_March 21._--Spent last evening till very late, sitting on the steps of Frank Simmons’ studio, talking with W. W. Story, sculptor and poet. He is the finest talker I ever heard. Of course, he knows everything about Italy; he has lived here most of his life, and his “Roba di Roma” tells more worth knowing about Rome than any similar book ever written. We talked, too, of America. He lamented that he had never achieved distinction in the United States as a poet. That, not sculpture, had been his first ambition. I told him he did not know how many loved his name at home for the poetry he had written. On my last trip over the sea, a young and discriminating newspaper man had envied me that I was going where I would know Story, the _poet_. He had committed “Antony and Cleopatra” to memory, repeated it to me walking on the ship deck one evening, and said it was the “best American poem.” The incident gratified Mr. Story very much, as it should. We spoke of the Washington monument at the capital. “It is nothing but a great, high smoke stack,” he said. “There was a design offered, for a monument, that had some taste, art, grandeur about it, but the mullet-headed politicians, knowing nothing, and thinking they knew everything, naturally threw that aside.” There was but little outlook, he said, for any immediate realization of true art in America. “There was but one god there--money getting.” I liked Mr. Story’s generosity of speech concerning other sculptors less famous than himself, and for poets with less renown than he believed he had. He is altogether one of the most agreeable men I ever knew. His studio is full of fine work that brings great prices, but it does not seem to me greater than the work of Frank Simmons, or even some of the statues of Ives and Rogers. There is a sea nymph at Ives’ studio more beautiful than anything else I ever saw in marble. We often go to the studio and the home of Randolph Rogers. He is an invalid, has been paralyzed, and sits most of his time in his chair; but he has a great, big, joyous heart, and is happy at seeing his friends. His fame is very wide. His “Blind Nydia” is one of the great things in marble. Very many copies of it have been made. They are everywhere. “Nydia” and his bronze doors at the Capitol in Washington, more than all else, made his reputation. I have met no one in Rome who seemed to retain his real, joyous, bluff Americanism as Mr. Rogers does. He knows his art, but he has not forgotten his country. His home is one of the most delightful here. He is justly proud of his wife, as she is proud of his art. “She must have been very beautiful in her youth,” said an American innocently. “Yes,” replied Mr. Rogers, “my wife is beautiful now.” The other morning occurred the wedding of his daughter to a worthy and handsome officer of the Italian army. Every hour he is expecting orders to go to Africa to help avenge the massacre of a lot of his countrymen.