I myself
wished to take a galley from Leghorn, or even a small steamer, but I was
overruled by less hardy but more obdurate spirits, and so we took the
Florentine express at Pisa, where we changed cars.
The Italian government had providently arranged that the car we changed
into should be standing beyond the station in the dash of an unexpected
shower, and that it should be provided with steps so high and steep,
with Italian ladies standing all over them and sticking their umbrellas
into the faces of American citizens trying to get in after them, that it
was a feat of something like mountain-climbing to reach the corridor,
and then of daring-do to secure a compartment. Though a collectivist,
with a firm belief in the government ownership of railroads everywhere,
I might have been tempted at times in Italy to abjure my creed if I had
not always reflected that the state there had just come into possession
of the roads, with all their capitalistic faults of management and
outwear of equipment which it would doubtless soon reform and repair.
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