In and out of Florence; a new introduction to a well-known city . moved on to the next tinseled Mary, or pitiful,weather-worn roadside crucifixion. While Prato is only about twenty minutes by rail-way from Florence, we managed to prolong the jour-ney to an hour and a half by going by the noisy,smoky, jouncing steam tram, that starts from nearthe central railway station and lands one in Pratounder the high, crumbling, plant-grown walls of theold prison. Part of the hour and a half was usedup in allowing a passenger to get out and trot backa quarter of a mile for his hat, lost overboard. And 3i8
In and out of Florence; a new introduction to a well-known city . moved on to the next tinseled Mary, or pitiful,weather-worn roadside crucifixion. While Prato is only about twenty minutes by rail-way from Florence, we managed to prolong the jour-ney to an hour and a half by going by the noisy,smoky, jouncing steam tram, that starts from nearthe central railway station and lands one in Pratounder the high, crumbling, plant-grown walls of theold prison. Part of the hour and a half was usedup in allowing a passenger to get out and trot backa quarter of a mile for his hat, lost overboard. And 3i8 Florentine Excursions some more disappeared during the proper discussionof this event by the tram officials and most of thepassengers. But it is exactly for such incidents ofreal Italy that we travel when we can by intermittenttrams that ramble through fields and back streets,or by pony carriages that explore country lanes andpull up at the smallest of trattorie. The Prato tram shows one a good deal of Tuscanlife. It brushes past the long, hanging, fruit-laden. A bit of Tuscan countryside. branches that straggle over vineyard fences. Itambles slowly by a stone-floored aja, where the menare beating the grain out with sticks or whippingthe sheaves against the floor. It pushes throughhigh walls of corn, a lush green growth that makesmockery of the too familiar phrases used to describethe centuries-old, gaunt, used-up land of takes one intimately by open doorways, in which Prato and Pistoja 319 women and girls sit, chatting and laughing, but al-ways steadily, interminably plaiting straw for thegay hats of the Mercato Nuovo in Florence. Andfinally, it lands one under the old fortress and prisonwalls of Santa Barbara, and immediately at the doorof the curious domed church of Madonna delle Car-ceri. Here we begin promptly our Prato sight-seeing. It is a church of the late fifteenth century, in theform of a Greek cross. The heavy dome rests onan attic story, and seems too lar
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookidinoutofflore, bookyear1910
