STILL IN ROME--PRESENTED TO POPE LEO XIII--STORY, THE POET SCULPTOR--RANDOLPH ROGERS--TILTON--ELIHU VEDDER--ASTOR RESIGNS--SECRETARY OF LEGATION DIES WITH ROMAN FEVER--I AM PUT IN CHARGE OF LEGATION--CAPRI--GOVERNOR PIERPONT--THINGS SUPERNATURAL--TALK AGAINST GLADSTONE--SHAKESPEARE WOOD-- SENATOR MOLESCHOTT, A REMARKABLE MAN--INTERESTING LETTERS FROM GENERAL SHERMAN--PARTY STRONGER THAN PATRIOTISM; MY RECALL-- MONEY LENDING AND TAXES--KEEP OUT OF DEBT. _February, 1885._--On Sunday morning we (myself, wife and son) together with others, were presented to the Pope, Leo XIII. The card of notification told us how we should dress. Full evening suit, with black cravat and black gloves for the gentlemen; black silk dress for the ladies, with black lace veils over the head, instead of bonnets. Our carriage entered the court yard at a private entrance, where dismounting we entered at a side door and went up the Bernini stairway. The Swiss guards, glad to hear their own tongue spoken, were very polite to us. Colonel Schmidt, their commander, is also a personal friend, who had visited us in Switzerland. He soon turned us over to the Pope’s personal body guard. These are young Roman nobles. We were led through a labyrinth of apartments, and put in charge of some of the court officers at the reception room. [Illustration: Pope Leo XIII.--_Page 261._] “The reception will take place in just thirty minutes,” said one of the officials, and this gave us time to look out of the window, and wonder what part of the enormous pile called the Vatican, we were in. Outside, the four thousand room building, with its two hundred stairways, looks like an ugly collection of big yellow factories. Inside, it is all magnificence. We were standing in rooms where the Popes ruled Rome, at a time when Rome ruled the world. The history of a thousand years was made and written under this roof. The genius of many ages found a resting place here. Here for centuries God, himself, was supposed to have his only agent on earth.