“I presume that he had a wild youth, but he's a good man,” Forbes added. That was all we said about it. Our drive, which began at midday, took us through the loveliest vineyards in Italy. I shall never forget the vivid-green valley of the Arno as it looked that day. Lace-like vines spreading over the cresset tops of the olives and between them and filling the air with color; stately poplar rows and dark spires of cypress; distant purple mountain walls and white palaces on misty heights--they were some of the items. Here in these vineyards, and in others like them, are about the best tillers in the world--a simple, honest, beauty-loving people who are the soul of Italy, and, in the main, no country has a better asset. On the road we met the Litchmans, of Chicago, touring with their yelling-machine and a special car trailing behind them filled with clothes and millinery. That night we dined together and went to the opera. It was all Greek to me, but it was great! They woke me at one, and we went home. Next morning, having learned that Mrs. Mullet was not at her hotel, we all proceeded to the vast Uffizi Gallery. Grand place! What a wonderful procession these people in marble and paint see every day in the parade of weary pilgrims, in the moving mosaic of humanity. What a Babel of tongues, all speaking Baedeker! I wonder if the gods, emperors, and painted masterpieces fully appreciate this endless human caravan. It is far more wonderful than they. Who are these people? Ask any of them, and he will be apt to tell you that the rest are fools; that almost every one of them is looking for conversational thunder and--knockers! Some hurry. “Two more galleries to see, and the train goes at five,” you hear one of them saying. I was nearly bowled over and trampled upon by three German women who had lost their party. Once these marble floors were almost exclusively the highway of the highbrows. Now the sacred children of the imagination are being introduced to a new crowd. Newness is its chief characteristic. Here are the overgrown multitude of the newly rich, the truly rich, and the untruly rich. Here are the newly married, the unmarried, the over-married, and the slightly married, and the well-married from all lands, some of them new recruits in the great army of art. We passed through the Hall of the Ancient Imperial Shoats into the long corridor filled with statuary. “The old gods seem to have had desperate battles before they gave up,” Betsey said to me. “Most of them lost either an arm or a leg in the war.” “Many were beheaded and chucked into the garbage-barrels,” I answered. “The way Jupiter and Minerva were beaten up was a caution. It wasn't right; it wasn't decent. They were a harmless, inoffensive lot; they had never done anything to anybody. A lot of things were laid at their doors, but nothing was ever proved against 'em. These days we know enough to appreciate harmlessness.”