erica.

You so often found the former abodes of glorious names with a modern
rental out of all proportion with their historic interest. This house,
poppa calculated, would let to-day at a figure discreditable neither to
Cristoforo himself, nor to the United States of America. Mr. Bebbini,
unfortunately, could not tell him what that figure was.

On the steps of San Lorenzo Cathedral momma paused and cast a searching
glance into all the corners.

"Where are the beggars?" she inquired, not without injury. "I have
_always_ been given to understand that church entrances in Italy were
disgracefully thronged with beggars of the lowest type. I have never
seen a picture of a sacred building without them!"

"So that was why you wanted so much small change, Augusta," said the
Senator. "Mr. Bebbini says there's a law against them nowadays. Now that
you mention it, I'm disappointed there too. Municipal progress in Italy
is something you've not prepared for somehow. I daresay if we only knew
it, they're thinking of lighting this town with electricity, and the
Board of Aldermen are considering contracts for cable cars."

"Do not inquire, Alexander," begged momma, but the Senator had fallen
behind with Mr. Bebbini in earnest conversation, and we gathered that
its import was entirely modern.

It was our first Italian church and it was impressive, for a President
of the French Republic had just fallen to the knife of an Italian
assassin, and from the altar to the door San Lorenzo was in mourning and
in penance. Masses for his soul's repose had that day been said and
sung; near the door hung a request for the prayers of all good
Christians to this end. Many of the grave-eyed people that came and went
were doubtless about this business, but one, I know, was there on a
private errand. He prayed at a chapel aside, kneeling on the floor
beside the railings, his cap in his hands, grasping it just as the
peasant in The Angelus grasps his. Inside the altar hung a picture of a
pitying woman, and there were candles and foolish flowers of tinsel, but
beside these, many tokens of hearts, gold and silver, thick below the
altar, crowding the partition walls. The hearts were grateful
ones--Alessandro explained in an undertone--brought and left by many
who had been preserved from violent death by the saint there, and he who
knelt was a workman just from hospital, who had fallen, with his son,
from a building. The boy had been killed, the father on