said Grimme. "There are plenty who will do that musty, fusty, crusty old chamber-maid the work at half the price." stirred up with his solemn old paws; and all the "Three dollars a week," said the woman, music you hear is that squeaky old bag-pipe in plaintively.

"They will do it for half, I tell you." "But with two children-"

"This is not an alms-house, Madam. I pay you for your work. Eight children or none makes no difference."

"Well," sighed the womau. "It is cruel hard. It does seem sometimes as if we couldn't live so; but I don't know where else to turn, and if you will pay me-"

"Can't pay you now," cut in Grimme, sharply, and buttoning up his coat. "I have paid out so much I am short; but you shall have it next week."

"Oh! but Mr. Grimme-"

the cafe below; and, what is worse, it is only ten o'clock!"

"Is that all? Heigh-ho! What was it that Murray said about service to-night at the French Church ?"

"Military mass: fine music!'"

"Let's go! It will be over in season for St. Peter's. We might as well make a night of it; for what with the air, and the music, and the witchery of a first night in Rome, there is no sleep for us."

Forth we went into the night, as innocent of all knowledge of Roman topography as the Babes in the Wood; but, thanks to the special Providence which protects all "innocents," we "Will you take them or not?" says Grimme, came to no harm, although more than one vilwith a savage thrust at the bundle of coats. lain must have spared us for the very joke of "Come, one thing or the other, quick! I the thing. Brigandage was rife at the time can't wait! I am going to prayer-meeting." even in the best and most frequented streets of "Prayer-meeting!" echoed the Fool Catcher, Rome, and our course led us through gloomy with a gasp; "why this is the greatest one of by-ways, ill-lighted and unwatched. them all. Thinks he can cheat Heaven. Head Furthermore, so intoxicated were we with the the procession, Sir!" and so we marched on-rich old wine of classic, historic, artistic (in one Mr. Grimme, Anonymous, Mrs. Prew, the man, word), Romantic association, which we had the woman, old Ossa, young Bourse, old Catch- this day for the first time begun to drink, that ew, John's father, Mrs. Pelion, Mr. Kral, Mrs. ordinary caution seemed to have forsaken us, Kral, John Pilar, Mrs. Patchouli, Judge Cath- and we sought our way recklessly, asking it of cart, Miss Stryffer, Mollie's father and mother, here and there a passer-by; but oftener pausMrs. Smythe, Mrs. Blivins, Grinder, and I. ing under some less opaque street-lamp to deliberately unfold the map of our " Murray," whose red hue unblushingly bewrayed our greenness to every observer. This after midnight, in the tortuous paths which we struck out for our

"SANCTUARY PRIVILEGES" IN

CHRIS

ROME.

HRISTMAS-EVE in Rome! Where, ex-selves, between the great dome of the Pantheon cept with the angels under the stars of Bethlehem, could one keep watch this holy night more fittingly than under the dome of domes, filled with the heavenly strains of the Pastorella?

Yes, so I do; but I hope you don't call leaving at three o'clock in the morning going out in the evening!"

What mortal woman, sanitary dragon though she were, could withstand sophistry so after her own heart as this? "Christmas comes but once a year," and Christmas in Rome not once in every lifetime.

and the loftier dome of the Vatican. The only apology for this fool-hardiness is the prolonged army experience of the one, and the fascination of a rare "lark" to the other.

At San Luigi de' Francesi, where we paused on our way, a superb illumination of the high altar, a suffocating crowd of spectators (including, possibly, two or three hundred worshipers), and a mighty roar of good organ and execrable vocal music.

So child-like and absolute was our faith in Murray at that time that we stood until past one o'clock, Christmas morning, amidst the horrid din and oppressive odors, patiently waiting for the exhibition of the "fine music" and "the In anticipation of and by way of atonement military mass with great pomp." But the music for this dubious indulgence, we piously set our-waxed coarser and more blatant till its final selves to the zealous cultivation of health by suicidal crash; and wherein consisted the miliretiring, shortly after eight o'clock, to the bed-tariness of the mass, which was celebrated room which had been prepared for us, somewhat to our surprise, by a venerable chamber-maid in black broadcloth and gold-bowed spectacles. Prolonged silence....... "What time can it be?" "Good! so you are not asleep!"

