Page:C N and A M Williamson - The Lightning Conductor.djvu/303

 mile through marshy land, where tall, melancholy eucalyptus trees told their tale of a brave struggle against malaria. All the windows and doors of the signal cabins by the railway stations were protected by wire gauze against mosquitoes, and we who have spent summers on Staten Island know what that means, don't we?

I think, if I were not in Rome, I could have written you a better account of our flight through Italy; but the Eternal City has blurred all other impressions for me now, though I think afterwards they will come back as clear and bright as ever. Nevertheless, I'm not going to write you much about Rome. It's too big for my pen, too mighty and too marvellous. I can only feel. You have been here, and Rome doesn't change. Only I wonder what you felt when you first saw the Laocoön and the Apollo Belvedere? I used to think I didn't quite appreciate sculpture, but now I know it was because something in me was waiting for the best, and refusing to be satisfied with what was less than the best. Why, I didn't even know what marble could be till I saw the Laocoön. I had meant to do a good deal of sight-seeing that day when I began with the Vatican; but I sat for hours in front of those writhing figures in their eternal torture. I couldn't go away. The statue seemed to belong to me, and I had found it again, after searching hundreds and hundreds of years. I wonder if I was once a princess in the palace of the Cæsars, in another state of existence, and if in those days I used to stand and worship the Laocoön? I shouldn't wonder a bit. And the Apollo