Well, it wuz vain to enjoy deep emotions in the face of such practicality. I put up my handkerchief and moved off into another room.
Besides pictures, these galleries contain rare gems of art in bronze, crystal, precious stones, coins, arms, helmets, etc., etc. Enough as I say to keep one’s mind rousted up and busy for years and years.
Dorothy said she couldn’t leave Florence without seeing the house where Elizabeth Barrett Browning lived and writ her immortal poems and I felt jest so; I felt that I must see the place sanctified by her pure spirit and genius. So Robert Strong got a carriage and took Dorothy and me there one fine afternoon. A plate let into the front of the house tells where she lived in body. But in sperit she inhabited the hull world, and duz now. Her home is in the hearts of all who love pure and exalted poetry.
Here she lived her happy life as the wife of Robert Browning and mother of her boy. Here she passed on up to the higher school, for which she had prepared her sweet soul below, graduated in the earth school and promoted up to the higher one above.
I had a sight of emotions here and Robert and Dorothy quoted from her all the way back to our tarven, and so I did. I thought more of such poems as “Mother and Poet,” and “The Sleep,” etc. But they quoted a sight from “Geraldine’s Courtship” and “Portuguese Songs,” for so every heart selects its own nutriment. Their young hearts translated it into glowing language I mistrusted, though I didn’t say nothin’.
From Florence we went to Rome. I had read a sight about Rome and how she sot on her seven hills and from her throne of glory ruled the world. But them hills are lowered down a good deal by the hand of Time, just as Rome’s glory is; she don’t rule the world now, fur from it.
There is in reality ten hills, but the ruins of old Rome––the Rome of Julius Cæsar––has filled in the hollers a good deal and the new city has grown old agin, as cities must, and I, and Josiah, and everybody and everything.
Robert Strong had writ ahead and got us some comfortable rooms in a tarven on the Corso. When Robert Strong first spoke on’t Josiah looked agitated. He thought it wuz a buryin’ ground. But it didn’t have anything to do with a corse.
The Corso is one of the finest streets in Rome, and handsome shops are on each side on’t, and carriages and folks in fine array and them not so fine are seen there. Most all of the big crowd wuz dressed as they do in Jonesville and Paris and London, though occasionally we met Italians in picturesque costooms.