It is heated to the correct temperature and incorporated in the ball of white glass at the spot where the pupil is to be. This done, and the white of the eye having assumed the proper creamy color, the delicate feat of making the veins is performed. In doing this, heated tubes of red streaked glass are drawn very deftly over the white surface, leaving tiny reddish streaks behind-the veins.

"It is difficult to say how long it takes to make an eye," said Signore Rubbi. "That depends on what kind of an eyc you are making. This lot of eyes here, for a hospital in Australia, is made in a short time. It need hardly be said that making a hospital eye is different from making an eye for a fashionable young lady. The one customer, so long as he has any resemblance at all to an eye in his head, is satisfied. His eye costs about two dollars. The fashionable young lady, however, will probably have half a dozen eyes made before she is satisfied. Now it is the veins that are a little too red, now the pupil a trifle too small or too large. And," continued the signor, "it is odd that these fastidious people are more particular with their night than with their day eyes."

"Night and day eyes? What do you mean?"

66 Were you not aware that a different eye is worn for night? Certainly; the pupil is much smaller in daytime than at night, and your fashionable woman would not think of entering a ballroom with the pupils of her eyes of different sizes. When I receive orders from this class, I have to study the eye at all hours of the day and night. Very distant customers sometimes have an artist paint a portrait of the eye, but that method is not altogether satisfactory, and the rich customer generally comes to have his eye personally examined."

On the completion of an eye, before being wrapped in its soft bed of cotton, it is laid on a platter to cool. The first glimpse of a platter of eyes is startling. They seem so natural, look so like they had just jumped out of their owners' heads, that they cause an involuntary start of surprise.

The only horses in Venice are those in bronze over St.

Mark's. They were originally in Alexandria, whence they were brought to Rome by Augustus. Constantine transferred them to Constantinople, where for many centuries they ornamented St. Sophia. The Doges drove them over to Venice. Several centuries afterwards, when Napoleon began his celebrated feat of whipping all Europe, the French drove them over to Paris. There they remained until Napoleon went to St. Helena, then they came back to Venice again. Other trips these bronze horses have made, but they somehow always managed to trot or gallop or fly or swim back to Venice, where they are at the present day, perched upon St. Mark's-a standing curiosity to people unaccustomed to regard horses in the light of church ornaments.

The largest piece of land to be found in Venice is the Piazza of St. Mark, probably large enough to hold the Fifth Avcnue Hotel. It is thronged every evening by thousands of people. A citizen may live several miles away, but when evening comes he jumps into his gondola and goes to St. Mark's Piazza to stare and to be stared at. Certainly many of the strollers one sees there are worth staring at; specimens of so many nationalities are not often seen elsewhere. Eastern races are well represented. I saw a Turk promenade every evening up and down the Piazza, smoking long cigarettes. His dress was of the brightest colors, his silk trousers were very baggy: they came only a little below the knee. His jacket of silk was so scanty it hardly sufficed to cover his back. There were tassels on his shoes and on his turban. He was always alone, seemed to be objectless. I wondered what had brought him westward.

Westward? Venice west! That sounds odd to American ears, yet relative to Stamboul or Damascus, Venice is in the 66 far west." The first time I was in San Francisco I overheard a conversation in the hotel dining-room.

"Well, Bill, good-by," said one man to another. "I shall not be East again for some time."

It was my first trip west of the Rockies, and I naturally thought I was at the western limits.

"Excuse me," said I to the stranger, "but did that you were not coming East again?"

"I did. What of it?"

Why, I wanted to know when were you East?" "When was I East? By the horned spoon, man, where do you call me now?"

The gentleman was from Honolulu.

Before leaving Venice I visited the arsenal and looked at the mediæval relics. The armor worn at Lepanto in 1571 by Sebastiano, Captain-general of the Venetian Republic, is there, as is also his sword, with which he doubtless thumped many a hardheaded Turk. More interesting than Sebastiano's armor is that of Henry IV. of Navarre. Near by is his sword and the identical white plume which he bade his soldiers watch and follow into the thickest of the fight. The plume, discolored and torn by time and rough usage, was presented to Venice in 1603.

CHAPTER XI.

THE STORY OF A RESTLESS TRAVELLER.-A PICKWICKIAN INCIDENT IN MILAN. THE ROYAL FAMILY.-FAREWELL TO ITALY.

EN ROUTE from Venice to Milan I stopped in Padua. There is not much to see in Padua—only a few churches and a university-but I was interested in the place from its association with a very singular gentleman whose acquaintance I made several years ago when an attaché in the office of a western newspaper.

It was during the dull season, and I was lolling in an easychair, running over the morning issue of the paper, when there entered a gray-haired gentleman, spare and lean in figure, and his deep-set eyes nervous, restless, glancing quickly here and there, as if on the watch for some hidden enemy.

"I wish to subscribe," he said.

"Certainly," said I, arising. "W. Keane King."

"And the address?"

66

What name, sir?"

"The address the address?" repeated the man, with deepset eyes, nervously-"the address? Well, send it to-to Padua."

"To where?"

"To Pad- No, after all you may as well send it to Paris." "Paris, Tennessee, or Paris, Kentucky?"

"Paris what?" exclaimed the gray-haired gentleman. "Why, Paris, France. That is my address-Rue St. Honore."

It was not every day that we had subscribers from Padua and Paris, so I endeavored to draw the old gentleman into conversation. At first he was shy and cautious; by degrees, however, he relaxed, and finally related something of his strange life.

"My wife died many years ago," he said, "and since her death I have wandered from place to place, never pausing, never resting. My headquarters are in Paris. There I keep my books and paintings and papers. Once a year I go there and, burying myself in my chambers, read in the papers that have accumulated the world's history for the past year. Then I resume my travels. I have apartments in every capital in Europe -in all I feel equally at home. I had expected to spend the winter in Padua, but now that I think of it, I shall go instead to Paris and Madrid. I start on my forty-ninth voyage across the Atlantic next Saturday."

We sent the paper to the Rue St. Honore, Paris, as directed, and from time to time our singular subscriber sent me foreign journals, now from Spain, now from Russia, the next week perhaps from Turkey or Persia. A year or two passed, when one morning who should enter but Mr. W. Keane King, and as quietly and sedately as if he had been absent but a moment to step across the street. He renewed his subscription to the paper, this time directing it to be sent to Moscow, and was about to leave without further remark, when my brother, who, as it happened, had only returned that morning from a trip to Australia, came into the office. I introduced him and mentioned the fact of his recent trip.

“What, from Australia?" exclaimed Mr. King. "Tell me something of that country. Singular," he added, musingly— "singular I never thought of going there."

My brother's account interested him.

"You may send the paper to Sydney," he said. "I shall not go to Moscow."

That was the last I ever saw of him. Our telegraph editor, who knew the old gentleman-as did, indeed, every one in the office-showed me a few days later a despatch announcing his sudden death in Memphis, Tennessee. So far as I could learn, he died without heirs, and his books, art collections, etc., in the various States of Europe escheated to the respective governments in which they were located.