Part 21

In the Via Marquada, a fine bustling modern street, I found my friend Palladia the milliner. She welcomed me cordially though I saw she looked ill and care-worn.

When the serious business of choosing straw, shape, and flowers for a new hat was over, we spoke of other things.

“How are thy affairs going, Palladia?”

“Badly, Signora. It is a dreadful season. No one buys anything new. See that mass of old hats my customers have brought me to make over! It is a miracle the Signora should come today; she can perhaps help me? I have had an idea. The ladies of Taormina have always served themselves at Messina (there is no serious milliner at Taormina). Now that the milliners of Messina are no more,--how if I went to Taormina with hats for Easter? Mostly mourning hats of course--but a little lighter, _via_, second mourning for the young ladies at least!”

“What a good notion!”

“If the Signora would give me two lines to one who might assist me?”

Introductions were written on the spot. Palladia, the valorous, had come from Rome to Palermo, a stranger, with only her old mother to help her, had set up her shop, and so far had “made good.” Surely she deserved what help an old customer could afford her!

Next day Patsy, insatiate sightseer, went off to Segesta and Selinus. Left alone I hunted up our friends Dr. Parlato Hopkins and his wife. Thanks to them I was translated from a lone traveler’s solitude to a cordial circle of old and new friends. It all began with the tea-party in the doctor’s study, where I met Mrs. Bishop, the wife of our Consul (an old friend), and Canon and Mrs. Skeggs of the English Church.

“What a tempting cake!” one of the party exclaimed, as we drew up to the table.

“I hope it’s good as it looks;” said Mrs. Parlato Hopkins; “for I made it.”

“Did I help?” asked the doctor. “Could you have baked that cake if I had not made the baking powder?”

Voted that it was “both of their cake,” and that the Canon should cut it. He began by “counting noses.”

“You’re too extravagant,” his wife exclaimed as the Canon cut the first slice. His triumph came when every one of us asked for a second piece.

“A little marmalade?” urged the doctor; “home-made also. My wife is a good housewife in spite of being a good doctor.”

“I can recommend that marmalade,” said the Canon’s wife; “the oranges came from our garden.”

While at table we spoke of joyous things; as the afternoon passed, the talk waxed serious, laughter ceased, faces grew earnest, voices grave. This little group of friends, exiles all, living in Palermo, bound together by a thousand kindnesses, had passed through deep waters. The faithful almoners of England and America, they too had worked early and late for the _profughi_. Here, as at Messina, and Syracuse, the most precious contribution was the moral, not the material aid. Order, discipline, in that welter of chaos were worth more than money or stores.

“These poor souls will not go to work while they are being fed, housed, and clothed by charity,” said the Canon. “When they ask me for work I am in a quandary. The working people of Palermo are all against them--naturally; there isn’t enough work to go around!” Exactly what Ignazio had said.

“Why not colonize?” I proposed. “England would do that. There must be parts of Italy where prosperous colonies might be founded. I myself have seen practically deserted villages both in the Abruzzi mountains and in the Sorrentine peninsula, where whole populations have emigrated to the Argentine Republic or to the United States.”

“This is not England!” sighed the Canon.

I said to Mrs. Bishop how much I wished to see her husband.

“Another day,” she answered. “He is still very busy with the Petrosino murder.”

“Petrosino!” Another tragedy--as if Sicily had not had enough that dreadful year. From one source and another I learned the story of the murder.

Lieutenant Giuseppe Petrosino, a detective of the New York police force, came to Palermo to look up the records of some criminals. A curious law, made in the humane intention of helping reform criminals, is in force in Italy. By this statute, passed in 1902, a discharged criminal, after a certain number of years of good behavior, is given certain papers by the authorities by which it is made to appear that there has never been a criminal charge against him. With this clean bill of health, he is given another chance to start life over again in a new country. At the same time a careful secret record of his case is kept by the authorities.

In the United States we have a law that forbids the emigration into our country of all criminals, except so called “political” criminals.

The equitable adjustment of the two conflicting statutes has been, and I believe is still, the subject of grave consideration by both Governments.

Meanwhile, when it became necessary for our police to gain knowledge of certain secret criminal records, a request was made of the Italian police for copies of them. The Italian authorities, on demand, furnished the American authorities with these copies. So far, so good. There came a time when some mysterious influence was felt to be at work, due to the agency of the Mafia, a secret society affiliated with the Camorra, whose members exist in every class of society. It somehow became known that copies of the secret records were being called for, and supplied from various communities all over Sicily. The wheels of justice became clogged; it was to help set them in motion that Petrosino, with the approval of the Italian police, came to Palermo.

