‘Signore, I can not read.’

‘Perhaps it is the name of the street, maybe of the city?’

‘It must be so,’ answered the priest, ’unless it’s a sign of a lottery office, or a caution against blasphemy up and down the pavement.  Those are the only signs we have in the country, except the government salt and cigar shops.’ ...  He took a snuff-box from a pocket in his sleeve, and with a bow offered a pinch to Mr. Caper.  This accepted, they bid each other profoundly farewell.

‘There goes a brick!’ remarked the traveler.

Arrived at the entrance-door to the tower of the Capitoline Hill, James Caper first felt in one pocket for a silver piece and in the other for a match-box, and finding them both there, rang the bell, and then mounted to the top of the tower.  Lighting a zigarro scelto or papal cigar, he leaned on both elbows on the parapet, and gazed long and fixedly over the seven-hilled city.

‘And this,’ soliloquized he, is Rome.  Many a day have I been kept in school without my dinner because I was not able to parse thee idly by, Roma—­Rome—­noun of the first declension, feminine gender, that a quarter of a century ago caused me punishment, I have thee now literally under foot, and (knocking his cigar) throw ashes on thy head.

’My mission in this great city is not that of a picture-peddler or art student.  I come to investigate the eating, drinking, sleeping arrangements of the Eternal City—­its wine more than its vinegar, its pretty girls more than its galleries, its cafes more than its churches.  I see from here that I have a fine field to work in.  Down there, clambering over the fallen ruins of the Palace of the Caesars, is a donkey.  Could one have a finer opportunity to see in this a moral and twist a tail?  From those fallen stones, Memory-glorious old architect—­rears a fabric wondrously beautiful; peoples it with eidolons white and purple-robed, and gleaming jewel-gemmed; or, iron armed, glistening with flashing light from polished steel—­heroes and slaves, conquerors and conquered; my blood no longer flows to the slow, jerking measure of a nineteenth-century piece of mechanism, but freely, fully, and completely.  Hurrah, my blood is up! dark, liquid eyes; black, flowing locks; strange, pleasing perfumes are around me.  There is a rush as of a strong south wind through a myriad of floating banners, and I am borne onward through triumphal arches, past pillared temples, under the walls of shining palaces, into the Coliseum....

’Pray, and can you tell me—­if that pile of d——­d old rubbish—­down there, you know—­is the Forum—­for I do not—­see it in Murray—­though I’m sure—­I have looked very clearly—­and Murray you know—­has everything down in him—­that a traveler....

‘A commercial traveler?’ ... interrupted Mr. Caper, speaking slowly, and looking coolly into the eyes of the blackguard Bagman....  ’The ruins you see there are those of the Forum.  Good morning.’