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MEN WERE ALREADY IN THE FIELDS TEARING UP THE SOIL WITH THE CALABRIAN PLOW, A LARGE-BLADED HOE " climbed up out of the ditch beneath the smile, when I proposed taking his picture. hedge I called out, "Buon giorno," in As I left the field, he thanked me for my heartiest tones, and followed it im- taking the photograph. He displayed a mediately with, "You been in New confidence in himself, a quickness of York?" in abbreviated English, confident perception, and an energy that suggested of receiving an affirmative reply in the that his contact with America had been same tongue. If he was angry at my of value. One could not but conclude, invasion of his field, he was over it now, however, that his education in the United and welcomed me most cordially. In States had not brought him in contact the conversation in English which fol- with agricultural operations.

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ONLY THE OLD MEN AND THE INCAPABLES REMAIN IN MANY ITALIAN TOWNS

The homes of many of the Calabrians in the central part of the province are simply straw-covered hovels such as one would not expect to find any nearer home than the interior of the Philippines. They look like great stacks of straw, and help to explain why some Italians are unacquainted with the modern conveniences of a New York tenement-house. One afternoon, on passing one of these homes (!), and seeing a half-dozen or more men, women, and children about it, I stopped, and ran back to secure a picture of both the people and their home. There was little difficulty in obtaining the consent of the group to be photographed when they learned that I was from the United States, for America meant much to one woman who held a babe in her arms. Proudly she told of the twenty-year-old son in that faraway country, who was making eight lire a day.

of the city we saw two donkeys with panniers laden with garden truck stop in front of the neatest of the two-story houses. A man in uniform who had been sitting in front of the door in the shade of the house arose, and the gardener who sat on the first donkey gave him some small coin. The house was the local dogana or custom-house, and the uniformed man was the collector of the octroi.

Burdensome taxes, which are especially irksome because they are visible in the every-day activities, form one of the forces. Poverty, formerly more common than now, is another. Supporting a family on wages not exceeding twenty cents a day, coupled with occasional bad crops and land taxes that take sometimes as much as a quarter of one's income from the soil, is not a joyous round of gayety even in Italy, where living is relatively low in cost. One is not surprised to hear stories of

"And how much did he make at brides pawning their dowries in order home?"

"One lira," said she, with a laugh. So the group, the woman laughing the while, posed for the man from America, the foreign country which had been brought so near home to them through one of their number.

Whence came they? The question is answered for one who has seen men, such as he at Termini Imerese, Sicily, who told of twenty-two relatives in the Republic across the Atlantic, and who has visited communities which are truly deserted villages.

What are the forces which have loosened up the avalanche of human beings from the hillsides of southern Italy and Sicily? And how does this little-traveled people reach this far land whither they would go?

As we were leaving Reggio we saw women washing wearing apparel in the Strait of Messina. Near by, watching them, stood a representative of Italy's financial system. A coast-guard protecting Italy's salt monopoly against invasion, he was scrutinizing the wringing of each article and the pails, in order to prevent the removal of any salt water for the purposes of evaporation!

On the day previous, while on the way to Gallina, as we reached the outskirts

that their husbands of a few months may set off for a land where fortunes may be made in two or three years. The condition of the people is greatly changed now in many communities, for the influx of American money has paid debts, brought comparative comfort, and added to the landholdings of the peas

ants.

In the beginning, apparently, the emigrants were chiefly middle-aged men whose finances had reached a hopeless condition through poor crops and the payment of taxes, the demand for the latter being regular if the crops were not. They went to America, leaving their families at home, in the hope of repairing their fortunes. Money began to come back. Then the men came themselves. They wore better clothing than they had ever worn before. They had watches and chains. More than that, they had money, greater amounts than they had ever before possessed. The younger men, observing the success of the older ones, reasoned that by going to the United States they could avoid the troubles of the older men, and at their age be comfortably well off. Then wives, sweethearts, brothers, sisters, parents, were sent for, and in course of time-the avalanche.

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Vagabond Glimpses of

Two Old Provinces

By Harold and Madeline Howland

Illustrated with drawings by
Alden Leirson

Second Laper

HE day of our departure from Blois, on the second stage of our canoe trip down the Loire, was unmistakably one of Jean's" thirty clear days." But clear is too feeble an epithet. The rain and the winds, our adversaries for four days, had washed and swept the air till it fairly sparkled. The light that flooded the valley was brilliant without being harsh, and the varied greens of grass and leaves, the blue of the sky and the red of an occasional tiled roof, had the resonant quality of bell tones. Our nerves tingled, we sat very straight, and paddled with a snappy stroke quite unlike the listless dipping of the blade under lowering skies or its dogged thrust under the heartbreaking stress of head winds. For long our course was paralleled by the highroad, which afforded us a kind of running epitome of the life of the countryside. At times, where the road had dropped behind a bank, would appear a pair of white globes moving steadily along the parapet, like a couple of errant snow-balls. Soon the road would rise, and the mysterious apparition resolve itself into the spotless caps of

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two peasant women driving back from market, with their two-wheeled cart and a sedate little horse. Similarly an animated haystack traveling gayly over the country without visible attachment or guidance would presently disclose the underlying cart, the plodding horses, and the smocked and saboted driver. A soldier, in red trousers and blue jacket, cantering merrily toward Blois, added a dash of warm color and a suggestion of the world of action that seemed so far remote from this peaceful valley. A brake-load of young people went singing by; the smart carriage (buggy, rather, save for its foreign air) of the country doctor followed at a more moderate gait; and the van of an itinerant merchant made a spasmodic progress down the road, stopping at every cottage to dazzle the women folk with its store of bargains. Now and then the hoot of an automobile's horn and the beat of its engine invaded the stillness, and the rushing monster fled away down the river, leaving behind it great clouds of dust and a bad smell.

But all the life was not on the road. At intervals the curving current of the Loire had left a broad expanse of sand and shingle lying bare under one of its banks. At one such spot a group of peasants were loading two-wheeled carts with the gravel and hauling it away. Their unhurried movements, the patien

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