of pose in him. I wish I
could say how astonishing he was to me. Life has since thrown many young
artists and writers my way and I am used to their conceits and
affectations and splendid belief in themselves. But my experience then
was of the most limited and bound by Philadelphia convention, and I
cannot imagine a greater contrast than between the Philadelphia youth to
whom I was accustomed, talking of the last reception and the next party
over his chicken salad at the Dancing Class, and Donoghue talking
dispassionately of his own surpassing beauty over a small cup of coffee
at the _Nazionale_.

Donoghue was a child, not merely in his vanity, but in everything, with
the schoolboy's sense of fun. I never knew him happier than the evening
he hurried to the _cafe_ from his visit to the Coliseum by moonlight to
tell us of his joke on the Americans he found waiting there in silence
for the guide's announcement that the moon was in the proper place for
their proper emotion. A friend was with him.

"And I said: '_Sprichst du Deutsch?_' very loud as we passed," was
Donoghue's story. "And he answered as loud as he could: '_Nichts!
Nichts!_' And I said: '_Zwei Bier_,' and of course the Americans took us
for Germans. Then we hid in the shadows a little further on and we both
yelled together at the top of our voices, 'Three cheers for Cleveland!'
and the Americans jumped, and they forgot the moon, and they wouldn't
listen to the guide, and I tell you it was just great."

I was not overcome myself with the wit or humour of the jest, but
Donoghue was, and he roared with laughter until none of us could help
roaring with him in sheer sympathy. He was as enchanted with his method
of learning Italian. He was reading Wilkie Collins and Bret Harte in an
Italian translation, and when he yawned in our faces and left the _cafe_
early, it was because the night before the Dago's _Woman in White_ or
_Luck of Roaring Camp_ had kept him up until long after dawn, though
really he knew it was a waste of time since anybody had only to get
himself half seas over and he'd talk any darned lingo in the world.

He joined us less often after he gave up the hopeless hunt for the model
who never was found and whom it would have been useless anyway to find,
for Donoghue always spent his quarter's allowance the day he got it, and
most models could not wait three months to be paid. To this conclusion
he came soon after the first of the year and settled down