Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/276

 THE MARKET

Nor were my ears attuned to the accent of Andalusia where the prevailing poverty forces the natives to bite off and eat one half or three quarters of every rich, full-voweled Spanish word they utter. Thus I was forced to be content with the services of the hotel guide—a less picturesque but far more comprehensible and comprehending person. He fulfilled the promises of the proverb; for in spite of eighty years of baking in the shadeless streets of Ronda, he nimbly bore my camera from morn till night, climbing to belfries, descending the ravines without apparent fatigue, passing from the torrid street into the chill gloom of the churches without a shiver, and from the cloistered dimness of old monasteries into the awful glare of noonday without a blink. He could not, however, pass a café without partaking of a drop of some "elixir of youth," and in this his one weakness I indulged my eighty-year-old "chicken." His beatific smiles of thanks
 * ish taught in Chicago was as Greek to those rare old birds.