For here a cart is a glory of red tires and blue shafts, and green hubs and pink body and purple tailgate, with a canopy on it that would have suited Sheba's Queen; and the mule that draws the cart is caparisoned in brass and plumage like a circus pony; and the driver wears a broad red sash, part of a shirt, and half of a pair of pants--usually the front half. With an outfit such as that, you feel he should be peddling aurora borealises, or, at the very least, rainbows. It is a distinct shock to find he has only chianti or cheeses or garbage in stock. In Naples, also, there is, even in the most prosaic thing, a sight to gladden your eye if you but hold your nose while you look on it. On the stalls of the truckvenders the cauliflowers and the cabbages are racked up with an artistic effect we could scarcely equal if we had roses and orchids to work with; the fishmonger's cart is a study in still life, and the tripe is what artists call a harmonious interior. Nearly all the hotels in Italy are converted palaces. They may have been successes as palaces, but, with their marble floors and their high ceilings, and their dank, dark corridors, they distinctly fail to qualify as hotels. I should have preferred them remaining unsaved and sinful. I likewise observed a peculiarity common to hotelkeepers in Italy--they all look like cats. The proprietor of the converted palace where we stopped in Naples was the very image of a tomcat we used to own, named Plutarch's Lives, which was half Maltese and half Mormon. He was a cat that had a fine carrying voice--though better adapted for concert work than parlor singing--and a sweetheart in every port. This hotelkeeper might have been the cat's own brother with clothes on--he had Plute's roving eye and his bristling whiskers and his sharp white teeth, and Plute's silent, stealthy tread, and his way of purring softly until he had won your confidence and then sticking his claw into you. The only difference was, he stuck you with a bill instead of a claw. Another interesting idiosyncrasy of the Italian hotelkeeper is that he invariably swears to you his town is the only honest town in Italy, but begs you to beware of the next town which, he assures you with his hand on the place where his heart would be if he had a heart, is full of thieves and liars and counterfeit money and pickpockets. Half of what he tells you is true--the latter half. The tourist agencies issue pamphlets telling how you may send money or jewelry by registered mail in Italy, and then append a footnote warning you against sending money or jewelry by registered mail in Italy. Likewise you are constantly being advised against carrying articles of value in your trunk, unless it is most carefully locked, bolted and strapped. It is good advice too.