… I went out - for the first time in a Spanish town - to try my luck in the streets. I found a busy lane, placed my hat on the ground, and struck up a rusty tune. According to my experience in England, money should then have dropped into the hat; but it didn’t work out that way here. No sooner had I started to play than everybody stopped what they were doing and gathered round me in a silent mass, blocking the traffic, blotting out the sun, and treading my new hat into the ground. Again and again I fished it from under their feet, straightened it out, and moved somewhere else. But as soon as I struck up afresh, the crowd reformed and encircled me, and I saw in their scorched brown faces an expression I was soon to know well - a soft relaxed childishness and staring pleasure, an abandonment of time to a moment’s spectacle. …[F]rom then on I used the trick which I’d learned in Southampton - I made sure the hat was properly baited beforehand... I learned some other lessons, too. That men were less responsive than women - unless approached in a cafe, when they paid with the gestures of noblemen. That any Spanish tune worked immediately, and called up ready smiles, while any other kind of music - Schubert excepted - was met by blank stares and bewilderment. << less