Beggars are a great trial in the streets. The lame, the halt, and the blind breathe woe and pestilence under your window, and long monotonous whines of sorrow. Fat friars in spectacles and bare feet come round once a month begging bread and fuel for the convents. Old troubadours serenade you with zithers, strumming feebly with fingers that seem to be all bone, and in thin quavering voices pipe out old ditties of youth and love. There are lottery offices everywhere. Around them there is always a great excitement. The missing number, printed on a card framed in flowers and ribands, is placed in the windows daily. Some say that the system of lottery should be done away with; but it might be cruel to deprive the poor wretches of hope. The lottery brings joy to many despairing people. Venetian women are good-looking. One sees them continually about the streets. Nothing can surpass the grace of the shawl-clad figures seen down the perspective of the long streets, or about some old stone well in a campiello. They are for the most part smart and clean. You see them coming home from the factories, nearly always dressed in black, simple and well-behaved. Their hair is of a crisp black, and well tended; their manner is sedate and demure. There is no boisterousness about the Venetian girls, no turning round in the streets, no coarseness. Many of them are very beautiful. You see a woman crossing an open space with the sunlight gleaming on the amber beads about her throat and making the rich colour glow brighter beneath her olive skin. A shawl is thrown round her shoulders, and her jet-black hair is fastened by a silver pin. She wears a deep crimson bodice. The choice of colour of these women is unerring in taste. Their shawls are seldom gaudy, generally of blue or pale mauve; vivid colours are reserved for the bodices. Then, there are the bead-stringers. You see them everywhere: handsome girls with a richness of southern colour flushing beneath warm-toned skins, eyes large and dark, with heavy black lashes, the hair twisted in knots low on their necks, and swept back in large waves from square foreheads, a string of coloured beads round their necks, and flowered linen blouses with open collars. You see them with their wooden trays full of beads. The bead-stringers are nearly always gay. They laugh and chat as they run the beads on the strings. They often form a very pretty picture, as they bend over their work and thread turquoise beads from wooden trays. In the courtyards, some women are hanging white clothes on a line before a yellow wall; others are leaning out of their windows, gossiping with neighbours. Never was there a more gossiping set of women: every window, every balcony, seems to be thronged with heads thrust out to chatter. Venice is divided up into campi or squares. Each campo has a church, a butcher, a baker, a candlestick-maker, and everything else that is necessary to life, including a café and a market.