We went down to see the dungeons, dark, cramped, filthy holes in the solid wall: only a little light sifted in from the corridor through a narrow slit. It seemed as if them places wuz so awful we couldn't bear to look at 'em. But we went down into still deeper dungeons way below the canal, dretful places where you can't hardly draw a breath. We see dim traces of writings on the walls some wretched prisoner waitin' for death had writ there. How did he feel when he writ it? I didn't want to know, nor have Josiah know. We didn't make a very long stay in Venice, but journeyed on to Florence--Florence the beautiful. It lays in a quiet, sheltered valley with the Apennine Mountains risin' about it as if to keep off danger. The river Arno runs through it, spanned by handsome bridges. The old wall that used to surround it with its eight gates, has been destroyed some years ago. As I say, it is a beautiful city, although it wuz more grand and populous when it wuz the capital of Italy. Dorothy said it was well named the City of Flowers, for there wuz flowers everywhere, the markets full of 'em, flower girls at every turn, balconies and windows overrunning with them, public gardens and private gardens sweet with their brightness and perfume. CHAPTER XXIX The next morning after we arrived at Florence we sallied out sightseeing. We all went out together, but separated after a while, promising to meet at luncheon time at our tarven, but we all went together as fur as the Cathedral. It is a noble buildin', covered with red, white and black marble, elegantly ornamented with panels and sculpture. And the hull meetin'-house is so beautiful, that it wuz remarked that "it ort to be kep' in a glass case." Inside, the ceiling is one hundred and thirty-five feet high--good land! I told Josiah I wuz glad I did not have to whitewash or paper it overhead, for it 'most killed us Methodist Episcopal sisters to paper our meetin'-house ceilin' which wuz only twenty feet high, and put a hundred and fifteen feet on top of that and where would we be, we never could done it in the world. The interior is full of statutes and pictures by Michael Angelo and other great sculptors and famous painters. The Campanile or bell tower near it is most three hundred feet high, and a beautiful view is to be seen from the top way off onto the fur-off mountains, the city and the valley of the Arno, or that is I hearn so; I didn't climb up myself to see, bein' more'n willin' to take Dorothy's word and Robert Strong's to that effect.