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SUNLIGHT 135
looked at him in astonishment. ‘The gentleman who
just went away begged to be allowed to pay for you,”
he said seriously.
Were these words spoken in contempt? I looked
around me at the others. They did not turn an eye-
lid, but nodded in earnest approval of the stranger’s
act.
“But—I cannot accept this,” I protested.
“Poverty is an honorable thing, my man,” said the
merchant, as he slipped the money good-naturedly into
my pocket.
“Eso es,” the others said with straight faces—“‘it is
a true word.”
They appeared ultimately to have arrived at the
conclusion that I must be wretchedly poor, for they
could not otherwise explain my behavior, and they
looked at me with glances of compassion.
“No! here in Spain—thank God!—it is not a dis-
grace to be poor,” said a customer confidently as I was
going. In fact, it would not be a disgrace in northern
Europe either, if there were only some profit in it.
If this shopkeeper, for instance, retaining the same
principles of business, should settle down in Copen-
hagen, he would probably encounter very few persons
who would not gladly call themselves poor for the
privilege of taking advantage of the prices fixed for
the poor. We owe this to ourselves though the poor
should lose their privileges.
Trade and industry are not extensively developed in
Andalusia. Even their counterfeit money must be ob-
tained from England if it is to gain any currency. And
yet these persons are in many ways quite capable of
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