nd fashionable hotel. The
palm-room, where the band plays for afternoon tea, and where one
always comes for one's coffee, is between the entrance and the grand
dining-room, so that on entering the hotel one comes upon a most
beautiful vista of a series of huge glass doors and lovely green
waving palms, with nothing but a glass roof between one and the blue
Italian sky.

Most of the smart Americans go there, and a very beautiful front they
presented. I had not seen any American clothes for a year, but on
Easter Sunday at luncheon I saw the most bewitching array of smart
street-gowns worn by the inimitable American woman, who is as far
beyond the women of every other race on earth in her selection of
clothes and the way she holds up her head and her shoulders back and
walks off in them as grand opera is above a hand-organ. Even the
French woman does not combine the good sense with good taste as the
American does. And there I found these sisters, each lovely in her own
way--the pretty one listening to the raptures of the poetic one with a
palpable sneer which said plainly: "I not only have no part in these
vain imaginings, but I do not think that you yourself believe them.
You are posing for the world, and I am the only one who knows it. Have
I not been with you everywhere, and have I, with my two eyes, which
certainly are as good as yours--have I seen these things you
describe?" It was pathetic, for the muse of the poet soon felt the
mire in which it daily trod. The fire faded from the girl's eye, her
radiance disappeared, her noble enthusiasms paled, her fantastic and
brilliant imagination dulled, and soon she sat listlessly in our
midst, a tired, patient smile upon her delicate face, while her sister
discoursed volubly upon clothes. Alas, the old fable of the iron pot
and the porcelain kettle drifting down the stream together! At the end
of the journey the iron pot had not even a scratch upon its thick
sides, but the porcelain was broken to pieces. How I longed to take
that wounded imagination, that whimsical wit, under my wing and
explore Rome with her! But circumstances held the two together, and I
took instead my guide, Seraphino Malespina. Seraphino deserves a
chapter by himself. His observations upon human nature were of much
more value to me than his knowledge of Rome, accurate and worthy as
that was. He was the best guide I ever had. I had heard of him, so
when we arrived I simply wrote to him and engaged him by