Though the Franciscans live upon charity, they have almost always a garden connected with their convent, where they raise multitudes of cabbages, cauliflowers, _finocchi_, peas, beans, artichokes, and lettuce. Indeed, there is one kind of the latter which is named after them,--_capuccini_. But their gardens they do not till themselves; they hire gardeners, who work for them. Now I cannot but think that working in a garden is just as pious an employment as begging about the streets, though perhaps scarcely as profitable. The opinion, that, in some respects, it would be better for them to attend to this work themselves, was forced upon my mind by a little farce I happened to see enacted among their cabbages, the other day, as I was looking down out of my window. My attention was first attracted by hearing a window open from a little three-story-high _loggia_, opposite, hanging over their garden. A woman came forth, and, from amid the flower-pots which half-concealed her, she dropped a long cord to the ground. "_Pst, Pst_," she cried to the gardener at work below. He looked up, executed a curious pantomime, shrugged his shoulders, shook his fore-finger, and motioned with his head and elbow sideways to a figure, visible to me, but not to her, of a brown Franciscan, who was amusing himself in gathering some _finocchi_, just round the corner of the wall. The woman, who was fishing for the cabbages, immediately understood the predicament, drew up her cord, disappeared from the _loggia_, and the curtain fell upon the little farce. The gardener, however, evidently had a little soliloquy after she had gone. He ceased working, and gazed at the unconscious Franciscan for some time, with a curious grimace, as if he were not quite satisfied at thus losing his little perquisite.