“Owls!” she pronounced with an air of great satisfaction. “Indeed,” she owned with a little compunction, “I hope it isn’t very bad of me, but I can’t be serious at anything I see here. To-day I nearly had a fit over a fire-engine that passed our place. It was a little sort of handcart affair with four small wheels, and a box bottom that might hold half a barrel of water. A bar at each side supported seven painted tin pails, holding about two quarts each, and there was a small brass pump in the middle of the carriage. This machine was wheeled along by five men dressed in gray pantaloons with stripes down the sides, dark blue jackets, and blue caps with a gilt band. I presume they all go home and put on that costume after the bell rings, or whatever alarm they have is given. The arrangement was just about suited to put out a bundle of matches, only the engine would be too late. The matches would be burned before it got there. I wish they could hear our electric fire-alarm once, and see our beautiful engines come flying out of their houses before the first number was well struck.”
“I am proud of our fire-engines and companies,” the Signora said; “but they do not prevent our having conflagrations such as are never known here. The little thought given to fire-extinguishing here proves the little danger there is of
fires. In judging of what people do it is always well to take into consideration what is necessary to be done. One would hardly find fault with the Greenlanders for not having large ice-houses.”
“Their very scirocco disappointed me,” the young woman went on, unabashed. “I had the impression that it was a tearing high wind, like a blast out of a furnace. Instead of that, it is only a warm and unwholesome breath. How different from our sweet south winds at home!”
“Speaking of winds,” said Miss Josephine, “reminds me of the trumpet-bands. How wild and stirring they are! They make on me an impression as of mingled wind and fire.”
The Signora smiled on the gentle enthusiast.
“Then,” pursued Miss Warder, “the pokey, slow ways of these people, and their ceremonies, and their compliments, and their relics—” She stopped abruptly here, recollecting that she was in a Catholic household, and had the grace to blush slightly.
“A little more ceremony and politeness would do our people at home a great deal of good,” the Signora replied coldly. “As to the relics, it need not, I should think, surprise even an unbeliever that faith should preserve her mementos as jealously as art has preserved hers, and that objects which belonged once to beings who now are the companions of angels, and see God face to face, should have been held as precious as those which have nothing but a physical beauty. Or even if the relic should be of doubtful authenticity still a thing worthless in itself, but which has been touched by the sincere veneration of centuries, has a sort of venerableness
not to be mocked at. It is like the iron which has been touched by the lodestone, and so magnetized, or the dull gray mist kissed by sunbeams till it becomes beautiful and luminous. I do not know,” she added, smiling, “but you have all heard the story I am going to tell you apropos of false relics, but it was new to me when I heard it a few days ago from a clergyman. Many, many years ago a man who was going to the East was begged by a pious friend to bring him back a piece of the true cross. The voyager promised, but forgot his promise till he was near home. He did not wish to disappoint his friend; though, at the same time, he had no faith whatever in relics, or, indeed, in anything supernatural. So, after considering a while, he cut a tiny piece out of the mast of the ship in which he was returning homeward, enclosed it in a reliquary, and in due time presented it to his friend, who received it without a doubt, and, of course, told everybody what a treasure he had become owner of. The news, after awhile, reached the ears of a man possessed by a devil, and he immediately begged that the sacred relic might be brought to deliver him. The bit of the ship’s mast was, accordingly, brought with all ceremony and reverence, the devil in possession—who, of course, knew the trick that had been played—laughing, undoubtedly, at the efforts about to be made to drive him away. But when the necessary prayers had been said, no sooner did the supposed relic touch the possessed man than the devil felt himself thrust violently out and forced to fly. But he cried out in parting: ‘It is faith that drives me away, and not your chip of the old mast.’”
“That all answers perfectly, as far as the believers are concerned,” Mr. Vane said. “But I would like to know what became of that Eastern traveller.”