Fra non molto ad un'
importanza maggiore di quella che attualmente."
The erection of a letter-box in the Street of a small place of which 80
per cent of the readers have never so much as heard. ... I begin to
understand why the cultured Tarentines do not read these journals.
By far the best part of all such papers is the richly-tinted personal
column, wherein lovers communicate with each other, or endeavour to do
so. I read it conscientiously from beginning to end, admiring, in my
physical capacity, the throbbing passion that prompts such public
outbursts of confidence and, from a literary point of view, their
lapidary style, model of condensation, impossible to render in English
and conditioned by the hard fact that every word costs two sous. Under
this painful material stress, indeed, the messages are sometimes crushed
into a conciseness which the females concerned must have some difficulty
in unperplexing: what on earth does the parsimonious Flower mean by
his Delphic fourpenny worth, thus punctuated -
"(You have) not received. How. Safety."
One cannot help smiling at this circuitous and unromantic method of
touching the hearts of ladies who take one's fancy; at the same time, it
testifies to a resourceful vitality, striving to break through the
barriers of Hispano-Arabic convention which surround the fair sex in
this country. They are nothing if not poetic, these love-sick swains.
Arrow murmurs: "My soul lies on your pillow, caressing you softly";
Strawberry laments that "as bird outside nest, I am alone and lost.
What sadness," and Star finds the "Days eternal, till Thursday." And
yet they often choose rather prosaic pseudonyms. Here is Sahara who
"suffers from your silence," while Asthma is "anticipating one endless
kiss," and Old England observing, more ir sorrow than in anger, that
he "waited vainly one whole hour."
But the sagacious Cooked Lobster desires, before commiting himself
further, "a personal interview." He has perhaps been cooked once before.
Letters and numbers are best, after all. So thinks F. N. 13, who is
utterly disgusted with his flame -
"Your silence speaks. Useless saying anything. Ca ira." And likewise
7776 - B, a designing rogue and plainly a spendthrift, who wastes
ninepence in making it clear that he "wishes to marry rich young lady,
forgiving youthful errors." If I were the girl, I would prefer to take
my chances with "Cooked Lobster."
"Will much-admired young-lady cherries-in-black-hat indicate method
possible correspondence 10211, Post-Office?"
How many of these arrows, I wonder, reach their mark?
Ah, here are politics and News of the World, at last. A promising
article on the "Direttissimo Roma-Napoli" - the railway line that is to
connect the two towns by way of the Pontine Marshes. . . . Dear me!
