little Italy together, she touched it with the exquisite politeness of her
race, and it became for the instant a lordly mansion, standing on the
Chiaja, or the Via Nuovissima, or the Canalazzo.

I say this woman seemed glad to be greeted in Italian, but not, so far as
I could see, surprised; and altogether the most amazing thing about my
doorstep acquaintance of her nation is, that they are never surprised to
be spoken to in their own tongue, or, if they are, never show it. A
chestnut-roaster, who has sold me twice the chestnuts the same money would
have bought of him in English, has not otherwise recognized the fact that
Tuscan is not the dialect of Charlesbridge, and the mortifying nonchalance
with which my advances have always been received has long since persuaded
me that to the grinder at the gate it is not remarkable that a man should
open the door of his wooden house on Benicia Street, and welcome him in
his native language. After the first shock of this indifference is past,
it is not to be questioned but it flatters with an illusion, which a stare
of amazement would forbid, reducing the encounter to a vulgar reality at
once, and I could almost believe it in those wily and amiable folk to
intend the sweeter effect of their unconcern, which tacitly implies that
there is no other tongue in the world but Italian, and which makes all the
earth and air Italian for the time. Nothing else could have been the
purpose of that image-dealer whom I saw on a summer's day lying at the
foot of one of our meeting-houses, and doing his best to make it a
cathedral, and really giving a sentiment of medieval art to the noble
sculptures of the facade which the carpenters had just nailed up, freshly
painted and newly repaired. This poet was stretched upon his back, eating,
in that convenient posture, his dinner out of an earthen pot, plucking the
viand from it, whatever it was, with his thumb and fore-finger, and
dropping it piecemeal into his mouth. When the passer asked him "Where are
you from?" he held a morsel in air long enough to answer "Da Lucca,