Only live in America a lill' w'ile--to discover, you und'stan' ?" "Mr.Bebbini," said poppa, "if you go around contradicting Americans on the subject of Christopher Columbus your business will decrease.

As a matter of fact, Christopher wasn't born, he was made, and America made him.

He has every right to claim to be considered an American, and it was a little careless of him not to have founded a family there.

We make excuses for him--it's quite true he had very little time at his disposal--but we feel it, the whole nation of us, to this day." The Via Balbi was cheerfully crooked and crowded, it had the modern note of the street car, and the mediaeval one of old women, arms akimbo, in the nooks and recesses, selling big black cherries and bursting figs.
Even the old women though, as momma complained, wore postilion basques and bell skirts, certainly in an advanced stage of usefulness, but of unmistakable genesis--just what had been popular in Chicago a year or two before.
"Really, my love," said momma, "I don't know _what_ we shall do for description in Genoa, the people seem to wear no clothes worth mentioning whatever." We concluded that all the city's characteristically Italian garments were in the wash; they depended in novel cut and colour from every window that did not belong to a bank or a university; and sometimes, when the side street was narrow and the houses high, the effect was quite imposing.

Poppa asked Alessandro Bebbini whether they were expecting royalty or anything, or whether it was like this every washing day, and we gathered that there was nothing unusual about it.