and thus temper the inclemency of the weather, and beguile the time with
solemn loafing, [Footnote: I permit myself, throughout this book, the use
of the expressive American words _loaf_ and _loafer_, as the
only terms adequate to the description of professional idling in Venice]
and the perusal of dingy little journals, drinking small cups of black
coffee, and playing long games of chess,--an evening that seemed to me as
torpid and lifeless as a Lap's, and intolerable when I remembered the
bright, social winter evenings of another and happier land and
civilization.

Sometimes you find a heated stove--that is to say, one in which there has
been a fire during the day--in a Venetian house; but the stove seems
usually to be placed in the room for ornament, or else to be engaged only
in diffusing a very acrid smoke,--as if the Venetian preferred to take
warmth, as other people do snuff, by inhalation. The stove itself is a
curious structure, and built commonly of bricks and plastering,--
whitewashed and painted outside. It is a great consumer of fuel, and
radiates but little heat. By dint of constant wooding I contrived to warm
mine; but my Italian friends always avoided its vicinity when they came to
see me, and most amusingly regarded my determination to be comfortable as
part of the eccentricity inseparable from the Anglo-Saxon character.

I daresay they would not trifle with winter, thus, if they knew him in his
northern moods. But the only voluntary concession they make to his
severity is the _scaldino_, and this is made chiefly by the yielding
sex, who are denied the warmth of the caffe. The use of the scaldino is
known to all ranks, but it is the women of the poorer orders who are most
addicted to it. The scaldino is a small pot of glazed earthen-ware, having
an earthen bale: and with this handle passed over the arm, and the pot
full of bristling charcoal, the Veneziana's defense against cold is