sausage repulsive. Nothing is painted or white-washed, let alone
dusted, swept, or scoured. The walls have the appearance of having
been _pawed_ over by new relays of dirty fingers daily for ten years.
This is a very peculiar appearance at many nasty places _out_ of
Sicily, and we really do not know its _pathology_. You tread
loathingly an indescribable earthen floor, and your eye, on entering
the apartment, is arrested by a nameless production of the fictile
art, certainly not of _Etruscan_ form, which is invariably placed on
the _bolster_ of the truck-bed destined presently for your devoted
head. Oh! to do justice to a Sicilian _locanda_ is plainly out of
question, and the rest of our task may as well be sung as said, verse
and prose being alike incapable of the hopeless reality:--

"Lodged for the night, O Muse! begin
To sing the true Sicilian inn,
Where the sad choice of six foul cells
The least exacting traveller quells
(Though crawling things, not yet in sight,
Are waiting for the shadowy night,
To issue forth when all is quiet,
And on your feverish pulses riot;)
Where one wood shutter scrapes the ground,
By crusts, stale-bones, and garbage bound;
Where unmolested spiders toil
Behind the mirror's mildew'd foil;
Where the cheap crucifix of lead
Hangs o'er the iron tressel'd bed;
Where the huge bolt will scarcely keep
Its promise to confiding sleep,
Till you have forced it to its goal