Year: 1866

When remarking that the italian peasant


had no home, did not mean that he had no


dwelling. He has dwelling and he styles


1t Ia casa. Here he exists when the darkness


compels him to retire to it, or the weather is


SO bad that 1t is more uncomfortable to re-


main out of doors than in, and to have this


effect it must be very bad indeed In fact,


one often sees the rustics laboring in their
nelds with sacks, Il mean the coarse bags in


which corn and meal are carried thrown


over their heads to protect them from the
pltiless storm, which would drive any other
people under the shelter of their own roofs.


La casa is black and dingy in its interior as
the condensed essence of midnight The
windows, if any there be, are foul with dirt,
the webs of spiders and the corpses of the
| llles whose life blood these have sucked out.
The wooden beams of the ceiling are dark
with smoke and coated with the lamp-black
that Tor ages has risen from the thick tallow
candles and the pine cones the people burn.
| The door is ever ready to let in, not the re-
ireshing air Of heaven, but intrusive pigs
anu mems who naturally feel that they have
lar more right to this sanctuary of domestic
happiness than those who lay claim to it,
GOATS mop in and out, leaving behind them
long trains of fearful odors that furrow deeply
the nasal membrane of those in whom it has
not been blunted by habit. Dogs loiter to
ana irot or lie down and dream till with a
yell and jump they hurry out to worry the
legs OF some passing stranger. They are
ladened with IF sharps" and other forms of
animacul@, nimbly skipping on the slightest
pretext and prompt to evade the vindictive
touch of exasperated man.


The beds are such as few would care to
rIecline upon. They are populous with every
insect that "crawls, walks, skins, hops, Jumps
or creeps or files" The bedding is yellow,
or rather brown, with dirt and age. 1t is
washed only once in six months, and that
merely from some vestige of tradition that
their fathers used to practice the custom be- |
tore them, and not from any feeling of me- |
cessity or decency Hence the process has |
degenerated into mere formality, and the |
clothing often returns from the wash with |
all It's lmperteetions on its head" Their |
Darbarous and clumsy cooking is done with |
the rudest and most uncleanly dishes, which
are often used for other processes, detail of |
which would shock the feelings of every per-
son that heard them. The people are dressed
in the toughest and most soiled garments of
worsted and cotton. They put them on and
seldom or never take them off till they fall |
away in rags Thus they live, thus they die
Here they experience what NJ. About so
wlttily, but in this case so truthfully, calls
Yes J0fes dustereS de Ia .fdmilie." Father,
mother and children, all eating, drinking and
sleeping in the same filthy pen, and breath
ing the same "foul and pestilential congre-
CATION OF vapors." Islt wonderful that their
church, with its bright and cleanly walls
and all the adornments with which time and
wealth and veneration have decorated it,
should appear to them a heaven on earth
and draw them towards it with an influence
that nothing earthly can destroy9