ent nor
taxes, and yet enjoyed all the delights of nature. It seemed to the boy
that affairs would go more smoothly in the world if everybody would live
in this simple manner. Nor did he then know, or ever after find out, why
it is that the world permits only wicked people to be Bohemians.

XIX. A CONTRAST TO THE NEW ENGLAND BOY

One evening at vespers in Genoa, attracted by a burst of music from
the swinging curtain of the doorway, I entered a little church much
frequented by the common people. An unexpected and exceedingly pretty
sight rewarded me.

It was All Souls' Day. In Italy almost every day is set apart for some
festival, or belongs to some saint or another, and I suppose that when
leap year brings around the extra day, there is a saint ready to claim
the 29th of February. Whatever the day was to the elders, the evening
was devoted to the children. The first thing I noticed was, that the
quaint old church was lighted up with innumerable wax tapers,--an
uncommon sight, for the darkness of a Catholic church in the evening
is usually relieved only by a candle here and there, and by a blazing
pyramid of them on the high altar. The use of gas is held to be a
vulgar thing all over Europe, and especially unfit for a church or an
aristocratic palace.

Then I saw that each taper belonged to a little boy or girl, and the
groups of children were scattered all about the church. There was a
group by every side altar and chapel, all the benches were occupied
by knots of them, and there were so many circles of them seated on the
pavement that I could with difficulty make my way among them. There
were hundreds of children in the church, all dressed in their holiday
apparel, and all intent upon the illumination, which seemed to be a
private affair to each one of them.

And not much effect had their tapers upon the darkness of the vast
vaults above them. The tapers were little spiral coils of wax, which the
children unrolled as fast as they burned, and when they were tired of
holding them, they rested them on the ground and watched the burning. I
stood some time by a group of a dozen seated in a corner of the church.
They had massed all the tapers in the center and formed a ring about the
spectacle, sitting with their legs straight out before them and their
toes turned up. The light shone full in their happy faces, and made the
group, enveloped otherwise in darkness, like one of Correggio's pictures
of children or an