noon
There could have been little else in his circumstances to remind him of home , and if he was really in the sort of day-dream attributed to him , he was wise not to look about him . I have not myself been in Lucca , but I conceive that its piazza is not like our square , with a pump and horse-trough in the midst ; but that it has probably a fountain and statuary , though not possibly so magnificent an elm towering above the bronze or marble groups as spreads its boughs of benison over our pump and the horse-car switchman , loitering near it to set the switch for the arriving cars , or lift the brimming buckets to the smoking nostrils of the horses , while out from the stable comes clanging and banging with a fresh team that famous African who has turned white , or , if he is off duty , one of his brethren who has not yet begun to turn . Figure , besides , an expressman watering his horse at the trough , a provision-cart backed up against the curb in front of one of the stores , various people looking from the car-office windows , and a conductor appearing at the door long enough to call out , `` Ready for Boston ! '' -- and you have a scene of such gayety as Lucca could never have witnessed in her piazza at high noon on a summer 's day . Even our Campo Santo , if the Lucchese had cared to look round the corner of the meeting-house at its moss-grown head stones , could have had little to remind him of home , though it has antiquity and a proper quaintness . But not for him , not for them of his clime and faith , is the pathos of those simple memorial slates with their winged skulls , changing upon many later stones , as if by the softening of creeds and customs , to cherub 's heads , -- not for him is the pang I feel because of those who died , in our country 's youth exiles or exiles ' children , heirs of the wilderness and toil and hardship . Could they rise from their restful beds , and look on this wandering Italian with his plaster statuettes of Apollo , and Canovan dancers and deities , they would hold his wares little better than Romish saints and idolatries , and would scarcely have the sentimental interest in him felt by the modern citizen of Charlesbridge ; but I think that even they must have respected that Lombard scissors-grinder who used to come to us , and put an edge to all the cutlery in the house .