Having given the boatman explicit directions you settle back in your cushion seat to enjoy the trip. You marvel how he, standing at the stern, with his single oar fitted into a shallow notch of his steering post, propels the craft so swiftly and guides it so surely by those short, twisting strokes of his. Really, you reflect, it is rowing by shorthand. You are feasting your eyes on the wonderful color effects and the groupings that so enthuse the artist, and which he generally manages to botch and boggle when he seeks to commit them to canvas; and betweenwhiles you are wondering why all the despondent cats in Venice should have picked out the Grand Canal as the most suitable place in which to commit suicide, when--bump!--your gondola swings up against the landing piles in front of a glass factory and the entire force of helpers rush out and seize you by your arms--or by your legs, if handier--and try to drag you inside, while the affable and accommodating gondolier boosts you from behind. You fight them off, declaring passionately that you are not in the market for colored glass at this time. The hired hands protest; and the gondolier, cheated out of his commission, sorrows greatly, but obeys your command to move on. At least he pretends to obey it; but a minute later he brings you up broadside at the water-level doors of a shop dealing in antiques, known appropriately as antichitas, or at a mosaic shop or a curio shop. If ever you do succeed in reaching your destination it is by the exercise of much profanity and great firmness of will. The most insistent and pesky shopkeepers of all are those who hive in the ground floors of the professedly converted palaces that face on three sides of the Square of Saint Mark's. You dare not hesitate for the smallest fractional part of a second in front of a shop here. Lurking inside the open door is a husky puller-in; and he dashes out and grabs hold of you and will not let go, begging you in spaghettified English to come in and examine his unapproachable assortment of bargains. You are not compelled to buy, he tells you; he only wants you to gaze on his beautiful things. Believe him not! Venture inside and decline to purchase and he will think up new and subtle Italian forms of insult and insolence to visit on you. They will have brass bands out for you if you invest and brass knuckles if you do not.