Perhaps There Is No Country Which Can Show
Anything Like That Beauty, And America Is No Worse Off Than The Rest Of
The World; But I Am Not Sure That I Have A Right To This Consolation.
Again There Were Those
"Silent pinnacles of aged snow,"
Flushed with the Southern sun; in those sombre slopes of pine; again the
olives climbing to their gloom; again the terraced vineyards and the
white farmsteads, with villages nestling in the vast clefts of the
hills, and all along the sea-level the blond towns and cities which
broidei the hem of the land from Marseilles to Genoa. One is willing to
brag; one must be a good American; but, honestly, have we anything like
that to show the arriving foreigner? For some reason our ship was
abating the speed with which she had crossed the Atlantic, and now she
was swimming along the Mediterranean coasts so slowly and so closely
that it seemed as if we could almost have cast an apple ashore, though
probably we could not. We were at least far enough off to mistake Nice
for Monte Carlo and then for San Remo, but that was partly because our
course was so leisurely, and we thought we must have passed Nice long
before we did. It did not matter; all those places were alike beautiful
under the palms of their promenades, with their scattered villas and
hotels stretching along their upper levels, and the ranks of shops and
dwellings solidly forming the streets which left the shipping of their
ports to climb to the gardens and farms beyond the villas.
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