"Asleep one's first night in Rome! The air is full of electric influences, and glorious ghosts, and-and [yawningly] the music of the spheres." "The air is fuller of must and dust, which

pompously enough, we have yet to discover, unless it lay in the dozen French soldiers who shouldered arms and prowled through the aisles with their ugly hats on.

Reluctantly following the retiring multitude, we withdrew our unsatisfied souls and exhausted bodies; but speedily forgot all in the delicious excitement of searching for St. Peter's. To be sure the service was announced for three o'clock, but must we not (oh, innocents!) go early to

get a seat? On we went. What cared we for cavernous streets, for weary feet, for lurking robbers? Were we not every moment drawing nearer and nearer to It-the wonder of the world? It was an epoch when our feet at last struck the old Pons Ælius, flanked by seventeenth century angels (which some one wittily calls Bernini's "breezy maniacs"), and when, crossing the Tiber, we passed under the shadow of that mighty tomb where Rome lies buried, with an angel balancing himself above the door of the sepulchre.

Ye who are whirled in millionaire state to St. Peter's, heralded and encompassed by commissionaire, courier, and lackeys, and behold for the first time its glories, vulgarized by the garish sunlight, receive-whether ye will or no-the commiseration of a pair of foot-sore pilgrims who, following only the beams of a strange constellation-a starry cross shining afar, with no other attendants than the midnight starscame out at last into the great Piazza, with no sound to break the sacred silence but the musical rhythm of the twin fountains, at once the simplest and the grandest in all Rome. There they stood, clinging to each other, thrilled and entranced in that awful solitude, scarcely daring to lift their eyes so far toward heaven as that, Marvelous Dome, whose mere shadow crushed them. The darkness, and their excited imagination, magnified indescribably the proportions of the immense Cathedral in their view, untilwhat with the season, the hour, the solitude, the companionship, the weird duskiness, no mortal eye, I am convinced, ever beheld St. Peter's more impressively.

When our senses returned we realized that we were indeed all alone. The Piazza, which strikes the beholder often at first as disproportionately small, lengthened and broadened as we walked on and on toward the sombre pile. After we had passed the cruciform gas-lights not a gleam of light appeared, except here and there in the remote colonnades which shut in the Piazza. Obviously the sexton hadn't come, and we began to exercise our fledgling skepticism in fearing that Murray had blundered, and the Pastorella was not for our ears.

After sitting for some time on the great flight of steps leading up to the Cathedral, meek and subdued under the natural action of our fatigue, the languor of the hour, and the reaction from our ecstasy, we suddenly discovered an apparition under the colonnade on our left. One of the Papal guard was pacing his beat sullenly, occasionally glowering at us as suspicious characters. Having projected at him-done up in choice French-the Yankee question, "What time are the meeting begun ?" he received it, metaphorically, on the point of his bayonet, and gruffly rejected it. But here, as often, German proved our angel of deliverance. The guard could not withstand the same inquiry done up in his vernacular burr, so he graciously informed us that the sacred doors would open at three o'clock-and not till then.

Returning a quarter of an hour later from an unsuccessful search for a cup of black coffee, in which to drown our impatience, we found that a few shivering shades had crept into view at immense intervals along the great flight of steps. To our distempered vision they seemed the remorseful ghosts of Nero's band of tormentors, who were wont to kindle into awfully grotesque torch-light devout martyrs for the illumination of this old arena, and who on this holy night were come to do grievous penance where once they kept impious revel. But when at last an official ascended the steps and unlocked the massive door, we recognized somewhat offensively the mortality of those with whom we came in contact, as we pushed with the now numerous crowd into the vestibule. So high did my enthusiasm run that for a moment after the sudden illumination of this vestibule I mistook it for the Basilica itself, but fortunately did not beat a hasty retreat, like the Yankee of the British Apocrypha, who departed inveighing against the "conceit of these fellows, when their confounded old meetin’-house ain't any bigger than Brattle Street !"

