A party of ladies go out shopping in a gondola, this may seem strange, but it is really true. They flit from street to street, and from shop to shop, they leave the gondola as a lady here leaves her carriage or her motor, by the curb, while they have rolls and rolls of silk or muslin or linen unrolled, and then, perhaps, have just enough cloth to make the pet dog at home a paletot. Human nature, we find, is much the same the world over. Boys and girls go to school in the gondola, while they jump and kick, and fight on the way, but only in play, until landed at the school house gateway. Nurses are out in the gondola with babies for an airing, and to pass away the sunny hours on the waters. Families go to church in the gondolas, dressed in their best, they are soon sculled to the place where they are wont to worship. The mail boat is a gondola, with its freight of letters newly arrived, and is always interesting. Funerals are also carried out in the same way. The gondola is heavily draped in black velvet and silver trimmings, and furnished with huge candles lighted, surmounting the canopy, under which lies one who, in his turn has trodden the silent highways in the enjoyment of health, but is now on his last journey, accompanied by the solemn chant of the priestly requiem. Business men come or go in the gondola as we do here in cab or motor. The doctor visits his patients in and out of the quaint old city, not on a bicycle, but in a gondola. We saw a party flitting, the furniture remover brought his gondolas, and furniture was handed out into this strange vehicle for such a purpose. At Venice it is common, indeed, the only way possible of conveying goods or furniture from house to house. So, for almost all purposes, the gondola is useful. We found it a most enjoyable, as well as a speedy means of getting about. To say there are no streets in Venice would be hardly true, or to say you cannot get from place to place only by water. There are only three bridges cross the Grand Canal which divides the city into pretty nearly equal halves. The city is built upon one hundred and seventeen islands, intersected by one hundred and fifty small canals, and two thousand five hundred and eighty passages or waterways; but almost all the waterways have a footpath bordering it, while four hundred bridges unite one island to another. It is, however, very bewildering to pace the mazes of this strange city. If you get five hundred yards from your starting point, you may have to cross half a dozen bridges before you can get back again.