hanced to have the very thing I wanted
to see--no other than Leoni's "Life of Petrarch," to which I have
already referred. Courtesy is the blood in an Italian's veins, and I
need not say that the ecclesiastic of Arqua, seeing my interest in
the place, was very polite and obliging. But he continued to sleep
throughout our first stay in Arqua, and I did not see him then.

I strolled up and down the lazy, rambling streets, and chiefly devoted
myself to watching the young women who were washing clothes at the
stream running from the "Fountain of Petrarch." Their arms and legs
were bronzed and bare, and they chattered and laughed gayly at their
work. Their wash-tubs were formed by a long marble conduit from the
fountain; their wash-boards, by the inward-sloping conduit-sides; and
they thrashed and beat the garments clean upon the smooth stone. To
a girl, their waists were broad and their ankles thick. Above their
foreheads the hair was cut short, and their "back hair" was gathered
into a mass, and held together by converging circle of silver pins.

The Piazza della Fontana, in Arqua, is a place some fifty feet in
length and breadth, and seems to be a favorite place of public resort.
In the evening, doubtless, it is alive with gossipers, as now with
workers. It may be that then his reverence, risen from his nap,
saunters by, and pauses long enough to chuck a pretty girl under the
chin or pinch an urchin's cheek.

Our dinner was ready by the time I got back to the inn, and we sat
down to a chicken stewed in oil and a stoup of the white wine of
Arqua. It was a modest feast, but, being a friend to oil, I found it
savory, and the wine was both good and strong. While we lingered
over the repast we speculated somewhat carelessly whether Arqua had
retained among its simplicities the primitive Italian cheapness of
which you read much. When our landlord leaned over the table and made
out our account on it with a bit of chalk, the bill was as follows:--

Soldi.
Chicken 70
Bread 8
Wine 20
--
Total 98

It surely was not a costly dinner, yet I could have bought the same
chicken in Venice for half the money; which is but another proof that
the demand of the producer is often much larger than the supply of
the consumer, and that to buy poultry cheaply you must not purchase it
where raised,--

..."On misty mountain ground,
Its own vast shadow glory crowned,"--

but rather in a la