One afternoon, in Rome, on the way back from the Aventine, the
road-mender climbed onto the tram as it trotted slowly along, and
fastened to its front, alongside of the place of the driver, a bough
of budding bay.
Might one not search long for a better symbol of what we may all do by
our life? Bleakness, wind, squalid streets, a car full of
heterogeneous people, some very dull, most very common; a laborious
jog-trot all the way. But to redeem it all with the pleasantness of
beauty and the charm of significance, this laurel branch.