and a quiet
conscience. These are the abiding securities that smooth our passage
through life and bring a man peace at the last, and each of us has his
own way of going about to win them.

Peppino brought my luggage and, with no nonsense about what I would have
for dinner or when or where I should like it, told me that it would be
ready at 7.30 in the garden. Accordingly I went down punctually and
found a table spread under a trellis of vines from which hung an electric
light. Peppino waited on me as, according to his account, he used to do
in London, and entertained me with reminiscences of his life there. He
had attended divine service at St. Paul's, which he called il Duomo di
Londra, and had found it a more reverent function, though less emotional,
than Mass at home. He was enthusiastic about the river Thames, the
orators in Hyde Park and the shiny soldiers riding in the streets. He
remembered the lions in the Zoological Gardens and the "Cock" at
Highbury, where he once drank a whisky-soda and disliked it intensely.
He had stood on the base of La Torre del Duca di Bronte (by which he
meant the Nelson Column) to see the Lord Mayor's Show, and considered it
far finer than any Sicilian procession--more poetical in conception, he
said, and carried out with greater magnificence. He had been to Brighton
from Saturday to Monday and burst into tears when he saw the sea again.
It is difficult to travel on the Underground Railway without losing
oneself, but Peppino can do it. He got lost once, but that was in some
street near Covent Garden, soon after his arrival, and before he had
ventured alone in the Underground; he asked his way of a policeman who
spoke Italian and told him the way: he believes that all London policemen
speak Italian, but he himself prefers English if he can get a chance to
speak it.

Sicilians always want to speak English, especially those of the lower
orders who invariably consider it as a master-key that will open every
door leading to wealth. Sometimes what they say is, of course, nothing
more than otiose compliment; sometimes they are merely introducing the
subject of their want of money in an artistic manner in the hope of
anything from a soldo to a promise to take them into service as valet,
courier, coachman, or whatever it may be--a sort of shaking of Fortune's
bag to see what will come out. Sometimes they really do want to learn
English and some of them even make attempts to pick up a