Chapter XVI: Messina (ave Atque Vale!) 466 (10)

“Petrosino!” Another tragedy--as if Sicily had not had enough that dreadful year. From one source and another I learned the story of the murder.

Lieutenant Giuseppe Petrosino, a detective of the New York police force, came to Palermo to look up the records of some criminals. A curious law, made in the humane intention of helping reform criminals, is in force in Italy. By this statute, passed in 1902, a discharged criminal, after a certain number of years of good behavior, is given certain papers by the authorities by which it is made to appear that there has never been a criminal charge against him. With this clean bill of health, he is given another chance to start life over again in a new country. At the same time a careful secret record of his case is kept by the authorities.

In the United States we have a law that forbids the emigration into our country of all criminals, except so called “political” criminals.

The equitable adjustment of the two conflicting statutes has been, and I believe is still, the subject of grave consideration by both Governments.

Meanwhile, when it became necessary for our police to gain knowledge of certain secret criminal records, a request was made of the Italian police for copies of them. The Italian authorities, on demand, furnished the American authorities with these copies. So far, so good. There came a time when some mysterious influence was felt to be at work, due to the agency of the Mafia, a secret society affiliated with the Camorra, whose members exist in every class of society. It somehow became known that copies of the secret records were being called for, and supplied from various communities all over Sicily. The wheels of justice became clogged; it was to help set them in motion that Petrosino, with the approval of the Italian police, came to Palermo.

Two years before, Petrosino had arrested Erricone, the Chief of the Camorra in New York, and handed the arch criminal over to the Carabinieri, the royal police force of Italy. From that day every Cammorista in the world knew that the Camorra had condemned Petrosino to death. How was it that Petrosino did not know it? That is the most puzzling phase of the whole affair. Probably the man was too much absorbed in his work to think about himself at all. He went about Sicily, where a price was set on his head, unarmed and unafraid.

He registered at his hotel under an assumed name; otherwise he took few precautions to conceal his identity. His mail came to the general post-office addressed to his real name. He was careless in a hundred ways about preserving his incognito. Petrosino was a perfectly fearless man, though he was often warned; from the first he exposed himself recklessly. One night on his way home from the Caffè Orete, he was surprised, set upon from behind, and shot to death in the back.

No one saw the murder; no one could even guess who the murderers were.

“It would have been the same,” it was said, “if the murder had taken place at high noon at the Quattro Canti, instead of nine o’clock at night in the empty Piazza Marina; no one would have seen the murder, no one could have guessed who the murderers were, though the Italian Government offered a large reward.”

They gave Petrosino a great funeral, with military honors at the expense of the State. The hearse was draped by the American flag and covered with beautiful wreaths from the city, the province, the police and the Department of Justice. Our Consul walked behind it as the first mourner with Doctor Parlato Hopkins at his side. The procession passed the Consulate, where Canon and Mrs. Skeggs bore Mrs. Bishop company through the trying hours.

The streets and balconies were packed with people, a silent unsympathetic crowd. There was no disorder. The Mafia made no sign. Its work was done, the man was dead; let them give him all the honors they cared to pay for. The feeling expressed by those thousands of silent spectators was indifference. There were many who would not uncover as the coffin passed.

“He was a spy; he got what he deserved!” said the faces of the silent Palermitans,--grave, sinewy, fierce-eyed men, dark as Arabs.

* * * * *

“Petrosino must have been a very uncommon man, from all you tell me,” I said; “what did he look like?”

“He was a fine man,” one of the company answered, “so handsome, so remarkable looking. He had a Napoleonic head.”

“Yes,” said the doctor, “he had indeed.”

“But you never saw him!”

A queer look came into the doctor’s eyes; he did not answer.

“Where could you have seen him?”

“I never saw him alive,” said the doctor, “you forget, I embalmed Petrosino.”

One of the newspapers had a caricature by Piff Paff of the Prefect of Palermo with his arm about Mr. Bishop, pointing to a long line of criminals.

“Here they are, _caro mio_, take your choice of them;” says the Prefect. The paper was quickly suppressed. I tried in vain to buy a copy.

None of my friends in Palermo by the way had seen or heard of the profane poem supposed to have been printed in a Messina newspaper, calling upon the Saviour to prove He could work miracles by sending a good earthquake. Mr. Bishop never heard the story till he went to Rome. I asked many people about this; no one had seen it, no one could give the name of the newspaper in which it was printed.

Agnese and Napoleone both had assured me that the earthquake was sent as a punishment for the poem. According to Agnese it was written by an anarchist; Napoleone held that it was by a free mason. I have come to the conclusion that the whole matter is an entire invention.

At our hotel I made the acquaintance of a lady whose name I never learned. When I spoke of our Consul she told me what admirable service he had rendered.

“It was Mr. Bishop’s idea to set the _profughi_ in the different _ricoveri_ to work,” she said. “At first all the rest of the Committee were opposed to it. He tried first one, then another; at last he found a priest, an admirable man, who backed him. I don’t know what they would have done without him.”

How Griscom’s slogan “We help these people to help themselves!” rings out. I heard its echo in Palermo, Syracuse, Messina, wherever one of his staff has been.

Mr. Bishop spoke with the greatest cordiality of the Palermitan Committee. “They have done fine work,” he said. He mentioned the wife of General Mazza as one of the most earnest of the leaders.

