Perhaps the pleasantest break in my university studies came in the summer of 1894, when I went to Switzerland, and, later in the year, to Italy. My writings had begun to bring me in a small income by this time, and I had learned how to make a dollar do valiant service when it came to paying traveling expenses.

My companion in Switzerland was a fellow-student at the university. I understand he is now spending his days and nights trying to write a new history of Rome. We did the usual things on our trip together, some things that were unusual, and we saw, on comparatively little money, the greater part of Switzerland. We also climbed a mountain; and thereby hangs a tale.

Both of us had been diligently reading Mark Twain's "A Tramp Abroad"—particularly the chapters on Switzerland. Eventually we got into the Rhone Valley, and at Visp, or rather at St. Nicholas, midway between Visp and Zermatt, we stumbled upon our ideal of a mountain guide, or, rather, on the ideal that the "Tramp Abroad" book had conjured up for us. We had seen other guides before, dozens of them, but there was something in the "altogether" about the St. Nicholas discovery that captured us completely. We drew the guide into conversation. Yes, he knew of a mountain at Zermatt that we could climb.

"Roped together?" said the present historian of Rome. Somehow, unless we could be attached to a rope and dangle over precipices, the ascent presented no great charms. Yes, we could even be roped together, could march in single file, spend hours in the snow, and have a wonderful aussicht.

"And the price?" A sudden return of everyday sense prompted me to ask. By this time our funds were getting pretty low, and neither one of us was sure when his next remittance would arrive. My friend's, by the way, never did arrive when we most needed it.

The guide told us the prices for the Matterhorn and the other "horns" in and about Zermatt.

"Three hundred francs to go up the Matterhorn!" the historian gasped. "Why, we haven't over a hundred in the outfit."

"Ah, but the Breithorn!" the guide went on, readjusting his coil of rope and ax, as if he knew that it was these very things that were tempting us and leading us into bankruptcy. Never before or since have ropes and axes possessed such fascinating qualities as they did that day. The guide told us that the Breithorn was ours for thirty francs—"Sehr billig, sehr billig," he added. The historian and I took stock of our resources. We finally concluded that, if the hotel bill at Zermatt didn't exhaust our means, we could just barely hire the guide, climb the mountain, pay railroad fare back to Brieg, and have a few francs left over for incidentals until fresh funds arrived. We knew a hotel man in Brieg who would trust us—at least we thought he would—and the main thing just then was going up the Breithorn. At a pinch we knew that we could go "on tramp," or rather I did. The historian just guessed that he could.

We stopped by the wayside to rest and think. Foolishly, I pulled the "Tramp Abroad" book out of my pocket by way of reference. I wanted to make sure that our guide was the real thing, a la "A Tramp Abroad." Then I glanced at his rope and ax. That decided the matter for me.

"Up the Breithorn we go," I cried, and the guide was formally engaged.

In ascending this mountain from Zermatt the average traveler, I believe, stops over night at the Theodule Pass, continuing the journey early in the morning. Our guide, for some foolish reason, decided that we were not average travelers, that it would be a mere bagatelle for us to sleep in Zermatt until early morning, and then do the whole thing in one gasp. My clothes—a light summer outfit from head to feet—were about as suitable for such an adventure as for the North Pole. The historian was a little more warmly clad, but not much. However, perhaps we should never pass that way again, as Heine sighs in his "Harzreise," and then—what regrets we might suffer! The time came when, for a moment, we regretted that we had ever passed that way at all—but I anticipate.

