But here the family and half the neighborhood come trooping up the stairs, escorting Antonio, who, since his arrival, had been treated like a king, and now he welcomed us royally and we were dragged into a perfect maelstrom of introductions to cousins and friends, to emerge a trifle confused as to relationships and names. When we had removed some of the grime of our tramp and displayed the mysteries of our kodak to the throng, which could not contain its impatience concerning the black box and rolls of films, we were taken on a twilight walk in the little plot of vineyard ground which Antonio had bought three years before, east of the town. The ostensible object of the walk was to show the _town_ to us, but the real one, as we soon understood, was to show _us_ to the town. My wife walked with Antonio and his father; Carmelo Merlino, the shoemaker and steamship agent, took my arm, and the people who could crowd into the narrow street, formed a procession behind us. From that time on we lived in procession. Whatever we did, big or little, was done in procession. Did I desire to take a photograph of the town in the late afternoon from the hill opposite, five hundred inhabitants came to my help. If my wife went to the public laundry with the women, you would have thought the festival of the patron saint of laundries was in celebration. Did I go forth to the fields with the men at dawn, there was a centurion’s host to witness. On our return from the garden it was after six o’clock, perhaps near seven, and we found many people waiting to see us, and in the next half hour the neighborhood called. Family after family poured in, all dressed in Sunday attire, and as we sat in the large second-floor room of the Squadritos’ house the entire apartment was thronged to suffocation, while in the street outside there were people enough to fill a circus tent.