CHAPTER XVII.

THE SIGNORA'S MEDICINE CHEST.

July 12.-"The mother's" medicine chest has become an institution in the village. She has been successful in one or two simple cases of children's ailments, etc., and now the contadini have recourse to her on all occasions. Fiore's pet little boy, the pretty fair-headed Gianni, was ill and feverish yesterday, and the father, in despair about the child, brought him to the mother to ask advice. Her remedies of linseed plaster and some castor oil were so efficacious that Fiore made a point of coming in before going to his work to thank her almost with tears in his eyes.

"He's a dear little fellow!" said Fiore. "If anything happened to him I should never hold up my head again."

The man's devotion to the child is something quite touching; whenever he goes to work in the fields he carries little Gianni on his shoulder or in his arms, and sets him down near

as he

hoes or digs. I think if he had not the child nestling about him somewhere he would be quite unhappy. It is the case here as in every other part of Italy, boys are so much more valued. than girls by their parents. On once inquiring the reason of this, I was told that boys were so many bread-winners, whose earnings helped to support the family; for the Italians have a patriarchal style of living, and it is a custom for sons to remain in their father's house even after marriage. But in the case of daughters, they are so many extra and expensive mouths to feed, and have each to be endowed with a sufficient dote, or there is no chance of their being sought in marriage. That girls should do anything independent is an unheard-of idea in Italy, or rather was till the last few years. Since the establishment of normal schools and the telegraph, some means of existence have been found for the bravest among Italian undowered maidens.

But all this applies more to the cities of the plains.

The reason why boys are so much more valued than girls in the mountains is of quite a different kind. It is because they are so much more difficult to rear. Whether the infant male constitution is more delicate than the female, or whether

it requires a greater degree of nourishment, I do not venture to decide; but the fact is, that in these chestnut regions the mortality of boys in infancy is nearly double that of girls. The men seem robust enough, but I suppose that is to be accounted for by the fact that only the strongest grow up, and that once having passed the critical time of infancy, their constitutions have become inured to mountain living, and draw as much

nourishment from necci as we do from animal food. As a rule though, men are not so longlived as women in the Apennines, if one may judge by the great number of aged women one sees in the villages, and the very few old men.

Apropos of aged women, the poor old soul we call Atropos has at last succumbed to her infirmities and the fatigues imposed on her by

Pippino, and has taken to her bed in extreme

weakness.

Of course "the mother" and her medicine chest were applied to, but we found the aged sufferer had more need of rest and nourishment than of medicine.

The house is one of the true mountain habitations,-smoke-blacked planks for flooring, smokeblacked beams overhead, and even the gaudy

i

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WALL OF THEATRE AT POMPEII.

Madonna on the wall is covered and toned down by fumigation. The boards of the flooring almost give way beneath our feet, so old are they. The grandmother lies on an ancient tressel bedstead; but even here, in the midst of poverty, the old The sheets are coarse home

civilization crops up. spun, but they are

adorned with insertion of

antique yellow thread guipure. This strange em

broidery struck me particularly, for I had just been reading Havard's "Dead Cities of the Zuyder Zee," and this came as an illustration to the work which the Frisian women learned from their ancestors. He says, "The pillows and sheets are embroidered with open work, which is a special fabrication of the women at Marken,-white and yellow threads crossed something in the fashion of guipure."

Much interested to find this work of our Friesic foremothers in the house of a descendant of the Etruscans, we asked the story of her sheets.

“Oh, signora!" replied the grandmother,

"who

knows how old they are? My grandmother had them in her corredo, but they had been in the family for generations before that. 'Tis a kind of work people cannot do now. Of course we do not use these in common, but one likes to have a nice sheet to put on in case of a wedding or a death, or in sickness, when we receive visits (in caso di spozalizio, o morte, o pure malattia)." By which we understood they were in the present instance worn in our honour, and were duly gratified. She went on "We have not many of our old heirlooms left. There was some beautiful lace of my grandmother's, but a gentleman from Florence came round and bought a great many old things,

to say,