The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1886-08-05

On our way down to Como we met group
of country girls, young and joyous creatures,
several of whom were very pretty, and one
decidedly beautiful-far more so than any
aristocratic Milanese young lady we have yet
seen. All, however, would have been more
attractive in the picturesque costume of the
Lombardy peasant of the better class-a cos
tune now seldom worn except by domestic
servants, especially nurses. 1t is occasionally
seen on the stage. Lucia" the heroine of
II Promessi Sposi," always wears it in the
opera of that name. The peculiar part of it
is the headdress, which at distance looks
like halo, and so, on laughing, coquettish
girl, little out of character. 1t is formed of
long, narrow, spoon-shaped Spille, or pins, of
silver, closely woven into and radiating from
the back hair. A friend of ours who has a
cook conservative enough to ceave to the old,
old fashion, and sport the silver heir-looms
in her silver hair, says that it takes profess
sonal artist to do the weaving-in, and that it
is only done once week, the poor woman
being obliged to sleep in her crown of thorns
OF course, she can only repose on her back, and
as she is, after the immemorial manner of
cooks, "fat and scant of BREATH" natures
sonorous nocturnal remonstrance may be
imagined. 1t must shake that little villa like
an embryo earthquake 1t is antique, it is
national, this bristling head gear, but an in
strument of torture and only pretty on a
pretty girl, like Manzonis heroine, the gentle
Lucia. whose picture inclose. cannot con-
fidently vouch for the facial likeness of the
lady, if ever there was "such person." hav-
ing been dead some $50 years-but this is I'M
doubtedly the way she dressed.
The romantic and classic associations OF
Lake Como are not the least of its charms.
There was Claude Melnotte you know, and
there was Pliny. We have failed to identify
the palace" of Pauline's "gay deceiver," the
young market gardener; but there is villa
called "Pliniana," after the old naturalist, he
having described in his writings certain
mysterious spring, now in its court, whose
waters have a tidal ebb and flow, as though
in secret correspondence with the Atlantic
ocean. Pliny the younger was born in
Como, and wrote enthusiastically of the
scenery of this wonderful region; and the
lake-Lacus Larius-sparkles with immortal
brightness in the verse of Virgil. The old
Romans, who, like the monks of later days,
had an infallible instinct for beautiful and
fruitful spots, reveled in luxurious retirement
on these picturesque shores, much as the
Milanese nobility and gentry do now; but
happier were they, in that no putting and
snorting of steamboat or locomotive disturbed
their summer siestas; no Cooks tourists in
vaded their fiowery solitudes.
The other morning we were rowed across
the lake to look at two villas, still especially
interesting to all art-loving visitors-that Of
Taglioni, the queen danseuse of the world
forty years ago, and who, in fact, has had no
real successor, and the more stately home Of
Pasta, who probably was the grandest dra-
matte soprano that Italy has yet produced
In 1853 first saw these two villas, and also
caught glimpses of their famous occupants
As our boat paused before Pasta's house,
which is a miniature copy of the Scala theatre,
the scene Of her greatest triumphs, we saw
the grand singer herself, taking a stroll on the