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It is like an otherwise beautiful woman spoiled by a bad complexion. We passed through fine open plains, then a series of tunnels, rocky defiles, over mountain streams and fertile valleys, until we reached Pracchia. We had been steadily ascending to higher ground, and were now nearly at the top of a mountain range, a wild defile and stream on the one side, a mountain road on the other.
But there is a sullen look about its current, that tells how wicked it can be, this Serchio, lashed into madness by winter storms, and the overflowing of the water-gates above, among the high Apennines at the Abbetone at San Marcello, or at windy, ice-bound Pracchia. How fair are thy banks, O mountain-bordered Serchio! How verdant with near wood and neighboring forest!
Who that has ever seen the Pistojese the Val di Lima, the country of S. Marcello, the Val di Reno, the country about Pracchia, does not love it the silent ways through the chestnut woods, the temperance of the hill country after the heat of the cities, the country ways after the ways of the town? And there are songs there too.
The great villas and palaces are closed; the Florence Club, that most exclusive institution in Europe, is shut up; the hotels move up to Camaldoli, to Pracchia, or to Abetone; and to be seen in Florence in those blazing days causes wonder and comment. Charlie and I were the only two foreigners in Florence.
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