DioneaFrom the Letters of Doctor Alessandro De Rosis
to the Lady Evelyn Savelli, Princess of Sabina.
Montemiro Ligure,
June 29, 1873.
I take immediate advantage of the generous offer of your Excellency (allow an old Republican who has held you on his knees to address you by that title sometimes, ’tis so appropriate) to help our poor people. I never expected to come a-begging so soon. For the olive crop has been unusually plenteous. We semi-Genoese don’t pick the olives unripe, like our Tuscan neighbours, but let them grow big and black, when the young fellows go into the trees with long reeds and shake them down on the grass for the women to collect – a pretty sight which your Excellency must see someday: the grey trees with the brown, barefoot lads craning, balanced in the branches, a
