That
was in Boston, where he turned his hand first to one thing and then
another, and came away at last through some call home, honoring and
loving the Americans as the kindest, the noblest, the friendliest people
in the world. I tried, politely, to persuade him that we were not all of
us all he thought us, but he would not yield, and at one place he
generously claimed a pre-eminence in wickedness for his
fellow-Neapolitans. That was when we came to a vast, sorrowful prison,
from which an iron cage projected into the street. Around this cage
wretched women and children and old men clustered till the prisoners
dear to them were let into it from the jail and allowed to speak with
them. The scene was as public as all of life and death is in Naples, and
the publicity seemed to give it peculiar sadness, which I noted to our
guide. He owned its pathos; "but," he said, "you know we have a terrible
class of people here in Naples." I protested that there were terrible
classes of people everywhere, even in America.
Pages:
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80