all-but-smiling

Updated: July 31, 2026

These were the hateful doubts which the Roman strike suggested to the witness, or, at least, one of the witnesses, who has here the pleasure of unburdening himself upon the reader. Yet there was something amusing in the situation; there was a joke that rarest of all things in Rome latent in it, which one suspected only from the amiable, the all-but-smiling behavior of the strikers.

William Dean Howells - Roman Holidays, and Others