5
The Shrine of Mnemosyne
The little town of Kirkwall, in the Orkney Islands, in a mid-Winter mist, flat and charming like a Japanese print.... San Francisco and the Golden Gate from the top of Twin Peaks.... Gibraltar on a Spring day, all in pastel shades, like the back-drop for a musical comedy.... My first view of the tropics, the palm-trees suddenly bulging out of the darkness of dawn, the tremendous stillness, the sweetly acid smell, the immeasurable strangeness.... The Trentino on a glorious morning, up from Verona to the Brenner Pass.... Central Germany from Bremen to Munich, all in one day, with the apple trees in bloom.... Copenhagen on a wild night, with the Polizei combing the town for the American who upset the piano.... Christiania in January, with the snow-clad statue of Ibsen looming through the gloom like a ghost in a cellar.... The beach at Tybee Island, with the faint, blood-curdling rattle of the land-crabs.... Jacksonville after the fire in 1902, with the hick militiamen firing their machine-guns all night.... The first inauguration of Woodrow, and the pretty suffragette who drank beer with me at the Raleigh.... A child playing in the yard of a God-forsaken town in the Wyoming desert.... Bryan’s farewell speech at the St. Louis Convention in 1904.... Hampton Court on Chestnut Sunday.... A New Year’s Eve party on a Danish ship, 500 miles off the coast of Greenland.... The little pile of stones on the beach of Watling’s Island, marking the place where Columbus landed.... The moon of the Caribbees, seen from a 1000-ton British tramp.... A dull night in a Buffalo hotel, reading the American Revised Version of the New Testament.... The day I received the proofs of my first book.... A good-bye on an Hoboken pier.... The Palace Hotel in Madrid.