Chapter VII: Part I: With the Outgoing Tide (4)

At the forge, he preaches the gospel of sobriety, of industry, and of peace; and, as he welds broken iron, so he is trying to weld into union the three alien races that battle round the foot of the Tatra. The task is difficult, and it will be slow.

The stupid and materialistic Hungarian government is trying to accomplish this task by throwing people into prison, because they love their mother tongue, or do not lightly regard their historic inheritance.

The Slovak Christian will certainly accomplish more than the gendarmes for the unification of these alien peoples in Hungary; for the Gospel is more powerful than guns and bayonets.

As we parted from our new friends that last day, we sang: "Blest be the Tie that Binds." The gendarmes, who were watching us, thought we were singing some revolutionary "Marseillaise," and in that they were not mistaken; for there is nothing more revolutionary than the force which "Binds our hearts in Christian Love."

X

THE GUSLAR OF RAGUSA

It is a long time since I first saw Dalmatia, on the eastern shore of the Adriatic. Her hills were denuded of verdure, monotonously barren and ashen gray, with a bit of Paradise here and there along the edge of the sea. In silence, her ancient cities mourned a turbulent past of which they were reminded by walls and palaces which the Romans built, as only the Romans knew how to build.

Although these walls have felt the force of Venetian battering-rams, of French, Turkish, and Austrian cannon-balls, they still stand, silent witnesses of a civilization which carried culture in the path of its conquest, and brought a certain kind of liberty to its captives. The Venetians took away these liberties, and, in exchange, gave the Dalmatians churches, whose graceful campaniles tower over the gray and solid Roman walls.

The French came and went; but, far as the eye can see, left nothing behind them.

Austria brought soldiers who are still there; nesting in the forts, commanding the mule-paths

From here, come virile children, of the stony soil, to mine our coal and dig our trenches.]

and seaways and hated by the native population, which is Slavic with a sprinkling of Italian, both races being antagonistic to the ruling power.

That Dalmatia has been badly governed, no one denies. It has been purposely kept out of touch with the mainland, the old motherland behind it, Croatia. Only by the sea had it access to other peoples, to whom it rarely went and who seldom came to it.

Of all Dalmatian cities, Ragusa is the proudest, even as it is the poorest. Once the seat of a virile republic, she sent out armadas for conquest, watched from her sea-girt walls the struggles between Venice and the Ottomans, and, by force of arms, helped to decide the destinies of nations.

Ragusa's glory was short, but memory is long; although her harbour is choked and useless, her sea-wall in ruins, and her pavements grass-grown; still under marble porticoes half-sunk into the ground, sit the grandees of the city, smoking the Turkish _czibuk_ and musing over those golden days when Ragusa called herself the "Queen of the Adria," and fought with Venice for its supremacy.

On the corner of the Stradona and the Piazza, there stood all day long an old minstrel, who strummed monotonous strains on the _gusla_, while he sang the epics inspired by centuries of conflict. As he sang, the grandees smoked and mused; while the lesser folk cobbled _opankee_, embroidered garments after Oriental fashion, and wove tiny strands of silver into crude filigree.

The old _guslar_ was minstrel, poet, and historian. It was he who told me marvellous stories of the time when in each of those palaces on the Stradone there lived a statesman-soldier, at war politically with one half his world and in social rivalry with the other half. The city's gentlefolk were divided into the _Salamanchesi_ and the _Sorbonnesi_; those who sent their sons to the University of Salamanca and those who sent them to the Sorbonne.

These divergent cultural currents kept the nobility apart and gave ample cause for petty quarrels; many a Ragusan Romeo's love for his Juliet has furnished material for a romance and for a beautiful funeral.

Against these old walls and old traditions the immigrant tide has been beating for the last ten years, carrying away the grandee's sons, numbers of whom are now digging coal in Pennsylvania, or waiting on table in some cheap restaurant in New York. Yet, whether he lives in a wretched boarding-house in a Pittsburg "Patch," or accepts the modest tip his patrons give him, the son of a Ragusan grandee never forgets his nobility.

These immigrants, too, have gone home again, and make their presence felt, economically and socially. They have repaired the old palaces and brought money into circulation; but the old _guslar_, who stood on the corner of the Stradona and the Piazza, and whom I sought out after these ten years, had his story to tell.

"Yes, Signor, many have gone to America and have come back, and will go again; but, Signor, that must be a bad country, a wild country. They come home and walk carelessly up and down the Stradona, the finest street in the world, every house a palace--and they talk of it with disrespect!

"Why, Signor, they say that in America there are finer streets than this, and bigger houses, and they laugh at the _Dogana_, Signor--at the _Dogana_, where our _Principes_ and our _Consiglios_ made treaties with the great powers, where we received the ambassadors of the Sultan and of the Doges of Venice!

"Signor, they walk up and down the street with their heavy-soled shoes, talking loudly, and making such a noise that the grandees cannot take their siestas undisturbed.

"Yes, Signor, there are some of them here now. They came back a fortnight ago, a man and his two daughters. A good-for-nothing he is, Signor. Think of it! Ah, listen!" He paused abruptly. I listened. The sweet, harmonious quiet was rudely broken; the air, full of the fragrance of oleander blossoms, seemed suddenly vitiated; the Monte Sergio and the swaying palms beneath it, which made so marvellous a picture, seemed to drop with a crash out of their frame of sky and sea.

