get out of the
country quick, and it didn't take us 15 minutes to pack up, and here we
are in Venice.

Well, say, old friend, this is the place where you ought to be, because
nobody works here, that is, nobody but gondoliers. We have been here
several days, and I have not seen a soul doing anything except begging,
or selling things that nobody seems to want. If anybody buys anything
but onions, it is for curiosity, or for souvenirs, and yet the whole
population sits around in the sun and watches the strangers from other
lands price things and go away without buying, and then everybody looks
mad, as though they would like to jab a knife into the stranger. The
plazas and the places near the canal are filled with hucksters and
beggars, and you never saw beggars so mutilated and sore and disgusting.
I never supposed human beings could be so deformed, without taking an ax
to them, and it is so pitiful to see them that you can't help shedding
your money.

[Illustration: Coughed up over $40 the first day, just giving to beggars
191]

As hard hearted as dad is, he coughed up over $40 the first day, just
giving to beggars, and he thought he had got them all bought up, and
that they would let him alone, but the next day when he showed up there
were ten beggars where there was one the day before, and they followed
him everywhere, and all the loafers in the plazas laughed and acted as
if they would catch the cripples when dad got out of sight and rob the
beggars. Dad thinks the way the people live is by dividing with beggars.
A man who has a deformity, or a sore that you can see half a block away,
seems to be considered rich here, like a man in America who owns stock
in great corporations. These beggars pay more taxes than the dukes and
things who live in style.

I suppose dad never studied geography, so he didn't know how Venice was
situated, so he told me to go out and order a hack the first morning we
were here, and we would go and see the town. When I told dad there were
no hacks, no horses and no roads in Venice, he said I was crazy in my
head and wanted me to take some medicine and stay in bed for a few days,
but I convinced him, when we got outdoors, that everything run by water,
and when I showed him the canal and the gondolas, he remembered all
about Venice, and picked out a gondalier that looked like one dad saw
at the world's fair, and we hired him because he talked English. All the
English the gondolier could use w