Sometimes the student of men may witness a Neapolitan quarrel in these
streets, and may pick up useful ideas of invective from the remarks of
the fat old women who always take part in the contests. But, though
we were ten days in Naples, I only saw one quarrel, and I could have
heard much finer violence of language among the gondoliers at any
ferry in Venice than I heard in this altercation.

The Neapolitans are, of course, furious in traffic. They sell a great
deal, and very boisterously, the fruit of the cactus, which is about
as large as an egg, and which they peel to a very bloody pulp, and lay
out, a sanguinary presence, on boards for purchase. It is not good
to the uncultivated taste; but the stranger may stop and drink, with
relish and refreshment, the orangeade and lemonade mixed with snow and
sold at the little booths on the street-corners. These stands looks
much like the shrines of the Madonna in other Italian cities, and a
friend of ours was led, before looking carefully into their office,
to argue immense Neapolitan piety from the frequency of their
ecclesiastical architecture. They are, indeed, the shrines of a god
much worshiped during the long Neapolitan summers; and it was the
profound theory of the Bourbon kings of Naples, that, if they kept
their subjects well supplied with snow to cool their drink, there was
no fear of revolution. It shows how liable statesmen are to err, that,
after all, the Neapolitans rose, drove out the Bourbons, and welcomed
Garibaldi.

The only part of the picturesque life of the side streets which seems
ever to issue from them into the Toledo is the goatherd with his
flock of milch-goats, which mingle with the passers in the avenues as
familiarly as with those of the alley, and thrust aside silk-hidden
hoops, and brush against dandies' legs, in their course, but keep on