"Signor, listen!" And the old _guslar_ trembled from anger and pain. It was the grinding of a phonograph which struck our ears. "Listen, Signor! That they bring out of America! Out of your barbaric country!"

True enough; they were the painfully familiar notes of "canned ragtime" at its worst.

"Signor, that man has come back with his two daughters. They can't speak a word of their mother tongue; and oh, Signor! they walk up and down the Stradona without a duenna, they look boldly at the men, and they keep their jaws moving constantly, even when they do not speak.

"The father drinks, he drinks maraschino by the bottleful and he defiles the pavements of our ancient streets by his polluted spittle. You want to go to see him?" The _guslar_ looked deeply hurt. He feared that the phonograph had lured me from him.

"No, I shan't go until you play and sing for me."

He took his _gusla_ and moved his bow gently over its single string, while he sang of "Mustapha who came riding on a dapple gray stallion, with thirty Pashas as his escort. He struck a glass of wine from the hand of a Servian hero, who vowed that he would shed the black blood of the Turk," which, after many monotonous verses, he did.

"Signor, I can't sing very well--ah, there it is again!"

While he had been singing about Mustapha, who died so many years ago, the phonograph bawled lustily about "Tammany, Tammany," which, unfortunately, is very much alive.

I made my peace with the _guslar_ by putting into his hand a liberal fee; then I followed the sound of the phonograph which had been switched from "Tammany" to the song of "A nice young man, that lives in Kalamazoo."

On the lower floor of a house in one of the small streets which divide the Stradona, I discovered the phonograph and its owner, a man neither of the nobility nor noble. His knowledge of America extended as far as Brooklyn and the Austro-Italian docks, near which he had established a boarding-house. Of course, he had come home rich, and only for a visit.

"Who could live in Ragusa after Brooklyn?"

He told me that he made a great deal of money selling liquor, and acknowledged that he sold it without a license. Besides that, the sailors brought over various articles for which he found a ready market. His case would not be worth recording were it not for the fact that he may be looked upon as a man who has been spoiled by his sojourn with us. I doubt, though, that there was anything to spoil; evidently, he was a man of poor breeding and low moral standards. In America, he had found an outlet for his evil tendencies, and a bad business which offered opportunities for lawlessness.

His daughters were more interesting than he; for they came back perfect strangers, into the environment which they had left as children. They had quite forgotten Italian and spoke Serbo-Slavic very poorly; while their English was typical.

"Golly! But Ragusa is a bum town!"

The Adriatic shore could not be compared with the sea they knew, bordered as it was by Coney Island.

"No, sir-ree! Give me Coney Island, and you can have this two for a cent, Gravoosa." And I suppose, the peninsula of Lapad also, circled by palms and olives and set in a sea of turquoise blue.

When I mentioned the _guslar_, one of the girls said that he "might make a hit at Coney Island as a side-show."

"Were there many Dalmatians in America?" I asked the father.

"You bet! They have gone from along the whole ---- coast, and there is one ---- little town near Lucin Piccolo where there is not an able-bodied man left. They'll all come over when they get the ---- money. The more come the better for me."

His place was the centre to which they came and from which they radiated.

"What do they do in America?" I asked.

"Oh! any old thing. It all depends. There is one back here now."

"He's a regular big head," interrupted one of the girls; "thinks he's the whole cheese. He's a newspaper man. I suppose he'll be on the Stradona to-night."

Every evening after sunset, all Ragusa wakens out of its day-dreams and is on parade in the Stradona.

Demure maidens come out from behind latticed windows, reflecting in their garments the sombre hues borrowed from Venice, and a riot of Oriental colours. They are dark-eyed creatures, these maidens, and their faces, as well as their garb, show the mixture of Latin and Slav; for this is the battling-ground of the two races, the persistent Slav being in the ascendency.

The youths followed at a distance; for propriety is one of the assets of Ragusan society.

Noiselessly they walked up and down over the grass-grown pavement, and, when one heard the heavy-soled shoe striking it, one recognized the stranger; and by that sign I knew the Ragusan-American newspaper man. A graceful, swarthy young fellow he was, upon whose face his new environment had already written its story.

His eyes had lost their melancholy look, for he had escaped the thraldom of the past and seemed like a man fully awake to the present. When we met, he looked at my shoes, I looked at his, and the contact was made.

Interesting, indeed, his story was, beginning with his running away from home, one of those ancient palaces on the Stradona. His assets were: money enough to take him to Triest, third-class, a large stock of inherited pride, and nothing else.

At that time there was no passenger service from Triest, but there were freight steamers and a chance to serve as steward to the officer's mess. Three weeks of life on the sea and then New York. There he served his apprenticeship in the art of "getting along" by walking up and down Broadway, hungry and cold, sleeping in "Sailor's Boarding Houses," and finally in the police station.

At last came a turn in his fortunes, through getting work as a strawberry-picker in New Jersey, then working in a restaurant in Pennsylvania as waiter and cook. After much chance and change, he had become the owner of an Italian newspaper, whose chief object was to chronicle the happenings in the Fatherland, for the edification of his countrymen.

