Half an hour elapsed: the sun was beginning to descend, when the sound
of wheels was again heard, and a light wagon with four places and a
brisk little horse came rattling down the street. A pleasant-looking
fellow jumped down, took off his hat and said he had come to drive
us to Perugia. We jumped up joyfully, but I asked the price. "Fifty
francs"--a sum about equivalent to fifty dollars in those regions. I
smiled and shook my head: he eagerly assured me that this included
his _buon mano_ and the cost of the oxen which we should be obliged
to hire to drag us up some of the hills. I shook my head again: he
shrugged and turned as if to go. My unhappy fellow-traveler started
forward: "Give him whatever he asks and let us get away." I sat down
again on the steps, saying in Italian, as if in soliloquy, that
we should have to go by the train, after all. Then the new-comer
cheerfully came back: "Well, signora, whatever you please to give."
I named half his price--an exorbitant sum, as I well knew--and in
a moment more we were skimming along over the hard, smooth
mountain-roads: we heard no more of those mythical beasts the oxen,
and in two hours were safe in Perugia.
THE PARADOX.
I wish that the day were over,
The week, the month and the year;
Yet life is not such a burden
That I wish the end were near.
And my birthdays come so swiftly
That I meet them grudgingly:
Would it be so were I longing
For the life that is to be?
Nay: the soul, though ever reaching
For that which is out of sight,
Yet soars with reluctant motion,
Since there is no backward flight.
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