Then there broke forth the chatter of men, women and children who were gathering grapes, and had stopped to listen to an American song. The boy had been in America two years, his father had contracted consumption working in the New York subway, and the family had returned that he might recover in the balmy air of Sicily. One day the boy told me that as soon as he was big enough (he is eight years old) he was going to run away and go to America, because he could make more money selling papers after school than he could working all day in the fields in Gualtieri, and here he “never had no time for no fun.” The spirit of this incident is the spirit which to-day stirs all Italy, all Greece, all Syria, all Hungary and Roumania, and has spread deep into the hearts of the people of the whole of southern Europe. The eyes of the poor are turned with longing fancy to “New York.” That is the magic word everywhere. The sound of it brings light to a hundred million faces in those lands, and oddly enough not one out of a thousand but believes that to come to America it is necessary to come to New York. When I opened the battened shutters that took the place of windows, there was a cool inrush of fragrant air, and looking down from the balcony I saw Nicola already at work at his anvil. Carmelo Merlino was at his shoemaker’s bench set out before the door, and across the way the Di Bianca girls were giving the fat baby a bath in a large yellow bowl. The baby was splashing the water with great delight. All was peace and industry. We had begun our first full day in Gualtieri life. People are up betimes in Italy. The very early morning hours are best for work, and a couple of hours’ labor is often accomplished before breakfast. An ordinary breakfast is vegetable stew, bread and fruit,—in summer fresh fruit, in winter dried. In fruit-ripening season, on every house-top and balcony, figs are drying, raisins and prunes are in the making, and prematurely plucked fico-d’indias are being made ready for winter use. Canned fruit is little used. A mash of tomatoes to use in winter with spaghetti is always drying at door or on house-top in sunshine. The midday meal is eaten usually about 11:30, and is much the same, only less is eaten in the summer, and perhaps, though only once or twice a week, some meat, eggs or fowl are made to take the place of the vegetable stew. In the evening soup is served, made with some one of the thousand sorts of spaghetti and macaroni, as I will call it, though that word covers only a part of the great Italian dish, _pasta_. A meat stew may be added and more fruit and wine. I have seen poor families dine heartily off black bread, fried pumpkin and fico-d’indias, and in homes of more pretension I have eaten very good course dinners.