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Venetian Life by William Dean Howells
page 77 of 329 (23%)
we imprudently paid our way, and consequently had no ties to bind us to
our fellow-creatures. In Venice provisions are bought by housekeepers on a
scale surprisingly small to one accustomed to wholesale American ways, and
G., having the purse, made our little purchases in cash, never buying more
than enough for one meal at a time. Every morning, the fruits and
vegetables are distributed from the great market at the Rialto among a
hundred greengrocers' stalls in all parts of the city; bread (which is
never made at home) is found fresh at the baker's; there is a butcher's
stall in each campo with fresh meat. These shops are therefore resorted to
for family supplies day by day; and the poor lay in provisions there in
portions graduated to a soldo of their ready means. A great Bostonian whom
I remember to have heard speculate on the superiority of a state of
civilization in which you could buy two cents' worth of beef to that in
which so small a quantity was unpurchasable, would find the system
perfected here, where you can buy half a cent's worth. It is a system
friendly to poverty, and the small retail prices approximate very closely
the real value of the stuff sold, as we sometimes proved by offering to
purchase in quantity. Usually no reduction would be made from the retail
rate, and it was sufficiently amusing to have the dealer figure up the
cost of the quantity we proposed to buy, and then exhibit an exact
multiplication of his retail rate by our twenty or fifty. Say an orange is
worth a soldo: you get no more than a hundred for a florin, though the
dealer will cheerfully go under that number if he can cheat you in the
count. So in most things we found it better to let G. do the marketing in
her own small Venetian fashion, and "guard our strangeness."

But there were some things which must be brought to the house by the
dealers, such as water for drinking and cooking, which is drawn from
public cisterns in the squares, and carried by stout young girls to all
the houses. These _bigolanti_ all come from the mountains of Friuli;
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