Well, we only stayed one day at Verona, and the next day we hastened on to Venice.
Josiah told me that he wanted to go to Venice. Sez he: “It is a place from what I hear on’t that has a crackin’ good water power and that is always the makin’ of a town, and then,” sez he, “I’ve always wanted to see the Bridge of Size and the Doggy’s Palace.” Sez he: “When a city is good 331 enough to rare up such a palace to dogs it shows there is sunthin’ good ’bout it, and I dare presoom to say there hain’t a dog amongst ’em any better than Snip or one that can bring up the cows any better.”
Josiah thinks we’ve got the cutest dog and cat in the world. He has spent hours trainin’ ’em, and they’ll both start for the cow paster jest the right time and bring up the cows; of course, the cat can’t do much only tag along after the dog; she don’t bark any, it not bein’ her nater to, but it looks dretful cunnin’. Sez Josiah, “I wouldn’t be ashamed to show Snip off by the side of any of the dogs in the Doggy’s Palace.”
Sez I, coldly, “How do you spell dogs, Josiah Allen?”
“Why, dog-es, doggys.”
Sez I, “The palace was rared up by a man––a Doge––the Doges wuz great men, rulers in Venice.”
“I don’t believe a word on’t,” sez he. “It is rared up for dogs, and I’m thinkin’ quite a little of rarin’ up a small house with a steeple on’t for Snip. He deserves it.”
Well, there wuzn’t no use in argyin’; I knew he would have to give up when he got there, and so he did. And it wuz jest so with the Bridge of Sighs, that has, as Mr. Byron said, “A palace and a prison on each side.”
Josiah insisted on’t that it wuz called the Bridge of Size, because it wuz the most sizeable bridge in the world. But it is no such thing; it don’t begin, as I told him, with the Brooklyn Bridge; why, it hain’t no longer than the bridge between Loontown and Zoar, or the one over our creek, but I presoom them who passed over this bridge to execution gin deep, loud sithes––it wuz nateral they should––so the bridge wuz named after them sithes.
Josiah said if that wuz fashionable he should name the bridge down back of the barn the Bridge of Groans, it wuz such a tug for the horses to draw a load over it. Sez he, “I almost always give a groan and so does Ury––Bridge of 332 Groans.” Sez he, “that will sound uneek and genteel in Jonesville.”