ed image, carved in wood, stands in their
church. If it rains at once, well and good, they return thanks, and
there is an end of the matter. But if their prayers are unanswered after
what they consider a reasonable time, they hold a service and punctuate
their prayers with threatening cries--

"Corda, o pioggia!"

The saint sometimes chooses the second alternative and sends the
rain--the peasants return thanks, and all goes well. But if he is still
obdurate, they assume he has chosen the first, put the threat into
execution, take down S. Calogero, tie a cord about his neck and
reverently cast him into the sea where they leave him till it does rain.
If one waits long enough the rain always comes at last, even on the south
coast of Sicily. Then they pull the poor saint out of the water, dry
him, give him a fresh coat of paint and carry him back to his place in
the church, with a brass band and thanksgiving--another form of the
recurrent death and resurrection of the god, imitating sunset and
sunrise.

"We call this treatment of S. Calogero an act of faith," said the
sceptical guard, "and yet when a gambler puts a few soldi on any number
he may have dreamt of, we call it superstition. The peasant and the
gambler are both playing for material gain, and S. Calogero in the sea
has as much connection with the meteorological conditions as the dream
has with the lottery numbers; yet the treatment of the saint has the
sanction of the Church and the act of the gambler is branded as
superstitious. But to abuse a thing is not to alter its nature."

The guard who had heard the bells ring now began to remonstrate gently
and begged there might be no confusing of faith with superstition.

The sceptical guard replied that it was difficult to keep them apart, or,
indeed, to look upon them as two different things. The only confusion
there was arose because of the imperfections of language--a clumsy
instrument, though the best we have for its purpose. We call a kiss a
kiss whether it be given by an old woman to her grandchild or by a young
man to his bride; but the having one word for two things does not make
them the same in intention, and so the having two words for faith and
superstition does not make them fundamentally different. The guard who
had heard the bells was beginning to look uncomfortable, if not actually
offended, the tendency of all this being to depreciate his faith in the
Madonna and treat it as superstition.