[Footnote: The Italians
here live usually grouped by "villages," that is, those from the
same community with the same patron saint keep close together.
The saint's name-day is their local holiday. If the police want to
find an Italian scamp, they find out first from what village he
hails, then it is a simple matter, usually, to find where he is
located in the city.] That was conclusive. It was not so in those
days. So, between the vendetta, the mafia, the ordinary neighborhood
feuds, and the Bend itself, always picturesque if outrageously
dirty, it was not hard to keep it in the foreground. My scrap-book
from the year 1883 to 1896 is one running comment on the Bend and
upon the official indolence that delayed its demolition nearly
a decade after it had been decreed. But it all availed nothing to
hurry up things, until, in a swaggering moment, after four years
of that sort of thing, one of the City Hall officials condescended
to inform me of the real cause of the delay. It was simply that
"no one down there had been taking any interest in the thing.
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