It is snowing heavily as we steam slowly out of Boston harbour. We
drop our pilot, and at noon have the lightship abeam. At last we are
fairly under way, but so thickly falls the snow that we move along at
little more than half-speed, and the steamer's whistle keeps blowing
as in a fog. After an hour or two we run out of the snowstorm, and
the whistling ceases. A tugboat inward bound, towing three huge
barges, is the last object we descry this day, for darkness soon
settles upon the scene.
This evening I sit and listen dreamily to the soft accents of the
Italian tongue. One or two of the saloon passengers are Italian and
the ship's doctor is a native of the land of sunshine and song. It
is twenty-five years since I dwelt in that land, but those
intonations strike the ear and those inimitable gestures the eye as
familiarly as if it were but yesterday. What a wonderful thing is
memory! How it bridges the years, and brings the dead past to life
again! By it we reverse the poet's process, and "stretch a hand
through time to catch" the forms of things long passed away.
"Vedi Napoli e poi Mori." This, my Italian friend tells me, is the
original of the saying that runs in English: "See Naples and die."
As you approach Naples, Mount Vesuvius rises in the rear, and beyond
it is the little town of Mori. The original saying is, "See Naples
and then Mori." But as it happens that "mori" is also the imperative
of the verb "morire"--"to die," a play upon the word gives the
meaning, "See Naples and then die"--as if no place else worth seeing
were left in all the wide world.
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