It had been a rough road, but it was worth the struggle; for it led to usefulness and into life. He thought that his countrymen always experienced unusual difficulties in America.

"The masses of them are illiterate to an alarming degree; bound by traditions, tribal in their social outlook, and serve as so much carrion for those birds of prey, the steamship companies' agents, the _padrone_, the boarding-house keeper, the saloon, and the venal justice of the peace."

Our national moral character he interpreted in the light or the experiences of his countrymen, and his judgment was not a flattering one. Yet he admitted that America is a blessing to Dalmatia. It has relieved bitter poverty, mentally awakened the people, and has broken down worthless traditions.

In Dalmatia, as elsewhere, the returned immigrant has sharpened the hunger for political liberties, and has intensified the struggle between the oppressed and the oppressor.

Wherever the government was aided by the reactionary church, the people left the church. This is especially true of the northern towns of the peninsula, between Zara and Triest.

"Yes, indeed! The returned immigrant causes much trouble, and I am no exception. I wound my parents by my democratic ways, and I have forgotten many of the niceties of their social life.

"Yes, it was I who hurt the _guslar's_ feelings by telling him that there are streets in New York finer than the _Stradona_, and houses bigger than the _Dogana_. Ah, yes; the returned immigrant causes both sorrow and annoyance. Just watch that man and his two daughters."

There they were; the man from Brooklyn, garishly attired. His daughters walked proudly beside him, heedless of the fact that over those pavements generations of Ragusa's great men had walked to victory or to death.

The Brooklyn man seemed quite oblivious of the fact that these people whom he passed so carelessly were the sons and daughters of nobles and heroes. He did not lift his hat to them or step aside to let them pass; his daughters occupied more than their share of space, with their gorgeous and exaggerated hats, and smiled encouragingly on the young men whom they met, although strangers to them.

Later, there was much discussion of these "Americans," among those who spend the evening at the "Café Arciduca Federigo"; smoking, singing, sipping _granite_, and talking about the good old days, those quiet, dreamy days which they had spent on this matchless spot, watching the sea as it encircled with its phosphorescent splendour the Island of Lacroma, or when, beaten by the Bora, it lashed itself into fury against the ancient walls.

The young newspaper man told me much about the pride and poverty of his countrymen, of their love for this fair spot, of their moral standards, and their unbroken word.

The _guslar_, standing in front of the café, began tuning his Jeremaic instrument, looking wistfully, as he did so, at the stranger who had given him so liberal a fee. He needed but slight encouragement to begin his plaintive recitative. A few lines clung to my memory; for they fitted so well into my conversation with the young Ragusan:

"Go out and sing of right and truth,
Of valour and of manly strife;
Better far, thy tongue grow mute
Than that thou sing of baser life
For common gain."

In the middle of a verse, he dropped his instrument hopelessly.

"Oh, Signor! These terrible Americans! Listen!"

The quiet of that matchless night was being assailed by the awful refrain of: "There'll be a hot time in the old town to-night."

"Ah, me, Signor! This will be my ruin! All the young men are at that man's house drinking like beasts; they no more care for me, or for the heroic songs of their ancestors, and while they used to give me _kreutzer_, they now give me _heller_, if they give me anything."

The old minstrel sighed profoundly and disappeared into the darkness, his _gusla_ under his arm; while from the tin horn poured a medley of songs, the climax of which was: "A nice young man that lives in Kalamazoo."

The sorrowful old man and his grief made me feel guilty, as if I were responsible for that terrible, torturing, unmusical outburst which disturbed the peace of the wonderful night.

After the _guslar_ had left us, the newspaper man rowed me in his father's _barquetta_ across the shallow harbour, as far as the shadow cast by the gigantic palm trees on the shore. Every time his oars dipped into the water they brought to the surface a flame of fire; yet amid all the splendour of that night, I could think of nothing but the sad old musician.

Many months passed and I had quite forgotten the _guslar_ of Ragusa. Again I was at the seashore; but it was the turbulent Atlantic--not the sunny Adriatic; Coney Island--not Lacroma.

Many confusing strains of music were in deadly conflict with one another; myriads of glowing lights encircled grotesque buildings of all descriptions; through streets given over to pleasure, crowded in one day nearly as many people as there are inhabitants in all Dalmatia.

I certainly did not think of Dalmatia, until I stood before an "Oriental Palace of Pleasure," in front of which I saw the man from Brooklyn, resplendent in a gorgeous Oriental costume, "barking" to the multitude the sensuous pleasures which could be enjoyed within "for the small sum of one dime, only ten cents."

When he paused for breath, I heard peculiar, strange, and yet familiar music. Following the sounds, I found on a balcony, in a blaze of electric lights, the _guslar_ of Ragusa. When he finished playing, he too cried: "Tenee cenee, onlee tenee cenee! C-o-m-e een! Only tenee cenee!"

XI

WHERE THE ANGEL DROPPED THE STONES

Prince Nicolas of Montenegro does not remember me, and why should he? It was many years ago, and I was one of 20,000 guests who suddenly descended upon his little capital of 5,000 inhabitants, during its national festivities in honour of the Prince of Bulgaria.

