" The postilions cracked their whips,
the mules shook their bells gayly, the heavy wagons started off at a
full gallop, and the beggars said, "May your graces go with God!"
It was the end of July, and the sky was blue and cloudless. The fine,
soft light of the afternoon was falling on the tawny slopes and the
close-reaped fields. The harvest was over. In the fields on either side
they were threshing their grain, not as in the outside world, with the
whirring of loud and swift machinery, nor even with the active and
lively swinging of flails; but in the open air, under the warm sky, the
cattle were lazily treading out the corn on the bare ground, to be
winnowed by the wandering wind. No change from the time of Solomon.
Through an infinity of ages, ever since corn and cattle were, the
Iberian farmer in this very spot had driven his beasts over his crop,
and never dreamed of a better way of doing the work.
Not only does the Spaniard not seek for improvements, he utterly
despises and rejects them. The poorer classes especially, who would
find an enormous advantage in increased production, lightening their
hard lot by a greater plenty of the means of life, regard every
introduction of improved machinery as a blow at the rights of labor.
When many years ago a Dutch vintner went to Valdepenas and so greatly
improved the manufacture of that excellent but ill-made wine that its
price immediately rose in the Madrid market, he was mobbed and plundered
by his ignorant neighbors, because, as they said, he was laboring to
make wine dearer.
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