wish Totò a good voyage. The father of Rosa was an old sea-dog, and because of that had consented to the marriage of his daughter to a sailor; for he never would have permitted a match with a youth of the land. "What are these landsmen!" he thought. "Quarrelsome folks, and full of follies. They love cards and women; they mix with bad companions. May the Lord save all good Christians from such! And in the evening, soaked with drink, they fight about nothing, and beat their wives and children. Give us sea-room from them, give us sea-room. What say our Sicilian proverbs? Take your neighbor's sweepings and put them in your house;' and, Like to like, and each to his own.'"

The boat cleaved placidly the blue waves, which were lightly crisped by the wind that, at Palermo, is apt to blow during the later hours of the day. The slow and measured beat of the oars was translated upon Rosa's face in a certain agitation which might well have been interpreted as impatience to reach the Maria as soon as possible. The father divined as much, and, striding over the bench against which the boatman braced his feet, he took one of the oars and gave a stroke so powerful that it turned the boat to one side, obliging the boatman to strain his oars, so that in a few moments they reached the ship lying at anchor.

Totò, who was watching at the prow, was not slow to perceive them; and when they came alongside he was ready to appear at the rail. What was said between him and the newly arrived is easy to imagine. Rosa, who before had been red with uneasiness, was now white as a washed rag, and had only a few broken words for her lover, who looked at her again and again without being able fully to account for her unusual agitation. The visit was brief, because the father, as a man of the world, well knew that when a parting has to take place, it is better to cut short all delays. VOL. LXXIV. — NO. 445. 40

Rosa was completely overcome; she could not utter a word, she could not weep. Totò mounted again upon the forward bridge, shading his eyes with his left hand, and saluting with his right. Rosa's parents also made salutations; the man cutting the air from right to left with his hand, the woman opening and shutting her fingers. But as the rowboat went farther away from the ship, and the figure of Totò lost, in the uncertain light, its distinct outlines, a remembrance came to trouble Rosa's mind: those last words, "I repent of "- and she gave a start which frightened her poor parents.

The young man, for his part, having gone sadly down below, forward, was recalling with an ineffable melancholy a certain song which he had often heard sung by sailors at their departure: “How sad is parting, what a bitter woe! To-morrow, who can tell where I may be! The ship is making ready now to go,

With sails all black, dismal and dark to see. When I reach port, I'll write to let you know; And you, dear girl, each hour remember

me.

If Death shall spare to shoot me with his bow, I will return, believe it certainly."

It is the custom of Palermitan mariners never to set sail on a Friday; and this custom is not only from respect to the old proverb, "Of a Friday and of a Tuesday, neither marry nor go on a journey," but also in memory of the hapless fate of a captain from the Molo, who, presuming to disregard the prejudice, would sail on a Friday, and was miserably drowned. The ships wait, therefore, for the earliest hours of Saturday morning, and then sail. So did the Maria, of whose crew was Totò.

During the night, in the home of Rosa,

the only one who slept was the father; he, having swallowed a few mouthfuls of salad - his usual supper since he had left off going to sea - and smoked his favorite pipe, went to bed and began to snore. Rosa lay awake all night in agitation, and counted every quarter hour as it was struck by the clock of the parish church of Santa Lucia. What a long night that was ! From Ave Maria to midnight she saw with her mind's eyes her Totò, motionless, bewildered, not knowing what to do; after midnight had struck, she saw him arise with agility, await the pilot's cry, "Weigh anchor! and run, first of all the sailors, to turn the handle of the capstan; among the voices of the crew she could distinguish clearly his, and she herself joined in the strange chant that accompanies that task:

“Urrò simarò, Simarella, carolina."

She saw him climb rapidly among the yards, give a hand to unfurl the sails; and, watching him, she trembled for his life, at that hour, in that thick darkness, and with the ship already beginning to pitch. Then she remembered that there are blessed souls who watch over the poor sailors; and to them she uttered a prayer, the warmest prayer that she ever had made, promising them a "journey if they would bring him back safe to her. The "Souls of the Beheaded Bodies " could not fail to aid Totò, if they help all the devout who recommend themselves to them.

not a real journey unless a stop is made at that church."

The dialogue went on, growing warmer, upon the subject of Totò, his voyage, and the Souls of the Beheaded.

"But will you never make an end of these discourses, tireless ravens!" suddenly broke out the father, who had been awakened from his first sleep by the unaccustomed chatter, although the women had endeavored to speak in an under"You have talked all night long without once stopping. Think whether, on account of a passage from here to New York, there has to be made such a fuss. If it is to go on like this every night, it will be cold weather for me."

tone.

Rosa was silent, and donna Maricchia replied coldly, "Sleep, sleep. When you have nothing to say, you talk against your own flesh and blood. Do we annoy you?"

"Do you annoy me! The whole night long you are here at my bedside as if to mourn for a death. Totò is not dead, is he?"