Having lighted the great lamps of the vestibule, our "light-bearer and path-preparer” unlocked a little side-door, and, as we followed him curiously with our eyes, began to ascend a flight of stone steps, torch in hand. We were half inclined to follow bodily, not knowing but through that strait gate our way to the Holy of Holies must lie. But we refrained, although a dozen men pressed after him; and presently the bells of the tower rang out merrily, and the ringers came tumbling down the steps, and unlocked at last the temple itself to our eager feet. The romantic excitement of the time and place almost overpowered us as the people lifted the ponderous leathern curtain and we passed in.

In a moment the crowd had melted away in the immensity, and we stood alone in St. Peter's in the dead of Christmas-eve. The delicious atmosphere rapt us away into a trance of delight. Far away tremulous stars faintly glimmered before the high altar; near us all was dim, save that on our right a lamp burned before the exquisite Pietà of Michael Angelo, the Mater Dolorosa holding the dead Christ in her arms. The Lord pardon thy servant in this thing, if in the house of Rimmon I bowed down myself then and thereafter, whenever I entered the cathedral, feeling that the living Christ was not far from that little chapel! It was strange, and consoling as strange, to kneel on this storied pavement, and offer petitions for the little soul far away whose sweetest eyes were at that moment just opening to the dawn of her first Christmas. With hearts at rest we wandered through the beautiful twilight, dimly discerning the magnificence of the pavement and the columns, and the stately grandeur of statues and sepulchral monuments, with whose minutest lines we subsequently became familiar, till finally we stood by the great baldacchino which

flaunts its stolen bronze beneath the pure maj- paraphernalia to perfect the illusion. After his esty of the dome.

When one's conscience forbids sufficient comWhen at last the grand procession came march-pliance with the prescribed rites of any place or ing in with candles, crosiers, mitres, and what-season, what alternative remains to good-breednots, I am afraid somebody thought the Grand Mogul thereof was no less than Pio Nono himself, and gazed accordingly with quickened pulsebeat. But it was only a comfortable cardinalbishop who played he was Pope, with gorgeous

the blessing of an old man could do you no | When the gorgeous train of the three kings harm!"

It is not strange she should be so implacable toward even childish peccadilloes, inflicting present pain to avert eternal dole.

swept by her domicile she was absorbed in the But to return to the chapel of the choir. fascinations of Spring cleaning, and in response Amusing Britons ceased to interest when the to all entreaties to gaze at the holy cavalcade, heavenly music of the Pastorella began. We she only brandished her broom the more zealhave longed to lay hands on the score, and as- ously, saying: "I'll see them when they come sure ourselves whether this music were really back!" But, alas! every body knows that more seraphic than we had ever heard besides. they returned by another way; and wicked King Certainly our enjoyment of its exquisite harmo- Herod was foiled, and poor old Befana stands to ny was so great that the three hours' standing this day, broom in hand, and eyes protruded, which we endured for its sake were of little ac-looking in vain for glories which she will never, count to us, and the strains which still float in never see. our memories are marvelously sweet. The organ was superbly played, and the choir of male voices left no room for desire that Patti, or even Jenny Lind, had been there. The soprano was singularly smooth and sweet. Possibly the beauty of the music was enhanced by its contrast with the responsive chanting of the squirrels, ermines, etc., wherein they went on to iterate and reiterate in the gruffest and most snuffling manner that they were respectively Owls of the Desert, Pelicans of the Wilderness, and Bulls of Bashan. Talk of Yankee expectoration! Every priest and Levite in Rome takes snuff, and uses a great banner of a yellow pocket-handkerchief with a resonance that would put to shame the most catarrhal State Legislature in our country, while no spot or time is sacred to them. Our good Abbé Stold us, with the naïvest delight (as proving the Vicegerent's humanity), that he actually saw the Pope take snuff as he was going up to the altar to celebrate Mass!

