On leaving Amalfi we only slept one night at Naples (for Posilippo we saw no more), and that was a dream-tost, tearful night. We would not suffer any of our friends to accompany us to the station. Public farewells would be unbearable.
The last thing I remember, as I drove through the hot, bright streets teeming with life, was two young girls with naked feet gayly [pg 174] dancing the tarantella on the burning pavement. Lightly, trippingly, daintily they danced—these two supple-limbed daughters of the sunny south. How joyous, how free from care, from afterthought or forethought, did they seem! A few figs (they were just ripe) in summer, a few chestnuts and some yellow bread of Indian corn, are all they need for food; and one scant frock, that hides neither arms nor ankles, is all that decency demands. The sun does the rest, pouring rich color into their veins, bright sparkles into their eyes. And so at mid-day shall they dance, on flags which would scorch my northern skin, singing the while to their own steps, unchallenged by police, unreproached by man, and know no harm, while we go back to our mists and showers amidst our “advanced civilization.”
While writing this my eyes rest upon these lines: “Many take root in this soil, and find themselves unable to leave it again. A species of contemplative epicurism takes possession of them—a life freed from all vain desires and sterile agitation; an ideal existence which is shocked by no inconvenient reality. Others return to their hyperborean country, bringing with them a luminous remembrance to light up the gray twilight of their frozen sky for evermore; others still have quaffed the enchantress' charmed potion, and can no longer resist the gentle desires which draw them periodically back to her.”
May I also be numbered with those who return to the southern shores of beautiful Italy!
The Three Edens.
Bloom'd the first Eden not with man alone,
But woman, equal woman, at his side.
And seemly was it when, together tried,
They fell together—for the two were one.