The stocks of goods in the shops were not extensive, generally.  In the vestibule of what seemed to be a clothing store, we saw eight or ten wooden dummies grouped together, clothed in woolen business suits and each marked with its price.  One suit was marked forty-five francs—­nine dollars.  Harris stepped in and said he wanted a suit like that.  Nothing easier:  the old merchant dragged in the dummy, brushed him off with a broom, stripped him, and shipped the clothes to the hotel.  He said he did not keep two suits of the same kind in stock, but manufactured a second when it was needed to reclothe the dummy.

In another quarter we found six Italians engaged in a violent quarrel.  They danced fiercely about, gesticulating with their heads, their arms, their legs, their whole bodies; they would rush forward occasionally with a sudden access of passion and shake their fists in each other’s very faces.  We lost half an hour there, waiting to help cord up the dead, but they finally embraced each other affectionately, and the trouble was over.  The episode was interesting, but we could not have afforded all the time to it if we had known nothing was going to come of it but a reconciliation.  Note made—­in Italy, people who quarrel cheat the spectator.

We had another disappointment afterward.  We approached a deeply interested crowd, and in the midst of it found a fellow wildly chattering and gesticulating over a box on the ground which was covered with a piece of old blanket.  Every little while he would bend down and take hold of the edge of the blanket with the extreme tips of his fingertips, as if to show there was no deception—­chattering away all the while—­but always, just as I was expecting to see a wonder feat of legerdemain, he would let go the blanket and rise to explain further.  However, at last he uncovered the box and got out a spoon with a liquid in it, and held it fair and frankly around, for people to see that it was all right and he was taking no advantage—­his chatter became more excited than ever.  I supposed he was going to set fire to the liquid and swallow it, so I was greatly wrought up and interested.  I got a cent ready in one hand and a florin in the other, intending to give him the former if he survived and the latter if he killed himself—­for his loss would be my gain in a literary way, and I was willing to pay a fair price for the item —­but this impostor ended his intensely moving performance by simply adding some powder to the liquid and polishing the spoon!  Then he held it aloft, and he could not have shown a wilder exultation if he had achieved an immortal miracle.  The crowd applauded in a gratified way, and it seemed to me that history speaks the truth when it says these children of the south are easily entertained.