their life there; even the things he had so often
condemned now came up, softened by time and distance, as pleasant
memories of an era passed in great enjoyment If any passing trait in the
scenery recalled the classic land, he never failed to remark it, and,
once launched upon the theme, he would talk away for hours of the
olive-woods, the trellised vines, the cottages half hid amidst the
orange-groves, showing how insensibly the luxurious indolence he had
imbibed lingered like a sort of poison in his blood.

"Yes, sir," said he, one day, as with an amount of irritation he
acknowledged the fatal fascination of that land of dreamy inactivity,
"it's _my_ notion that Italy is a pasture where no beast ought to be
turned out that's ever to do any work again. It ain't merely that one
does nothing when he 's there, but he ain't fit for anything when he
leaves it. I know what I 'd have thought of any man that would have said
to me, 'Shaver Quackinboss, you 'll come out of them diggin's lazy and
indolent. You 'll think more of your ease than you ought, and you 'll be
more grateful for being jest left alone to follow your own fancies than
for the best notion of speculation that ever was hit upon.' And that's
exactly what I 've come to! I don't want a fellow to tell me where I can
make thirty or forty thousand dollars; I 've lost all that spring in me
that used to make me rise early and toil late. What I call happiness now
is to sit and smoke with one of your sort of an afternoon, and listen to
stories of chaps that lived long ago, and worked their way on in a world
a precious sight harder to bully than our own. Well now, sir, I say,
that ain't right, and it ain't nat'ral, and, what's more, I ain't
a-goin' to bear it. I mean to be stirrin' and active again, and you 'll
see it."

It was a few days after he had made this resolve that he said to
Layton,--

"Only think who I saw at the bar this morning. That fellow we came over
with in the passage out; he was a-liquoring down there and treating all
the company. He comes up to me, straight on end, and says,--

"'Well, old 'oss, and how do _you_ get on?'

"'Bobbish-like,' says I, for I was minded to be good-humored with him,
and see what I could get out of him about hisself.

"'Where's the young 'un I saw with you aboard?' says he.

"'Well,' said I, 'he ain't very far off, when he's wanted.'

"'That's what he ain't,' said he; 'he ain't wanted nowhere.' When he
said this I saw h