Two years before, Petrosino had arrested Erricone, the Chief of the Camorra in New York, and handed the arch criminal over to the Carabinieri, the royal police force of Italy. From that day every Cammorista in the world knew that the Camorra had condemned Petrosino to death. How was it that Petrosino did not know it? That is the most puzzling phase of the whole affair. Probably the man was too much absorbed in his work to think about himself at all. He went about Sicily, where a price was set on his head, unarmed and unafraid.

He registered at his hotel under an assumed name; otherwise he took few precautions to conceal his identity. His mail came to the general post-office addressed to his real name. He was careless in a hundred ways about preserving his incognito. Petrosino was a perfectly fearless man, though he was often warned; from the first he exposed himself recklessly. One night on his way home from the Caffè Orete, he was surprised, set upon from behind, and shot to death in the back.

No one saw the murder; no one could even guess who the murderers were.

“It would have been the same,” it was said, “if the murder had taken place at high noon at the Quattro Canti, instead of nine o’clock at night in the empty Piazza Marina; no one would have seen the murder, no one could have guessed who the murderers were, though the Italian Government offered a large reward.”

They gave Petrosino a great funeral, with military honors at the expense of the State. The hearse was draped by the American flag and covered with beautiful wreaths from the city, the province, the police and the Department of Justice. Our Consul walked behind it as the first mourner with Doctor Parlato Hopkins at his side. The procession passed the Consulate, where Canon and Mrs. Skeggs bore Mrs. Bishop company through the trying hours.

The streets and balconies were packed with people, a silent unsympathetic crowd. There was no disorder. The Mafia made no sign. Its work was done, the man was dead; let them give him all the honors they cared to pay for. The feeling expressed by those thousands of silent spectators was indifference. There were many who would not uncover as the coffin passed.

“He was a spy; he got what he deserved!” said the faces of the silent Palermitans,--grave, sinewy, fierce-eyed men, dark as Arabs.

* * * * *

“Petrosino must have been a very uncommon man, from all you tell me,” I said; “what did he look like?”

“He was a fine man,” one of the company answered, “so handsome, so remarkable looking. He had a Napoleonic head.”

“Yes,” said the doctor, “he had indeed.”

“But you never saw him!”

A queer look came into the doctor’s eyes; he did not answer.

“Where could you have seen him?”

“I never saw him alive,” said the doctor, “you forget, I embalmed Petrosino.”

One of the newspapers had a caricature by Piff Paff of the Prefect of Palermo with his arm about Mr. Bishop, pointing to a long line of criminals.

“Here they are, _caro mio_, take your choice of them;” says the Prefect. The paper was quickly suppressed. I tried in vain to buy a copy.

None of my friends in Palermo by the way had seen or heard of the profane poem supposed to have been printed in a Messina newspaper, calling upon the Saviour to prove He could work miracles by sending a good earthquake. Mr. Bishop never heard the story till he went to Rome. I asked many people about this; no one had seen it, no one could give the name of the newspaper in which it was printed.

Agnese and Napoleone both had assured me that the earthquake was sent as a punishment for the poem. According to Agnese it was written by an anarchist; Napoleone held that it was by a free mason. I have come to the conclusion that the whole matter is an entire invention.

At our hotel I made the acquaintance of a lady whose name I never learned. When I spoke of our Consul she told me what admirable service he had rendered.

“It was Mr. Bishop’s idea to set the _profughi_ in the different _ricoveri_ to work,” she said. “At first all the rest of the Committee were opposed to it. He tried first one, then another; at last he found a priest, an admirable man, who backed him. I don’t know what they would have done without him.”

How Griscom’s slogan “We help these people to help themselves!” rings out. I heard its echo in Palermo, Syracuse, Messina, wherever one of his staff has been.

Mr. Bishop spoke with the greatest cordiality of the Palermitan Committee. “They have done fine work,” he said. He mentioned the wife of General Mazza as one of the most earnest of the leaders.

There were still 7,000 _profughi_ in Palermo at this time. I went with Canon Skeggs and Dr. Parlato to visit one of the largest _ricoveri_. It was admirably arranged in a big garden surrounded on three sides by an arcade like a wide cloister. This had been boarded in, and divided off into neat little dwellings where the refugees lived in families. They all had good beds and were fairly well clothed. The Canon had a word for every one.

To this man he promised employment, to that he gave news of a lost daughter separated from the rest of the family and traced to a _ricovero_ in Syracuse. In one room I talked with an elderly woman and her unmarried daughter, a pretty creature who said she was thirteen and looked it; her mother claimed that she was sixteen. She was very calm looking, said she felt perfectly well, but that she was to go to the lying-in hospital the next day. Poor child, her lover was killed at Reggio.

I talked with an old woman who had lost every member of her family.

“_Sono troppo impressionata!_” she cried, “_tremo sempre!_”

She showed a tiny empty snuff-box.

