Uncle Terry was an excellent draftsman and J. had great respect for his opinion. The Dante came back to the salon. On my next reception day Mrs. David Kimball, a Boston collector, saw it and bought it on the spot. Later Curtis and Cameron reproduced it as a Copley Print; it has gone all over the world, taken prizes in Australia and Japan and is, I believe, the most popular modern portrait of the great Italian poet. I tell this story for the benefit of other artists’ wives, for it has been my experience that artists are often the worst judges of their own work. They seem to value most the work that has cost them the greatest labor, whereas it sometimes happens that things struck off at white heat, quickly and easily, have more of the artist’s personality, which of course is what gives every work of art its value. Before leaving America, I had arranged to write a syndicate newspaper letter for the _Boston Transcript_, the _Kansas City Star_, the _New Orleans Times Democrat_, a Chicago, and a New York paper. Gathering materials for this correspondence added much to the interest of my life in Rome. I had the sense of being eyes and ears for thousands of readers in different parts of the world. My letters to my family, however, give more intimate glimpses of Rome at this time. [To my Mother.] Rome. February, 1894. I see many fine functions at St. Peter’s. I never tire of it all, the arrogant scarlet cardinals, the ermine-tippeted canons, the great feather fans carried before Pope Leo, his extraordinary waxen face where only the eyes seem alive, as he passes through the throng carried high above the people, giving the papal benediction with three fingers of the right hand. The uniforms of the Swiss Guard and the Guardia Nobile, the papal chamberlains, the vested choir, the voices of the Pope’s “angels”, the rich smell of incense are all just as you knew them before I was born. Did you remember that some of the splendid costumes were designed by Michael Angelo? “St. Peter’s is the theater of the Church,” Monsignor (now Cardinal) O’Connell once said to me. He is right. A function there moves me just like any other great pageant. I hadn’t been here a week when I saw the King, the Queen and the Pope. She is like a queen in a fairy story, tall, beautiful, with golden hair. The King seems better loved by the Romans, the Queen by the diplomats and foreigners. She is very _dévote_, doubtless a fortunate thing for the dynasty. I find matters political very difficult to understand. Mr. Stillman, who is the _London Times_ correspondent and hardly less important a personage than the British Ambassador, tells me that Crispi is a giant and the only man able to hold Italy in hand. He is seventy-four years old and after him “the deluge” is feared.