Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-05-17

distinguished q predecessor as Horace
when, IN the train of M@cenas he tagged
| along the same stony road to secure
literary ''scoop" at the, conclusion of q
| certain famous alliance between Angus
tus and Antony at Tarentum.
But one has opportunity in this sort
of lettering to see 1000 years this
side of the myths, heroes and
savageTy of time our classics
have mysucised, deified and glorified.
You feel like sitting with the carrettajo
as his cart and OK or mule are waiting by
the fountain; climbing to the shrines
with the dusty pilgrims; waiting by the
montatoio or mounting-b block with the
beggars at waYside inns; making all
sorts of excuses to get into the interior of
cabins for draughts of acqua di latte and
nanfa, the buttermilk and orange water,
which you can always get in the country
for five soldi, or one American cent;
winding along the craggy ways with the
peoore and his fiocks; becoming the COM
panion of the vIgnajo or vine-dresser at his
scorchIng toll in the sitting vineyards;
trudging at the eide of the ploughman
after the odd procession in the fields;
and, close to every manner of laboring
lowly, to get near to the heart throbs of
know they are human, like your own.
That is the only way to know Italy, or
any country. Those who only see
America on the New York avenues, Lon
don along Rotton Row, Milan at the
Scala, Florence at the Cascine, Rome in
the Corso, and Naples along the Chiaia,
never see or know of the bronzed
and toiling hosts who pro-
duce the magnifoence of which they
are part. But even if it be vulgar and
common, my heart turns to these in
every land; and confess that contem-
plation of the dumbness, patience and
sunniness of
THE WHITE SLAVES
of Southern Itaiy, from which the entire
Italian kingdom draws its greatest food
as well as military supply, fill me with q
feeling of the deepest and most pathetic
commiseration.
So far as have been able to
ascertain by the most pains
taking inquiry, there are no peasant
farmers in all Italy. I doubt if
there are 1000 small land holders in the
entire kingdom. l refer, of course, to
land titled as farms, olive and orange
groves, and vineyards. Whatever may
be the fortune of the ambitious lowly in
the larger Italian cities, the feudal
aristocracY, feudal noblemen, the feudal
ecclesiastic benefoes, and the still al
most feudal government, own, and are
determined never to relinqush, every
square inch of Italian soil the sun of
heaven shines on. No land would be
sold to the peasantry, on any terms.
This is an unwritten but inexorable
law. Were it possible for any single
peasant, or any combination of peas
ants, to ever secure sufficient means to
purchase a tract of land a score of COM
bInations on the part of titled aristocratic
or ecclesiastic landholders would be ready
to purchase at any price TO keep it out of
the lowly mans hands. Why, there is
even no equivalent in the Italian Ian
guage for the word farm. The dictiona-
ries define farm as "afitto, - "aIioga-
mento," "villa, etc. The very es-
sence of the first two of these is some
thing fixed, fastened, retained, but
hired out. A score of times
have endeavored TO make Ital-
ian peasants understand that there
were portions of Gods green earth.
including America, where even such as
they could absolutely own, solely possess,
irrevocably hold, :he home above them
and thu soil on which it stood. Their lips
parted, drawn, sad smile came into
their parohment-like faces, and their
eyes rolled upward expressive of the
hopelessness of their effort at compre-
hension. The black men of the South
twenty-five years before the war were
clearer on sociology than these. The
serfs OF Hannibal, the helcts of the olden
Celtic septs, had quicker, keener spirit
OF men. and more of the siriIe blood