There were still 7,000 _profughi_ in Palermo at this time. I went with Canon Skeggs and Dr. Parlato to visit one of the largest _ricoveri_. It was admirably arranged in a big garden surrounded on three sides by an arcade like a wide cloister. This had been boarded in, and divided off into neat little dwellings where the refugees lived in families. They all had good beds and were fairly well clothed. The Canon had a word for every one.

To this man he promised employment, to that he gave news of a lost daughter separated from the rest of the family and traced to a _ricovero_ in Syracuse. In one room I talked with an elderly woman and her unmarried daughter, a pretty creature who said she was thirteen and looked it; her mother claimed that she was sixteen. She was very calm looking, said she felt perfectly well, but that she was to go to the lying-in hospital the next day. Poor child, her lover was killed at Reggio.

I talked with an old woman who had lost every member of her family.

“_Sono troppo impressionata!_” she cried, “_tremo sempre!_”

She showed a tiny empty snuff-box.

“I have not a _soldo_ to buy snuff!”

“Here are two _soldi_,” said Dr. Parlato, “cheer up, mother, we will find some of your people yet; you promised you would not cry, if I kept you in snuff!”

A brave smart looking woman sewing on a Singer sewing machine told us proudly that she was paid for her work by the day; the others were so lazy they were paid by the piece.

The Director, an able excellent man, told us his _profughi_ were now earning money by making clothes for the prisons, but that the future of the poor people under his charge was a grave problem. The central committee had agreed to send him 300,000 _lire_ more. “After that, there will be no more! What will become of them?”

I talked with a shop-keeper of Messina, one of the few _profughi_ I met who wished to go back.

“So you wish to return to Messina?”

“Why not? It is the mother land; I cannot live in any other. I am not so fortunate as some; after three months I am still idle, who would so gladly work. If the money subscribed were given out pro rata, so much a head, say one thousand francs apiece, a family of five, like mine, by putting their money together could have a little capital to begin with. The Government makes a mistake to spend so much money in building houses; it was not given with that scope, but to feed, clothe, and start again in life such of us unfortunates as escaped! If I were the Prefetto I would call in some great firm from England, America, Russia, and make a contract with them to excavate Messina. If it were let out to some great contractors, responsible people who could bring the machinery necessary, Messina might be excavated in six months, or at most in a year!”

How easy it is to criticize, how hard it is to do!

My last morning in Palermo was spent at the Canon’s house. The parsonage is close by the charming Gothic church, largely maintained by the Whittakers, an English family long resident in Palermo. The parsonage had been turned into a store-house.

“I have very little left now,” said Mrs. Skeggs. “Here are some nice woolen skirts from England. A friend who owns a large woolen mill gave the flannel, the mill operatives, women who had worked all day, put in extra time, sat up at night to make these garments for us! We have had some American contributions too from Rome. Such good stuff in all the clothes they sent. And their admirable little work-bags, each holding good scissors, thimble, needles, thread, buttons, hooks and eyes. I have only one left.”

I asked if she had succeeded in getting employment for her refugees. She could find plenty of good situations for the young women as servants among responsible people, but the girls’ parents would not let them take positions for fear of their coming to harm.

The parsonage hall was full of _profughi_. One had come for a bed, one for a blanket, one for a dress. The Canon had promised to show me the church. As he led the way there, his wife came after him to ask a last question.

“May I give Ginocchio a small bed?”

“What has he had?” asked the Canon.

“Oh, a great deal; but he has nine children, and they only have two beds between them all.”

“Then let him have it!”

The good earnest face of the Canon’s wife, frowning slightly with perplexity, looking out of the parsonage door, as the Canon and I hurried off through the pretty garden to the English church, is the last picture of Palermo that remains! The garden was full of English flowers, blooming luxuriantly side by side with those famous orange trees whose blossoms perfumed the air.

“Blue sky arching o’er me,
Keen winds piercing through me,
Waves lapping my feet--
White clouds sailing swiftly,
Bright sun laughing roundly--
O, Earth, thou art sweet.”
(HELEN LEE.)

XIV

MR. ROOSEVELT AT MESSINA

Tuesday, the sixth of April, six weeks after work began at the American camp, the German East African steamer “Admiral,” having on board Mr. Roosevelt, Mr. Griscom and Captain Belknap, entered the harbor of Messina. More than a month before, on the fourth of March, Mr. Roosevelt’s term of office as President of the United States came to an end. The last months of a retiring president are always arduous, and Mr. Roosevelt must have found them peculiarly so. Besides the endless knotting up of the ordinary executive business, there was all the extra labor connected with the Italian Relief. Now he was off for a holiday in the African jungle. On his way, he looked in at Messina, to see how things were going on at the Camp. Work had been pushed at the Mosella, at Reggio, Sbarre, Palmi, Ali, all along the line; the rumor that Mr. Roosevelt was coming spurred every man to his best pace.

“We must have something worth while to show him!” said Belknap.

“All right!” the Camp answered as one man. The very hammers sang it, the saws shrieked it, the true hearts beat the gay refrain: “All right!”

As the “Admiral” passed the Faro, Belknap, who had joined the party at Naples, pointed out the royal standard flying at the masthead of a man-of-war. “That means the King and Queen are here!” They had timed their visit to Messina so as to meet the ex-President there. As the “Admiral” slowed down, a launch from the King’s ship came alongside, a dapper young officer ran up the gangway and saluted.

