Page:Morley roberts--A tramps notebook.djvu/29

backs. The houses of this regular town are white, and pale yellow, and fine worn-out pink, with narrow green painted verandahs which soon lose crudeness in the intense light. The windows of the larger blocks are numerous and set in long regular lines; the streets if narrow run into open squares blazing with white unsoiled monuments. All day long the ways are full of people who are fairly but unostentatiously polite. They do not stare one out of countenance however one may be dressed. In Antwerp a man who objects to being wondered at may not wear a light suit. Lisbon is more cosmopolitan. But the beauty of the town of Lisbon is not added to by the beauty of its inhabitants. The women are curiously the reverse of lovely. Only occasionally I saw a face which was attractive by the odd conjuncture of an olive skin and light grey eyes. They do not wear mantillas. The lower classes use a shawl. Those who are of the bourgeois class or above it differ little from Londoners. The working or loafing men, for they laugh and loaf, and work and chaff and chatter at every corner, are more distinct in costume, wearing the flat felt sombrero with turned-up edges that one knows from pictures, while the long coat which has displaced the cloak still retains a