and
word-painters to do much business in the home-market.

The mixture of races in our cities is rapidly increasing, and we hardly
notice it. Yet it is coming to pass that a large part of our population
is German and Irish, and that our streets within ten years have become
fuller of Italian fruit dealers and organ-grinders, so that _Cives sum
Romanus_ (I am a Roman citizen), when abroad, now means either "I possess
a monkey" or "I sell pea-nuts." Jews from Jerusalem peddle pocket-books
on our sidewalks, Chinamen are monoplizing our washing and ironing, while
among laboring classes are thousands of Scandinavians, Bohemians, and
other Slaves. The prim provincial element which predominated in my
younger years is yielding before this influx of foreigners, and Quaker
monotony and stern conservatism are vanishing, while Philadelphia becomes
year by year more cosmopolite.

As we left the handsome negroes and continued our walk on Water Street an
Italian passed us. He was indeed very dirty and dilapidated; his clothes
were of the poorest, and he carried a rag-picker's bag over his shoulder;
but his face, as he turned it towards us, was really beautiful.

"_Siete Italiano_?" (Are you an Italian?) asked my uncle.

"_Si_, _signore_" (Yes, sir), he answered, showing all his white teeth,
and opening his big brown eyes very wide.

"_E come lei piace questo paese_?" (And how do you like this country?)

"Not at all. It is too cold," was his frank answer, and laughing
good-humoredly he continued his search through the gutters. He would
have made a good model for an artist, for he had what we do not always
see in Italians, the real southern beauty of face and expression. Two or
three weeks after this encounter, we were astonished at meeting on
Chestnut Street a little man, decently dressed, who at once manifested
the most extraordinary and extravagant symptoms of delighted recognition.
Never saw I mortal so grin-full, so bowing. As we went on and crossed
the street, and looked back, he was waving his hat in the air with one
hand, while he made gestures of delight with the other. It was the
little Italian rag-picker.

Then along and afar, till we met a woman, decently enough dressed, with
jet-black eyes and hair, and looking not unlike a gypsy. "A Romany!" I
cried with delight. Her red shawl made me think of gypsies, and when I
caught her eye I saw the indescrible flash of the _kalorat_, or black
blood. It is very c