have
enough money to pay for them. So we said to lay the things aside for
us, and we would draw some money at our banker's, and pay for them
when we came to fetch them.

Not for the world, declared this Judas Iscariot, this Benedict Arnold
of an Italian Jew! We must take the things with us. Were we not
Americans, and by Americans did he not live? Behold, he would take the
articles with his own hands to our carriage. And he did, despite our
protests. But the villain drew on us through our banker before we were
out of bed the next morning! I felt like a horse-thief.

However, I confess to a weakness for the overwhelmingly polite
attentions one receives from Italian and French shopkeepers. One gets
none of it in Germany, and in America I am always under the deepest
obligations if the haughty "sales-ladies" and "sales-gentlemen" will
wait on the men and women who wish to buy. I am accustomed to the
ignominy of being ignored, and to the insult of impudence if I
protest; but why, oh, why, do politeness and honesty so seldom go
together?

There is a decency about Puritan America which appeals to me quite as
much as the rugged honesty of American shopkeepers. The unspeakable
street scenes of Europe would be impossible in America. In Naples all
the mysteries of the toilet are in certain quarters of the city public
property, and the dressing-room of children in particular is bounded
by north, east, south, and west, and roofed by the sky.

I have seen Italians comb their beards over their soup at dinner. I
have seen every Frenchman his own manicure at the opera. I have seen
Germans take out their false teeth at the _table d'hote_ and rinse
them in a glass of water, but it remains for Naples to cap the climax
for Sunday-afternoon diversions.

A curious thing about European decency is that it seems to be forced
on people by law, and indulged in only for show. The Gallic nations
are only veneered with decency. They have, almost to a man, none of it
naturally, or for its own sake. Take, for example, the sidewalks of
Paris after dark. The moment public surveillance wanes or the sun goes
down the Frenchman becomes his own natural self.

The Neapolitan's acceptation of dirt as a portion of his inheritance
is irresistibly comic to a pagan outsider. To drive down the Via di
Porto is to see a mimic world. All the shops empty themselves into the
street. They leave only room for your cab to drive through the maze of
stalls, booths, ch