the Venetians are still the best sailors in the Adriatic.

I do not offer the idea as a contribution to statistics, but it seems to
me that the most active branch of industry in Venice is plucking fowls. In
summer the people all work on their thresholds, and in their windows, and
as nearly out of doors as the narrowness of the streets will let them,--
and it is hard to pass through any part of the city without coming to a
poulterer's shop, in the door of which inevitably sits a boy, tugging at
the plumage of some wretched bird. He is seldom to be seen except in that
crisis of plucking when he seems to have all but finished; yet he seems
never to accomplish the fact perfectly. Perhaps it is part of his hard
fate that the feathers shall grow again under his hand as fast as he
plucks them away: at the restaurants, I know, the quantity of plumage one
devours in consuming roast chicken is surprising--at first. The birds are
always very lean, too, and have but a languid and weary look, in spite of
the ardent manner in which the boy clasps them while at work. It may be
that the Venetians do not like fat poultry. Their turkeys, especially, are
of that emaciation which is attributed among ourselves only to the turkey
of Job; and as for the geese and ducks, they can only interest anatomists.
It is as if the long ages of incursion and oppression which have
impoverished and devastated Italy had at last taken effect upon the
poultry, and made it as poor as the population.

I do not want to give too exclusive an impression of Venetian industry,
however, for now I remember the Venetian _lasagnoni_, whom I never
saw doing any thing, and who certainly abound in respectable numbers.

The lasagnone is a loafer, as an Italian can be a loafer, without the
admixture of ruffianism, which blemishes most loafers of northern race. He
may be quite worthless, and even impertinent, but he cannot be a rowdy,--