feast the relatives on both sides give the bride rings, and there is symbolic eating of grapes, almonds, and honey. Then for the year the affianced youth visits and serenades his bride-elect. At his last visit he gives her a gold piece. Then the two mothers prepare and furnish a house, and the two fathers convey to it the bridal bed, accompanied by a singing and rejoicing crowd of well-wishers. After the wedding ceremony each relative gives the young couple a coin marked with a cross. This is the most important part of the whole business, and any irregularity in the coin or its presentation is a sure harbinger of bad fortune.

I was not at Scanno in May, and could not learn how far this ancient ceremonial is still observed. The book was certainly right in saying that the women, at least, despise chairs. They squat on the ground in Oriental fashion. Most curious was the aspect of the church one evening when I turned into it for the Ave Maria. It was dusk, of course, and heavy rain-clouds had absorbed the color and the light. At the altar the priest had a few candles, but the congregation sat in the gloom. No matter; every one knew the responses, and roared them forth with such a volume of sound that I feared for my tympanum. About thirty men occupied benches in the background, but there were at least a hundred women, all dressed alike, all crouching on the floor of the nave or on the steps of the side chapels, their knees up to the chin, their hands concealed, their heads bent forwards, their eyes following the priest. The effect was most strange: dark, shapeless bundles here, there, and everywhere, lovely fair faces rising from them like Aphrodite from the sea. Nor was the church without beauty, at least in that twilight hour, which softened the whitewash and concealed the ravages and-worse still-the reparations of time. The old gilding caught

the candle-light, and the sparkles were reflected from a couple of antique convex mirrors. The brilliance gleamed on a colored figure of the Virgin floating heavenwards, it waked color on the altar embroideries, it shone on the silver buttons of the women's dark bodices, and here and there on some vivid face bent forward in the ecstasy of devotion. It was enchanting-a little heaven below, fit ending to the day's long toil, emblem that these hardworked sisters are no mere beasts of burden, but living souls in touch with the unseen.

Mine host of the little inn bears one of the great names of Scanno. The chief street is named after his greatuncle, who was a doctor in Naples. The grand-nephew is quite simple and unostentatious. He works in his gården on the far side of the Sagittario, and keeps a little shop in a back street, for which the fifteen-year-old daughter bakes childish cakes and sweetmeats. The guests-if there are any-are the wife's charge. I thought she was perhaps a little scornful of Scanno, hailing herself from far Sulmona. Her six little daughters do not follow the customs of their native place.

"What are you going to do with them?" I asked, looking at the little faces clustered round my supper table.

"Chi lo sa?" she answered with a sigh; and pointing to Pepina, the prettiest, she added, "That one would like to be a lady's maid and travel with a foreigner."

Ah me! that's the thin end of the wedge! Once let the taste for adventure assert itself, the desire for change and foreign parts, and Scanno will be improved off the face of the earth-at least, the Scanno which we have to-day, dark, mysterious, conservative, content, where the men are only shepherds and the smiling, strapping girls step forth under heavy burdens. How would our slum-dwellers like that endless carry

ing of water-jars on head or hip? Civilization certainly spares us some things; but are we really so much the happier for that? There are no such gentle faces, no such straight backs, in a London slum as here in the perpendicular streets, on the dark stairs and in the black caverns of the Scanno houses. And, indeed, that aspect of gloom belongs to the street side of Scanno only. The houses are built up the face of the rock, one on top of the other; but the back of each is open to the air of day, to the sunshine and the wind. My own room in Signor Orazio's tiny locanda faced the south,and across a few roofs at a lower level my eye travelled straight to the allotment gardens, to the mountains and the clouds. There is merit in these hill-top habitations, more than mere safety from climbing enemies, self-sufficiency, and splendid isolation. But it is not the modern way, and the new houses even in Scanno, the School and the Municipio and the Post Office, are all on the highroad, where the strong stream of the Sagittario is useThe Gentleman's Magazine.

ful for the installation of electric light. I see the doom of Scanno written in fiery letters across the sky, above her towers and her walls. The shouts of Progress will reach her ear, the boys now playing mora on the parapet will emigrate to America, the girls will be travelling lady's maids; bagmen will come with French hats, and the women will lay aside their turbans and their silver buttons, lose their noble carriage, and grow like everybody else in a dull provincial town. A hundred years hence, one fancies, there will be no pleasure in travelling, because the whole world from John o'Groats to Timbuctoo will be all alike.

"Tis a foolish and a timid fancy! Surprises are sure to come, and if we cannot conceive their Whence, their Wherefore, and their How, that is because they are to be surprises. A hundred years hence there will be plenty to see and to wonder at. But Scanno will not be there as she is to-day. If you are wise, you will visit her before the change.

Helen H. Colvill.

