"He's a regular big head," interrupted one of the girls; "thinks he's the whole cheese. He's a newspaper man. I suppose he'll be on the Stradona to-night." Every evening after sunset, all Ragusa wakens out of its day-dreams and is on parade in the Stradona. Demure maidens come out from behind latticed windows, reflecting in their garments the sombre hues borrowed from Venice, and a riot of Oriental colours. They are dark-eyed creatures, these maidens, and their faces, as well as their garb, show the mixture of Latin and Slav; for this is the battling-ground of the two races, the persistent Slav being in the ascendency. The youths followed at a distance; for propriety is one of the assets of Ragusan society. Noiselessly they walked up and down over the grass-grown pavement, and, when one heard the heavy-soled shoe striking it, one recognized the stranger; and by that sign I knew the Ragusan-American newspaper man. A graceful, swarthy young fellow he was, upon whose face his new environment had already written its story. His eyes had lost their melancholy look, for he had escaped the thraldom of the past and seemed like a man fully awake to the present. When we met, he looked at my shoes, I looked at his, and the contact was made. Interesting, indeed, his story was, beginning with his running away from home, one of those ancient palaces on the Stradona. His assets were: money enough to take him to Triest, third-class, a large stock of inherited pride, and nothing else. At that time there was no passenger service from Triest, but there were freight steamers and a chance to serve as steward to the officer's mess. Three weeks of life on the sea and then New York. There he served his apprenticeship in the art of "getting along" by walking up and down Broadway, hungry and cold, sleeping in "Sailor's Boarding Houses," and finally in the police station. At last came a turn in his fortunes, through getting work as a strawberry-picker in New Jersey, then working in a restaurant in Pennsylvania as waiter and cook. After much chance and change, he had become the owner of an Italian newspaper, whose chief object was to chronicle the happenings in the Fatherland, for the edification of his countrymen. It had been a rough road, but it was worth the struggle; for it led to usefulness and into life. He thought that his countrymen always experienced unusual difficulties in America. "The masses of them are illiterate to an alarming degree; bound by traditions, tribal in their social outlook, and serve as so much carrion for those birds of prey, the steamship companies' agents, the _padrone_, the boarding-house keeper, the saloon, and the venal justice of the peace."