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Updated: June 3, 2025
The houses, which seemed only to serve as backgrounds to all this teeming life, were of all colors red, green, orange, and blue and between the queer, many-shaped roof-tops waved the feathery crowns of date trees, the glossy foliage of the fig, and the stately fronds of the palm but these were of scanter growth just here, though what there were, swarmed with kites, crows, parakeets, and even squirrels, while dogs "by the million," as Hope remarked, and cattle, and monkeys, and goats, were on every spot where babies and larger children had left an inch of room.
"Look there," cried the Big Business Man suddenly. Coming down a cross street, marching in orderly array with its commander in front, was a company of soldier police. It came to a halt almost directly beneath the watchers on the roof-tops, and its leader brandishing his sword after a moment of hesitation, ordered his men to charge the crowd.
All that he had learned on the streets and wharves and roof-tops, all that pitiable experience and dangerous knowledge that had made him a leader and a hero among the thieves and bullies of the river-front he called to his assistance now. He faced the fact flatly and with the cool consideration of an uninterested counsellor.
Then it swung in cradling-song the twilight of Athens and the little birds sang low, twittering underneath the leaves in softest garb at last rose leaves falling the dusky bats around her roof-tops, and the high-soaring sky that arches all mysterious and deep. Then the voice sank low, and rang and held the note stern, splendid Athens of might. City of Power!
That night, which ended the five days of battle in Milan, while fires were raging at many gates, bells were rolling over the roof-tops, the army of Austria coiled along the North-eastern walls of the city, through rain and thick obscurity, and wove its way like a vast worm into the outer land. Countess d'Isorella's peculiar mission to Milan was over with the victory of the city.
In many places people were left clinging to trees, roof-tops and telegraph poles crying for assistance. The work of rescue was practically impossible because of the swift current of the flood, and most of those who were seen trying to save themselves were swept away to death. The village of Stratford, five miles to the south, was entirely under water and the loss great.
I could not but look about how could I do otherwise than look about? a lonely American walking at last past all these nobly haunted doorways and windows for your idealists or interpreters, your men who bring in the sea upon your streets and the mountains on your roof-tops; who still see the wide, still reaches of the souls of men beyond the faint and tiny roar of London.
Landed in some tropic port with some hard-pronouncing name, they have, shoving off from the ship's side with their rifles and their packs, to get a toe-hold somewhere against two, five, ten times their number blazing away at them from behind sand-hills, or roof-tops, or a fine growth of jungle, it may be.
Vehicles came to a halt, were wedged dose to the curbs, and became coigns of vantage; office windows, store-fronts, balconies, and roof-tops began to cluster with a human freight.
There was a rapid dashing beneath the great walls; a sudden night of darkness as we plunged through an open archway into a narrow village street; a confused impression of houses built into side-walls; of machicolated gateways; of rocks and roof-tops tumbling about our ears; and within the street was sounding the babel of a shrieking troop of men and women.
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