“I have not a _soldo_ to buy snuff!”

“Here are two _soldi_,” said Dr. Parlato, “cheer up, mother, we will find some of your people yet; you promised you would not cry, if I kept you in snuff!”

A brave smart looking woman sewing on a Singer sewing machine told us proudly that she was paid for her work by the day; the others were so lazy they were paid by the piece.

The Director, an able excellent man, told us his _profughi_ were now earning money by making clothes for the prisons, but that the future of the poor people under his charge was a grave problem. The central committee had agreed to send him 300,000 _lire_ more. “After that, there will be no more! What will become of them?”

I talked with a shop-keeper of Messina, one of the few _profughi_ I met who wished to go back.

“So you wish to return to Messina?”

“Why not? It is the mother land; I cannot live in any other. I am not so fortunate as some; after three months I am still idle, who would so gladly work. If the money subscribed were given out pro rata, so much a head, say one thousand francs apiece, a family of five, like mine, by putting their money together could have a little capital to begin with. The Government makes a mistake to spend so much money in building houses; it was not given with that scope, but to feed, clothe, and start again in life such of us unfortunates as escaped! If I were the Prefetto I would call in some great firm from England, America, Russia, and make a contract with them to excavate Messina. If it were let out to some great contractors, responsible people who could bring the machinery necessary, Messina might be excavated in six months, or at most in a year!”

How easy it is to criticize, how hard it is to do!

My last morning in Palermo was spent at the Canon’s house. The parsonage is close by the charming Gothic church, largely maintained by the Whittakers, an English family long resident in Palermo. The parsonage had been turned into a store-house.

“I have very little left now,” said Mrs. Skeggs. “Here are some nice woolen skirts from England. A friend who owns a large woolen mill gave the flannel, the mill operatives, women who had worked all day, put in extra time, sat up at night to make these garments for us! We have had some American contributions too from Rome. Such good stuff in all the clothes they sent. And their admirable little work-bags, each holding good scissors, thimble, needles, thread, buttons, hooks and eyes. I have only one left.”

I asked if she had succeeded in getting employment for her refugees. She could find plenty of good situations for the young women as servants among responsible people, but the girls’ parents would not let them take positions for fear of their coming to harm.

The parsonage hall was full of _profughi_. One had come for a bed, one for a blanket, one for a dress. The Canon had promised to show me the church. As he led the way there, his wife came after him to ask a last question.

“May I give Ginocchio a small bed?”

“What has he had?” asked the Canon.

“Oh, a great deal; but he has nine children, and they only have two beds between them all.”

“Then let him have it!”

The good earnest face of the Canon’s wife, frowning slightly with perplexity, looking out of the parsonage door, as the Canon and I hurried off through the pretty garden to the English church, is the last picture of Palermo that remains! The garden was full of English flowers, blooming luxuriantly side by side with those famous orange trees whose blossoms perfumed the air.

“Blue sky arching o’er me, Keen winds piercing through me, Waves lapping my feet-- White clouds sailing swiftly, Bright sun laughing roundly-- O, Earth, thou art sweet.” (HELEN LEE.)

XIV

MR. ROOSEVELT AT MESSINA

Tuesday, the sixth of April, six weeks after work began at the American camp, the German East African steamer “Admiral,” having on board Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Griscom and Captain Belknap, entered the harbor of Messina. More than a month before, on the fourth of March, Mr. Roosevelt’s term of office as President of the United States came to an end. The last months of a retiring president are always arduous, and Mr. Roosevelt must have found them peculiarly so. Besides the endless knotting up of the ordinary executive business, there was all the extra labor connected with the Italian Relief. Now he was off for a holiday in the African jungle. On his way, he looked in at Messina, to see how things were going on at the Camp. Work had been pushed at the Mosella, at Reggio, Sbarre, Palmi, Ali, all along the line; the rumor that Mr. Roosevelt was coming spurred every man to his best pace.

“We must have something worth while to show him!” said Belknap.

“All right!” the Camp answered as one man. The very hammers sang it, the saws shrieked it, the true hearts beat the gay refrain: “All right!”

As the “Admiral” passed the Faro, Belknap, who had joined the party at Naples, pointed out the royal standard flying at the masthead of a man-of-war. “That means the King and Queen are here!” They had timed their visit to Messina so as to meet the ex-President there. As the “Admiral” slowed down, a launch from the King’s ship came alongside, a dapper young officer ran up the gangway and saluted.

“His Majesty was about to go on shore; learning of the steamer’s arrival, he has delayed in the expectation of seeing Mr. Roosevelt on board.”

Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Griscom immediately embarked on the launch and went with the Italian officer to the King’s ship. So at this old “Four Corners” of the earth, Victor Emmanuel and Theodore Roosevelt met. What did they say to each other?

