By ten o’clock there had gathered on the crazy wharf enough dark-faced people to fill the steamer. On the open sea the wind was wild. Now and then a wave spat in the faces of the passengers huddled together on the deck. A ship’s officer jammed his way among us to collect the six-cent tickets.
The Bridge of Sighs, so-called because it leads from the Justice Court in the Palace of the Doges on the left to the prison on the right. It crosses the Grand Canal of Venice.
By and by the steamer stopped tossing about and began to glide smoothly. I pushed to the rail to peer out into the night. Before me I saw a stretch of smooth water in which twinkled the reflection of thousands of lights of smaller boats, and the illuminated windows of a block of houses rising sheer out of the sea. We glided into port. A gondola lighted up by torches at both ends glided across our path. A wide canal opened on our left, and wound in and out among great buildings faintly lighted up by lamps and lanterns on the mooring-posts. It was the Grand Canal of Venice. The steamer nosed its way through a fleet of gondolas and tied up at a landing before a marble column.
I went ashore and looked about me. There were no streets, and the hotels that faced the canals were all too expensive for me. I did not know where to look for the poor man’s section of the city. For two full hours I tramped through squares and dark, narrow alleys, only to turn up at last within a stone’s throw of my landing-place. I finally spent the night outdoors, sitting on the edge of the canal.
After spending a few days in Venice, I walked down to the Grand Canal one morning, with my mind made up to ride in a gondola. I had difficulty in attracting the attention of the water cabman. They are not in the habit of asking men wearing corduroys and flannel shirts to be their passengers. A score of them had just recovered from a rush made on a tow-head wearing the regular tourist clothes. They did not seem to see me. When I boldly called out to them, they crowded around me to jeer and laugh at the laborer trying to play the lord. For some time they thought I was joking. I had to show them my purse with money in it before one of them offered to take me aboard.
Along the Grand Canal passing gondoliers, without passengers to keep them in proper conduct, flung cutting taunts at my boatman.
“Eh, Amico!” they called out, “what’s that you’ve got?”
My gondolier on the Grand Canal.