Cetinje's two modest hostelries, in which under normal conditions twenty strangers might have found crude comforts, were packed from cellar to garret with the entourage of the royal guest. The rest of us, mostly natives and a few strangers, roving about the odd corners of Europe, were sheltered in private homes, hospitably thrown open by Cetinje's citizens, who still believe in hospitality as a virtue, which they practice on all occasions.

I did not know until the morning after my arrival that my host was the Minister to the Exterior. The Interior, being so small, needed no minister, I suppose. His house, a rude stone structure, was only a degree better than that of the peasant; the bed was softer than his, for it was not the stone floor. The food was practically the same; a monotonous diet of maize bread and mutton, the staple food of rich and poor alike, except that the peasant eats only the bread and sells the mutton.

To find that my boots were blacked by a relative of the Minister to the Exterior, and that by virtue of being his guest I was also to be a guest at the banquet given by Prince Nicolas in honour of his princely visitor, produced in me no little feverish excitement; revealing the fact that I was a mere mortal, and as much pleased by my aristocratic surroundings and the prospect of royal favour, as if I were not a student of social phenomena with a strong bias towards democracy.

It is of no consequence to chronicle these facts here, except that they led to a passing acquaintance with the Prince and his family. His youngest son was then a growing youth of exceedingly lovable character. At that time the Queen of Italy was a visitor in her father's simple home. The Prince is a writer of some ability, and I was glad to be able to tell him that I was familiar with his contributions to Serbic literature.

The royal favour accorded me stood me in good stead; for not only could I watch the pageant and other festivities from a splendid vantage ground, but it proved very helpful in my journey through the principality, which I traversed from Nyegusi to Lake Skutari, and from the Albanian Alps to the Herzegovina.

The country seemed like a huge eagle's nest, perched amid inhospitable mountains. Here all men were warriors, from the time they were weaned from their mother's breast, until they sank into their rock-hewn graves.

The women reared the young, tilled the bit of precious soil found among a waste of boulders, and carried mutton carcases to the market at Podgoricza or Cattaro, the largest trading town in Dalmatia. On the return home, they brought coffee and spring water, the two luxuries of those arid mountain heights. These poor homes, although rarely better than stables, sheltered people full of heroism, hospitality, and primitive social virtues; as well as a passionate hatred for the "Schwab," their Austrian neighbour, and the Turk, their ancient foe.

The men lived in anticipation of war, not much caring whom they fought; for peace meant a stagnant poverty, while war held glory and pillage.

It was the day of the farewell festivities for the Bulgarian Prince, that the peasant subjects of Prince Nicolas passed in review before their patriarch, who was the supreme judge and arbiter of their fate. The menials kissed the hem of his coat, while the heads of different tribes kissed his cheek. Each man in passing before his lord told his troubles openly, and waited for the word of cheer or of judgment.

With little variation they all told of utter poverty--the kind of poverty which meant that from the month of August until the next autumn, there would be no bread; for the crops had failed. There was no prospect of relief, the Prince himself being poor and in debt; and the country had no resources.

I proposed emigration as a remedy, and rather impatiently the Prince dismissed the suggestion, saying that every warrior was of value in this mountain fastness; soldiers were its one asset, and they might at any moment be needed by their godmother, Russia, if not by himself.

Soldiers we did not need, I told him; the war with Spain was over, and even during its progress, we had soldiers to spare; but if his men would learn to "turn their spears into" crowbars, and "their swords into" shovels (taking liberties with a prophetic utterance) they would find opportunity for work, if not for valour; for a good wage, but not for pillage.

I knew they would come and they did. An apostolic band of twelve men first; seventy and more, following; three hundred on the next steamer, after which a temporary check. The three hundred, having violated the contract labour law, were sent home.

Then, like a flood, too long held back, came thousands, scattering through the Alleghanies and the Middle Western plain, as far as the Missouri River, and into California, where a colony of many hundreds at Los Angeles is in Paradise; although first they went through many a purgatory.

Ten years, and ten times ten years, which in Montenegro's past were more or less glorious, had left the country practically unchanged; except as the present ruler had tried to root out some of its latent barbarisms. Here Slavic traditions at their best were immovably intrenched, and here were the bulwarks against the best and the worst in our civilization.

Neither steam nor electricity, those destroyers of archaic simplicity, had yet entered the country, nor had our vulgarities of French dress and morals driven out the simple virtues or the picturesque national garb, worn by the Prince and by the peasant.

On all sides, Montenegro's neighbours, the Albanians, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, and even her brother, Servia, in the lowlands of the old cradle home--had all yielded, in a greater or lesser degree, to Mohammedan influences. Montenegro alone remained an unsealed fortress, in which the crescent never supplanted the cross; nor did the horse's tail wave from its flag-staff, on which once and forever had been unfurled the victorious colours--red, black, and white.

The dawn of the twentieth century found the principality still Homeric and patriarchal, but the brief years since its opening have been significant ones. During those years her sons for the first time left "their crags and unsealed passes" to go out upon so base an errand as seeking work across the Atlantic, later to return with the booty of a bloodless conquest.

