Summary: This says everything that ever needed to be said.<br> -The Voice before the Void<br> “My Castles in Spain”<br> from Prue and I<br> George William Curtis<br> adapted by anonymous for The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book<br> I am the owner of great estates. Many of them lie in the west, but the greater part in Spain.<br> You may see my western possessions any evening at sunset when their spires and battlements flash against the horizon. But my finest castles are in Spain. It is a country famously romantic, and my castles are all of perfect proportions and appropriately set in the most picturesque situations.<br> I have never been in Spain myself, but I have naturally conversed much with travellers to that country; although, I must allow, without deriving from them much substantial information about my property there.<br> The wisest of them told me that there were more holders of real estate in Spain than in any other region he had ever heard of, and they are all great proprietors.<br> Every one of them possesses a multitude of the stateliest castles. It is remarkable that none of the proprietors have ever been to Spain to take possession and report to the rest of us the state of our property there, and it is not easy for me to say how I know so much about my castles in Spain.<br> The sun always shines upon them. They stand lofty and fair in a luminous, golden atmosphere, a little hazy and dreamy, perhaps, like the Indian summer, but in which no gales blow and there are no tempests.<br> All the sublime mountains and beautiful valleys and soft landscapes that I have not yet seen are to be found in the grounds.<br> I have often wondered how I should reach my castles. I have inquired very particularly, but nobody seemed to know the way. It occurred to me that Bourne, the millionaire, must have ascertained the safest and most expeditious route to Spain; so I stole a few minutes one afternoon and went into his office.<br> He was sitting at his desk, writing rapidly, and surrounded by files of papers and patterns, specimens, boxes,—everything that covers the tables of a great merchant.<br> “A moment, please, Mr. Bourne.” He looked up hastily, and wished me good-morning, which courtesy I attributed to Spanish sympathy.<br> “What is it, sir?” he asked blandly, but with wrinkled brow.<br> “Mr. Bourne, have you any castles in Spain?” said I, without preface. He looked at me for a few moments, without speaking and without seeming to see me. His brow gradually smoothed, and his eyes apparently looking into the street were really, I have no doubt, feasting upon the Spanish landscape.<br> “Too many, too many,” said he, at length, musingly, shaking his head and without addressing me.<br> He feared, I thought, that he had too much impracticable property elsewhere to own so much in Spain: so I asked:—<br> “Will you tell me what you consider the shortest and safest route thither, Mr. Bourne? for, of course, a man who drives such an immense trade with all parts of the world will know all that I have come to inquire.”<br> “My dear sir,” answered he, wearily, “I have been trying all my life to discover it; but none of my ships have ever been there—none of my captains have any report to make.<br> “They bring me, as they brought my father, gold-dust from Guinea, ivory, pearls, and precious stones from every part of the earth; but not a fruit, not a solitary flower, from one of my castles in Spain.<br> “I have sent clerks, agents, and travellers of all kinds, philosophers, pleasure hunters, and invalids, in all sorts of ships, to all sorts of places, but none of them ever saw or heard of my castles, except a young poet, and he died in a madhouse.”<br> “Mr. Bourne, will you take five thousand at ninety-seven?” hastily demanded a man whom, as he entered, I recognized as a broker.
