“I hope you hain’t any idee of marryin’ the Jonesville creek, Samantha, because it won’t look well in a M. E. sister and pardner.”
Jealous of the creek! That’s the last thing I ever thought that man would be jealous on. The idee! I only wanted it out of curiosity.
We visited the Arsenal, another spot where the greatness of Venice in the past hanted our memory, when she had twenty thousand workmen there and now not two thousand. But we see queer lookin’ things there––suits of armor, crossbows, helmets. Josiah took quite a fancy to one wore by Attila, king of the Huns, and wanted to put it on. Good land! his head went right up into it just as it would into a big coal-scuttle. What a mind Mr. Attila must have had if his brains wuz accordin’ to his head.
And we see infernal machines, thumb screws, spiked collars, and other dretful implements of torture like black shadders throwed from the past. A piece of the boat that the Doge went to his weddin’ in when he married the water wuz interestin’; weddin’s always did interest females and males too, no matter whether the bride wuz formed out of dust or nothin’ but clear water, and we also see a model of the boat Columbus sailed in to discover us.
Robert Strong who wuz always interested in the best things, said that the first newspaper ever published appeared in Venice three hundred years ago, and the first bank was started there.
You can walk all over Venice if you want to take the time to go furder round and cross the bridges and walk through narrer, crooked little streets, some on ’em not more’n five or six feet wide, but the easiest and quickest way is to take a boat, as well as the most agreeable.
Venice is built on seventy-two islands besides the Grand Canal which takes the place of our avenues and streets. There is a charm about Venice that there is not about any other city I ever see. You dream about it before you see it and then you dream on and keep dreamin’ as long as you stay there, a sort of a wakin’ dream, though you keep your senses.
Memories of the past seem to hant you more, mebby it is because them old memories can slip along easier over them glassy streets, easier than they can over our hard rocky pavements. ’Tennyrate they meet you on every side and stay right with you as long as you are there and hant you. As you float down them liquid roads you seen face to face sweet, wise Portia, “fair and fairer than that word;” and gallant Bassanio who made such a wise choice, and Shylock, the old Jew. And if you happen to git put out with your pardner, mebby he’ll find fault with you, and say demeanin’ words about wimmen or sunthin’ like that, whilst sweet Portia’s eyes are on you, if you feel like reprovin’ him sharp, then you’ll remember: “The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth like the gentle rain from heaven, it blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”
And so you forgive him. And then beautiful, sad Beatrice de Cenci will meet you by moonlight in front of some of them old marble palaces and her pa, about as mean a man as they make, and his sister, Lucretia de Borgia, that wicked, wicked creeter. Why, it beats all what mean folks Beatrice’s relation wuz on her pa’s side.