“His Majesty was about to go on shore; learning of the steamer’s arrival, he has delayed in the expectation of seeing Mr. Roosevelt on board.”

Mr. Roosevelt and Mr. Griscom immediately embarked on the launch and went with the Italian officer to the King’s ship. So at this old “Four Corners” of the earth, Victor Emmanuel and Theodore Roosevelt met. What did they say to each other?

They probably shook hands, they may have talked about the weather, or the price of oranges (sixty cents a dozen in New York at the present writing and a drug in the markets of Sicily). Their meeting is none the less significant because we know nothing about it; the circumstances make it momentous. Though Mr. Roosevelt was no longer in office, in a certain sense, at all events, in the eyes of the Italians, he represented the American people. It was under his administration that the earthquake occurred, that the relief work was planned and started; he himself had given the impetus. Morally, if not technically, this was a meeting of the representatives of the two great allies, Italy and the United States, bound together by the strongest of all alliances, the need of each other’s help.

What would America do without the skill of the Italians? What would Italy do without the gold of the Americans? May neither ever have to stand the test!

The interview over, the King took the ex-President and the Ambassador on shore in his launch. At the landing they parted, King Victor going off with Captain Bignami to the Villaggio Regina Elena, the others starting for the Camp. On their way they passed two of our steamers unloading lumber. Mr. Roosevelt stopped and shook hands with the sailors in charge of the job. No holiday for them! Though little else went on in the way of work that afternoon, the unloading could not be delayed. The nightmare of demurrage, forfeit money paid the ship owners for every day’s delay in unloading the cargo, haunted Belknap, sleeping or waking.

The carriage with the Roosevelt party drove up the Viale San Martino, past the Tell Tale Tower, to the Camp. Though it was raining in torrents, the road was in good condition; the Italians, like the Americans, had been “rushing work.” At the Camp the party was received by Buchanan and Brofferio. The sailors were lined up; the officers, volunteers and carpenters were assembled. There was a great gathering of the clan; from Reggio came Ensign Wilcox, Gerome Brush, Robert Hale and the head carpenter. From Taormina came Mr. Bowdoin and Mr. Wood. Mr. Chanler was with the Roosevelt party, together with Avvocato Giordano who had been on the “Bayern,” Commendatore Salvatore Cortesi of the Italian Associated Press, Mr. Lloyd Derby, and Mr. Robert Bacon, Jr.

The visitors walked through Viale Taft, Viale Roosevelt and Viale Stati Uniti (the streets in the American Village are all named for men who had some part in building it). Mr. Roosevelt was keen to see every detail: the ice house, the kitchen, the neat offices, the comfortable bedrooms, and finally the “mess-room,” gay with bunting. Gasperone had set the tables with fresh linen, and decorated them with wild hyacinths and acanthus. Such hospitality as the Camp could afford was offered. The cook had baked a cake; Mr. Buchanan’s “boy,” the giant negro from Florida, had prepared a vast quantity of sandwiches. Though nobody was hungry, the good cheer must be sampled.

Mr. Roosevelt made a short speech, then, raising his glass, gave the toast:

“To every man of every nation engaged in this great work!”

They drank the toast standing.

“What did he say about every civilized nation owing a debt to Italy?” whispered a reporter to J.

“You’ve got the gist of it,” said J., “and it’s true as Gospel, too!”

All too soon it was time to go! The three hours were up! Down in the harbor the “Admiral” was blowing off steam; this was a non-schedule stop, made out of courtesy to a distinguished passenger; privileged persons must be punctual. The return to the landing was a triumphal progress. During the last year and a half Mr. Roosevelt has had many such, he has heard a deal of cheering. None, it would seem, can have moved him so profoundly as the cheers of the Messinesi, the brave remnant of a brave people!

The letters and diaries of this time ring with the echoes of those shouts.

_Extract from Mr. Elliott’s Diary_

“The Camp, Messina, April 6.

“Mr. Roosevelt was most cordial to us all. After saying lots and
lots about the splendid work of the officers, sailors, and
carpenters, he spoke of the rest of us volunteers who, he said,
have given our time and energies to help a philanthropic work. The
Italians cried: ‘Long live our President,’ and ran along holding on
to the carriage and cheering him--a moving sight. The Queen is
worshipped by the people in these parts and deserves to be. Women
in

their petticoats, half dressed, evidently in the act of doing their
hair, raced after her carriage with the ends of their hair held
between their teeth. Somehow this was curiosity, admiration, and
awe--even worship, that seemed to be expressed. The same might be
said of their attitude towards the King. I thought they really
seemed to worship him, and perhaps love him, too--but with
Roosevelt the feeling expressed was different. It seemed to be
admiration and brotherly affection--that was pleasant to see.”

Some of the visitors were quite unprepared for the magnitude of the work undertaken. They had received the impression that the building party had very little to do, except put together the portable houses (there were only forty-nine of _them_) that, it was commonly supposed at home, composed the larger part of the cargo of the lumber ships.

“As if,” Belknap exclaimed, “you could pick a portable house from a tree like a lemon!” In a letter to the Ambassador, Belknap gives some interesting details about the hospital.

