I haven’t seen a real clothing store in Italy. There are two classes of Italians only: The rich, who have a tailor, and the poor, who put the goods together themselves. Again I want to repeat what I have said before: The things that are cheap in Europe are those in which labor is the principal factor. When it comes to hiring a man to do work, you name your price. That is why carriage-driving, servants, clothes-making, the building trades and labor of every kind from lace-makers to railroad engineers, are so low.
The Italian shopkeepers have a well-deserved reputation as bargainers. Go into a shop, ask a price, and very likely the proprietor or clerk will say “So much: what will you give?” Americans have a reputation of being “easy,” and so they usually start us with a price of “6 francs,” when they will come down to one or two rather than lose a sale. When you get through you never know just how much you have been beaten—you only know you have been. Some stores advertise “fixed prices,” but they are unfixed if necessary. The process of “shopping” thus has another and delicious feature for the American “shopper.”
I have found the Italians honest. We hardly ever lock our room. I am always leaving the umbrella, but somebody always finds it and brings it to me, and I can’t say that much for Americans. The hackmen do not overcharge, or at least not near as much as in Chicago or New York. I think a stranger is better treated in Rome than in Kansas City. But then comes the suspicious thought—we pay for it.
Previous to this trip I had often heard people talk about the fleas in Italy, and had thought it was very funny. It is no joke. At first I was much amused when I would see a well-dressed lady stop suddenly on the street, elevate her skirt and go hunting. I now consider it a perfectly justifiable and proper action. If there is a game law in Italy with a closed season on fleas it is not at this time of the year. I have seen the anxious, heart-stricken look on the faces of the martyrs and saints as painted by the old masters, and I know now where they got their models, for I have seen the man and the woman conscious of the march of the flea along the small of the back or in some other unreachable place, and have seen the haunted, hunted look on the face as conjecture what the flea would do next changed into realization. The Italian flea works a good deal like the American mosquito, only he makes no music and you can only tell where he is by sad experience. He can dodge better than some politicians and he can get in his work early and often. I am growing accustomed to the sensation myself, but I do not think I shall ever enjoy it. The Bible says the wicked flee when no man pursueth, but in Italy the wicked flea is improving each minute whether anyone pursueth or not. Mingled with art and old masters, lagoons, and gondolas, cathedrals and Cæsars, blue sky and green fields, will always be my recollection of the flea that never takes a siesta and to whom the poets have never done justice.