At three o'clock in the morning we got away, the guide carrying ropes, ax and lunch. At five or thereabouts we reached the pass. Thus far everything was delightful—landscape, atmosphere, temperament and intentions. The view that morning from the Theodule Pass, over the glacier below, was the most wonderful I have ever enjoyed. The clouds were tossing about over the glacier like stormy waves at sea, and the morning sun threw over the scene a most beautiful medley of colors. At our right was the Matterhorn, but that represented three hundred francs, and inspired covetousness. Pretty soon we were off again, and when we struck the snow my delight was climaxed. We were roped together! Never before or since in my life have I felt the sense of personal responsibility in such an exalted degree. I thought of the historian, and what I should do if he tumbled into a crevice. I even pictured myself hauling the stalwart guide out of a hole. These thrilling notions of possible valor did not last long, however. In an hour my light summer shoes were wet through, my face had begun to burn, my hands had got cold, and the top of the world looked all awry. "Get your money's worth," the historian encouraged me, and I plodded on to the top. There we stood, and were supposed to enjoy life. My feet ached, and I said "d——." An Englishman, brother of a well-known novelist, whom I took to be a clergyman, said, "Tut, tut!" I repeated my expression, and he and his party crossed over to the Little Breithorn, to be alone. I said a number of other things before the day was over, but we managed to get back to Zermatt without interference. As we paid the guide off before going into the village, I asked him whether he would not like to have us write a recommendation for him in his book. He smiled. "Oh, I can go up that hill backwards," he said, "but I am much obliged." This is the way he left us: bankrupt practically, wet, tired, and with the humiliating inference that had we been real sportsmen we could have climbed the "Breithorn" heels foremost. I have never read "A Tramp Abroad" since that experience.

Of our impoverished condition on reaching Breig there is little to say except that it was whole-hearted and genuine. We could hardly have had over two francs between us. The hotel man insisted that we were honest, however, and would pay him when we could. So for ten days we settled down upon him to wonder why we had ever attempted the "Breithorn." There was a stone wall, or abutment, near the town, about sixty feet high. Climbing it was like going up a New England stone fence to the same height—there was not a particle of difference. If one lost his footing, there was nothing to do but fall to the bottom and think things over. A fall from near the top, which nearly happened to me, could only have stopped all things, because there was nothing but bowlders to light on.

For two hours, every day of our stay in Brieg, we fools risked our limbs and necks in finding new ways to climb the wall. Perhaps the Matterhorn presents more difficult problems in climbing to solve than those of our wall, but I doubt it. At any rate, I should want to be paid, and not pay, three hundred francs before I would attempt either wall or mountain to-day.

The journey into Italy was made alone. One bright afternoon in October, I left Poschiavo, in the Italian Engadine, where I had spent several weeks in calm retreat, writing, studying Italian, and climbing mountains, by eyesight, and made off for Venice. I had, perhaps, sixty dollars in my pocket, a sum quite sufficient, in those days, to have emboldened me to tackle Africa, had it seemed the next thing to do. Italy was nearest to hand just then, and I wanted to experiment with my Italian on the Venetians. Learning German had given me a healthy appetite for other languages, and I had dreams of becoming a polyglot in course of time. I also had a notion that I could learn to write better in a warm climate. Berlin seemed to warp my vocabulary when I felt moved to write, and I persuaded myself that words would come more readily in a sunny clime.

A genuine seizure of Wanderlust was probably the predominant motive in the southern venture, but I was determined that it should be attended with good resolutions. Indeed, at this time, I was so far master of Die Ferne that, although temptations to wander were numerous enough, I was able to beat them off unless the wandering promised something useful in return, either in study or money-making.

Besides the intention to scribble and learn the language, I furthermore contemplated a course of study with Lombroso at Turin. My collateral reading at the University of Berlin had got me deeply interested in criminology, and Lombroso's writings, of course, had been included. From the very beginning I disagreed with his main thesis, and I do yet, as far as professional crime is concerned. However, I thought it would be valuable to come in contact with such a man, and I expected to learn much from his experimental apparatus. This plan fell through in the end. I found there was quite enough criminology for my purposes in watching the Italian people in the open, and I invented some apparatus of my own for experimentation, which, under the circumstances, probably revealed as much to me as would have that of Lombroso. Nevertheless, I regret now that I did not make the professor's acquaintance, for, say what one will, of the men that I know about he has done the most in recent times to awaken at least scientific interest in crime as a social disorder.

My first ride down the Grand Canal in Venice, from the railway station to the Riva, was my initial introduction to the Venetian wonderland. As a boy, I had read my "Arabian Nights" and had had, I suppose, dreams of Oriental things, but on no occasion that I can recall had anything Eastern ever taken hold of me sufficiently to inveigle me into a trip outside of my own country. That was wonderful enough for me then, and it becomes more wonderful to me every day that I grow older.

