Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, page 149 by Various Authors
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s before the wedding broke her engagement because on visiting her betrothed, who was ill, she found hanging above his head a picture of the Holy Ghost, which she tore down and broke to pieces in anger and scorn.
Men engaged on the sea do not marry into families employed on the land. The sailors consider themselves, and are, better and milder than other classes, as is shown by the criminal cases[29] and the words and phrases which they use (especially those of the Kalsa of Palermo). Then there are the social differences, which are an obstacle to many marriages. We do not speak of the large cities, where certain prejudices are more or less overlooked; but in the smaller and less populous towns there are distinctions and sub-distinctions, so that he is fortunate who does not lose himself in that labyrinth. The gentleman (galantuomo, who is also called cappeddu or cavaleri) forms the highest caste, and is above the master (maestro), who in turn must not be confounded with the countryman (villano), the lowest grade in the social scale. Among the countrymen of Modica a shepherd who lives on his own property is above a reduced massarotto (who is a countryman proprietor of lands), and yet the massarotto would refuse him for a son-in-law: the mechanic would not be accepted by a family of drivers, nor these by another the head of which is the keeper of swine or of cattle. The husbandman who can prune the vines is above the one who can only till the ground; the cowherd looks down on the one who guards the oxen; the last named scorns the keeper of calves; the one who keeps sheep deems himself noble in comparison with the one who guards goats; and so with other most minute distinctions. When a countryman woos a young girl of a different rank, he hopes to overcome the difficulties in his way by choosing a matchmaker from among the foremost men of his native place, but the matchmaker will inevitably receive the answer, "The young man is honest, labor