When the service was ended, the people, without haste or without form, gathered around the priest while he christened a tiny wailing infant, held up by the midwife, with the proud father at her side. They named it Giuseppe. Yet another to join the millions of Giuseppes, Giacomos and Giovannis! As we left the church, the father of the child followed us and bade us come to his house, where the christening was being celebrated. Through the dark, narrow streets we wended our way to the other end of the town, climbed the stone stairs to an overcrowded upper room, and spent a politely sufficient length of time eating anise cakes and drinking sweet wine. With the tact of womankind, my wife had brought some trinkets of American origin as a gift for the child, whereat the assemblage beamed its appreciation, and just before we left the father said to me aside, as if it was a secret he was keeping from his wife: “If I can save twenty more lire, the next one will be born in Pittsburg, praise the Holy Mother.” At home all the favored neighbors and relatives had gathered for a dance. The large room on the ground floor of the Casa Squadrito was ringed around with a double row of guests. Whole families sat together, on the stairway were seated the youngsters already drowsy; crowding around the wide door opening into the street were the unbidden, but none the less interested and curious. The head of the Mannino family, weary with the labors of his sixty years and the fatigue of a stiff, home-laundered collar, was nodding before the music struck up, occasionally raising his head to blink at the light solemnly and to make sure none of the young men were unduly near his daughter, the heiress of his hard-got wealth. Every one who had any heavy gold rings, bracelets or brooches, or any of the pretentious gold-mounted strands of old coral, which are handed down so carefully from mother to daughter, had them on, for a display of gold ornaments is a sure sign of rural social distinction. Feet that were rarely shod were now encased in _scarpi_ made by Carmelo Merlino and his fellow craftsmen in the village, and dress among women in the throng varied from a department store ready-made cloth gown sent home from America to a ragged working frock, the wearer of which kept her shoeless and stockingless feet shyly tucked out of sight. All were awaiting our arrival, for Antonio, who was with us, was host as well as chief musician. A home-made acetylene lamp, of the blacksmith brother’s contriving, was lighted and set high up on a bracket, throwing every object in the room, even to the boys perched in the transom, into sharp relief. The mandolins and guitars hanging on the wall were taken down, and with a skilful, brilliant prelude—for he is an excellent mandolin-player—Antonio swept into one of the stirring, if monotonous time-honored _tarantelle_ airs.