s_ biggest _scaldino_, and called it an experience. After a few
evenings we decided it was an experience we could do without and, like
all miserable Romans who have no fireplace, we settled down to spending
our nights in the restaurants and _cafes_ of Rome.

I doubt if I should care to spend my nights that way now; a quarter of a
century has added unexpected charm to a dinner-table and fireside of my
own; but no Arabian Nights could then have been fuller of entertainment
than the Roman Nights that drove us from home in search of warmth and
food. In Philadelphia there never had been a suspicion of chance, a
shadow of adventure about my dinner. It was as inevitable as six
o'clock and as inevitably eaten in the seclusion of the Philadelphia
second-story back-building dining-room, if not of my family, then of one
or another of my friends. In Rome it became a delightful uncertainty
that transformed the six flights of stairs leading to it from our rooms
into the "Road to Anywhere". That road was by no means an easy one to
climb up again and if we could help it, we never climbed down more than
once a day, usually a little before dusk, a few hours earlier when we
were in a rare holiday mood, and always in time for a long or short
tramp before dinner. If we came to a church we dropped into it, or a
gallery, or a palace, or a garden, when we were in time. We followed the
streets wherever they might lead,--along the brand-new _Via Nazionale_
to the Forum or the narrow alleys to St. Peter's, beyond the gates to
the _Campagna_--seeing a good deal of Rome without setting out
deliberately to see anything. When we were hungry, we stopped at the
first _Trattoria_ we passed, provided it looked as if we could afford
it, and the chance dinner in a chance place at a chance hour was the
biggest adventure of all that had crowded the way to it.

[Illustration: Etching by Joseph Pennell
OLD AND NEW ROME]

One night the _Trattoria_ happened to be the _Posta_ in a narrow
street back of the _Piazza Colonna_. It was small: not more than
twenty could have dined there together in any comfort. It was
beautifully clean. And the _padrone_, his son, and the one
waiter--all the establishment--greeted us with that enchanting smile
to which, during my first year in Italy, I fell only too ready a
victim. Once we had dined at the _Posta_, we found it so pleasant
that we fell into the habit of getting hungry in its neighbourhood.

I have since got to know