I was singularly fortunate from time to time in discovering these kindred, sympathetic spirits. I met one party of three in Egypt, and found them again in Greece, and crossed to Italy with them. It was a mother and son and a lovely girl. They will never know, unless they happen across this page, how much they were to me on the Adriatic, and what a void they filled in Athens.
I found another such at Capri and Pompeii, and those beautiful days stand out in my mind more for the company I was in than even the wonders we went to see. That statement is strong but true. Yet my various other fellow-travellers who were lacking in the one essential of soul would never believe it, inasmuch as a person without a soul cannot miss what she never had, and will not believe what she cannot comprehend. I met one ill-assorted couple of that kind once. They were two young women--sisters. One had imagination, soul, fire, poetry, and all that goes to make up genius; but lacking as she did executive ability and perseverance, her genius was inarticulate. The impersonal world would never know her beauties, but her friends were rich in her acquaintance. Her sister was a walking Baedeker--red cover, gold letters, and all. She was "doing Europe." She read her guide-book, she saw nothing beyond, and the only time that she really blossomed was when dressing for _table d'hôte_ dinners. I found them at the Grand Hôtel at Rome--one of the most beautiful and well-kept hotels, and one admirably adapted to display the tourist who tours on principle.
This gorgeous hotel on Easter week is a sight for gods and men. We engaged our rooms here while we were on the Nile, two months before, and reminded them once a week all during that time that we were coming; otherwise, on account of its extreme popularity in the fashionable world, they might not have been able to hold them for us. We reached there late on the Saturday evening before Easter, and dined in our own apartments. But the next day, and indeed until war broke out and we fled from Rome, the Grand Hôtel was as delightful as it was possible to make a gorgeous, luxurious, and fashionable hotel. The palm-room, where the band plays for afternoon tea, and where one always comes for one's coffee, is between the entrance and the grand dining-room, so that on entering the hotel one comes upon a most beautiful vista of a series of huge glass doors and lovely green waving palms, with nothing but a glass roof between one and the blue Italian sky.