Identifier: menmannersofoldf00biag (find matches)
Title: Men and manners of old Florence
Year: 1909 (1900s)
Authors: Biagi, Guido, 1855-1925
Subjects:
Publisher: Chicago, A. C. McClurg and co.
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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hronicles, and private cor-respondence, from story-tellers and poets, from dustyarchives and forgotten records. Here embedded aremany interesting particulars, many anecdotes, manyitems of news that help to give an insight into thelife of that time, so remote even from our imagination.In the narrow, crowded streets, beside the massivestone palaces secure as fortresses, with their embattledtowers rising proudly above their heads, crouchedroofs thatched with straw, and windows covered withoiled linen in lieu of glass. These houses were alwaysexposed to danger by fire, and Paolo di Ser Pace daCertaldo, as we read in a previous chapter, advisedpeople always to keep large sacks ready, in which toremove their portable property in case of a con-flagration in the neighbourhood, and also long ropesto serve as fire-escapes, for even the higher, better-class houses, with their many rooms and windingpassages, were not much safer. The dusty streetswere never swept, except by the water that ran like
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Photo) OR SAN MICHEIE, THE SHRIXE BY ORCAGNA. (Aliiiaii.(2c) /,icv pogf 89. PRIVATE LIFE OF THE FLORENTINES 89 a rivulet in and out of the gutters, in which, asSacchetti tells us in his famous novels, thoseanimals specially protected by San tAntonio usedto wallow, after which they will pay visits in theneighbouring houses, bringing with them dirt, con-fusion, and disorder. Not that these houses werepatterns of cleanliness. They were swept once a week,on Saturdays ; on other days the refuse was tossedunder the bed, where could be found a little of every-thing, such as fruit-parings, cores, bones, pluckedfeathers, and live fowls, cackling geese, and an abun-dance of cobwebs. These were just the modestdwellings of a people satisfied with very little, whothought more of gain than of the comforts and luxuriesof daily life—people pertaining to good families,nevertheless, but who passed their time shooting andhunting in the country over their own lands. Some-tirnes, however, they were also

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