The Waterbury Democrat., 1934-02-08
In New York
BY PAUL HARRISON

New YOrK.-Iner0 IS WdJeSty and drama when death parades in Little Italy. There is dignity ;n spite of the squalor of the district and the fact that word-a-day life goes on all about with only a little pause
 An this day an Italian merchant politician was going to his grave going in silvered casket, with an eighteen-piece band, and six open automobiles billed high with bril- liantly be-ribboned floral tributes. and twenty-two hired motor cars with friends and relatives staring out of them. :.
 The slow stepping bandsmen had brass instruments, except the drummer whose booms semeed to mark time for the inexorable march of death. Old women lear1- ing from tenement windows cross ed themselves as he passed by. The horn men played a sonorous, end- less dirge as they led the cortege -the long way around-toward a funeral parlor. Latin hearts stirred to the air-shivering requiem. Peo- pie ceased snatching vegetables and underwear and tin utensils from the grimy pushcarts. Urchins clutched caps in their hands and stared and listened with some sort of anamalous ecstacy
 For a few moments all
 these people in their tawdry
 street must have envisiOned
 an avenue of purple banners
 and bay trees stretching toe
 ward n stone arch black
 against setting sun.
 Turkey Dinners
 The restaurant business in the Mohammedan districts has resumed it's normal, quiet way, for the &C., day fast of the Ramadan is over. It marks the time when the Prophet received the first part of his revelation, and so 1t was writ ten: 70 ye who believe! There is prescribed flor you the fast, as 1t has been prescribed for those be- fore you" And so the faithful eat only after sunset and before sum rise You're mistaken, though. if you think that makes for tenn perate living. The lid is off when it comes to nocturnal feasting. For a Turkish feast, at any time, of the year. many of the Moham- medan elite-and a few western folk who like that sort of thing go to a brownstone house on East Thirtieth street called the Con- stantinople. Keghan Enrenjy, the host, provides a luncheon that usually starts with Turkish hors d'oeuvres, called mezalik, and tcheomlek kebab, which is lamb that has had interesting things done to it. For dessert there may be quinces stewed in rose-water Every tasty) and Turkish coffee. An Aquatic Religion
 A foreign quarter event, event worth attending is the cross-dip- ping ceremony of the Greek St. Nicholas Church. There was one the other day at the Battery. pre- cided by a procession which march ed oown the waterfront's West street behind two comets, a saxo- phone and drum playing weird strains whoch probably would be called rusic in Asia Minor.
 This was the Feast of Epiphany commemorating Christ's baptism by John in the Jordan. On account of the Julian calendar 1t is cele- brated later than in western churches.
 As the church folk gathered at the wind-swept Battery landing. with the temperature just below freezing, car drew up and out stepped Mir. Harry Marines, a young man who is hat-cleaner by profession, but the official cross-diver by fame. He wore a dressing gown and a bathing suit A priest took a gilded wooden cross (which had 8 long blue rib- bon tied to 1t in case anything went, wrong) and cast 1t far out on the water. MT. Marinos, who
 has done this six for six successive years, dove. without hesitation
 came up almost under the cross,
 kissed 1t revently and swan with 1t back to the dock. Some friends and doctor awaited him
 with towels and stimulants, but he
 waved them aside. 'I like it.'
 said the amateur martyr, and dove
 again just for fun.