I have knocked about sufficiently in my time in the showy chambers of American dealers and elsewhere to know that there is entirely too much in what was told me. The wonder of Florence grew a little under the Professor’s quiet commercial analysis, for after exhausting this matter of reproducing so cheaply, we proceeded to a discussion of the present conditions of the city. “It’s very different commercially from anything in America or the north of Europe,” he said, “or even the north of Italy, for as yet we have scarcely anything in the way of commerce here. We still build in the fashion they used five hundred years ago--narrow streets and big cornices in order to keep up the atmosphere of the city, for we are not strong enough commercially yet to go it alone, and besides I don’t think the Italians will ever be different. They are an easy-going race. They don’t need the American “two dollars a day” to live on. Fifty centimes will do. For one thousand dollars (five thousand lire) you can rent a palace here for a year and I can show you whole floors overlooking gardens that you can rent for seventeen dollars a month. We have a garden farther out that we use as a workshop here in Florence, in the heart of the city, which we rent for four hundred dollars a year.” “What about the Italian’s idea of progress? Isn’t he naturally constructive?” I asked Mr. Jesuram. “Rarely the Italian. Not at this date. We have many Jews and Germans here who are doing well, and foreign capital is building street-railways. I think the Italians will have to be fused with another nation to experience a new birth. The Germans are mixing with them. If they ever get as far south as Sicily, Italy will be made over; the Germans themselves will be made over. I notice that the Italians and Germans get along well together.” I thought of the age-long wars between the Teutons and the Italians from the fifth to the twelfth century, but those days are over. They can apparently mingle in peace now, as I saw here and farther north. It was also while I was in Florence that I first became definitely and in an irritated way conscious of a certain aspect of travel which no doubt thousands of other travelers have noted for themselves but of which, nevertheless, I feel called upon to speak.