“The hospital referred to was one that the Queen desired to be built at Villaggio Regina Elena. Like the hotel, it began as a combination of several standard cottages, but, as Mr. Elliott was never content with a makeshift when he could improve upon it, a plan was ultimately evolved which embodied all of her Majesty’s ideas, and at the same time made the most of the ground area that would be available to cover. The Queen had stipulated for kitchen, laundry and servants to be in a building separate from the hospital proper, and for a detached house to be available close at hand. Mr. Elliott’s plan was of a large, main building, forty by sixty feet, containing three wards, dining-room and pantry, bath, office, dispensary, and linen closet, with a wing thrown out on the north containing operating-room, sterilizing-room, and emergency ward, and another wing on the south for doctors’ rooms and bath, and nurses’ rooms and bath. In the rear were to be kitchen, laundry and dining-room, with servants’ sleeping-rooms and storeroom in a semi-detached building in one corner, and, symmetrically placed in the opposite corner, a small isolated building for a contagious ward. With the hospital, also, our part was at first limited to the contractor work, her Majesty sending an engineer down to arrange for plumbing, drainage, lighting and furnishing; but later we arranged for, and carried through, the plastering and tiled flooring.

“In submitting the two floor plans of the hotel, it is requested that the Ambassador take such steps as may be necessary for obtaining her Majesty’s sanction for the use of her name for the hotel.

“It is only intended to build a two-story structure, having about eighty-four rooms available for guests, and a dining-room and its accessories amply large for about two hundred at one time.

“Since we have been at work about the hotel site, several persons have approached me about undertaking to manage the hotel when completed. My reply has been that I should refer all such questions to the Ambassador, as I did not feel myself in a position to decide any matter not connected strictly with the construction. The interest in the hotel is spreading.”

The sixth of April was a red-letter day. In the morning the King came to the Camp; in the afternoon Mr. Roosevelt and the Ambassador made their long expected visit, and in the evening J. was summoned on board the Italian man-of-war, to show his plans of the hospital to the Queen.

_Extract from Mr. Elliott’s Diary_

“The Camp, Messina, April 7.

“Yesterday the King arrived unexpectedly at the Camp at 9 A.M.
Buchanan, Brofferio and I accompanied him and his staff through the
village. They came into my small office. I showed the King my
designs for the hospital and the cottages we are to build at
Villaggio Regina Elena, a model village the Queen has built on the
other side of Messina. He liked the plans very much. When I spoke
of the great disaster the King said that the American duty put on
lemons was almost as great a disaster for Sicily as the earthquake.
Though, he added, ‘America is perfectly right.’ At 7 P.M. I was
taken on board the ‘Umberto I’ by the steam pinnace of the
‘Dandolo.’ I was received by the Queen, a most fascinating lady.
She thanked me many times, till I felt quite embarrassed. She was
really very enthusiastic about the plans for the hospital and the
cottages. The subject of the allotment of the houses came

up. I said I thought the plan the King had spoken of as his
idea--the drawing of the cottages by lots--was the only way, in
spite of the fact that some undeserving people might be housed
while people of higher grade, really the greatest sufferers, might
get nothing.”

The day after Mr. Roosevelt’s visit the Camp was astir early. The Ambassador breakfasted with the officers and master carpenters in the mess-room; in spite of the pouring rain, he was off before eight o’clock with Belknap on a tour of inspection. He was delighted with everything, had a good word for everybody. More than twelve hundred men were now employed at Messina, Reggio, Sbarre and the smaller places, where our Lilliputian “wooden palaces” were going up. The Ambassador, who had kept in touch with every step of the work, now saw it “in full swing,” saw the working of the system, the organization of the army of labor. There were corps for clearing the ground, stacking the lumber, delivering the building materials, and for cleaning up. There were interpreters, mostly Sicilians, who had been in America, carters and water-boys. The Sicilian and Calabrian carpenters all served an apprenticeship in the “shop.” Here under the keen eye of Phillips, the carpenter in charge, each man was tested, and then taught to do one thing,--whatever he proved fittest for. To build one hundred houses a week was Belknap’s ambition; sometimes he fell short, oftener he exceeded the number. This is the way the thing was done:

First on the ground came Cook--ship’s carpenter from the “Celtic,” a Boston man--with his gang. They cleared the land (the peasants had already cut down the lemon trees), smoothed and leveled the soil, drove the foundation posts, laid the sills.

Second, came Emerson, the Philadelphian, and his gang of framers. They put up the side studs, the roof frame, the gable ends (made in the shop), and laid the floor joists.

Third, came Cox of Brooklyn with his gang. They placed the end studs, the door and window frames, their “cripples,” and the kitchen framing. When the work of these two framing gangs was done, they passed on, leaving a skeleton house behind them.

Now came one of the four enclosing gangs, organized by Neil Mackay, a canny Scot, king of carpenters they called him. There were fifty men in each enclosing gang, with one of their own number for leader, who was made responsible for the tools. At seven every morning each gang was given its tool-box; a close tally of the contents was kept, and at night the precious tools must be returned intact. The enclosing gang made more of a showing than the others. They took a skeleton house and clothed it with clapboards and floors; so that the roofers--who came next with their Sicilian _capo_ (boss), Ferrara--found something that looked a good deal like a house. After the roofers had put on the roof, the finishers came. They hung the doors, fitted and glazed the windows, put on locks and fastenings, added the steps. When the carpenters were done with the house, the bricklayers and masons took hold and built the famous kitchen, putting in a stovepipe to make all complete, and in their turn making room for the painters. These men gave each cottage two coats of white paint, green doors and trimmings and dark neutral-colored base, “so that the mud splashed up by the rain would not show.”