But that first ride in Venice! As the gondola bore me down the canal to the Riva where my lodgings had been secured in advance, it seemed to me as if I were gliding into a new world, a world, indeed, that hardly belonged to our world at all. The mere strangeness of things did not impress me so much as their soft and gentle outlines. I thought then of the city, as I do still, more as a lovely, breathing creature, truly as a bride of the Adriatic, than as a dwelling place of man. I walked from my lodgings to the Piazza. As I turned into the Piazzetta, and the glory of that wonderful square flashed upon me in the glow of the bright afternoon sun, I came suddenly to a halt. Such moments mean different things to different men. I remember now what passed through my mind, as if it were yesterday:

"If to come to this entrancing spot, young man, is your payment for pulling out of the slough that you once let yourself into, then your reward is indeed sweet."

For four most enjoyable months I lingered near that fascinating Piazza reluctant to leave it. Lord Curzon thinks that the Rhigistan in Samarcand, considering all things, is the most beautiful square in the world. Perhaps, had I seen the Rhigistan first, and at the time I saw the Piazza, I might have been similarly impressed. As it happened, when, in 1897, I first beheld the Rhigistan I thought inevitably of the Piazza, and then and there renewed my allegiance to her superior charm over me.

Of my life in and about this square there is much that I would like to tell if I could tell it to my satisfaction, for I believe that Venice is a mistress to whom all admirers, without distinction of color, race or previous incarnation, should offer some artistic tribute either in prose or verse.

My most intimate friend, while in Venice, was Horatio Brown, a gentleman who knows the city probably better than any other foreigner, and much more intimately than many of the Venetians themselves. His book, "Life on the Lagoons," is the best book about the town that I know, and I have rummaged through a number. Mr. Howell's "Venetian Life," like everything he writes, is very artistic and instructive, but I was never able to find the Venice that he knows.

I must thank Arthur Symons for persuading Brown to be kind to me, and I fancy that he told him the truth—that I was a young Wanderlust victim. The result was that, although I had to live pretty scrimpingly, Brown's home on the Zattere became a magnificent retreat, where, at least once a week, I could brush up my manners a little, and enjoy an Anglo-Saxon atmosphere and undisguised comfort.

I think it was Monday evenings that Brown generally received his friends. There were many interesting persons to meet on these occasions, literary and otherwise, but a good illustration of the vagaries of fancy and memory is the fact that an Austrian admiral stands out strongest in my recollections of the Monday evenings that I recall. I suppose it was because he had been through a great many adventures out of my line, and was not quite my height. Any one smaller than I am who has projected his personality into more alluring wanderings than I have becomes immediately to me a person to look up to. Tall men and their achievements, fiendish or angelic, are so out of my range of vision that I have never tried to wonder much about them. Napoleon I could have listened to by the month without a murmur; Bismarck would have made me look dreamily at the ceiling at times.

The admiral told me how Garibaldi once gave him a scare, when the Italians were freeing themselves of Austrian rule. It seems that Garibaldi kept the enemy guessing at sea quite as much as on shore, and the admiral received word, one day, that Garibaldi was coming up the coast toward Venice with a formidable force. As a matter of fact, he was doing nothing of the kind, being busy in very different quarters. "But how was I to know?" the admiral said to me. "He was jumping about from place to place like a frog, and I had no reason to believe that the rumor might not be true. I decided to take no chances, and commandeered two Austrian-Lloyd steamers and sunk them in the Malamocco Strait. I felt able to guard the other end of the Lido. But Garibaldi fooled me, as he did a great many others, and the two steamers were sunk for nothing."

During a part of my stay in and about Venice, I lived alone in an empty house at San Nicoletto on the Lido. Within a stone's throw was the military prison, dreaming about which, in the empty house, after a luxurious gratuitous dinner, sometimes made night life rather gloomy. I got my non-gratuitous meals at an osteria near-by. I wonder whether the asthmatic little steamer that used to run from the Riva to San Nicoletto is still afloat? It was owned and captained by a conte, who also collected the fares. I patronized his craft for a while, and then in partnership with a corporale, stationed at the San Nicoletto marine signal station, invested in a canoe.