A young sailor, John Gibson by name, stood in the dock of the Old Bailey charged with murder on the high seas, and the jury had just brought in a verdict of guilty. The evidence for the Crown, as the prosecuting counsel pointed out, was purely circumstantial; but, as he had also remarked, if circumstantial evidence was always to be held insufficient, how many guilty men would escape the reward of their wrong-doing. After a long and careful trial, therefore, it had been demonstrated to the satisfaction of the jury that one night, when his ship was nearing home, John Gibson had deliberately hurled overboard a shipmate, one

James Lale, whereby the said shipmate was drowned. The evidence which had gone against Gibson more than the rest was that of two of his fellow-sailors, who in a dull way, without malice against the prisoner, but with little comprehension of the importance of their evidence, had borne witness as to a quarrel between Gibson and Lale the day before the murder, during which Gibson said Lale would never be safe till he was in Davy Jones's locker.

Gibson was a boy of nineteen, straight and good-looking, and altogether a person to enlist the sympathy of his fellow-creatures. Lale, from all accounts

seemed to have been a rather worthless creature, about fifty years old, harm. less enough, but possessed of no qualities which made him very vehement friends. The sailors, who were dazzled by a court of justice, gave their evidence as fairly as their intelligence enabled them, and the captain, who testified to Gibson's excellence as a seaman, sealed the boy's fate when he explained his reasons for putting Gibson under arrest. He evidently had no doubt as to the prisoner's guilt, though he was rather surprised at the fuss the court was making about it.

"Lale was not of much consequence," he explained to the judge.

"He was a living soul," said his Lordship.

So Gibson was found guilty, with a strong recommendation to mercy on account of his youth, the latter part of the verdict causing the counsel for the defence to smile bitterly, for he knew the judge, and he knew how little attention he paid to such recommendations.

His Lordship had only lately been raised to the Bench, but had already shown that, although he prated a good deal about the mercy of God, he did not think it was a quality which should be exercised by man. On the present occasion, in sentencing the young sailor to death, he told him to expect no mercy from man, and to entertain no hope of reprieve, but he urged him to try to obtain from man's Creator what man refused him, and so to make sure of life eternal in exchange for the temporal existence which was to be cut short so suddenly. The boy in the dock heard the sentence quietly, not much surprised, only a little confused in his head. The only sorrow and indignation he felt was against his captain. He could not feel anger at the law, for it seemed to him simply a hideous and cruel net which was thrown over the heads of unfortu

nate beings; the judge he looked upon not as a man, but as a claw of some unshapely monster within whose reach he had been thrown. So he turned round and walked quietly down the steps to the cells, much as a fly shuts its eyes (let us hope) when the spider begins to wrap it in its noisome coils.

Gibson was not a clever boy; his life had been a rough and simple one; but he was wise enough to know that when a man, without money and with humble relations, is judged by the law to have done wrong, whether he has or not, he has got to bear it,—and grin if he can. Hanging indeed seemed to him rather dreadful, and no one wants to die at nineteen; but he would not have minded being hanged so very much if he was to get the Victorian Cross for it,-only he knew that he would not.

If Gibson was a little downcast at the result of the trial and the knowledge that he was to be hanged in a month, the newspapers were delighted. Several of the daily papers had leading articles congratulating the public on the verdict, and one went so far as to say that if Gibson had been acquitted no one would have dared to cross the Atlantic. Of course, the usual paper, in its usual contradictory way, pretended to see a possible miscarriage of justice, pointed out the danger of convicting on purely circumstantial evidence, and commented on the harsh summing-up of the judge. For the first two or three days after the verdict the ordinary papers gave dramatic accounts of murders on the high seas, while the contradictory paper gave instances of notorious miscarriages of justice.

However, the affair was soon altogether forgotten, and young Gibson was left alone in his cell, waiting quietly for death, and trying in an awkward way to comfort his poor little mother who took the affair most

extravagantly to heart. To hear her talk and see her distress one would have thought that the world and its laws had been made to pivot round her son. Even with the most tremendous events in the air, such as a serious complication with a foreign Power, which might involve thousands of lives and millions of money, this humble little woman thought of nothing but a sailor. boy; just one among-of whom England has as we know-so many.

But suddenly the public interest in John Gibson was revived. It was about four days before the date fixed for his execution. The papers had just printed a small paragraph (of the size and type which served to record the fact that Lady So-and-So had returned to town from the Riviera and taken up her residence in Belgravia) announcing that "The execution of Gibson, the high-sea murderer, had been fixed for Tuesday next, and would take place at nine o'clock precisely"; some of the more fashionable papers went so far as to add that "Billington would be the executioner."