When Mr. Griscom had seen the different gangs at work, he went to inspect the foundations of the hotel. While he was admiring the neat brick arches, the royal automobile whizzed up to take the Ambassador, Belknap and J. to the Villaggio Regina Elena, to meet the Queen. Having seen and approved the plans for the hospital and houses the Ambassador had promised to build in the American quarter of her model village, she wished to see the site the buildings would occupy.

They found the Queen already there; in spite of the torrential “earthquake rain,” she was determined to see every detail of her village. The Ambassador walked with her and Captain Bignami; the others fell in behind and followed with the lady-in-waiting, Brofferio and the Italian officers.

“This is the bakery!” said the Captain. “This is the baker; he himself built his oven. Your Majesty can see how light the bread is!”

Her Majesty said something kind to the baker, then crossed the street to the butcher’s shop, neat as wax, with all the latest sanitary contrivances; next to the school, then to the church, last of all to the industrial school,--a busy hive of working women and girls.

“The Queen was perfectly delighted,” writes

J. “The place fairly hummed with the noise of machinery. Everything was going at full blast; women were making stockings and weaving underclothes; there must have been twenty of them at least stitching on Singer sewing-machines (the Singer people, by the way, sent a good subscription). The Queen went into several of the houses, and found them all in apple-pie order; Captain Bignami insists on perfect cleanliness.”

As they left the building a little girl, escaping from the guards who kept the people back from pressing too closely on the royal party, threw herself at the Queen’s feet and kissed the hem of her dress. Many petitions were made, some of them for perfectly unreasonable things.

“It is so hard,” said the Queen; “these poor people think I can give them whatever they ask me for.”

“That is not wonderful, considering all that your Majesty has given them.”

“The hospital will stand here;” Captain Bignami pointed out the site on the hillside above the village, commanding a magnificent view.

“You have heard,” it was whispered, “her Majesty names it the Elizabeth Griscom Hospital?”

“What a good idea!”

The Queen now disappeared, and the Americans returned to Messina. The Ambassador soon after took the ferry-boat for Reggio. Here he looked over the work with Ensign Wilcox, and later went with Mr. Chanler to Sbarre, to see the buildings put up there under Chanler’s direction. Timothy, the carpenter, writing to his wife, says:

“The Ambassador, Captain Belknap and several other gentlemen came. My men was working, though the mud was ears deep and one could not keep looking well. The Captain introduced me to Mr. Griscom, who highly commended me on the mill and its workings. They all took dinner with us that evening, and we was twelve at table. When we got good and started and was about half-way through, Mr. Chanler came in late and made thirteen. He did not mind. Some of the boys kicked but we laughed them out of it. Many funny stories was told. Finally broke up, singing _America_ on the party’s leaving; it was raining very hard.”

“I had hoped,” writes Belknap, “that Mr. Roosevelt might see what was to me the best feature of the whole enterprise, the hundreds of men busily employed, earning good wages, making the air ring with the noise of their saws and hammers; but it would have been futile to try and keep the men at their places while he was passing. The men were in sight, to be sure, by the hundreds, fresh from their work, with tools in hand, nail aprons on. I doubt if much work was done the whole afternoon, notwithstanding that Mr. Roosevelt was in the Camp only an hour; yet the time lost was more than made up afterwards by the enthusiasm and stimulus that the visit gave.”

So ended the meeting of the Triumvirs, Roosevelt, Griscom and Belknap. To those who helped them in their work it was of such profound interest, that the sixth of April remains the culminating point of the whole Messina business.

What did it mean to _them_?

All three are men of action, who delight too much in doing to waste much time in talking about what they have done. They felt it none the less for all that. A single sentence from a letter of Mr. Griscom’s tells us more than a volume of official reports.

“I may say personally, I have had the most valuable and interesting experience of my lifetime.”

We said at the time that the rain was the only drawback to the complete success of Mr. Roosevelt’s visit. Looking back at that memorable sixth of April, we are not so sure of this. Was it not really best things happened as they did? All the distinguished visitors received a more exact idea of the actual conditions under which the work they planned was carried out, than if the day had been fair. For more than three months that cruel earthquake rain continued, with only a few rare days of fair weather. The peculiar rain may in some measure have been due to the fine dust discharged into the atmosphere, since every drop of rain is formed around such a particle. This may, the scientists say, account for the rain at Messina. Peculiar rains have been observed after other earthquakes. The trouble is that earthquakes are so rare that the scientists cannot tell whether the rain was a mere coincidence or due in some measure to the disturbance. “The change of the electrical potential due to the earthquake might serve to start a rain, and altogether one is inclined to suspect that the rain was at least started by the earthquake,” writes one expert. The truth is the scientists themselves are all “up a tree” about that mysterious rain. Rosina Calabresi, Timothy, and all the simple people who endured it, have no such doubts. To them, to us, perhaps to Mr. Roosevelt, it remains a rain apart, unlike all others!

XV

EASTER

“_Oggi il Signor è morto._”

“Dead? Impossible, we heard he was better!”

Gasperone smiled patiently, pointed to heaven and repeated the greeting that, in Sicily, people give each other on Good Friday: “Today our Lord is dead.”

I had come to spend Easter at Camp; Gasperone met me at the station. His words brought a faint uneasiness that returned whenever the greeting was repeated: I heard it many times that day--from Caterina, Zenobia, Zia Maddalena, a dozen others--and always it brought that faint shock, as if there was something especially significant to us in the words.

