The Jersey City news. (Jersey City [N.J.]) 1889-1906, 1889-06-08
LAZY MORNING.
A Strange Picture Of squalid In
dolence and Indifference.

They call it dolce far niente, the Ital-
ians.
1t seems to mean lolling around in the
warm afternoons, in Italy; but up IN
Rome-that is what some persons cal
that part of Jersey City between the rail
road, Colgate street, Brunswick street and
Third street - they loll around in the
morning
suppose they are getting ready for the
hard work of the afternoon. Or, posi-
bly,, they are resting from the labors OF
the night-for some of the Italians work
In the night
Imade trip to Rome yesterday morn
Everybody seemed to be having such q
good time. First saw Mr.. and Miss
Cont sorting rags, and then saw a lot OF
people doing nothing-no; they were, they
must have been, resting
There were swarms of children and
there were their mothers and their older
sisters. The mothers, who sat on the door
sills of the wooden houses in that part OF
the city, wore wonderful kerchiefs- blue
and yellow and red, sometimes one, some
times the other, sometimes all three to-
gether- knotted about their heads; but
the children were bareheaded. Not one
had hat.
But-eyery little girl had earrings and
such earringsl Big, fancy gold-or imita-
tion gold earrings, that were visions of
joy and envy to all their mates.
GETTING READY FOR A WEDDING.
In the midst of the lazy fat women and
roly-poly children / found an excited and
enthusiastic crowd of young girls and one
young man. He was tricked out in his
Sunday best and his beaming eyes were
girls who was not talking. They were
going down to the City Hall to be mar
ried by Mayor Cleveland.
The BRIDES companions joked her and
she took it in good part. but when they
started off down town all the levity
ceased as if they felt that it was the be-
ginning of very serious business.
The very busiest man in all the region
was fruit vendor. had imagined that
the fruit vendors practiced their internal
arts outside of Rome entirely, but found
this fellow shining up his apples just as
if the people about him did not under
stand all about it as well as he did him
self. l think nobody buys anything off
him, but it amuses him to keep fruit
stand and the other people do not object.
He is u capitalist and is fast growing rich,
for he has no family, and rents beds in
his three rooms to the men who work so
hard on the streets-seven of them-for
five cents night, and as his rent costs
him little more than nothing, and his
food is not worth more than ten cents a
day, he is laying up fund to buy Sicily
one of these fine days.
A COMMUNITY OF IpLERs.
Nobody seemed to be working-it was
warm and sunny and everybody was try
ing to get tanned into a good Italian
co1or-but everybody was having a tip
top time. l couldn't tell what they were
talking about, but supposed it must be of
the bali of Wednesday evening, to which
q lot of them went and where they danced
nearly all night. 81
The few men in the neighborhood were
grouped together talking politics, for no
where is there to be found more en-
thusiastic politician than an Italian who
had been in this country long enough to
learn when he is voting the Democratic
ticket.
The streets were quiet as of a Sunday,
but lots of people were about-waiting Tor
somebody to come along. o. c. Jr.