We make
excuses for him--it's quite true he had very little time at his
disposal--but we feel it, the whole nation of us, to this day."
The Via Balbi was cheerfully crooked and crowded, it had the modern
note of the street car, and the mediaeval one of old women, arms akimbo,
in the nooks and recesses, selling big black cherries and bursting figs.
Even the old women though, as momma complained, wore postilion basques
and bell skirts, certainly in an advanced stage of usefulness, but of
unmistakable genesis--just what had been popular in Chicago a year or
two before.
"Really, my love," said momma, "I don't know _what_ we shall do for
description in Genoa, the people seem to wear no clothes worth
mentioning whatever." We concluded that all the city's characteristically
Italian garments were in the wash; they depended in novel cut and colour
from every window that did not belong to a bank or a university; and
sometimes, when the side street was narrow and the houses high, the effect
was quite imposing. Poppa asked Alessandro Bebbini whether they were
expecting royalty or anything, or whether it was like this every washing
day, and we gathered that there was nothing unusual about it.
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