A WEEK AT LEGHORN
We left Rome with such a nostalgic pang in our hearts
that we tried to find relief in a name for it, and
we called ourselves Romesick. Afterward, when
we practised the name with such friends as we could
get to listen, they thought we said homesick.
Being better instructed, they stared or simpered,
and said, “Oh!” That was not all we could
have asked, but Rome herself would understand, and,
while we were seeking this outlet for our grief, she
followed us as far as she could on her poor, broken
aqueducts. At places they gave way under her,
and she fell down, but scrambled up again on the next
stretch of arches, like some fond cripple pursuing
a friend on crutches; when at last our train outran
them, and there was no longer an arch to halt upon,
she gave up the vain chase and turned back within
her walls, where we saw her domes and bell-towers
fading into the heaven to which they pointed.
It was a heaven of better than absolute blue, for
there were soft, white clouds in it, and the air that
our Sunday breathed under it was, at the beginning
of April, as bland as that of an American May-end.
The orchard trees were in bloom—peach and
plum, cherry and pear—whenever you chose
to look at them, and all nature seemed to rejoice in
the cessation of the two days’ strike which
had now enabled us to drive to the station instead
of walking and carrying our bags and bundles.
There were so many of these that we had taken two
cabs, and at the station our drivers attempted to
rejoice with nature in an overcharge that would have
recouped them for the loss suffered in their recent
leisure. But as we were then leaving Koine, and
were not yet melted with the grief of absence, I had
the courage to resist their demand. Long before
we reached Leghorn I was so Romesick that I would
have paid them anything they asked.
When we emerged from the suburbs upon the open Campagna,
we passed through many fields of wheat, more than
we had yet seen on the grassy waste, but there were
also many flocks of sheep feeding with the cattle
in pastures. Now and then we passed a wretched
hut which seemed to be the dwelling of the shepherds
we saw tending the flocks, and here and there we came
upon a group of farm buildings, all of straw, whether
for man or beast, set within a sort of squalid court,
with a frowzy suggestion of old women and children
about the doors of the cottages. We saw no men,
though there must have been men off at work in the
fields with the younger women.
As we drew near Civita Vecchia the sea widened on
our view, wild with a wind that seemed to have been
blowing ever since the stormy evening in 1865 when,
after looking at the tossing ships in the harbor, we
decided to take the diligence for Leghorn, rather
than the little steamer we had meant to take.
From our pleasant train we now patronized Civita Vecchia
with a recognition of its picturesqueness, unvexed