About ten years after my last visit to Montenegro, I was again journeying towards it upon that serpentine road from whose every winding the truly matchless bay can be seen, receding with every turn, hemmed in more and more by the chalk cliffs which look like petrified clouds. Almost barren of verdure they are, but full of an awful majesty; until they blend with the bay, when one can see beyond them the blue Adriatic. The ships upon her bosom are moved by a gentle _sirocco_, while the islands on the Dalmatian coast, hidden in the shining green of the olive and the yellower tints of fig leaves, make patches of colour which seem to be floating away in the mist rising at noontime from the sea.

Suddenly one turns northward and faces gray stones, walls of stone, fields of stone--nothing but stone--and that is Montenegro. My peasant driver told me that when God made the earth, He saw that He had made it good, with the exception of the stones, of which there were too many. He called His angel Gabriel and told him to take a bag as large as the ends of the four winds and go down to earth, pick up the surplus stones and cast them into the sea.

The devil, who delighted in the stones and the trouble they would give humanity, flew after the busy angel.

When Gabriel had picked up all the superfluous stones on earth, and was about to drop them into the Adriatic, his Satanic Majesty took his pocket knife, cut a hole in the angel's bag, and all the stones dropped on to that part of the earth where Montenegro is situated.

The peasant's story accounts for the topsy-turvy position of the stones; now piled high as mountains, then solid walls of stone, and, again, huge boulders scattered about, with plenty of smaller ones between. There are some fertile spots, especially the famous _Brda_, where flocks find pasture; and there is an occasional field large enough for a horse to turn with its plough. Most of the country, however, is barren, and it is from this bleakest mountain region that the exodus to America has taken place.

At Nyegusi, as usual, there was an hour's wait, and a chance to refresh the inner man with cheese and coffee. In this primitive hostelry one noticed the first evidences of the changes wrought. Nyegusi, the birthplace of the Prince, under the shadow of the historic Lovczin, has been more drained of its men in these times of peace than ever it was in time of war.

A typical landscape in a district of Montenegro, from which immigration has set in.]

When last I passed through it, there stood before every one of the wretched stone huts a giant-like figure, attired in his native costume, which, according to Montenegrin standards, was worth a fortune, and did indeed represent its wearer's wealth. Ancient and costly weapons protruded from his belt, generously wound around his portly body. Thus armed, he paraded up and down the rocky streets of Nyegusi, or lounged in the village inn, smoking cigarettes and drinking his _raki_, if he had the wherewithal.

At the time of which I write, the streets were deserted, save for the women, who bent beneath their heavy burdens of wood which they bring down from the ravines in the Lovczin mountain.

Old men sat wearily on the stone walls which surrounded their small fields, and every one told of a son who had gone "to Amerikee."

One toothless woman could tell her age only approximately, by the number of sons she had borne; and there were eighteen. Ten of them were in America; the others had been killed in border warfare.

In this same town I met a mother of twenty-two sons, twenty of whom had lost their lives in battle. The two survivors were the innkeepers of Nyegusi. The inn itself was the same as when first I saw it, with its beaten earth floor, and walls bare, except for the _icon_, a splendid bit of Byzantine workmanship; but since I drank the excellent coffee there, ten years ago, more than 5,000 braves have been under its roof, bound for my own country or returning from it. Now the room is full of them, all homeward bound, spending money far too freely in drinking and gambling; two vices which, although taken with them from their mountains, they bring back in exaggerated form.

I must confess to a sense of disappointment when I saw them beside the Montenegrin who had remained at home. The sombre dress of our civilization was a poor exchange for the brilliant, native costume. The hard labour the men performed in America had robbed them of their erect and elastic forms, and they looked like the menials of their brothers who had been keeping watch against the "Schwab," in the shadow of the Lovczin.

The change was not unlike that which has taken place in the American Indian who left the war-path to repair the steel path of the railroad.

The men in the inn, nearly thirty of them, belonged to all parts of the little realm, from Niksic in the North and Grahova on the Herzegovinian border, to Cetinje and Podgoricza, its centre. They had gone out in neighbourhood groups, members of one tribe; but, returning, had become badly mixed. Some in the original group had failed, while others had succeeded; some decided to remain in America, others were glad to come home.

Most of those in the inn had been West, and knew only the rigorous side of our industrial life, and to no European people could the experience have been so trying; while none could have adjusted itself less easily to it.

The complaints as registered in Cetinje were many, and on the whole justified. They may be classified as follows:

Cheated by Employment Agencies 80%

Cheated by Austrian boarding-house keepers 60%

Money lost by giving bribes to Irish-American
bosses who promised jobs which were never given 36%

Rough treatment by bosses 72%

Robbed by railroad crews in Montana 80%

"Shanghaied"--made drunk and railroaded
from St. Louis to Southern Kansas 15%

Robbed of money and tickets before departure
for home 40%

This represented the dark side of the experience of the Montenegrin immigrant. The brighter side cannot so easily be classified. As with other groups, so with those; America meant an enlargement of their horizon. Most of them had earned money and meant to buy land; some of them had an eye to the undeveloped mineral wealth of their country, and two carried home enriched lives through having attended an evening school, where they had learned to read and write some English.

