ABSTRACT
Abundance is less than opulence but more than plenty. Florence is not a great city, but it abounds. Florence decorates herself publicly, with flowers in street islands and the middles of avenues. Most modern cities do that, even if not all have statues parting the traffic, a bronze fawn or a pony like a ship’s figurehead. The very young get special abundance at Epiphany and Carneval. In some families when a milk tooth comes out, it is wrapped in paper with the Befana’s name written on it and placed on the hearth or table. Goldfish are on sale in tiny plastic bags of water, and rabbits, puppies, tortoises and cagebirds. The young father probably did not know that there was a precedent for the maleness of the name in an eleventh century monk at Worcester.
