Around
it, above it, beneath it, in its vicinity--but never in it--hovers an
ethereal aura, an effluvium so rarefied and delicate that only the
Society for Psychical Research could note its origin. Do not say that
garlic is in the fish at El Refugio. It is not otherwise than as if the
spirit of Garlic, flitting past, has wafted one kiss that lingers in the
parsley-crowned dish as haunting as those kisses in life, "by hopeless
fancy feigned on lips that are for others." And then, when Conchito, the
waiter, brings you a plate of brown frijoles and a carafe of wine that
has never stood still between Oporto and El Refugio--ah, Dios!
One day a Hamburg-American liner deposited upon Pier No. 55 Gen. Perrico
Ximenes Villablanca Falcon, a passenger from Cartagena. The General
was between a claybank and a bay in complexion, had a 42-inch waist
and stood 5 feet 4 with his Du Barry heels. He had the mustache of
a shooting-gallery proprietor, he wore the full dress of a Texas
congressman and had the important aspect of an uninstructed delegate.
Gen. Falcon had enough English under his hat to enable him to inquire
his way to the street in which El Refugio stood. When he reached that
neighborhood he saw a sign before a respectable red-brick house that
read, "Hotel Espanol.
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