The Douglas independent. [volume] (Roseburg, Or.) 187?-1885, 1882-02-25
Country Life IN Italy.


A lady living in country village in
Italy writes, in the Cornhill Magazine, of
her neighbors and their habits. She
says:
It Is amazing how smart the very
poorest lady who has any pretensions to
being such, will turn out ON occasions
however dilapidated her home attire.
Two young ladies belonging to an old
but utterly ruined family, whose parents
we're too poor to keep servant, would
dress themselves for their evening walk
in the most fashionable hats and cos
tunes, with their fans, smelling bottles,
lace handkerchiefs and gloves, all COM
plete. In order to obtain these dresses
the young ladies had to condescend so
far as to work for the peasants, who paid
them for the manufacture of the smart
stays and chemises they wear on feast
days. The attempt at being highly fash
ionable, combined with an entire ignor-
ance, of the ways of the fashionable
world, produce sometimes the strangest
incongruities. The lace veil is now al
most confined to the class called
'sartisti that is, shop keepers and
skilled workpeople; but few of
the old-fashioned ladies still keep
to it. Curious specimens of decayed
nobility aresto be found in these remote
villages people bearing grand names
and retaining considerable pride in their
ancient lineage, whom generations of
idleness aud unthriftiness have reduced
to extreme poverty. They are not edu-
Gated for any profession, and when
starvation stares them in the face they
have no resource but to earn their bread
by manual labor. One noble count of
my acquaintance is q carpenter; another
bricklayer. / have seen the grand
daughters of countess working in the
fields. With their fortunes, their man.
ners deteriorate, until nothing buta rem
nant of pride remains to distinguish them
from the peasants between whose class
and theirs so great o gulf was once
fixed. remember nothing more mel
ancholy than the assemblage of these
poverty stricken mobiles I once met at
the house of the rich man of the village.
We were at supper; and as one ragged
and dirty old man after another came
sEambling in, each In turn was, to my
great surprise, introduced as the descend
ant of an ancient and noble family, but
fallen scaduto," added my host, with
gesture Of compassion. The old man
would then bow his head in melancholy
acqniescence, and casting rueful glance
at his shabby cloak with the faded green
lining, would sink into a chair at the
far end of the table. One of these fallen
mobiles, who had taken to house painting,
we thought it only charitable to employ
for the decoration of our ceiling. was
prepared to feel quite a romantic inter-
est in this unfortunate nobleman, and to
be enchanted with his artistic genius:
but he was SO uncommonly dirty, and
his manners were SO little removed from
those of peasant, that my illusion was
dispelled ut once. Neither did his style
of decoration exactly come up to my
ideal, although it was ambitious enough.
A basket of flowers soon adorned each
corner of our ceiling, and in the center,
from amid clouds and wreaths of roses,
rather shapeless cupid began to be de-
lineated. In the middle of the work the
artist, whose telaper was short ard
whose feelings were sensitive, took Of
Tense, as we supposed. at some uninten-
tional slight ON our part. Without the
slightest explanation he departed one
day, leaving the cupid minus one leg and
one arm, and returned no more. Poor
cupid?