This is an old scandal. As long ago as Pope Urban a bull of excommunication was issued against any priest who should introduce his snuff-box into his official service, whereupon Pasquin turned against the Pope a blast from the sacred canon, quoting Job's remonstrance: "Against a leaf driven to and fro by the wind wilt thou show thy strength, and wilt thou pursue the light stubble?"

This Christmas service was shamelessly disfigured. One gross fellow, upon whom devolved the onerous duty of holding up a candle while the Doll spelled out occasionally a sentence from a big book held before him by another obese boy, when he rested from his labors sat just behind the Cardinal, and actually spat offensively directly before the holy altar upon the stair of which he sat.

It was good to go out into pure daylight, for as we descended the steps the guns of St. Angelo hailed the rising of the Christmas sun with a grand salute, and our first night in Rome was

over.

Twelfth Night, the anniversary of the presentation of gifts to the Christ-child by the three kings, is the favorite gift-season in Rome. Santa Claus is ousted by a certain old beldame, yclept Befana (corruption of Epiphania), wizened and ugly, who delivers rods to bad and presents to good children. Tradition reveals something to the following effect in regard to her origin and history. She seems to have been the prototype of Martha, the famous housewife of Bethany.

It

Why all the Roman world should flock to the Piazza di San Eustachio on this famous night I know not; but thither they have been, year after year, since the beginning, and find rare entertainment for their pains; and with them went I, under the protection of a party of Americans, on the last anniversary, stealing away from my sleeping invalid like an arch-conspirator. was after midnight, yet the Corso was all alive, and every shop whose specialty is eating, drinking, or articles of virtu, open and thronged. It was charming to meet the fathers, mothers, big brothers, godfathers, bachelor uncles, etc., hastening home with love-laden eyes and hands, or in eager pursuit of some treasure for the little people who lay dreaming compassionately of poor old Befana

As we approached the Pantheon the crowd grew denser and the excitement deepened. The streets leading into the Piazza di San Eustachio were barred against the entrance of carriages, and filled, like the Piazza itself, with booths for the sale of every imaginable commodity, the vendors watching all night for the chance of disposing of their wares to the turbulent crowds. It was pitiful to see some of these sales-people; weary women and sleepy children shivering and screwing open their eyelids all the long night for a possible handful of baiocchi. Some of the more prosperous were furnished with a large brasier of burning coals, and still more with the national scaldino-the little earthen basket for embers, which seems the chief solace for Roman women, rich or poor. As the entire vicinity was brilliantly illuminated by candles and torches of every description, and by vessels of oil with floating wicks, the effect was startling to a novice.

I was at first too dazed by the wild scene to enjoy it, and repented bitterly my escapade. The cries of the vendors, the chaffering of the buyers, the unrestrained laughter and babble of the spectators were crazing. Every few moments we were forced aside by the approach of a grotesque procession of revelers who came dancing down upon us, sounding trumpets, beating tambourines and drums, blowing whistles, working gigantic "jumping-jacks" (three feet and more in height), with innumerable other "soul-stirring" and "ear-piercing" devices. Our party was eminently grave in its composition, made up as it was of two clergymen of the Dutch Reformed and the Methodist Churches;

three ministers' wives; with the excellent physician to the American Legation and his wife, whose hospitality and kindly offices toward their countrymen and countrywomen visiting Rome are above praise.

But here were we in the midst of Bedlam, and our only alternatives were instant flight or a pell-mell entrance into the revel. While I was preparing myself for the first a shrill blast in my ear, discharged by no less a personage than our portly Dominie himself, quickly succeeded by the deafening flourish of a tambourine above my head by his elegant little wife, provoked me to the second. In five minutes' time, following our leader, the entire party were furnished with the peculiar Befana whistle in the form of parti-colored plaster images, or with ringing tambourines, and were doing their utmost to swell the din. It was noticeable, and perhaps humiliating, to Independence-day braggarts to see how wild and apparently uncontrollable the sport could wax, and yet nothing take place which was either brutal or offensive. There was no drunkenness, no fighting, only unbridled jollity. So fascinating did the sport become that even the silence of the streets on our return did not quell it. We whistled and rung our merry bells to the last, even sounding a defiant blast in the ears of the innocent sleeper at home.

