"singing As They Toil."

A reader of the Sun interested in its recent remarks about tlie cheerfulness and good temper of colored people in general, has sent a letter to the office upon the subject. He says: "Everywhere that I saw darkies at work during my tour in the south they 3eemed much happier than our northern workers. The colored navvies that I saw on the east coast of Florida and the colored men at work in the phosphate mines of South Carolina nearly always sang as they worked. But who is there that ever knew of a gang of Italian railroad hands singing as they wielded the implements oí labor?" So far the Sun's correspondent. It is a curious fact that in Italy itself the oíd custom of stnging while toiling has been given up by the people. The wellknown woman who writes under the signature of "Ouida" makes referencc to the change whlch has takeo place in this respect in an article published in the last number ot the Nineteenth Century. She says: "Twenty years ago in Italy melody was to be heard all over the country. The laborer going through the vines sang his sternello or his rispetto to the sleeping flelds. The boy who drove his yoked oxen or cows in tne Dig square cart beguiled the way with song, joyous or amorous. The guitar and the mandolín were heard at dusk at every farmhouse door and in the streets oí the town youths went singing and playing till the moon was high. There was music all over the land, along the hedgerows as in the city lanes, under the poplars and mulberries as beneath the walls oí citadel and baptistry. How many a time at sunfet or in the starlight have I listened to the beautifnl canzone ot the peasantry when the sweetnesa of the vine flower filled the atmosphere or the dropped acacia blossom shed its smell on garden paths. Now rarely are those wood notes wild ever heard to lighten and spiritualize toil."