The adventures that we had with this canoe were many and varied. On one occasion, for instance, the canoe and I were suspected of being spies, and came very near being bombarded. I had spent the afternoon in Venice, leaving the canoe near the Giardino Pubblico. It was darker than usual when I was ready to return to the Lido, and I carried no light; but I set out for home undaunted. I had been paddling along serenely enough for fifteen minutes or so, when, on nearing the powder magazine island, or whatever it is between Venice and San Nicoletto that is guarded by a sentry, I was partly awakened from my dreaming by a strenuous "Chi va la?" on my left. I say partly awakened advisedly, because I paid no attention to the challenge, and paddled on. It seemed impossible that anybody could want to learn who I was out there on the water. Again the words rang out, clear and sharp, and again I failed to heed them. The third time the challenge was accompanied by an ominous click of a gun. I came out of my dream like a shot. Why I should be challenged was absolutely unintelligible to me, but that suggestive click jogged my work-a-day senses back into action.

"Amico! Amico!" I yelled.

"Well, draw up here to the landing and let me look at you."

I put about and paddled over to the island, where the sentry detained me nearly half an hour, making me explain how harmless and innocent I was. I must needs tell him who my landlord was on the Lido, which room I occupied in the empty house, why in the name of Maria I lived on the Lido at all, and by what maladetto right I dared cruise in those waters without lights. He finally let me pass on, with the warning that my craft stood a good chance of being sent to the bottom if she passed that way again at night without the proper illumination.

One day this canoe foundered near the Giardino Pubblico, and the accident brought to light a typical Italian trait in the corporale. I thought that it was an exhibition of simple stubbornness at the time, but Brown assured me later that I was mistaken. I was trying to manage things when the canoe put her nose into the mud bank, and the corporale was in the garden, I think, looking on. He was slicked up in his best uniform and looked very fine, but, as a sailor and part owner of the canoe, I thought he should come to her aid in such a case of signal distress. At first he also thought that he ought to bestir himself in the matter, and carefully looked about to see if anybody was watching. Then he picked his way more like a woman with fine lace skirts on than like a man, let alone a sailor, to a dry spot within perhaps thirty feet of the canoe. There he spent himself utterly in telling me how to do what he could do a hundred times better from the shore. All the canoe needed was a good, big shove, which he could have given her without any great inconvenience. I urged him in spotless Italian to get a real genuine move on and send me seaward.

"Ma non—ma non," he kept on whining, pointing to his highly polished shoes and the mud—with which there was no need for him to come in contact. At this juncture Brown and his gondolier hove in sight, and I gave them the shipwreck signal. While they were coming to my rescue, the corporale, again, like a mincing woman, got back into the garden. The gondolier threw me a rope, and then towed me out of my predicament, the corporale watching the maneuvers, cat-like, from his vantage ground above. I waved him adieu, and would not speak to him all of the next day. Brown explained his conduct with the one word—critica. If there is anything that Italians dislike, he told me, it is to be surprised by their neighbors in predicaments that make them appear ludicrous. He said that the corporale would have let the canoe rot in her mud berth before he would have subjected himself to the scrutiny of the onlookers in an attempt to save her. The reason he retired to the garden so quickly when Brown appeared was because he saw critica coming his way.

I am afraid that a similar fright possessed him several weeks later, when the canoe was blown through the Nicoletto Strait and out into the billowy Adriatic, whence she never returned. I was not present when the accident occurred, but "they" say that the corporale was, and that all that was necessary to save the canoe was to swim a short distance from shore and tow her back. But the "public" was doubtless looking on, and the corporale was afraid of the critical comments and suggestions.

I had the most fun with the canoe, while she lasted, in the small, narrow canals in Venice proper. Day after day, I cruised with her in different parts of the city, exploring new routes and sections, lunching where the hour overtook me, and in the evening paddled back to port on the Lido, feeling very nautical and picturesque. The principal fun came when I had to turn corners in the small canals. The gondoliers have regular calls, "To the right," and "To the left," and by rights I should have used them, too. But, somehow, all I could think of when surprised at a turn by an oncoming craft was to cry "Wa-hoo!" at the top of my voice, and then hug the side of some buildings till the danger had passed. The way the gondoliers scolded me was enough to have frightened a prizefighter, but I learned to expect scoldings and not to mind them. On the Riva, where I was wont to forgather with many of them, they finally got to calling me "Wa-hoo."

