oney. The mother comes forward out of the
house, evidently pleased with our notice of the children, and shows
us the baby in her arms. At once we are on good terms with the whole
family. The woman sees that there is nothing impertinent in our cursory
inquiry into her domestic concerns, but, I fancy, knows that we are
genial travelers, with human sympathies. So the people universally are
not quick to suspect any imposition, and meet frankness with frankness,
and good-nature with good-nature, in a simple-hearted, primeval manner.
If they stare at us from doorway and balcony, or come and stand near
us when we sit reading or writing by the shore, it is only a childlike
curiosity, and they are quite unconscious of any breach of good manners.
In fact, I think travelers have not much to say in the matter of
staring. I only pray that we Americans abroad may remember that we are
in the presence of older races, and conduct ourselves with becoming
modesty, remembering always that we were not born in Britain.

Very likely I am in error; but it has seemed to me that even the
funerals here are not so gloomy as in other places. I have looked in at
the churches when they are in progress, now and then, and been struck
with the general good feeling of the occasion. The real mourners I could
not always distinguish; but the seats would be filled with a motley
gathering of the idle and the ragged, who seemed to enjoy the show and
the ceremony. On one occasion, it was the obsequies of an officer in
the army. Guarding the gilded casket, which stood upon a raised platform
before the altar, were four soldiers in uniform. Mass was being said
and sung; and a priest was playing the organ. The church was light and
cheerful, and pervaded by a pleasant bustle. Ragged boys and beggars,
and dirty children and dogs, went and came wherever they chose--about
the unoccupied spaces of the church. The hired mourners, who are
numerous in proportion to the rank of the deceased, were clad in white
cotton,--a sort of nightgown put on over the ordinary clothes, with a
hood of the same drawn tightly over the face, in which slits were cut
for the eyes and mouth. Some of them were seated on benches near the
front; others were wandering about among the pillars, disappearing
in the sacristy, and reappearing with an aimless aspect, altogether
conducting themselves as if it were a holiday, and if there was anything
they did enjoy, it was mourning at other people's expens