Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1871-05-27
NO. 1875.
HUNTING LODGINGS IN ROME.

There cant be many things in this world
50 bewildering as looking after lodgings
In Rome. In the first place. the door into
which You enter at the beginning looks
like the very dirty and neglected entrance
to some old warehouse on wharf, in q
city where there has not been any busi-
ness for a hundred years. You stand there
minute and say, .'Oh, dear" especial
y if You have already been up five or six
hundred steps that morning.) 81 do wish
they would tell on their cards how many
rooms there are.' Perhaps we shall find
somebody on the third floor who can tell
US. Not bit of it up flight after flight
you crawl on each floor is one great
grim iron door, with a ring and chain
hanging outside. You have no business
to pull the ring on any floor but the floor
with which your business is; and if you
did they wouldn't know anything about
. any floor but their own. Each floor is its
own house, as much as if it were six miles
off from any other floor. When you get
up to the one hundred and seventh stair
you would be so glad to sit down, but you
can't. They don't put either chairs or
benches in these grim passages; and the
stairs are all stone. You can't sit on them,
not if you are half dead; SO you lean up
against the wall and get your black cloak
all cobwebbed, while you wait for the
mysterious chain and ring which you have
pulled, to bring forth an answer. Then
the great door creaks and opens, and you
get breath enough to ask if they have
furnished rooms to let, and if there are
three bedrooms, with sun and fire. After
a little while you learn that it makes no
difference whether they have or have not
they always say, Isl. 81, Sgnora." Be-
fore you learn this, you go in quite gaily,
and think you are all right Then you see
one great bedroom with two beds, and
one little one, on neither of which the sun
has apparently ever shone; fine parlor,
with stands of artificial roses under high
glass-cases, no end of china teacups sit
ting around; usually about twenty fright
ful pictures on the walls; in the dining
room there is great display of glass and
china on the table; and the Padrone, if
he is at home, and the Padrona, and one
or two or three daughters, all down at the
heel and down at the neck, and huddled
up somehow with strings and pins in the
| middle, and looking like rag men and rag
| women, begin to talk all at once, with
their tongues and their shoulders and their
fingers; and they tell you that the sun
shines at some impossible hour of the day
'o noAS iiiPOoSioIC uLglt lutU all lIlTet
rooms; and that two beds in one room
are exactly the same thing as two bed
| rooms with bed in each; and that their
| linen and their silver and their furniture
are $50 much. SO much, = and $50 fine, so
! fine, and they smile and show white teeth,
and their eyes are such a lovely brown
black, that you are in some danger of be-
| ing in love with them; and then if you
say you must have "free ktchen,n which
means simply that they are not to have
the use OF your tea and sugar and bread,
they shrug their shoulders, and look at
each other, with such an expression of in
jury, that you feel like an awful sneak
yourself just as if you had stolen all
your lite; and for all that, you know
| that you are the honest one, and they
will steal, and you know the rooms won't
do at all, and you edge along to the door;
| and then the faces of the Padrone and the
Padrona and the daughters all grow black,
and the white teeth all go down their
ihroats, apparently, they disappear so ab-
solutely and forever; and as you fairly
step out of the door, if you wish to know
the true character of the people you might
have lived with, turn around quickly and
| look at the faces which have settled down
behind your back From the atlantic
MontAly for June,
The new liquor law of Michigan pro-