Mr. Mazzini will never be rich. He takes too much time for philosophy
and gossiping with the women, and he loves a joke too well, and his
heart is too kind. He is a universal type, as old as the world is old,
Theocritus knew him well.
“You pick me out some good cantaloupes,” I said with deadly tact, and
Mr. Mazzini answered that it couldn’t be done and that melons were like
men, that there was no sure way of picking them out for their kindness
of heart. Then he took time over the melons to tell me how his mother in
Italy, who was evidently something of a match-maker, had gotten fooled
on a young man who was both “laze” and “steenge” in his youth but who
made a very good husband.
One day it was figs, and I was strong for the nice appearing ones,
but Mr. Mazzini told me a lot about figs and chose me some that were
lop-sided from packing. What delicious figs they were, all stored with
sunshine and sweetness and flavor just as he had told me. Mr. Mazzini
owns his own store, and yet when he throws in a few extra, as he always
does, because they are soft or a little specked, he will wink and glance
slyly around just as though he were putting one over on the boss.
One morning I saw him sweeping out his store and he wore a woman’s
sweeping cap with the strings tied under his grisly old chin. When I saw
him I just stood and laughed aloud, and he asked me why not, and said
that a sweeping cap was just as good for a man as for a woman, and then
he stopped his sweeping and gave me quite a male feminist talk. And
he has a horse, Mr. Mazzini has, a fat old plug that peeks around his
blinders as humorously as his master. Oh, I could just keep on talking
about Mr. Mazzini for pages, but I started to speak of Dante.
I like the Italians and I like the Latin quarter where they live. I like
it better than Ashbury Heights for instance. I like the way the Italians
use their windows to look out of and to lean out of, and I like the way
they have socialized the sidewalk. It’s all a matter of taste, and I
wouldn’t criticize the people of Ashbury Heights simply because they use
their well-curtained windows only to admit the light, and do not lean
out and gossip with their neighbors and yell to their children, “Mahree,
Mahree,” nor sit out on their steps in the evening and play Rigoletto on
the accordion. It’s all a matter of taste.
Six hundred years ago Dante was an Italian, but he is much more than
that today. After six centuries Dante belongs to all those and only
those who can read him with appreciation and pleasure. Our scavenger
is an Italian, and he reads Dante just as so many of the Anglo Saxon
proletair read Shakespeare. So Dante belongs to this garbage man,
not because he is Italian, but because he sincerely loves the Divina
Commedia. A waiter, in Il Trovatore, a rarely honest man, acknowledged
to me that he could not read Dante, and that every time he tried he got
mad and threw the book away.
Dante belongs to the literary elect of all nations, Dante belongs to the
great internationale of the immortals. Dante belongs to Eternity. And
for that matter so does Mr. Mazzini.