FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   296   297   298   299   300   301   302   303   304   305   306   307   308   309   310   311   312   313   314   315   316   317   318   319   320  
321   322   323   324   325   326   327   328   329   330   331   332   333   334   335   336   337   338   339   340   341   342   343   344   345   >>   >|  
ful, it is brutal, it is base, to bully and abuse an unprotected lady who has lost the use of her limbs and cannot put her feet to the floor without agony!" "Good heavens, madam, why didn't you say that at first! I offer a thousand pardons. And I offer them most sincerely. I did not know--I COULD not know--anything was the matter. You are most welcome to the seat, and would have been from the first if I had only known. I am truly sorry it all happened, I do assure you." But he couldn't get a word of forgiveness out of her. She simply sobbed and sniffed in a subdued but wholly unappeasable way for two long hours, meantime crowding the man more than ever with her undertaker-furniture and paying no sort of attention to his frequent and humble little efforts to do something for her comfort. Then the train halted at the Italian line and she hopped up and marched out of the car with as firm a leg as any washerwoman of all her tribe! And how sick I was, to see how she had fooled me. Turin is a very fine city. In the matter of roominess it transcends anything that was ever dreamed of before, I fancy. It sits in the midst of a vast dead-level, and one is obliged to imagine that land may be had for the asking, and no taxes to pay, so lavishly do they use it. The streets are extravagantly wide, the paved squares are prodigious, the houses are huge and handsome, and compacted into uniform blocks that stretch away as straight as an arrow, into the distance. The sidewalks are about as wide as ordinary European STREETS, and are covered over with a double arcade supported on great stone piers or columns. One walks from one end to the other of these spacious streets, under shelter all the time, and all his course is lined with the prettiest of shops and the most inviting dining-houses. There is a wide and lengthy court, glittering with the most wickedly enticing shops, which is roofed with glass, high aloft overhead, and paved with soft-toned marbles laid in graceful figures; and at night when the place is brilliant with gas and populous with a sauntering and chatting and laughing multitude of pleasure-seekers, it is a spectacle worth seeing. Everything is on a large scale; the public buildings, for instance--and they are architecturally imposing, too, as well as large. The big squares have big bronze monuments in them. At the hotel they gave us rooms that were alarming, for size, and parlor to match. It was well the weath
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   296   297   298   299   300   301   302   303   304   305   306   307   308   309   310   311   312   313   314   315   316   317   318   319   320  
321   322   323   324   325   326   327   328   329   330   331   332   333   334   335   336   337   338   339   340   341   342   343   344   345   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

matter

 

squares

 

streets

 

houses

 
arcade
 

supported

 

spacious

 

shelter

 
columns
 

straight


handsome
 
compacted
 

uniform

 

blocks

 

prodigious

 

extravagantly

 

lavishly

 

stretch

 

European

 

STREETS


covered
 

ordinary

 

distance

 

sidewalks

 

double

 

overhead

 
Everything
 
public
 

buildings

 
architecturally

instance

 

multitude

 
laughing
 

pleasure

 

seekers

 
spectacle
 
imposing
 

alarming

 

parlor

 

monuments


bronze

 

chatting

 

sauntering

 
enticing
 

wickedly

 
roofed
 

glittering

 

inviting

 

prettiest

 
dining