The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1909-06-26
Special 10 The linton.
LETTER FROM ABROAD.
How the Correspondent Put in Four Days
Poverty and Happiness-Conver
sation With Skeleton-A
Long Way from Home
and Dead Broke.
ROME, ITALY, June 10th, 1909.

ROME, ITALY, June 10th, 1909.
MessTs. Editors Never shall forget these
glorious hours of glorious sunshine, when the
bright skies and awakening spring are both an
inspiration to work and temptation to lazy
dreaming. l have yielded to the temptation
and have not time before the next mails to write
my weekly letter to America and must perforce
impose upon my newspaper friends in the home
land a few of the crude notes from my diary just
as they were written each night during the past
week.
Monday-This morning 1 went to the baths of
Caracalla, where paid franc for ticket and
entered the ruins through country fair turn
stile. Shelly considered them the most majestic
and grandiose relic of the imperial period. The
Hottest sentiment they awakened in me was
curiosity. / have never realized before how
powerful is poverty to develop meanness and
all kinds of narrow mindedness, and 1 could not
help contemplating myself with disgust when 1
realized that was not in mood to care for or
appreciate those wonderful ivy grown arches,
simply because begrudged the franc.
Coming back home took the road that winds
between vineyards from the Thermae to st. John
Lateran, and midway along the route i came to
a green field from which rose a great fragment
of the Aurelian city wall, mass of crumbling
brick work several hundred feet long, twelve
feet thick and about forty feet high. The in
ward face of the wall was honeycombed by
inches in the masonry which may once have
served as shelters for the sentinels or guards,
and in the holes of these number of poor
families had made their homes, partially stop
ping up the openings with brush and loose
stones There was something primitive, almost
prehistoric, about the scene. In one of the
caves a mother was seated on the earthen floor
sucking a babe and grooming lullaby; the
father, clothed In a single garment of leather,
which left his legs and chest bare, carrying on
his shoulder a wooden pitchfork which was
nothing more nor less than long forked stick
with its two prongs hardened in the fire, had just
come in from the field and was wiping the sweat
from his brow with his hairy arm a dog was
seated in the mouth of the cave; on the grass
two baby boys, stark naked, were rolling and
tumbling like puppies with their little pink
bodies glowing in the sunlight, pretty as the
peach blossoms that the wind was scattering
from a nearby tree. The father dropped his
rude fork and stopped to grab one of the babies
and toss it high in the air. while went back to
civilization, envying him with all my heart.
One month of poverty had soured me. was
thinking for the moment, but life of it had left
him sweet.
wife of my artist host, came home piping mad
from the Capuchin church around the corner
where she had gone to early mass. Some vii
famous wretch had poured bottle of ink into
the holy water basin. The worshippers sleepily
entering the dim church in the early morning
had each mechanically, according to the Gus
tom, dipped finger in the basin and then
touched their foreheads to make the sign of the
cross. Result: Some twenty of them, among
whom the Signora, had daubed their faces with
ink before the deviltry was discovered.
In the crypt of this same church is the famous
Capuchin cemetery or ossuary, series of sub
terranean rooms with walls lined from ceiling to
floor with skulls, the ceilings decorated with
rib-bone arabesoues, the hanging lamps sus-
pended by and decorated with strings of knuckle
bones fastened on wires; skeletons of long de-
deceased brethren still clothed in robe and cowi
and standing everywhere around in inches. Some
of them are not really skeletons but dried
corpses, often with part OF the face gone and the
parchment skin. These latter are horrible; but
the skeletons are not. Their monkish garb lends
them an indefinable air of peaceful, benevolent
tranquility. and had quite pleasant CONVEX
satiOn with one of them, an old fellow whom the
Sacristan afterward told me was the Fra Bene-
detto di Rioto, deceased, February 2lst, 1728. 1t
gave me queer sensation to gaze into his
cavernous eyes and think that he had been
standing there for more than generation when
the old State House bell at Philadelphia pealed
| out the defiance of the Thirteen Colonies to
| British rule That he was still standing immo-
bile when Napoleon changed the map of Europe,
and that he would still be standing there when
we all lie beneath the sod. On his face there
was sphynx-like smile. Most skeletons grin,
but he was smiling, and there was infinite wis
dom in his smile. Two American girls, who
came into the crypt at the moment was talk
| ing with Fra Benedetto. stopped moment with
| feminine curiosity to see what was looking at
so fixedly. They caught the shadow of that smile
and maybe part of its meaning also, for they
turned away giggli1g neryousy and Tustied
as if to say: mo. No What have we to do with
that ? Youth and life are eternal But soon
the nervous mirth was frozen on their lips and
they hurried chilled from the place with their
afternoon spoiled, while the old monk smiled
calmly on.
