F. H. S.

CONTENTS

An Arrival[ 1]
Gondola Days[ 8]
Along the Riva[ 28]
The Piazza of San Marco[ 42]
In an Old Garden[ 58]
Among the Fishermen[ 85]
A Gondola Race[ 101]
Some Venetian Caffès[ 116]
On the Hotel Steps[ 126]
Open-Air Markets[ 136]
On Rainy Days[ 145]
Legacies of the Past[ 155]
Life in the Streets[ 176]
Night in Venice[ 197]

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Back of the Rialto (see page [87])[ Frontispiece]
The Gateless Posts of the Piazzetta[ 14]
The One Whistler etched[ 26]
Beyond San Rosario[ 58]
The Catch of the Morning[ 90]
A Little Hole in the Wall on the Via Garibaldi[ 116]
Ponte Paglia ... next the Bridge of Sighs[ 136]
The Fruit Market above the Rialto[ 140]
Wide Palatial Staircases[ 160]
Narrow Slits of Canals[ 186]
San Giorgio stands on Tip-toe[ 198]

AN ARRIVAL

YOU really begin to arrive in Venice when you leave Milan. Your train is hardly out of the station before you have conjured up all the visions and traditions of your childhood: great rows of white palaces running sheer into the water; picture-book galleys reflected upside down in red lagoons; domes and minarets, kiosks, towers, and steeples, queer-arched temples, and the like.

As you speed on in the dusty train, your memory-fed imagination takes new flights. You expect gold-encrusted barges, hung with Persian carpets, rowed by slaves double-banked, and trailing rare brocades in a sea of China-blue, to meet you at the water landing.

By the time you reach Verona your mental panorama makes another turn. The very name suggests the gay lover of the bal masque, the poisoned vial, and the calcium moonlight illuminating the wooden tomb of the stage-set graveyard. You instinctively look around for the fair Juliet and her nurse. There are half a dozen as pretty Veronese, attended by their watchful duennas, going down by train to the City by the Sea; but they do not satisfy you. You want one in a tight-fitting white satin gown with flowing train, a diamond-studded girdle, and an ostrich-plume fan. The nurse, too, must be stouter, and have a high-keyed voice; be bent a little in the back, and shake her finger in a threatening way, as in the old mezzotints you have seen of Mrs. Siddons or Peg Woffington. This pair of Dulcineas on the seat in front, in silk dusters, with a lunch-basket and a box of sweets, are too modern and commonplace for you, and will not do.