“‘No chilling winds, no poisonous breath
Can reach that healthful shore!’”
“Heavens and earth, man! That is just where I don’t want her to go yet! Nor for many a long year!”
The laugh I could not suppress helped to warm and brighten us all. Do any of us suspect how much we owe to the funny side of life?
Thus began my Roman winter. With “domano” came the sunshine and the carpet, and the first of the hundred drives in and about the storied city, that were to bring healing and vigor, such as even my optimistic husband had scarcely dared to anticipate. That I am alive upon this wonderful, beautiful earth at this good hour, I owe, under God, to those divine four months among the Seven Hills. Doctor Terhune had received the appointment to the Chaplaincy of the American Chapel in Rome before we left Paris. He decided to accept it within a week after our arrival in the Eternal City. It was a cosey corner for pastor and flock—that little church in Piazza Poli, belonging to an Italian Protestant corporation, and occupied by them for half of each Sunday, by American tourists and transient residents of Rome for the other half. All my memories of the wonderful and bewitching winter are happy. None have a gentler charm than those which renew the scenes of quiet Sunday forenoons when visitors from the dear home-land, who had never before looked upon the faces of their fellow-worshippers, gathered by common consent in the place “where prayer was wont to be made” in their own tongue. There were no strangers in the assembly that lingered in the tiny vestibule and blocked the aisle when the service was over. The spirit of mutual helpfulness spoke in eye and speech. It should not have been considered singular that those thus convened were, almost without exception, refined and educated, and so unlike the commonly accepted type of travelling American, that we often commented upon the fact in conferences with familiar friends. We felicitated ourselves that we caught the cream of the flow of tourists, that season.
“It is a breath of the dear old home-life!” said more than one attendant upon the simple services, where the congregation was kaleidoscopic in outward seeming, the same in spirit.
I cannot pass over this period of our foreign life without a tribute to one whose friendship and able co-operation in the work laid to Doctor Terhune’s hand, did more than any other one influence to make for him a home in Rome. Dr. Leroy M. Vernon, who subsequently became Dean of the University of Syracuse, in New York State, was the rarest combination of strength and gentleness I have ever seen. He had been for some years resident in Rome; was an enthusiastic archæologist and art-student, speaking Italian with fluency and grace, and thoroughly au fait to the best literature of that tongue. From the beginning of their acquaintanceship, the two men fraternized heartily. In the ripening of liking into intimacy, they walked, rode, talked, and studied together. What the association was to the younger of the two, may be imagined by one who has had the privilege of close communion with a beloved comrade who held the key to the treasure-house one has longed all his life to enter.
“The winter in Italy with Vernon was worth more to me than a course in the Academy of Fine Arts, combined with ten years of archæological lectures from experts,” was the testimony of the survivor, twenty years later, when the news of the dean’s death was brought to us.
They loved each other tenderly to the end of mortal companionship.
Who can doubt that it has been renewed in the City where eager minds are never checked by physical weakness, and aspiration is identical with fulfilment?