The Scene Was As Public As All Of Life And Death Is In Naples, And
The Publicity Seemed To Give It Peculiar Sadness, Which I Noted To Our
Guide.
He owned its pathos; "but," he said, "you know we have a terrible
class of people here in Naples." I protested that there were terrible
classes of people everywhere, even in America.
He would not consent
entirely, but in partly convincing each other we became better friends.
He had a large black mustache and gentle black eyes, and he spoke very
fair English, which, when he wished to be most impressive, he dropped
and used a very literary Italian instead. He showed us where he lived,
on a hill-top back of our gardened quay, and said that he paid twelve
dollars a month for a tenement of five rooms there. Schooling is
compulsory in Naples, but he sends his boy willingly, and has him
especially study English as the best provision he can make for him - as
heir of his own calling of cicerone, perhaps. He has a little farm at
Bavello, which he tills when it is past the season for cultivating
foreigners in Naples; he expects to spend his old age there; and I
thought it not a bad lookout. He was perfectly well-mannered, and at a
hotel where we stopped for tea he took his coffee at our table unbidden,
like any American fellow-man. He and the landlord had their joke
together, the landlord warning me against him in English as "very bad
man," and clapping him affectionately on the shoulder to emphasize the
irony.
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