The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1886-10-01

like everything there, the laces are coarse in
workmanship and rude in design in COMPARE
son to the fairy tissues wrought by the nim-
bic fingers Of the Venetian girls One estab-
lishment has a school, where little misses as
young as six or seven are taken as appren-
tees and put through course of instruction
until they reach the acme of their ambition,
when they earn seventeen cents day in
weaving applique and point laces, whose
threads they knot into moonbeam meshes
and oyerlay them with the tracery OF frost
work. We found here to our surprise, the
elaborate and durable bed spreads and cur
tains, which our city dealers recommend as
the nobby thing for every bridal outfit,
They are the work of the convicts in the
state prisons, who are employed by the We
netian lace manufacturers. One convict
often spends three hundred days out of
year, if Sundays, and church Fete days are
allowed for recreation or rest in netting
covering for lady's couch, and at the end
returns to his paternal government in conf
pensation for his daily rations, his lodging
and his mongrel suit, the paltry sum of TWEEN
ty dollars. We shall never look upon our
| purchases without being reminded of the
| joyless tasks that the unhappy prisoners
have had set before them.
After visiting the lace factories everybody
must see the glass and mosaic establish
ments. Boys and girls begin very young to
work in mosaics. 1t takes endless patience
to prick the tiny colored needles into the
soft clay or follow intricate patterns with
the colored stones. 1t is only in Italy, where
wages are so low and the poor require such
pittance for their necessities that this work
could be done so cheaply. The showcases of
| glass are full of wares whose colors and
| forms were never excelled by Pompeian ar
| tisans. We often felt our own littlcness be-
| side porter in hotel who would break in
| to his English while talking with us and an
swer questions from strangers in four or
five different languages; so we wondered at
first at the illiterate gondoliers, who pointed
out Desdemonas house, Othello's palace, and
| talked of Antonio, Shylock and Lord Byron
as we rowed under the Rialto. These people
are very learned while you adhere to the
subjects that affect their trade, but as soon
| as you strike out on new line of thought
| they founder about in grammatical labrinths
most helplessly. The lessons of historic
places and characters have been more zeal
eusly taught and carefully handed down
from father to son than the tenets Of their
catechism.
We took no note of time while I'VE were
fitting IN and out of the sunshine on the
sleepy canals of Venice, until letters from
home warned us we had exceeded our al
lotted time, and we must hasten northward
if we would be in Merry Old England to see
the opening of the hawthorne buds in the
month of May. Perhaps it was as easy to
say goodbye that week as any time, but we
were not reconciled to parting with Venice
until news of cholera reached our ears.
When SO many acres of terra frma lie I'M
improved within few miles, it is remarka-
BILE that settlements should have risen on the
little flats in this sluggish bay and been
linked together to make the strange city of
Venice. As we rolled over the bridge, held
up by three thousand arches, which is the
shortest cut to the main land, we could see
hundreds of embryo islands, which might in
the far off future ages be the bases of sister
cities. M. G. p. B.