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Page 10
I
"You here, Bagster?" I exclaimed, as in the Sistine Chapel I saw an
anxious face gazing down into a mirror in which were reflected the
dimmed glories of the ceiling. There was an anxiety as of one who was
seeking the Truth of Art at the bottom of the well.
One who is in the habit of giving unsolicited advice is likely to take
for granted that his advice has been acted upon, even though experience
should teach him that this is seldom the case. I had sagely counseled
Bagster to go to the New Hampshire woods, in order to recuperate after
his multifarious labors. I was therefore surprised to find him playing
truant in Rome.
My salutation did not at first cause him to look up. He only made a
mysterious sign with his hand. It was evidently a gesture which he had
recently learned, and was practiced as a sort of exorcism.
"I am not going to sell you cameos or post cards," I explained.
When he recognized a familiar face, Bagster forgot all about the Last
Judgment, and we were soon out-of-doors and he was telling me about
himself.
"I meant to go to Chocorua as you suggested, but the congregation
advised otherwise, so I came over here. It seemed the better thing to
do. Up in New Hampshire you can't do much but rest, but here you can
improve your taste and collect a good deal of homiletic material. So
I've settled down in Rome. I want to have time to take it all in."
"Do you begin to feel rested?" I asked.
"Not yet. It's harder work than I thought it would be. There's so much
to take in, and it's all so different. I don't know how to arrange my
material. What I want to do, in the first place, is to have a realizing
sense of being in Rome. What's the use of being here unless you are here
in the spirit?
"What I mean is that I should like to feel as I did when I went to Mount
Vernon. It was one of those dreamy autumn days when the leaves were just
turning. There was the broad Potomac, and the hospitable Virginia
mansion. I had the satisfying sense that I was in the home of
Washington. Everything seemed to speak of Washington. He filled the
whole scene. It was a great experience. Why can't I feel that way about
the great events that happened down there?"
We were by this time on the height of the Janiculum near the statue of
Garibaldi. Bagster made a vague gesture toward the city that lay beneath
us. There seemed to be something in the scene that worried him. "I can't
make it seem real," he said. "I have continually to say to myself, 'That
is Rome, Italy, and not Rome, New York.' I can't make the connection
between the place and the historical personages I have read about. I
can't realize that the Epistle to the Romans was written to the people
who lived down there. Just back of that new building is the very spot
where Romulus would have lived if he had ever existed. On those very
streets Scipio Africanus walked, and C�sar and Cicero and Paul and
Marcus Aurelius, and Epictetus and Belisarius, and Hildebrand and
Michelangelo, and at one time or another about every one you ever heard
of. And how many people came to get emotions they couldn't get anywhere
else! There was Goethe. How he felt! He took it all in. And there was
Shelley writing poetry in the Baths of Caracalla. And there was Gibbon."
"But we can't all expect to be Shelleys or even Gibbons," I suggested.
"I know it," said Bagster, ruefully. "But if one has only a little
vessel, he ought to fill it. But somehow the historical associations
crowd each other out. When I left home I bought Hare's 'Walks in Rome.'
I thought I would take a walk a day as long as they lasted. It seemed a
pleasant way of combining physical and intellectual exercise. But do you
know, I could not keep up those walks. They were too concentrated for my
constitution. I wasn't equal to them. Out in California they used to
make wagers with the stranger that he couldn't eat a broiled quail every
day for ten days. I don't see why he couldn't, but it seemed that the
thought of to-morrow's quail, and the feeling that it was compulsory,
turned him against what otherwise might have been a pleasure. It's so
with the 'Walks.' It's appalling to think that every morning you have to
start out for a constitutional, and be confronted with the events of the
last twenty-five centuries. The events are piled up one on another.
There they are, and here you are, and what are you going to do about
them?"
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