"Prompt reply requested!"
XII
MOLLE TARENTUM
One looks into the faces of these Tarentines and listens to their casual
conversations, trying to unravel what manner of life is theirs. But it
is difficult to avoid reading into their characters what history leads
one to think should be there.
The upper classes, among whom I have some acquaintance, are mellow and
enlightened; it is really as if something of the honied spirit of those
old Greek sages still brooded over them. Their charm lies in the fact
that they are civilized without being commercialized. Their politeness
is unstrained, their suaveness congenital; they remind me of that New
England type which for Western self-assertion substitutes a yielding
graciousness of disposition. So it is with persistent gentle upbringing,
at Taranto and elsewhere. It tones the individual to reposeful
sweetness; one by one, his anfractuosities are worn off; he becomes as a
pebble tossed in the waters, smooth, burnished, and (to outward
appearances) indistinguishable from his fellows.
But I do not care about the ordinary city folk. They have an air of
elaborate superciliousness which testifies to ages of systematic
half-culture. They seem to utter that hopeless word, connu! And what,
as a matter of fact, do they know? They are only dreaming in their
little backwater, like the oysters of the lagoon, distrustful of
extraneous matter and oblivious of the movement in a world of men beyond
their shell. You hear next to nothing of "America," that fruitful source
of fresh notions; there is no emigration to speak of; the population is
not sufficiently energetic - they prefer to stay at home.
