Private Speculation In Rome Brought Disaster
Twenty-Five Years Ago, But Now The City Has Overflowed With New Life The
Edifices that long stood like empty sepulchres, and public enterprises
cannot finally fail; otherwise we should not be digging the
Panama Canal
or be trying to keep the New York streets in repair. We may confide in
the ability of the Italians to carry out their undertakings and to pay
the cost out of their own pockets. It is easy to criticise them, but we
cannot criticise them more severely than they criticise themselves; and
perhaps, as our censure cannot profit them, we might with advantage to
ourselves, now and then, convert it into recognition of the great things
they have accomplished.
XIII
CASUAL IMPRESSIONS
The day that we arrived in Rome the unclouded sun was yellow on the
white dust of the streets, which is never laid by a municipal
watering-cart, though sometimes it is sprinkled into mire from the
garden-hose of the abutting hotels; and in my rashness I said that for
Rome you want sun and you want youth. Yet there followed many gray days
when my age found Rome very well indeed, and I would not have the
septuagenarian keep away because he is no longer in the sunny sixties.
He may see through his glasses some things hidden even from the eyes of
the early forties. If he drives out beyond the Porta Pia, say, some
bright afternoon, and notes how the avenue between the beautiful old
villas is also bordered by many vacant lots advertised for sale as well
as built up with pleasant new houses, he will be able to carry away with
him the significant fact that a convenient and public-spirited
trolley-line has the same suburban effect in Rome, Italy, as in Rome,
New York.
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