into a fit of shrill laughter, the first sound he had uttered, made
a macaronic gesture, and capered off with the airiest gambols and antics,
like a very devil's kid. A street-urchin teasing an old woman is no new
sight, but the nimbleness, spirit, grace and gentleness of this young
Pickle, the impossibility of guessing what he would do or where he would
be next, and the fine dramatic rage of the beldame, who looked like one of
Michael Angelo's Fates, kept us standing and staring at the two until the
fun was over as if we had been at a play.

In one respect we must have seen Verona under a disadvantage: there was no
sunshine during our short stay. The beautiful, lordly gardens of the
Palazzo Giusti on the declivity of a hillside on the left bank of the
Adige were dank and dripping; there was no temptation to linger near their
chilly statues and gloomy cypresses; even the view from their noble
terraces, formed partly by the wall of the town, was cold and colorless
under the November sky. Out-of-door life is so large a part of the
pleasure of being in Italy, fine weather adds so indescribably there to
the beauty of even the most glorious works of man, that to have seen them
only under a dull sky is like having seen a human countenance without its
smile. Perhaps at another season we should not have thought the streets so
melancholy: perhaps even in our admiration we did not pay full justice to

L'eccelsa, graziosa, alma Verona.[A]

SARAH B. WISTER.

[A] The lofty, gracious, kindly Verona.

A LAW UNTO HERSELF.

CHAPTER III.

Captain Swendon, with the majority of his sex, was never less a hero than
when at home. Brute force, _od_, backbone, whatever you call the resistant
power which keeps a man erect among other men, weakens under the coddling
of feminine fingers and the smoke of conjugal incense. The aching tooth,
the gnawing passion or the religious problem that strikes across his life
like a blank wall, all of which he pooh-poohs out of sight in the street,
master him indoors. A woman puts on her noblest virtues with the fireside
slippers, but to a man they are a chance for remorse, for repining, for
turning God's mighty judgments on himself into a small drizzling shower of
miseries for his wife and the children. Give the same man his boots and
the fresh air, and he will go to the stake gallantly.

The captain, pacing up and down the garden-alleys that night, thinking of
the blow which would fall on