the effect that the boy, to whose beautiful eyes we
now imputed a lurking sadness, was not happy with his
step-mother, and that he took refuge from her on the
box with his father. They seemed very good comrades;
the boy had shared with his father the small cakes
we had given him at the cafe. At the station,
in recognition of his hapless lot, I gave him half
a franc. By that time his father was radiant
from the small extortion I had suffered him to practice
with me, and he bade the boy thank me, which he did
so charmingly that I almost, but not quite, gave him
another half-franc. Now I am sorry I did not.
Pisa was worth it.
BACK AT GENOA
There is an old saying, probably as old as Genoa’s
first loot of her step-sister republic, “If
you want to see Pisa, you must go to Genoa,”
which may have obscurely governed us in our purpose
of stopping there on our way up out of Italy.
We could not have too much of Pisa, as apparently
the Genoese could not; but before our journey ended
I decided that they would have thought twice before
plundering Pisa if they had been forced to make their
forays by means of the present railroad connection
between the two cities. At least there would have
been but one of the many wars of murder and rapine
between the republics, and that would have been the
first. After a single experience of the eighty
tunnels on that line, with the perpetually recurring
necessity of putting down and putting up the car-window,
no army would have repeated the invasion; and, though
we might now be without that satirical old saying,
mankind would, on the whole, have been the gainer.
As it was, the enemies could luxuriously go and come
in their galleys and enjoy the fresh sea-breezes both
ways, instead of stifling in the dark and gasping
for breath as they came into the light, while their
train ran in and out under the serried peaks that
form the Mediterranean shore. I myself wished
to take a galley from Leghorn, or even a small steamer,
but I was overruled by less hardy but more obdurate
spirits, and so we took the Florentine express at
Pisa, where we changed cars.
The Italian government had providently arranged that
the car we changed into should be standing beyond
the station in the dash of an unexpected shower, and
that it should be provided with steps so high and steep,
with Italian ladies standing all over them and sticking
their umbrellas into the faces of American citizens
trying to get in after them, that it was a feat of
something like mountain-climbing to reach the corridor,
and then of daring-do to secure a compartment.
Though a collectivist, with a firm belief in the government
ownership of railroads everywhere, I might have been
tempted at times in Italy to abjure my creed if I had
not always reflected that the state there had just
come into possession of the roads, with all their
capitalistic faults of management and outwear of equipment
