of labor it costs to earn
even the little the natives seem to care for. Our hotel here is an
old monastery, and on one side of the court is the cathedral with
its grotesque paintings. One becomes fairly sickened with the
ghastly spectacle of the dead Christ. It is amazing how little they
make of the living Christ.

On Monday morning we drove back over that magnificent road, and
took the train to Naples. In the afternoon we went to Lake Avernus
and into the grotto of the sibyls, the entrance to Dante's Inferno.
It was a dark, cavernous passage and with the flaring candles
making the darkness only more visible, we could not but feel there
was reason for the old superstition. The narrowness of the streets
of Naples--and they are without the pretense of a sidewalk--leave
the men, women and children, horses and carriages, funny little
donkeys with their big loads, the cows and goats (which are each
night and morning driven along and halted at the doors while the
pint cupful, more or less, is milked to supply the people within)
all marching along together in the filthy road, jostling each other
at every step.

But we are back in Rome now and this forenoon we spent in the
galleries of the Vatican. One is simply dazed with the wealth of
marble--not only statuary, but stairs, pillars and massive
buildings. We stop here till the 9th, then go to Florence.[15]

It is good for our young civilization to see and study that of the
old world, and observe the hopelessness of lifting the masses into
freedom and freedom's industry, honesty and integrity. How any
American, any lover of our free institutions based on equality of
rights for all, can settle down and live here is more than I can
comprehend. It will be only by overturning the powers that
education and equal chances ever can come to the rank and file. The
hope of the world is indeed in our republic; so let us work to make
it a _genuine_ democracy, where every citizen--woman as well as
man--shall be crowned with the one symbol of equality--the
ballot....

ROME, April 5.

MY DEAR SISTER: How these anniversary days of our dear mother's
illness and death bring back to me everything, even at this
distance and amid these strange surroundings. How s