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Brussels, and was inclined to divide the blame between the Brescians and his friend in the elevator business.

He was the only man I ever met who associated Brescia with carpets. Most English-speaking people who have heard of Brescia associate it either with Haynau or with Browning. A legend dating from the year 1848 charges Haynau, the Austrian general, with having flogged patriotic Brescian ladies, and it was the belief in this legend which led the draymen of Barclay and Perkins to mob Haynau when he visited London. That Haynau suppressed an insurrection in Brescia with stern severity is true. It was his duty as an Austrian general to suppress it, and he can hardly be blamed for so doing, no matter how warmly we may sympathize with the patriotic impulse which spurred the Brescians into revolt against their Austrian masters. Haynau shot men freely, but men who engage in an insurrection that fails must expect to pay the penalty. That he ever flogged women there is no sufficient evidence. The story was believed because, at the time, the hatred of Austria was so intense in Lombardy that the Italians were ready to believe anything against them. Still, until sufficient evidence that Haynau flogged women is forthcoming, it is unfair to charge him with that outrage.

Readers of Browning associate Brescia with the poem which describes a patriot on his way to be hanged, amid the applause of the delighted Brescian population. He had entered Brescia just a year previous to the date of his exit, and had been welcomed with enthusiastic demonstrations of approval. What he had done during the twelve months that reconciled the people to his death on the gallows is not mentioned. Possibly he wanted to introduce electric lights and automobiles and female suffrage into Brescia. At any rate, the Brescians had evidently had enough of him. Of course he was a purely imaginary patriot, and hence we are justified in saying that many people know Brescia only as the site of one or two mythical incidents. But that is not the fault of Brescia.

The guide-books inform us that Brescia is called "Brescia Armata," or Armed Brescia, and that it is so called because arms are manufactured there. I very much doubt this interpretation. Bologna has the title of "Bologna la Grassa," or Bologna the Eat. Does this mean that Bologna is celebrated for the manufacture of fat, instead of bologna sausages? Like many other Italian towns, Brescia is built on a hill, and is crowned with a castle which in medieval days must have been exceptionally strong. Perhaps Brescia was called the armed because she was always armed against her enemies. In the good old times when every Italian city fought against its neighbors, Brescia must have been a place which judicious generals left alone, while they sacked the cities of the plain.

The tall American and the Apologetic Porters

The first thing which strikes the observant visitor to Brescia is the excessive