face, and I resolved thereafter to be cheated in quiet dignity behind my
back. The woodman exulted in his restored sovereignty, and I lost nothing
in penalty for my revolt.

Among other provisioners who come to your house in Venice, are those
ancient peasant-women, who bring fresh milk in bottles carefully packed in
baskets filled with straw. They set off the whiteness of their wares by
the brownness of their sunburnt hands and faces, and bear in their general
stoutness and burliness of presence, a curious resemblance to their own
comfortable bottles. They wear broad straw hats, and dangling ear-rings of
yellow gold, and are the pleasantest sight of the morning streets of
Venice, to the stoniness of which they bring a sense of the country's
clovery pasturage, in the milk just drawn from the great cream-colored
cows.

Fishermen, also, come down the little _calli_--with shallow baskets
of fish upon their heads and under either arm, and cry their soles and
mackerel to the neighborhood, stopping now and then at some door to
bargain away the eels which they chop into sections as the thrilling drama
proceeds, and hand over as a denouement at the purchaser's own price.
"Beautiful and all alive!" is the engaging cry with which they hawk their
fish.

Besides these daily purveyors, there are men of divers arts who come to
exercise their crafts at your house: not chimney-sweeps merely, but
glaziers, and that sort of workmen, and, best of all, chair-menders,--who
bear a mended chair upon their shoulders for a sign, with pieces of white
wood for further mending, a drawing-knife, a hammer, and a sheaf of
rushes, and who sit down at your door, and plait the rush bottoms of your
kitchen-chairs anew, and make heaps of fragrant whittlings with their