a music-mist,
Soon by the fitful breeze
How gently kissed
Into remote and tender silences.

PAUL H. HAYNE.

POPULAR MARRIAGE CUSTOMS OF SICILY.

The customs of the Sicilian people in regard to the celebration of
marriages are so numerous and so strange that were I to attempt to
describe them all I should furnish not only the material for a volume,
but also for a series of quaint pictures. I shall not pretend to collect
the most of them, but only present a few which will awaken, I trust,
some interest in those who study popular traditions and the comparative
history of customs and usages.

Let us begin by supposing two young people in love with each other. The
parents of the young girl are aware of the fact, but have shut their
eyes because the match is a good and fitting one. When, on taking her
daughter to mass, the mother has noticed her blush on meeting the young
man more than once, she has pretended not to notice it. At night she has
heard some love-song at the door, and seen that her daughter was the
first to awaken at it, but has remained oblivious of this also. She
knows all, and pretends to know nothing--sees her daughter careful about
her dress, often hears mentioned a name dear to her, mentions it herself
with praise, and contributes without seeming to do so to increase that
love which sooner or later becomes a subject of conversation to
neighbors, to friends, to all. The matter is known, and it is time for
the parents of the young man to go or send to the parents of the young
girl to ask her hand.

Here begins the business of the future marriage. The young man's mother
visits the girl's mother, and gives her to understand that they wish to
make the match, and therefore would like to know whether their proposal
is agreeable and what dower the girl will have. The other mother, after
the usual compliments have been exchanged, either gives at once, or
promises to give, a memorandum of all that she is able to bestow on her
daughter as dower.

This is the most usual way of arranging a marriage, but the manner
formerly varied, and still varies, in places. In Noto, in the province
of Syracuse, fifty years ago the mother of the young man put under her
Greek mantle the reed of a loora, and going to the house of a young girl
asked her mother if she had a reed like that. If the match was
acceptable, the reed was found at once: if not, there was no reed, or
they could not find it, o