It Was The Moment When The Society Calling Itself By Giordano Bruno's Name Was Making An Effort For The Suppression Of Ecclesiastical Instruction In The Public Schools; And On The Anniversary Of His Martyrdom His Effigy Had Suffered This Unmeant Hurt.

In all the churches there had been printed appeals to parents against the agnostic attack on the altar and the home, and there had been some of the open tumults which seem in Rome to express every social emotion.

But the clericals had triumphed, and an observer more anxious than I to give a mystical meaning to accident might have interpreted the disfiguring ribbon over Bruno's bronze lips as a new silencing of the heretic.

I certainly did not construe it so, and, if my notion of serially visiting the piazzas of Rome was not prompted by my chance glimpse of the Campo di Fiori, it was certainly not relinquished because of any mischance in my meditated vision of it. I had merely reflected that I could not hope to carry out my scheme without greater expense both in time and money than I could well afford, for, though cabs in Rome are swift and cheap, yet the piazzas are many and widely distributed; and I finally decided to indulge myself in a novelty of adventure verging close upon originality. It had always seemed to me that the happy strangers mounted on the tiers of seats that rise from front to back on the motor-chariots for seeing New York and looking down, even from the lowest place, on the life of our streets had a peculiar, almost a bird's-eye view of it which I might well find the means of a fresh impression. But I never had the courage, for reasons which I have not the courage to give, though the reader can perhaps imagine them. In Rome I did not feel that the like reasons held; of all the unknown, I was one of the most unknown; by me nobody would be put to the shame of recognizing an acquaintance on the benches of the like chariot, or forced to the cruelty of cutting him in my person. When once I had fully realized this, it was only a question of the time when I should yield to the temptation which renewed itself as often as I saw the stately automobile passing through the storied streets, with its English legend of "Touring Rome" inscribed on the back of the rear seat. There remained the question whether I should go alone or whether I should ask the countenance of friends in so bold an enterprise. When I suggested it to some persons of the more courageous sex, they did not wait to be asked to go with me; they instantly entreated to be allowed to go; they said they had always wished to see Rome in that way; and we only waited to be chosen by the raw and blustery afternoon which made us its own for the occasion.

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