The gondola is a long, slim hack without wheels and is worked around
through the damp streets by a brunette man whose breath should be a sad
framing to us all. He is called the gondolier. Sometimes he sings in a low
tone of voice and in a foreign tongue. I do not know where I have met so
many foreigners as I have here in Europe, unless it was in New York, at
the polls. Wherever I go, I hear a foreign tongue. I do not know whether
these people talk in the Italian language just to show off or not. Perhaps
they prefer it. London is the only place I have visited where the Boston
dialect is used. London was originally settled by adventurers from Boston.
The blood of some of the royal families of Massachusetts may be found in
the veins of London people.
Wealthy young ladies in Venice do not run away with the coachman. There
are no coaches, no coachmen and no horses in Venice. There are only four
horses in Venice and they are made of copper and exhibited at St Mark's as
curiosities.
The Accademia delle Belle Arti of Venice is a large picture store where I
went yesterday to buy a few pictures for Christmas presents. A painting by
Titian, the Italian Prang, pleased me very much, but I couldn't beat down
the price to where it would be any object for me to buy it. Besides, it
would be a nuisance to carry such a picture around with me all over the
Alps, up the Rhine and through St. Lawrence county. I finally decided to
leave it and secure something less awkward to carry and pay for.
The Italians are quite proud of their smoky old paintings. I have often
thought that if Venice would run less to art and more to soap, she would
be more apt to win my respect. Art is all right to a certain extent, but
it can be run in the ground. It breaks my heart to know how lavish nature
has been with water here, and yet how the Venetians scorn to investigate
its benefits. When a gondolier gets a drop of water on him, he swoons.
Then he lies in a kind of coma till another gondolier comes along to
breathe in his face and revive him.
She Kind of Coaxed Him.
I never practiced law very much, but during the brief period that my
sheet-iron sign was kissed by the Washoe zephyr, I had several odd
experiences. I'm sure that lawyers who practice for forty years,
especially on the frontier or in a new country, could write a large book
that would make mighty interesting reading.
One day I was figuring up how much a man could save in ten years, paying
forty dollars a month rent, and taking in two dollars and fifty cents per
month, when a large man with a sad eye and an early purple tumor on the
side of his head, came in and asked me if my name was Nye. I told him it
was and asked him to take a chair and spit on the stove a few times, and
make himself entirely at home.
He did so.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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