This was our matin service, After dejeuner my friend and myself, with her bright Baby Bell and her nurse, went to vespers at the church of Ara Cœli.

In this ancient church, built on the site of the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, the wooden Bambino now usurps the place and healing prerogative of the uglier (if possible) bronze wolf, to which Roman women many centuries ago brought their sick children in faith.

A flight of 124 steps, which once served as the approach to the Temple of Quirinus, now leads up to the church. Up these steps climbed great Cæsar on his knees once upon a time, and at their foot Rienzi fell, and so did Baby Bell. These magnificent steps were crowded with worshipers of the Bambino and of Mammon. Devotees and sight-seers made their ascent slowly through the press of vendors, who detailed clamorously the virtues of their wares, consisting of books, pictures, rosaries, and charms of every

sort.

The pictures and images most popular among the devout were shameful caricatures of the Christ-child and truthful copies of the sacred Bambino, whose miraculous graces and gifts are the prime care of the Franciscans of the convent connected with this church. As the country people hold the Bambino in special honor, and flock to its feast, this was our most favored opportunity for seeing picturesque costumes, and we lingered long on the steps, observing the various groups as they arrived, and the exhibitions of national shrewdness, drollery, and superstition.

for its unspeakable hideousness. It was (of course) wrought from a tree of Mount Olivet by a pilgrim, who, as an artist, must have been like Jean Paul's grandfather-"poor but pious." This devout hewer of wood having fallen asleep over his chopping, that Pre-Raphaelitist of artists, St. Luke, (of course) happened along, and added the finishing touches with his ubiquitous brush. It strikes an unprejudiced inspector of this twin composition that either artist might have done better with "t'other dear charmer away." Their united efforts have certainly produced the strangest of all strange gods. Its uncouthness is somewhat concealed by a rank overgrowth of diamonds, rubies, emeralds, etc., sown lavishly by the halt, maimed, and blind whom it has healed. It is borne in state to the bedside of the rich and noble invalid, while the poor carry their sick to the Presepio itself. The thing can always be seen for a fee (being displayed to the curiosity-hunter after various preparatory genuflections and incensings on the part of the pious showman), but from Christmas to Epiphany its healing beams arise without money or price.

Ac

Among the stories current in Rome is one of a devotee, whose zeal outran her honesty. Being the mother of a frequently ailing family the draft upon purse and time made by the employment of the Bambino became oppressive. cordingly she planned and executed with holy guile the following device: Procuring from the nearest carpenter, or whittling for herself a counterpart of the idol, she seized the first opportunity when the Bambino was making a professional call at her house and confiscated it bodily, sending back to the unsuspecting Franciscans the "counterfeit presentment," adorned with the true relic's gewgaws. All went well that day in the lady's home, and all went ill in the Convent. At night, however, according to the story, the vigils of the monks were disturbed by mysterious knockings, and at last a plaintive voice cried, "I am the Bambino, let me in." Whereupon the holy men exclaimed, with horror, "Avaunt blasphemer! The holy Bambino is safe in the Presepio." But the pitiful voice kept pleading until the gates opened, and behold there was, indeed, the genuine image, clad only in its native graces, which, going forthwith to its manger, cast out the bogus baby and took possession of its own again. What became of the purloining materfamilias my informant said not.

In one of the chapels of the church we found a grand tableau of wax-figures, representing a scene in Bethlehem, which inspired Baby Bell's vociferous admiration. In the centre lay the Bambino in the Virgin's arms, she being appropriately dressed for the occasion in a robe of crimson silk, liberally spangled, surrounded by a bevy of most idiotic-looking representations of wise men and beasts. Over against this caricature of that divine scene, which St. Matthew alone has painted from the life, was erected a little platform, from which boys and girls deThe Bambino ought to be good in atonement claim the glories of Mary and the miracles of