"Not to any alarming extent, young man. Never had one--she's my sister--only one I got; and this summer she took it into her head--you don't mind my setting here, do you? I'm so durned lonesome among these jabbering Greeks I'm nearly froze stiff. Thank ye!--took it into her head she'd come over here, and of course I had to bring her. You ain't never traveled around, perhaps, with a young girl of fifty-five, with her head crammed full of hifalutin' notions,--convents and early masters and Mont Blancs and Bon Marchés,--with just enough French to make a muddle of everything she wants to get. Well, that's Eliza-beth. First it was a circulating library, at Unionville, back of Troy, where I live; then come a course of lectures twice a week on old Edinburgh and the Alps and German cities; and then, to cap all, there come a cuss with magic-lantern slides of 'most every old ruin in Europe, and half our women were crazy to get away from home, and Eliza-beth worse than any of 'em; and so I got a couple of Cook's tickets out and back, and here we are; and I don't mind saying," and a wicked, vindictive look filled his eyes, "that of all the cussed holes I ever got into in my life, this here Venice takes--the--cake. Here, John Henry, bring me another cup of coffee; this's stone-cold. P.D.Q., now! Don't let me have to build a fire under you." This to a waiter speaking every language but English. "Do not the palaces interest you?" I asked inquiringly, in my effort to broaden his views. "Palaces be durned! Excuse my French. Palaces! A lot of caved-in old rookeries; with everybody living on the second floor because the first one's so damp ye'd get your die-and-never-get-over-it if you lived in the basement, and the top floors so leaky that you go to bed under an umbrella; and they all braced up with iron clamps to keep 'em from falling into the canal, and not a square inch on any one of 'em clean enough to dry a shirt on! What kind of holes are they for decent---- Now see here," laying his hand confidingly on my shoulder, "just answer me one question--you seem like a level-headed young man, and ought to give it to me straight. Been here all summer, ain't you?" "Yes." "Been coming years, ain't you?" I nodded my head. "Well, now, I want it straight,"--and he lowered his voice,--"what does a sensible man find in an old waterlogged town like this?" I gave him the customary answer: the glories of her past; the picturesque life of the lagoons; the beauty of her palaces, churches, and gardens; the luxurious gondolas, etc., etc.