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Hemingway deprecates the recent rule (inaugurated under Primo de Rivera) that the abdomens of horses in the bull ring must be padded. It saves the feelings of some spectators but, says Hemingway, it hurts the horses as much when the bull hits them. He admits there are essential cruelties in bullfighting but thinks the spectacle as a whole is a good and worth-while sight. "The people of Castile have great common sense. . . . They know death is the unescapable reality, the one thing any man may be sure of. ... They think a great deal about death and when they have a religion they have one which believes that life is much shorter than death. Having this feeling they take an intelligent interest in death and when they can see it being given, avoided, refused and accepted in the afternoon for a nominal price of admission they pay their money and go to the bullring. . . ."
The Author has done a little amateur bullfighting himself but "was too old, too heavy and too awkward. ... In the ring I served as little else than target or punching dummy for the bulls. . . . When I had compromised myself through awkwardness I would fall onto the bull's muzzle, clinging to his horns as the figure clings in the old picture of the Rock of Ages and with equal passion. This caused great hilarity among the spectators." After several years' expatriation, husky (200-lb.) Author Hemingway last autumn returned to the U. S., is now in Montana, has his home in Key West, Fla. A leading light of U. S. letters, his influence is far out of proportion to the amount of his published work. A rabid sportsman and anti-"literary" writer, he eschews Manhattan and its cliques, would rather fish than drink tea. At 34 he has become a U. S. legend.
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