Chapter 26 Summary

Mark Twain introduces Rome with a reverse monologue, playing the part of a Roman visiting America for the first time. As the Roman, Twain imagines the awe and modernness of America as compared to the antiquity of Rome. Rome has its beauty, though the city depends on its own history to hold that beauty. This is a land that is not run by the church, where everyone can attend school, where women dress for fashion and not for need. This style of living has no place in Rome.

The church of St. Peter is the first site to see in Rome. Twain comments that, from the outside, the church is neither large nor beautiful. Upon entering, however, he has to stop to absorb the vastness of it. Inside the church was so immense, Mark Twain has nothing in his own brain that he...