any to tempt from
home any of the home-keeping Italian race. And yet Colico, though
undeniably hot, and openly dirty, and tacitly unhealthy, had merits,
though the dinner we got there was not among its virtues. It had an
accessible country about it; that is, its woods and fields were not
impenetrably walled in from the vagabond foot, and after we had dined we
went and lay down under some greenly waving trees beside a field of
corn, and heard the plumed and panoplied maize talking to itself of its
kindred in America. It always has a welcome for tourists of our nation
wherever it finds us in Italy, and sometimes its sympathy, expressed in
a rustling and clashing of its long green blades, or in its strong,
sweet perfume, has, as already hinted, made me homesick; though I have
been uniformly unaffected by potato-patches and tobacco-fields. If only
the maize could impart to the Italian cooks the beautiful mystery of
roasting-ears! Ah! then indeed it might claim a full and perfect
fraternization from its compatriots abroad.

From where we lay beside the cornfield, we could see, through the
twinkling leaves and the twinkling atmosphere, the great hills across
the lake, taking their afternoon naps, with their clouds drawn like
handkerchiefs over their heads. It was very hot, and the red and purple
ooze of the unwholesome river below "burnt like a witch's oils." It was
indeed but a fevered joy we snatched from nature there; and I am afraid
that we got nothing more comfortable from sentiment, when, rising, we
wandered off through the unguarded fields toward a ruined tower on a
hill. It must have been a relic of feudal times, and perhaps in the cool
season it is haunted by the wicked spirits of such lords as used to rule
in the terror of the people beside peaceful and happy Como. But in
summer no ghost, however sultrily appointed in the other world, could
feel it an object to revisit that ruined tower. A few scrawny
blackberries and other brambles grew out of its fallen stones; harsh,
dust-dry mosses painted its weather-worn walls with their blanched gray
and yellow. From its foot, looking out over the valley, we saw the road
to the Spluegen Pass lying white-hot in the valley; and while we looked,
the diligence appeared, and dashed through the dust that rose like a
flame before. After that it was a relief to stroll in dirty by-ways,
past cottages of saffron peasants, and poor stony fields that begrudged
them a scanty vegetation, b