"Here, boy, run and
tell - - "
"Or O'Cicereniello."
"O'Vergeniello."
"O'Sciabolone. ..."
"Never mind the G - - d - - son of b - - ," says a cheery person in
excellent English, who has just arrived on the scene. "See here, I live
fifteen years in Brooklyn; damn fine! 'Ave a glass of wine round my
place. Your Luigi's in America, sure. And if he isn't, send him to Hell."
Sound advice, this.
"What's his surname, anyhow?" he goes on.
You explain once more.
"Why, there's the very man you're looking for. There, standing right in
front of you! He's Luigi, and that's his surname right enough. He don't
know it himself, you bet."
And he points to the good-natured individual. . . .
These countryfolk can fare on strange meats. A boy consumed a snake that
was lying dead by the roadside; a woman ate thirty raw eggs and then a
plate of maccheroni; a man swallowed six kilograms of the uncooked fat
of a freshly slaughtered pig (he was ill for a week afterwards); another
one devoured two small birds alive, with beaks, claws and feathers. Such
deeds are sternly reprobated as savagery; still, they occur, and nearly
always as the result of wagers. I wish I could couple them with equally
heroic achievements in the drinking line, but, alas! I have only heard
of one old man who was wont habitually to en-gulph twenty-two litres of
wine a day; eight are spoken of as "almost too much" in these degenerate
days.
