LXX.
The Main widened and swam fuller as they approached the Rhine, and
flooded the low-lying fields in-places with a pleasant effect under a wet
sunset. When they reached the station in Mayence they drove interminably
to the hotel they had chosen on the river-shore, through a city handsomer
and cleaner than any American city they could think of, and great part of
the way by a street of dwellings nobler, Mrs. March owned, than even
Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. It was planted, like that, with double
rows of trees, but lacked its green lawns; and at times the sign of
Weinhandlung at a corner, betrayed that there was no such restriction
against shops as keeps the Boston street so sacred. Otherwise they had to
confess once more that any inferior city of Germany is of a more proper
and dignified presence than the most parse-proud metropolis in America.
To be sure, they said, the German towns had generally a thousand years'
start; but all the same the fact galled them.
It was very bleak, though very beautiful when they stopped before their
hotel on the Rhine, where all their impalpable memories of their visit to
Mayence thirty years earlier precipitated themselves into something
tangible.
Pages:
1553
1554
1555
1556
1557
1558
1559
1560
1561
1562
1563
1564
1565
1566
1567
1568
1569
1570
1571
1572
1573
1574
1575
1576
1577