Passage One

(1) It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles v/hich look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and close below, the Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.

(2) Over the river men were at work with spades and sieves on the sandy foreshore, and on the river was a boat, also diligently employed for some mysterious end. An electric tram came rushing underneath the window. No one was inside it, except one tourist; but its platforms were overflowing with Italians, who preferred to stand. Children tried to hang on behind, and the conductor, with no malice, spat in their faces to make them let go. Then soldiers appeared—good-looking, undersized men—wearing each a knapsack covered with mangy fur, and a great-coat which had been cut for some larger soldier. Beside them walked officers, looking foolish and fierce, and before them went little boys, turning somersaults in time with the band. The tramcar became entangled in their ranks, and moved on painfully, like a caterpillar in a swarm of ants. Indeed, if it had not been for the good advice of an old man who was selling button-hooks, the road might never have got clear.

(3) Over such trivialities as these many a valuable hour may slip away, and the traveller who has gone to Italy to study the tactile values of Giotto, or the corruption of the Papacy, may return remembering nothing but the blue sky and the men and women who live under it. So it was as well that Miss Bartlett should tap and come in, and having commented on Lucy’s leaving the door unlocked, and on her leaning out of the window before she was fully dressed, should urge her to hasten herself, or the best of the day would be gone. By the time Lucy was ready, her cousin had done her breakfast, and was listening to the clever lady among the crumbs.

(4) A conversation then ensued, on not unfamiliar lines. Miss Bartlett was, after all, a wee bit tired, and thought they had better spend the morning settling in; unless Lucy would at all like to go out? Lucy would rather like to go out, as it was her first day in Florence, but, of course, she could go alone. Miss Bartlett could not allow this. Of course she would accompany Lucy everywhere. Oh, certainly not; Lucy would stop with her cousin. Oh, no! That would never do. Oh, yes!

(5) At this point the clever lady broke in. “If it is Mrs. Grundy who is troubling you, I do assure you that you can neglect the good person. Being English, Miss Honeychurch will be perfectly safe. Italians understand. A dear friend of mine, Contessa Baroncelli, has two daughters, and when she cannot send a maid to school with them, she lets them go in sailor-hats instead. Every one takes them for English, you see, especially if their hair is strained tightly behind.”

(6) Miss Bartlett was unconvinced by the safety of Contessa Baroncelli’s daughters. She was determined to take Lucy herself, her head not being so very bad. The clever lady then said that she was going to spend a long morning in Santa Croce, and if Lucy would come too, she would be delighted.

(7) “I will take you by a dear dirty back way, Miss Honeychurch, and if you bring me luck, we shall have an adventure.”

(8) Lucy said that this was most kind, and at once opened the Baedeker (旅行指南), to see where Santa Croce was.

Passage Two

(1) The stillness that settled down on me at Bear Butte holds for my first few days at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, named for the conservationist president who tested his mettle (勇气) ranching cattle here as a young man. For the most part, I’m a solo act until a guy shows up at my campsite’s splintered picnic table. His earth-toned outfit camouflaged against the landscape, he looks like a birder.

(2) “Did you see a map? I lost my map.”

(3) I’m well into finishing the day’s third cup of camp-stove-brewed coffee. Less complete is my plan for the day. Hike the Petrified (石化的) Forest loop? Or head to the prairie dog town? Behind me, the day’s sun, already startlingly bright, lights up the badlands’ buttes (孤山), ringed by horizontal bands colored coal black, brick red, and clay tan.

(4) Until this interruption I’d been pondering those buttes—and the sagebrush that’s hiding, in my mind, a thousand rattlesnakes. The guy at the next campsite barely missed stepping on one yesterday.

(5) In front of me, the man shifts his weight from foot to foot. He paces. He dances in place to an anxious tune.

(6) “What map?” I ask.

(7) It’s the second time in five years that John, who introduces himself as an “unpaid botanist” from Vermont, has visited the park to explore—and document—the plant life. Over the years he has turned a store-bought map of the wilderness areas and hiking trails into a diary of the park’s life, filled with notations of the cottonwood trees that grow along the Little Missouri River, the junipers that rise up from the north-facing sides of buttes, and the green and gold grasses—salt grass, western wheatgrass, bluestem—that thrive on a prairie where little rain falls.

(8) “I’m very organized,” John insists. Forgetting things on top of his car and driving off is his Achilles’ heel. His sadness overwhelms him. Replacing that map won’t be easy. He’ll have to restart the project from scratch.

(9) “You’ll find it. I know you’ll find it.” The words feel like the truest thing I’ve said in weeks. “Years ago, somebody stole my bag and a notebook filled with my short stories,” I tell him. “A man found the bag. I got it all back.” If I can’t hand him the map, I can at least try to peel off some of his worry. His pacing slows. He gives me his address and hurries off to resume the search.

(10) Twenty minutes into my hike in the Petrified Forest, I’m trying to make sense of a different map, a photocopied trail guide I’d picked up at the visitors center. The sound of approaching footsteps throws me off. Aside from a sprinkling of spring wildflowers, little other life shows its face out here.

(11) A man in shorts and a bright green T-shirt, a ponytail hanging down his back and a small water bottle in his hand, runs up. He’s dressed as if he’s out for a jog through the suburbs.

(12) I hate that I feel nervous, but nobody knows I’m here. We exchange hellos and names. I keep my distance.

(13) “Is that a map of the trail?” Joseph doesn’t have one. I’m still trying to figure out which path to venture down, so I take a few steps toward him. though reluctantly.

