n of 1908, I was sitting in front of one of the
windows of the albergo looking out across the harbour at the mountains of
Calabria, waiting for coffee and thinking of _Omerta_. I had been
spending a week in Messina with Giovanni Grasso and his company of
Sicilian Players, and _Omerta_ was the play they had performed the
preceding evening. I remembered how at the end Giovanni had staggered in
mortally wounded and refused to give the name of his murderer--though the
audience guessed who it must have been--and then how he had given his
knife to Pasqualino, his young brother, and with his last breath had
spoken these words; "Per Don Toto, quando avrai diciotto anni"; and I had
left the theatre wishing I could see Giovanni as Pasqualino grown up and
executing the vendetta. Giovanni now uses a revolver as being a nobler
weapon, but when I was with him in Messina it was a knife.

The big waiter brought the coffee and stood on my left, the little waiter
followed him, and stood on my right. During the week I had often seen
this boy who was not yet a real waiter, he was learning his business by
waiting on the waiters, and hitherto I had respected the convention by
which I was supposed to be unaware of his existence, except that when he
had made way for me on the stairs we had exchanged greetings. I said to
the big waiter:

"How old is this little fellow?"

"Thirteen."

I glanced at him and saw by his smile of expansive friendliness that he
was pleased to be the subject of our conversation.

"What do you call him?"

"Toto."

I took my knife off the breakfast table and imitating Giovanni, as well
as I could, handed it to the big waiter saying:

"For Don Toto when he shall be eighteen years old."

This was perhaps wrong, it was certainly risky to play with edged tools
in this way in a country where one ought not to give a handkerchief as a
ricordo lest one should be supposed to be intending to pass the tears it
contains. But I assumed he had seen the play and, although the quotation
was not exact, expected him to recognise it, instead of which he was
furious with me:

"You are not to do that. Toto is a very good boy and I shall not accept
the knife."

He said this so sternly that I made up my mind he could know nothing
about the theatre--he must be a foreigner who had yet to learn that a
Sicilian child's confidence is not destroyed by a mere threat to stick a
knife into him, the idea that anyone is going to hurt