“Do you recollect the pretty Miss Cators? With them and some pleasant Americans, and Lanciani the famous archaeologist, I have been up Monte Cavi. Lanciani was most delightful, and told us about everything in a way which had all the enthusiasm and colour without the dry bones of archaeology, and oh! what lilies, violets, cyclamen, narcissus, covered the woods. Another day he lectured on old Fidenae, standing aloft on the ancient citadel, with all his listeners in groups on the turf around him, and afterwards they all had luncheon—still in scattered groups: it was like the pictures of the miracle of the loaves and fishes.
“It has been a great pleasure to see a good deal of ‘Mark Twain’ (Mr. Samuel Clemens) and his most charming wife. He is a wiry, thin old man, with abundant grey hair, full round the head, like an Italian zazzara. He speaks very slowly, dragging his words and sentences laboriously, and is long in warming up, and when he does, he walks about the room whilst he makes all his utterances, which have additional drollery from the slowness with which they are given. He began life as a wharfinger, throwing parcels into barges, and as he threw them the overseer called out ‘Mark one, Mark twain,’ and the chime of the words struck him, and he took the name. Speaking of the Catacombs he said, ‘I might have hooked the bone of a saint and carried it off in my carpet-sack, but then I might get caught with it at the frontier. I should not like to get caught with a thing like that; I would rather it were something else.’ ‘That story by Symonds,’ he said, ‘of a crucifix which contained a dagger, reminds me of the State of Maine. Spirits were strictly forbidden there, but pocket-testaments became very abundant. They contained two or three leaves, then there was a whisky flask. Now with one of those crucifixes and one of these pocket-testaments, one might cope with the worst society in the world.’
“‘My man George has made his fortune,’ said Mark Twain. ‘He used to bet on revivals, then he took to betting on horses: he understands it all round, and he has made a good thing of it.
“‘One night when I came home unawares, I found the house-door open. After going in and poking round, I rang up George. “Well,” I said, “George, you’ve been here probably some hours with the house-door undone.”—“Good heavens!” he cried, striking his forehead, and rushed up the stairs five steps at a time. When he came down I said, “Why, George, what was the matter?”—“The matter! why, that the house-door was left open, and that there were fifteen hundred dollars between my mattresses.”’
“Mrs. Clemens spoke to George one day about his answering ‘Not at home’ when she did not want to see visitors. In England it is understood, but in quiet places in America it is not: it is a lie. And Mrs. Clemens said, ‘George, you really should not say what you know is not true; you should say I’m engaged or that I beg to be excused.’ George came close up to her and said, ‘Mrs. Clemens, if I did not lie, you’d not be able to keep house a month.’
“A rival to Mark Twain, or rather one who draws him out capitally, is an American Miss Page, a very handsome elderly woman like an ancient Juno. She said yesterday, ‘I must be going home soon to see all the coloured friends and relations. Aunt Maria was groaning very much one day, so I asked her if she had found religion. She said, “No, but she was on the anxious bench.” A few days after she had “found religion,” and I asked her about it. “Why,” she said, “I got religion, and when I found that I’d got religion, I just did make the chignots (chignons) fly. And so we did all; we danced so hard that Uncle Adam had to be sent right away the next day to bring them all home in a wheelbarrow.”
“‘My cousin was begged of by a woman one night,” said Miss Page. ‘She was very violent, and she said, “You must give me money, you shall, or I’ll say you’re Jack the Ripper.” He went close up to her, and in sepulchral accents whispered “I am!” and the woman ran off as hard as she could.’