CHAPTER XI NEW OPPORTUNITIES I had found that I was badly handicapped in all intercourse with my Italian fellow workers by the fact that I knew nothing of their language and that they knew but little English. The handicap did not lie so much in the fact that we couldn't make ourselves understood--we could after a rough fashion--as it did in the fact that this made a barrier which kept our two nationalities sharply defined. I was always an American talking to an Italian. The boss was always an American talking to a Dago. This seemed to me a great disadvantage. It ought to be just a foreman to his man or one man to another. The chance to acquire a new language I thought had passed with my high school days, but down here everyone was learning English and so I resolved to study Italian. I made a bargain with Giuseppe, the young sculptor, who was now a frequent visitor at our flat, to teach me his language in return for instruction in mine. He agreed though he had long been getting good instruction at the night school. But the lad had found an appreciative friend in Ruth who not only sincerely admired the work he was doing but who admired his enthusiasm and his knowledge of art. I liked him myself for he was dreaming bigger things than I. To watch his thin cheeks grow red and his big brown eyes flash as he talked of some old painting gave me a realization that there was something else to be thought of even down here than mere money success. It was good for me. The poor fellow was driven almost mad by having to offer for sale some of the casts which his master made him carry. He would have liked to sell only busts of Michael Angelo and Dante and worthy reproductions of the old masters. "There are so many beautiful things," he used to exclaim excitedly in broken English; "why should they want to make anything that is not beautiful?" He sputtered time and time again over the pity of gilding the casts. You'd have thought it was a crime which ought to be punished by hanging. "Even Dante," he groaned one night, "that wonderful, white sad face of Dante covered all over with gilt!" "It has to look like gold before an American will buy it," I suggested. "Yes," he nodded. "They would even gild the Christ." Ruth said she wanted to learn Italian with me, and so the three of us used to get together every night right after dinner. I bought a grammar at a second hand bookstore but we used to spend most of our time in memorizing the common every day things a man would be likely to use in ordinary conversation. Giuseppe would say, "Ha Ella il mio cappello?" And I would say, "Si, Signore, ho il di Lei cappello." "Ha Ella il di Lei pane?" "Si, Signore, ho il mio pane." "Ha Ella il mio zucchero?" "Si, Signore, ho il di Lei zucchero."