The Innocents Abroad


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night. She did all this before she died, you understand. It is a very  
small lamp and a very dim one, and it could not work her much damage, I  
think, if it went out altogether.  
The great altar of the cathedral and also three or four minor ones are a  
perfect mass of gilt gimcracks and gingerbread. And they have a swarm of  
rusty, dusty, battered apostles standing around the filagree work, some  
on one leg and some with one eye out but a gamey look in the other, and  
some with two or three fingers gone, and some with not enough nose left  
to blow--all of them crippled and discouraged, and fitter subjects for  
the hospital than the cathedral.  
The walls of the chancel are of porcelain, all pictured over with figures  
of almost life size, very elegantly wrought and dressed in the fanciful  
costumes of two centuries ago. The design was a history of something or  
somebody, but none of us were learned enough to read the story. The old  
father, reposing under a stone close by, dated 1686, might have told us  
if he could have risen. But he didn't.  
As we came down through the town we encountered a squad of little  
donkeys  
ready saddled for use. The saddles were peculiar, to say the least.  
They consisted of a sort of saw-buck with a small mattress on it, and  
this furniture covered about half the donkey. There were no stirrups,  
but really such supports were not needed--to use such a saddle was the  
next thing to riding a dinner table--there was ample support clear out to  
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Page
63 64 65 66 67

Quick Jump
1 187 374 560 747