ack to the steamer blistering in the sun.

Now indeed we were glad of the awning, under which a silent crowd of
people with sunburnt faces waited for the departure of the boat. The
breeze rose again as the engine resumed its unappreciated labors, and,
with our head toward Como, we pushed out into the lake. The company on
board was such as might be expected. There was a German
landscape-painter, with three heart's-friends beside him; there were
some German ladies; there were the unfailing Americans and the unfailing
Englishman; there were some French people; there were Italians from the
meridional provinces, dark, thin, and enthusiastic, with fat, silent
wives, and a rhythmical speech; there were Milanese with their families,
out for a holiday,--round-bodied men, with blunt, square features, and
hair and vowels clipped surprisingly short; there was a young girl whose
face was of the exact type affected in rococo sculpture, and at whom one
gazed without being able to decide whether she was a nymph descended
from a villa gate, or a saint come from under a broken arch in a
Renaissance church. At one of the little towns two young Englishmen in
knickerbockers came on board, who were devoured by the eyes of their
fellow-passengers, and between whom and our kindly architect there was
instantly ratified the tacit treaty of non-intercourse which travelling
Englishmen observe.

Nothing further interested us on the way to Como, except the gathering
coolness of the evening air; the shadows creeping higher and higher on
the hills; the songs of the girls winding yellow silk on the reels that
hummed through the open windows of the factories on the shore; and the
appearance of a flag that floated from a shallop before the landing of a
stately villa. The Italians did not know this banner, and the Germans
loudly debated its nationality. The Englishmen grinned, and the
Americans blushed in silence. Of all my memories of that hot day on Lake
Como, this is burnt the deepest; for the flag was that insolent banner
which in 1862 proclaimed us a broken people, and persuaded willing
Europe of our ruin. It has gone down long ago from ship and fort and
regiment, and they who used to flaunt it so gayly in Europe probably
pawned it later in the cheap towns of South France, whither so much
chivalry retired when wealth was to be wrung from slaves no more
forever. Still, I say, it made Como too hot for us that afternoon, and
even breathless Milan was a