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Europe Revised

Chapter 7 Thence On and On to Verbotenland

Word Count: 4229    |    Released on: 29/11/2017

ist, taking his cue from the guidebooks, to carry on like this, forgetting in his enthusiasm that, even if they did speak, they would doubtless speak Ital

are hovels; a new, shiny, modern apartment house, and shouldering up against it a cankered rubbish heap that was once the playhouse of a Caesar, its walls bearded like a pard's face with tufted laurel and splotched like a brandy drunkard's with red stains; a church that is a dismal ruin without and a glittering Aladdin's Cave of gold and gems and porphyry and onyx within; a wide and handsome avenue starting from one festering stew of slums and ending in another festering stew of slums; a grimed and broken archway opening on a lovely hidden courtyard where

smells to the Nth degree, and set half the populace to singing. We establish in every second doorway a mother with her offspring tucked between her knees and forcibly held the

aws the cart is caparisoned in brass and plumage like a circus pony; and the driver wears a broad red sash, part of a shirt, and half of a pair of pants-usually the front half. With an

the stalls of the truckvenders the cauliflowers and the cabbages are racked up with an artistic effect we could scarcely equal if we had

ly-they all look like cats. The proprietor of the converted palace where we stopped in Naples was the very image of a tomcat we used to own, named Plutarch's Lives, which was half Maltese and half Mormon. He was a cat that had a fine carrying voice-though better adapted for concert work than parlor singing-and a sweetheart in every port. This ho

n Italy, but begs you to beware of the next town which, he assures you with his hand on the place where his heart would be if he h

footnote warning you against sending money or jewelry by registered mail in Italy. Likewise you are constantly being advised a

ed the Swiss border his trunk was so light he had to sit on it to keep it from blowing off the bus on the way from the station to the hotel,

et the dirt in the carriages and the smells in the compartments-a railroad journey through t

d pecked with age, looping their arches across the land for miles on miles; or the fields, scored and scarified by three thousand years of unremitting, relentless, everlasting agriculture; or the wide-horned It

lag station, any more than I know why, when a squad of Paris firemen march out of the engine hous

another, until a whole hillside becomes one long, confusing vista of leafy festoons. The thrifty owner gets the benefit of his grapes and of his trees, and of the earth below, too, f

, basking on

widowed tr

gayly quaf

e god of al

here and there are wonderful helps

as being most curious-one is the amazing prevalence of family washing, and

ng from the front windows of every house in this country? Everybody is forever washing c

s shop in the town and sees spread on the stalls heaps of pitiably small starlings and sparrows and finches expos

ird and the red-worsted pulse-warmer, and other pleasing wild creatures of the earlier days in America, now practically or wholly extinct. And I felt that before I could attend to th

ding far out, seemingly right through the placid Adriatic, to where the beaded lights of Venice showed like a necklace about t

and the tall, gloomy buildings almost met overhead, so that only a tiny strip of star-buttoned sky showed between. And from dark windows high up came the tinkle of guitars and the

ns, when the family would take the family plate and the family cow, and other treasures, and retire to the attic floor to wait for the spring rise to abate; and when really the most annoying phase of the situation for a housekeeper, sitting on the top landing of his staircase

ome-so far back as '84 I could remember when Jeffer

globe it helps us to realize how small a place this world is after all, and how closely all peoples are knitted together in common bonds of love and affection. The hot dog, as found here, is just as we know him thro

purely-but in these parts it is logical and serves a practical and a utilitarian purpose, because the mountain byways twist and turn and double, and the local beverages are potent brews;

its midst, and frequently more than one. In one sweep of hillside view from our car window I counted seven church steeples. I do not think

tbrim; the tight-fitting knee-breeches; the gaudy stockings; and the broad-suspendered belt with rows of huge brass buttons spangling it up and down and crosswise. Such is your pl

id, you will behold him, as I did, pulling off his parade clothes and climbing into the blue overalls and the jean jumpers of prosaic civilization, to wait

huge bundles of fagots and fodder on their heads; women hauling heavy carts, sometimes with a straining, panting dog for a teammate, sometimes unaccompanied except by a stalwar

n Bohemia, if there is a particularly nasty and laborious job to be done, such as spading up manure in the rain or grubbing sugar-beets out of the half-frozen earth, they wish it on the dear old grandmother. She always seemed to me to be a grandmother-

in Germany you see them-the cabbages by the millions and the billions, growing rank and purple in the fields and giving promise of the time when they will change from vegetable to vine and become the fragrant and l

ly upholstered, handswept state forests; or the hedges of willow trees along the brooks, sticking up their stubby, twiggy heads like so many disreputable hearth-brooms; or the young grain stretching in straight rows crosswise of the weedless fields and looking,

e constantly before the reading public. Rameses the Third of Egypt-that enterprising old constant advertiser who swiped the pyramids of all his predecessors and had his own name engraved thereon-had been dead for many centuries and was for

No; this is what I shall do: On every available site in the length and breadth of this my realm I shall stick up my name; and, wherever possible, near to it I sh

-on railroad stations and in railroad trains; on castle walls and dead walls and brewery walls, and the back fence of the Young Ladies' High School. And nearly always, too, you will fin

ied peacefully in his bed, surrounded by his wives, his children and his courtiers; and

t and Entrance; but surely this could not be so. If so many things were forbidden, a man in Germany would be privileged only to die-and probably not that, unless he died according to a given formula; and certainly no human be

ems an irksome arrangement-this posting of rules and orders and directions and warnings everywhere-but he finds that everyone, be

oard a German train that frequently there is barely room for the paying travelers to squeeze in; but the cars are sanitary and the schedule is accurately maintained, and the attendants are honest and

ded commander-in-chief of the artillery corps of the imperial army-so I judged him to be by his costume, air

ed in several blanks of a printed form, and went and cooked the coffee and brought it back, pausing at intervals as he came along to fill in other blanks. Would I ta

put him to the trouble of starting his literary labors all over again. Besides, by that time the coffee would be cold. So I took it as it was-with two lump

excel greatly in Old Masters, but we had already gazed with a languid eye upon several million Old Masters of all ages, including many very young ones. It has no ancient monuments and tombs either, which is a blessing. Most of the statuary in Berlin is new and shiny and provided with all the modern conveniences-the present kaiser attended competently to that detail. Wherever, in his capital,

boken, and a whole lot of Milwaukee; conceive this combination as being scoured every day until it shines; conceive it as beautifully though somewhat profusely governed, an

cture of the composer Verdi that looked exactly like Uncle Joe Cannon, without the cigar; whereas

ssians after dark, for I wanted to see those people. You will recollect that when George the Third

re hire

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