The 30,000 Dollar Bequest and Other Stories eBook

A glance at the telegraphic page filled me with encouragement.  There were no scare-heads.  That was good—­supremely good.  But there were headings—­one-liners and two-liners—­and that was good too; for without these, one must do as one does with a German paper—­pay our precious time in finding out what an article is about, only to discover, in many cases, that there is nothing in it of interest to you.  The headline is a valuable thing.

Necessarily we are all fond of murders, scandals, swindles, robberies, explosions, collisions, and all such things, when we knew the people, and when they are neighbors and friends, but when they are strangers we do not get any great pleasure out of them, as a rule.  Now the trouble with an American paper is that it has no discrimination; it rakes the whole earth for blood and garbage, and the result is that you are daily overfed and suffer a surfeit.  By habit you stow this muck every day, but you come by and by to take no vital interest in it—­indeed, you almost get tired of it.  As a rule, forty-nine-fiftieths of it concerns strangers only —­people away off yonder, a thousand miles, two thousand miles, ten thousand miles from where you are.  Why, when you come to think of it, who cares what becomes of those people?  I would not give the assassination of one personal friend for a whole massacre of those others.  And, to my mind, one relative or neighbor mixed up in a scandal is more interesting than a whole Sodom and Gomorrah of outlanders gone rotten.  Give me the home product every time.

Very well.  I saw at a glance that the Florentine paper would suit me:  five out of six of its scandals and tragedies were local; they were adventures of one’s very neighbors, one might almost say one’s friends.  In the matter of world news there was not too much, but just about enough.  I subscribed.  I have had no occasion to regret it.  Every morning I get all the news I need for the day; sometimes from the headlines, sometimes from the text.  I have never had to call for a dictionary yet.  I read the paper with ease.  Often I do not quite understand, often some of the details escape me, but no matter, I get the idea.  I will cut out a passage or two, then you see how limpid the language is: 

Il ritorno dei Beati d’Italia

Elargizione del Re all’ Ospedale italiano

The first line means that the Italian sovereigns are coming back —­they have been to England.  The second line seems to mean that they enlarged the King at the Italian hospital.  With a banquet, I suppose.  An English banquet has that effect.  Further: 

Il ritorno dei Sovrani

a Roma

Roma, 24, ore 22,50.—­I Sovrani e le Principessine Reali si attendono a Roma domani alle ore 15,51.

Return of the sovereigns to Rome, you see.  Date of the telegram, Rome, November 24, ten minutes before twenty-three o’clock.  The telegram seems to say, “The Sovereigns and the Royal Children expect themselves at Rome tomorrow at fifty-one minutes after fifteen o’clock.”