ong the photographed who thought it
overbold; if the reader had been young and blond and _svelte,_ in a
Parisian gown and hat, with narrow russet shoes, not too high-heeled for
good taste, I do not believe he would have been any better; or, if he
would, I should not have liked him so well.

On the earlier day which I began speaking of I found that I was
insensibly attaching myself to an English-hearing party of the
personally conducted, in the dearth of my own recollections of the local
history, but I quickly detached myself for shame and went back and
meekly hired the help of a guide who had already offered his services in
English, and whom I had haughtily spurned in his own tongue. His
English, though queer, was voluminous; but I am not going to drag the
reader at our heels laden with lore which can be applied only on the
spot or in the presence of postal-card views of the Colosseum. It is
enough that before my guide released us we knew where was the box of
Caesar, whom those about to die saluted, and where the box of the
Vestals whose fatal thumbs gave the signal of life or death for the
unsuccessful performer; where the wild beasts were kept, and where the
Christians; where were the green-rooms of the gladiators, who waited
chatting for their turn to go on and kill one another. One must make
light of such things or sink under them; and if I am trying to be a
little gay, it is for the readers' sake, whom I would not have perish of
their realization. Our guide spared us nothing, such was his conscience
or his science, and I wish I could remember his name, for I could
commend him as most intelligent, even, when least intelligible.
However, the traveller will know him by the winning smile of his
rosy-faced little son, who follows him round and is doubtless bringing
himself up as the guide of coming generations of tourists. There had
been a full pour of forenoon sunshine on the white dust of the street
before our hotel, but the cold of the early morning, though it had not
been too much for the birds that sang in the garden back of us, had left
a skim of ice in damp spots, and now, in the late gray of the afternoon,
the ice was visible and palpable underfoot in the Colosseum, where
crowds of people wandered severally or collectively about in the
half-frozen mud. They were, indeed, all over the place, up and down, in
every variety of costume and aspect, but none were so picturesque as a
little group of monks who had climbe