“Don’t give up, Josiah,” sez I, “here right in the dream of the world, Venice, the beautiful.”
Sez Josiah, “I hearn there wuz a sayin’, ‘See Venice and die,’ and I can tell ’em that if this smell keeps on, and if the dum muskeeters keeps on a-bitin’, there’s one man who will foller their advice.”
“If this smell keeps on, and the dum muskeeters keeps on a-bitin’, one man will ‘see Venice and die.’”
Sez I, “They hain’t muskeeters, they’re nats, and it wuz Naples that wuz said on; and,” sez I, wantin’ to roust him up, “they say Venice is perfectly beautiful by moonlight.”
That kinder nerved him up, bad as he felt—he seemed to look forrered to it, and after a good meal and a good rest, when we did set off by moonlight, hirin’ a gondola jest as we would a express wagon to home, he admitted the beauty of the seen.
And it wuz like a journey through fairyland. The long, glassy streets, all lit up by lights from the tall, white palaces on each side on us, and by the lanterns of the passin’ gondoliers; the soft, sweet voices of the gondoliers as they called out to each other in their melogious Southern tongue; the glidin’ boats movin’ past us like shadder craft, with the handsome, graceful forms of the gondoliers a-drivin’ ’em, and anon or oftener the sweet strains of a guitar, and some divine voice in song; and the admirin’ surprise when you’d turn a corner and look down another street of beauty, differin’ in form of glory.
Oh, it wuz a seen to be remembered as long as Memory sets up on her high-chair under my foretop! And what hantin’ thoughts kep’ company with me and filled the gondola to overflowin’! I seemed to see Titian with his artist’s eyes and inspired pencil—the old Doges with their embroidered and jewelled robes—sad-eyed Beatrice Cenci, Antonio, Shylock, Wise-eyed Portia—I seemed to hear her sayin’,
“The quality of mercy is not strained,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from Heaven....