“There are other friends I must tell you about. At No. 38 Gregoriana, in a delightfully home-like apartment with a view of St. Peter’s, live Miss Leigh Smith and her friend Miss Blyth. The former is a sister of Madame Bodichon, who was such an admirable artist, and is of a most serene, noble, and beautiful countenance, but perhaps severe: the latter is gentleness and sweetness itself, though she is less striking in appearance. Every one likes them both, but every one loves Miss Blyth. They are known as ‘Justitia’ and ‘Misericordia.’
“Another person of interest, another American, who has come to Rome to visit Miss Hosmer, is Mrs. Powers. She is charming. She said this to me to-day: ‘I took a young lady with me on a Mississippi steamer. She was very pretty and attractive. On the deck she sat by an old lady, who looked at her and ejaculated “Married?”—“No.” “Engaged?”—“No.” Just then her husband came up, and she said to him, “Here’s a young lady who says she’s not married and not engaged: how’s that?” He looked her all over and said, “Guess the pattern don’t take.”’
“And now, that you may be introduced to all my present society, Miss Hosmer is going to give you one of her dinner enliveners. ‘An American came in one day with, “Have you heard this extraordinary news from England?”—“No; what?”—“Why, about the Archbishop of Canterbury.”—“No; what about him?” “Why, about his having refused to bury a waiter at the Langham Hotel.”—“No; what a proud contemptuous priest he must be; but what possible reason could he give for refusing to bury the waiter?”—“Why, that he was not dead.”
“‘That’s a good catch,’ says Miss Hosmer, who is talking to you; ‘and now I’ll give you another. A young man—a very charming young man—was engaged to be married, and he went down from London for the wedding to the place where his bride lived, full of the brightest hopes and expectations, and in his pocket he carried the ring with which he was going to marry his love. But alas! when he reached his destination, his love had changed her mind, thought better of it, would not marry him at all. So he came away very miserable, and he thought he would go and hide his sorrows in a little fishing-village, where he had often been in happier days; he really could not face the world yet. And as soon as he arrived at the village, he went out in a boat, and took the ring from his pocket, and threw it far out to sea. Next day a remarkably fine fish was brought to table, and when it was opened, what do you think they found?—“Why, the ring,” of course you will say, as I did—No, a fishbone.’ A most provoking story!
“There are two Misses Feuchtwanger in the hotel, kindest of elderly American ladies, full of funny reminiscence. ‘Mrs. Broadhurst,’ said one of them, ‘liked nothing so much as going to dine with her old “Black Mammy;” it was the thing she liked best: and so, through a long course of years, she heard Black Mammy’s old husband say grace, and the words he used were always the same. “Beautiful mansions, we thee redorable, many sensations, Amen.” The sound meant a whole world to him.’
“But I shall send you too much anecdotage, so good-night.”
To the Hon. G. H. Jolliffe and Journal.
“Rome, April 27.—All the features of this Roman spring have been American. Mrs. Lee was in this hotel. ‘I was just raised in the South,’ she said, ‘and I’m a Southerner to the backbone. Some one wanted to be complimentary, and wrote of me in a newspaper as one raised in the lap of luxury, but I was just raised in the lap of an old nigger.’ She was very full of having been to the masquerade ball at La Scala. ‘It was awfully indecent. I could not have let my daughter go, but for me it did not matter; so I just went, and stayed to the end, for I thought some one might come along and say, “Ah! you don’t know about that, because it happened after you left,” so I thought I’d just see what was indecent for once; it might be my only chance; and I made quite sure nothing should happen after I left.’
“‘Don’t you know,’ she says, ‘that we call a story we have heard before “a chestnut”? Why, in America the smart young men used to wear a little bell on their watch-chains, and if they heard a story too often, they rung it to show the story was stale. That was the chestnut-bell.’
“Perhaps the most interesting American here is the Bishop of Nova Scotia. ‘“I’ve captured a church,” said a young American parson to me. “Captured a church! what in the world do you mean?”—“Why, I went into a church where the boys (soldiers) go, and I was asked to take the service. Soon the boys came in, and I saw that there was going to be a row. A lot of them sat down by the door, and as soon as I began to preach, one of them crowed like a cock. I said, ‘Just crow again, will you; I’m not ready for you yet.’ So he crowed again. Then I said, ‘Now, if you crow again, I’ll just fix up your beak to the anvil of God’s righteousness, and I’ll beat out your brains with the sledge-hammer of the wrath of God. Now, crow again, if you dare,’ and he did not crow any more, so I captured the church.”