fisher-people, they play, sing, and dance among themselves. Some of the wives, mothers, and sisters are generally with them; but we were unfortunate enough to miss these, as they had gone down to Key West with the schooner the day before our arrival, remaining there to visit until the next trip. This schooner of José's is a taut craft of forty tons, and it carries all their fish to market. They sell wholly in Cuba, ordinarily at Havana, but occasionally at Matanzas. Both places furnish far better markets for their class of goods than any of our own ports; for the Cubans consume quantities of salt fish, most of which must be imported, as, owing to the filth of the harbors and adjacent waters of Havana and Matanzas, all their fish are condemned as inedible or disease-producing. Of course the war prices are now of the past; but Manuel's cargo always commands from five to seven cents per pound, sold in bulk. When you remember that mullet run THE EARLY MORNING CATCH-3,000 MULLET. from one to two and a half pounds each, and that during these two years of increased demand they have salted down all other fish that may come into their nets with the mullet (excepting only the offensive "cats"), you can see that the ranch brings in returns handsomely disproportioned to the expenditure of capital and labor. The dried roes must be counted in, also; I regret to have to say that they sell very large quantities of these, the prices ranging from twelve and a half to sixteen cents per pound. José's capital invested is $1,700 for the schooner, $200 for the net boat, and $75 for the great seine. He has several skiffs and dingeys, but they amount to little; probably $20 would cover all. Several of the men keep small sailboats of their own. A little labor keeps up the shacks, and $75 would surely buy the entire camping outfit. The schooner averages one trip per month to Cuba, and usually carries a heavy cargo of fish. But twice the preceding winter it had carried only eleven tons; this was owing to protracted wet weather. Neither the men nor the mullet will do their part when it rains; both keep strictly to cover. The usual cargo is from twentyfive to thirty tons. Six or eight men man the schooner on these tripsa different set going each time, since the majority of them are as good sailors as fishermen and this holiday is greedily sought. With a fair wind they often sail on us dozens of sweet lemons (gathered in abundance from an abandoned grove on a neighboring island), loaves of his fresh bread, dishes of really delicious broiled roe, and all sorts of stews and chowders odious with garlic to our Saxon palates. He it was, too, who first spied out our camera, and begged for his "fotografia," insisting that it should be taken with his watch in his hand -perhaps with some vague idea of proving himself a systematic chef; also that we should include his chum, a brigandish-looking old fellow who yet revealed his softer side by hastening away and returning with his mandolin and mimic tambourine. 'Tonio it was, again, who invited us each day into his quaint kitchen, a low shack of palmetto thatch, but, unlike the others, having boarded sides; it was furnished with a long, rough table, rude benches on either side, a muchworn stove at one end, various im ANTONIO AND HIS CHUM. boxes, and other contrivances for holding provisions. A giant coffee-pot furnished reminder of the one great indispensable on the fisherman's menu every time. A great tub was swung from the rooftree, and lowered or raised by rope and pulley, this peculiar device being the camp method of keeping every sort of vermin from the bread. from Captiva to Havana in two days, the provised cupboards, and sundry barrels, distance being only two hundred and twenty miles via Key West. But they usually linger a week in one or the other city, visiting friends, seeing the sights, and spending their money lavishly. Indeed, improvidence, that goes hand in hand with a reckless generosity on one side and a light indifference to the demarcation of meum et tuum on the other, seems to be a racial characteristic of these fishermen. This was well illustrated in the Captiva kitchen. Here "Tonio (or in full, Antonio Quevasa) presided. "Tonio the genial, the gentle, the generous. He it was who summoned the captain to talk to us on our arrival; he it was who pressed 'Tonio's bunk, with its flowered calico mosquito and sand-fly curtains, was in the kitchen; it was elevated as we noticed all the bunks in the various shacks to be raised about three feet above the ground, and under it a bushel or so of Irish potatoes were spread out and sprouting lustily in the humid atmosphere. On a shelf above, onions were sending out strong green shoots, and I could not help