This ebook edition has been proofed and corrected for errors and compiled to be read with without errors!***An excerpt (modestly edited) from the INTRODUCTION:This author of "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" is not a regional novelist.He is not a literary disciple of the late Don Juan Valera.He is not a literary anarchist, nor a follower of the Catalan Ferrer.He has not reformed Spain.He is not associated with a group of novelists or other writers who have done so.Had this desirable end been attained, and attained through the efforts of a novelist, that novelist may have been Don Benito Perez Galdos.The author of The Cabin cannot in modesty accept of foreigners the laurels of all the writers of Spain. The Spanish is an ancient, complex, strongly characteristic civilization, of which he happily is a product. It is his hope that Americans may become some day better acquainted with the spirit and rich heritage of a great national literature through his pages. As his works have long been translated into Russian and have been familiar for many years in French, perhaps it is not too early to anticipate the attention of the enterprising American public.Unfortunately standards of translation do not exist in this country. Many believe that there is no such thing as translation, that the essence of a book cannot be conveyed. The professor seizes his dictionary, the lady tourist her pen; the ingenious publisher knows that none is so low that he will not translate—the less the experience, the more the translator, a maxim in the application of which Blasco Ibáñez has suffered appalling casualties. When Sangre y arena (" Blood and Sand ") comes from the press as The Blood of the Arena, the judicious pause—this is to thunder on the title page, not in the index—but