Excerpt from Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 41: June to November, 1870

In the fact that pesetas render excellent service Spain is not different from the rest of Europe. In Great Britain, France, Italy, and Germany you receive perpetual intimations to open your purse; but on the Peninsula you are often led to infer that what you want can't be had on any account. You are constantly met with Quien sabe? E3 z'mposible; Eso ne puede ser; and the phrases are accompanied with so much gravity and such apparent sincerity that you are inclined to believe them true. But they are merely designed to heighten the effect of removing the difficulties that stand in the way of your pleasure. A few pesetas will melt the most formidable obstacles. The silver key unlocks galleries, churches, palaces, monaster ies, and the secretest of all secret chambers.

We anglo-saxons think time is money. The Iberians hold time as nothing, money as every thing. They have an aphorism, somewhat eyn ical of course: When the heart is dead to love, it hears the clink of coin and dances to its tune. If a Spaniard of the lower order could be ener getic, in an American sense, he would be so before the vision of a purse from which he had hopes. He undergoes a revolution when he has been feed. His face loses its grimness after his palm has been crossed with silver, and he no longer persecutes you with the national Quien sabe? Which is intended to have the force of an overwhelming negative. He who journeys be yond the Pyrenees, and begrudges custodians and servants their propina, puts clogs on his feet and scales before his eyes. A judicious and en lightened employment of money has been to me the best guide. It opened doors that had grown rusty on their hinges, and revealed to me what I should never have suspected. Never fear from the high dignity of an official that he will be offended at the offer of money. If he deems it an insult, he will pocket it and be silent.

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