"Pal-aer-mo? Indeed!" said Colin. "Fine city, I guess."
"Been-a Pal-aer-mo?" asked the Italian eagerly. Colin couldn't say that he had.
"Great city, Pal-aer-mo," continued our friend, "great theatre—cost sixteen million dollars."
There is nothing like a walking-trip for gathering information of this kind.
The Italian went on to explain that this country was a poor substitute for the "ol-a country."
"This country—rough country. In this country me do rough-a work," he explained apologetically; "in Pal-aer-mo do polit-a work."
And he accentuated his statement by a vicious side spit upon the
American soil.
It transpired that the "polit-a work" on which he had been engaged in
Pal-aer-mo had been waiting in a restaurant.
And so the poor soul chattered on, touching, not unintelligently, in his absurd English, on American politics, capital and labour, the rich and the poor. The hard lot of the poor man in America, and—"Pal-aer-mo," made the recurring burden of his talk, through which, a pathetic undertone, came to us a sense of the native poetry of his race.
Did he ever expect to return to Palermo? we asked him as we parted. "Ah! many a night me dream of Pal-aer-mo," he called back, as, striking into a by-path, he disappeared in the darkness.