sportsman's chamber, and social hall, for no sooner had Signor Ercole
seen his guests comfortably seated, than his servant brought in segars,
with a brass dish of live coals to light them, several bottles of wine,
and one of capital old Sambuca di Napoli, a liquor that is refreshing,
drank, as it should be, with a good allowance of water.

Dinner was served at an early hour, with a profusion of each dish that
would have frightened an economical Yankee housewife. Six roast chickens
were not considered at all too many for the five persons at table--the
fifth being a jolly old gentleman, an uncle to the Signor Ercole. The
plate of maccaroni looked as if Gargantua had ordered it--the salad
might have been put in a bushel measure, the bread been carried in a
donkey-cart, and the wine--ahem! in the expressive language of the
Celts, there was 'lashings of it.'

But even a Campagna dinner with a Farmer-General will have an end, and
when our friends had finished theirs, they arose and went dreamily forth
to the before-mentioned squire's office, where they lighted segars,
while they drank small cups of black coffee, and gazed out of the open
windows to the distant mountains, rising far above the plain sleeping in
the summer sun, and hushed to sleep by the unceasing song of the cicalas
sharply crying from leaf and blade of grass.

About three o'clock in the afternoon a man came to inform the Signor
Ercole that the mares and colts had been driven into the corral, and our
party accordingly walked out to see them lassoed prior to their
performance in the ring. As they approached the corral, they saw the
blooded animals circling around the inclosure, apparently aware that
they would soon be called on to do some work--the only work, in fact,
the majority of them had to do the whole year through. Taking a lasso
from one of the men, Signor Ercole entered the inclosure and singling
out a fine-looking bay mare, he threw the lasso--the noose encircling
her neck as she dashed forward, bringing her up all standing. Satisfied
with this performance, he handed her over to one of the herdsmen, who
fastening her with a halter, again and again swung the lasso, catching
at last twelve horses and mares. One long halter was now attached to six
of the animals, and a driver taking it in hand, led them toward the spot
where the beaten earth was covered with sheafs of wheat standing on end
one against the other in a circle of say thirty or forty feet i