While the mother searches the child's head for
a flea; anyhow, it is more charitable to say it is a flea; and we
add a special touch of gorgeousness to the street pictures.
For here a cart is a glory of red tires and blue shafts, and green
hubs and pink body and purple tailgate, with a canopy on it that
would have suited Sheba's Queen; and the mule that draws 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 outfit such as that,
you feel he should be peddling aurora borealises, or, at the very
least, rainbows. It is a distinct shock to find he has only chianti
or cheeses or garbage in stock.
In Naples, also, there is, even in the most prosaic thing, a sight
to gladden your eye if you but hold your nose while you look on
it. On the stalls of the truckvenders the cauliflowers and the
cabbages are racked up with an artistic effect we could scarcely
equal if we had roses and orchids to work with; the fishmonger's
cart is a study in still life, and the tripe is what artists call
a harmonious interior.
Nearly all the hotels in Italy are converted palaces. They may
have been successes as palaces, but, with their marble floors and
their high ceilings, and their dank, dark corridors, they distinctly
fail to qualify as hotels. I should have preferred them remaining
unsaved and sinful. I likewise observed a peculiarity common to
hotelkeepers in Italy - 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 hotelkeeper might
have been the cat's own brother with clothes on - he had Plute's
roving eye and his bristling whiskers and his sharp white teeth,
and Plute's silent, stealthy tread, and his way of purring softly
until he had won your confidence and then sticking his claw into
you. The only difference was, he stuck you with a bill instead
of a claw.
Another interesting idiosyncrasy of the Italian hotelkeeper is
that he invariably swears to you his town is the only honest town
in 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 had
a heart, is full of thieves and liars and counterfeit money and
pickpockets.
