parture had
been in such a deluge, and who had taken away with her all the moisture
of the land; and they did pray for her return, and believed that
the gates of heaven would be again opened if only the nunnery were
repeopled. But the government could not see the connection between
convents and the theory of storms, and the remnant of pious women was
permitted to remain in their lodgings at Massa. Perhaps the government
thought they could, if they bore no malice, pray as effectually for rain
there as anywhere.

I do not know, said my informant, that the curse of the Lady Superior
had anything to do with the drought, but many think it had; and those
are the facts.

CHILDREN OF THE SUN

The common people of this region are nothing but children; and
ragged, dirty, and poor as they are, apparently as happy, to speak
idiomatically, as the day is long. It takes very little to please them;
and their easily-excited mirth is contagious. It is very rare that
one gets a surly return to a salutation; and, if one shows the least
good-nature, his greeting is met with the most jolly return. The boatman
hauling in his net sings; the brown girl, whom we meet descending a
steep path in the hills, with an enormous bag or basket of oranges
on her head, or a building-stone under which she stands as erect as a
pillar, sings; and, if she asks for something, there is a merry twinkle
in her eye, that says she hardly expects money, but only puts in a
"beg" at a venture because it is the fashion; the workmen clipping the
olive-trees sing; the urchins, who dance about the foreigner in the
street, vocalize their petitions for un po' di moneta in a tuneful
manner, and beg more in a spirit of deviltry than with any expectation
of gain. When I see how hard the peasants labor, what scraps and
vegetable odds and ends they eat, and in what wretched, dark, and
smoke-dried apartments they live, I wonder they are happy; but I
suppose it is the all-nourishing sun and the equable climate that do
the business for them. They have few artificial wants, and no uneasy
expectation--bred by the reading of books and newspapers--that anything
is going to happen in the world, or that any change is possible. Their
fruit-trees yield abundantly year after year; their little patches of
rich earth, on the built-up terraces and in the crevices of the rocks,
produce fourfold. The sun does it all.

Every walk that we take here with open mind and cheerful heart is su