Of one of the Riva gondoliers I made quite an intimate, and when I moved back to Venice from the Lido we were almost daily together, either on the water or in his sandalo, or swapping yarns over a glass of wine and Polenta in some osteria.

On one occasion he came to me and said: "Signor, will you not accompany me on a journey to the fine lace and glasshouses in Venice?"

I said: "Gladly."

He continued: "You will see many fine things in our lace houses and our glass houses."

I said: "Let us see these wonderful things."

So we proceeded up the Grand Canal; afterwards we went down the Grand Canal. Since Lord Byron's time I believe there is a slight difference of opinion as to which is up or down in this canal. We got into Sambo's sandalo, and Sambo took me to one of the great lace houses, where I had to expose all my ignorance of lace, and yet try to appear to be a specialist in this commodity; then, to a place where what I understand is called Venetian glass was sold; then to other places. During none of our calls did I make a purchase, much to the disgust of the attending clerks, but fully within the agreement with Sambo that I should not buy that which I did not want or did not have money enough to buy. I noticed that Sambo received either a brass check or a small amount in Italian currency on each call. Eventually this pilgrimage to places of Venetian commercialism was finished. I said to Sambo: "What in the world is the meaning of all this?"

He said: "Why, signor, did you not observe? We have been friendly together, have we not?"

I said: "Certainly, Sambo, but it strikes me as funny that you should take me to places where you know I have no idea of buying anything."

"Ah, signor, you do not understand the situation here in Venice. You see, these glass people, these lace people—and other people—give us gondoliers a commission. When we get so many brass checks, we go over and cash them in, and get a certain percentage for such business as we may have brought to the business houses. When we get money, of course that comes in the shape of tips such as you have seen, and we put that direct in our pockets.

"I want to say to you, signor, that although my story may offend you, and you may think I had no right to take you on the ride, which, as you will remember, I suggested should be on me, I have succeeded in accumulating nine lire. Signor, please do not take offense. I knew the game. Will you not come as my guest to-night at one of our gondolier's restaurants, where I will spend every one of those nine lire on a good dinner?"

I suppose that Sambo is still inviting other innocent people like myself to pilgrimages to the lace and glass houses of Venice.

Of Rome, which I visited after my experiences in Venice, there is also much that I should like to say literarily, if I felt that I could do it. Most writers dwell heavily on the ancient sadness of Rome. There was nothing in the ancient sadness of Rome, during the month that I spent in that city, in the spring of 1895, which compared with the sadness which came over me on going to the English cemetery and reading the names of certain great men known to all the world, and of certain young men known personally to me, Englishmen and Americans, who are buried in that picturesque but unwaveringly sad spot.

A friend of mine, who has since settled down and gone in for all the intricacies of what settling down means, was with me in Rome, on a certain night in 1895, when there was a discussion of what was the best thing for two students at a German university to do. It was decided that, first of all, Gambrinus, in the Corso, was the best place for considering things. I remember that my friend lost his umbrella. As it came time to leave the Gambrinus, he became very indignant over the disappearance of this umbrella, which he thought should be in his hands at any time that he wanted it. The umbrella was not to be found. The supposition was that one of the waiters had taken it. How could this be proved? We called our waiter and said to him: "Where is that umbrella?"

He replied: "Signor, I have no idea."

My friend said: "Well, suppose you get an idea just about as quickly as you know how."

The waiter said that he would do as suggested. He went to the proprietor's wife, and came back pretty soon and said that there was no record of any missing umbrella.

My friend, who was completely occupied with the determination that he was going to get that umbrella, got up, and, in his very abrupt way, said: "You bring me my 'bamberillo.' If you don't, there will be trouble."

