the more magnificent scoundrels of whom _he_ bought the wood
originally, contented me with the swindle with which I had become
familiarized. On this occasion I took a boat and went to the Custom House,
to get my fuel at first hand. The captain of the ship which I boarded
wished me to pay more than I gave for fuel delivered at my door, and
thereupon ensued the tragic scene of bargaining, as these things are
conducted in Italy. We stood up and bargained, we sat down and bargained;
the captain turned his back upon me in indignation; I parted from him and
took to my boat in scorn; he called me back and displayed the wood--good,
sound, dryer than bones; he pointed to the threatening heavens, and
declared that it would snow that night, and on the morrow I could not get
wood for twice the present price; but I laughed incredulously. Then my
captain took another tack, and tried to make the contract in obsolete
currencies, in Austrian pounds, in Venetian pounds, but as I inexorably
reduced these into familiar money, he paused desperately, and made me an
offer which I accepted with mistaken exultation. For my captain was
shrewder than I, and held arts of measurement in reserve against me. He
agreed that the measurement and transportation should not cost me the
value of his tooth-pick--quite an old and worthless one--which he showed
me. Yet I was surprised into the payment of a youth whom this man called
to assist at the measurement, and I had to give the boatman drink-money at
the end. He promised that the measure should be just: yet if I lifted my
eye from the work he placed the logs slantingly on the measure, and threw
in knotty chunks that crowded wholesome fuel out, and let the daylight
through and through the pile. I protested, and he admitted the wrong when
I pointed it out: "_Ga razon, lu!_" (He's right!) he said to his
fellows in infamy, and throwing aside the objectionable pieces, proceeded
to evade justice by new artifices. When I had this memorable load of wood
housed at home, I found that it had cost just what I paid my woodman, and
that I had additionally lost my self-respect in being plundered before my