after the noshing and schmoozing I take my son on a tour of Emily Dickinson’s house though he claims not to like her poetry which is not unusual for a young man but nevertheless we go on this tour with a couple in their twenties mumbling verses as we are herded from one room to the next and three Italians a middle-aged couple and an older gentleman who I find out the next morning at our B&B is an intellectual or poet perhaps because the other Italian man has a book with the older gentleman’s picture on the cover to which I point and say Emily Dickinson but he laughs and says no though what I meant was is the older gentleman a scholar of Emily Dickinson because in her house there is a mannequin wearing a dress that the poetess may or may not have worn and the elderly Italian gentleman sees it and says Reina Vitoria and I think that’s something one is not likely to say unless he knows something anyway I discover that everyone staying at the B&B except me is a Jew even my son even the Italian couple and I feel a bit self-conscious about eating my bacon so keep trying to hide it under the toast