“Said Sciatti was suddenly harvested (gathered in?) by several citizens, who by means of public cab No. 365 transported to St. John of God.”

Paragraph No. 3 is a little obscure, but I think it says that the medico set the broken left leg—­right enough, since there was nothing the matter with the other one—­and that several are encouraged to hope that fifty days well fetch him around in quite giudicandolo-guaribile way, if no complications intervene.

I am sure I hope so myself.

There is a great and peculiar charm about reading news-scraps in a language which you are not acquainted with—­the charm that always goes with the mysterious and the uncertain.  You can never be absolutely sure of the meaning of anything you read in such circumstances; you are chasing an alert and gamy riddle all the time, and the baffling turns and dodges of the prey make the life of the hunt.  A dictionary would spoil it.  Sometimes a single word of doubtful purport will cast a veil of dreamy and golden uncertainty over a whole paragraph of cold and practical certainties, and leave steeped in a haunting and adorable mystery an incident which had been vulgar and commonplace but for that benefaction.  Would you be wise to draw a dictionary on that gracious word? would you be properly grateful?

After a couple of days’ rest I now come back to my subject and seek a case in point.  I find it without trouble, in the morning paper; a cablegram from Chicago and Indiana by way of Paris.  All the words save one are guessable by a person ignorant of Italian: 

Revolverate in teatro

PARIGI, 27.—­La Patrie ha da Chicago: 

Il guardiano del teatro dell’opera di Walace (Indiana), avendo voluto espellare uno spettatore che continuava a fumare malgrado il diviety, questo spalleggiato dai suoi amici tir`o diversi colpi di rivoltella.  Il guardiano ripose.  Nacque una scarica generale.  Grande panico tra gli spettatori.  Nessun ferito.

Translation.—­“Revolveration in Theater.  Paris, 27th.  La Patrie has from Chicago:  The cop of the theater of the opera of Wallace, Indiana, had willed to expel a spectator which continued to smoke in spite of the prohibition, who, spalleggiato by his friends, tire (Fr. Tire, Anglice pulled) manifold revolver-shots; great panic among the spectators.  Nobody hurt.”

It is bettable that that harmless cataclysm in the theater of the opera of Wallace, Indiana, excited not a person in Europe but me, and so came near to not being worth cabling to Florence by way of France.  But it does excite me.  It excites me because I cannot make out, for sure, what it was that moved the spectator to resist the officer.  I was gliding along smoothly and without obstruction or accident, until I came to that word “spalleggiato,” then the bottom fell out.  You notice what a rich