Summer is approaching, sir, and apart from
certain unpleasant risks which I need not specify, you will surely agree
with me that the solstitial heat is a needlessly severe trial for a boy
with long hair. My own children are all cropped close, and I have reason
to think they are grateful for it. Why not yours? Boys may differ in
strength or complexion, in moral character and mental attainments, but
they are remarkably unanimous as to what constitutes personal comfort.
And it is obviously the duty of parents to consult the personal comfort
of their offspring - within certain reasonable limits, of course - - "
"But - - "
"Lastly, we come to the much-debated point: I mean the aesthetic side of
the matter. No doubt, to judge by some old pictures such as those of the
renowned Mantegna, there must have been a time when men thought long
hair in children rather beautiful than otherwise. And I am not so
rigorous as to deny a certain charm to these portraits - a charm which is
largely due I fancy, to the becoming costumes of the period. At the same
time - - "
The stranger did not trust himself to listen any longer. He threw down a
coin and walked out of the shop with his son, muttering something not
very complimentary to the barber's female relations.
But the other was quite unmoved. "And after all," he continued,
addressing the half-opened door through which his visitor had fled, "the
true question is this: What is 'too short'? Don't cut it too short,
you said. Che vuol dire? An ambiguous phrase!
"Too short for one man may be too long for another. Everything is
relative. Yes, gentlemen" (turning to myself and his shop-assistant),
"everything on this earth is relative."
With this sole exception, I have hitherto garnered no Hellenic traits in
Taranto.
Visible even from Giadrezze, on the other side of the inland sea and
beyond the arsenal, there stands a tall, solitary palm. It is the last,
the very last, or almost the very last, of a race of giants that adorned
the gardens which have now been converted into the "New Quarter." I
imagine it is the highest existing palm in Italy, and am glad to have
taken a likeness of it, ere it shall have been cut down like the rest of
its fellows. Taranto was once celebrated for these queenly growths,
which the Saracens brought over from their flaming Africa.
The same fate has overtaken the trees of the Villa Beaumont, which used
to be a shady retreat, but was bought by the municipality and forthwith
"pulizzato" - i.e. cleaned. This is in accordance with that
mutilomania of the south: that love of torturing trees which causes
them to prune pines till they look like paint-brushes that had been out
all night, and which explains their infatuation for the much-enduring
robinia that allows itself to be teased into any pattern suggested by
their unhealthy phantasy.
