The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1885-07-07
ITALIAN HOME. LIFE.
SOCIAL CUSTOMS IN WHICH THERE
Is A LACK OF FlRESlDE JOY.
Breakfast Time-Scene at the Dinner
NATURALIZATION from the Window
The Son and His Sisters
A Late Supper.
Icor. San Francisco Chronicle. ]


family of an Italian gentleman will give
the reader an adequate notion OF 1talan
home life. Our pleasant breakfast table
and the family gathering thereat, pre-
sided over by the helpful mother, in her
crisp white cap and elegant wrapper, are
unknown in Italy. A cup of ice, Win
a roll, is the only sustenance partaken OF
in the morning, and this taken informally
at no fixed hour The mother is not 10
be seen. She is either taking her coffee
in bed or off to an early mass. Shade OF
Nesuvius. can these two slatternIy crea-
lures in deshabille and Gathering slippers
be the graceful sylphs l admired and
raved about on the promenade OF yester-
day EVENING" 1t is even they and they
will remain in that same scant and unes-
thetic costume until it is time to bedeCk
themselves for the evening passeggiata on
the Corso. Meanwhile they are not idle.
1t is considered beneath them to do house
work, but they ply the needle assiduOusly
and knit devotedly.
The family meet for the first time at
dinner, which takes place at or after noon
Before taking their seats at the table, the
children Il write of particular family of
father, mother, a grown up son, en-
ployed in the municipal Office, and two
the hand of father and mother But little
is said, and that by the mother, who
usually discourses upon one of three
topics-her bodily ailments, of which she
has an imaginary variety; her religion, of
which she is a scrupulOus devotee, and her
uncle, the aristocratic bishop of
Arezzo who succumbed ages ago
She used to chatter considerably
about her ghostly adviser, until one day
her eldest born son kicned his reverence
down stairs, and is now living under
double accommodation from home and
church. The soup is disposed of noisily
the young ladies contributing literally to
the supplying noise, with proportionate
disenchantment to deponent. There are
two kinds of wine on the table, baptized
of water and baptized-this for the
children, that for the parents. Toward
the end of the meal the father pushes the
unbaptized decanter to his son, in defer
ence to his superiority over the girls. He
drinks a bumper, lights a suicidal cigar,
kisses the hand of each parent and departs
for his Office, when he discharges affairs
of state. tO-wit. the registering of mar
riages, births and deaths, until p. m.
The old folks retire for a siesta and
the girls betake themselves, each to her
own window, whence they indulge in a
half hours ocular filtration with some
young blood, who happens to be at
neighboring window, or whose business
makes it necessary for him to pass and re-
pass in the street below, until an admoni-
tory cough from behind apprises them
that the old nurse and chaperon has dined,
parenthetically, that were young man to
walk to and fro before a given house in
our country. gazing rapturously the while
at certain window, the probability is
that he would be arrested, either as
crank or dangerous subject But in Italy,
bless you, the police remain out OF sight
of such gOings on, as assiduously as do
the . old folks " in America, when NJ riar"
has her best young man in the front
parlor
At 5 D. m. our adolescent statesman
emergcs from the municipal palace with
the conscious dignity of a man who has
labOred for his country and done some
business on his own account the consid
Grafton being $50 a month, minus Is per
cent. income tax. Does he go home to
read good books and store his mind
with useful knowledget" No, for the
good reason that he has no home. He eats,
drinks, sleeps and has his washing done in
a certain house, of which his father is the
present and he himself the prospective
owner. But he lives between his office
and his favoritSStafe or winehouse. He
may not frequent the same cafe as his
father Politics divide men socially
in Italy; They are either Lib;
the town or village, there is a cafe and
apothecary shop where the Liberals con
gregate to gossip; cafe and apothecary
shop where the Clericals meet To
one or other of these resorts. according to
his political convictions and the secondary
demands of his inner man, the scion of
the family of which l write repairs,
where he refreshes himself with a cup of
= 4
shutting the cards at bacCarat or tre-sette.
If it be winter be INDUCES in harm
less punch But he never drinks to eX-
cess At the cafe then. or mayhap at q
club or in a theatre. our friend passes
his time until towards midnight His
father likewise.
Meanwhile his sisters array themselves
in their best about an hour before sun
down. and, with the everlasting mother,
or chaperon, go out to take the air and If
possibl make conquest, or establish one
already begun. Going out alone is abSo-
lutely against social laws. Shopping, in
the American sense and the delight of
American ladies is unknown. The mother
or Chaperon, does the selecting and buy
ing. The dressmaker always works at
the house of her customer and it is but
recently that milliners have begun to
work in their own shops. Young women
sion, and that is to marry and be free
The being free does not amount to much,
beyond the liberty of going out alone to
church, or to do her own shopping. Re-
turning home the ladies doff their
finery and put on calico. If it be in the
winter time the long tedious evening is
eked out by them in alternate sewing and
shivering, for even the wealthiest fami.
lies have no fires. The houses are cool
and pleasant in summer, but cold and dis
nal in winter. Even in the hotels, which
have fireplaces and fires in Difference to
the wants of foreigners everything goes
up the chimney but the smoke. Each
lady holds in her lap a small bronze OF
earthen base-called scaldius---in which
there is burning charcoal and over which
she warns her chilblained fingers.
Extreme sanitarians decry late suppers
In healthy protestation against their rant
ings stand the Italians, as sound and long
lived a race as any other. Between 10
and II o'clock at night the father and son
of our family return and supper is eaten
q substantial meal, consisting Of soup,
meat and salad and fruit with wine as a