Good gracious! how long and tedious is this narrative of your illness!

Long! yes or no. Long for you perhaps, who, as it would seem, have never been ill, and who do not know what a consolation it is for one who is suffering from the same malady as yourself to hear about such illness from one who is at present quite well. If it annoys you, have patience—some one may benefit by it; and at any rate, for the present I have done.

The night that preceded my departure, that dear saintly woman my wife remained up all night to put everything in the house in order, and to prepare what was needed for us—that is, myself, my wife, and Beppina, our second daughter. I had at that time four daughters: Amalia, who is the eldest; Beppina, who went with me; and Luisina and Emilia, who remained at home with their grandmother and Amalia. I lost Emilia quite young, dear little angel. Her little body rests in the cemetery of San Leonardo. Gigina I lost when she was grown up, and will speak of this in its place.

The journey had to be made by short stages in a vettura, so that it was necessary to hire a carriage and keep it at one's own expense as far as Naples. We left on the morning of the 20th of October 1852, arrived on the 28th, and lodged at the Hotel de Rome, Santa Lucia. That eight days' journey in the sweet company of my wife, the pretty, innocent questionings of Beppina about the fields, the rivers, and the villages that we passed by one after the other, the novelty of the life, the pure country air, and the hope of regaining my health, had softened the asperity of my suffering. Apathy and sadness gradually gave way to a desire to see new things; my wife's questions and those of my little one obliged me to answer, and sometimes to smile. I felt my appetite for food return, and I slept peacefully some hours every night.

IMPRESSIONS OF NAPLES.

In this way I arrived in Naples—in that immense city, so crowded with people, so noisy and deafening on account of the numbers of carriages, shouts of the coachmen, of the people offering things for sale, of jugglers, beggars, all speaking in a strange difficult dialect most unpleasant to a Tuscan. In this city the first impression made upon me was a mixture of wonder and anger. It seemed to me as if one could do all that those good people were doing without being obliged to scream and throw one's self about so much. Here a coachman smacked his whip within four fingers of your ears, to ask you if you wanted his carriage; there a man, selling iced water and lemonade, screamed out at the height of his voice I don't know what, and, to give it more force, beat with his lemon-squeezers against his metallic bench, like Norma or Villeda on Irminsul's shield; a little farther on a half-naked beggar, with his ragged wife and children, shouted out, "I am dying with hunger," with lungs that a commander of a battalion in the battle-field might envy. These beggars, however, are for the most part impostors. One day—it was a festa—I was returning from San Gennaro, where I had been to Mass with my wife and little girl. I saw a man extended on the ground with his body and legs inside a doorway, his head and his arms out into the street; his mouth was green with grass that he had been chewing, and some of which was hanging out of his mouth. The people passing by looked, and then went on their way talking and laughing as if it was nothing. I was stunned, indignant, and full of pity, and turning to my wife (and even I flinging about my arms in the Neapolitan fashion), said, with all the Christian and human resentment that I was capable of, "How is it possible that, in such a flourishing and civil city as this, a poor Christian is left to die of hunger in the street for want of a little bread which is denied him by his unnatural brethren, and is obliged to feed upon the food for beasts?" And I ran at once to a pastrycook's near by for some cakes, because I thought bread would be too hard food for a man reduced to such a state; and with a light heart on account of the good action, I took them to him that I might see him eat them, and as soon as he was a little restored give him some soldi. Clever indeed! You little thought that the man was an impostor! I bent over him, called him; he did not answer. I put a cake to his mouth, and he looked at me, took the cakes, and hid them in his bosom between his shirt and his skin, and this kind of a bag was crammed full of bread and other things. Some inquisitive people had stopped to look on, and seeing this, it seemed to me as if they laughed at my simplicity.

I GIVE MY BOOTS TO A BEGGAR.

And as I am on this question, and my memory serves me well, I will tell you of another beggar. In front of the Hotel de France, Largo Castello, where I was staying, is the Church of San Giacomo. At the door of this church a poor man stood from morning until night trembling, half naked, and barefoot. It made me feel badly, comfortably lodged as I was, and sitting smoking my cigar on the terrace, to see that poor creature out in the cold with his feet in the mud. More than once my poor wife had given him some soldi; but one day when it was raining heavily, and the poor man was out in it all, with his feet nearly covered by water, a happy thought struck me, inspired by Christian charity, and I said, "I am here under cover, and have boots on my feet, while that poor wretch is there outside with no shoes on; I will give him my boots." I rang the bell; the servant came, and I said to him, "Raffael, take this pair of boots to that poor man over there by the door of San Giacomo."

"Yes, sir," said Raffael, and away he went.

I went back on to the balcony to enjoy the effect of my good deed, imagining that I should see an expression of amazement and joy on the man's face. Nothing of the sort; he remained there with the boots in hand as if he did not know exactly what sort of things they were, and when Raffael told him that I gave them to him, and pointed me out to him on the terrace, the man turned, looked up, and, always holding them in his hand, made signs of thanking me; then he put them down on the ground near his feet, and continued to stretch out his hands to the people entering the church! "Ah, poor man," I said, "he wished to put them on to-morrow morning; he must wash himself, of course, and dry his feet before putting them on. How stupid of me! The people are just going in for the novena (it was Christmas-time), and he does not want to lose a chance grano to buy him some bread." But the next morning he was still barefooted, and it was raining. I said to my wife—