have read some of its defenders, and consider _(entre nous)_ that they
have made out a pretty strong case. But I am not in the mood for
discussing their proposition--not just now.

Here at San Gervasio I prefer to think only of the Roman singer, so
sanely jovial, and of these waters as they flowed, limpid and cool, in
the days when they fired his boyish fancy. Deliberately I refuse to hear
the charmer Boissier. Deliberately, moreover, I shut my eyes to the
present condition of affairs; to the herd of squabbling laundresses and
those other incongruities that spoil the antique scene. Why not? The
timid alone are scared by microscopic discords of time and place. The
sage can invest this prosaic water-trough with all its pristine dignity
and romance by an unfailing expedient. He closes an eye. It is an art he
learns early in life; a simple art, and one that greatly conduces to
happiness. The ever alert, the conscientiously wakeful--how many fine
things they fail to see! Horace knew the wisdom of being genially
unwise; of closing betimes an eye, or an ear; or both. _Desipere in
loco. . . ._




VIII

TILLERS OF THE SOIL


I remember watching an old man stubbornly digging a field by himself. He
toiled through the flaming hours, and what he lacked in strength was
made up in the craftiness, _malizia,_ born of long love of the soil. The