It was no go.
If I had been a poet or a historian, or a person full of Chianti,
I presume I might have done it; but I am no poet and I had
not been drinking. All I could think of was that the guide on
my left had eaten too much garlic and that the guide on my right
had not eaten enough. So in self-defense I went away and ate a
few strands of garlic myself; for I had learned the great lesson
of the proverb:
When in Rome be an aroma!
Chapter XXII
Still More Ruins, Mostly Italian Ones
When I reached Pompeii the situation was different. I could conjure
up an illusion there - the biggest, most vivid illusion I have been
privileged to harbor since I was a small boy. It was worth spending
four days in Naples for the sake of spending half a day in Pompeii;
and if you know Naples you will readily understand what a high
compliment that is for Pompeii.
To reach Pompeii from Naples we followed a somewhat roundabout
route; and that trip was distinctly worth while too. It provided
a most pleasing foretaste of what was to come. Once we had cleared
the packed and festering suburbs, we went flanking across a terminal
vertebra of the mountain range that sprawls lengthwise of the land
of Italy, like a great spiny-backed crocodile sunning itself, with
its tail in the Tyrrhenian Sea and its snout in the Piedmonts; and
when we had done this we came out on a highway that skirted the bay.
There were gaps in the hills, through which we caught glimpses of
the city, lying miles away in its natural amphitheater; and at
that distance we could revel in its picturesqueness and forget its
bouquet of weird stenches. We could even forget that the automobile
we had hired for the excursion had one foot in the grave and several
of its most important vital organs in the repair shop. I reckon
that was the first automobile built. No; I take that back. It
never was a first - it must have been a second to start with.
I once owned a half interest in a sick automobile. It was one of
those old-fashioned, late Victorian automobiles, cut princesse
style, with a plaquette in the back; and it looked like a cross
between a fiat-bed job press and a tailor's goose. It broke down
so easily and was towed in so often by more powerful machines that
every time a big car passed it on the road it stopped right where
it was and nickered. Of a morning we would start out in that car
filled with high hopes and bright anticipations, but eventide would
find us returning homeward close behind a bigger automobile, in a
relationship strongly suggestive of the one pictured in the
well-known Nature Group entitled:
