with a crusted bottle of Calabrian wine--your Sicilian stuff is too
strong for me, too straightforward, uncompromising; I prefer to be
wheedled out of my faculties by inches, like a gentleman--under this
genial stimulus my extenuated frame was definitely restored; I became
mellow and companionable; the traveller's lot, I finally concluded, is
not the worst on earth. Everything was as it should be. As for
Messina--Messina was unquestionably a pleasant city. But why were all
the shops shut so early in the evening?

"These Sicilians," said the waiter, an old Neapolitan acquaintance, in
reply to my enquiries, "are always playing some game. They are
pretending to be Englishmen at this moment; they have the Sunday-closing
obsession on the brain. Their attacks generally last a fortnight; it's
like the measles. Poor people."

Playing at being Englishmen!

They have invented a new game now, those that are left of them. They are
living in dolls' houses, and the fit is likely to last for some little
time.

An engineer remarked to me, not long ago, among the ruins:

"This _baracca,_ this wooden shelter, has an interior surface area of
less than thirty square metres. Thirty-three persons--men, women, and
children--have been living and sleeping in it for the last five months."

"A little overcrowded?" I suggested.

"Yes. Some of them are beginning to talk of overcrowding. It was all