All were still loyal sons of their mountain home, and only three of the thirty in the inn meant to try their luck again.

The innkeeper thought emigration a great boon, and it was, to him; for the emigrants all passed through Nyegusi whether they came or went, and that meant revenue.

Externally, Cetinje, the capital, is still the same; although there the greatest change has taken place since my last visit. Cetinje now has a parliament, and its post-office officials have something more to do than smoke cigarettes. Its storekeepers are enriched by the inflow of money; the women respond to the new spirit; for a comparatively large number is going to America, and a few have already gone. The men, especially the old peasants, find this new spirit most trying. One of them, in a little stone hut at Kolasin, said: "The women come home after three years' absence and the devil has got into them. They _sit_ in my presence and demand to eat when I do!

"What kind of country is that anyway which encourages such things? Is it a woman's country?"

I met one woman whose son I knew in the "States." He is one of the few that have prospered, and he means to stay. His mother's little cottage on the outskirts of Cetinje shows plainly the influence of America.

On the walls hang many gaudy calendars, and a crayon portrait of her son, in an elaborate frame.

"Tell me," she said, as she pointed to a bulky newspaper printed in Scranton, Pa., and sent by her son, as a curiosity, "how many weeks does it take them to read it?"

Her son sends her ten dollars every month, which means fifty kronen. "Only the good Princess has so much money of her own!" the proud mother said; and I am not so sure that even the Princess has it.

There must be many such huts; for the postmaster told me that $30,000 came into this little rocky nest in one year; more money than passed through the hands of that postmaster in twenty preceding years. In a country so impoverished, this money cannot help being a blessing.

It is true, that after a brief glimpse of Montenegro I left it with feelings decidedly mixed as to the benefits it has derived from emigration. The Prince is less a patriarch than he was and not so accessible to his subjects; for he has felt the force of a revolution, small but significant.

The grand opera setting of the villages and towns is being destroyed; men no more strut about like stage heroes, waiting for their cues. The picturesque is going, is almost gone, and will go entirely; poverty, extreme poverty, pinching, grinding poverty is going too, and will soon disappear. Men drink more fiery _raki_ and gamble more; women are beginning to lift up their heads and walk _beside_ the men, not _behind_ them. I am convinced that the relative of the Minister to the Exterior would not now black my boots; for which I rejoice, although the old braves complain and say: "America is a woman's country."

Montenegro, hemmed in on three sides by Austria and on the other side by Turkey, and all around by poverty, has found an outlet and relief by way of the sea. Progress has come slowly and from far away and she must pay the price; yet when all is considered, she ought to be glad to pay it.

In talking to the postmaster of Cetinje, I referred to my driver's story, about the angel's dropping the stones upon Montenegro, and said: "It must have been a poor sort of angel; for he didn't pick them up again."

"Ah, well! He is trying to make up for it. Look here;" and he showed me advices from New York for 1,500 kronen.

"If that angel keeps up the good work, we will have a krone for every stone that he dropped on our soil. Don't you say anything against our angel!"

XII

"THE HOLE FROM WHICH YE WERE DIGGED"

It was some sort of saint's day, one of the many; this day, just before the harvest time, served at least one useful purpose. It brought together the _latifondisti_, the landowners, and the _contadini_, the labourers, who, after mass, bargained with one another for the harvest wage.

There was a time when the _padrone_ had a dozen men at his heels begging to procure them work; but now the tables are turned, and smartly dressed men court these rough toilers of the Abruzzi, and are happy, when, over a bottle of wine and a hand-grasp, the bargain is sealed.

In less than twenty years wages have increased from sixteen to sixty cents a day, and the difference in the attitude of the two classes towards each other is correspondingly great. The withdrawal from the intense congestion in Italy of nearly 2,000,000 toilers in the last ten years, accounts for the change in the economic condition of the common field labourer of that country. No phase of human relations has been left unaffected by this remarkable movement away from the home soil.

"Just as you wish, Signor," I heard a man say to one of the upper class. "Three _lire_ and not a _centesimo_ less."

The landowner watched the labourer closely, and when he saw him approached by another landowner, ran to him and sealed the bargain.

"Ah, Signor! Emigration has done this!" the labouring man said when I entered into conversation with him. "There are not men enough left to do the work, and if it weren't for the hard times in America, I would have charged him two _carini_ (about sixteen cents) more; but there are some men back from America who have not done so well, although they too will not hire out for less than three _lire_. They say that in America they have received three times as much."

The gentleman to whom I introduced myself, and who was suspicious that I might be in his parts encouraging emigration, took a different view of the situation.

"It is a curse, sir! Why, sir, you rob us of our men; of our strongest men, and leave only the aged, the women and the children!

"I have fields still unploughed, although it is June, and the bringing in of my crops will cost me three times as much as it did ten years ago."

"Didn't he get a much better price for his produce?" I asked.

"Yes, indeed! Perhaps I am no worse off financially than before; but worse than the higher wage is the changed attitude of the common people towards the landowner. Signor, those who come back are worse than the Socialists! The Socialists simply talk and argue; most of our common people cannot understand what they mean. They have always known that God made some rich and some poor, they were content with their cheese and their olives; but these men who come back from America walk through the streets as if they were our equals. They wear just such clothing as we do; shoes without hobnails and starched shirts and collars.

