Later inquiry as to the name and popularity of the game brought forth the information that it is called mora and is very general through southern Italy, being a favorite diversion among the country people. In Italy country boys will get together in a corner and play mora till they are exhausted, and in the place under us I have known the last hoarsely shouted number to sound after the hour of three.
As I climbed back into my own room I took with me the satisfying knowledge that we should probably hear mora and sing-songing every night while we dwelt in the place. It was evidently a restaurant and used as a sort of club house by a company of the convivial and congenial. There was not the slightest indication on the street front that the place was anything but an ordinary tenement basement.
The commissary end of our campaign after information was very weak. Home cooking is well enough with facilities. It is a destroyer of peace and well-being, without them. Therefore we began a series of disastrous experiments in lunching and dining out in first one and then the other Italian restaurants thereabouts, and after a plucky and determined resistance to the enemy we succumbed. Our stomachs demanded time to accustom themselves to the change, and so we took to Italian fare only in moderation, securing at last an ability to eat and enjoy it.
After I had discovered that there was a restaurant in the basement of our own house, I made inquiry of the landlord as to its desirability, and on his recommendation we went in there one day for lunch. We found that, as I had surmised, there was a third room in the front, and in this a large table was set. At its head was an important-looking red-bearded gentleman whom I knew was an editorre of one of the many small Italian publications put forth in New York. Ranged down each side were men of several sorts. There was an animated conversation in progress as we entered, but a sudden silence fell as they saw us. Looks of suspicion passed, and though they greeted us in a constrained sort of way as we took places at the foot of the table, I could see that we represented a note of discord. The proprietor, who was cook as well, and his wife and sister-in-law were effusive in their welcome, and after we had tasted the character of the food I felt that we were nearer a solution of the eating question than at any time before. The men at the table were visibly relieved when they found that we could not understand Italian, and ventured remarks now and then to test our knowledge. Some of these were of a very personal nature concerning us; and, being able to understand some few of the words and phrases, I knew this but behaved as if there were no word of all they said that had any meaning to me.
That evening when we came in for dinner we found that a little table for the two of us had been put in a remote corner of the long room, and though the places in which we had been at noon were empty, plates and chairs had been removed, so that we well knew “outsiders,” especially ladies, were not desired at their board.
Once they were perfectly sure we did not understand anything of which they spoke, they became just as free of speech as they must have been before. This was very fine for us. An understanding of the good Italian they spoke, which was barely sufficient to trace and know the current of conversation, rapidly broadened into ability to get more of the full meaning. It was ill for speaking-practice, though, for we used only English in the place, and I found that if I used the Italian that I heard them speaking at the table, to any one outside in other parts of the Italian quarter there was an absolute failure to understand me. At first I thought this was because of my poor pronunciation and awkward attempts, but the more I listened the more I learned that we were absorbing better Italian than was spoken by the mass of Italians in New York, and when I first mentioned the subject to an Italian friend, newly made, he laughingly explained that there are about twenty varieties of Italian speech, and that in the restaurant in the Houston Street basement I was hearing Milanese while all about outside were Romans, Neapolitans, Genoese, Turinese, Calabrese, Sicilians, and so on. Greater knowledge of the language showed me that so wide are the differences that a man from certain portions of the north of Italy is almost unable to converse with a man from the south, even if willing to do so. There is the bitterest sectional feeling, and people of different provinces are constantly arrayed against each other. I found this feeling very strong between the Calabrese and the Sicilian.
The men who took lunch at the basement restaurant were of a more intelligent class than those who came there at night, and so, as we came to understand more each day, we began to learn more and more of the very facts of inside life among Italians for which we were seeking.
Mrs. Brandenburg in Her wretched Tenement-room
I do not know that we got so much well-rounded information from their chance conversation as tips on the things for which to be on the lookout. Some little things in particular that had no bearing on generalities are contained in the following incidents.