Publisher's Synopsis
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER XVI OFF SORRENTO Sobbento, September 21st. There's no use in trying to guide the conversation of this man Lubin; it blows uncontrolled. He is riding a special benevolent hobby in these days, and, though it absorbs most of his energies, it does not always govern his thought. So, though he had dwelt for half-hour passages upon his plan for a national system of agricultural chambers of commerce in America, he never got down to a full discussion of the subject until yesterday afternoon, out on Naples Bay. Sometime in the middle of the day the sirocco, that enervating, sticky heat wind, had stopped blowing, and the late afternoon came off cool and pleasant. We had taken a little lateen-rigged sail boat, commanded by Luigi, a skipper who can sail round a ten-cent piece, and tacked out on a dying breeze to the point where Capri raised her double crest from the mists on one bow, and the grottoes on the other make black slashes in the brown cliffs. And here Lubin fell to talking of his hobby, whose expression in America is the Sheppard Bill, now before Congress. How much of a ripple that bill has caused at home I do not know. Very seldom do I see an American newspaper or periodical in these wandering, homesick days. Lubin reached into his pocket for a pencil, found none, and drew out a cigar instead. Balancing that across one finger, he began to talk. "Do you know the foundation for Alexander Hamilton's idea of protection J" he asked. "Well, it's a governing principle, as good now as it was then. There's the city"--he indicated the pointed end of the cigar--"and there, at the other end, is the country. They're opposite poles. They always have been and they always will be. The city means progress. The country means stability. A peasant...
