I Do Not Remember To
Have Seen Any Other Bird Yawn.
It hated boys because the boys
plagued it sometimes.
The boys generally go barefoot in summer,
and if ever a boy came near the door of the hotel this parrot would
go straight for his toes.
The most striking feature of Mesocco is the castle, which, as I
have said, occupies a rock in the middle of the valley, and is one
of the finest ruins in Switzerland. More interesting than the
castle, however, is the church of S. Cristoforo. Before I entered
it I was struck with the fresco on the facciata of the church,
which, though the facciata bears the date 1720, was painted in a
style so much earlier than that of 1720 that I at first imagined I
had found here another old master born out of due time; for the
fresco was in such a good state of preservation that it did not
look more than 150 years old, and it was hardly likely to have been
preserved when the facciata was renovated in 1720. When, however,
my friend Jones joined me, he blew that little romance away by
discovering a series of names with dates scrawled upon it from
"1481. viii. Febraio" to the present century. The lowest part of
the fresco must be six feet from the ground, and it must rise at
least ten or a dozen feet more, so the writings upon it are not
immediately obvious, but they will be found on looking at all
closely.
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