Rosa started, and said no more.

The next morning, very early, the old sailor went to the fishing-ground at the Borgo, and, straining his lynx eyes, he could not discover anything along the whole horizon. Raisi Peppi, a fisherman of his acquaintance, who guessed the reason of his coming at that hour, told him that the Maria had gone away with a good wind, and now, he added, was certainly making ten knots an hour.

The life of the seafaring people of Sicily has little in common with that of the landsmen, and differs from it in sentiments, in customs, and in habits.

Of a character superior to that of any other Sicilian working class, the sailor, the fisherman, occupies himself only with his family and with his business. The land, however he may invoke it in moments of peril, has no attraction for him, does not interest him, does not give him any thought except for his beloved wife

and children. The fisherman, who in stormy days is obliged to draw his boat to the beach, has there his favorite haunt where he passes the entire day, now smoking a castaway cigar stump or taking a pinch from his faithful pewter snuffbox, now mending broken nets and seines and worn-out floats. He takes little thought of public affairs, as of a thing which does not concern him; he does not care for the personages and acts of the national and the city government (which he always confuses in his mind as one). He respects the law rather by instinct than upon reflection. Peace and quiet, natural, not the consequences of political disturbance, are dear to him; and he resigns himself, unconscious of any sacrifice, to the privations and hardships to which he is condemned by the treacherous sea, sometimes because of the scarcity of fish, sometimes because of the impossibility of going out to cast the nets.

Nor is the sailor unlike the fisherman in the avoidance of quarrels and in the love of patriarchal peace. When he has shipped as seaman and has taken the advance for the coming voyage, he puts all the money into the hands of his wife, or, if unmarried, of his mother, keeping for himself what little may suffice for his needs. He is, proverbially, as ready to break his oaths as he is to make them; as soon as he sets foot on land, he is weary, impatient to return to the dangers which he had lately sworn never to challenge again. His house, during the few days that he dwells in it, is his sacred temple; and he does not leave it until he sails again for some port, where he will expect, on his arrival, to receive good news from his family.

The women lead a singular life during the absence of the husbands, the betrothed, the brothers. They who are accustomed to live out of doors, in front of their houses, from the moment that their dear ones take leave shut themselves inside, and nothing is seen of them.

However long the voyage may be, they never show themselves, do not even visit each other. Only on Sundays and festival days they break in upon this cloistral life, going to confession or to hear mass. But they never do this in broad daylight; instead, they go to the first. mass, in the morning darkness, when no indiscreet eye can gaze upon them.

Those months and days are a continual agitation for them. When they receive visits from their near relatives, they always inquire about the weather, whether it is good or bad; about the sea, whether it is quiet and favorable for vessels outward or inward bound; how many days other ships have taken to reach Gibraltar, and such like matters. They anxiously await replies, as they sew, or sweep the room, or set the dishes in order on the shelves. Morning and evening they recite their prayers with devotion; and they never forget, in repeating the rosary, to mention the dear voyager, in whose favor they propitiate the souls of purgatory by ejaculations, or the Virgin with an Ave Maria.

Three months and more had elapsed since Totò quitted Palermo; and not only Rosa, but also donna Maricchia had refrained from sitting, as is the custom, before the door. Rosa had the habit of combing her hair with her shoulders toward the street; but her hair-dressing, which had been the admiration of passers, was now become an indoors affair, which no one was any longer permitted to witness. It had been her practice to seat herself in a low chair, let down her black and abundant tresses, loosen them, brushing them to right and left and backward; then, without the aid of a mirror, she parted them with marvelous accuracy, and gathered them at the back of the head in two great braids splendid for glossiness and volume, which she pinned in a circle like the bottom of a basket. Rosa was a sight to see after her toilet was finished, with her wide brow, her large eyes, black and bright,

her cheeks always rose-tinted, and her lips like the most beautiful coral of Trapani or Sciacca. She cared little for ornaments, and wore none except a slender hoop of gold on the third finger of the left hand, - the finger that communicates with the heart, as her mother had told her at the time when Totò gave the ring to her. But to make up for the lack of jewels she knotted around her neck a silk kerchief, whose fringes hanging on her breast and shoulders gave her a grace which was the main charm of her attire.

