Cañon City record., 1909-10-14


and Venitian lace.
Every town in Italy and the world,
for that matter, has distinctive
thing. In Canon City, apples and the
Skyline drive.
In Florence. Italy, it is jewelry, in
Kansas City it is the packing houses
and the Kansas City Star; in Rome
it is the marble and bronze; in Eldo-
rado it is Bent Murdock; 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 astonish-
ingly cheap. And the shops-little af-
fairs not much larger than cigar
store in hotel lobby are the enticing
beyond telling. One wonders how
much may be kept in and displayed
in such a little space. For in addition
to the beads and tumblers and laces
of the town, these shops have marbles
and bronzes from Rome, corals and
tortise-shell work from Naples, sill
verware from Florence and antiques
/
the bate for the tourists. The stores
for the home trade are not, as a rule.
so well managed.
These things go more hit or miss
after the Italian way in storekeeping.
We saw feather fans and fiatirons dis
played in the same window and in the
same store were clocks and candy
and it was a store not bigger than
Tibbals jewelry store in Emporia-
not big department store.
In mems wear the stock was bad
Never before were so many paper col
lars and made-up ties and cheap
shirts displayed in fashionable streets
There is not a store in Venice as
large as Rorabaugh's In Emporia, no
one that carries an assortment of its
own line so wide and so wisely Sc
lected.
The grocery store. as Jones & Stone
and Frank Kenney and Ireland run 1t.
unknown in Italy. The cheese shop
is one kind OF shop. The canned
goods shop is another. The green gro
cery is a sidewalk stand and very lit
tie else, and rarely does the vegetable
dealer carry fruit also.
The meat seller handles no fish and
The fish monger carries no game. And
TO us the most interesting place in
Venice was the fish market. The time
we might have spent In the galleries
improving our minds We put in at the
fish market-a great block where sea
food of most varied and tempting
kinds. mostly new to us, was sold
The man and woman there were in
initely more interesting to us than
the stiff old painted figures on the
canvass In the art galleries.
AS for the churches-the town was
full of them. But we only went into
one-St. Mark's-on a hot day to cool
off. 1t looked like a great secondhand
store filled with brass lamps and
with faded pictures of rascally look
ng saints and with hidious martyr
who. doubtless dying in worthy
cause. did 1t so unbecomingly and
withal so unmartyr-like. that we
chilled sooner than we expected. and
hurried out into the sunlight.
There we saw one of the notable
sights in Europe-somethlng as en-
during and as universal in its appeal
as any canvass and as simple and
beautiful as anything alive may be-
II was the children feeding the
pigeons In st. Marks square. And
as the children and the pigeons have
been there for hundreds OF years and
probably will be there hundreds OF
years from now. the spectacle. though
ever changing as the generations of
children and pigeons come and grow
old and go away-the changing spec
tacle is eternal and deserves some
passing comment from the traveller.
st. Marks square seems to be a great
parallellogram about-at a guess-5O0
feet by 2600. At one end OF the GIN
ger-bread OF the cathedral. on the two
long sides are places over shops
the royal palace and the dogs pal
ace.
The palaces are rather gaily
facaded anil decorated in the upper
stories and the shops in the lower
stories are cheaply devoted to lace
and glass and bric-a-brac shops. and
under each palace is a great restau-
rant. Gmagine king or duke living
upstairs over a bakery)
The great parallellogram is paved
and upon the pavement are thousands
| of black and gray pigeons. And among