river Gizio. Never was town SO wealthy in water as fair Sulmona. The plashing of fountains, the gurgle of runnels and streamlets, form the background of every other noise.

Strapping peasant girls march all day and in every street with huge copper jars, filled to the brim with water, on their heads. In my inn water was laid on with a vengeance. Taps dripped at every hour of night and day. Whole districts of the house suggested nothing so much as autumnal inundations.

I arrived at Sulmona on Friday. Saturday was market-day and I was early astir. Can there be a more beautiful market in all beautiful Italy? I doubt it.

The Piazza Garibaldi (alas, for the modernized name!) is an immense empty space surrounded by quaint houses. At one end a broad stair leads to the main street. Crossing its steps and cutting off a corner of the Piazza are the arches of a ruined thirteenthcentury aqueduct. Above the stair a Romanesque doorway once gave ingress to a church, now to a meat-market. Effect of an earthquake, says the omniscient Baedeker; but it is the kind of thing which happens in this utilitarian, anti-religious age. Peasants are always to be seen sitting on those broad steps under the ruined arches. In the market-place there are always a few little stalls, where patient saleswomen chatter together and are rejoiced if you purchase a ha'porth of grapes or a penny jug. But on Saturday the whole place is alive. The Piazza has become a town with streets edged by booths and crowded by a surging mass of persons and animals. I saw farmers and laborers, pedlars and costermongers, metal-hammerers and writers of loveletters. I was jostled by Punch and Judy, and again by a patent-invention advertiser. All commodities were on sale, from mattresses to chickens, from tomatoes to sewing-machines, from

bound books to scraps of rusty iron a quarter of an inch square. All the people and all the things moved about incessantly. The wares travelled round upon trays on the women's heads, and in the trays were fruit and vegetables, lambs and turkeys, umbrellas and pitchforks. The seller calls her wares in an even, monotonous voice, and is ready at half a wink to lay her tray at your feet and transfer all its contents to your arms. I nearly bought a five-days old kid, and I did acquire, out of pure negligence, a lapful of hot and greasy cakes which ensured my immediate popularity in the dense crowd of children who formed my attentive and inalienable bodyguard.

As for the donkeys, they walk whither they will. They thrust soft noses under your arm and devour your sunshade. If they tread on you, you administer a shove. If you attempt a photograph, they surround you in an inquisitive circle and obliterate the view. I suppose the owners know their own beasts and occasionally cast an eye upon them; it appeared to me that if I had been in need of a donkey, nothing would have been easier than just to take one.

The whole air is pervaded by cries. Wild birds are calling overhead, caged goldfinches answer from the houses. Unfortunate cocks, tied by the legs and flung on a heap, feebly admonish their wives; the donkeys bray ceaselessly with the long-drawn note which is so suggestive of internal agony; the turkeys gobble and hiss; the children yell; bargainers quarrel and blaspheme, shaking their fists in each other's faces, thumping on the frail woodwork of the stalls, rolling the potatoes and pepperoni over the ground in simulated fury. A man selling bolsters by auction rings a bell uproariously, calls the bidding in a voice fit to crack the heavens, and now and then leaps high in the air, to the imminent peril of his crazy rostrum.

The joy of Sulmona market is that all these people are in costume, and really no two of them are alike. I speak chiefly of the women; the men are less splendid than those whom I saw later at Isola Liri. But the women-and oh, such handsome women! So tall, so haughty-with the carriage of queens; with the flashing eyes, the white teeth, the pillar-like throats, the finely moulded limbs, which bespeak health and purity of breed. I doubt if there are metaphysicians among them, casuists, or questioners looking before and after, pining for what is not. Such persons belong to cities, to progress, to the divine discontent which mars and makes the world; such persons have muddy complexions; and when we give up carrying water-jars on our heads and take to writing and needlework, then we stoop, and grow myopic, flatchested and feeble-hearted, unable to walk without staggering, or to shout without growing hoarse. Not so the women of Sulmona. They are splendid animals; and, I doubt not, have hot hearts and sharpness of intellect enough for their daily needs; souls, too, sufficient to carry them to church on Sundays and to comfort and hearten them when the hour comes for leaving fair Sulmona and entering the dim, chill valley of the great shadow.

"Do the people die often in your country?" one of them asked mestrange, wistful, prosaic question, which yet had in it the touch of nature which makes the whole world kin.

Let me attempt a description of a few of the dresses.

There was the girl from Pacendro. She wore a tovaglia on her head-a great snowy floating veil of white linen edged with lace, folded over the brow and hanging loose behind white sleeves and a brilliant kerchief tucked into her dark-blue, pink-lined stays, which were loosely laced with an orange ribbon. Under the kerchief was

a white chemisette cut very 10w at the throat and showing a gold necklace. Her skirt was russet, her apron blue. On her head she carried the usual round wooden tray shaped like a sieve, bottom and walls tied together in primitive fashion with knotted leather.

