head, neck, and
shoulders.

Napoleon the First, in breaking down most of the feudal customs of the
Papal States, should be regarded by the poor inhabitants as one of their
greatest benefactors; still, many a remnant of the middle ages remains
firmly marked in the habits of the country people. Even now the
inhabitants of the Campagna live, not in isolated houses, but in small
towns built around the once protecting castle or powerful monastery,
where, in times past, they fled, when attacked in the fields by the
followers of some house inimical to the one under whose protection they
lived. Follow the entire Campagna, from Rome to Naples, by way of
Frosinone, and you will see the ruins of watch towers, built to warn the
workmen in the fields of the approaching enemy. Thus, in Segni, although
the fields cultured by the inhabitants, lay miles away at the foot of
the mountain, yet every day seven eighths of the 5,000 inhabitants
walked from four to six miles or more down the mountains to the scene of
their daily labors, returning the same distance at sunset. Often and
often Caper saw the mother, unable to leave the infant at home, carry it
in a basket on her head to the far-away fields, bringing it back at
night with the additional burden of corn shelled or wheat garnered in
the field. Trotting along gayly at her side, you may be sure, was the
ever-present black pig, with a long string wound around his body, by
which he is attached to some tree or stone as soon as he reaches the
fields, and thus prevented from rooting where he should not root. The
day's labor of his mistress finished, she unties him, wraps the string
around his body, and he follows her up to the town with the docility of
a well-trained dog.

It is the women, too, who daily walk four or five miles up the mountain
for their supply of firewood. Arriving at the forest of the commune,
they collect split wood and fagots, tying them into round bundles, a
yard long, and two or three feet in diameter, and return to Segni,
carrying this small woodpile all the way on their heads. It is the
women, too, who bring water from the fountains for their household use,
in A copper vessels (_conche_) holding from two to three gallons: these
are placed on the head, and carried self-balancing sometimes for long
distances. At a fair held at Frosinone, Caper once saw several women,
each one carrying on her head two of these conche filled with water, one
balanced on the other; and th