thinking how disagreeable the smells must be in the night. But doubtless Antonio's Spanish olfactories are proof against unpleasantness of that sort. The ubiquitous feature of that apartment was the garlic, festooned and pendant whichever way you turned. One of the Carolinians said to us in confidence: "Oh, we have plenty to eat an' abundance to waste; but if it wasn't for the coffee an' fish roe, I'd starve here. Everything tastes just like everything else from that everlastin' garlic. An' when it ain't garlic, it's spice. They even mess up the canned goods that way." Abundance to waste! It did not require more than one trip to the kitchen to comprehend the fact. Even the numerous chickens, cats, and dogs that were hangers-on, had grown capricious in their appetites from overmuch feeding, while the mascot of the ranch, Manuel's huge, sleek black cat, had to be coddled like a princeling. Seeing all this, and remembering Florida prices, one could not question the captain's estimate of $4,000 requisite to cover the supplies for seven months, even though the water is a good free market, lemons, sea-grapes, wild figs, pawpaws, and prickly pears cost them nothing, and no government imprint raises the price of that indispensable commodity, aguardiente, their popular sugar-cane rum, the name of which, by the way, they corrupt into what sounds like "augerdent." 66 Easy come, easy go "it is with these fishers' money, as one might almost say it is with their lives. Lightness and gaiety are their characteristics, rather than the austere resolution and courage of the men who risk so much on the Grand Banks every year. There is no death from exposure here, and very little sickness of any sort. There are no storms or dangers of the deep to be faced daily, little indeed to cultivate the sterner virtues. True, when we were at Captiva we knew Manuel to sail thirty miles in a blue nor'wester to attend a dance or baile a ranch on Pine Island Sound, where a Spanish fisherman's five daughters were the center of charm. Any of his men would have done the same, and thought nothing of it; for they are not without boldness and endurance enough where their pleasures or desires are concerned. 66 at Let them be, the men of Captiva and the neighboring islands and shores, with the gay sunshine on their sails and on their natures. Just as they are, with their virtues and their vices unaltered, they interest us, these aliens under our flag. Stranger things have happened than that a sturdy citizenry should grow from such beginnings. A FLORENTINE MONK'S ROMANCE. BY ELIZABETH M. ELGIN. HERE is one pilgrimage outside the gates of Florence which every student of art history should make, not merely for the interest which attaches itself to the work of an artist whose pictures may be seen in the Uffizi and Pitti galleries, not solely for an inspection of the faded frescoes by this master upon the walls of an ancient cathedral, but for love of a romance which even in this practical age appeals to the sentiment of every reader who learns, in connection with the art history of this painter, his heart history as well. It is a story which comes down through the centuries in unsatisfactory, broken bits, pieced out by tradition where history fails; yet a wonderful record even at its worst-a record which succeeding painters and chroniclers have broidered with the seed pearls of their fancy. This pilgrimage should be to Prato, a small town once belonging to Florence, whose fortunes it shared throughout the middle ages. It boasts of a church interesting to all lovers of early Renaissance architecture, and numbers among its sculptures and paintings works by Donatello, Michelozzo, Andrea della Robbia, the incomparable Mino da Fiesole, and Rossellino, and Filippo Lippi's finest frescos. It is not for these art treasures, however, that the pilgrimage should be made, as better specimens of the work of most of these artists may be found elsewhere. The student bent on satisfying a sentiment, should pass by the duomo and up the paved street in search of the narrow via Margherita where, in the convent of that name, once lived the young novice whose love the artistmonk Filippo Lippi stole unawares, and whose face looks out from the Madonnas of his famous canvases. In this Italian town was laid the romance of Fra Filippo Lippi, the Carmelite monk who linked his name and fate with Lucretia Buti, and whose son was the Filippo, or Filippino Lippi, who as a painter is classed with his illustrious father, and his master, Botticelli; their works in the churches and galleries of Florence showing a strong line of demarcation from the style of all preceding artists. This is the romance, as far as can be gathered, from the few authentic