"The Ship's Barber.--Coming across from Marseilles in the _dampfer_ (Germ. for boat) the weather moderated so that I needed only one overcoat. Got acquainted with barber. Often have some trouble in making up with a captain, but can usually hit it off with the barber. A good barber is a bureau of information, headquarters for scandal, and knows what the run is going to be. The barber on our _dampfer_ no good. Shy on conversation, but great on arithmetic. Charged me two francs for a shave, and when I suggested that he was rather high he said he was compelled to ask one franc and thirty centimes for the extract of vanilla he had put on my hair. Told him I did not want any extract of vanilla, but he said there was no way of getting it back into the bottle. Besides, he had the money, so we compromised by permitting him to keep it. Said he longed to go to America. I told him there would probably be an opening in America for anyone so energetic and muscular, and I promised to give him a letter to Armour & Co., of Chicago." [Illustration: _Promised him a letter to Armour & Co., Chicago_] "Free Fireworks.--A full hundred miles out at sea we could make out an irregular oval of fire suspended in the sky--the two streams of lava now trickling down Vesuvius. Finest landmark and sailing target a sailor could ask for. When we were forty miles away we wanted the captain to slow up for fear he would run into the mountain and injure it. Next morning in harbour we discovered that we were still ten miles away from it. "The New Naples.--In ten years Naples has done a lot of sprucing up. Streets are cleaner, new and pretentious buildings have multiplied, smells have been eliminated. Guides, beggars and cabmen not so pestiferous as of yore, but still bad enough to deserve electrocution, provided some more lingering form of death could not be substituted. Cabmen seemed downcast. Municipality recently forbade any extra charge for cab service on a _fiesta_, or holiday. In Italy 300 days out of every 365 can be rung in under the head of _fiestas_. Every American who landed in Naples found himself right in the midst of a _fiesta_ and had to pay two fares, or as much as thirty cents in gold, to ride around in one of the open hacks. Thirty cents would seem a reasonable charge, but not after you have seen the hack. The smaller the horse in Naples the heavier the harness. Evidently a desire to have about the same total weight in each case.