women are dressed in the vivid colours of their town, with scarlet
bodices and snowy cloths on their heads, broad-shouldered, fuU-
bosomed, straight-backed, large-waisted, and made to bear and to
endure. Their faces beam with health like russet apples glowing in
the autumn sun, and the circulation is decidedly good. So, too, is the
digestion, if one judges from the appetite with which they eat their
raw onions and salads, and bite great curves out of their wedges of
black bread.
Here, seated in the open street, you will see a peasant holding
under his chin a basin with a curved notch to fit his neck, from which
the piazza barber is rubbing lather over his face with his hand,
preparatory to reaping the thick black stubble of his beard. On the
opposite side you will hear the snapping of scissors, where sits an-
other peasant, whose round bullet-head has just been cropped close
to the skin ; or another, on whom the operation is now completed,
and who, as he rises from his chair, passes his hand over his head
with a grin of satisfaction, and puts on his new hat that he has just
bought in the piazza.
