gowns and masks. If there be death abroad, life is well
represented too, for all Naples would seem to be out of doors, and
tearing to and fro in carriages. Some of these, the common Vetturino
vehicles, are drawn by three horses abreast, decked with smart trappings
and great abundance of brazen ornament, and always going very fast. Not
that their loads are light; for the smallest of them has at least six
people inside, four in front, four or five more hanging behind, and two
or three more, in a net or bag below the axle-tree, where they lie
half-suffocated with mud and dust.

Exhibitors of Punch, buffo singers with guitars, reciters of poetry,
reciters of stories, a row of cheap exhibitions with clowns and
showmen, drums, and trumpets, painted cloths representing the wonders
within, and admiring crowds assembled without, assist the whirl and
bustle. Ragged lazzaroni lie asleep in doorways, archways, and kennels;
the gentry, gaily drest, are dashing up and down in carriages on the
Chiaja, or walking in the Public Gardens; and quiet letter-writers,
perched behind their little desks and inkstands under the Portico of the
Great Theater of San Carlo, in the public street, are waiting for
clients.

Why do the beggars rap their chins constantly, with their right hands,
when you look at them? Everything is done in pantomime in Naples, and
that is the conventional sign for hunger. A man who is quarreling with
another, yonder, lays the palm of his right hand on the back of his
left, and shakes the two thumbs--expressive of a donkey's ears--whereat
his adversary is goaded to desperation. Two people bargaining for fish,
the buyer empties an imaginary waistcoat pocket when he is told the
price, and walks away without a word, having thoroughly conveyed to the
seller that he considers it too dear. Two people in carriages, meeting,
one touches his lips, twice or thrice, holding up the five fingers of
his right hand, and gives a horizontal cut in the air with the palm. The
other nods briskly, and goes his way. He has been invited to a friendly
dinner at half-past five o'clock, and will certainly come.

All over Italy, a peculiar shake of the right hand from the wrist, with
the forefinger stretched out, expresses a negative--the only negative
beggars will ever understand. But, in Naples, those five fingers are a
copious language. All this, and every other kind of out-door life and
stir, and maccaroni-eating at sunset, and flower-sellin