From Edith Wharton’s Roman Fever (pg. 15 of Roman Fever and Other Stories).
“I was just thinking,” she said slowly, “what different things Rome stands for to each generation of travellers. To our grandmother, Roman fever; to our mothers, sentimental dangers – how we used to be guarded! – to our daughters, no more dangers than the middle of Main Street. They don’t know it – but how much they’re missing!”
This brief passage feels pregnant with far more meaning than its obvious value in the titular story – akin to the social and generation commentary via the hotel room in Forster’s A Room With a View, only skewing differently in its final value.
Extracts 