Excerpt: ...peddling mousetraps and santi boniti barati. One of the Nessis, who survived until a short time ago, always said that the family had been very comfortably off in Lombardy, where one of his relatives, Guiseppe Nessi, a doctor, had been professor in the University of Pavia during the eighteenth century, besides being major in the Austrian Army. As mementos of the Italian branch of the family, I still preserve a few views of Lake Como in my house, a crude image of the Christ of the Annunziatta, stamped on cloth, ...
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Excerpt: ...peddling mousetraps and santi boniti barati. One of the Nessis, who survived until a short time ago, always said that the family had been very comfortably off in Lombardy, where one of his relatives, Guiseppe Nessi, a doctor, had been professor in the University of Pavia during the eighteenth century, besides being major in the Austrian Army. As mementos of the Italian branch of the family, I still preserve a few views of Lake Como in my house, a crude image of the Christ of the Annunziatta, stamped on cloth, and a volume of a treatise on surgery by Nessi, which bears the imprimatur of the Inquisition at Venice. VIII MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD SAN SEBASTIAN I was born in San Sebastian on the 28th of December, 1872. So I am not only a Guipuzcoan but a native of San Sebastian. The former I regard as an honour, but the latter means very little to me. I should prefer to have been born in a mountain hamlet or in a small coast town, rather than in a city of summer visitors and hotel keepers. Garat, who was a most conventional person who lived in Bayonne, always used to maintain that he came from Ustariz. I might say that I am from Vera del Bidasoa, but I should not deceive myself. There are several reasons why I dislike San Sebastian: In the first place, the city is not beautiful, when it might well be so. It is made up of straight streets which are all alike, together with two or three monuments that are horrible. The general construction is miserable and shoddy. Although excellent stone abounds in the neighbourhood, no one has had the sense to erect anything either noble or dignified. Cheap houses confront the eye on all sides, whether simple or pretentious. Whenever the citizens of San Sebastian raise their hands-and in this they are abetted by the Madrilenos-they do something ugly. They have defaced Monte Igueldo already, and now they are defacing the Castillo. Tomorrow, they will manage somehow to spoil the sea, the sky, and the air. As for the...
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