Suicide in France

1895

Poverty Every Year Drives Four Thousand People to Seek Relief In Death.

Statistics of suicide, alluded to by the London Standard's Paris correspondent, show that during the last four years 26,000 persons have in France put an end to their own lives. In Italy, with a population almost equal to that of France, the number of suicides during the same period has not exceeded 8,000. In seeking the reason for this great difference the well known Parisian journalist, M. Henri Fouquier, explains that in Italy the Roman Catholic religion is still strongly rooted in the population, and that it acts as a deterrent against self destruction.

Formerly in Italy the body of a suicide was dragged through the streets and then exhibited on a gibbet. Moreover, if Italy is not so rich a country as France, poverty there is less severely felt and more easy to bear than in France, thanks to the Italian sunshine and blue sky. It is estimated that perhaps a quarter of the population of Naples, for instance, live in a state of poverty which could not be borne by a workman in Paris or in the towns of the north of France. In addition to this, mendacity is not in Italy regarded as either shameful or humiliating.

Therefore, notwithstanding the extreme poverty prevailing in Italy, M. Fouquier is not astonished that it should lead but few persons to commit suicide. M. Fouquier points out that in Italy self destruction is in most cases the denouement of a love drama, whereas in France, out of an average of 6,500 suicides a year, there are not more than about 300 that can be classed as suicides of passion. In France money, or rather the lack of it, is the cause of self destruction.

M. Fouquier considers that some 2,000 suicides a year may be due to insanity, but he points out that it is now demonstrated by the statistics that in France 4,000 persons a year — that is to say, about ten persons a day — hang, drown or stifle themselves with the fumes of charcoal or blow out their brains because they are ruined, because they are prosecuted by their creditors, because they cannot earn enough to procure food and are dying of starvation.

Gambling In Italy

1895

It Is Widespread and Brings the Government $10,000,000 a Year.

In Italy there are many highly moral laws against gambling, but the government is responsible for a system of state lotteries which encourages widespread gambling among the people.

The published statistics show average receipts of over $10,000,000 a year.

Every Saturday afternoon the lottery is drawn in the eight principal towns of Italy, and there are government lottery offices in every town and village, where tickets may be taken for any of the eight lotteries in this kingdom. A village may be too small to have a postoffice, but it will be pretty sure to have a lottery office.

The method of staking in the lottery is to select from one to four numbers and to stake what you please upon them at the nearest lottery office.

You may bet on one number, and if it is one of the five drawn in the lottery you receive 12-1/2 times your stake. Or you may bet that it will be drawn either first, second, third, fourth or fifth in the order of drawing. In this case you get 66 times your stake if you win.

Another plan is to take two numbers and back what is called the ambo. If both your numbers come out among the five, you get 300 times your stake. If you choose three numbers, which is called a terno, and they all come out, you win 5,000 times your stake.

If you back four numbers, called a quaderno, you win 60,000 nines your stake.

The method most in vogue among the peasants is to take three numbers and invest a small sum on the terno and on each of the ambos contained in it. A peasant's weekly investment ranges between 2 cents and 10 cents. As little as four-fifths of a cent may be staked.

All kinds of omens are consulted to arrive at the lucky numbers. Dreams are great favorites, and inspirations are drawn from any great national event.

For instance, when Victor Emmanuel died, the tip was to play the number of his age, the number of the year of his birth and the number of the day of the month on which he died. Thousands of people backed this terno, and, oddly enough, it actually came out.

A few weeks late Pope Pius IX died. The same game was played on the numbers relating to his death, and again the terno came out.

Of course the government lost a great deal of money on these occasions, but it would soon get it back again by the additional impulse given to the gambling by the news of these winnings. — Pearson's Weekly.

Women In Italy

1895

In Italy, writes a correspondent, we have seen women not only working in the fields, but carrying bricks and stone and mortar up ladders for the construction of buildings. On the railroad from Brindisi to Naples, in southern Italy, where a tunnel was being repaired, we saw some 40 girls carrying on their heads bushel baskets of mortar and stone from a valley on one side of the track up a steep stairway above the tunnel on the other side. The baskets were filled by men and lifted upon the heads of the girls, who thus had by far the heavier task of carrying the loads up an ascent of 60 feet. Their feet and arms were bare, their faces brown, but they looked cheerful, at least those did who paused in their work to stare at the passing train. Near Paestum "gangs of women were at field work, with a man to oversee them, cracking a long hunting whip."

At Amalfi we saw old women carrying on their backs loads of wood up the long, rocky stairways leading to the Cappuccini Monastery hotel. The wood was 4 feet long, and to all appearances there was nearly a quarter of a cord on each woman's back. In several places in southern Italy we witnessed this almost brutal scene of women bent and staggering beneath loads of wood which they were carrying up the hills. The first feeling one has on seeing women thus employed is of resentment against some one who has forced them to it, but evidently the rough out of door toil is voluntarily assumed, or at least accepted as inevitable.

