

A WALK TO IMPRUNETA 



806 



In the course of my day I managed to see the industries that support this 

 well-conditioned village. The land about it is so poor that it cannot do much 

 i han feed itself ; indeed but for the Madonna there would never have 

 been a town here at all. The burden of life is carried on straw braid. The 

 women and children do this work ; the men are busied in preparing the straw 

 with various dyeing and softening processes for the work of the hands. 

 There are also some potteries. It was curious to notice that the forms of 

 the vessels have not changed since ancient times. It is only when the people 

 begin to consider the foreign market that they get a modern flavor in their 

 work. The great amphorae, each big enough to hold several middle-sized 

 thieves, particularly fixed my attention. The people of this land have never 

 become reconciled to the barrel. One rarely sees hooped vessels of any form, 

 and they are generally tubs. I have never seen a cask on duty that would hold 

 over fifteen gallons, and these are of a flattened form and show that the prin- 

 ciple of the barrel has never been understood. The same is the case with the 

 wheelbarrow; this, though an invention of Leonardo da Vinci, has never 

 taken in Italy. No room is found here for the machinery of life that has been 

 invented in this century. Simple as the life is, it is cast in an iron mould. 



After my tramp about Impruneta I found my way into a little country 

 inn where a provision of bread, eggs, and sausages was after much din 

 brought out of the darkness. My guide ate with me and had the best of the 

 appetite as he had of the conversation. It was wonderful to see how he, 

 though a little man, could do trencher work while he lectured me on all con- 

 ceivable things. A flask of wine and half a grindstone of bread went to support 

 his loquacity. With all his wolf-like hunger there was a certain grace in his 

 table-manners that would have been sought in vain among Northern people 

 of the same class. The landlord was a Garibaldian ; the only picture in the 

 house was one of this hero and when I took off my hat to it he almost em- 

 braced me. It is good to see the intensity of the devotion to this man of 

 the people. Unfortunately devotion to him means a separation from the 

 old rule of the church, and this rule, however evil in many ways, cannot 

 be destroyed without leaving their uneducated minds hopelessly adrift. . . . 



My guide led me to his house, entered through dark and unsavory ways 

 and several ladderlike steps. The larger room was the place of abode, and 

 the shop where he earns a pittance in carving out little blocks of the beautiful 

 serpentines which I came to study. By the fireplace, where probably there 

 had been a fire some centuries ago, before the forest was stripped away, sat 

 two women, his wife and daughter. Both were pinched-looking and still, 

 except that their fingers were nimbly at work pleating straw, their morn- 

 ing's work, several yards in length, lying in bright yellow curls at their feet. 

 The walls black with the slow coloring that centuries give, the stone floor, 



