As I have said there are many very worthy men engaged in banking and agency businesses among Italians, but there is a notable number who are born thieves and swindlers and have records at home which prevent their enjoyment of the balmy air of Italy for even one brief day. This matter is not overlooked at home. A joke in one of the Roman comic papers printed not long ago attests that. A cashiered army officer is pictured as meeting a defaulting office-holder just emerging from a term in prison. This is the dialogue: _Army Officer._—“What is the game now? An honest life?” _Late Office-holder._—“No, I think I shall open an emigrant bank in New York.” _Army Officer._—“Indeed! I had thought of _that_ myself.” CHAPTER III TO NAPLES IN THE STEERAGE OF THE _LAHN_ When midsummer came it was of course still too hot in southern Italy for us to go there with safety, let alone comfort, and it was becoming every day more onerous to live in the quarter. New Yorkers who dwell up-town and have entire houses, floors or apartments to themselves complain bitterly of the heat in summer, and, if possible, escape from the city. I have passed a whole summer in New York up-town, but, permit me to say that it is life at a seaside resort compared to what the people endure in the down-town tenement districts. I think that we could have supported the heat, but the conglomerate of smells increased until it was overpowering, and each night the entire quarter was in tumult until well towards dawn. We learned then what we came to know so well thereafter, that when the Italian cannot sleep he fain would sing and play _lotto_, seven and a half, or _mora_. At last, in June, my wife became quite sick one day, and two days later we were off on a trip by steamer to Newfoundland, Labrador and Nova Scotia, returning early in August in time to sail on the _Lahn_ of the North German Lloyd line. The morning of our departure was a beautiful one, and as we crossed by the Hoboken ferry we could see the great German ships lying at the Hamburg-American and North German Lloyd docks. One of them had smoke pouring from her funnels, and a “blue peter” fluttered at her peak,—the signal that she was about to sail.