They probably shook hands, they may have talked about the weather, or the price of oranges (sixty cents a dozen in New York at the present writing and a drug in the markets of Sicily). Their meeting is none the less significant because we know nothing about it; the circumstances make it momentous. Though Mr. Roosevelt was no longer in office, in a certain sense, at all events, in the eyes of the Italians, he represented the American people. It was under his administration that the earthquake occurred, that the relief work was planned and started; he himself had given the impetus. Morally, if not technically, this was a meeting of the representatives of the two great allies, Italy and the United States, bound together by the strongest of all alliances, the need of each other’s help.

What would America do without the skill of the Italians? What would Italy do without the gold of the Americans? May neither ever have to stand the test!

The interview over, the King took the ex-President and the Ambassador on shore in his launch. At the landing they parted, King Victor going off with Captain Bignami to the Villaggio Regina Elena, the others starting for the Camp. On their way they passed two of our steamers unloading lumber. Mr. Roosevelt stopped and shook hands with the sailors in charge of the job. No holiday for them! Though little else went on in the way of work that afternoon, the unloading could not be delayed. The nightmare of demurrage, forfeit money paid the ship owners for every day’s delay in unloading the cargo, haunted Belknap, sleeping or waking.

The carriage with the Roosevelt party drove up the Viale San Martino, past the Tell Tale Tower, to the Camp. Though it was raining in torrents, the road was in good condition; the Italians, like the Americans, had been “rushing work.” At the Camp the party was received by Buchanan and Brofferio. The sailors were lined up; the officers, volunteers and carpenters were assembled. There was a great gathering of the clan; from Reggio came Ensign Wilcox, Gerome Brush, Robert Hale and the head carpenter. From Taormina came Mr. Bowdoin and Mr. Wood. Mr. Chanler was with the Roosevelt party, together with Avvocato Giordano who had been on the “Bayern,” Commendatore Salvatore Cortesi of the Italian Associated Press, Mr. Lloyd Derby, and Mr. Robert Bacon, Jr.

The visitors walked through Viale Taft, Viale Roosevelt and Viale Stati Uniti (the streets in the American Village are all named for men who had some part in building it). Mr. Roosevelt was keen to see every detail: the ice house, the kitchen, the neat offices, the comfortable bedrooms, and finally the “mess-room,” gay with bunting. Gasperone had set the tables with fresh linen, and decorated them with wild hyacinths and acanthus. Such hospitality as the Camp could afford was offered. The cook had baked a cake; Mr. Buchanan’s “boy,” the giant negro from Florida, had prepared a vast quantity of sandwiches. Though nobody was hungry, the good cheer must be sampled.

Mr. Roosevelt made a short speech, then, raising his glass, gave the toast:

“To every man of every nation engaged in this great work!”

They drank the toast standing.

“What did he say about every civilized nation owing a debt to Italy?” whispered a reporter to J.

“You’ve got the gist of it,” said J., “and it’s true as Gospel, too!”

All too soon it was time to go! The three hours were up! Down in the harbor the “Admiral” was blowing off steam; this was a non-schedule stop, made out of courtesy to a distinguished passenger; privileged persons must be punctual. The return to the landing was a triumphal progress. During the last year and a half Mr. Roosevelt has had many such, he has heard a deal of cheering. None, it would seem, can have moved him so profoundly as the cheers of the Messinesi, the brave remnant of a brave people!

The letters and diaries of this time ring with the echoes of those shouts.

_Extract from Mr. Elliott’s Diary_

“The Camp, Messina, April 6.

“Mr. Roosevelt was most cordial to us all. After saying lots and lots about the splendid work of the officers, sailors, and carpenters, he spoke of the rest of us volunteers who, he said, have given our time and energies to help a philanthropic work. The Italians cried: ‘Long live our President,’ and ran along holding on to the carriage and cheering him--a moving sight. The Queen is worshipped by the people in these parts and deserves to be. Women in

their petticoats, half dressed, evidently in the act of doing their hair, raced after her carriage with the ends of their hair held between their teeth. Somehow this was curiosity, admiration, and awe--even worship, that seemed to be expressed. The same might be said of their attitude towards the King. I thought they really seemed to worship him, and perhaps love him, too--but with Roosevelt the feeling expressed was different. It seemed to be admiration and brotherly affection--that was pleasant to see.”

Some of the visitors were quite unprepared for the magnitude of the work undertaken. They had received the impression that the building party had very little to do, except put together the portable houses (there were only forty-nine of _them_) that, it was commonly supposed at home, composed the larger part of the cargo of the lumber ships.

“As if,” Belknap exclaimed, “you could pick a portable house from a tree like a lemon!” In a letter to the Ambassador, Belknap gives some interesting details about the hospital.