Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 55, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 March 1919 — VINTAGE TIME IN TOSCANY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

VINTAGE TIME IN TOSCANY

IT WAS the vintage time, and I tried to forget that half of Christendom was plunged in a great war. Leaving the fighting line, I wandered about In the lovely freedom of the hill country of Tuscany, past villas which are surmised rather than seen through the long vistas of grave, still cypresses and. around smiling, silvergreen olive slopes from. whose summits beckon dignified palace fortresses of the Medicis or sterner and more aged ivy-decked towers, writes a Tuscany correspondent of the New York Evening Post. Finally, I reached the road of my morning’s quest and stopped where a high wall, after many turns and twists, suddenly opened to a vision of green terraces. It was the gate to the podere upon which TonIno and his forebears have labored for fhelast century and a half —the family “going to the land,” not as serfs, but as willing servants of the soil. Entering the terraced farm, I skirted a stout wall with ivy spreading lovingly over its gray stones; a hedge of winter roses followed me in fragrant companionship all the way to Tonino’s farmhouse, a structure poised bravely over a precipitous ledge of rocks. The house itself might be called an architectural slant of walls, chimneys, stone flags and steps running off and down in all directions till they seem to merge with the vines and the olive tree and the green sod. I lingered a moment, then followed in the wake of a primitive oxcart, painted bright red, .on which the empty grape vats rumbbled sonorously as the plodding beasts dragged their draft over the stony road.

Harvesting the Grape Crop. —picture, as those huge cattle, white and big-horjfied, moved slowly and processionally down the way, flanked by grape vines in endless, festive wreaths and festoons strung from tree to tree. At the lower terrace a host of neighbors was busily at work cutting the dew-moist grapes, dropping the cious bunches into picturesque baskets lying all about. The sun prayed in glad, shifting shadows iu and out of the vines and olive trees, while the damp soil, drinking In the solar warmth, exuded a moisture heavily odorous with the abounding vitality of Mother Earth. The harvesters included many women. some territorial soldiers on leave and a few children. No one, old or young, gave signs of fatigue; the labor was pursued slowly and easily, not at all as a struggle in overcoming time, or resistance. It was this seeming slowness of the laborers in Italy which often gives to the outsider, especially to the nervous and strenuous Ameri-' can observer, the impression of a wastage of time in the accomplishment of things. This apparent slowness, however, is rather a wise restraint and “distribution of effort, coupled with traditional skill or special hardiness,Which bring about results by deftness as well as by mere expenditure of force. So, at this harvesting, all of that -crowded, terraced acreage had been shorn of its grapes by sundowjn, and all the fruit carried away to the wine

press. . , - Slipper for Tonino’s Laborers. At nine in the evening we gathered at Tonino’s house for the harvest supper, to which, by immemorial custom, everyone who has labored in the vineyards must be invited. We entered by the kitchen doof, near which hung a little oil Isynp patterned after those of the Etruscans; at the long table in the main room of this casa colonica sat three generations of harvesters — 24 men, women and children. A warm, soothing, “natural” odor of oxen and stable came thinly and not unpleasantly into the feast chamber, which had that dighity of proportion and fine simplicity of lines which speaks of Tuscan taste, even in these humble quartets. A light hung from the center of the ceiling threw a rather dim Illumination over the festive board, but amply sufficient for us to see all the good things which awaited our impending attack. First soup was served from huge bowls into deep, <a-

pacious dishes; next came a rich and satisfying fritto misto, and Then larger platters, burdened with pasta redolent with an herb savored sauce. There was plenty ‘of honest wine towash down the huge slashes of war bread served out generously to all of us. No Bitterness in War Talk. After the pleasant business of eating w-as over the men started talking about the war. It was a simple, rather objective discussion, without bitterness or hatred, of something unpleasant which had to be done, but all must wish that it should be ended and laid aside as soon as possible. Then the conversation waxed warm in the more direct and personal realities of the year’s corps, and the promise for the* coming seasons. One by one the little children snuggled closer to their mothers’ sides and childish heads bent sleepily over the table or fell, relaxed and safe, on arms soft and solicitous with maternal care. The drowsiness of a hard, day’s labor crept irresistibly upon the men, urging' them to well-earned and refreshing sleep. We said good night and started homeward; the. little oil lamp by the door had flickered out. but a faint moonlight was bathing the landscape in a soft, mystical indistinctness; far away the domes and towers of Florence rose skyward like dream symbols us tropes and darings, of love and faith. I sat in contemplation, watching the moonlight wax stronger and brighter, making more real and definite the pie ture of peace on earth spread so wohdrously before me, till my thoughts wandered awajTlo another harvest scene, far removed among sterner but: no less pebce loving mountains, a harvest scene of battle wherein men like those with whom I had gathered grapes today were the protagonists. We have been told of the thrill of a gallant assault and the stirring emotions of a brave defense, Put what of the harvest after the decisive fighting, is over and one walks over the fields plowed by the merciless artillery and harrowed by the struggles and^the. sufferings of men. What of the fruitage of battle, fiot alone of the dead and the wounded we have been told so often, but. of all the other and indescribably sad things which the eyeand the heart of the harvest gathers t Amidst Scenes of Desolation. Look! A once flourishing littletown, with not a single one of its houses unscathed, and most of them horribly rent asunder, showing the debris of what had once been The privacy and the sanctity of peaceful hearths. In the partial shelter of these shells of homes along the main streets of the town, countless men are sitting or crouching, in full fighting Equipments waiting for orders te proceed ,to the front treneh es, -where a battle has just been fought and won. Let us walk to the battlefield; it is feaclied through a pine wood still smoking resinously from the fires which the bursting shells have started. The road is wholly exposed tq a the range of the enemy’s artillery, but thousands of men have gallantly crossed it in order to reach their comrades in the trenches beyond. You can see what the harvest has been here! There are fragments of shrapnel and unexploded shells along every foot of the line; by the whir of the projectiles still passing over our heads we can reconstruct the scene of fire of some Pours ago; the shells whizz by us with that horrible suggestive rotatory sound which seems to say: Coming, Coming, Bang—and you die!

A Road in Tuscany.