"They no longer greet us respectfully as they used to, and the way they spend money looks to these deluded _contadini_ as if they had _found_ it in the streets of New York.

"Everybody in my town who has anything to sell, sells it or borrows from his friends in America and goes there. Last year over 1,600 went out of my town, which has less than 6,000 inhabitants. The saints alone know what will become of us! And the worst of it is, Signor, that they lose respect for us!"

Travelling from Naples towards Calabria, I noticed in the second-class compartment a group of Italians returning from America for a visit to their native hill town. Among all the people of this class that I had seen, these were the most remarkable. They were better dressed than others, spoke English fluently, were cleanly in their habits and travelled second-class.

"Oh, yes! Italy is beautiful!" said one of them, who I afterwards learned was a stationary engineer at New Brunswick, N. J. His finely chiselled face showed his delight as he watched the landscape.

"But America is more beautiful on the insides. You ask why? I will tell you.

"I was born in a small hill town of 3,000 inhabitants. My parents were poor labourers and I was born in a hole in the wall. I will show you the wall when we come to the town. No windows, no chimney, no nothing. Our goats and pigs had another hole, smaller than ours; but the goats and pigs were not ours, they belonged to the landlord and when the pigs were killed we got half. We had just one meal of the meat and the rest had to be sold to those who could afford to eat it; we couldn't. It was a great day though when we had that taste of meat, and I don't think I have ever tasted such good meat since. Of course we had meat only three or four times a year.

"My father and mother both had to work in the fields. They left the hole in the wall at four o'clock in the morning and came back to it at seven in the evening. When I was a baby, my mother carried me along on her back; later my sister carried me and I can't remember the time when one of my sisters didn't carry a baby out into the field.

"I worked from the time I was seven; we all worked when there was work to do. I never was hungry when the melons and the figs were ripe; but I never remember having eaten as much bread as I wanted. I remember I wanted to be older than I was, for the children got about an inch more bread for every year, as they grew older.

"I went to school to the _padre_, and he taught me the _Pater Noster_ and the _Ave Maria_ and just enough writing to sign my name. When I was fourteen years old, an uncle who lived in New York sent money to my father and mother to come over. Never can I forget when that letter came. I nearly went crazy. I ran around to every hole in the wall and called out: 'We are going to America! We are going to America!'

"My father was crazy, too; for he gave the letter-man half a _lira_ for bringing him such a letter and reading to him the good news. Everybody in the town knew of our good fortune; for the letter-man told all those to whom we could not speak, because they were above us. When we went to Naples I thought I was going to heaven, and on the ship, in spite of seasickness, I was happy; because for the first time in my life I had enough bread to eat.

"I can't tell you how I felt when we came to New York; but at Ellis Island they turned all my joy into weeping. Two of the younger children had eye disease and they wanted to send all of us back. My uncle said he would take care of us older children, so they let us in and sent father and mother and the younger ones back. It was terribly sad and father and mother cried; but although I too cried, I felt very happy because I would not have to return to Italy. We promised them to come back and here we are."

These then were the older children, three sons and one daughter, who had been admitted to their heaven and were now coming home to the _padre_ and _madre_ who had lived in the hole in the wall.

"What do you think of emigration?"

The young woman answered: "Signor, it works like a miracle! I used to pray many a time, when I went to sleep, that the good saints would work a miracle and wake me in another world, where I could wear real stockings and ribbons, and now my prayer is answered and the miracle has happened."

Indeed it was a miracle. "Bessie," as the brothers called her, was transformed and transfigured. She was more "stylish" than the landowner's wife who travelled in the next compartment, and I feel sure that her gown cost more than that of a certain American woman who shared with me the pleasures of the journey Bessie was engaged to be married to a countryman of hers, who is head gardener in a cemetery in one of New York's suburbs.

"When we are married we will live in a cottage all our own, Signor, at the edge of that beautiful cemetery; six rooms it has and a bath room!"

A miracle indeed! From the hole in the wall to a six-room cottage.

Of course this group is not typical. These people went to school in America during their youth. The boys went to night school in New York and the girl went to the public school; they had entered profitable trades. Stone-cutting, engineering and dressmaking.

What was perfectly normal in their history was the effect that their going away has had upon the town from which they came.

Does the father live in the hole in the wall? No indeed. They sent home money enough to build him a house and buy about fifteen acres of land. The children at home were all sent to school. Yes, times have changed. All the children in that town are sent to school; for the immigrant father writes to his wife: "Let the children learn how to read and write. We who cannot, have to remain beasts of burden, while those who can, rule over us."

My travelling companions grew greatly excited as the train drew near their home. They collected their numerous packages and then looked longingly at the town, perched upon a high hill and crowned by a magnificent castle.

"Look, Signor, look! You see that wall, the old city wall? You see those holes? I was born in one of them!" Tears stood in Bessie's eyes. No doubt she thought of the six-room cottage and the miracle.