On our way to Camp we met Timothy, the carpenter. I stopped to ask how things were going on.

“Badly!” said Timothy. “Ain’t it a pity? Such a fine day at last after all this rain! It’s a holiday; the men don’t want to work. We’re short of hands all round. I have only fifteen out of my gang of twenty-seven, and they are working under protest.”

“This is a _festa_?” I asked Gasperone.

“No, not a feast; rather a great fast,” said Gasperone.

“First thing I knew of it’s being Good Friday,” said Timothy, “was the hot cross buns for breakfast--the best bread I have eaten since I left home. You ought to look into the church they rigged up; it’s like a tempor’y railroad station. It certainly is cheerful to see them poor devils hanging round the statuary--touching, too.”

It was well for all concerned that the men refused to work, that the great “drive” was relaxed for a breathing space. They had all been working over time, “on a spurt” to get things as far advanced as possible for the visitors.

Saturday morning I went with Signor Donati and J. to call on the Archbishop at his palace, one of the few habitable buildings in Messina; it had been only slightly damaged by the earthquake. The handsome courtyard was filled with wooden shanties, the lower halls, the very stairs were crowded with families camping out. The palace had become an asylum for the homeless, a storehouse for the treasures saved from cathedral, church and monastery. While waiting for the Archbishop, we were entertained by a Jesuit priest who spoke good English.

“You shall see all our precious things,” he said, “if you will send some more blankets for our poor people and some vulgar shoes.”

The Jesuit, a lean virile man in a shabby cassock, took a big bunch of keys from his belt and led the way to a distant wing of the palace. He unlocked a heavy iron-barred door, motioned us to pass through, and locked the door behind us. We were in a vast room, smelling faintly of stale incense and wax candles, filled with the spoil of churches. There were statues of saints, plaster angels, paintings of the Madonna, crucifixes, fragments of rich altar cloths, embroidered vestments, priceless old laces, gold and silver vessels for the mass, painted missals, candlesticks, lamps, all carefully sorted and laid in piles. We passed through room after room,

filled with this strange wreckage of the churches, to an inner apartment, double locked, a high vaulted chamber where the most precious treasures were kept, the gold and the silver _mantas_ of the Madonna della Lettera. The gold _manta_ is an exquisite piece of goldsmith’s work, beautifully chased and set with gorgeous jewels, most of them royal gifts. We admired an emerald ornament offered by Queen Isabel of Spain (the modern Isabel), who greatly affected emeralds, and a diamond brooch given by Queen Margherita.

“Nothing is missing,” said the Jesuit; “if the soldiers overlooked anything, the people found it and brought it to us--all the jewels of the Madonna della Lettera, even the precious letter itself, are here.”

“The epistle,” Signor Donati explained, “written by the Virgin to the people of Messina, and brought here by Saint Paul, who, as you know, came to Sicily in the year 42.”

The Archbishop received us in his study, a big bare room filled with supplicants, all talking at once. In order that we might hear each other speak, he led the way to a smaller apartment next door. The Archbishop is a tall handsome man, with a direct, forcible manner. We heard from Sicilian friends that he had spent the whole of his large private fortune for the benefit of his people and his church. The Archbishop wasted no time; after thanking us for what had already been done, he spoke of what was nearest his heart.

“Build us a church! That is our first need; then build us a barrack, large enough to house eighteen priests. Out of my one hundred and five, eighty were killed; but first of all the church, that is our greatest need!”

“You shall have your church, be not afraid,” said Signor Donati. “Behold, the Signor _architetto_ has brought his plans to show you!”

J. unrolled the plans with his neat drawings, and spread them out on the writing table, using the ancient sand boxes of the silver inkstand to hold down the corners:

“Notice that the church is to be in the shape of the Red Cross.”

“Admirable!” said the Archbishop. “Be seated.” With a gracious gesture of authority, he motioned J. to a chair, seated himself at the table, and bent over the plans.

Point by point, they went over the ground-plan, elevation, and all the rest of it. The Archbishop was delighted; every ingenious detail pleased him. His earnest, worn face relaxed; he really smiled, waxed enthusiastic. Nothing, he declared, could have been better devised. This was the attitude of the churchmen throughout. Whatever was done for them was well done. The plans for the church were much more elaborate than I had supposed from J.’s letters. Instead of a mere roofed-in shed, it was to be a very solidly built wooden church on concrete foundations; it was even to have a belfry.

“By grouping together the ordinary cottage windows, we have here a rose window!”

“What a good idea!”

“By a miracle, enough red glass has been found in Messina to make a red cross for the centre of the rose window--nothing is lacking, you see, not even a stained glass window.”

“Capital!”

“If we succeed in getting your church built for you, there are two requests we make in return.”

“Requests? Let us hear them.”

“First, that the church be called Santa Croce; this because, if built, it will be by a gift of the American Red Cross.”

“A good name,” the Archbishop nodded; “it shall certainly be called Santa Croce. The second request?”

“The Signor Comandante asks for the use of a bell one of our carpenters saw lying on the ground outside a ruined church.”

“For what will the bell be used?”

“To call the men to work.”

“That is a good use. _Laborare est orare._ Send your men for the bell when you like.”

