On one of the last evenings of our first season we went to the Thompsons', and were there shown, among other things, a portfolio of sketches. There is in The Marble Faun a chapter called "Miriam's Studio," in which occurs a reference to a portfolio of sketches by Miriam herself; the hint for it may have been taken from the portfolio of Mr. Thompson, though the sketches themselves were of a very different quality and character. The latter collection pleased me, because I was just beginning to fill an album of my own with such lopsided attempts to represent real objects, and yet more preposterous imaginative sallies as my age and nature suggested. My father was interested in them on account of the spiritual vigor which belongs to the artist's first vision of his subject. In their case, as well as in his own, he felt that it was impossible, as Browning put it, to "recapture that first, fine, careless rapture." But the man of letters has an advantage over the man of paint and canvas in the matter of being able to preserve the original spirit in the later, finished design. Towards the close of this first season in Rome the Bryants came to town, and the old poet, old in aspect even then, called on us; but he was not a childly man, and we youngsters stood aloof and contemplated with awe his white, Merlin beard and tranquil but chilly eyes. Near the end of May William Story invited us to breakfast with him; the Bryants and Miss Hosmer and some English people were there; and I understood nothing of what passed except the breakfast, which was good, until, at the end of the session, my father and Story began to talk about the superstition as to Friday, and they agreed that, of course, it was nonsense, but that, nevertheless, it did have an influence on both of them. It probably has an influence on everybody who has ever heard of it. Many of us protest indignantly that we don't believe in it, but the protest itself implies something not unlike believing.