The station, in the shadow of the town, was much like other such stations. There was the usual donkey cart. Pompous officials bustled about and a few _carabinieri_ walked up and down, proud of their fuss and feathers. The _padre_ and _madre_ were there, and a throng of brothers and sisters and relatives, who greeted the travellers with noisy and affectionate salutations.

Bessie's _madre_ held her at arm's length at first, as if to be sure that this fine _Signorina_ was really the little girl she left behind in New York twelve years ago. Ah, me! It was a love-hungry heart to which Bessie was pressed. And the boys! What pride shone on the father's face! Any father might be proud of them, and I was prouder than the father.

"See what America does for your men!" I cried to a portly gentleman who stood beside us at the window, watching the interesting scene. He did not answer; for the train puffed and screeched, and the cars lurched as they were drawn around the curves. For a long time we could see the donkey cart piled high with baggage, the happy people following it.

The train came closer and closer to the walls of that ancient town, and on its southern side we saw again the holes in the wall, swarms of little children, a gray, tired donkey and picturesque dirt and confusion. At sight of those holes in the wall, I repeated my remark.

"See what America does for your men!"

"Ah!" replied the gentleman, "you see only one side of it; the bright side. There is a dark side to emigration, as there is to an olive leaf. We have given you nearly two million of our best men, to do your dirty and dangerous work."

"Yes," I replied; "but we pay them a decent wage; more wages in one year than you pay them in ten."

It was this remark, the sight of those holes in the wall, and the vision of that six-room cottage in America, which set me to striking the balance for Italy, the country most affected by the good and ill of immigration.

Italy has given to America for shorter or longer periods nearly two and one-half millions of men, for whose labour we have paid her a fair wage. At least two million dollars annually to every one of the provinces from which we have recruited this army of men.

While not all the money will remain in Italy, most of it has already been invested in land. In 1906, there were at least 50,000 land sales made, and much of the land will become doubly productive as a result of the extreme care which will be given it by this landless class, which has suddenly gained its foothold.

The rise in wages which is not far from sixty per cent. is a distinct benefit to the whole country; for a living wage means adequate consumption and increased production. While in some provinces there has been a dearth of labour, Italy is rather remarkable in that there is no danger of its being depopulated, and economically, the entire country is the gainer through emigration.

I have heard many complaints, especially in Italy, that we make Socialists and Anarchists out of their once docile peasantry. The facts are these. Crime has decreased in all districts affected by emigration; which however does not prove that the criminal classes have moved to America. There are other reasons. First, improved economic conditions have removed the causes for many crimes. Second, much crime was due to the uncontrolled passions and undisciplined characters of the peasantry; and the sojourn in America has given to many of them the power of self-control.

That Calabria in Sicily reports a reduction of about forty per cent. in crimes against the person, is certainly significant.

Again, the privileged classes in Italy and other European countries naturally look askance at the spirit of independence which the men bring back with them. Much as we may deplore with the aristocracy the fact that the peasant has lost his fine manners, we can but believe that, on the whole, the loss of docility and the gain in independence are a splendid exchange and of untold benefit to all concerned.

Some day, Democracy may teach her children the art of polished manners; let us hope that it may not be at the loss of the democratic spirit. That the peasant looks his master straight in the face and does not cringe; that he demands fair treatment, a comfortable yoke and no pricking with the goad, are as much benefit to Italy and Austro-Hungary, as they are cause for pride to those of us who believe that America has a mission to fulfill in the world.

If the Italian has really lost his good manners, we have given him in exchange a spirit of independence which, I admit, is sometimes a little in need of pruning, and with it, a yearning for better things and the possibility of its realization.

Public education in Italy has received an impetus directly traceable to the returned immigrant, who saw its value. He was a beast of burden because he knew nothing. The men who were educated had wealth, leisure and all that was denied him and his children.

If ignorance is removed from the common people of Italy, especially from those of the Southern provinces, she can well afford to pay double the price she has paid, whatever that price may be.

It is also charged against the returned immigrant, that he spreads sedition by bringing home strange religious ideas.

"Signor," said a priest to me in the Campagna, "a man came home who had been in America a few years; an ignorant, stupid fellow, and when he came, he invited his neighbours to his house. Not to treat them with wine, as you might think; but to preach to them. Think of the impudence of the man! A common man, uneducated and not a priest!

"And the people flocked to hear him! One day shortly after that, there came a real American and he preached to them and they sang. I could hear them singing, Signor, while I was saying mass. The tunes kept going around on the tongues of the people and a few months after, they began building a church. They call it the 'Methodisto' church.

"Tell me, what heresy do they teach? My flock is divided; the women are crazy over this new doctrine and they gather the little children and teach them to sing these heretical songs."

Undoubtedly, a new element of friction has been introduced into the solidary, religious life of the nation; but it is equally true that, in most of the towns of Italy, destructive ideas have long been at work and have weaned many peasants, especially the men, from the Mother Church, leaving them in an anarchical attitude towards Church and State.

The new religious ideals, which are largely the ideals of Protestantism while also acting destructively, have, after all, large constructive powers, and, on the whole, are of undoubted benefit. It is the undisputed testimony of impartial observers, that the Sectarians come home "cleaner" than others, that almost without exception they insist upon temperance and chastity, and that they encourage a sane, intellectual activity.