“Holy God!” said the peddler-woman. “I work hard for dat-a money. I save ev’ry cent. I ain’t go’n now to t’row it away--I ain’t. Dat-a man, he’s all right w’ere he is--he is.” “What did you marry him for?” I asked. The peddler-woman looked at me with that look which seems to convey the information that curiosity once killed a cat. “What for?” I persisted--“for love?” “I marry him w’en I was young girl. And he was young, too.” “Yes--but what did you do it for? Was he awfully nice, and did he say awfully sweet things to you?” “He was dem sweet--oh, yes,” said the peddler-woman. She grinned. “And I was young.” “And you liked it when you were young and he was sweet, didn’t you?” “Yes, I guess so. I was young,” she answered. The fact that one is young seems to imply--in the Italian peddler mind--a lacking in some essential points. “And don’t you like your man now?” I asked. “Dat-a man, he’s all right, in Italy--he is,” replied the woman. “Well,” I observed, “if I had a man who had been dem sweet once, when I had been young, but who was not sweet any more, I think I should leave him in Italy, too.” “You’ll git a man some day soon,” said the peddler-woman. I was interested to know that. “They all do--oh, yes,” she said. “But you likely to be better off peddlin’, I tell you.” “Yes, I think it would be amusing to be a peddler for a while,” I said. “But I should want the man, too, as long as he was dem sweet.” The peddler-woman picked up the telescope valise. “Yes,” she remarked, “a man, he’s sweet two days, t’ree days, then--holy God! he never work, he git-a drunk, he make-a rough-house, he raise hell.” The peddler-woman nodded at me and limped out of the yard. The telescope valise was heavy. When she walked every muscle in her body seemed to be pressed into the service. She had a heavy, solid look. She seemed as though she might weigh three hundred pounds, though she was not large. The afternoon sun shone down brightly on her dirty white handkerchief, on her brown comely face, on her brown brass-ringed hands, on her black satine wrapper, on her ancient cape. As I watched her out of sight I thought to myself: “Two days, t’ree days, then--holy God! he never work, he git-a drunk, he make-a rough-house, he raise hell.” I was conscious of an intense humor that was so far beyond laughter that it was too deep even for tears. But I felt tears vaguely as I watched the peddler-woman limping up the road. It was not pathos. It was humor--humor. My emotion was one of vivid pleasure--pleasure at the sight of the woman, and at the telescope valise, and at her conversation supplemented by my own. This emotion is divine, and I can not grasp it. As I looked after the Italian peddler-woman it came to me with sudden force that the earth is only the earth, but that it is touched here and there brilliantly with divine fingers.