Alas! I begin to
perceive that spirits of the right kind, of the useful kind, have yet to
be discovered. Our present-day ghosts are like seismographs; they
chronicle the event after it has happened. Now, what we want is - -
"The Signore smokes, and smokes, and smokes. Why not take the tram and
listen to the municipal music in the gardens?"
"Music? Gardens? An excellent suggestion, Gennarino."
Even as a small Italian town would be incomplete without its piazza
where streets converge and commercial pulses beat their liveliest
measure, so every larger one contrives to possess a public garden for
the evening disport of its citizens; night-life being the true life of
the south. Charming they are, most of them; none more delectable than
that of old Messina - a spacious pleasaunce, decked out with trim palms
and flower-beds and labyrinthine walks freshly watered, and cooled, that
evening, by stealthy breezes from the sea. The grounds were festively
illuminated, and as I sat down near the bandstand and watched the folk
meandering to and fro, I calculated that no fewer than thirty thousand
persons were abroad, taking their pleasure under the trees, in the bland
air of evening. An orderly, well-dressed crowd.
