XIX.—FROM BOB TO JACK.
Genoa.
DEAR JACK,—-Maybe we haven't been travelling! My! Pop met a man in Geneva and he says going to Venice aren't you? Not much said Pop. New York's wet enough for me. Then you make a great big error said the man. It's fine this time of year and anybody that gets as far into Italy as Genoa without going a little further to see the most unicorn city in the world doesn't know as much as he thinks he does and wastes an elegant importunity. So Pop spoke to Ma about it and Ma said she'd sort of like it and as for Aunt Sarah she was so pleased she forgot all about the music-boxes and recovered her health right away, but it's kept us on the jump, and I've seen so many things I hardly know how to begin telling you about 'em. The first jump was to Luzerne where we only stayed all night though Pop was afraid we might have to stay there forever in order to get money enough to pay our bill. They had a band playing in the office of the hotel which seemed very nice until the bill came in the next morning and they'd charged us forty cents apiece, babies and all for it. Pop said it would have been cheaper for us to have bought an orchestrion and sat up with it in the Park all night. Next day we took the corkscrew train and bored our way right through the Alps, over the St. Gothard railway into Italy, landing at Milan late in the afternoon, where there isn't much for boys to see, though Jules says the cathedral collectors think it's bully; and then we went on to Venice and of all the places yet it's the best. Talk about going yachting, or sailing across the ocean in a great big ship—it's all nothing to living in a place like Venice where you can sit in your parlor at home and still be on the water, with no motion to make you seasick and no fear that a big wave will come up to engollop you in its midst. We stayed at a hotel that used to be a palace and it was palatial—that is, it was in front. All the parlors were fine, but the bedrooms in the rear wouldn't do for store-rooms home. These old Dukes that used to live there were great on parlors, salongs they called them, but when it came bed time most anything was good enough.
I suppose you know that Venice is built mostly on water—like American railroads Pop says, though I never saw one of them and I guess that's what Aunt Sarah calls one of Pops suttle political whimsies. The houses are held up by spiles that have been driven down into the mud, and when people want to go anywhere they hire a gondola and get paddled off to where they want to go. Of course they haven't any horses and Pop says the only driving they can do is spile driving. He told Jules to get a team of quiet gentle spiles that a lady could drive and let me try 'em, but Jules was so stupid he didn't understand—-though he pretended he did and promised to have 'em at the door at three o'clock, and when three o'clock came he told Pop he was very sorry but every one in town had been hired for the season. Jules is smart even if he can't understand American jokes.
Venice is a great many years old and used to be managed by men they called Dodges. They didn't have mares the way we do in our cities because horses couldn't get along there, but they whacksed very rich and built magnificent houses and churches and palaces. They have a great big public square called St. Marks where the bandolins play every night and it's full of pigeons.
Pigeons are so sacred here that when they have 'em on the bills of fare at the hotels they call them squab for fear the populace would rise and tear them limb from limb for eating pigeons. They make glass in Venice too, smelling bottles and tumblers and chandeliers, but the best part of the whole thing is the canals. The water isn't very clean but it's clean enough and I tell you what a boy has a great advantage over a nurse in a place like Venice. One morning when Pop and I were getting gondoliered along the Grand Canal we heard a fearful shrieking in one of the palaces and in a minute we saw a boy being chased by his nurse. He was only about a foot ahead and she almost had him when he jumped off the front stoop into the canal and swam up and down just out of her reach and my, wasn't she mad! I don't know what she said because she spoke Italian, but I could guess generally what she meant. Just think of it for a minute. If you want to go swimming or fishing or boating you can do it all right in front of your own house. We'd be pretty rich in America if we could stand on our front door steps and catch all the dinner we needed.
One great thing for children is to stand in the square and feed the pigeons I was telling you about. Pop bought me three bags of corn and the minute I dropped one little kernel of it on the walk about a hundred pigeons flew down. A lot of 'em roostered on my arms and one fellow sat on my hat, and then we went inside the cathedral which is magnificently furnished with things the Venetians used to steal from the heathen they went out to convert, but they're a little sore because Napoleon came down and stole a few things from them. People over here don't like to put the boot on the other leg any more than they do at home, which Aunt Sarah says shows that human nature is the same in Italian as it is in English.
Where they haven't got canals in Venice there are little narrow streets about three feet wide mostly and you'd have as hard a time finding your way about through them as Pop would trying to follow the lines of a sailor suit for a boy of seven through one of Ma's Bazar patterns. That's what Pop said. He said Venice must have been laid out after a Bazar pattern and he asked Ma to go up in a high tower they have there called the Campanini to get a bird's eye view of it and see whether it was a bicycle costume or a pignoir they had in mind when they laid it out. Ma said Pop was flippant and he said all right my dear, I'll let you find our way home and she tried it and in ten minutes she had us lost and she turned to Pop and said I guess you're right about the Bazar pattern, popper, this is the worst yet.
We all wanted to stay there a week but it wasn't possible. A birds eye view of it was all we had time for and so we left for Genoa after two days at Venice. To-morrow we sail for Hoboken on the Werra and my next letter will be from home, when I'll tell you all about Gibraltar, Genoa, and Hoboken.
Good-bye Bob.
P.S. The bandolins came and sang under our window at Venice the last night and it was very romantic Pop says even if the soprano did fall into the water reaching up for a ten cent piece Pop had.