On account of fear that there might be some other instruments used than those which would ordinarily go after this pronouncement of my friend, I suggested that we proceed up a certain stairway and ask the proprietor's wife whether she did not think that my friend should get his "bamberillo" back. She replied, with such pathos as a German woman is capable of: "I fear you do not understand the Italian mind. This Italian mind is strange and peculiar."

"Yes," my friend said in German, "it is so strange that I cannot find my 'bamberillo.'"

The good Hausfrau said: "Well, you must excuse us down in this country of—Ja, Sie kennen das Vieh, nicht wahr?"

From Rome I went to Naples. My money gave out in this town with pronounced persistency. I received there fifty dollars a month to meet all bills—promissory notes and other financial engagements. My home during my residence in the city was a room which I shared unwillingly with two of the most marvelous cats that I have ever known. Some men say they like cats. It would please me to have any one of these men sentenced to ten days' imprisonment in my room in the Santa Lucia in Naples. The song called "Santa Lucia" is often heard in our streets. It is a pleasant song for those who have never had to live in the Santa Lucia with cats as I did. I honestly tried to increase my Italian vocabulary with the Neapolitan variations while in Naples. But I could never find any word, vituperative or otherwise, that would explain what those cats that prowled around in that strange room in the Santa Lucia meant to me. I make so much of them because they made so much of me during my fifty-dollar-a-month existence in Italy. I found it difficult to live within my bounds. My fifty dollars a month were generally all torn to pieces by the twentieth of the month, and not always on account of nonsense. At this time I was much engaged in buying books that interested me, and I think it fair to say that a good quarter of my monthly stipend went for their purchase.

On the twentieth, particularly in Naples, I was very ragged with my fifty dollars. I had a proprietor there in this catful Santa Lucia who was a North Italian. My fifty dollars did not reach me as quickly as I wanted it and I got worried. My rent was due. It was a problem how I was to make this plain to the landlord. In the end I went to him and said in all frankness: "I should like to say to you, signor, that I am very much disappointed that my money has not come. It will come. It must come. There seems to be some delay."

Again there was that fine Italian touch. He said: "My son, do not be worried. I understand your difficulty. Mio figlio," and he patted me on the back, "you will be taken care of." Is there anything in the English language that can beat that?

While I was stopping in the Santa Lucia I took my meals, such as I could get, in a restaurant one or two doors away. In this restaurant were all kinds of truckmen, cabmen and men in general who have to spend much of their time in the open air. I had learned in Venice that there was a strong bond of sympathy among Italian criminals.

It occurred to me that while I was among some of these people, it would be worth while to learn something about the Maffia Society and the Camorra. I had heard indirectly that these societies were working pretty well in their own interests at home.

How many Italians there are in the United States I do not know. It is questionable whether any one else knows exactly. We certainly know that there are several millions of them. My interest in inquiring in Naples, so far as I was able, into the workings of the Maffia and the Camorra, was to find out, if I could, what power they were alleged to have over their own countrymen.

In pursuance of these facts, I ran up against a facchino. A facchino is a common porter in Italy.

I said to one of my facchino friends: "Can you not make me acquainted with some friend in the Maffia Society?"

He was a genuine lounger, a stevedore, a longshoreman—and a big man.

He said to me, in effect: "Are you not wise enough to go into that park, where you can meet anybody, and find out all you want to know about the Maffia or the Camorra?"

I said: "Yes, I suppose I am. But what will it cost?"

"Why, you just go over there. Perhaps you will find somebody of the stripe you want; perhaps you won't."

I made no discoveries that were of any value. But what is to be said about my friend, the facchino, and the Maffia and the Camorra? I look at it this way. If these people have quarrels which so concern themselves, then let them proceed on their own lines. If they have quarrels in my country, and think that by any chance their secret societies can rule my country, they have terribly mistaken their calling. They are not so dangerous as the newspapers make them out to be. They believe, true enough, in their end of the game, to a finish, which can sometimes be disturbing.

I asked my facchino friend what he thought in general of the people who might be called Maffia or Camorra in the park which he suggested.

"Well," he said, "I no more know what the Maffia or the Camorra will do, than I know what will happen to me in the next five minutes."

"Then I must make my own conclusions," was my reply