tly the people will
one day take it up and try it--when their minds and arms are free. As it
is, the genuine Romans live through their winters without wood in a
merry kind of humor; taking the charcoal sent them by chance for cooking
with great good nature; and, without words, blessing GOD for
giving them vigorous frames and sturdy bodies to withstand cold and
heat. After all, the want of fixed firesides by no manner of means
annoys the buxom Roman woman of the people: she picks up her moving
stove, the _scaldina_, and trots out to see her nearest gossip, knowing
that her reception will be warm, for she brings warmth with her. There
is a copy of Galignani, a round of bull beef, and a dirty coal fire,
even in Rome, for every Englishman who will pay for them; but why, oh
why! forever hoist the banner of the Blues over the gay gardens of every
earthly paradise? Why hide Psyche under a hogshead?'

'Are you asking me those hard questions? For if you are,' said Caper, 'I
will answer you thus: A fishwoman passing along a street in
Philadelphia one day, heard from an open window the silver-voiced
Brignoli practising an aria, possibly from the Traviata: 'That voice,'
quoth she, 'would be a fortune for a woman in shad time!''

THE VIOLETS OF THE VILLA BORGHESE.

'It is well to be off with the old love
Before you are on with the new:'

hummed James Caper, as he sauntered, one morning early, through the dewy
grass of the Villa Borghese, with his uncle, Bill Browne, leisurely
picking a little bouquet of violets--'dim, but sweeter than the lids of
Juno's eyes, or Cytherea's breath.'--and pleasantly thinking of the
pretty face of his last love, the blonde Rose, who was at that moment
smiling on somebody else in Naples.

'There is nothing keeps a man out of mischief so well as the little
portrait a pair of lovely eyes photographs on his heart; is there now,
Uncle Bill?'

'No, Jim, you are 'bout right there: if you want to keep the devil out
of your heart, you must keep an angel in it. If you can't find a
permanent resident, why you must take up with transient customers. First
and last, I've had the pictures of half the pretty girls in Saint Louis
hanging up in my gallery: as one grows dim I take up another, and that's
the way I preserve my youth. If it hadn't been for business, I should
have been a married man long ago; and my advice to you, Jim, is to stop
off being a bachelor the instant you are home again.'

'I think