We shall remember something of pleasant France; and something also of
Paris, though it flashed upon us a splendid meteor, and was gone again,
we hardly knew how or where. We shall remember, always, how we saw
majestic Gibraltar glorified with the rich coloring of a Spanish sunset
and swimming in a sea of rainbows. In fancy we shall see Milan again,
and her stately cathedral with its marble wilderness of graceful spires.
And Padua—Verona—Como, jeweled with stars; and patrician Venice, afloat
on her stagnant flood—silent, desolate, haughty—scornful of her humbled
state—wrapping herself in memories of her lost fleets, of battle and
triumph, and all the pageantry of a glory that is departed.
We cannot forget Florence—Naples—nor the foretaste of heaven that is in
the delicious atmosphere of Greece—and surely not Athens and the broken
temples of the Acropolis. Surely not venerable Rome—nor the green plain
that compasses her round about, contrasting its brightness with her gray
decay—nor the ruined arches that stand apart in the plain and clothe
their looped and windowed raggedness with vines. We shall remember St.
Peter’s; not as one sees it when he walks the streets of Rome and
fancies all her domes are just alike, but as he sees it leagues away,
when every meaner edifice has faded out of sight and that one dome looms
superbly up in the flush of sunset, full of dignity and grace, strongly
outlined as a mountain.
We shall remember Constantinople and the Bosporus—the colossal
magnificence of Baalbec—the Pyramids of Egypt—the prodigious form, the
benignant countenance of the Sphinx—Oriental Smyrna—sacred
Jerusalem—Damascus, the “Pearl of the East,” the pride of Syria, the
fabled Garden of Eden, the home of princes and genii of the Arabian
Nights, the oldest metropolis on the earth, the one city in all the
world that has kept its name and held its place and looked serenely on
while the Kingdoms and Empires of four thousand years have risen to
life, enjoyed their little season of pride and pomp and then vanished
and been forgotten!
_FROM_ “ROUGHING IT”
STARTING WEST
(1870–71)
We were six days going from St. Louis to “St. Joe”—a trip that was so
dull, and sleepy, and eventless that it has left no more impression on
my memory than if its duration had been six minutes instead of that many
days. No record is left in my mind, now, concerning it, but a confused
jumble of savage looking snags, which we deliberately walked over with
one wheel or the other; and of reefs which we butted and butted, and
then retired from and climbed over in some softer place; and of
sand-bars which we roosted on occasionally, and rested, and then got out
our crutches and sparred over. In fact, the boat might almost as well
have gone to St. Joe by land, for she was walking most of the time,
anyhow—climbing over reefs and clambering over snags patiently and
laboriously all day long. The captain said she was a “bully” boat, and
all she wanted was more “shear” and a bigger wheel. I thought she wanted
a pair of stilts, but I had the deep sagacity not to say so.