. . Why, to be sure, it is the identical
dissertation, with a few changes by the office-boy, that has cropped up
periodically in these pages for the last half-century, or whenever the
railway was first projected. The line, as usual, is being projected more
strenuously than before, and certain members of the government have
goneso far as to declare. . .. H'm! Let me try something else: "The
Feminist Movement in England" by Our London Correspondent (who lives in
a little side street off the Toledo); that sounds stimulating. . . . The
advanced English Feminists - so it runs - are taking the lead in
encouraging their torpid sisters on the Continent. . . . Hardly a day
passes, that some new manifestation of the Feminist Movement ... in
fact, it may be avowed that the Feminist Movement in England. . . .
The air is cooler, as I awake, and looking out of the window I perceive
from the mellow light-effects that day is declining.
Towards this sunset hour the unbroken dome of the sky often undergoes a
brief transformation. High-piled masses of cloud may then be seen
accumulating over the Sila heights and gathering auxiliaries from every
quarter; lightning is soon playing about the livid and murky
vapours - you can hear the thunders muttering, up yonder, to some
drenching downpour. But on the plain the sun continues to shine in
vacuously benevolent fashion; nothing is felt of the tempest save
unquiet breaths of wind that raise dust-eddies from the country roads
and lash the sea into a mock frenzy of crisp little waves. It is the
merest interlude. Soon the blue-black drifts have fled away from the
mountains that stand out, clear and refreshed, in the twilight. The wind
has died down, the storm is over and Cotrone thirsts, as ever, for rain
that never comes. Yet they have a Madonna-picture here - a celebrated
black Madonna, painted by Saint Luke - who "always procures rain, when
prayed to."
Once indeed the tail of a shower must have passed overhead, for there
fell a few sad drops. I hurried abroad, together with some other
citizens, to observe the phenomenon. There was no doubt about the
matter; it was genuine rain; the drops lay, at respectable intervals, on
the white dust of the station turnpike. A boy, who happened to be
passing in a cart, remarked that if the shower could have been collected
into a saucer or some other small receptacle, it might have sufficed to
quench the thirst of a puppy-dog.
I usually take a final dip in the sea, at this time of the evening.
After that, it is advisable to absorb an ice or two - they are excellent,
at Cotrone - and a glass of Strega liqueur, to ward off the effects of
over-work. Next, a brief promenade through the clean, well-lighted
streets and now populous streets, or along the boulevard Margherita to
view the rank and fashion taking the air by the murmuring waves, under
the cliff-like battlements of Charles the Fifth's castle; and so to dinner.
