There is probably a moral to be extracted from all this. But
frankly my ethics are so mixed that I fail to see where the blame
lies, and which is the less worthy individual, the ostentatious
axe-grinding host or the interested guest. One thing, however, I
see clearly, viz., that life is very agreeable to him who starts in
with few prejudices, good manners, a large amount of well-concealed
"cheek" and the happy faculty of taking things as they come.
CHAPTER 36 - American Society in Italy
THE phrase at the head of this chapter and other sentences, such as
"American Society in Paris," or London, are constantly on the lips
of people who should know better. In reality these societies do
not exist. Does my reader pause, wondering if he can believe his
eyes? He has doubtless heard all his life of these delightful
circles, and believes in them. He may even have dined, EN PASSANT,
at the "palace" of some resident compatriot in Rome or Florence,
under the impression that he was within its mystic limits.
Illusion! An effect of mirage, making that which appears quite
tangible and solid when viewed from a distance dissolve into thin
air as one approaches; like the mirage, cheating the weary
traveller with a vision of what he most longs for.
Forty, even fifty years ago, there lived in Rome a group of very
agreeable people; Story and the two Greenoughs and Crawford, the
sculptor (father of the brilliant novelist of today); Charlotte
Cushman (who divided her time between Rome and Newport), and her
friend Miss Stebbins, the sculptress, to whose hands we owe the
bronze fountain on the Mall in our Park; Rogers, then working at
the bronze doors of our capitol, and many other cultivated and
agreeable people.
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