Life in Naples.

Te Aroha News, Volume II, Issue 84, 10 January 1885, Page 4

Life in Naples.

The English are an adventurous people, therefore it will surprise no one to learn that a band of young doctors and many amateur philanthropists besides have set out for Naples to study the best means, not of curing the cholera, which now must have its course, but to cure the diseases of dirt and starvation by which the cholera has been engendered. The reports sent home tell such a hideous tale of the want and destitution of the place that it seems like reading that page from the history of Carthage which describes the horrora of fche huge pit in which the prisoners the Roman mercenaries made were left to perish of starvation amid the filth and corruption into which, when wounded and with broken limbs, they had been thrown. An entirely new light has been shed upon the character of the Neapolitans. Prejudice has accused them of having absolutely invited the cholera by their laziness and dirt; but according to the account sent to England this is proved to be false. The working classes of Naples work longer and for less pay than any other in Europe. The misery of the la* zarone which is beheld in the face of day — asleep in the hot sun— is nothing compared to that of the working man which is hidden in the shade. The wages of the tailors and stonemasons are the same — one lire a day in ordinary times, and one lire and a-half in days of prosperity ; and yet it is observed that the fashionable young men of Naples are better dressed than those ot the re&t of Italy. The best gloves in Europe are made at Naples, although makers only earn eightpence a day. The inferior trades are all paid half a lire a day of twelve hours. The Neapolitan maidservant is a far different being to our Mary Anne in Engj land. She is paid ten lire a month without t her dinner ; sometimes she has to traverse the whole city to get to her work in the morning, she has to run up and down long flights of stairs the whole day long to draw water from the well in the yard, and carry up the pails. She has in general no food to eat, nor time to eat a meal even if she had provided one. Examples continually occur wherein the poor woman comes home so tired at night that, like the children formerly employed in the cotton factories, she sinks upou her bed and sleeps too soundly to be awakened even for the mess of bean porridge, her only food. These poor women, says the report, at thirty years of age appear more than fifty. They look so dusty and disconsolate that the stranger turns from them with disgust. They are forced to wear the same clothes for years; the apron is only changed once in three months. They never complain, but move slowly forward to their fate, dying before forty in the hospital. It is amongst them that the deaths from cholera have been the most numerous. But it is the pitable state 'in which the children are left which makes the hearts of the young Englishmen bleed ! A boy ofterji will be made to work like a horse — to fetc-h and carry all day long from one end of +.he city to the other, to draw heavy load? , to carry heavy burthens— for the mere suipper of bean porridge given him at night;i ght ; the poor mother can only give him a son to buy a scrap of bread to stay his stomach in the day ; while the poor little apprentice girl can never >jy the the hardest labour earn more than five sous a week, and for the mos.t part they are suffered to run abo ut the streets the whole day long. It is this peculiar form of human debasement that Mrs Schwabe, of Manchester, has undertaken to rectify. Her work, at the Collegio Medico, given to her for fJie purpose by the Government, is progressing most favourably. This brave lady h<as spent time and fortune in reclaiming from the streets the unfortunate female -children hitherto left to the dirt and depravity of the causeway. And the work has been blessed, for the poor mothers, whoatfiist opposed all connection with the "foreign lady," now come in crowds, anxious to have their children taught some decent trade which shall keep them from the fate they have endured themselves.

"Now," said the photographer, taking hold of the cloth over the instrument, " are you all ready?" "Yes," replied the customer. " Well, just keep your eye on thatsign," he said, pointing to a legend on the wall which read, "Positively No Credit,"' " and look pleasant," Mamma—" Well, pet, how do you like your new teacher?" Pet— "l don't like her at all." "You don't? Why?" "She is so impolite." "Impolite? Why, what did she do ?" " She asked me all sorts of 'pert'nent questions about that lesson that I couldn't answer at all." It shows that faith in humanity is fast becoming an unknown quantity when & wife will believe a ten shilling clock rather than her husband when the latter has told her it was only 11 o'clock when he came in last night, while the clock at that time struck 2.