Well, say, old friend, this is the place where you ought to be, because nobody works here, that is, nobody but gondoliers. We have been here several days, and I have not seen a soul doing anything except begging, or selling things that nobody seems to want. If anybody buys anything but onions, it is for curiosity, or for souvenirs, and yet the whole population sits around in the sun and watches the strangers from other lands price things and go away without buying, and then everybody looks mad, as though they would like to jab a knife into the stranger. The plazas and the places near the canal are filled with hucksters and beggars, and you never saw beggars so mutilated and sore and disgusting. I never supposed human beings could be so deformed, without taking an ax to them, and it is so pitiful to see them that you can't help shedding your money. [Illustration: Coughed up over $40 the first day, just giving to beggars 191] As hard hearted as dad is, he coughed up over $40 the first day, just giving to beggars, and he thought he had got them all bought up, and that they would let him alone, but the next day when he showed up there were ten beggars where there was one the day before, and they followed him everywhere, and all the loafers in the plazas laughed and acted as if they would catch the cripples when dad got out of sight and rob the beggars. Dad thinks the way the people live is by dividing with beggars. A man who has a deformity, or a sore that you can see half a block away, seems to be considered rich here, like a man in America who owns stock in great corporations. These beggars pay more taxes than the dukes and things who live in style. I suppose dad never studied geography, so he didn't know how Venice was situated, so he told me to go out and order a hack the first morning we were here, and we would go and see the town. When I told dad there were no hacks, no horses and no roads in Venice, he said I was crazy in my head and wanted me to take some medicine and stay in bed for a few days, but I convinced him, when we got outdoors, that everything run by water, and when I showed him the canal and the gondolas, he remembered all about Venice, and picked out a gondalier that looked like one dad saw at the world's fair, and we hired him because he talked English. All the English the gondolier could use were the words “you bet your life,” and “you're dam right,” but dad took him because it seemed so homelike, and we have been riding in gondolas every day.