I could find no reading-room; no recent newspapers except The Natchez Free Trader, which has nothing but cotton and river news and steamboat puffs; no magazines but aged Harpers; and no recent publications of any sort are for sale or to be seen at the booksellers’; so, after supper, I went to the bluff again, and found it most solemnly beautiful; the young moon shining through rents in the clouds: the great gleaming crescent of water; the dim, ungapped horizon; the earth sensibly a mere swinging globe.
Of all the town, only five Germans, sitting together, but smoking in silence, had gathered for this evening worship.
As I returned up the main street, I stopped opposite a house from which there came the sound of excellent music—a violin and piano. I had heard no music since I was in Western Texas, and I leaned upon a lamp-post for an hour, listening. Many stopped near me for a few minutes, and went on. At length, a man who had remained some time, addressed me, speaking in a foreign tongue. “Can’t you speak English?” said I.
“You are not an American?”
“Yes.”
“I should tzink it not.”
“I am; I am a New Yorker.”
“So?—O yes, perhaps, but not zis country.”
“What are you?”
“Italian.”