There is an old saying, probably as old as Genoa's first loot of her
step-sister republic, "If you want to see Pisa, you must go to Genoa,"
which may have obscurely governed us in our purpose of stopping there on
our way up out of Italy.
We could not have too much of Pisa, as
apparently the Genoese could not; but before our journey ended I decided
that they would have thought twice before plundering Pisa if they had
been forced to make their forays by means of the present railroad
connection between the two cities. At least there would have been but
one of the many wars of murder and rapine between the republics, and
that would have been the first. After a single experience of the eighty
tunnels on that line, with the perpetually recurring necessity of
putting down and putting up the car-window, no army would have repeated
the invasion; and, though we might now be without that satirical old
saying, mankind would, on the whole, have been the gainer. As it was,
the enemies could luxuriously go and come in their galleys and enjoy the
fresh sea-breezes both ways, instead of stifling in the dark and gasping
for breath as they came into the light, while their train ran in and out
under the serried peaks that form the Mediterranean shore. I myself
wished to take a galley from Leghorn, or even a small steamer, but I was
overruled by less hardy but more obdurate spirits, and so we took the
Florentine express at Pisa, where we changed cars.
The Italian government had providently arranged that the car we changed
into should be standing beyond the station in the dash of an unexpected
shower, and that it should be provided with steps so high and steep,
with Italian ladies standing all over them and sticking their umbrellas
into the faces of American citizens trying to get in after them, that it
was a feat of something like mountain-climbing to reach the corridor,
and then of daring-do to secure a compartment. Though a collectivist,
with a firm belief in the government ownership of railroads everywhere,
I might have been tempted at times in Italy to abjure my creed if I had
not always reflected that the state there had just come into possession
of the roads, with all their capitalistic faults of management and
outwear of equipment which it would doubtless soon reform and repair. I
venture to suggest now, however, that its prime duty is to have
platforms level with the car-doors, as they are in England, and not to
let Italian ladies stand in the doorways with their umbrellas. I do not
insist that it shall impose silence and sobriety upon a party of young
French people in the next compartment, but I do think it should remove
those mountains back from the sea so that the trains carrying cultivated
Americans can run along the open shore the whole way to Genoa.
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