Indeed, so far as the procedure is concerned, it is not so very different from our own, and, were it not for the presence of the uniforms of the carabinieri and the officers of infantry in the court-room, and the huge cage in which the prisoners are confined, one could easily imagine one’s self in a court in America. The conduct of the trial is far more free, far less formal, than with us—a fact which, the writer believes, makes in the end for effectiveness, although the excitability of the Italian temperament occasionally creates something of an uproar, which calls for a suspension of proceedings. Doubtless the prisoners give vent to cries of rage and humiliation; perhaps one or two of them in the course of the trial may faint or have fits (such things happen with us); the judge and lawyers may squabble, and accuser and accused roundly curse each other. Such things could hardly help occurring in a trial lasting, perhaps, a year. In fact, deaths and births have occurred among them during this period, for Ciro Alfano has passed away and Maria Stendardo has given birth to a child; but, on the whole, there is probably no more excitement, no more confusion, no more bombast, and vastly less sensationalism than if thirty-six members of the Black Hand were being tried _en masse_ in one of our own criminal courts for a double murder, involving the existence of a criminal society whose ramifications extended into the national legislature and whose affiliations embraced the leaders of a local political organization and many officials and members of the New York police. CHAPTER IX THE MALA VITA IN AMERICA THERE are a million and a half of Italians in the United States, of whom nearly six hundred thousand reside in New York City—more than in Rome itself. Naples alone of all the cities of Italy has so large an Italian population; while Boston has one hundred thousand, Philadelphia one hundred thousand, San Francisco seventy thousand, New Orleans seventy thousand, Chicago sixty thousand, Denver twenty-five thousand, Pittsburgh twenty-five thousand, Baltimore twenty thousand, and there are extensive colonies, often numbering as many as ten thousand, in several other cities. So vast a foreign-born population is bound to contain elements of both strength and weakness. The north Italians are _molto simpatici_ to the American character, and many of their national traits are singularly like our own, for they are honest, thrifty, industrious, law-abiding, and good-natured. The Italians from the extreme south of the peninsula have fewer of these qualities, and are apt to be ignorant, lazy, destitute, and superstitious. A considerable percentage, especially of those from the cities, are criminal. Even for a long time after landing in America, the Calabrians and Sicilians often exhibit a lack of enlightenment more characteristic of the Middle Ages than of the twentieth century.