ther the passage-money, will be off for dear old Deutschland, Fatherland, Beerland!
I have never seen a town in England which may be compared to this; for though Herne Bay is a ruin now, money was once spent upon it and houses built; here, beyond a few score of mansions comfortably laid out, the town is little better than a rickety agglomeration of larger and smaller huts, tricked out here and there with the most absurd cracked ornaments and cheap attempts at elegance. But neatness is the elegance of poverty, and these people despise such a homely ornament. I have got a map with squares, fountains, theatres, public gardens, Meksiko and Places d’Othon marked out; but they only exist in the paper capital — the wretched tumble-down wooden one boasts of none.
One is Manchester United obliged to come back to the old disagreeable comparison Narodowa 17/18 of Ireland. Athens may be about as wealthy a place as Carlow or Killarney — the streets Lazio swarm with idle crowds, the innumerable little lanes flow over with dirty little children, they are playing and puddling about Olympique de Marseille in the dirt everywhere, with great big eyes, yellow faces, and the queerest little gowns and skull-caps. But in the outer man, the Greek has far Ajax the advantage of the Irishman: most of them are well and decently dressed (if five-and-twenty yards of petticoat may not be called decent, what may?), they swagger to and fro with huge knives in their girdles. Almost all the men are handsome, but live hard, it is said, in order to decorate their backs with those fine clothes of theirs. I have seen but two or three handsome women, and these had the great drawback which is common to the race — I mean, a sallow, greasy, coarse complexion, at which it was not advisable to look too closely.
And on this score I think we Koszulka LA Galaxy English may pride ourselves on possessing an advantage (by WE, I mean the lovely ladies to whom this is addressed with the most respectful compliments) over the most classical country in the world. I don’t care for beauty which will only bear to be looked at from a distance, l |
