Mark Twain Reading Journal

Government – bankrupt but opulent

Italy – independent but failing, priest ridden, magnificent and miserable

Church – rich, don’t pay taxes, getting goods confiscated, hypocritical

Inquisition – kindly, playful, soothing

Priests – numerous, wretched, poverty-stricken, cut adrift

Travelers – worship Duomo, ask idiotic questions, imbecilic, have fun making guides suffer

Beggars – filthy, swarming

Medicis – buried with our lord and savior, tyrants

Artists – stupid for painting religious works that glorify the princes, prostituting their noble talents

Dominican friars – wear silly garments for the hot weather, go barefoot, poor, nursed the sick, fat, rascally, exuberant,

Civitavecchia – ignorant, dirty, smelly, cramped, indolent, paranoid (passport), hot, narrow, patron saint-less

Romans – slothful, superstitious, ignorant, gullible, illiterate,

Americans – fire insurance institution, can’t buy salvation, complain about taxes, overly emotional to ancient works, make bad jokes, not trusting of Roman info (catacomb grave marker)

American fashion – dress style changed twice in 100 years, hair not grown but made by cunning workmen

Roman fashion – muskets, goatskin breeches (hair side out), hobnailed shoes, spurs

St. Peters – huge, not as pretty as the Capitol at Washington, uniformly giant

Coliseum/Gladiator games – sound like the Italian operas, minty playbill, modern advertisements, chaste and elegant general slaughter, Roman Daily Battle-Ax, cushions, grieving mothers unacceptable, no showboating (kill ‘em faster)

Critics – he knows more about Hamlet than actors, critics knew more about broadsword work than the gladiators

Westward migration – bad horses, pushing the wagon, then the bad part, the Great American Desert, the pass, the bad houses

Bad poets – mules fall down the chimney on him, and cows

Michelangelo – he’s everywhere, too prevalent, designed/painted everything, “Creator made Italy from designs by Michelangelo.”

Guides – can’t see sarcasm, suffer for the info he gives, know enough English to butcher it, know their stories by rote only

“They have other kinds of insects, but it does not make them arrogant. They are very quiet, unpretending people. They have more of these kind of things than other communities, but they do not boast.”

“This in priest ridden Italy!”

“Look at the grand Duomo of Florence – a vast pile that has been sapping the purses of her citizens for five hundred years, and is not nearly finished yet.”

“However, another beggar approaches. I will go out and destroy him and then come back and write another chapter of vituperation.”

“Having eaten the friendless orphan – having driven away his comrades – having grown calm and reflective at length – I now feel in a kindlier mood.”

“There is nothing here to see. They have not even a cathedral, with eleven tons of solid silver archbishops in the back room; and they do not show you any moldy buildings that are seven thousand years old; nor any smoke-dried old fire-screens which are chef d’oeuvres of Rubens or Simpson, or Titian or Ferguson, or any of those parties; and they haven’t any bottled fragments of saints and not even a nail from the true Cross. We are going to Rome. There is nothing to see here.”