—­[From the note-book: 
“Bay—­When the waiter brought my breakfast this morning I spoke to him in
Italian. 
“Mama—­What did you say? 
“B.—­I said, ‘Polly-vo fransay.’ 
“M.—­What does it mean? 
“B.—­I don’t know.  What does it mean, Susy? 
“S.—­It means, ’Polly wants a cracker.”]

Clemens discovered that in twelve years his attitude had changed somewhat concerning the old masters.  He no longer found the bright, new copies an improvement on the originals, though the originals still failed to wake his enthusiasm.  Mrs. Clemens and Miss Spaulding spent long hours wandering down avenues of art, accompanied by him on occasion, though not always willingly.  He wrote his sorrow to Twichell: 

I do wish you were in Rome to do my sight-seeing for me.  Rome interests me as much as East Hartford could, and no more; that is, the Rome which the average tourist feels an interest in.  There are other things here which stir me enough to make life worth living.  Livy and Clara are having a royal time worshiping the old masters, and I as good a time gritting my ineffectual teeth over them.

Once when Sarah Orne Jewett was with the party he remarked that if the old masters had labeled their fruit one wouldn’t be so likely to mistake pears for turnips.

“Youth,” said Mrs. Clemens, gravely, “if you do not care for these masterpieces yourself, you might at least consider the feelings of others”; and Miss Jewett, regarding him severely, added, in her quaint Yankee fashion: 

“Now, you’ve been spoke to!”

He felt duly reprimanded, but his taste did not materially reform.  He realized that he was no longer in a proper frame of mind to write of general sight-seeing.  One must be eager, verdant, to write happily the story of travel.  Replying to a letter from Howells on the subject he said: 

I wish I could give those sharp satires on European life which you mention, but of course a man can’t write successful satire except he be in a calm, judicial good-humor; whereas I hate travel, and I hate hotels, and I hate the opera, and I hate the old masters.  In truth I don’t ever seem to be in a good enough humor with anything to satirize it.  No, I want to stand up before it and curse it and foam at the mouth, or take a club and pound it to rags and pulp.  I have got in two or three chapters about Wagner’s operas, and managed to do it without showing temper, but the strain of another such effort would burst me.

Clemens became his own courier for a time in Italy, and would seem to have made more of a success of it than he did a good many years afterward, if we may believe the story he has left us of his later attempt: 

“Am a shining success as a courier,” he records, “by the use of francs.  Have learned how to handle the railway guide intelligently and with confidence.”