Another, from Introdacqua: white tovaglia, immense, and rising in a point above the forehead, crimson bodice, red sleeves tied to the bodice with ribbon bows, striped skirt, white lace chemisette and coral necklace. On her arm she bore a baby wrapped in scarlet, and she led a little Cupid by the hand, disguised in a long blue coat and trousers, a red vest and a battered black hat.

But most beautiful by far was the old woman from Genzano. She was thin, but not emaciated. She had thick wavy gray hair, clear dark skin and very large, very soft blue eyes. She wore a scarlet cloth, called fascia trella, over her white tovaglia, blue velvet bodice and blue sleeves, tied at the shoulder with knots of flame-colored ribbon. She leaned eagerly towards a fortuneteller, who, mounted on a throne with a pack of cards, was whispering to her in the centre of an inquisitive crowd.

I wondered what the gray-haired woman was learning from the sorceress. It must have been more than the usual commonplaces for her children and grandchildren. It must have been something personal, I had almost said questionable, to evoke that mystic look, that restrained excitement, that halfterrified, hot interest which showed in the blue eyes. She moved away as if in a dream, her gaze on the ground, her ears deafened to the Babel around. She seated herself dully by her little stall, buying or selling no more. Her face haunts me. She might have been a sibyl or a pythoness; nay, a spirit, unsatisfied and homeless, in that crowd of bright-faced, strong-limbed, goodhearted materialists and utilitarians.

Scanno was certainly the most interesting place I visited in the Abruzzi. Others may exist equally attractive; but limitations of time and of weather, of enterprise and of pence, prevented me from discovering them. I had, however, learned from some book or person that Scanno had fine scenery. Vaguely I wandered forth into the wilderness for to see.

An early train from Sulmona took me to the wayside station of Anversa. There I climbed to the box-seat of a crazy diligence. It was drawn by three small black horses, their harness tied together with string and dotted here and there with odd little tufts of fur. It took three-quarters of an hour to get the three passengers and the half-dozeŋ post-bags stowed away in the conveyance. At last the postman-driver clambered to his perch, cracked his whip mightily, and we were off, lumbering and shambling along an excellent road constructed some fifteen years ago. Formerly Scanno was connected with the world only by a mule-path skirting the river Sagittario. The postman described it as an intolerably dangerous route, wandering among precipices, hanging over the bottomless abyss, overwhelmed by avalanches and inundations. Even on the new road he seemed apprehensive of wolves and brigands, and carried a revolver. I looked eagerly for these interesting enemies; but, alas! even at Scanno adventures have become rare as the visits of angels.

The landscape began to be beautiful at once. Anversa the town, three miles from its station-the scene of d'Annunzio's Fiaccola sotto il Moggio-nestles in a nook of barren mountains, which, in the morning light, show all the most delicate shades of violet and blue. White clouds float dreamily about their summits. Great Maiella towers behind.

We saw the village of Castro Valva on the top of a mighty rock, approached by a staircase up which girls and elderly women, all heavily burdened, were tripping lightly as things of air. The surrounding desolation was appalling. We passed through gorges never reached even by the midday sun. We saw immense boulders, detached from the mountain-tops and strewn about the valley by some Titan hand. Presently we skirted two or three pools, recently formed, in which a few withered trees were rotting. Then we saw a lonely pilgrimage church reached by a plank spanning the Sagittario; and the village of Villa Lago, from the lowest tier of whose grim and windowless houses a plumb-line would drop clean into the river a thousand feet below.

But at last we reached the Lake of Scanno, a beautiful expanse surrounded by chestnut-trees, and merry with the voices of children. The spirits of the little horses, of the postman, and his child lieutenant visibly revived. We ascended for another two miles, wound round the head of the gorge, crossed the river, descended a little, and were deposited at the door of a church. Below, on our right, the town of Scanno crawled down the mountain. No other road approaches it. On every other side it is walled, and egress to the

mountain-paths is through mediæval

gates.

It was now one o'clock. I was hungry; cold, too, for the mountain wind blew fresh. The postman gave me a child of four as guide to the one little inn, and promised to send a woman presently with my luggage. Following the babe, I dived down a very steep street, or rather stair, paved with the most miry of cobbles. It was strangely narrow, and alarmingly dark, bordered by tall houses generally askew, sometimes arched overhead. Black openings led to underground cellars, or showed steep black stairs to courts or alleys at a lower level. The street was full of people, chiefly women, all dressed in the oddest clothes-dark, misshapen creatures, short, sturdy, with widened shoulders, strangely abbreviated skirts, immense rolls like sausages round the hips, and very thick legs. heads were dark, close-fitting cloth caps or turbans. Sometimes their chins, and even noses, were wrapped in woollen shawls. Strangest of all, the plaits encircling the heads below the caps were scarlet, emerald, royal blue, sometimes white.

