repose there for several months.

The following sketches correctly describe his Roman life.


ARRIVAL IN ROME.

It was on an Autumn night that the traveling carriage in which sat James
Caper arrived in Rome; and as he drove through that fine street, the
Corso, he saw coming towards him a two-horse open carriage, filled with
Roman girls of the working class (_minenti_). Dressed in their
picturesque costumes, bonnetless, their black hair tressed with flowers,
they stood up, waving torches, and singing in full voice one of those
songs in which you can go but few feet, metrically speaking, without
meeting _amore_. And then another and another carriage, with flashing
torches and sparkling-eyed girls. It was one of the turnouts of the
_minenti_; they had been to Monte Testaccio, had drank all the wine they
could pay for; and, with a prudence our friend Caper could not
sufficiently admire, he noticed that the women were in separate
carriages from the men. It was the Feast Day of Saint Crispin, and all
the cobblers, or artists in leather, as they call themselves, were
keeping it up bravely.

'Eight days to make a pair of shoes?' he once asked a shoemaker. 'Si,
Signore, there are three holidays in that time.' Argument unanswerable.

As the carriages rolled by, Caper determined to observe the festivals.

The next day our artist entered his name in his banker's register, and
had the horror of seeing it mangled to 'Jams Scraper' in the list of