The Survey October 1917-March 1918 . s and passed through rooms stacked withpapers and official-looking documents, and our first thoughtwas that these were themselves treasure trove from it turned out that this was the customary environment oftheir master, whom we came upon, like some antiquary in themidst of his collections, standing in a further and larger were tables, desks, cabinets, heaped two feet high withsuch litter, shelves lined with paper-covered books, booksstacked in front of the shelves and wedged in on top of otherbooks in defiance of all librarians. And the
The Survey October 1917-March 1918 . s and passed through rooms stacked withpapers and official-looking documents, and our first thoughtwas that these were themselves treasure trove from it turned out that this was the customary environment oftheir master, whom we came upon, like some antiquary in themidst of his collections, standing in a further and larger were tables, desks, cabinets, heaped two feet high withsuch litter, shelves lined with paper-covered books, booksstacked in front of the shelves and wedged in on top of otherbooks in defiance of all librarians. And the man before us looked nothing less than some olddoge of Venice, stepped out of the Middle Ages. His hairwas white and long over his collar; heavy black eyebrows con-trasted with white beard; he wore a skull cap, and a mufflerhung down from his neck like a stole. Unhappy man, hesaid, that in his age it should fall to his lot to be chargedwith the evacuation of his native district. But with that, he 537 THE SURVEY FOR FEBRUARY i6, 191. THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS fired to his task, and talked brilliantly of the war, of states-manship, of Americas part in arms and in civilian aid. Ofthe refugees he said: To give all labor and not all alms is myproblem. And in his quick mind and vehement speech wecould gather why, however much of the actual task of admin-istering a comprehensive system of care for the refugeesmight fall to his younger associates, this venerable senator andmember of ministries from the stricken district had beenchosen as embodying in the public imagination the care andprovision which the government had set itself to give. Andin a sense he stood for another force in modern Italian life,of which Americans are, for the most part, unconscious. For—such have been the tremendous mutations of the centuries—this guardian of fugitives from the city of Antonio and Shy-lock, is, like the Italian minister of foreign affairs and manyanother high in public life, a Jew. A Refuge from
Size: 1161px × 2151px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectcharities, bookyear19
