“Are you traveling on business, Mr. Sanderson?” asked Bernard.
“No; I’ve been pretty lucky, and put by a considerable pile, and my friends told me I ought to see Europe. So I left my business in the hands of my brother, and came over last March.”
“Are you enjoying it?”
“Well, middling well! I can’t get used to their cookery. Why, I haven’t seen a doughnut or eaten a plate of pork and beans since I left America.”
“I never ate a doughnut in my life,” said Walter Cunningham.
“Then you’ve missed a great deal. I reckon Bernard knows how they taste.”
“Oh, I have eaten a great many.”
“The fact is, there’s no country where you can get such good living as in America,” said Amos Sanderson, with patriotic complacency.
Mr. Cunningham smiled, but did not dispute the statement. It is doubtful, however, whether he would have agreed with the man from Nebraska.
Mr. Cunningham was not sorry that he had permitted Amos Sanderson to join his party. The American was singularly ignorant as regards the antiquities of Italy, but he had a shrewd common sense, and his quaint remarks were unintentionally humorous. He always spoke from the point of view of a Western American.
Scattered along the route, or a little distance from it, were the ruins of ancient or medieval buildings, churches, temples, monasteries, and other edifices. Many of these had historical associations. These were quite unknown to Mr. Sanderson, and even where they were explained to him he was not much interested.
“It isn’t creditable to Italy,” he said one day, “to have so many ruined buildings. They’d ought to be repaired when they’re worth it, and when they’re not the best way would be to pull ‘em down.”
“But, my dear sir,” said Walter Cunningham, “it would be a great loss to Italy if your advice were followed. Most travelers come here on purpose to see the ruins.”
“Then I don’t admire their taste.”
“And naturally they bring a great deal of money into Italy. If the ruins were repaired or pulled down they wouldn’t come, and the people would lose a good deal of their income.”
“That’s practical. That’s what I understand. But it seems foolish, after all. When Chicago burned down, a number of years ago, suppose they kept the ruins instead of building up again, everybody would have laughed at them.”
“There were no associations connected with the burned buildings of Chicago.”
“What’s associations, any way? They won’t pay your butcher’s bill.”
“Surely, Mr. Sanderson, if you could see the house once occupied by Julius C?sar, for instance, you would be interested?”
“I don’t know that I would. C?sar’s dead and gone, and I don’t believe any way that he was as great a man as General Jackson.”
“I see, Mr. Sanderson, you are hopelessly practical.”
“Yes, I’m practical, and I’m proud of it. There’s some folks that can write poetry, and leave their families to starve, because they can’t earn an honest penny. Why, I knew a man once named John L. Simpkins that could write poetry by the yard. He often writ poems for the Omaha papers, and never got a red cent for it. His folks had to support him, though he was strong and able to work.”
“I shouldn’t have much respect for a poet like that.”
“Nor I. He had a brother, Ephraim Simpkins, that kept a grocery store, and was forehanded. John fell in love with a girl and used to write poetry to her. Everybody thought she’d marry him. But when she found that he didn’t earn more’n three dollars a week she up and married his brother, the grocer, and that showed her to be a girl of sense.” When the travelers reached Ceprano, Mr. Cunningham suggested making an excursion to Isota and Arpino.
“At Isota,” he said, “we shall see the falls of the Liris, and at Arpino we shall see the site of Cicero’s villa.”
“Who was Cicero?” asked Amos Sanderson.
“Surely you must have heard of Cicero?” said Walter Cunningham, in surprise.
“Well, mebbe I have. What did he do?”
“He was a great orator.”
“Did he go to Congress?”
“There was no Congress in Rome. However, he was a consul—that is, one of the two rulers or presidents of Rome.”
“I’ll bet he couldn’t talk as well as Joseph L. Higgins, of Omaha. Why, that man can get up in a meeting and talk you deaf, dumb, and blind. The words will flow like a cataract.”
“I don’t think Cicero could talk like that,” said Bernard, smiling, “but I have read some of his orations, and they were very eloquent.”
“I’d like to match Joseph L. Higgins against him. I’d like to hear a specimen of Cicero’s speeches and judge for myself.”
