Out of the other window
stretched the blue Gulf of Genoa all becalmed and smiling, with freakish
little points and headlines, and here and there the white blossom of a
sail. The Senator counted eighty tunnels--he wants that fact mentioned
too--some of them so short that it was like shutting one's eyes for an
instant on the olives and the sea. Nevertheless it was an idyllic
journey, and at four o'clock in the afternoon we saw the Leaning Tower
from afar, describing the precise angle that it does in the illustrated
geographies. Momma was charmed to recognise it, she blew it a kiss of
adulation and acclaim, while we yet wound about among the environs, and
hailed it "Pisa!" It was as if she bowed to a celebrity, with the homage
due.
What the Senator called our attention to as we drove to the hotel was
the conspicuous part in municipal politics played by that little old
brown river Arno. In most places the riparian feature of the landscape
is not insisted on--you have usually to go to the suburbs to find it,
but in Pisa it is a sort of main street, with the town sitting
comfortably and equally on each side of it looking on.
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