It was like this that she had been observed, in passing, by monsù Nino, the most skillful young barber of that quarter of the city; and he had experienced such a sense of pleasurable surprise that, feigning to have forgotten something, he retraced his steps and looked again at her. She, who had been sitting with her back to the street, had turned around, and when monsù Nino passed for the second time he was able to behold her in all her beauty and her enchanting simplicity, a real rosebud of a Rosa, a sight which caused him a new and mysterious delight. The next day he went by that way and looked, but did not succeed in seeing her; and so for the next day and several days after. Monsù Nino, a bachelor, and not unversed in love-making as a pastime, for on account of his good looks, and also of a certain way that he had, he was rather fortunate in small conquests,

began to think of this lovely girl, and remembered perhaps too many times in the course of the day her whom he would have been glad to see frequently. But Rosa, unconscious of herself, unacquainted with men and things, stayed in a corner of the catodio (the windowless ground-floor room of the Sicilian people) and thought only of the Totò of her heart. He, safely arrived at New York, had written her a letter announcing that the merchandise from Palermo was unloaded, and that an American cargo

would probably be taken on board either there or at Boston, to which city, according to what the boatswain had told him, the Maria was to go. For Totò were Rosa's thoughts, for Totò her vows, upon Totò all her hopes were fixed; and when he wrote to her again and told her that the trip to Boston had not been made, and that the ship, already loaded with grain, would sail the next night, she, beside herself with joy, ran to light a lamp before the Mother of Mercies, in order that the Madonna might keep over him her holy hands. The news arrived on Saturday, the day of all the good gifts that Heaven concedes, the day during which, according to the devotees of the Virgin, the sun appears seven times.

-

The following Monday, the mother and daughter made ready for the journey to ney to the Souls of the Beheaded. These souls, it may be explained, are those of persons who have been executed, according to or against justice. The Sicilian populace believe that they are beneficent spirits, tutelar genii who aid and defend those who recommend themselves to them, who pray to them, or who make a pilgrimage to the church that bears their name, on the banks of the river Oreto. The legends concerning them are among the most curious known; and one must hear the gossips relate these stories in order to comprehend the singular devotion which is felt for these souls by women and by men, especially sailors.

Towards six o'clock in the morning, Rosa and her mother, wrapped in brown shawls, issued together from the house, and made their way toward Porta di Termini, called in these days Porta Garibaldi. According to the rite, complete silence must be observed; and the women remained mute until, having gone beyond the Borgo, they heard the sinister baying of a dog. At the first bark, as at a presage of great woe, they trembled for the poor sailor; considering that

the howl of a dog during the journey to the Souls of the Beheaded is of ill omen. So, too, would be a harsh voice, a negative reply between two passers, the appearance of a humpbacked woman or of a priest. Trembling like reeds, neither Rosa nor her mother dared to break the silence; each trusting that the sound had been unnoticed by her companion, and that at all events the Blessed Souls would give no doubtful sign of their protection. They arrived at Porta di Termini, where donna Maricchia broke the silence by crossing herself in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and beginning at once to recite the rosary, "Ave Maria, gratia plena." And Rosa responded, "Sancta Maria, mater Deum." At every Ave Maria they told off a bead of the rosary, and at the tenth they bowed their heads with a Gloria Patri, and recited the refrain: —

"Little Souls of the Beheaded,
Who were born upon the earth,
Who in Purgatory are,
And in Paradise awaited,
Pray to the Eternal Father
For my great necessity,
Pray for me unto the Lord

That the journey be in favor." Having finished in this manner the first of the fifteen parts of the rosary, they recited the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, which coincided with their arrival at the little church of the Annegati (those who were drowned), where they entered and prayed for Totò upon the high seas. As they set forth again upon their journey, they experienced a certain satisfaction in ending it with the litanies of Loreto, in sight of the church. There they entered and prostrated themselves with devotion, of fering the rosary. The neat little church was thronged with women, all kneeling, all whispering prayers. Donna Maricchia and Rosa collected their minds for an instant; then lifting their eyes to the high altar, they prayed with more fervor than ever before in their lives. After

ward they rose to their feet together, as if at a sign of command.

The journey was accomplished; there remained to be learned the prognostications as to Totò's voyage; and they could not do without these, under the frightful impression of the baying of that dog, a baying which, if it could not really be called a howl, must at least be taken as a warning to use precautions. The auguries are to be had, clear and explicit, in the chapel to the right of the church, by listening. There the two women betook themselves, and drew near, trembling, to the slab set in the right-hand wall, through which, it is believed, are heard the answers of the souls to petitions; and there Rosa and her mother applied their ears after having made some interrogations. What they heard, or what they believed they heard, may not be known; but from the smiling faces with which they went away it is presumable that the Souls of the Beheaded had given good tidings of the voyage of the beloved one. It is sure that before quitting the mysterious place the women gathered a flower from the oleander-tree planted there, and gave a small coin in alms to a blind woman crouching before the gate, who was quick to thank them with the words, "May God repay it to you in blessings and in health, and may the Souls of the Beheaded accompany you by land and by

sea.

Monsù Nino felt some impatience to see again the beautiful girl who had seemed to him a celestial apparition. He passed frequently, without defining his motives, through the street of the Collegio di Maria, and he always looked at that door, gazing with all his might, feigning to be obliged to turn back; but the door was hermetically closed, and he was not given to see a living soul. Among his thoughts was first, pertinaciously first and ever present, that of Rosa; he cherished it, and found it more