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 and about the cushioned frame intended
for repose, do they converse, or indulge in that sort of chat from which
not one idea is carried away? No one reports, fortunately, and we do not
know. But do all the women like this method of spending hour after hour,
day after day-indeed, a lifetime? Is it invigorating, even restful? Think
of the talk this past summer, the rivers and oceans of it, on piazzas and
galleries in the warm evenings or the fresher mornings, in private
houses, on hotel verandas, in the shade of thousands of cottages by the
sea and in the hills! As you recall it, what was it all about? Was the
mind in a vapid condition after an evening of it? And there is so much to
read, and so much to think about, and the world is so interesting, if you
do think about it, and nearly every person has some peculiarity of mind
that would be worth study if you could only get at it