Page:The Burton Holmes lectures; (IA burtonholmeslect04holm).pdf/312

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ON THE GRAND STAND

the street we witness the grand balls given by the leading clubs in their huge open-air pavilions. We find ourselves now struggling with those everlasting buñuelo sellers, now idling in a retired corner of a leafy garden, or, again, passing as in a dream beneath a pyramid of brilliant lanterns suspended like a multi-colored constellation in the night. Even a pictured description of the Seville Fair will give you but the faintest idea of that far-famed event. True, the feria will not bear comparison with the great international fairs of other lands; it is, you must remember, but a local festival—the most important of its kind in Spain. To the stranger, however, it offers a unique attraction; it gives him in three days a clearer idea of the Spanish people than he could gain by months of formal intercourse and study. During the following days, society, as if to prove how cosmopolitan it is, forgets its Spanish pleasures and becomes Anglomaniac After the bull-fights, after the dances and