sionaire at the hotel always recommends strangers to go to the
Apollo: 'I will git you loge, sare, first tier--more noble, sare.'

The Capranica Theatre is next in size and importance; it is beyond the
Pantheon, out of the foreign quarter of Rome, and you will find in it a
Roman audience--to a limited extent. Salvini acted there in _Othello_,
and filled the character admirably; it is needless to say that Iago
received even more applause than Othello; Italians know such men
profoundly--they are Figaros turned undertakers. Opera was given at the
Capranica when the Apollo was closed.

The Valle is a small establishment, where Romans, pure blood, of the
middle class, and the nobility who did not hang on to foreigners, were
to be found. Giuseppina Gassier, who has since sung in America, was
prima-donna there, appearing generally in the _Sonnambula_.

But the Capranica Theatre was the resort for the Roman _minenti_, decked
in all their bravery. Here came the shoemaker, the tailor, and the small
artisan, all with their wives or women, and with them the wealthy
peasant who had ten cents to pay for entrance. Here the audience wept
and laughed, applauded the actors, and talked to each other from one
side of the house to the other. Here the plays represented Roman life in
the rough, and were full of words and expressions not down in any
dictionary or phrase-book; nor in these local displays were forgotten
various Roman peculiarities of accentuation of words, and curious
intonations of voice. The Roman people indulge in chest-notes, leaving
head-notes to the Neapolitans, who certainly do not possess such
smoothness of tongue as would classify them among their brethren in the
old proverb: 'When the confusion of tongues happened at the building of
the Tower of Babel, if the Italian had been there, Nimrod would have
made him a plasterer!'

You will do well, if you want to learn from the stage and audience, the
Roman _plebs_, their customs and language, to attend the Capranica
Theatre often; to attend it in 'fatigue-dress,' and in gentle mood,
being neither shocked nor astonished if a good-looking Roman youth
should call your attention to the fact that there is a beautiful girl in
the box to the left hand, and inquire if you know whether she is the
daughter of Santi Stefoni, the grocer? And should the man on the other
side offer you some pumpkin-seeds to eat, by all means accept a few; you
can't tell what they may bring forth, if yo