a barber at Rome, which could imitate any word he heard. One day, a company of passing soldiers blew their trumpets before the shop and for the next forty-eight hours the magpie was not only mute but also pensive and melancholy. It was generally believed that the sound of the trumpets had stunned the bird and deprived it of both voice and hearing. It appeared, however, that this was not the case for, says Plutarch, the bird had all the time been occupied in profound meditation, studying how to imitate the sound of the trumpets, and when at last master of the trick, he astonished his friends by a perfect imitation of the flourish on those instruments it had heard, observing with the greatest exactness all the repetitions, stops, and changes. This lesson, however, had apparently been learned at the cost of the whole of its intelligence, for it made it forget everything it had learned before.
We visited 'many out-of-the-way places together, Peter and I, the Negro dance-halls near 135th Street, and the Italian and the Yiddish Theatres. Peter once remarked that he enjoyed plays more in a foreign language with which he was unfamiliar. What he could imagine of plot and dialogue far transcended the actuality. We often dined at a comfortable Italian restaurant on Spring Street, on the walls of which birds fluttered through frescoed arbours, trailing with fruits and flowers, and where the spaghetti was too good to be eaten
