There is a decency about Puritan America which appeals to me quite as much as the rugged honesty of American shopkeepers.  The unspeakable street scenes of Europe would be impossible in America.  In Naples all the mysteries of the toilet are in certain quarters of the city public property, and the dressing-room of children in particular is bounded by north, east, south, and west, and roofed by the sky.

I have seen Italians comb their beards over their soup at dinner.  I have seen every Frenchman his own manicure at the opera.  I have seen Germans take out their false teeth at the table d’hote and rinse them in a glass of water, but it remains for Naples to cap the climax for Sunday-afternoon diversions.

A curious thing about European decency is that it seems to be forced on people by law, and indulged in only for show.  The Gallic nations are only veneered with decency.  They have, almost to a man, none of it naturally, or for its own sake.  Take, for example, the sidewalks of Paris after dark.  The moment public surveillance wanes or the sun goes down the Frenchman becomes his own natural self.

The Neapolitan’s acceptation of dirt as a portion of his inheritance is irresistibly comic to a pagan outsider.  To drive down the Via di Porto is to see a mimic world.  All the shops empty themselves into the street.  They leave only room for your cab to drive through the maze of stalls, booths, chairs, beds, and benches.  At nightfall they light flaring torches, which, viewed from the top of the street, make the descent look like a witch scene from an opera.

It is the street of the very poor, but one is struck by the excellent diet of these same very poor.  They eat as a staple roasted artichokes—­a great delicacy with us.  They cook macaroni with tomatoes in huge iron kettles over charcoal fires, and sell it by the plateful to their customers, often hauling it out of the kettles with their hands, like a sailor’s hornpipe, pinching off the macaroni if it lengthens too much, and blowing on their fingers to cool them.  They have roasted chestnuts, fried fish, boiled eggs, and long loops of crisp Italian bread strung on a stake.  There are scores of these booths in this street, the selling conducted generally by the father and grown sons, while the wife sits by knitting in the smoke and glare of the torches, screaming in peasant Italian to her neighbor across the way, commenting quite openly upon the people in the cabs, and wondering how much their hats cost.  The bambinos are often hung upon pegs in the front of the house, where they look out of their little black, beady eyes like pappooses.  I unhooked one of these babies once, and held it awhile.  Its back and little feet were held tightly against a strip of board so that it was quite stiff from its feet to its shoulders.  It did not seem to object or to be at all uncomfortable, and as it only howled while I was holding it I have an idea that, except when