iva, the Grand Canal, the islands, gleam with twinkling
lamps; the dark boats glide along with a star in the prow, bearing youth
and beauty and sin and ugliness, all alike softened by the shadows; the
electric lights from the shores and the huge steamers shoot gleams on
towers and facades; the moon wades among the fleecy clouds; here and
there a barge with colored globes of light carries a band of singing men
and women and players on the mandolin and the fiddle, and from every side
the songs of Italy, pathetic in their worn gayety, float to the entranced
ears of those who lean from balconies, or lounge in gondolas and listen
with hearts made a little heavy and wistful with so much beauty.

Can any one float in such scenes and be so contentedly idle anywhere in
our happy land? Have we learned yet the simple art of easy enjoyment? Can
we buy it with money quickly, or is it a grace that comes only with long
civilization? Italy, for instance, is full of accumulated wealth, of art,
even of ostentation and display, and the new generation probably have
lost the power to conceive, if not the skill to execute, the great works
which excite our admiration. Nothing can be much more meretricious than
its modern art, when anything is produced that is not an exact copy of
something created when there was genius there. But in one respect the
Italians have entered into the fruits of the ages of trial and of
failure, and that, is the capacity of being idle with much money or with
none, and getting day by day their pay for the bother of living in this
world. It seems a difficult lesson for us to learn in country or city.
Alas! when we have learned it shall we not want to emigrate, as so many
of the Italians do? Some philosophers say that men were not created to be
happy. Perhaps they were not intended to be idle.

IS THERE ANY CONVERSATION

Is there any such thing as conversation? It is a delicate subject to
touch, because many people understand conversation to be talk; not the
exchange of ideas, but of words; and we would not like to say anything to
increase the flow of the latter. We read of times and salons in which
real conversation existed, held by men and women. Are they altogether in
the past? We believe that men do sometimes converse. Do women ever?
Perhaps so. In those hours sacred to the relaxation of undress and the
back hair, in the upper penetralia of the household, where two or three
or six are gathered together on an