“It is so difficult—at least, I find it difficult—to understand people who speak the truth.”

In the hotel, the middle-class guests deride Mr. Emerson's sincerity. To them, his direct and honest speech seems rude and absurd. He says what he means, rather than cloaking his intention in layers of manners and social etiquette. Emerson simply plays by different rules to the middle-class guests, to the point where they cannot understand people who "speak the truth" (13) when it is not conveyed through a certain system of manners.

“Built by faith indeed! That simply means the workmen weren't paid properly.”

In the Santa Croce Cathedral, Mr. Emerson speaks over Reverend Eager's lecture to point out the flaws in the man's thinking. While the priest is eager to credit the great artworks to “faith” alone, Emerson insists that the “workmen” are due their credit. His intrusion into the lecture is a demonstration of why his actions offend the middle-class English people. His comments are not incorrect, but the uncouth manner in which he frames them causes the same middle-class people to confront the prospect of income inequality. They would rather exist in their comfortable bubble of etiquette and wealth than imagine a world where rude, working-class men like Emerson are properly compensated. He functions as a dreadful harbinger of an uncouth socialist future.