United States or Mongolia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"It would be worth seeing, what a little town like this would be," I said, indicating the village of Cestona, "with really human life in it, and, above all, without Catholicism. Every tenant might be a master in his own home, throughout his life. Here you have farm-land that produces two crops, you have woods, mountains, and a medicinal spring.
The inhabitants of Cestona might have the entire produce of the land, the mountain to supply building-stone and fire-wood, and besides all that, the entrance-fees at the springs." "And whose duty would it be to distribute the profits in this patriarchal republic? The municipality's?" he asked.
My father was a contributor to the Voz de Guipuzcoa of San Sebastian, so he always received the paper. One day I read or it may have been one of the family that the post of official physician was vacant in the town of Cestona. I decided to apply for the place, and dispatched a letter accompanied by a copy of my diploma.
I hesitated. "In any event," I thought, "I shall learn what the town is like. If I like it, I shall stay; if not, I shall return to Burjasot." I took the diligence, which goes by the name of "La Vascongada," and made the trip from San Sebastian to Cestona, which proved to be long enough in all conscience, as we were five or six hours late.
I set out for Madrid, where I passed the night, and then proceeded to San Sebastian, receiving a letter from my father upon my arrival, informing me that there was another physician at Cestona who was receiving a larger salary than that which had been offered to me, and recommending that perhaps it would be better not to put in appearance too soon, until I was better advised as to the prospects.
Neither Robinson Crusoe nor Cyrus Harding rode horse-back. I committed no blunders while I was a village doctor. I had already grown prudent, and my sceptical temperament was a bar to any great mistakes. I first began to realize that I was a Basque in Cestona, and I recovered my pride of race there, which I had lost.
I realized in Cestona my childish ambitions of having a house of my own, and a dog, which had lain in my mind ever since reading Robinson Crusoe and The Mysterious Island. I also had an old horse named Juanillo, which I borrowed from a coachman in San Sebastian, but I never liked horses. The horse seems to me to be a militaristic, antipathetic animal.
I merely mention these characteristics of the actual epoch; and I point them out to legitimatize this prologue I have written, which, for what I know, may after all give more clearness, or may give more obscurity to my book.... BROTHER AND SISTER Many years ago I was stationed as doctor in a tiny Basque town, in Cestona.
In any event, they were not recently wed. He bowed to me, and then said to his companion: "Shall we sit down here?" "Very well." They seated themselves on the half-rotten trunk of a tree. "Are you on a trip?" he asked me, noticing my horse fastened to a branch. "Yes. I am coming back from a visit." "Ah! Are you the town doctor?" "Yes." "And do you live here, in Cestona?" "Yes, I live here."
Word Of The Day