under which she stands as erect as a pillar, sings; and, if she asks for something, there is a merry twinkle in her eye, that says she hardly expects money, but only puts in a “beg” at a venture because it is the fashion; the workmen clipping the olive-trees sing; the urchins, who dance about the foreigner in the street, vocalize their petitions for un po’ di moneta in a tuneful manner, and beg more in a spirit of deviltry than with any expectation of gain.  When I see how hard the peasants labor, what scraps and vegetable odds and ends they eat, and in what wretched, dark, and smoke-dried apartments they live, I wonder they are happy; but I suppose it is the all-nourishing sun and the equable climate that do the business for them.  They have few artificial wants, and no uneasy expectation—­bred by the reading of books and newspapers—­that anything is going to happen in the world, or that any change is possible.  Their fruit-trees yield abundantly year after year; their little patches of rich earth, on the built-up terraces and in the crevices of the rocks, produce fourfold.  The sun does it all.

Every walk that we take here with open mind and cheerful heart is sure to be an adventure.  Only yesterday, we were coming down a branch of the great gorge which splits the plain in two.  On one side the path is a high wall, with garden trees overhanging.  On the other, a stone parapet; and below, in the bed of the ravine, an orange orchard.  Beyond rises a precipice; and, at its foot, men and boys were quarrying stone, which workmen raised a couple of hundred feet to the platform above with a windlass.  As we came along, a handsome girl on the height had just taken on her head a large block of stone, which I should not care to lift, to carry to a pile in the rear; and she stopped to look at us.  We stopped, and looked at her.  This attracted the attention of the men and boys in the quarry below, who stopped work, and set up a cry for a little money.  We laughed, and responded in English.  The windlass ceased to turn.  The workmen on the height joined in the conversation.  A grizzly beggar hobbled up, and held out his greasy cap.  We nonplussed him by extending our hats, and beseeching him for just a little something.  Some passers on the road paused, and looked on, amused at the transaction.  A boy appeared on the high wall, and began to beg.  I threatened to shoot him with my walkingstick, whereat he ran nimbly along the wall in terror The workmen shouted; and this started up a couple of yellow dogs, which came to the edge of the wall and barked violently.  The girl, alone calm in the confusion, stood stock still under her enormous load looking at us.  We swung out hats, and hurrahed.  The crowd replied from above, below, and around us, shouting, laughing, singing, until the whole little valley was vocal with a gale of merriment, and all about nothing.  The beggar whined; the spectators around us laughed; and the whole population was aroused into a jolly mood.  Fancy such a merry hullaballoo in America.  For ten minutes, while the funny row was going on, the girl never moved, having forgotten to go a few steps and deposit her load; and when we disappeared round a bend of the path, she was still watching us, smiling and statuesque.