“Nothing—a pleasure!” Teodoro had the nicest laugh, the whitest teeth. He and Patsy made friends on the spot. They sat chatting gaily by the further window while the angry father wrangled with the little avvocato, who exasperated him more and more every time he spoke. They were in the midst of a hot dispute when the angry man broke off to point out a trolley that runs from the top of the mountain to the station where the salt is loaded on the trains.
“Guardi, Signora, there is the place where this pure, this exquisite salt is excavated from the entrails of the earth. Me spiego?”
We had just reached a white river. Its banks were lined with nespole, palms, fig trees, gray asphodels, bushes of green carob. From the top of the mountain one cobweb line of black crossed another; two iron baskets passed each other on the aerial railway, one ascending empty, the other descending laden with shining salt.
“What a pleasure to see life, movement, activity after the desolation of Calabria and Messina!” Patsy exclaimed.
“Davvero! This should be a rich country; our people are hard working, frugal. We need only a little foreign capital to restore La Sicilia to her ancient greatness. Crispi[1] saw that—if we only had a few such men today!”
“I have heard Crispi speak in the Camera—what an orator! Once at Baron Blanc’s I talked with him,” I murmured.
“As to capital,” said Patsy, “are your taxes favorable to foreign investors? I met a man last winter from New York representing a syndicate; he had five millions to invest in Sardinian mines. He looked into it, found the taxes prohibitive, and left Italy without spending a cent. All that good money is now invested in the Argentine.”
“Taxes! We do not tax lemons as you do in the United States; on the contrary in the summer, when they are necessary to the health of the people, they are sold in our great cities by the Government at less than cost!”
“Has us there!” said Patsy. “People in New York are paying forty cents a dozen for lemons while millions of them rot on the trees of Sicily because—on account of our damnable tariff—it’s not worth while to gather them!”
We were passing a small forlorn station without stopping.