ssions from stern
Reverend Mothers; and sometimes in American towns painting the earliest
American mural decoration that prepared the way, through various stages,
for the latest American series of all--at the San Francisco Exposition
where Duveneck was acclaimed as the American master of to-day. But in
his story, as he told it to us, he had not got as far as Florence when a
new turn was given to his reminiscences and to our evening talk by the
descent upon Venice of the men from Munich.

IV

They were only three--McFarlane, Anthony and Thompson, shall I call
them?--but they had not journeyed all the way from Munich to talk about
"the boys" and to drop sentimental tears over old love tales. They were
off on an Easter holiday and meant to make the most of it. Because
Duveneck was Duveneck they gave up the gayer _cafes_ in the _Piazza_ to
be with him in the sleepy old _Orientale_. But they were not going to
let it stay a sleepy old _Orientale_ if they could help themselves.
Their very first evening Duveneck called for two glasses of milk--to
steady his nerves, he said, though he politely attributed the
unsteadiness not to this new excitement but to the tea he had been
drinking. People drifted to our room from outside and from the new room
to see what the noise was about, until there was not a table to be had.
The old Englishman and his son put down the _Standard_ and laughed with
us. The _caramei_ man went away with an empty tray, I do believe the
only time he was ever bought out in his life, and McFarlane treated us
all to _tamarindo_ to drink with the fruit, and he wound up his horrible
extravagance by buying a copy of the Venetian paper "the boys" used to
call the _Barabowow_. It was nothing short of a Venetian orgy.

Nor did the transformation end here. The men from Munich were so smart,
especially McFarlane, in white waistcoat, with a flower in his
button-hole and a gold-headed cane in his hand, that we were shocked
into the consciousness of our shabbiness. Duveneck, who, until then, had
been happy in an old ulster with holes in the pockets and rips in the
seams, dazzled the _cafe_ by appearing in a jaunty spring overcoat. J.
exchanged his old trousers with a green stain of acid down the leg for
the new pair he had hitherto worn only when he went to call on the
Bronsons or to dine with Mr. Horatio Brown, where I could not go
because I was so much more hopelessly unprepared to dine anywhere
outside the _Panada_ or