ed and interesting people; and that blooming maiden may really
have been the Blue Flower of Romance that she looked before she began to
dine.

[Illustration: 49 WASHING IN THE RIVER, GENOA]

We were entering upon our third view of Genoa with the zest of our
first, and I was glad to find there were so many things I had left
unseen or had forgotten. First of all the Campo Santo allured me, and I
went at once to verify the impressions of former years in a tram
following the bed of a torrential river which was now dry except in the
pools where the laundresses were at work, picturesquely as always in
Italy. But here they were not alone the worthy theme of art; their
husbands and fathers, and perhaps even their _fiances,_ were at work
with them, not, indeed, washing the linen, but spreading to dry it in
snowy spaces over the clean gravel. On either bank of the stream newly
finished or partly finished apartment-houses testified to the prosperity
of the city, which seemed to be growing everywhere, and it would not be
too bold to imagine this a favorite quarter because of its convenience
to the Cam-po Santo. Already in the early forenoon our train was
carrying people to that popular resort, who seemed to be intending to
spend the day there. Some had wreaths and flowers, and were clearly
sorrowing friends of the dead; others, with their guide-books, were as
plainly mere sight-seers, and these were Italians as well as strangers,
gratifying what seems the universal passion for cemeteries. In our own
villages the graveyards are the favorite Sunday haunt of the young
people and the scene of their love-making; and it has been the complaint
of English visitors to our cities that the first thing their hosts took
them to see was the cemetery. They did not realize that this was often
the thing best worth showing them, for our feeble aesthetic instincts
found their first expression in the attempt to dignify or beautify the
homes of the dead. Each mourner grieved in marble as fitly as he knew
how, and, if there was sometimes a rivalry in vaults and shafts, the
effect was of a collective interest which all could feel. Sometimes it
was touching, sometimes it was revolting; and in Italy it is not
otherwise. The Campo Santo of San Miniato at Florence, the Campo Santo
at Bologna, the Campo Santo wherever else you find it, you find of one
quality with the Campo Santo at Genoa. It makes you the helpless
confidant of family pride, of bruised and