chin church of which was writing yesterday
hangs one of the most celebrated oil paintings
in Rome3a picture which az the world comes to
very much about art, but have common sense
enough to despise without affectation the wishy-
washy false sentiment of Guido RENTS work,
and don't believe he eyer painted poorer pic
ture than the Archangel of the Capucni, though
nowhere in history, mythology or revelation
can be found more glorious subject. ST. Michael
with his flaming sword is the incarnation of war
like strength deified. He is the Christian Mars,
but a Mars who lets loose the dogs of war only
to battle for the right Mars whose shield and
helmet are illumined by more unearthly splen-
dor than ever shown from Mount Olympus, and
% of tha AnonoITnso Ana inst seo
what Guido has painted A pretty wax-doll
face with a rosebud mouth, and wavy, fiaxen
wax-doll hair, big soft body with beautiful
feminine curves and pair of rosy feet with the
toes done up in blue baby ribbon. The van
pushed devil upon whose broad, bent shoulders
Saint Michael stands, is obviously taking the
whole matter as joke. He is like great Eng
lish mastiH that condeScends to let baby Bobby
If the mpssti chose it could chew BABY Bobby
into bits in the twinkling of an eye and if Guido
Reni's Satan chose he could do the same with the
Archangel. As looked at the picture l Won
dered how this effeminate painter had managed
to paint such fine, husky devil, and did not
understand until learned that he happened to
be quarreling with Pope Innocent x at the
epoch when he was working on this canvas and
that the Satan is portrait of the Pope. piece
of spite work that made the artist forget his
mannerism long enough to be strong and
realistic.
l don't intend to essay any more amateurish
comments on art and maybe l shouldn't have
written this, but there are so many poor pic
lures in Rome that we go to see and try to ad-
mire simply because the guide books tell us we
ought to that it has done me good to have my
say about this one.
Thursday-Today made the acquaintance of
the dying Paul rendered SO famous by Byron's
lines telling how he was "butchered to make
Roman holiday" and afterward saw the bronze
Wolf of the Capitol, "the thunder stricken nurse
of Rome" which every school boy has read
about in Cicero In an adjoining corridor of the
Capitoline picture gallery stopped long enough
to look at Michael Angeles portrait by himself,
one of the few things he ever did in oil. The
sad light in the eyes and the bitterly unhappy
expression of the whole visage was so depress
ing that it recalled to me my own troubles. |
am wondering where that long expected check
can be. Three thousand miles from home and
friends, with exactly AZ cents and half jar of
honey as my sole available wealth.
Friday-The whole world looks bright and
rose-colored like the sky behind st. Peters
dome, seen at sunset from the Pincio. Yester-
day went "stone broke, - lacked even the two
cents to get cup of coffee Ny little Roman
mother, Signora K, came to the rescue with a
loan of 20 lire. This morning got the check
from America, accompanied by the good news
that two or three more newspapers in 1.-The
states" have contracted to print my stuff regu-
larly, which means that my financial worries in
Europe are ended. SEABRoOK.