One last word and I am done. I strolled out from Santa Croce one evening a little confused by the charm of all I had seen and wondering how I could best bestow my time for the remaining hours of light. I tried first to find the house of Michelangelo which I fancied was somewhere in the vicinity, but not finding it, came finally to the Arno which I followed upstream. The evening was very pleasant, quite a sense of spring in the air and of new-made gardens, and I overcame my disappointment at having failed to accomplish my original plan. I passed new streets, wider than the old ones in the heart of the city, with street lamps, arc-lights, modern awnings and a trolley-car running in the distance. Presently I came to a portion of the Arno lovelier than any I had yet seen. Of course the walls through which it flows in the city had disappeared and in their place came grass-covered banks with those tall thin poplars I had so much admired in France. The waters were a “Nile green” at this hour and the houses, collected in small groups, were brown, yellow, or white, with red or brown roofs and brown or green shutters. The old idea of arches with columns and large projecting roofs still persisted in these newer, outlying houses and made me wonder whether Florence might not, after all, always keep this characteristic. As I went farther out the houses grew less frequent and lovely bluish-black hills appeared. There was a smoke-stack in the distance, just to show that Florence was not dead to the idea of manufacturing, and beyond in a somewhat different direction the dome of the cathedral,--that really impressive dome. Some men were fishing in the stream from the bank, apparently catching nothing. I noticed the lovely cypresses of the South in the distance, the large villas on the hills, and here and there clumps of those tall, slender trees of France, not conspicuous elsewhere on my journey. In one place I noticed the largest display of washing I have ever seen, quite the largest,--a whole field of linen, no less, hung out to dry; and in another place some slow-moving men cutting wood. It was very warm, very pleasant, slightly suggestive of rain, with the smoke going up straight, and after a while when the evening church-bells were beginning to ring, calling to each other from vale and hill, my sense of springtime and pleasant rural and suburban sweetness was complete.