The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-08-14
From William Allen Whites Venice Let
 ter to the Emporia Gazette.


 AN ITH all the water traffic and
 NRJ with not horse or a cab or a
 w wagon to wake the echoes, the utter silence of Venice Is the thing that first impresses the traveller. Yet because there is no undertone of city noises in which occasional noises may merge. the Grand canal at Venice seems to the sleep CT at night the noisest place in the world. For every little noise crashes into ones sleep, and the most wakeful hours of our six weeks in Italy were spent on the Grand canal in Venice. The bells of the churches probably do not ring louder nor more frequently than they ring in other cities. Yet because Venice Is so still these bells clang through the night like the alarm of a continuous and ever increasing fire. The bawl of a love-lorn human calf carrying home three drinks and throbbing heart, noise that may be heard by the attentive listener any place on earth after Il o'clock, in Venice becomes insistent and demoniacal The common quarrel in the street enters the bedroom at night with nerve-wracking distinctness; and the morning song of the market gardener bringing his wares to town in his silent boat smites the sleep CTS ears like a call to arms. If Mao beth really did murder sleep the crime was done in Venice.
 There are, of course, considerable acres in yenice--.siands- s--where the streets are paved and where commerce goes on in the ordinary way--except that there are no horses or carriages in the narrow ways. On these islands are the hundreds of little shops which make Venice de- light to- the tourist almost as keen as Florence. These shops have two distinc- tive things not found elsewhere in Italy except sparsely. They are Venetian glass beads, tableware, bric-a-brac-and Ven- etian lace. Every town in Italy and in the world for that matter, has it's distinctive thing. Tn Emoorta 1t is white face cattle and the Normal school. In Florence it is tewslry; in Kansas City 1t is the packing houses and the Kensas City Star; in Rome 1t is marble and bronze; in Venice it is glass and lace. And they are all beautiful after their kind.
 But the glass and lace of Venice are especially beautiful and astonishingly cheap. And the shops-little affairs not much larger than a cigar stand in hotel lobby-are enticing beyond telling. One wonders how so much may be kept and displayed in such a little srace. For in addition to the beads and tumblers and faces of the town, these shops have mar bles and bronzes from Rome, corals and tortoise shell work from Naples, silver ware from Florence and antiques from all over Europe. But these are the bait for tourists.
 The stores for the home trade are not ! as a rule. so we'll managed. These things l go more hit or rilgs--after the Italian way in storekeeping. We saw feather | fans and fiatirous displayed in the same | window, and in the same store were l clocks and candy-and it was store no bigger than Tibbals' jewelry store in l Emporia-not big department store. In mems ware the stock was bad. Never
 before were so many paper collars and
 makeup ties and cheap shirts displayed | in fashionable streets. There is not a l store in Venice as large as Rorabaugh's | in Emporia. no one that carries an as- l sortment in its own line so wide and sc | wisely selected.
 The grocery store as we know 1t is unknown in Italy. The cheese shop il one kind of shop. The canned goods
 shops Is another. The green grocery is (
 sidewalk stand. and very little else. ant rarely does the vegetable dealer carr,