To this man he promised employment, to that he gave news of a lost daughter separated from the rest of the family and traced to a _ricovero_ in Syracuse. In one room I talked with an elderly woman and her unmarried daughter, a pretty creature who said she was thirteen and looked it; her mother claimed that she was sixteen. She was very calm looking, said she felt perfectly well, but that she was to go to the lying-in hospital the next day. Poor child, her lover was killed at Reggio. I talked with an old woman who had lost every member of her family. “_Sono troppo impressionata!_” she cried, “_tremo sempre!_” She showed a tiny empty snuff-box. “I have not a _soldo_ to buy snuff!” “Here are two _soldi_,” said Dr. Parlato, “cheer up, mother, we will find some of your people yet; you promised you would not cry, if I kept you in snuff!” A brave smart looking woman sewing on a Singer sewing machine told us proudly that she was paid for her work by the day; the others were so lazy they were paid by the piece. The Director, an able excellent man, told us his _profughi_ were now earning money by making clothes for the prisons, but that the future of the poor people under his charge was a grave problem. The central committee had agreed to send him 300,000 _lire_ more. “After that, there will be no more! What will become of them?” I talked with a shop-keeper of Messina, one of the few _profughi_ I met who wished to go back. “So you wish to return to Messina?” “Why not? It is the mother land; I cannot live in any other. I am not so fortunate as some; after three months I am still idle, who would so gladly work. If the money subscribed were given out pro rata, so much a head, say one thousand francs apiece, a family of five, like mine, by putting their money together could have a little capital to begin with. The Government makes a mistake to spend so much money in building houses; it was not given with that scope, but to feed, clothe, and start again in life such of us unfortunates as escaped! If I were the Prefetto I would call in some great firm from England, America, Russia, and make a contract with them to excavate Messina. If it were let out to some great contractors, responsible people who could bring the machinery necessary, Messina might be excavated in six months, or at most in a year!” How easy it is to criticize, how hard it is to do! My last morning in Palermo was spent at the Canon’s house. The parsonage is close by the charming Gothic church, largely maintained by the Whittakers, an English family long resident in Palermo. The parsonage had been turned into a store-house.