Now a Museum, Where Keats and Shelley Lived in Rome

1909

Opened As Museum

House Where Keats and Shelley Lived in Rome

Flowers and Vines Make Enchanting Bower of Little Gallery Where One Can Fancy Two Famous Poets Chatted Together

Rome. — Early in April, in the presence of King Victor Emmanuel III, of Italy, the Keats-Shelley memorial house in Rome was opened and consecrated as a museum in memory of the two English poets who were friends. Henceforth this house, situated on the right hand side of the old Spanish stairs, in the Piazza di Spagna, will be a new resort for English-speaking tourists and lovers of these poets when in the Eternal city. The house has been bought by English and American lovers of poesy. It cost $60,000. It is a modest house, which in Keats' and Shelley's day was a pension, or boarding house.

There is a quiet seriousness about the premises, as if the shadow still lingered where young Keats breathed his last sigh. In the little entrance hang some old engravings, which give one an idea of the Piazza di Spagna before the Spanish stairs were built and after their construction. The house has been renovated. The central room has been transformed into a reading room. Around the walls run the book shelves made of dark walnut, the floor is covered by thick Turkish rugs. Sir Moses Ezekiel's bust of Shelley holds a prominent place in this room, as well as that made of Shelley by Severn. It is rather hard to put oneself in touch with the two poetic spirits who lived in this house, amid the babble of the tourists, and the questions with which they ply the civil Italian gentleman who acts as curator. I am quite sure he must be almost distracted after his morning's work, for the house is only open every day to the public from ten o'clock until one p. m. One of the little rooms leads out on the dearest little terrazionoo, which in these lovely spring days is a display of beautiful flowers and creeping vines. Here one can easily fancy Keats and Shelley resting and chatting together. In another room the book shelves hold 200 editions of Keats' and Shelley's works. Most of these being recent editions, they have little value except as evidence of the continuing fame of the poets — but is not that worth while to show In this way?

By far the most interesting room is the little bedchamber in which Keats died, with its two windows, one of which looks out over the Piazza di Spagna and the other on the picturesque stairs leading up to the Church delta Trinita de Monte. From that window one can gaze down on the loveliest flower market to the world all the year round, and watch the ever passing throng going up and down the Spanish steps. Many of the artists' models group themselves about, or drop off for their open air siestas in the most natural of poses.

In this small bedroom Keats died in the arms of his faithful friend, Severn The ceiling and the little fireplace have been left just as when Keats lived in the room. In this little sanctuary is the death mask of Keats, and a small lock of his chestnut brown hair. In a sealed vase is a little bone which Trelawney kept from the heart — "cer cordium" — when the flames reduced all that was once Percy Bysshe Shelley's frame to a handful of clean ashes.

This little house where the two poets stayed in Rome puts us in touch with them on different lines from their graves, in the beautiful little English cemetery, under the shadow of the pyramid of Calus Cestius, and the walls of old Rome. There are several autograph letters of Keats and Shelley carefully treasured in the little museum, as well as their songs set to music. It is pleasant to feel that these poetic friends — such lovers of Italy — lived and enjoyed all Italy had to offer them in the fullness of her wondrous beauty, art and history, and when life's fitful fever ended for them, they rest in her loving bosom.

A School Boys' Garden

An admirable scheme to have a school boys' garden next year has been planned by the authorities of Elming, New York. Last summer a hundred boys made good as farmers of vacant lots and it is now proposed to place practically all such unused property in the city under cultivation, the pupils of the public schools to be the gardeners and to reap the profits from their products.
----------
A Fair Return
Minister (arousing himself in barber's chair) -- All through yet.
Barber -- Aye, lang syne.
Minister -- Then I must have been indulging in a quiet nap?
Barber -- Ye wis that, sir.
Minister -- It was very good of you not to waken me. I am very thankful for what has been a most refreshing sleep.
Barber -- Hoots, man, haud yer tongue; it's only a fair return. I slept all through your sermon last Sawbath. -- London Tit-Bits.
----------
Keep Watch on the Tuberculosis
The Italian government, on account of the number of tuberculosis cases among the Italian emigrants sent back from America, has appointed boards of examiners in the seaports, whose duty it is to report the arrival of tuberculous persons. These are then kept under observation in these places where they settle, to prevent further spread of the disease. The erection of new sanitoria and other tuberculosis institutions is being urged in Italy, and the number of beds for consumptives has been considerably increased in different places.

--The Ellis Review-Headlight, Ellis, Kansas, 1911.