and threw me across the street, the girl scratched
me with her finger nails and bit me, and yelled some grand hailing sign
of distress, her brother and a ragged boy that was in love with the girl
and was jealous, drew daggers, and the whole crowd yelled murder, and I
started for our hotel on a run, and the whole population of Rome seemed
to follow me, and I might as well have been a negro accused of crime in
the states. I thought they would burn me at the stake, but dad came out
of the hotel and threw a handful of small change into the crowd, and it
was all off.

After they picked up the coin they beckoned me to come out and play some
more, but not any more for little Hennery. I have been in love in all
countries where we have traveled, and in all languages, but this Italian
love takes the whole bakery, and I do not go around any more without a
chaperone. The girls are ragged and wear shawls over their heads,
and there are holes in their dresses and their skin isn't white, like
American girls', but is what they call olive complexion, like stuffed
olives you buy in bottles, stuffed with cayenne pepper, but the girls
are just like the cayenne pepper, so warm that you want to throw water
on yourself after they have touched you. Gee, but I wouldn't want to
live in a climate where girls were a torrid zone, 'cause I should melt,
like an icicle that drops in a stove, and makes steam and blows up the
whole house.

Well, old man, you talk about churches, but you don't know anything
about it. Dad and I went to St. Peter's in Rome, and it is the grandest
thing in the world. Say, the Congregational church at home, which we
thought so grand, could be put in one little corner of St. Peter's, and
would look like 30 cents. St. Peter's covers ground about half a mile
square, and when you go inside and look at grown people on the other
side of it, they look like flies, and the organ is as big as a block of
buildings in Chicago, and when they blow it you think the last day has
come, and yet the music-is as sweet as a melodeon, and makes you want
to get down on your knees with all the thousands of good Christians of
Italy, and confess that you are a fraud that ought to be arrested.

Dad and I have been to all kinds of churches, everywhere, and never
turned a hair, but since we got to this town and got some of the
prevailing religion into our systems, we feel guilty, and it seems as
though everybody could see right into us, and that they