AT A BULL FIGHT.

Waipa Post, Volume XXIV, Issue 1401, 8 September 1923, Page 2

AT A BULL FIGHT.

On Sunday I went, as is the custom to a bull fight, writes Thelma Clifton in an article on Spain in John o' London's Weekly.-On the broad steps of the arena around which surged a dense gesticulating crowd, were crouched a host of beggars, many of them horribly maimed and scarred. Inside, the arena seemed already surrounded by a solid black mass of people, rising tier on tier. The sun was intense. From below the President's box the orchestra played manfully, but no music, only the occasional metallic clang of cymbals, reached the ears above the roar of ten thousand odd voices. For the (last time the water carts quickly encircle the little space of sand, and there enters the procession of matador and picadors, their gold and silver costumes glittering in the vivid light. The signal is given, the bull rushes out into the ring, a knot of coloured ribbons streaming from his shoulder, and charges snorting at the magenta cloak spread out before the nearest matador; the play is begun. It is inevitable, predestined, and perhaps it is just this analogy to the grand comedy of life which has led, and still leads vast crowds of men and women to sit with bated breath and clenched hands, watching that scene of pageantry and primitive slaughter. When I arose finally and left that place of almost mediaeval brutality it was almost dark. The people surged around me, talking, laughing, singing—a merry, satisfied crowd. I could not take part in their merriment—the smell of blood was still in my nostrils. Later that night I took the tram to Tibidabo, a high mountain overlooking the city. Arrived at its summit by means of an oddly toylike funicular railway, far below me shining a myriad lights, betokening the presence of Barcelona. And as I sat there, that for which I had come became suddenly mine. The cruelty of the Inquisition, the languorous beauty of the South, the mournfulness of the nation, the passionate ruthlessness of its people, all these commingled and blended in the spirit of the city below me were mine.