Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 17, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 January 1877 — Humors of Italian Begging. [ARTICLE]

Humors of Italian Begging.

It is fair to observe that the Italian beggar usually renders tribute to an abstract Idea of manhood by assuming that he has done you some sort of service. This service is not generally visible to the unaided eye, and I fancy thqt the magnify-ing-glass of sufficient power to enable you always to detect it has yet to be invented. But it is to his everlasting praise that he often does try to throw a vail of decency over the naked injustice of his demand, though he is too apt to be content with the thinnest of fabrics. I have paid a Neapolitan gentleman ten sous for leaning against a dead-wall in front of a hotel window. The unexpectedness and the insinuating audacity of the appeals frequently take away your presence of mind and leave you limp. There was an old son of Naples who dwelt on a curb-stone near the Castell dell’ Ovo. Stumbling on his private public residence quite unintentionally one forenoon, I was immediately assessed. Ever after he claimed me, and finally brought his son-in-law to me and introduced him as a person combining many of the most desirable qualities of a pensioner. One of his strong points was that he had been accidentally carried off to America, having fallen asleep one day in the hold of a fruit vessel. “ But, sir,” I said, " why should I give you anything ? I don’t know you.” "That is the reason, signor.” At bottom it was an excellent reason. If I paid the father-iu-law for the pleasure of knowing him, was it not logical and just that I should pay the son-in-law for the much greater pleasure I had had in not knowing him ? The slightest thing will serve, in Italy, for a lien upon your exchequer. An urchin who turns himself into a Catherine-wheel at your carriage side, or stands on his head under the very hoofs of your horses, approaches you with the confidence of a prodigal son. A three-day old nosegay thrown into your lap gives a small Italian maiden in one garment the right to cling to the footboard of your vettura until you reimburae her. In driving from Pompeii to Sorrento, no fewer than fifty of these floral tributes will be showered upon you. The little witches who throw the flowers are very often pretty enough to be caught ana sculptured. An inadvertent glance toward a fellow sleeping by the roadside places you at once in a false position. I have known an even less compromising thing than a 'turn of the eyelid to establish financial relations between the stranger and the native. I have known a sneeze to do it. One morning, on the Mole at Venice, an unassuming effort of my own in this line was attended by a most unexpected result. Eight or ten young ragamuffins, who had been sunning themselves at a gondolalanding, instantly started up from a recumbent posture and advanced upon me in a semi-circle, with “ Salute, signor, salute I” One of these youths disturbed a preconceived idea of mine by suddenly exclaiming, with an oath: “ I am a boy, Americano.” As I had not come so far from home to relieve the necessities of my own countrymen, and as I reflected that possibly this rogue’s companions were also profane Americanos, I gave them nothing but a genial smile, which they divided among them with the resignation that seems to be a national trait.— Thomae Bailey Aldrich, in Atlantic for January.