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Updated: May 27, 2025
The little chap was evidently in a talkative mood, and I nudged Colin to do the honours of the conversation. "Pal-aer-mo? Indeed!" said Colin. "Fine city, I guess." "Been-a Pal-aer-mo?" asked the Italian eagerly. Colin couldn't say that he had. "Great city, Pal-aer-mo," continued our friend, "great theatre cost sixteen million dollars."
It transpired that the "polit-a work" on which he had been engaged in Pal-aer-mo had been waiting in a restaurant. And so the poor soul chattered on, touching, not unintelligently, in his absurd English, on American politics, capital and labour, the rich and the poor.
The banks of Acheron can not be more wildly funèbre, and it was companionable to hear Colin's voice mimicking out of the darkness: "In this country me do rough-a work. In Pal-aer-mo do polit-a work!" "Poor chap!" I said, after a pause, thinking of our friend from Pal-aer-mo. "Do you know Hafiz, Colin?" I continued. "There is an ode of his that came back to me as our poor Italian was talking.
Labourers homing from the day's work greeted us now and again in the dimness, and presently one of these, plodding up behind us, broke forth into conversation: "Ben-a carry pack-a lik-a dat-a forty-two months army ol-a country," said the voice out of the darkness. It was an Italian labourer on his way to supper, interested in our knapsacks. "You're an Italian?" "Me come from Pal-aer-mo."
The hard lot of the poor man in America, and "Pal-aer-mo," made the recurring burden of his talk, through which, a pathetic undertone, came to us a sense of the native poetry of his race. Did he ever expect to return to Palermo? we asked him as we parted. "Ah! many a night me dream of Pal-aer-mo," he called back, as, striking into a by-path, he disappeared in the darkness.
There is nothing like a walking-trip for gathering information of this kind. The Italian went on to explain that this country was a poor substitute for the "ol-a country." "This country rough country. In this country me do rough-a work," he explained apologetically; "in Pal-aer-mo do polit-a work." And he accentuated his statement by a vicious side spit upon the American soil.
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