airs, 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 invaded by foreigners, the bambino's existence is quite
happy. Babies seem to be no trouble in Italy, and one cannot but be
struck by the number of them. One can hardly remember seeing many
French babies, for the reason that there are so few to remember--so
few, indeed, that the French government has put a premium upon them;
but in Naples the pretty mothers with their pretty babies, playing at
bo-peep with each other like charming children, are some of the most
delightful scenes in this fascinating Street of the Door.

These bambinos hooked against the wall look down upon curious scenes.
Their mothers bring their wash-tubs into the street, wash the clothes
in plain view of everybody, hang them on clothes-lines strung between
two chairs, while a diminutive charcoal-stove, with half a dozen irons
leaning against its sides, stands in the doorway ready to perform its
part in the little scene. I saw a boy cooking two tiny