The palms were larger than I remembered them, and
the statues had grown up and seemed to have had large families since my
day; but the lovely sea was the same, with all the mural decorations of
the skyey horizons beyond, dim precipices and dreamy island tops, and
the dozing Vesuvius mistakable for any of them. At one place there was a
file of fishermen, including a fisherwoman, drawing their net by means
of a rope carried across the carriage-way from the seawall, with a
splendid show of their black eyes and white teeth and swarthy, bare
legs, and always there were beggars, both of those who frankly begged
and those who importuned with postal-cards. This terrible traffic
pervades all southern Europe, and everywhere pesters the meeting
traveller with undesired bargains. In its presence it is almost
impossible to fit a scene with the apposite phrase; and yet one must own
that it has its rights. What would those boys do if they did not sell,
or fail to sell, postal-cards. It is another aspect of the labor
problem, so many-faced in our time.
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