entioned him in a book of travels which we hope to see taken
seriously. And we do.

CHAPTER IX.

Momma wishes me to state that the word Italy, in any language, will for
ever be associated in her mind with the journey from Genoa to Pisa. We
had our own lunch basket, so no baneful anticipation of cutlets fried in
olive oil marred the perfect satisfaction with which we looked out of
the windows. One window, almost the whole way, opened on a low
embankment which seemed a garden wall. Olives and lemon trees grew
beyond it and dropped over, and it was always dipping in the sunlight to
show us the roses and the shady walks of the villas inside, white and
remote; now and then we saw the pillared end of a verandah or a plaster
Neptune ruling a restricted fountain area. Out of the other window
stretched the blue Gulf of Genoa all becalmed and smiling, with freakish
little points and headlines, and here and there the white blossom of a
sail. The Senator counted eighty tunnels--he wants that fact mentioned
too--some of them so short that it was like shutting one's eyes for an
instant on the olives and the sea. Nevertheless it was an idyllic
journey, and at four o'clock in the afternoon we saw the Leaning Tower
from afar, describing the precise angle that it does in the illustrated
geographies. Momma was charmed to recognise it, she blew it a kiss of
adulation and acclaim, while we yet wound about among the environs, and
hailed it "Pisa!" It was as if she bowed to a celebrity, with the homage
due.

What the Senator called our attention to as we drove to the hotel was
the conspicuous part in municipal politics played by that little old
brown river Arno. In most places the riparian feature of the landscape
is not insisted on--you have usually to go to the suburbs to find it,
but in Pisa it is a sort of main street, with the town sitting
comfortably and equally on each side of it looking on. Momma and I both
liked the idea of a river in town scenery, and thought it might be
copied with advantage in America, it afforded such a good excuse for
bridges. Pisa's three arched stone ones made a reason for settling there
in themselves in our opinion. The Senator, however, was against it on
conservancy grounds, and asked us what we thought of the population of
Pisa. And we had to admit that for the size of the houses there weren't
very many people about. The Lungarno was almost empty except for
desolate cabmen, and they were just as