Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 65, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 March 1919 — VINTAGE TIME IN TUSCANY.. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

VINTAGE TIME IN TUSCANY..

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 vista? 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 the last 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. It was a pagan—almost bacchanalian —picture, as those huge- cattle, White and big-horned, 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 luscious bunehes into picturesque baskets lying all about. The sun played in glad, shifting shadows in 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 American observer, the impression of a wastage of time in the accomplishment of things. 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 sundown, and all the fruit carried away to the wine press. Supper for Tonino’s Laborers. At nine in the evening we gathered at Tonino’s house for the harvest sup- ■ per, to which, by iihmemorial custom, everyone who has labored in the vineyards must be invited. We entered by the kitchen door, near which hung a little oil lamp patterned after those of the Etruscans; at the long table in the main room of this casa . colpniea sat three generations of boryesters—--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 dignity of proportion and fine simplicity of lines which screaks of,Tuscan taste, even in these hdrhble quarters. A light hung from the center of the ceiling threw a rather -dim filumination over the festiva board, but amply sufficient, for us to see all the good things which awaited, our impending attack. FifSt soup was huge bowls into deep, ea-

pacio us dishes; next came a rich and satisfying fritto misto, and then large platters, burdened wltlj pasta redolent with an herb savored sauce. There was plenty of honest wine to wash 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 was 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, fine 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 eare. 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 of hopes and darings, of love and faith.

I sat in contemplation, watching the moonlight wax stronger and brighter, making more real and definite the picture of peace on earth spread so wondrously befgre me, till my thoughts wandered away to another harvest scene, far removed amopg sterner but: no less peace 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, but what off 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 fruitageof battle, not alone of the dead and the wounded we have been told so often, but of all the other and indescribably sad things which the eye and the heart of the harvest gathers! Amidst Scenes of Desolation. Look! A. once flourishing little town, 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 streejts of the town, countless men are sitting or crunching, in full fighting equipment, waiting for orders to proceed to the front trenches, where a battle has just been fought and won. ‘ Let ns walk to the battlefield; it Is reached through a pine wood still smoking resinously from the fires which the bursting shells have started. The road is wholly exposed to 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 hours,ago ;lhe shells W-hizz £ by us • with that horrible suggestive rotatory sound which seems to say: Coming, Coming. Bang—and you die!

A Road in Tuscany.