Pine Bluff daily graphic., 1894-08-08
A PLAGUE ON ALL TOURISTS.
But One Can Keep Away From. Them Al.
 ter All, Says Marion Crawford.

But One Can Keep Away From. Them. Al
 ter All, Says Marion Crawford.
 Tn writing of the marvellous scenery on the Italian coast between Sorrento and Amalfi, Mir. Crawford says that the song of songs is still unwritten, though natures music makes mans grandest symphonies ridiculous, and sounds night and morning in the ears of him whe has ears to hear.
 But those are not the ears of the Cooks tourist, the German water-colo1 painter, or the English spinster, all oi whom come yearly southward to the Sorrento coast, as regular in their mi. grafton as the swallows, and far more .awelcome to the bankrupt hotel-keeper and the starving boatman, though less suggestive .oi poetic thoughts when prominent ob iect in the landscape. They come, they eat, they sleep, and their scarlet guide books catch the sun and mark them for the natives prey. And then, thank Heavenl they go. But it is easy to get away from them. for they keep to the. beaten track, d vast flock of sheep for
  ray, of Albemarle street, will be held responsible at the last judgment. <.
 1t may be doubted whether any church, any creed. or any despotic form of government which the world has ever seen, has disposed more complete ly of mems conseienees, mems money, and mems movements, than the com pliers and publishers of famous guide books. MT. Murray says to the tourist. "Go, and he goeth, or, Do this, and he doeth it, in the certain conscious ness that he can not do wrong, which is more than the spiritual pastors and masters of the world generally succeed in accomplishing without assistance.
 I will not venture to impugn the judgment of the great guide-bool1s, but l will venture to say that the aver age tourist in Italy sees very little that is distinctively Italian The places he visits have been visited by such an in- finite number of tourists before him that they have acquired certain tour ist color so to say. and have suffered a certain localization of small iniquity which passes in the eyes of foreigners for native character.
 The least prejudiced of tourists is perhaps the German artist. He is also as rule the most ready to undergo small hardships and considerable fatigue in the pursuit of the beautiful. But even he sees little. To him Capri seems wild, Naples picturesque, and Vesuvius romantic, and when he has painted the Capri Needles, and eaten shefl-fish at Santa Lucia, and has picked up handful of seori@ on the edge of the crater, he has generally had his fill of south ern Italy, and goes home to talk about it. So far as Sorrento is concerned. lie and his colleagues in the land come to the most beautiful place in the world, stay three days in the modern hotel, drive dozen miles or so over a modern road in q particularly shalty modern carriage read Agnes of Sorrento and go to the next place mentioned in the guide-bo
 It never seems to strike them that they could hire q little boat with couple of men for week. and wander in and out among the rocks and caves and beaches and fishing villages all the way from Sorrento to Psestum. seeing sights not dreamed of in their guide books and calling up visions of the great romantic past, of Amalfi's doges, of Robert Guiscard, Tancred and Pope Hildebrand, or else idle away half a day with the old fishermen of Crapolla or Praiana, listening to their strange tales, their stories of Arabian Nights in Italian dress, their amazing versions of Scripture history, and more inter esting still to those who love the sea, to their accounts of hairbreadth es- capes in winter storms and summer squalls.
 And yet it is very easy to do all these things, and very pleasant, and there is. no particular hardship to be under gone. Macaroni is not bad eating, and to most people it is pleasant novelty to dine on mackerel, lobster, red mul- let, or mur@n@, just out of the sea There is nothing particularly uncom- forta ble, either, in sleeping in the warm, dry sand, or iii boat-house on pile of nets, or even in the bottom of the boat itself, with the bay of Naples or the gulf of Salerno for bath-tub in the morning, and the southern moon light for a bedroom candle Century.