Explore "The Soldo of the Castellani" by Francis Hopkinson Smith on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Via Garibaldi is astir to-day. From the Ponte Veneta Marina, next the caffè of the same name -- it is but a step -- to the big iron gates of the Public Gardens, is a moving throng of Venetians, their chatter filling the soft September air. Flags are waving -- all kinds of flags, and of all colors; gay lanterns of quaint patterns are festooned from window to window; old velvets and rare stuffs, some in rags and tatters, so often have they been used, stream out from the balconies crowded with pretty Venetians shading their faces with their parasols as they watch the crowds below.
In and out of this mass of holiday-makers move the pedlers crying their wares, some selling figs, their scales of polished brass jingling as they walk; some with gay handkerchiefs and scarfs draped about their trays; here and there one stands beside a tripod holding a big earthen dish filled with _fulpi_ -- miniature devil-fish about as big as a toad -- so ugly that no man, however hungry, except, perhaps, a Venetian, dares swallow one with his eyes open.