At my hotel the dining-room was a public _trattoria_, opening upon the street, but only two or three military men--the eternal officers--made use of it, and I felt a less cheery social atmosphere than at Taranto or at Catanzaro.
One recurring incident did not tend to exhilarate.

Sitting in view of a closed door, I saw children's faces pressed against the glass, peering little faces, which sought a favourable moment; suddenly the door would open, and there sounded a thin voice, begging for _un pezzo di pane_--a bit of bread.

Whenever the waiter caught sight of these little mendicants, he rushed out with simulated fury, and pursued them along the pavement.

I have no happy recollection of my Reggian meals.
An interesting feature of the streets is the frequency of carved inscriptions, commemorating citizens who died in their struggle for liberty.

Amid quiet by-ways, for instance, I discovered a tablet with the name of a young soldier who fell at that spot, fighting against the Bourbon, in 1860: "_offerse per l'unita della patria sua vita quadrilustre_." The very insignificance of this young life makes the fact more touching; one thinks of the unnumbered lives sacrificed upon this soil, age after age, to the wild-beast instinct of mankind, and how pathetic the attempt to preserve the memory of one boy, so soon to become a meaningless name! His own voice seems to plead with us for a regretful thought, to speak from the stone in sad arraignment of tyranny and bloodshed.