Alas for human arrangements! The next announcement that the papers made with regard to Gibson was that he was ill. The evening prints proclaimed in large letters that he was very ill, and the public began to get seriously concerned. However, the papers at first took an optimistic view. One said that no doubt the indisposition would prove to be of a trifling character, and was due to the strain latterly put upon his nerves. Another expressed its conviction that Gibson's illness was merely a temporary one, and "hoped that he would be all right on the day." Another, a model of propriety, said that "for the sake of the public morals and the safety of the community, we must hope against hope that Tuesday's ceremony may take place."

But when Tuesday morning came

and John Gibson ought to have risen with the lark, dressed himself, and stepped out to be hanged, the unfortunate fellow was unable to put his foot to the ground. He whose thoughts should that morning have been fixed on the solemnities of death, was prattling deliriously about his early childhood and his adventures at sea.

Billington, the executioner, who had fully expected to be sitting down to lunch with the satisfactory feeling of having done a good morning's work, was wandering about disconsolately, with a kind of empty feeling, and vaguely calling to mind the words about "Satan finding some mischief still for idle hands to do."

But certain it was that it would be long before Gibson would be in a fit state of health to be hanged, for the doctor had diagnosed typhoid fever. He added also that no doubt it had been contracted in the insanitary building of the Old Bailey.

Then commenced one of those discussions in the newspapers which make honest people regret the advance of education. The papers themselves began and encouraged the correspondence by violent articles proclaiming against the crying scandal which Londoners suffer in their midst. In the largest city in the world, reputed also to be the richest and the most wicked, which produced criminals second to none, they apparently could not afford a better place in which to try offenders against the laws than an insanitary, old-fashioned hole. For long this had been pointed out, but nothing had been done. Time after time fever had stalked round the gloomy court claiming a victim.

Sometimes it was a judge, sometimes a juryman, sometimes an obscure member of the bar, or even a well-known advocate; sometimes it picked out a solicitor or his clerk, sometimes a member of the curious public; it had even been known to select one

of the jurors in waiting. And now the inevitable had happened; it had attacked a man in the dock, and not a mere person sentenced to three months' hard labor, but a murderer lying under sentence of death. Perhaps now at last the public would rise in their might and insist that London should have a criminal court befitting its size and morals.

As the news of Gibson's illness grew more and more serious, letters and leading articles on the subject filled the columns of the papers. A question as to the sanitary condition of the Old Bailey was put in the House of Commons; and one of the Irish Members said that it was only another example of British hypocrisy to hide away the Central Criminal Court in a little back street, just to make foreigners believe that there was no crime in the country.

Gibson became a public hero; one almost expected prayers to be offered for his recovery; many people left cards at the prison where the precious life was trembling in the balance. Business men laid odds on the result of the illness, and unbusinesslike business men took them. For a few days everybody shared Gibson's fever; they all caught it, and took part in his delirium.

The headlines in the papers showed the hold the subject had on the public. Gibson Gone, Gibson a Shade Better, The Passing of Gibson, Trembling in the Balance, Still Life Still Hope, and so forth. The letters also bore witness to the concern of all classes. One warmhearted Englishwoman wrote to The Daily Gale (a paper which was always trying to raise the wind by making storms in teacups) asking whether England was at last roused from its lethargy; was it possible that in a Christian country so promising a young life should be snatched from the gallows by a fever-ridden dock?

Only in one small cottage in Bermondsey did a poor widow cry, and pray

that her boy might never awake to consciousness and sorrow.

The one bright spot at this dark time was the devotion of the prison doctor. Never for once, while the life of his patient was hovering near the valley, did that devoted man leave the bedside, save at the most urgent summons. Indeed it may be mentioned in confidence, and not for the purposes of a newspaper controversy, that the health of the other prisoners was somewhat neglected. Day and night he watched by that bedside; he even took notes of Gibson's ravings, and sent on the assertions of innocence which fell from the fevered lips to the judge who had sentenced the boy. That impartial man, who was strong enough to read the papers without being influenced by them, sent back a polite note to the doctor, remarking that he would be the last person to take advantage of a delirious man's ravings; he was never influenced by any statement which was not made on oath. He also highly commended the doctor's devotion to the patient, and expressed a hope, under Providence,⚫ for Gibson's recovery.

At last came the happy day when Gibson, to the delight of the world and the joy of the entire Press, was pronounced out of danger. The doctor had indeed, if we may use the phrase in connection with one under sentence to be hanged, pulled him through. Naturally Gibson was weak and ill yet, but the tide had turned. The youthful blood came surging up, cleansed and refreshed; and, as was natural, the public forgot both Gibson and also their plans for building a new Old Bailey.

In due time Gibson, convalescent, was sent to one of our brightest and most cheerful country prisons, there to grow strong and well and fill his weakened body with God's blessed sun and air. Under the genial influences of a healthy and quiet prison the sailor