LOVEMAKING IN SPAIN: The best of the Aleazar is the Alcazar gardens. But I would not ignore the homelike charm of the vast court by which you enter from the street outside to the palace beyond. It is planted casually about with rather shabby, orange trees that children were playing under and was decorated with the week’s wash of the low, simple dwellings which may be hired at a rental moderate even for Seville, where a handsome and commodious house in a good quarter rents for $60 a year.

One of those two story cottages, as we should call them, in the antecourt of the Alcazar had for the student of Spanish life the special advantage of a lover close to a ground floor window dropping tender nothings down through the slats of the shutter to some maiden lurking within.

The nothings were so tender that you could not hear them drop, and, besides, they were Spanish nothings, and it would not have served any purpose for the stranger to listen for them. Once afterward we saw the national courtship going on at another casement, but that was at night, and here the precious first sight of it was offered at 10 o’clock in the morning.

Nobody seemed to mind the lover stationed outside the shutter with which the iron bars forbade him the closest contact, and it is only fair to say that he minded nobody. He was there when we went in and there when we came out, and it appears that when it is a question of lovemaking time is no more an object in Spain than in the United States. The scene would have been better by moonlight, but you cannot always have it moonlight, and the sun did very well; at least the lover did not seem to miss the moon. –– W.D. Howells in Harper’s Magazine.

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CURIOUS FISHING: In the Hawaiian Islands some of the native fishermen literally go into the water and chase the fish into their nets.

The sea round the shores of the islands is studded with coral reefs, in which are numerous holes and tiny caves in which the fish hide. The natives row out over their reefs, taking with them a brush about three feet in length, with very long bristles, and shallow nets, somewhat resembling a paper bag, as they are closed at one end.

As they row over the surface, seeking a likely spot, they chew a very oily fruit known as the candle nut. When they consider they have reached a good fishing ground they spit out this nut, which forms a thin film on top of the water, over which the wind passes without leaving a ripple. This enables them to see right down into the clear sea, and if they are satisfied with the outlook they prepare to fish.

Taking the brush in one hand and the net, the mouth of which is propped open by means of a twig or two in the other, they dive noiselessly and quietly overboard. Having arrived at the face of the coral reef, they literally brush the frightened fish out of their dens, endeavoring to catch them in the net as they dart away.

There is one place at least on the coast of Belgium where they go shrimping on horseback. The trawling nets are attached to the sides of saddles carried by horses or big donkeys, and on their back men, and women, too, for that matter, ride into the sea until the animals are almost under water, when they drag the trawls behind them, walking parallel to the shore. –– Stray Stories.