said, that the Italian Government wasn’t ashamed of having such a lot of them.  They might be picturesque, but they weren’t creditable; they gave you the impression that the country was on the down grade.  “You needn’t call my attention to any more of them, Augusta,” he added; “but if you see any building that looks like progress, now, anything that gives you the idea of modern improvements inside, I shouldn’t like to miss it.”  And he returned to the thirty-second page of the Sunday New York World.

“I sometimes wish,” said momma, “that I were not the only person in this family with the artistic temperament.”

Sometimes we stopped at the little yellow towns and saw quite closely their queer old defences and belfrys and clock towers, and guessed at the pomegranates and oleanders behind their high courtyard walls.  They had musical names, even in the mouths of the railway guards, who sang every one of them with a high note and a full octave on the syllable of stress—­“Rosign_a_no!” “Car_m_iglia!” The Senator was fascinated with the spectacle of a railway guard who could express himself intelligibly, to say nothing of the charm; he spoke of introducing the system in the United States, but we tried it on “New York,” “Washington,” “Kansas City,” and it didn’t seem the same.

It was at Orbatello, I think, that we made the travelling acquaintance of the enterprising little gentleman to whom momma still mysteriously alludes as “il capitano.”  He bowed ceremoniously as he entered the carriage and stowed the inevitable enormous valise in the rack, and his eye brightened intelligently as he saw we were a family of American tourists.  He wore a rather seamy black uniform and a soft felt hat with cocks’ feathers drooping over it, and a sword and a ridiculously amiable expression for a man.  I don’t think he was five feet high, but his moustache and his feathers and his sword were out of all proportion.  There was a gentle trustful exuberance about him which suggested that, although it was possibly twenty-five years since he was born, his age was much less than that.  He twirled his moustache in voluble silence for ten minutes while we all furtively scrutinised him with the curiosity inspired by a foreigner of any size, and then with a smile of conscious sweetness he asked the Senator if he might take the liberty to give the trouble to see the English newspaper for a few seconds only.  “I should be too thankful,” he added.

“Why certainly,” said poppa, much gratified.  “I see you spikkum English,” he added encouragingly.

“I speak—­um, si.  I have learned some—­a few of them.  But O very baddili I speak them!”

“I guess that’s just your modesty,” said poppa kindly.  “But that’s not an English paper, you know—­it’s published in New York.”

“Ah!” he exclaimed with enthusiasm.  “That will be much much the more pleasurable for me.”  His eyes shone with feeling.  “In Italy,” he added with an impulsive gesture, “we love the American peoples beyond the Londonian.  We always remember that it was an Italian, Cristoforo Col——­”