Spain has a rich and varied literature, from whichother nations have freely drawn,—
a literature thatgives true expression to the life and aspirations of theSpanish people.
The selections in this volume aretaken from literary works that have been written in
thepast fifty or sixty years, and although they are inferiorin some respects to the great
master-pieces of the sixteenthand seventeenth centuries, I believe that theyhave
literary excellence, and they have, besides, theadvantage of being written in the
language of today andof describing present-day life.
It is my greatest wish that this volume may awakenthe students' interest in the
civilization of Spain, andthat it may serve as an introduction to the study ofSpanish
literature.
The integrity of the texts has been preserved so faras the exigencies of a beginners'
book permit, but thefollowing changes have been made: (1) Some words orpassages
have been omitted, chiefly in the earlier stories.The parts thus omitted are, for the
most part, digressionsor uninteresting descriptive passages. Omissionshave generally
been marked by four suspensive points,or by three at the beginning of a story. Except
at thebeginning of a story, three suspensive points form apart of the punctuation of the
several authors. (2) Theorthography has been made to conform to that nowprescribed
by the Royal Spanish Academy. (3) In theearlier stories, le has been substituted for
the feminineindirect object-pronoun la, and los for the masculineplural direct object-
pronoun les. (4) And in the earlierstories, the conjunctive personal pronoun-object
hasbeen placed before the indicative verb: e.g., se tornó fortornóse, p. 11, l. 4. (5) The
conjunction y has beenadded a few times to bridge over an omission: e.g., p. 2,l. 3. (6)
In a few cases one word has been substitutedfor another: vieron for se apercibieron de
que, p. 22, l. 11;la niña for la del rojo balandrán, p. 47, l. 13; Rogó forDe esto á
rogar, p. 48, l. 9; ese dinero for esos monises,p. 57, l. 31; cochero for auriga, p. 58, l.
4; reloj for calderómetro,p. 101, l. 7; otro pájaro for la escula-mata, p. 116,l. 9;
madre for escula-mata, p. 116, l. 11.
In the notes the difficulties have been explained, sofar as possible, by reference to
the vocabulary, or byrearranging the words; but it has often been necessaryto translate
into English. Perhaps the criticism will bemade that the notes to the first few pages are
too numerousand too simple; but many of these notes, and especiallythose that explain
elementary rules of Spanishgrammar, are given for the benefit of students whobegin
to read almost from the first. In the notes tothe lyrics, no attempt has been made to
treat Spanishprosody fully; only a few rules are given, and these inthe simplest
language.
The vocabulary has been made as complete as possible.It contains many facts, such
as descriptions ofplaces and biographies of noted men, that are usuallynot given in
vocabularies. It contains also all irregularverb-forms that occur in the first fifty pages
of the texts.