On their

"What hideosities!" I exclaimed involuntarily; and presently was quite startled to discover that the wearers of this wondrous garb were most of them quite young girls, all very like each other, and of really astonishing loveliness. Their features were Greek; their long-lashed eyes, large and sparkling, shone under clear, delicately curved eyebrows; their full white throats rose column-like from the dark bodices. All faces wore a gentle, pensive smile bent welcomingly on the stranger. As for the costume, I had not been many days in Scanno before I became quite fond of it.

The extraordinary shape, at first so repellant, is caused by dragging up the very thick skirt through a leather band encircling the hips, so as to shorten it, even to the knees, for work

ing hours. When allowed to hang at length in straight heavy folds, it is stately; and the bodice is stately too, perfectly simple and close-fitting, open at the throat and fastened with silver buttons. The full sleeves taper to the wrist much in the "leg of mutton" shape of our grandmothers. The turban is not unbecoming to the fair oval faces of these beautiful women. I do not know that I can say so much for the plaiting of the hair with colored wool, or for the hiding of the hands in pouches of the dark full aprons.

The four-year-old who was my escort through the tortuous and ever-narrowing lanes, drew up at a house so unlike anything I understood by an inn that I hesitated to enter. Older children, however, encouraged me; and 1 stumbled up a dark stone stair, none too clean, and walked into a kitchen, where a family were gathered round a big hearth for their dinner. The mother, a pleasant-looking woman, not of the Scanno type, led me to an inner apartment, bare but dusted, and set about preparing lunch. Her six little daughters, a kitten, and Maddalena the servant, a strapping wench with the Scanno face and the Scanno clothes, assisted her. I was fed simply but well; then provided with a bedroom on the roomy upper floor, to which I had access by a stair starting from my sitting-room. The bedroom was airy, and clean (for Italy). From the window I looked out on sky and mountain. The walls were hung with old pictures. On shelves and window-ledges were jugs of old Majolica. One was in the form of a truculent yellow and green lion. The glare of his eye, the bristle of his tail, were horrific. Instantly I resolved that I would not leave Scanno without this blatant beast. Truth to tell, he now sits on the top of the writing-desk at which, in London Town, I indite these memoirs.

A very old woman, the postman's

mother, arrived carrying my bag, and laughed when I apologized for its weight. Her son had described me as a brava signora, very rich, and a great friend of his, for whose good behavior he was willing to stand surety. These encomiums led mine hostess to raise her prices.

She undertook to board

and lodge me for four lire a day; but I learned later that my predecessor, a French artist, had only paid three.

I spent a happy week at Scanno, and should have stayed longer but for an unfortunate break in the weather. The place and the people were delightful to me; nor was I lonely, for I was at once adopted into the simple life of my neighbors. No one stared, or catechised, or bothered. The children ran by my side, neither begging nor crowding. The women invited me into their houses. The men showed the paths and sheepfolds, and told me their histories. I did not always understand what they said, for few talk pure Italian. In this respect I got on better with the children, who evidently have a good schoolmaster. I was quite nonplussed one day in talking to a little boy, who told me his education was finished at the age of ten.

"Well, let us see how much you know. For instance, can you tell me where England is?"

I expected he would say "In America"-the customary delusion in these parts. But he replied, without a moment's hesitation, "England is an island on the northwest corner of Europe, not far from France. The chief town is London, on the Thames. In the same island are countries, called Scotland and Wales, and there is another bad island called Ireland. All these islanders speak the same language and have the same king, and they are rich, with many ships and manufactures."

"Dear me!" I exclaimed, aghast, and all the other little boys applauded.

"Well," said I, "now you know so

the hard work is done by the women— the strong, beautiful girls in the kilted skirts with the stout and shapely limbs. The men are dreamy. They drive cattle, they lounge in little offices and shops, they deliver the letters and meet the trains. The boys sit on the wall and play mora; they ask each other riddles, watch the sun traversing the heavens, note the shadows on the mountains and the signs of the times. One of them made quite a speech on the Church and the questions of local government. But their sisters, older or younger, were much too busy for speeches. They passed and repassed, loaded with heavy weights; they were spinning, knitting, carrying on business at dye-works and weaving-looms. They never went by without a smile and a salutation, but they did not converse even with each other.

I have heard that it is a sign of a primitive people, this laying the work upon the woman. My hostess lent me a great topographical book from which I learned that Scanno was discussed even by Pliny, and is thought to have been peopled by Greeks; that in the dialect many purely Greek words occur; that the customs and costumes of the people, not to mention their noses, find their counterparts in some of the Ionic islands. The same book says that the Scannites are simple and temperate in habit and idea, faithful, peaceable, and renowned for filial piety, but perhaps a little lazy. They always wear wool (can Dr. Jaeger have been a Scannite?), and they never sit on chairs. Engagements last a year, and weddings are celebrated in May. At the betrothal