"To a certain extent I had no reason to be dissatisfied with my success in life. Many a man has done worse at thirty-three. I was married; I had money in the bank; I could eat and drink and sleep well; I enjoyed reading and smoking. Beyond that, I have grown to think a man need not go. For you gentlemen, of course, it's different. You are out for fame. You work at high and low pressure, whereas I work in a vacuum, so to speak. I thought a good deal about life on that voyage to Genoa as a passenger. It was a new experience to me, I can tell you. For the first day or two I was lost. There seemed nothing to do. I'd walk up and down the promenade deck listening to the beat of the twin-engines, wondering if the Second was a good man ... habit, you see? And then I found a little library abaft the smoking-room full-up with leather-bound books that nobody wanted to read. They were Italian, of course, for it was an Italian ship, and it struck me that I'd have some fun rubbing up my knowledge of the language. For let me tell you that colloquial Genoese doesn't take you very far into Dante or Boccaccio! I think that was one reason why Rosa had disliked the idea of living in Italy. Although I didn't notice it much, being a foreigner, her speech was not refined. How could it be, down on the Via Milano with Rebecca for a teacher? Well, I started in and every day I worked my way through a chapter or two. Perhaps it is because I know modern Italian writing so well--for a foreigner--that I don't take much stock in all these great men English and Americans boom so. They seem to me smart Alecks, but the high-pressure men are Latins. I can't help thinking, after reading the modern men, that they are like the transformers in an electric power-plant. The Latins are the generators of ideas, and these other chaps are transformers. They reduce the voltage, lose a lot in leakage, but are useful because they make the current available to the small man. It's a rather technical illustration, but that's what I mean.