Antonino attended us to our carriage when we went away.  He had kept us all night at Capri, it is true, and he had brought us in at the end for a prodigious buonamano; yet I cannot escape the conviction that he parted from us with an unfulfilled purpose of greater plunder, and I have a compassion, which I here declare, for the strangers who fell next into his hands.  He was good enough at the last moment to say that his name, Silver-Eye, was a nickname given him according to a custom of the Sorrentines; and he made us a farewell bow that could not be bought in America for money.

At the station of Castellamare sat a curious cripple on the stones,—­a man with little, short, withered legs, and a pleasant face.  He showed us the ticket-office, and wanted nothing for the politeness.  After we had been in the waiting-room a brief time, he came swinging himself in upon his hands, followed by another person, who, when the cripple had planted himself finally and squarely on the ground, whipped out a tape from his pocket and took his measure for a suit of clothes, the cripple twirling and twisting himself about in every way for the tailor’s convenience.  Nobody was surprised or amused at the sight, and when his measure was thus publicly taken, the cripple gravely swung himself out as he had swung himself in.

XI.

THE PROTESTANT RAGGED SCHOOLS AT NAPLES.

I had the pleasure one day of visiting nearly all the free schools which the wise philanthropy of the Protestant residents of Naples has established in that city.  The schools had a peculiar interest for me, because I had noticed (in an uncareful fashion enough, no doubt) the great changes which had taken place in Italy under its new national government, and was desirous to see for myself the sort of progress the Italians of the south were making in avenues so long closed to them.  I believe I have no mania for missionaries; I have heard of the converted Jew-and-a-half, and I have thought it a good joke; but I cannot help offering a very cordial homage to the truth that the missionaries are doing a vast deal of good in Naples, where they are not only spreading the gospel, but the spelling-book, the arithmetic, and the geography.

It is not to be understood from the word missionaries, that this work is done by men especially sent from England or America to perform it.  The free Protestant schools in Naples are conducted under the auspices of the Evangelical Aid Committee,—­composed of members of the English Church, the Swiss Church, and the Presbyterian Church; the President of this committee is Dr. Strange, an Englishman, and the Treasurer is Mr. Rogers, the American banker.  The missionaries in Naples, therefore, are men who have themselves found out their work and appointed themselves to do it.  The gentleman by whose kindness I was permitted to visit the schools was one of these men,—­the Rev. Mr. Buscarlet, the pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Naples, a Swiss by birth, who had received his education chiefly in Scotland.