One of the strangest things about Venice to me was the curious manner in which you could always track a great public square or market place of some kind by following some thin trickling of people you would find making their way in a given direction. Suddenly in some quite silent residence section, with all its lovely waterways about you, you would encounter a small thin stream of people going somewhere, perhaps five or six in a row, over bridges, up narrow alleys, over more bridges, through squares or triangles past churches or small stores and constantly swelling in volume until you found yourself in the midst of a small throng turning now right, now left, when suddenly you came out on the great open market place or piazza to which they were all tending. They always struck me as a sheep-like company, these Venetians, very mild, very soft, pattering here and there with vague, almost sad eyes. Here in Venice I saw no newspapers displayed at all, nor ever heard any called, nor saw any read. There was none of that morning vigor which characterizes an American city. It was always more like a quiet village scene to me than any aspect of a fair-sized city. Yet because I was comfortable in Venice and because all the while I was there it was so radiantly beautiful, I left it with real sorrow. To me it was perfect. * * * * * The one remaining city of Italy that I was yet to see, Milan, because already I had seen so much of Italy and because I was eager to get into Switzerland and Germany, was of small interest to me. It was a long, tedious ride to Milan, and I spent my one day there rambling about without enthusiasm. Outside of a half-dozen early Christian basilicas, which I sedulously avoided (I employed a guide), there was only the cathedral, the now dismantled palace and fortress of the Sforzas masquerading as a museum and the local art gallery, an imposing affair crowded with that same religious art work of the Renaissance which, one might almost say in the language of the Milwaukee brewer, had made Italy famous. I was, however, about fed up on art. As a cathedral that of Milan seemed as imposing as any, great and wonderful. I was properly impressed with its immense stained-glass windows, said to be the largest in the world, its fifty-two columns supporting its great roof, its ninety-eight pinnacles and two thousand statues. Of a splendid edifice such as this there is really nothing to say--it is like Amiens, Rouen, and Canterbury--simply astounding. It would be useless to attempt to describe the emotions it provoked, as useless as to indicate the feelings some of the pictures in the local gallery aroused in me. It would be Amiens all over again, or some of the pictures in the Uffizi. It seemed to me the newest of all the Gothic cathedrals I saw, absolutely preserved in all its details and as recently erected as yesterday, yet it was begun in 1386.