Stromboli had sent to Italy for a Neapolitan clay figure of a shepherd, cleverly modelled and painted, and vaguely resembling himself--he had been a Calabrian goatherd.

The contralto, who came from Bologna, the city of sausages, gave Margaret a tiny pig made of silver with holes in his back, in which were stuck a number of quill toothpicks.
'You will think of me when you use them at table,' she said, charmingly unconscious of English prejudices.
Schreiermeyer presented her with a bronze statuette of Shylock whetting his knife upon his thigh.
'It will encourage you to sign our next agreement,' he observed with stony calm.

'It is the symbol of business.

We are all symbolic nowadays.' Fraeulein Ottilie Braun had wrought a remarkable little specimen of German sentiment.

She had made a little blue pin-cushion and had embroidered some little flowers on it in brown silk.