Page:Letters from New Zealand (Harper).djvu/283

Rh some well-dressed, others of the poorer classes, who were waiting until a priest, attended by a boy, came out of a sacristy and took his place at the head of the table. The boy carried a book, and a silver vessel of water, with an asperge or whisk. So long as you are reverent, no one seems to mind what you do in an Italian church. So I drew near the priest and looked over his shoulder at the book, which contained in Latin short prayers and benedictions for every kind of food. Uttering these prayers, the priest, with the asperge, sprinkled the plates, the boy responding with "Amen" after each benediction. I imagined that the food was being blessed as a charitable offering to the poor. But no sooner was the ceremony over, than the owner of each plate, wrapping it in a napkin, carried it off, and within a few minutes the table was again covered with others, by a different set of people. "Tell me, please," I said to a bystander, "what all this means." "Oh no, not for the poor; on Easter day we bring something of our provision for our households, in order to receive the Church's blessing upon it; then we take it home and feast upon it."

I was much struck, also, with another instance of practical Italian piety, often seen in the busiest streets. A procession of men, habited in black robes, with peaked cowls which completely hide the face, leaving only two small holes for their eyes. They are on their way to perform the last offices for the dead; they have a special chapel, founded in the thirteenth century, where the dead lie until burial, whilst a watch is kept. These men are not monks, but drawn from all classes, often of the higher ranks; their work is entirely gratuitous; they are summoned to it at any hour by the tolling of their bell.