The Archbishop rose as he said it, and the interview was over; a busy man, he had given us all the time he could spare. The Jesuit came with us to the door of the palace.

“The Signora will not forget? Vulgar shoes. Some were sent with high heels, pointed toes--no use for us. Vulgar shoes for men and women. It is understood?”

* * * * *

Grass was not allowed to grow under the feet at Belknapoli (so Mrs. Griscom christened the Camp); that very afternoon they sent for the bell. It came in a cart, drawn by a pair of swift red oxen, surrounded by an enthusiastic crowd of Messinesi. With a deal of laughter and shouting, the church bell was hung between two trees outside the “pay-window.” From that day on, it called the men to labor and to rest, morning, noon and night.[2]

On Saturday afternoon Gasperone knocked at my door. “Behold,” he said, “the package from Rome the Signora expected. It seems in good condition.” He laid down a big bundle that had come by post.

We had telegraphed Agnese from Palermo, to send some clothing to the Camp to distribute for Easter. Agnese had been faithful, the post-office prompt, the clothes had come in time. It cost twenty cents to send the telegram, a very small sum to transport the package. In Italy the people own their telegraph and express; they pay the minimum price for both services. _When shall we do as much?_

The news that there were clothes to be had for the asking spread rapidly; a line formed outside the guest house. The dresses, alas, did not begin to “go round.” With the doctor’s help, we gave them to the most needy, thwarting Gasperone, who wanted them all for his family. At the end of the distribution Caterina arrived, out of breath, leading the raggedest barefoot child in all ragged Messina. Nothing remained for her but a bright blue dress and a buff silk handkerchief.

“It is finished, away, away!” Gasperone drove the grateful, gossiping crowd before him. “The Comandante does not allow loafing about the Camp; be off!”

On Easter morning the Camp slept late; it was to be a real holiday, for the men at least. The matins of the birds began before dawn. At sunrise the world was one great opal; as the sun grew stronger, the opalescent mists disappeared; by the time the goats came rambling to the kitchen door, the earth was an emerald between a sapphire sea and sky. Caterina was the first to give me the lovely Easter greeting:

“_Oggi il Signor non è morto!_” (Today our Lord is not dead.)

A little girl in a pretty blue dress, a buff handkerchief tied over her rippling bronze hair, shyly held out a lilac lily as she lisped:--“Blessed be thou!”

“Don’t you know her?” cried Caterina. “It’s Teresa; the dress suits her, yes?”

Teresa, the ragged little witch of last night, was transformed into a neat demure child! All that bright beautiful Easter day I kept meeting one and another of the girls and women, who the night before had been so forlorn, so bedraggled. Today they were neat and freshly dressed for Pasqua. How did they do it? In the streets, in the church, wherever you met the women, you felt that effort at festive dress for the great feast of the year, the world-old festival, that from the beginning of time we have celebrated by one name or another.

The services in Messina this Easter Sunday were far more impressive than any I ever saw at Rome or even at Seville. The pontifical mass was said by the Archbishop in a small wooden theatre that had escaped destruction. The congregation was large; there were now forty thousand persons in Messina. Many of the congregation were maimed or crippled. A man with a bandaged right arm at the elevation of the Host struck his breast three times and murmured low, “_Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa._” Poor soul! whatever his sins have been, his sufferings must have matched them! In the afternoon the images of the Saviour and of Mary the Mother were carried in procession through Messina. Cries of “Viva Maria!” followed the figures. A young girl took her earrings from her ears, and one of the bearers climbed up and hung the offering in Mary’s girdle.

“Ah, Santissima Maria!” cried a poor old woman with tear-worn eyes, “you have nothing, not even a drum, to do you honor! Ah! the band that went before you a year ago! The musicians are all dead. I lost my two daughters. They are under the ruins; may I meet them in Paradise! See, this is my husband; he is blind; we two old ones were saved; all the children and the grandchildren were taken.”

As the figure of the Christ passed, the old blind man fell on his knees, stretching out his arms and crying in a terrible voice: “_Santissimo padre_, help us, help us!”

“This is the first real Sunday we have had at Camp,” said the doctor that evening.

No one was ever obliged, or even asked, to work on Sunday, I think; our men had caught the fever of work, it was the labor microbe that pushed them on. The desolate people, the sad women with their wonderful children, who came from their little wretched huts and looked with longing eyes at the _baracche Americane_, stirred and stimulated our men to toil through the bitter days of rain, and the dreadful days of wind, when the pestilential dust of the city, that vast charnel house, was driven into the eyes and throat.

Easter Monday was a _festa_, and the men did not work. Some of the carpenters went for a long bicycle ride. Signor Donati appeared at breakfast in a fine sportsmanlike costume with gaiters, cartridge belt and game bag. We heard him blazing away all day with his gun. He shot one swallow. The tiny scrap of a bird was brought in on a plate at dinner, offered to me, then to the Captain, and finally sent to Brofferio, who was ill in his room.

At the Villaggio Regina Elena there was a pretty ceremony that Easter Monday. On Sunday a poor blind woman, Giuseppa Lo Verde, gave birth to a little girl, the first child born in the Queen’s village. The child was baptized the next day and given the name of Elena. The ceremony took place at the tiny church the dear sailors built. Captain Bignami holding the little one in his arms at the baptismal font.

