The Sun Was Setting Red And Rayless, With A Play Of Many
Lights And Tints, Over The Landscape Up To
The snow-line on the Sierra.
The town lay a stretch of gray roofs and white walls, intermixed with
yellow
Poplars and black cypresses, and misted over with smoke from the
chimneys of the sugar factories. The mountains stood flat against the
sky, purple with wide stretches of brown, and dark, slanting furrows.
The light became lemon-yellow before nightfall, and then a dull crimson
under pale violet.
The twitter of the Spanish women was overborne at times by the voices of
an American party whose presence I was rather proud of as another
American. They were all young men, and they were making an educational
tour of the world in the charge of a professor who saw to it that they
learned as much of its languages and history and civilization as
possible on the way. They ranged in their years from about fifteen to
twenty and even more, and they were preparing for college, or doing what
they could to repair the loss of university training before they took up
the work of life. It seemed to me a charming notion, and charming the
seriousness with which they were fulfilling it. They were not so serious
in everything as to miss any incidental pleasure; they had a large table
to themselves in our Barmecide banquet-hall, where they seemed always to
be having a good time, and where once they celebrated the birthday of
one of them with a gaiety which would have penetrated, if anything
could, the shining chill of the hostelry.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 326 of 376
Words from 89516 to 89790
of 103320
