, 1886-11-11
A CITY OF eEeeARs.



Cruelty, immortality and Laziness.
The Neapolitans are nearly all beggars.
No city in the kingdom is more popu-
lous or more poor. The mixture of the
Moorish blood with the Italian has pro-
duced a race among Europeans, at all
events, unexampled for beauty, cruelty,
easy immortality, and intolerable lazi-
ness. As you wander along the streets
you hear snatches of Moorish music
mixed with the rue Neapolitan refrains,
and you see faces, especially among tho
children of 8 or 8, of quite incredible
beauty. There are the familiar charac-
t~eristics of the beautifully set brow, the
facile smile, II the eyes, sometimes
brown, sometimes blue, always express
sivc, and everything set oil by II rich
varnish Of dirt.
But, with all this, there is n cowardly
skulking and n brutality that is not Ital-
ian but Oriental. No sight is more COM
mon along that hilly road leading from
the famous Santa Lucia to the height OF
Posillipo thar to see miserable little
horses, all bleeding and lame, tottering
under the shafts of a cart weighed down
with eight or ten %corpulent Neapolitans,
who flog it and kick it till it swerves and
falls. At the corner of one we'll
known street there is a bird-shop
where you may buy n~ightingales, gold
finches, and robins. Sometimes a
crowd Of gamins is collected to witness
a little surgical operation. Some char
coal burns in "A brasiero, and the opera
tor thrusts into it n needle with Il wooden
handle. He her takes from n cage IA
recently-caught blackbird, and with the
red-hot needle puts out his eye. 1t needs
much skill-skill that only comes from
practice-to do this successfully. An
unsteady hand would prematurely kill
the bird. In most instances, where the
operation is successful, the birds do die,
but that is only after a couple OF days of
agony. You will sec the patients in
cages hanging round the shop, with the
sightless eyes swollen to the size of a
pea, but in the rare cases of recovery
the bird sings briskly through the
tw~enty-four hours, day and night being
the same to it. If a stranger approaches
the children cave the bird torturer to
beg for soldi. The fat, round cherub
faces are thrust into your own, the lit
tie hands point to the mouth, and you
hear the familiar cry that is translated:
Il am dying, | am dying of hunger;
give me n halfpenny." The truth is the
children live on the strangers.
Sturdy. well-to-do women, with bold,
laughing faces, beg pence, and are i'm
pertinent and shameless if they do not
get them. In Italy no families are so
large as the Neapolitan, and no people
marry so freely and SO young. A fam
lily of seven is usual; a family of ten is
not unusual.
The Neapolitan housewife OF this
poorer class has no care. She make no
attempt to "faire lie MENACE" She gives
the little ragmufiin n soldo or two to get
his dinner. and, like young Norval, his
only care is to increase his store, which
he does by begging; thus the parents di-
rectly encourage their children, and the
police authorities most respectable
body in cooked hats-look on and do not
interfere. The result is Just what might
be expected. Naples is one of the most
populous cities in Europe and one of the
loveliest. Its harbor gives it direct trade
with all quarters of the world. French
men II Germans and Lombards and
English take the opportunities which the
N~eapolitans are too lazy to accept. The
place has n bad name, and deserves it.
In all countries there are thieves; but in
few capitals north of Naples need the
stranger be in such constant fear of be-
ing robbed. 1t is said that things arc
improving. But so long AS shameless,
audacious, and in~solent begging is per-
mitted, so long AS the children are al
lowed to swarm about the streets with
out the slightest attempt at their reclama-
tioi: or their education, the degradation
of the beautiful city must remain a con-
slant blot On the Italian government
Naples Letter.