sources at the command of the twentieth-century historian: under that master's instruction, or copied from these frescos in the Brancacci chapel, as his early work strongly savors of Masaccio's influence. At the age of fifteen he took the vows of the order, more from necessity of circumstances than from inclination, it is presumed; but he was permitted to leave the convent in 1432, still wearing his monastic garb, to follow his vocation as painter, for which he early evinced a taste. He led a wandering THE PAINTER LIPPI AND THE NUN BUTI." BY G. CASTAGNOLA. Filippo Lippi, born at Florence in the year 1406 (some chronicles have it 1412), was the son of Tommaso Lippi, a Florentine butcher. At the age of eight years, being left an orphan, he was adopted by an order of Carmelite monks whose convent walls overshadowed the shop of his parents. It was in the church attached to this convent that Masaccio left those frescos which have been the inspiration of all Florentine painters since his day; and it is thought that the Young novitiate must either have painted life for a time, receiving commissions from patrons, one of whom was Cosimo de' Medici, who recognized the talent of the young monk, and afterwards befriended him in the greatest crisis of his career. In 1442, Filippo Lippi was made rector of San Quirico at Legnaia; and, in 1452, he became chaplain of the monastery of San Niccolo di Fieri in Florence. Of his life during those ten years little is known, except the fact that some of his best panel pictures were executed at that time. Vasari, without whose notes on Italian painters modern historians would be hopelessly at sea, states that after his departure from the Carmelite convent, Filippo Lippi was abducted by Moorish rovers on the shores of the Adriatic, and taken as a slave to Barbary; that he was returned to his country by his master, who thus rewarded the artist for drawing his portrait in a wonderful manner. Unfortunately, Vasari's love for the embellishment of dry facts led him far afield in his search for interesting material, and this ingenious account of the ten years of the monk's life must be questioned. His ablest work, now faded almost beyond recognition, was begun at the expiration of the ten years, in the choir of the pieve (now the duomo), at Prato; and here begins the romance which linked forever his name with the fortunes of this little dependency of Florence. The nuns of the convent of Santa Margherita at Prato held among their number the two sisters, Spinetta and Lucretia Buti, aged respectively seventeen and sixteen years. These sisters took the veil in 1451 not of their own free will, but at the instiga THE MADONNA BY FILIPPO LIPPI. THE FACE IS A tion of their brother, who, upon their father's death, was left with a large family to support. Filippo Lippi at this time was appointed chaplain to the convent of Santa Margherita, and of his own accord added the office of ecclesiastical painter to his duties. At the desire of the abbess, he set about completing an altar-piece for the convent chapel, taking as his model for the Madonna in his picture, Lucretia, the younger of the Buti sisters. In spite of the watchful eyes of the abbess, the painter contrived to declare his love for the young novitiate, who fled with her sister to his protection during the confusion attendant upon a public sacred festival in Prato, at which the nuns were present. The two sisters remained at Filippo Lippi's home for two years, and to Lucretia was born a son who was destined to perpetuate the artistic reputation of his father. At the end of two years, Lucretia and Spinetta Buti were induced to rejoin the sisterhood, taking upon themselves fresh vows; but escaping again to the protection of the monk, they called down upon his head the maledictions of the church, which was forced to take cognizance of the scandal. It was at this juncture that Cosimo de' Medici used his influence with Pope Pius II., and induced that prelate to issue a bull, releasing the two from their monastic vows, and sanctioning their marriage. According to Vasari, their daughter Allesandria was born in 1465, four years after the marriage of her parents; but some historians give credence to the story of Lucretia's untimely death before the kindly prelate could carry into effect his intentions on their behalf. Filippo Lippi being now deprived of all of the benefices of the church, had to depend upon his pencil for a livelihood. Yet the heart which beat too high for a monkish garb, must have been an improvident one as well; for it is known that the artist was poor all his life, at times being in great straits for money. After finishing the frescos in the pieve at Prato, Filippo Lippi obtained a commission |