“Here is a specimen,” said Bernard—“the beginning of his speech against Catiline: ‘Quousque tandem abntere Catilina patientia nostra.’”
“Why, that’s nothing but gibberish,” said Amos, in great disgust. “If Joseph L. Higgins should talk like that the people would fire bad eggs at him.”
“I hope you don’t object to visiting Cicero’s villa, Mr. Sanderson?”
“Oh, no, I’m ready to go wherever you and Bernard do. I suppose I must do the same as other people.”
“Your minister at home will be very much interested when you tell him you have visited the house where Cicero lived.”
“Do you think he ever heard of Cicero?”
“Oh, yes, all educated men have heard of him.”
“Then, I’ll take particular notice of it, and describe it to him.”
When they reached Cicero’s villa, however, Mr. Sanderson was not favorably impressed by it.
“For a president of Rome,” he said, “Cicero didn’t live very well. Why, for twenty-five dollars month he could get a house in Omaha with all the modern conveniences that would beat this by a long shot.”.
“They didn’t have modern conveniences at that time, Mr. Sanderson.”
“Then, I’m glad I didn’t live in them days. Give me the solid comfort of an Omaha house rather than all these marble pillars and ancient fandangos.”
“I am inclined to agree with you there, Mr. Sanderson,” said the young Englishman, laughing. “I enjoy seeing the remains of ancient edifices, but I think myself I should rather live in a nice English or American house.”
“From all I can see,” continued the American, “I’d rather be an alderman in Omaha than the biggest man in old Rome. Did they speak English?”
“No; English was not known.”
“How did they talk, then?”
“You haven’t forgotten the few words Bernard recited from one of Cicero’s orations?”
“No.”
“That was Latin, the language that was spoken at that time.”
“It’s the most foolish kind of gibberish I ever heard. There ain’t no language like English.”
“I prefer it myself to any other.”
“I should say so. I heard two Frenchmen jabbering the other day, shrugging their shoulders and waving their arms like windmills. It seemed awfully foolish.”
“They think their language much finer than English.”
“Then, they must be fools,” said Amos Sanderson scornfully. “Why, it made me think of monkeys, by hokey, it did!”
“Where did you receive your education, Mr. Sanderson?” asked Cunningham curiously.
“I went to a deestrict school till I was eleven. Then my father died, and I had to hustle. Didn’t have any time to study after that.”
“That’s the way most of your great men began, Mr. Sanderson.”
“I expect they did. Education isn’t everything. Why, the boy that stood at the head of my class is a clerk at fifteen dollars a week, while I have an income of fifteen thousand. He’s got a lot of book knowledge, but it hasn’t done him much good.”
This conversation will give some idea of the American’s peculiar ways of regarding everything foreign to his own experience. He could not like the Italian ruins, and this was not surprising. The inns on the route which they had selected were uncommonly poor, and the cookery was such as might have been expected from the comfortless surroundings.
One morning, however, Bernard and Mr. Cunningham were agreeably surprised by an excellent dish of ham and eggs.
“Really,” said Cunningham. “This seems something like what we get in England.”
“Or in America,” suggested Amos.
“Yes, or in America.”
“They must have an unusually good cook in this inn.”
“Thank you, squire,” said Sanderson, who seemed very much amused at something. “You do me proud.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that I cooked the breakfast.”
“You!” exclaimed Cunningham and Bernard, in concert.
“Yes; I went out into the kitchen and scraped acquaintance with one of the understrappers who knows a little English, and I offered a piaster for the privilege of cooking the ham and eggs. They accepted the offer, and gave me what I needed. So here you see the result.”
“We missed you during the last half hour, but had no idea you were getting our breakfast Really, Mr. Sanderson, you have quite a genius for cookery.”
“I guess I could make a good living as a cook if I had to. Any way, if I couldn’t cook better than them furriners I’d be ashamed of myself.”
“I hope this isn’t the last time we are indebted to your skill.”
“Well, I don’t think I’d be willing to do it regular. It would be too much like work.”
Apart from the poor hotels the travelers enjoyed their leisurely journey. Sometimes they proceeded only fifteen miles a day. The trip was pleasant, but not exciting. The excitement was to come.