Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/464

 the way to the king's town palace we passed through the old part of Naples; a district of tall houses, all of them crowded with poor people. The street was very narrow, and the sun was almost obscured by clothes newly washed, and drying in the sunlight. The wash-lines ran across the streets, and were so thick that I thought the sight the most curious I had ever seen. The streets were so crowded with children that we got through them with difficulty, and every little while some one who had been to America, hailed us in bad English. The lower floor of every house was nearly always occupied with a little shop, in which a family also lived. In one of these places, a little child was lying dead. The body was surrounded with candles, and five women sat in the room. For some reason, the mother of the child wanted us to look at it; she came out into the street, weeping, and made motions indicating that she wanted us to go in, which we did. The guide said the woman's husband was in America, and that she felt a friendly interest in us on that account The street was a steep one; so steep that we went down it by means of broad steps. I have seen a street almost exactly like it in Jerusalem. The cross-streets were narrower and steeper than the main street we traveled, and I was almost disposed to agree with Adelaide that Naples is the most interesting place we have visited James Gordon Bennett, of the New York Herald, issues an edition of his paper in Paris, and it is sold all over Europe by street peddlers. Twenty times a minute we were offered a copy of the Herald; the peddlers knew we were Americans, and were so insistent that I always