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Each mission was at once fortress, refuge, church, and town. The little town grew in time more and more to resemble its fellows in old Spain. Bull-fights and other festivals were held in the plaza, or public square, in front of the presidio, or governor's house, and the long, low, whitewashed hacienda, or tavern. About the mission arose a great farm.
When he sees they pay him according as he pleases them, he brings out his pack of lies, for, unfortunately, no one has any check on the deceit, and he tells them about all the great bull-fights in which he has taken part in Toledo, and all about the bulls he has killed; and these blockheads from England make a note of it in their albums, and even some coarse hand may make a sketch of this imposter's head; all he cares for is that they should believe all his lies and give him a peseta on leaving.
To hiss down a piece, he declares, is one of the chief amusements that fill the house. "Five minutes is the usual time, and the whistles resound, and the lovely women smile and felicitate themselves like the Spanish ladies at their bloody bull-fights." His second journey into Italy seems to have been in part occasioned by some quarrel with the theatre.
S. Maria Formosa, one of the churches mentioned in the beautiful legend of Bishop Magnus to be built, you remember, where he saw a white cloud rest which still has a blue door-curtain, is chiefly famous for a picture by a great Venetian painter who is too little represented in the city Palma the elder. Palma loved beautiful, opulent women and rich colours, and even when he painted a saint, as he does here S. Barbara (whose jawbone we saw in the S. Rocco treasury) he could not much reduce his fine free fancy and therefore he made her more of a commanding queen than a Christian martyr. This church used to be visited every year by the Doge for a service in commemoration of the capture of the brides, of which we heard at S. Pietro in Castello. The campo, once a favourite centre for bull-fights and alfresco plays, has some fine palaces, notably those at No. 5250, the Malipiero, and No. 6125, the red Don
Your Waterloo, and battles of the Nile and Baltic, what are they, in sober fact, but gladiatorial murder-games on a great scale, human imitations of bull-fights, at which Satan sits as grand alguazil and master of ceremonies?
I asked, knowing that her brother owned the finest game-cocks in the District of Columbia. Among the Americans there is a distinct love for fair play, and such sports as "bull-baiting," "bull-fights," "dog-fights," and "cock-fights" have never attained any degree of popularity.
I visited the theatres, attended cock-pits and bull-fights, in the hope that the excitement would afford me relief from the fascinating spell: but it was useless, I was a haunted man. 'One night, returning from the opera, at about ten o'clock, I was stopped by a large crowd at the corner of the Calle Plateros.
Sports of all kinds are of the same general character, including prize-fights, bull-fights, athletics, shooting, angling, yachting, and games of skill, even where the element of destructive physical efficiency is not an obtrusive feature. Sports shade off from the basis of hostile combat, through skill, to cunning and chicanery, without its being possible to draw a line at any point.
The sailors received many privileges, attended bull-fights and fandangos, loved and pledged; and were only restrained from emigration to the interior of this enchanted land of pretty girls and plentiful food by the knowledge of the sure and merciless vengeance of their chief.
The bull-fights which used to take place near this spot on Sunday afternoons are things of the past happily, and the gay, moving throngs, with picturesque costume of Spanish make and Mexican hue, have forever vanished. The old graveyard with its high walls on the south side of the Church remains.
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