opefully to and fro amid the unpicturesque gloom of this
Roman lane to catch a wafted kiss or a dropped letter from the rear
window of his Juliet's home. For nowhere else in Europe, Asia, America,
the Oceanic Archipelago or the Better Land can the Romeo-and-Juliet
business be more openly and freely carried on than in the by-streets of
the Eternal City, where girls are thought to be as jealously secluded
from the monster Man as are the women of a Turkish seraglio or the nuns
of a European convent. These Romeos and Juliets usually seem quite
indifferent to the number of unsympathetic eyes that watch their little
drama, providing only Papa and Mamma Capulet are kept in the dark in the
shop below. Even the observation of Signor and Signora Montague would
disturb them little, for it is only Juliet who is guarded, and Romeo is
evidently expected to get all the fun out of life he can. In their dingy
vicolo the Leatherstonepaughs have seen three Romeos watching three
windows at the same twilight moment. One of them stood under an open
window in the third story, from whence a line was dropped down to
receive the letter he held in his hand. Just as the letter-weighted line
was drawn up a window immediately below Juliet's was thrown violently
open, and an unromantic head appeared to empty vials of wrath upon the
spectacled Romeo below for always hanging about the windows of the silly
_pizzicarole_ girls above and giving the house a ridiculous appearance
in the eyes of the passers-by. Romeo answered audaciously that the
signora was mistaken in the man, that he had never been under that
window before in his life, had never seen the Signorina Juliet, daughter
of Capulet the pizzicarole who lived above, but that he was merely
accompanying his friend Romeo, who loved Juliet the daughter of the
_drochiere_ who lived a story below, and who was now wooing her softly
two or three windows away. A shriek was his response as the wrathful
head disappeared, while the lying Romeo laughed wickedly and the
Leatherstonepaughs immoderately, in spite of themselves, to see Juliet,
daughter of the drochiere, electrically abstracted from _her_ window as
if by the sudden application of a four-hundred-enraged-mother-power to
her lofty chignon from behind, while the three Romeos, evidently all
strangers to each other, folded their tents like the Arab and silently
stole away. [Illustration: ROMEO.]

[Illustration: JULIET.]

The Leatherstonepaughs always su