Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/465

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carried a copy of the paper in my pocket, to show them I had one. They also sold the New York Times, and I carried a copy of that paper, too. . . . Flowers grow in great profusion in Italy, and are sold by street peddlers who are hanging onto your carriage half the time. I bought fifteen very fine roses, on one occasion, for ten cents. . . . The Italian lire and the French franc are of the same value, twenty cents, and the franc circulates everywhere in Italy, as the lire circulates everywhere in France. If you ask for Italian money in Italy, you are as apt to get francs as lires. . . . Prices may have advanced abroad, as at home, but I doubt if the advance has been as great. Adelaide needed a pair of gloves, and the price at one of the best shops in Naples was fifty cents a pair. The same gloves would cost $1.50 at home. . . . You hear a great deal about tips abroad: how the servants mob you at hotels, etc. The tip nuisance is worse in New York than it is in Naples; besides, larger tips are exacted in New York. Carriage-hire here is less than half what it is in New York, and when I land in that American city I shall pay for rooms at the Waldorf-Astoria more than I paid for rooms and meals at the Hotel Vesuve. And Naples is one of the greatest resorts in Europe, and the Hotel Vesuve is one of the best hotels in Naples. . . . We expressed a desire to see the San Carlos theatre, one of the most famous in the world, and the guide promptly took us there, and had it lighted up for our special benefit. I was willing to give the theatre man forty cents, but our man said twenty cents was enough, and that was what we paid. The cathedral in Naples is also a famous