restaurant never; though the habit of frequenting the restaurants, to
which Goldoni somewhat vaingloriously refers, seems to have grown upon the
Venetians with the lapse of time. The eating-houses are almost without
number, and are of every degree, from the shop of the sausage-maker, who
supplies gondoliers and facchini with bowls of _sguassetto_, to the
Caffe Florian. They all have names which are not strange to European ears,
but which ape sufficiently amusing to people who come from a land where
nearly every public thing is named from some inspiration of patriotism or
local pride. In Venice the principal restaurants are called The Steamboat,
The Savage, The Little Horse, The Black Hat, and The Pictures; and I do
not know that any one of them is more uncomfortable, uncleanly, or noisy
than another, or that any one of them suffers from the fact that all are
bad.

You do not get breakfast at the restaurant for the reason, before stated,
of the breakfast's unsubstantiality. The dining commences about three
o'clock in the afternoon, and continues till nine o'clock, most people
dining at five or six. As a rule the attendance is insufficient, and no
guest is served until he has made a savage clapping on the tables, or
clinking on his glass or plate. Then a hard-pushed waiter appears, and
calls out, dramatically, "Behold me!" takes the order, shrieks it to the
cook, and returning with the dinner, cries out again, more dramatically
than ever, "Behold it ready!" and arrays it with a great flourish on the
table. I have dined in an hotel at Niagara, to the music of a brass band;
but I did not find that so utterly bewildering, so destructive of the
individual savor of the dishes, and so conducive to absent-minded
gluttony, as I at first found the constant rush and clamor of the waiters
in the Venetian restaurants. The guests are, for the most part, patient
and quiet enough, eating their minestra and boiled beef in such peace as
the surrounding uproar permits them, and seldom making acquaintance with