Men engaged on the sea do not marry into families employed on the land. The sailors consider themselves, and are, better and milder than other classes, as is shown by the criminal cases[29] and the words and phrases which they use (especially those of the Kalsa of Palermo). Then there are the social differences, which are an obstacle to many marriages. We do not speak of the large cities, where certain prejudices are more or less overlooked; but in the smaller and less populous towns there are distinctions and sub-distinctions, so that he is fortunate who does not lose himself in that labyrinth. The gentleman (galantuomo, who is also called cappeddu or cavaleri) forms the highest caste, and is above the master (maestro), who in turn must not be confounded with the countryman (villano), the lowest grade in the social scale. Among the countrymen of Modica a shepherd who lives on his own property is above a reduced massarotto (who is a countryman proprietor of lands), and yet the massarotto would refuse him for a son-in-law: the mechanic would not be accepted by a family of drivers, nor these by another the head of which is the keeper of swine or of cattle. The husbandman who can prune the vines is above the one who can only till the ground; the cowherd looks down on the one who guards the oxen; the last named scorns the keeper of calves; the one who keeps sheep deems himself noble in comparison with the one who guards goats; and so with other most minute distinctions. When a countryman woos a young girl of a different rank, he hopes to overcome the difficulties in his way by choosing a matchmaker from among the foremost men of his native place, but the matchmaker will inevitably receive the answer, "The young man is honest, laborious, he owns a vineyard and land, he possesses all the qualities, but—he is not of my rank."
Giuseppe Pitrè.
AUNT EDITH'S FOREIGN LOVER.
"There is a destiny which shapes our end;" and I am a firm believer in it, for how else can I explain my adventures and their results while travelling in Austria in the year of the Welt-Ausstellung at Vienna?
As is usual with a novice in European travel, I received during the week prior to sailing the ordinary amount of advice as to what I should and should not do. Meantime, my aunt Edith, who had spent a year in Europe ten or twelve years before, rather surprised me by her reticence in regard to my proposed voyage. However, the night before I was to sail I suggested to her that she might be able to give me some valuable advice, as she had probably not "forgotten how one should behave in Paris."
"Forgotten!" she exclaimed with a start, and then, raven-like, "nothing more." I played with the tassel of the window-curtain and wondered how I should ever get on without this aunt, the dearest, bravest and handsomest woman in all the world—to me. She was thirty-six years old, just ten years older than myself, for by a happy coincidence our birthdays fell in the same month, and upon the same day of the month, the twenty-fifth of August.
Aunt Edith was a great comfort to the maiden sisterhood. Spinsters referred to Edith Mack with a sense of triumph whenever any disrespectful allusions were cast upon "old maids." She was always bright, charming and witty, and people wondered, like so many idiots, why she had never married, instead of wondering why most other women did. When questioned about it, which was rarely, she usually replied that she never "had the time," or that she had been "warned in dreams," or that she awaited her "king from over the seas"—some such bêtise. But to me the fact that she had never married was never a matter for wonder: she had never loved, I supposed, which was reason enough. She had her work in life—had written two very delightful books, made occasional illustrations for publishers, and played German music à ravir. At length she spoke, this Aunt Edith.
"Yes, my dear niece, I have some advice to give you," she said in a low voice: "don't fall in love with a European."
"Do you think there is any danger?" I asked with mock seriousness.
"Not with a Frenchman or German," she quickly replied. "But let me tell you my experience. I was not far from your age when I went to Europe with Cousin Helen. I had just refused an offer of marriage from a very noble fellow because I could not love him. He lacked the power to control me: I felt myself the stronger of the two. Not that women like to be ruled, but that they like that power in men which can rule if need be, generously, but never despotically. I had only in my imagination a conception of that love 'which passeth understanding'—which lifts a woman out of herself into a willing sacrifice that looks to calmer eyes as the height of folly. I liked men well, but none had ever stirred more than the even surface of my feelings, and I so firmly believed that no one ever could as to regard my 'falling in love' as most improbable. I really desired the experience, feeling that something is lost out of life if every phase of human feeling and emotion be not awakened. But I went to Europe, and walked straight into my fate.