by common observers, that I fully believe, little as people in general are concerned with art, more of their ideas of sky are derived from pictures than from reality, and that if we could examine the conception formed in the minds of most educated persons when we talk of clouds, it would 5 frequently be found composed of fragments of blue and white reminiscences of the old masters.

Ca pricious (prish'us): fanciful; changeable. Chǎs'tise ment: punishment. În să pid'i tỷ: dullness; weakness. Ăp'a thy: indifference; want of feeling. Un Ŏb tru'sive: not forward or intrusive.

Legend of the Moor's Legacy

BY WASHINGTON IRVING

Washington Irving (1783-1859): An American author. He wrote several biographies, of which the best are the "Life of Washington," and "Life of Columbus." Irving is best known by the charming sketches and stories comprised in the volumes entitled, "The Sketch Book," and "Tales of a Traveler," "Bracebridge Hall," and "The Alhambra." The "Legend of the Moor's Legacy" is one of the Spanish tales in "The Alhambra.”

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Just within the fortress of the Alhambra, in front of the royal palace, is a broad, open esplanade, called the Place or Square of the Cisterns, so called from being 10 undermined by reservoirs of water, hidden from sight, which have existed from the time of the Moors. At one

corner of this esplanade is a Moorish well, cut through the living rock to a great depth, the water of which is cold as ice and clear as crystal. The wells made by the Moors are always in repute, for it is well known what 5 pains they took to penetrate to the purest and sweetest springs and fountains. The one of which we now speak is famous throughout Granada, insomuch that water carriers, some bearing great water jars on their shoulders, others driving donkeys before them laden with earthen 10 vessels, are ascending and descending the steep, woody avenues of the Alhambra, from early dawn until a late hour of the night.

Among the water carriers who once resorted to this well, there was a sturdy, strong-backed, bandy-legged, 15 little fellow, named Pedro Gil, but called Peregil for shortness. Being a water carrier he was a Gallego, or native of Galicia, for in Spain the carriers of water and bearers of burdens are all sturdy little natives of Galicia.

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Peregil, the Gallego, had begun business with merely a great earthen jar which he carried upon his shoulder; by degrees he rose in the world, and was able to purchase an assistant of a correspondent class of animals, being a stout, shaggy-haired donkey. On each side of this, his 25 long-eared aid-de-camp, in a kind of pannier, were slung his water jars, covered with fig leaves to protect them from the sun. There was not a more industrious water carrier in all Granada, nor one more merry withal. The streets rang with his cheerful voice as he trudged after 30 his donkey, singing forth the usual summer note that resounds through the Spanish towns: "Who wants water

the well of the Alhambra, cold as ice and clear as crystal?"

When he served a customer with a sparkling glass, it was always with a pleasant word that caused a smile; and 5 if, perchance, it was a comely dame or dimpling damsel, it was always with a sly leer and a compliment to her beauty that was irresistible. Thus, Peregil, the Gallego, was noted throughout all Granada for being one of the civilest, pleasantest, and happiest of mortals. Yet it is 10 not he who sings loudest and jokes most that has the lightest heart. Under all this air of merriment, honest Peregil had his cares and troubles. He had a large family of ragged children to support who were hungry and clamorous as a nest of young swallows, and beset him with 15 their outcries for food whenever he came home of an evening. He had a helpmate too, who was anything but a help to him. She had been a village beauty before marriage, noted for her skill at dancing the bolero and rattling the castanets; and she still retained her early pro- 20 pensities, spending the hard earnings of honest Peregil in frippery, and laying the very donkey under requisition for junketing parties into the country on Sundays, and saints' days, and those innumerable holidays which are rather more numerous in Spain than the days of the 25 week. With all this she was a little of a slattern, something more of a lie-abed, and, above all, a gossip of the first water; neglecting house, household, and everything else to loiter slipshod in the houses of her gossip neighbors.

He, however, who tempers the wind to the shorn lamb, 30 accommodates the yoke of matrimony to the submissive

neck. Peregil bore all the heavy dispensations of wife and children with as meek a spirit as his donkey bore the water jars; and however he might shake his ears in private, never ventured to question the household virtues of 5 his slattern spouse.

He loved his children, too, even as an owl loves its owlets, seeing in them his own image multiplied and perpetuated; for they were a sturdy, long-backed, bandylegged little brood. The great pleasure of honest Peregil 10 was, whenever he could afford himself a scanty holiday,

and had a handful of maravedis to spare, to take the whole of them forth with him, some in his arms, some tugging at his skirts, and some trudging at his heels, and to treat them to a gambol among the orchards of the 15 Vega, while his wife was dancing with her holiday friends.

It was a late hour one summer night, and most of the water carriers had desisted from their toils. The day had been uncommonly sultry; the night was one of those 20 delicious moonlights which tempt the inhabitants of southern climes to indemnify themselves for the heat and inaction of the day, by lingering in the open air and enjoying its tempered sweetness until after midnight. Customers for water were, therefore, still abroad. Peregil, 25 like a considerate, painstaking father, thought of his hungry children.

"One more journey to the well," said he to himself, “to earn a Sunday's treat for the little ones." So saying, he trudged manfully up the steep avenue of the Alham30 bra, singing as he went.

When arrived at the well, he found it deserted by

every one, except a solitary stranger in Moorish garb seated on a stone bench in the moonlight. Peregil paused at first and regarded him in surprise not unmixed with awe, but the Moor feebly beckoned him to approach. "I am faint and ill," said he; "aid me to return to the 5 city, and I will pay thee double what thou couldst gain by thy jars of water."

The honest heart of the little water carrier was touched with compassion at the appeal of the stranger. "God forbid," said he, "that I should ask fee or reward for doing 10 a common act of humanity."

He accordingly helped the Moor on his donkey and set off slowly for Granada, the poor Moslem being so weak that it was necessary to hold him on the animal to keep him from falling to the earth.

When they entered the city, the water carrier demanded whither he should conduct him.

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"Alas!" said the Moor, faintly, "I have neither home nor habitation; I am a stranger in the land. Suffer me to lay my head this night beneath thy roof, and thou 20 shalt be amply repaid."

Honest Peregil thus saw himself unexpectedly saddled with an infidel guest, but he was too humane to refuse a night's shelter to a fellow-being in so forlorn a plight, so he conducted the Moor to his dwelling. The children, 25 who had sallied forth open-mouthed as usual, on hearing the tramp of the donkey, ran back with affright when they beheld the turbaned stranger, and hid themselves behind their mother. The latter stepped forth intrepidly, like a ruffling hen before her brood when a vagrant dog 30 approaches.