"Sunday:—I spent two hours this morning (admission free on Sundays) in the Museo Nationale. It contains a fine collection of marble and bronze sculptures, most of them from Herculaneum and a few from Pompeii—the bronze exhibition consisting mostly of household utensils and affording an admirable insight into the domestic life of antiquity. The museum also contains a gallery with many beautiful and masterful pictures and also an unrivalled collection of vases.
"Later in the day I visited the Aquarium, which was very interesting, although not so large as the one in Honolulu. The sea life it contains is of a different species, being from other waters, but there are not so many varieties as in Hawaii.
"The shops, streets, and tenement sections of Naples are unique. Noise, congestion and colour are their most predominant features. Every man who is not a priest is engaged in ravenously devouring a greasy string of macaroni, while the women are shouting inhuman shrieks in the effort to sell a bottle of red wine."
The feeling of loneliness, which seizes us all at one time or another, is probably more acute, when—travelling alone—one enters a large city in a foreign land where he doesn't understand the language and doesn't know a single soul. Especially is this the case when the traveller is making his way on a sum which is so small that rigid economy has to be practised every minute of the day.
Never was I more impressed with this feeling of loneliness than when I arrived in Rome at midnight. It is a simple thing for the opulent traveller to alight from his first-class train and take a carriage to the leading hotel, but it is a very different matter for the lone and coin-depleted tramp to find board and lodging commensurate with his meagre funds and, especially so, during the middle of the night. The greatness of Rome, its magnificent history and its position in the world to-day made me feel as insignificant as when one gazes into the heavens on a moonless night and beholds the stars. I swung off a third-class coach, made my way through the crowds in the station, elbowed the hotel hawkers aside and reached a street corner, where I stood for a moment's reflection. I might as well have been in a jungle so far as knowing where to go next. I finally set out in search of an hotel, and for two hours I hunted in vain. I inquired for a room at every establishment over the door of which was printed the word "portier." My hotel in Naples had displayed this sign and I concluded that all places with such a label were hotels. Working under this delusion I canvassed every building which bore the inscription. No one would take me in and I couldn't make any one understand me. I began to wonder if there was something about my appearance which made me an outcast and caused the portiers to regard me with suspicion. Some of the supposed hotel-keepers laughed at me, others nearly threw me out, while still others seemed to regard me with pity. I became discouraged. It was now two o'clock in the morning. Was I to pace streets all night, luggage in hand, in search of a place to sleep? Tired and disgusted I decided to retire in the first vacant lot I came to, if Rome had such things. Presently I came across a large open space which appeared in the darkness to be some sort of an ancient excavation or ruin. This was good enough, I thought, and I scrambled down the decomposed steps and in a few minutes was sound asleep in a secluded corner of this deserted square.
The Temple of Theseus
I awakened early to recognise that my bedroom was no less than the Roman Forum. A smile rippled over my unshaven face and my thoughts were shifted years back to the time when I studied in school of the ruined Roman Forum and how at that time I little realised that the day was coming when I would wake up, like a tramp, and find myself surrounded by its huge and stately old columns.
I explored the venerable place at once and, although it was six o'clock in the morning and I had not eaten, I opened my Baedeker and spent two hours reading and becoming familiar with this ancient seat of oratory and modern domicile for hoboes.