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Show i iy,;e wiwX ' ; j Uv,r NsV (v .y f h A Road in Tuscany. paeious dishes ; next came a rich and satisfying fritto mlsto, and then large platters, burdened with pasta redolent redo-lent 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 eattnc was over the men started talking about the war. It was a simple rather objective ob-jective discussion, without bitterness or hatred, of something unpleasant which had to be done, but all must wish that it should be ended and lajd 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 start-ed homeward ; the little oil lamp by ; the door had flickered out, but a faint moonlight was bathing the landscape in a soft, mystics! Indistinctness; far away the domes and towers of Florence Flor-ence rose skyward like dream symbols sym-bols of hopes and darings, of love and faith. I sat in contemplation, watching the m vinlight wax stronger and brighter, making more real and definite the picture pic-ture of peace on earth spread so won-drously won-drously before nit , till my thoughts wandered away to another harvest scene, far removed among sterner but no less peace loving mountains, a harvest har-vest 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 emo-tions of a brave defense, but what of the harvest after the decisive fighting over and one walks over the fields plowed by the merciless artillery and harrowed' by the struggles and the sufferings suf-ferings of men. What of the fruitage of battle, not alone of the dead and the wounded we have been told so often, but of all the other and indescribably inde-scribably 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 streets of the town, countless men are sitting or crouching, in full fighting equipment, waiting for orders to proceed pro-ceed to the front trenches, where a battle has just been fought and won. Let us walk to the battlefield; it is reached through a pine wood still smoking feshiously from the fires which the bursting shells have started. The road is wholly exposed to the range of the enemy's artillery, hut thousands of men have gallantly crossed it in order to reach their comrades com-rades in the trenches beyond. You can see what the ..harvest has been here! There are fragments of shrapnel shrap-nel and unexploded shells along every tiot 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 ; the shells whizz by us with that horrible suggestive rotatory sound which seems to say: Coming, .Coming, Bang and you die! IT WAS the vintage time, and I tried to forget that half of Christendom Chris-tendom 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 vil-las which are surmised rather than seen through the long vistas of grave, still cypresses and around smiling, sll-vergreen sll-vergreen olive slopes from whose summits sum-mits beckon dignified palace fortresses of the Medicis or sterner and more aged ivy-decked towers, writes a Tuscany Tus-cany 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 Ton-ino Ton-ino and his forebears have labored for the last century and a half the family fam-ily "going to the land," not as serfs, but as willing servants of the soil. Entering the terraced farm, I skirted skirt-ed a stout wall with ivy spreading lovingly lov-ingly over its gray stones ; a hedge of winter roses followed me in fragrant companionship all the way to Tonlno'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, mo-ment, then followed in the wake of a primitive oxcart, painted bright red, on which the empty grape vats rumb-bled rumb-bled 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, wiiite and big-horned, moved slowij" and pro-cessionally pro-cessionally 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 neigh-bors was busily at work cutting the dew-moist grapes, dropping the luscious lus-cious bunches into picturesque baskets bas-kets 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 warmtb. exuded a moisture heavily odorous with the abounding vitality of Mother Earth. The harvesters included many women, wom-en, 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 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 effont, coupled with traditional tra-ditional skill or special hardiness,-which 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 ut Tonino's house for the harvest supper, sup-per, to which, by immemorial custom, everyone who has labored in the vineyards vine-yards must bo invited. Wo 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 colonica sat three generations of harvesiers 2i 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 speaks ot Tuscan taste, even in tlu-so humble quarters. A light hung from the center of the ceiling threw a rather rath-er dim illumination over the festive board, but amply srliieient for us to see f .11 the- good things which awaited our impending attack. First soup was serve! from huge bowis into deep, cr.- |