little calle. There are beautiful bells standing in rows in the
window, one having a border of finely traced crabs and sea-horses
at the base; another has a top like a Doge's cap, while the body of
another has a delicately wrought tracery, as if a fish-net had been
thrown over it.

Sometimes the children crowd about me as the pigeons in the Piazza
San Marco struggle for the corn flung to them by the tourists. If
there are only three or four, I sometimes compromise with my
conscience and give them something. If one gets a lira put into
small coppers, one can give them a couple of centesimi apiece
without feeling that one is pauperizing them, but that one is
fostering the begging habit in young Italy is a more difficult sin
to face.

To-day when the boys took off the tattered hats from their bonny
little heads, all black waves and riotous curls, and with disarming
dimples and sparkling eyes presented them to me for alms, I looked
at them with smiling admiration, thinking how like Raphael's
cherubs they were, and then said in my best Italian: "Oh, yes, I
see them; they are indeed most beautiful hats. I thank you for
showing them to me, and I am pleased to see you courteously take
them off to a lady."

This American pleasantry was passed from mouth to mouth gleefully,
and so truly enjoyed that they seemed to forget they had been
denied. They ran, still laughing and chattering, to the wood-
carver's shop near-by and told him the story, or so I judged, for
he came to his window and smiled benignly upon me as I sat in the
gondola with my writing-pad on my knees. I was pleased at the