One of the most popular places in the Camp was Dr. Donelson’s office, a tiny surgery, not more than eight feet square. The poor people had soon found him out--the unofficial work of this good physician deserves a whole chapter to itself. The doctor’s patients were not ungrateful; that Easter he had as thank offering a basket of golden citrons; a blue heron, warranted “good eating,” a handful of coppers from Zia Maddalena, whose grandchild he had cured. Though little was said of illness, there was plenty of it about. I was warned not to go near certain hovels, where scarlet fever was raging. The doctor was a daily visitor here; he nursed and tended the little children with a tenderness they will not forget. His office was rarely empty; during the half hour before dinner, when work for the day was over, the officers gathered here to talk things over. Sometimes the tinkle of Spofford’s guitar or the notes of the doctor’s flute came from the little office, with its neat shelves of bottles and faint odor of carbolic acid.

On Monday evening, wishing to consult the doctor about a new installment of clothing, I went to his door. There were voices in the office; the doctor had a patient, so I sat down outside to wait. It was a perfect evening; the sky was still flushed with sunset, the first star stood over the tall spire of the little Gothic church at the _campo santo_. The dusk fell softly; on the heights above Messina, the outlines of the old Saracen fort were blurred in the violet afterglow. The tramp of the sentinel marked time. Another sound broke the twilight stillness, the sound of the royal march played by a band. Where could it come from? In all Messina there had not been found so much as a drum for the procession. The music came nearer and nearer, a new sound mingled with it, the sound of voices singing and cheering. Lanterns were brought out, the mess-room door thrown open. By the light that streamed out I saw a cab, decked with green branches, drawn by a horse gay with white ostrich plumes. Two of our carpenters sat in the cab, which was followed by a pair of ox-carts, filled with chairs occupied by the carpenters’ guests. The three vehicles were surrounded by a crowd of people, singing and cheering.

“Long live the American carpenters!”

Some of our men had spent the day at a neighboring village, that had escaped the earthquake; they had been escorted home by the whole population. The band departed playing the merry march; the sound grew fainter and fainter in the distance. A bright fire lighted up the dark interior of the little shanty, opposite the Camp, built by Zia Maddalena and Cousin Sofia; the tinkle of Spofford’s guitar repeated the gay notes of the march--how good it was to hear the joyous sounds!

“Will you please tell this woman,” the doctor spoke sternly to his interpreter, “that this child has small-pox. If she doesn’t report it immediately to the health authorities it will go hard with her. She may be fined, or imprisoned for neglecting to do so and it may prove fatal to her child. It’s a menace to the community. Please make her understand this fully, as I shall immediately report the case myself.”

The poor mother, dazed and sorrow-stricken, buried her face in the little bundle in her arms and went weeping to the hospital, where the child--all that the earthquake had left to her--would be taken away from her--perhaps never to be returned.

The next morning at breakfast an unmistakable hint was dropped that my visit had best come to an end. Nothing was said about smallpox--it may, indeed, have had nothing to do with the hint. I have always believed, however, that had it not been for the sick baby, I might have enjoyed a few more days at the Mosella.

That day news came to the Camp of Marion Crawford’s death.

It was known that he was ill, but hopes had been held out of his recovery. He had written lately about the _profughi_ he had sheltered in his villa at Sorrento. In these last months, though suffering greatly, he worked early and late for these poor people. He wrote often concerning them. There was no sign of weakness, either in his firm beautiful handwriting or in his brave cheerful words.

It was strange to read the story of his death, sympathetically as it was told, in an Italian paper. He died, at sunset on Good Friday, sitting in his chair looking out over the Bay of Naples towards Vesuvius, just as the procession of Mary the Mother, returning from her search for her lost Son, passed his door. The news that his strong heart had ceased to beat cast a shadow over the Camp. Though not one of the company except ourselves had any personal friendship with him, each one felt that he had lost a friend.

Our great story-teller had told his last story. Not many men have served their generation as well as he. A wonderful man, more romantic than his romances, more poetic than his poetry, more dramatic than his dramas, his death was in keeping with all the rest--he was an idealist to the last!

XVI

MESSINA

_Ave atque Vale!_

As the steamer bore me away from Messina and towards Naples, I looked my last on the old sickle-shaped harbor of Zancle, on Cape Faro, where the current sweeping through the narrow straits was full of bewildering purple, blue, and green tints like a piece of shot silk. We passed a fishing boat with a man standing on a stunted mast above his fellows at the oars, on the lookout for swordfish; above boat and fishermen towered the crag and castle of Scylla. To the left the glass showed a blur of green--was it a new-leaved fig tree--a descendant of the tree Ulysses clung to as his boat slid by “Scylla’s dread abode?” Why not? Sailor, soldier, traveler, king, vagrants, all come and go; the island and its people remain unchanged. I have bought in a market of Trinacria the “hardening cheese heaped in a wicker basket” that Ulysses saw the Cyclops make from the milk of his sheep and goats. I have heard in the olive groves the shepherd’s flute, the neatherd’s song Theocritus heard and preserved for all time in his verse. As the little steamer churned her way through the Tyrrhene Sea, the sun set, the sky flushed and faded again, the stars came out. Little by little the lights on the shore dwindled to mere diamond points, then in a minute they were gone, and with them that faint perfume of the lemon and orange blossoms that had gone along with us while the breeze was from the land.

I have never seen the wonder island again; what remains to tell of the American work there, must be told by others.

_Extracts from J.’s Letters_

“Zona Case Americane, April 28, 1909.