ak-trees
gloomed denser on our right as we plowed along a villainously sandy road.
Labourers homing from the day's work greeted us now and again in the
dimness, and presently one of these, plodding up behind us, broke forth
into conversation:

"Ben-a carry pack-a lik-a dat-a--forty-two months--army--ol-a country,"
said the voice out of the darkness.

It was an Italian labourer on his way to supper, interested in our
knapsacks.

"You're an Italian?"

"Me come from Pal-aer-mo."

The little chap was evidently in a talkative mood, and I nudged Colin to
do the honours of the conversation.

"Pal-aer-mo? Indeed!" said Colin. "Fine city, I guess."

"Been-a Pal-aer-mo?" asked the Italian eagerly. Colin couldn't say
that he had.

"Great city, Pal-aer-mo," continued our friend, "great theatre--cost
sixteen million dollars."

There is nothing like a walking-trip for gathering information of
this kind.

The Italian went on to explain that this country was a poor substitute
for the "ol-a country."

"This country--rough country. In this country me do rough-a work," he
explained apologetically; "in Pal-aer-mo do polit-a work."

And he accentuated his statement by a vicious side spit upon the
American soil.

It transpired that the "polit-a work" on which he had been engaged in
Pal-aer-mo had been waiting in a restaurant.

And so the poor soul chattered on, touching, not unintelligently, in his
absurd English, on American politics, capital and labour, the rich and
the poor. The hard lot of the poor man in America, and--"Pal-aer-mo,"
made the recurring burden of his talk, through which, a pathetic
undertone, came to us a sense of the native poetry of his race.

Did he ever expect to return to Palermo? we asked him as we parted. "Ah!
many a night me dream of Pal-aer-mo," he called back, as, striking into a
by-path, he disappeared in the darkness.

And then we came to a great iron bridge, sternly silhouetted in the
sunset. On either side rose cliffs of darkness, and beneath, like sheets
of cold moonlight, flowed the Genesee, a Dantesque effect of jet and
silver, Stygian in its intensity and indescribably mournful. The banks of
Acheron can not be more wildly _funebre_, and it was companionable to
hear Colin's voice mimicking out of the darkness:

"In this country me do rough-a work. In Pal-aer-mo do polit-a work!"

"Poor chap!" I said, after a pause, thinking of our friend from
Pal-aer-mo. "Do you know Hafiz, Colin?"