(14) Joseph must sense my discomfort. He starts sharing his story. He’s director of the University of North Dakota’s Native Americans Into Law program and getting married soon. “I need to get in shape for the wedding pictures,” he explains. I have a feeling my appearance on the trail surprised him just as much as his did me.

(15) As we walk, sunburn prickles my skin. The glare is exhausting. I’m glad for Joseph’s company. Trusting a stranger suddenly strikes me as a far smarter move than the solo hike I’d planned.

(16) The trail cuts through more grasslands, then shoots us down a slope of dry cracked earth. A giant’s market of mushroom-shaped rock formations greets us. Red caps several feet wide balance on tan stalks. It’s an otherworldly place that calls for witnesses so, if nothing else, you know you’re not hallucinating from the heat.

(17) A few minutes later, we’re hopping on and off petrified stumps. We point out signs of new life growing from cracks in the long-dead trees. We pop up short hills to take the long view, and, finally, turn back. At the mushrooms again, we swap smartphones and snap photos of each other posing underneath the giant caps, then part ways, friends.

(18) Later, at my campsite, I notice I’ve received a picnic table delivery through the unofficial mail system of campgrounds—rocks and scrap paper.

(19) It’s from John. “Jenna, you were right. I have the map! Thank you for your assurance I would get the map returned.”

(20) The next morning, back in the driver’s seat and bound for Montana, I can’t stop grinning. Though the highways of the Dakotas helped form the outline of my new mental map, the kindred spirits along the way brought these states into sharp relief.

Passage Three

(1) Ramzi Raguii, a driver for the car-hire service Uber, was on vacation in Tunisia when he got word that the company had hired some political muckety-muck (大亨) named David Plouffe, who ran Barack Obama’s 2008 Presidential campaign and later served in the White House—as its senior vice-president of policy and strategy.

(2) Uber is an app that lets you hail a car: tap the screen and a car, with a driver, shows up wherever you are. Drivers sign on as independent contractors and use their own vehicles; Uber takes a twenty-per-cent commission on each fare.

(3) The service is popular among riders: an internal document leaked to the blog Valley wag late last year suggested that, each week, people worldwide were taking about 800,000 Uber rides. Drivers, meanwhile, appreciate the flexibility, autonomy, and ease of joining. The appeal of Uber is similar to that of Airbnb, which lets people rent out their homes to vacationers for a night or longer. Before the Internet, the reasoning goes, those who needed services and those who could provide them had fewer ways to find one another; companies like Uber use our newfound connectedness to put us in touch. What’s more, the companies can profit handsomely because they don’t actually own the property used to provide the service—the cars, in Uber’s case, or apartments, for Airbnb.

(4) Investors recently valued Uber at nearly twenty billion dollars, which struck some people as an absurdly high figure. But others believed that Uber could be worth more than that—not only because transportation is a big business, but because the company has the potential to do much more with its matchmaker app. Since Uber doesn’t own a fleet of cars or employ its drivers, it could, in theory, deploy its app for any number of other purposes. First it could displace the taxi industry. Then it could take on delivery trucks, moving vans, and more. Earlier this week, the company started testing out a home-delivery service in Washington, D.C.

(5) Raguii admires Uber for being innovative, but he has become an outspoken critic of some of its policies. He has recently started an organization called the Drivers Network because he doesn’t think politicians and regulators have offered much help.

(6) This isn’t for lack of pressure. Individual drivers like Raguii might not have much political influence, but lobbying groups representing traditional industries have worked hard to persuade the government to regulate their newer rivals more closely. In San Francisco, for instance, taxi operators have to provide a million dollars of liability coverage for their cars at all times; Uber, until recently, covered vehicles only when they held a passenger. But Uber, and companies like it, argue that they’re completely different from the industries that they’re displacing— taxis, hotels, employment agencies, and so on—and shouldn’t have to follow the old, fusty (陈腐的) regulations that apply to those industries.

(7) In these companies’ early days, no one seemed to complain much about that reasoning. But, in the past year, that has started to change. In the fall, Eric T. Schneiderman, New York’s attorney general, subpoenaed (传唤) Airbnb for information about its hosts—some of whom seemed to be operating in defiance of a law that barred short-term rentals in most cases. In April of this year, Schneiderman followed up with stern words in the Times about startups, like Uber and Airbnb. “Amazingly, many of these companies claim that the fact that their goods and services are provided online somehow makes them immune from regulation,” he wrote. Now, in California, a Democratic state legislator named Susan Bonilla is pushing a bill that would tighten auto-insurance regulations for transportation companies like Uber.

(8) Plouffe, in his new role, will be in charge of “all global policy and political activities, communications, and Uber branding efforts,” Uber’s CEO, Travis Kalanick put it. This is a broad purview (范围) —Plouffe has said, in interviews, that he expects to “campaign” for Uber just as he did for the President—but, presumably, part of the job will be figuring out how to address challenges like the ones in California and New York. It will also include lobbying the government to come up with policies that are more favorable to Uber’s interests in the first place.

(9) Raguii hadn’t heard of Plouffe, but he said that he feels like he knows the type. He believes Uber has stayed under the radar of the regulatory establishment for the past several years and now that there are signs that this is changing. “This guy’s job is obvious—to tell these guys, how are we going to dodge the rules? How do we cut corners?”

(10) Of course, Plouffe described his mission differently. “We’ll be trying to change the point of view of established politicians, and there’s a lot of resistance coming from people who want to protect the status quo.”

Passage One

Passage Two

Passage Three