer, wiser, of better origin, nor even much stronger in their spelling, than himself. *> He is elected to the Congress, makes a foolish speech, sees his pretty daughter Julieta elope with a young adventurer of a journalist, is tricked out of the greater part of his fortune, and drops back again, disillusionized, to the lower level. The episode of the glib journalist, the humors of Don Simon's canvas, the rude mountain hidalgo in his isolation, the dialogue of the children teasing the unpopular Julieta, are some of the more pleasing passages of a book which is everywhere graphic and entertaining. ^Don Gonzalo Cjonzalez de la Gonzalera^ (Mr. Gonzalo Gonzalez of Gonzalez-town), 1878, is a continuation of the above, in the sense that politics is a strong element of interest in both, and the abuses of popular suffrage, parliamentary misrule, and other modern social tendencies, are vividly and amusingly satirized in both. Don Gonzalo is one of those persons, returned after acquiring a small fortune in the Spanish colonies, who are called Jndianos, Very little good is usually said of them. This one, besides being vulgar, is base at heart; and does much mischief. He is refused by the refined daughter of the impoverished hidalgo, whom he had aspired to marry, and is left severely alone in the vulgarly pretentious house he built to dazzle the community with. But the worst part of his deserts is meted out to him by an incorrigible shrew; for such is the wife he finally marries. Free and progressive as he is in literature, Pereda is singularly conservative, or frankly reactionary, both in his books and out of them, in all that relates to government and modern conditions. He favors the absolute form of monarchy; and he has even sat as a Carlist deputy in the Cortes. Galdos says of him in friendly mockery that he would support even the restoration of Philip II. in Spain. He recalls one of those, on our own side of the water, who should still see only the better side of slavery, and sigh over the disappearance of that genial, charming system. It is a striking contrast between practice and theory; it testifies to the literary conscience of the writer, and may fairly be considered, too, as a heightening touch to his originality, now that nearly all the world is of an opposite way of thinking.

The titles of his books at once give a clue to their vigorous and homely character.  (A Chip of the Old Block) belongs to 1879;  (Fine Spun). 1884;  (The Family Board) and  (The First