The Signora did. The Signora, indeed, had noticed that periodically pandemonium broke loose below.

"It is that the Signora Vittoria," explained Maria, further, "has gone without. Whenever she goes abroad, this poor Signora Vittoria, the school ceases to work. Ah! The Signora should see the school when the Signora goes forth. It goes to the windows and beckons to the gondolieri; it waves handkerchiefs out-yes, no sooner is the poor Signora Vittoria's back turned and she closes the great front door-Boom!-than each hand goes to each stocking and each girl brings forth each one a love-letter.

"Love-letters-those babies!" I ob

She returned breathless.

"I arrive but in time," she announced. "They were pulling hair; they were scratching faces and slapping, and all because the great Rosina told Juliettathe Signora knows that Rosina brutta with eyebrows so"-Maria impersonated the ill-favored Rosina-"Rosina said that Julietta had no lover, but wrote herself her own love-letters. Ping! Julietta strikes Rosina. Rosina pulls the hair of Julietta, while all the time the little Bettina, the only good one, sits in the corner like a Madonetta and sews and does her work and does not raise. her eyes. Like this, Signora-so good. And that red-haired tosa, Concetta, now that the others fight, has the window all to herself and makes eyes for all to the gondolieri without."

Thus, as in a mirror, did we see reflected the lights and shadows of the life of this little atelier of girls.

Our advent was a signal for decorum; sleek heads were bent over embroidery

frames, respectful voices uttered pleasant greetings when we appeared. We got to know them all by sight, and were able to talk to them, because first one and then another was to be seen performing small duties around the house. One would be found making a bed; one was seen blacking shoes, and we could never enter our kitchen without finding a girl washing dishes or scouring a copper saucepan. Why this helpfulness? we asked ourselves. Why this eagerness for housework? The answer was not far to seek. Gemma, the littlest of all, told me.

"Why do I wash the dishes for Maria, Signora?" she fluted after me. "For the cigarette-butts, Signora, I wash them. Maria Immacolata, perhaps the Signora knows, saves the butts, and these she gives us for what we may do. So many for making a bed, and so many for washing a dish, and for blacking shoes so many."

This ingenuous method did Maria employ to avoid all labor, nor could we stop it. When we asked Maria if she thought cigarettes were good for young children, she only replied that "girls would be girls, and that one could only be young

once.

It was in this fashion that we first began to know the people in Venice who worked, and then we got on terms of cordial acquaintance with all that little section where we went out to buy things. The highest point of our acquaintance with the lace school was on the feast of San Martin. We knew it was a feastday first through a chorus of giggles at the foot of our stairs, and then through the chanting of a song. It seemed that it was a sort of Shrove Tuesday affair, and one gathered that if one paid tribute in the way of food to the singers, one would have good luck throughout the year, and if we did not do so, that they wished us as many disasters as there were nails in the house.

So we resolved on a party. It seems that on San Martin's day little boys chant through the streets and receive a tribute of here a piece of bread, and there some nuts, perhaps an orange. But a party, one gathered from the manner in which they accepted our invitation, was a grand occurrence. We consulted Signora Vittoria as to what refreshments

to have. What would they like to eat? And the answer plumbs the depths between the demands of little girls in that country and little girls in this.

"White bread," said the Signora Vittoria, "if the Signora would be so good. White bread and a glass of wine.'

That made a party, mind you, in Venice for little girls of the sweetmeateating age.

"White bread and a glass of wine-" The Signora hesitated. And perhaps," she added, "a cigarette as well."

And the success of that party, to which we added sweet chocolate and a few other things, was a tribute to their high degree of social training. The way they let us in, without boldness or embarrassment, to their fun was a tribute also to the democracy of them. They were just a little tiny corner of that great Venice which at the slightest provocation can so enjoy itself, which asks only a little excuse and some white bread and a glass of red wine to make a festa.

With their cigarettes in their innocent hands, they sang throughout the evening in their sheer lightness of heart, sang the songs of the day, and other songs in such deep Venetian that to us it was just a babble of soft syllables. They told stories and sang again, and went away grateful to us, not realizing that the success of it all lay with them and their ability to come to us over the gulf of the differences of age and language and circumstances that separated us, and to keep us from first to last from feeling like outsiders.

These little girls, who were picturesque young rascals or touching little persons, according to the varying of one's point of view, were just part of the real Venice, that vast majority which works, and which was presently to bring home to us for the first time what the modern life of the people of Italy really means. And that of all places in the world one should have come to a realization of this sort in Venice is significant, it seems to

me.

The first thing that a traveler in Italy notices after he has recovered from his superficial observation of the surface of things is the passionate attachment of a man for his village. A man is Floren

tine first, and Tuscan next, and Italian third; the Tuscan fears and disapproves of the "Black Hand" of Naples with much the same shiver that a NewEnglander may, and feels himself as far removed from it. I have heard a Tuscan farmer in a railway train rejoice that he didn't have to go to America, where one meets the "Mano Nero" and the mafiosi people of the South.

Each little town has such a vivid personality of its own that at first Italy seems cut out into tiny and independent communities, hostile and incomprehensible one to the other. And yet in Italy there is at work a great force which binds the people together without sacrificing this local feeling. One may live there a long time without discovering it unless one has it brought home in the spectacular and vivid fashion in which it was brought home to us in Venice. And this force is the spirit of labor, the great spirit, purely modern in its expression, whose force no one has yet been able to measure. For it is a young giant which is only now learning its own strength.

What happened was this: Down in Brescia in the mining district there had been a strike. Troops had been called to maintain the peace. The strikers had borne themselves in a menacing way toward the troops, had thrown stones, and a riot seemed imminent. The troops fired, killing two strikers. The united labor of Italy, upon this, declared a general strike as a protest against what they termed the murder of their brothers. All the north of Italy was to be closed; all labor of every description was to

cease.

Through the greater part of the north the strike was only partially successful, though it was said that in some cities it was an impressive enough demonstration of the power of labor. But Venice, the remote; Venice, that we regard as a show city, getting its prosperity from ourselves and the travelers of other nations who come to view its peculiar beauty, was closed absolutely and entirely. The shutters went up on all the shops; the hotels and restaurants and public eating - places ceased to serve

meals. Strangers were served by the hand of the hotel proprietor and his wife. Visitors who were living in furnished places went hungry or shared a polenta of fish and bread with the householders where they were staying. No trains left Venice or came in for thirty-six hours. Strangers arriving in the railway station could find no man to carry their handluggage.

A friend of ours was able to get a facchino to carry his bag only after he had bribed him with a large sum. Some of his comrades intercepted him as a strike-breaker. They were very gentle about it, and argued:

"He is a poor man and his wife is sick."

"And," added the facchino, "the gentleman is ill and a stranger in Venice." "How much are you getting?" inquired one of the facchino's friends.

He was told what the sum was. They consulted a moment, then made up a purse among themselves and permitted

him to go on his way carrying the bag; so that in spirit the strike was not broken.

All traffic on all of the canals stopped; gondola and sandala and barge lay idle, thronging the little canals. No fishingboat went out; no boat laden with food or fruit came in from the islands. The great factories of Venice stopped their work; the great pasta factory at the end of the Zattere, which works day and night on eight-hour shifts manufacturing foodstuffs all hours of the twenty-four, ceased its work. In the canal of the Giudecca the great boats from England bearing coal waited by the rivas. A force had spoken, and from one moment to another had turned this busy and active city into a city of sleep. Silence was everywhere. One might walk miles through silent streets which turned their blank, shuttered faces toward one. On the street corners knots of unwonted idle men stood and talked in low tones. Strangest of all were the silent and