03.19. Naples

Chapter 19 Naples.

Naples -- Its Beauty -- Its Social Extremes -- The Elevation of Snap Beans -- The Naples Donkey There is a saying to this effect: "See Naples, and then die." I have seen the city, and I have no intention of departing this life. The meaning of the proverb or saying, is, that after you look on Naples you have beheld the loveliest city and the most charming combination of sky, sea, and shore on earth, and that now you might afford to cease to live. You could die saying that nothing so beautiful is anywhere else to be beheld. This city of four hundred thousand inhabitants, sitting on an amphitheater of hills, and coming down by steps of terraced gardens and streets, to touch the blue, semi-circular bay at its feet, is a beautiful spectacle. Nor is this all. The city wears a diadem of stone on her forehead, called the Castle of St. Elmo. On its right cheek is a dimple called the Island of Ischia, and on its left cheek another dimple named the Island of Capri. At night she throws a cluster of brilliants on her neck, and the Mediterranean Sea forgets to storm in looking far off upon her beauty, while the mighty Vesuvius, as a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night, calls the attention of the nations to her as they pass by in distant ships, saying: "Behold the beautiful city of Naples!"

I arrived at midnight, but, before retiring, stepped upon the balcony in front of my room to feast my eyes with a night view. The hotel at which I stopped stood on the highest street, and so, from my position, I overlooked the city below and the quiet bay. Glancing to the left, I saw what I desired. Vesuvius was there, lifting up his tall form, with a dark, feathery plume blown back from his head, while he fastened one eye upon Naples. "I am here," he seemed to say. "You towns at my feet are asleep: but I am not asleep. My eye is upon you all." Is it not wonderful that the towns and cities can sleep, while that red, angry eye is looking down the mountainside upon them? The expression, "A palace and a prison on each hand," is the statement of a fact not peculiar to Venice, but seen everywhere. In no place have I seen wider extremes than in Naples. The west end of the street that skirts the bay has the gardens and drives, where the wealthy congregate; and the east end of the same avenue will show you multitudes of barefooted men and women toiling laboriously and painfully for a scanty living. I looked into the streets where they live, and for darkness and narrowness I have never seen them surpassed. Men, women, children, donkeys, baskets, and I know not what, are crowded away and back in these cracks of walls, which they compliment and dignify by the name of streets. The people are scantily and meanly clothed, the men are burned brown; the women have turned yellow, and the children beg vociferously and pertinaciously.

Such a sight as I saw one morning at an early hour I can never forget. Troops upon troops of people flocking into Naples from neighboring villages and the country with their fruits and vegetables, or coming to work in factories or workshops. How poor they looked! What a hard, bitter struggle life seemed to them! My heart ached as I looked at them packing their loads, pushing their carts, and driving their overburdened donkeys along. In the various cities in which I stop, I put the question: What is being done to save the people and bring them to Christ? I investigated the matter in Liverpool, London and Paris, in Venice and Naples. In some places I find a great deal is being done; in others, next to nothing. And I also find, from what my eyes see, that there is work for ten thousand more missionaries than we have in the field. About twenty or thirty Italians I found at religious service in the Wesleyan Chapel on Sunday morning. How long will it require to take Naples at this rate? Dropping into a Catholic Church of moderate size to see if any of the people were there, I found it filled with the hard-working class of the narrow streets, and all staring for dear life at the altar. It is remarkable how Catholics stare at the chancel. It is all the more surprising when we remember there is only a bowing man there, and a little boy ringing a bell. They have seen the performance a thousand times, and yet, with hungry look, they still gaze. How I trust that out of the pulpit jargon and altar genuflections they, through God’s mercy, will get something for the soul.

One of the institutions of Naples is the donkey. He abounds here, but cannot be said to flourish. Many of the poor people own one, and it is amazing to see what they put on that poor, diminutive animal to bear, or hitch to him to draw. I have seen a family of five or six sitting up on a two-wheeled cart, drawn by a donkey that looked little larger than a Newfoundland dog. And at other times I have seen him so covered up by huge panniers, filled with fruits and vegetables and other merchandise, that you could see nothing but his ears and tail. A crowning indignity done this long-suffering animal is that his owner generally grasps him by the tail. I watched to see the reason, and soon discovered that the peasant used it as a kind of rudder, with which to steer the living craft. Almost any hour you can hear them lifting up their voices on the streets; and when a Naples donkey lifts up his voice in real earliest, then let Vesuvius look to its honors as a thunderer.

If Mt. Vesuvius should burst forth into an eruption, and one of these Naples donkeys should bray at the same time -- well, let us not think of such a catastrophe!

These Italian people who move on hotel planes are great for long dinings. To please them possibly, the courses are multiplied until the consumption of time in such a way becomes a positive affliction as well as a sin. Moreover, their courses amount to very little. There are never more than two dishes to a course, and oftentimes not more than one. So a hotel dining is really, after all, nothing but a few dishes strung out for more than an hour, the clatter of many clean plates, the whisk of napkins, the running of waiters, and a bunch of toothpicks. The other day, while at the dinner-table, a silver-covered dish was brought to me containing one of the courses. On removing the cover my eyes fell upon a double handful of snap-beans! Not so much as a piece of meat to rest their heads upon, or under which to coil their long, lean limbs.

Now, suppose the reader had known in early life a poor, obscure, ordinary youth, and in traveling, should suddenly find him in the company of the nobility passing himself off for some great one. The feeling would be one of surprise and amazement on addressing him, or even beholding him. Thus was it I looked on the snap beans. I mentally ejaculated, Why, Snap Beans, I know you! I know how you are regarded in America, and your social standing there. You know that very few of the high-born care for you, and that your true place there is on a tin plate in the kitchen with the servants. And yet here I find you here lying on a silver dish and passing yourself off as somebody. Why, Snap Beans, thou friend and acquaintance of my boyhood, how did you get here, and how did you manage to fool these European people?"

Snap beans as a course for dinner! Whenever people begin to live for the stomach they at once go into all kinds of absurdities. There are follies and ridiculosities of table manners and bill of fare. In the dethroning of Reason and Conscience, and the enthroning of the Stomach, we may look for absurdities. The brain that is left is racked for table novelties and culinary inventions. The result is often such as to excite the whole family of risible muscles.

Then I have noticed that when a people swing like a pendulum between the two thoughts, what new things shall we eat, and how much shall we eat; when they spend much precious money, and much still more precious time, in feasting, and in a general deifying of the stomach, such people are getting at a place where God knocks them down with His providences and tears them to pieces with His judgments. The Bible says it is so, and History confirms the saying.

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