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I
SPAIN
EN ROUTE
We said good-by to Italy with tearless eyes and
put off. No doubt the country is beautiful, but
it is a little too picturesque, a little too idyllic. Its
importunate beggars are too smilingly amiable; the whole
nation laughs and crowds around you—for tips. The
countless tourists have transformed it into something
resembling a bedraggled poodle performing idiotic
tricks.
The whole land has been embroidered over,
bedeviled, as it were, by all the painters, poets and
philosophers in the world. John Smith painted that
pine tree; that fragment of a wall was poetically
interpreted by John Smith; and what has unser Goethe
not said and Byron not done in these places! Every
spot is tagged with its slip of paper, its erudition, its
reminiscences; and if a wretched modern writer turns
off the beaten path a little, after the manner of his
profession, at once a score of great departed shades
will rise up from the ground - like trolls in the legend.
As in China, you dare not spit for fear of hitting an
ancestor, nor draw a breath freely for sheer tradition.
We have cast loose, and Italy hardly matters at all.
The millions of bright reflections in Naples Bay are
swallowed by the Gulf. Messina comes and goes
without leaving a trace on our unfettered spirits, which
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