Page:Harper's New Monthly Magazine - v109.djvu/461

Rh such shooting as that. It's disgraceful: that's what it is."

That was all the comment he made on the art treasures of Brescia, until after we were again in the carriage. Then he said: "What you fellows can see in pictures I can't make out. I never took no stock in them. Why should I want to look at a lot of angels in nightgowns doing a walk-around, or a man stuck as full of arrows as a pincushion, or a woman holding a fat baby, or a tramp with a big stick, and nothing on in the way of clothes except a bit of buffalo-hide? It's all nonsense to pretend that folks really do take, interest in such things. Give me a portrait of James G. Blaine or of John L. Sullivan, and I can take interest in it, for it means something; but these old masters, as my friend calls them, ought to have been set to painting barns and fences."

Brescia is a busy town. The inhabitants are, as a rule, tall and robust, and they are always hard at work. The main streets are full of men employed in wearing large cloaks and talking to other men with the utmost energy. No matter how tired they may be, the Brescians scorn to rest, but they work at wearing cloaks and general conversation with an indefatigable earnestness that does them infinite credit. In the chemists' shops the local doctors are hard at work from morning to night, sitting on chairs and discussing politics with one another and with the chemist and his assistants. In front of the chief caffés there are dozens of young men who, from their dress, belong to the upper classes, but they work as hard as the rest of the people. They stand for hours at their post, tirelessly watching the ladies who pass. Some of these young men struck me as looking rather thin and worn, as if they had overworked themselves. But I presume that they hold that it is better to wear out than to rust out.

There is a superb view of the Lombard plain from the castle which crowns the summit of Brescia. To the south, east, and west stretches the plain, dotted with cities and isolated bell-towers. On the north rises the vast wall of the Alps, and in the far southwest the Apennines are dimly outlined.

My companion seemed interested in the view, but nevertheless it displeased him. Said he: "This country would make the best wheat-growing country in the world—that is, for its size. What the Italians want to do is to pull down all those miserable dirty little towns that they call cities, and to put all the inhabitants into one decent-sized city. Then they could grow wheat all over the country, and make big money. But you can't get any sense into an Italian. I know them all the way through, for we had gangs of them working on our new rail-road last year."

I bade good-by to my acquaintance at the railway station. He was going on to Milan, and I was bound for Cremona. We parted in the most friendly way, and he thanked me warmly for having shown him Brescia, and said that if ever I came to Cyrusville he would show me a town worth seeing. "And," he added, "just you chuck away all that rubbish that folks talk about pictures and architecture, and such, and take interest in things that amount to something. Come over to Cyrusville, and see how business is hustling with us. It will just make your head swim, and you'll wonder how you ever had the patience to stay overnight in this miserable Italy."

As the Milan train rolled out of the station my late companion thrust his head out of the window of his carriage, and in a stentorian voice yelled to me, "Think of those umberels!" Then his laughter rose above the noise of the train, and presently I saw him no more.

On reflection I mean to go again to Brescia, alone, and try to see it. At present it is hopelessly mixed up in my mind with Cyrusville, Minnesota, and the mixture is far from satisfactory.