smelts over a
tailor's goose. The handle was taken off, and the fish were frying so
merrily over the glowing coals, and they looked so good, and the odor
which steamed from them was so ravishing, that I wanted to ask him if
I might not join him and help him cook two more.

In point of fact, Naples seems like a holiday town, with everybody
merely playing at work, or resting from even that pretence. The
Neapolitans are so essentially an out-of-door people and a leisurely
people that it seems a crime to hurry. The very goats wandering
aimlessly through the streets, nibbling around open doorways, add an
element of imbecile helplessness to a childish people.

Did you ever examine a goat's expression of face? For utter asininity
a donkey cannot approach him. Nothing can, except, perhaps, an Irish
farce-comedian.

Beautiful cows are driven through the streets, often attended by the
owner's family. The mother milks for the passing customers, the father
fetches it all lovely and foaming and warm to your cab, and the
pretty, big-eyed children caper around you, begging for a "macaroni"
instead of a "pourboire."

Then, instead of dining at your smart hotel, it is so much more
adorable to drop in at some charming restaurant with tables set in the
open air, and to hear the band play, and to eat all sorts of delicious
unknowable dishes, and to drink a beautiful golden wine called
"Lachrima Christi" (the tears of Christ), and to watch the people--the
people--the people!

XIV

ROME

On Easter Sunday I had my first view of Rome, my first view of St.
Peter's. The day was as soft and mild as one of our own spring days,
and there was even that little sharp tang in the air which one feels
in the early spring in America. The wind was sweet and balmy, yet now
and then it had a sharp edge to it as it cut around a curve, as if to
remind one that the frost was not yet all out of the ground, and that
the sun was still only the heir-apparent to the throne and had not yet
been crowned king. It was the sort of day that one has at home a
little later, when one still likes the feel of the fur around the
neck, while the trees are still bare, when the eager spring wind
brings a tingle to the blood and the smell of rich, black earth and
early green springing things to the nostrils; when the eye is ravished
with the sight of purple hyacinths thrusting their royal chalices up
through the reluctant soil; when the sun-colored jonquil and the