A
Family, We Will Say, Has Just Gathered Its First Harvest; The Heat
On The Plains Is Intense, And The
Malaria from the rice grounds
little less than pestilential; what, then, can be nicer than to
lock up the house
And go for three days to the bracing mountain air
of Oropa? So at daybreak off they all start, trudging, it may be,
their thirty or forty miles, and reaching Oropa by nightfall. If
there is a weakly one among them, some arrangement is sure to be
practicable, whereby he or she can be helped to follow more
leisurely, and can remain longer at the hospice. Once arrived,
they generally, it is true, go the round of the chapels, and make
some slight show of pilgrimage, but the main part of their time is
spent in doing absolutely nothing. It is sufficient amusement to
them to sit on the steps, or lie about under the shadow of the
trees, and neither say anything nor do anything, but simply
breathe, and look at the sky and at each other. We saw scores of
such people just resting instinctively in a kind of blissful waking
dream. Others saunter along the walks which have been cut in the
woods that surround the hospice, or if they have been pent up in a
town and have a fancy for climbing, there are mountain excursions,
for the making of which the hospice affords excellent headquarters,
and which are looked upon with every favour by the authorities.
It must be remembered also that the accommodation provided at Oropa
is much better than what the people are, for the most part,
accustomed to in their own homes, and the beds are softer, more
often beaten up, and cleaner than those they have left behind them.
Besides, they have sheets - and beautifully clean sheets. Those who
know the sort of place in which an Italian peasant is commonly
content to sleep, will understand how much he must enjoy a really
clean and comfortable bed, especially when he has not got to pay
for it. Sleep, in the circumstances of comfort which most readers
will be accustomed to, is a more expensive thing than is commonly
supposed. If we sleep eight hours in a London hotel we shall have
to pay from 4d. to 6d. an hour, or from 1d. to 1.5d. for every
fifteen minutes we lie in bed; nor is it reasonable to believe that
the charge is excessive, when we consider the vast amount of
competition which exists. There is many a man the expenses of
whose daily meat, drink, and clothing are less than what an
accountant would show us we, many of us, lay out nightly upon our
sleep. The cost of really comfortable sleep-necessaries cannot, of
course, be nearly so great at Oropa as in a London hotel, but they
are enough to put them beyond the reach of the peasant under
ordinary circumstances, and he relishes them all the more when he
can get them.
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