My first ride down the Grand Canal in Venice, from the railway station to the Riva, was my initial introduction to the Venetian wonderland. As a boy, I had read my "Arabian Nights" and had had, I suppose, dreams of Oriental things, but on no occasion that I can recall had anything Eastern ever taken hold of me sufficiently to inveigle me into a trip outside of my own country. That was wonderful enough for me then, and it becomes more wonderful to me every day that I grow older. But that first ride in Venice! As the gondola bore me down the canal to the Riva where my lodgings had been secured in advance, it seemed to me as if I were gliding into a new world, a world, indeed, that hardly belonged to our world at all. The mere strangeness of things did not impress me so much as their soft and gentle outlines. I thought then of the city, as I do still, more as a lovely, breathing creature, truly as a bride of the Adriatic, than as a dwelling place of man. I walked from my lodgings to the Piazza. As I turned into the Piazzetta, and the glory of that wonderful square flashed upon me in the glow of the bright afternoon sun, I came suddenly to a halt. Such moments mean different things to different men. I remember now what passed through my mind, as if it were yesterday: "If to come to this entrancing spot, young man, is your payment for pulling out of the slough that you once let yourself into, then your reward is indeed sweet." For four most enjoyable months I lingered near that fascinating Piazza reluctant to leave it. Lord Curzon thinks that the Rhigistan in Samarcand, considering all things, is the most beautiful square in the world. Perhaps, had I seen the Rhigistan first, and at the time I saw the Piazza, I might have been similarly impressed. As it happened, when, in 1897, I first beheld the Rhigistan I thought inevitably of the Piazza, and then and there renewed my allegiance to her superior charm over me. Of my life in and about this square there is much that I would like to tell if I could tell it to my satisfaction, for I believe that Venice is a mistress to whom all admirers, without distinction of color, race or previous incarnation, should offer some artistic tribute either in prose or verse. My most intimate friend, while in Venice, was Horatio Brown, a gentleman who knows the city probably better than any other foreigner, and much more intimately than many of the Venetians themselves. His book, "Life on the Lagoons," is the best book about the town that I know, and I have rummaged through a number. Mr. Howell's "Venetian Life," like everything he writes, is very artistic and instructive, but I was never able to find the Venice that he knows.