‘Now that we have finished dinner,’ spoke Rocjean, ’we will smoke:  then to the Caffe or Cafe Greco and have our cup of black coffee.’

AMERICA IN ROME.

It may be a good thing to have the conceit taken out of us—­but not by the corkscrew of ignorance; the operation is too painful.  Caper, proud of his country, and believing her in the front rank of nations, was destined to learn, while in Rome and the Papal States, that America was geographically unknown.

He consoled himself for this with the fact that geography is not taught in the ‘Elementary Schools’ there;—­and for the people there are no others.

The following translation of a notice advertising for a schoolmaster, copied from the walls of a palace where it was posted, shows the sum total taught in the common schools:—­

The duties of the Master are to teach Reading, Writing, the First Four Rules of Arithmetic; to observe the duties prescribed in the law ‘Quod divina sapientia;’ and to be subject to the biennial committee like other salaried officers of the department; as an equivalent for which he shall enjoy (godra) an annual salary of $60, payable in monthly shares.

    (Signed)

    IL GONFALONIERE ——­ ——.

But what can you expect when one of the rulers of the land asserted to Caper that he knew that ’pop-corn grew in America on the banks of the Nile, after the water went down,—­for it never rains in America’?

It was a handsome man, an advocate for Prince Doria, who, once traveling in a vetturo with Caper, asked him why he did not go to America by land, since he knew that it was in the south of England; and gently corrected a companion of his, who told Caper he had read and thought it strange that all Americans lived in holes in the ground, by saying to him that if such houses were agreeable to the Signori Americani they had every right to inhabit them.

The landlord of a hotel in a town about thirty miles from Rome asked Caper if, when he returned to New York, he would not some morning call and see his cousin—­in Peru!

This same landlord once drew his knife on a man, when, accompanied by Caper, he went to observe a saint’s day in a neighboring town.  The cause of the quarrel was this—­the landlord, having been asked by a man who Caper was, told him he was an American.  The man asserted that Americans always wore long feathers in their hair, and that he did not see any on Caper’s head.  The landlord, determined to stand by Caper, swore by all the saints that they were under his hat.  The man disbelieved it.  Out came the ‘hardware’ with that jarring cr-r-r-rick the blade makes when the notched knife-back catches in the spring, but Caper jumped between them, and they put off stabbing one another—­until the next saint’s day.

It was with pleasure that Caper, passing down the Corso one morning, saw there was an Universal Panorama, including views of America, advertised to be exhibited in the Piazza Colonna.  ‘Here is an opportunity,’ thought he, ’for the Romans to acquire some knowledge of a land touching which they are very much at sea.  The views undoubtedly will do for them what the tabooed geographies are not allowed to do—­give them a little education to slow music.’