And you thought of any number of queer old Doges, rainin’ and pizenin’ and actin’, some on ’em, and marryin’ the Adriatic; a poor match in my opinion and one that you couldn’t expect to turn out well, the bride bein’ slippery and inconstant and the bridegroom mean as pusley, cruel and cunning, besides bein’ jest devoted to the Council of Ten. Queer works them Ten––made and cut a great swath that won’t be forgot and they needn’t expect it. The page of history is sticky and bloody with their doin’s. But they move along in front of you, the Doges, the Ten and the Three. And any number of conquerors and any number of Popes and Kings down to Victor Emanuel.
And I d’no as I thought of anybody or anything there in Venice so much as I did of John Ruskin, who give even the stuns of Venice a language that will go on speakin’ long after the stuns have mouldered back into dust. And then the dust will keep his memory green, and folks will ponder the “Ethics of the Dust” long after that dust has passed into other changing forms and disappeared.
Great mind, great lovin’ heart, who had but one thought, to make the world more full of beauty, knowledge, sincerity and goodness. His pure, bright intellect, his life white as the lilies, his living thoughts and noble idees they rap at the human heart, as well as mind, with their powerful sesame, and you have to open your heart’s door and take them in. Prophet of earth and heaven, the air, the clouds, the birds and trees, the rocks and waters, translatin’ the marvellous words so our duller eyes and ears can see and hear.
As I walked along over them stones of Venice, and in the Galleries of Modern Painters and ancient ones, my heart kep’ sayin’ onbeknown to myself and them round me, “John Ruskin, noble soul, great teacher, childlike, wise interpreter of the beauty and ministry of common things, hail and farewell!” For he had gone––it wuz true that he who had loved the flowers so and said to a friend who had sent him some: “I am trying to find out if there are flowers that do not 341 fade.” He had found out now, wreathes of heavenly immortelles are laid on his tired forward, not tired now, and he has his chance to talk to Moses and Plato, as he said he wanted to, and he is satisfied. Love and Sympathy that he longed for comforts and consoles him, and Beauty and Goodness wait on him.
Robert Strong felt just as I did about Ruskin, their idees about helpin’ the poor, and the brotherhood of man, and fatherhood of God, wuz as congenial and blent together like sun and dew on a May morning. Robert Strong said no other writer had done him the good Ruskin had.
And I guess Dorothy thought so too; she almost always thought jest as Robert did.
In wanderin’ round this uneek city Josiah said the most he thought on wuz of tellin’ Deacon Henzy and Uncle Sime Bentley about what he see there. And shadowy idees seemed to fill his mind about tryin’ to turn the Jonesville creek through the streets and goin’ from our house to Thomas Jefferson’s in a gondola.
Arvilly said she would gin anything to canvas some of them old Doges for the “Twin Crimes”. But I told her I guessed they didn’t need to learn anything about crime, and she gin up they didn’t.
The first thing Miss Meechim wanted to see wuz the church of St. Mark, so we all set off one day to see it. San Marco, as they call it, is one of the most interestin’ churches to visitors on the Continent. It wuz begun way back in the tenth century, and it has been in process of building ever since, and I don’t know how long they lay out to keep at it. They have spent thirty millions on it, so I hearn, and the news come pretty straight to me, and I d’no but they’ll spend as much agin before they git through. But when you see all its magnificent sculpture, columns, statutes, mosaic work, ornaments of every kind, its grand arches, its five domes and spires and all the exquisite work on it I d’no as I’d took the job for any less, and so I told Josiah.