The morning call., 1893-03-12

I
| Orient and by water. Far away, against
| the black pine mountains topped with ever
lasting snow, against the arching blue, you
behold city of marble in the sea, towers
and turrets and spires pointing up and out
of the great white flock of white palaces as
! if keeping watch; as if the whole white
| city of marble in the blue Adriatic might
! be flock of antediluvian birds ready to rise
| and fly away at your approach.
But to come upon Venice by land, as
nearly all travellers do now, you have miles
and miles of fat, smooth grass. with here
and there an earthwOrk where Napoleon 1
reared mud forts, from which to bang and
| batter the retreating armies OF Austria and
drive them out of Italy. Dismal in every
aspect is this approach; more dismal still
| the depot; more than dismal the dreary cry
| Of the hungry and insolent gondOlier as he
apreals to you for patronage; worse than
Water-street beggars in New York in bold
ness and badness.
Do what you can, fight as you may, bribe,
| bully. buy, you will be dumped into some
| English or American inn after a mile or
mOna's Palace" and so on. There are four
| of this latter to my knowledge, and l am
| told that since my soJourn there fifth has
been discovered, and is now very decent
| OF course. # you are of the artist not of the
| artistic set, you may, by your quiet ways
| and instructive sense of the difference be-
! tween gold and brass, get into gon-
f2a dGisDo. and fra d Ggr WA WAY to your S1
| it is not an easy thing. 1t is the hardest
| place on earth in which to land; in fact,
you do not land at all, you take TO water
AT the same time you may take your grip
sack in your hand and walk all over the
fnnfhTiHuaQ
narrow, musty alleys boarded over
and full Of falls, traps, manholes, and when
you come TO these narrow places, smelling
to heaven" with manholes right and left
| underfoOt, you begin to look about yOn for
! boat. boatman. policeman, officer, citizen,
human being of any sort. Not soul in
sight, not sound of anybody or anything
about-nOthing at all but great marble pal
aces, messy, empty as Egypt's- tombs, and
tottering on their rOtting centers. So, after
all, you had better keep to the water till
you know your way about. No, don't
think these people Will hurt you at all. They
are not the least bit Vicious and they are
amazingly lazy and out OF heart, The only
really startling and romantic way in which
to see this city of the tideless sea is to read
Ruskin's "StOnes of Venice" as you ap-
proach the city by steamer, and keep ON
reading and don't 60 ashore at all.
When you get letters from American
fortune, or rather title. hunters about how
they live in Venetian palaces on ten lire
per day, you should not doubt their word.
1t can be done, but it takes blood. 1t takes
daily more blood than money, for the bugs
there are as big as mlce and it is not every
day that they get their teeth into the soft
white flesh of Saxon. The very name Of
these bugs Is full Of meaning. Their Vene-
tion appelatioD is picoli besti-little beasts.
They seem to come uD from out of the rot
ting piles in the water. You can hear them
begin 10 walk across the floor at night when
you first lie down.
They are coming for you! Strike match
they Will stop, a black crescent on the
cleaning mosaic or marble floor. They lift
their heads TO look and listen. Some of
them have mustaches like the King of Italy,
almost.
Miles on miles of marble palaces are here
with only a stained bit of white paper
pasted on the inner side of a window-pane.
Perhaps in earlier times this paper bore
some inscription, but it does not now. No,
/ would be the last to deTide this piteous
decay. Venice was the commercial mother
of the world. If she be weeping, let her
weep. If she be sleeping, let her sleep.
But | am quite ready to poke fun at the fel-
low who goes u Venice and dates his let
ters under a gold-headed inscription like
"Napoleon's Venetian Palace" "Desde-
| mona's Palace, "Ruskin's Residence" ct
sic; ct sick.
or course. the air is sweet in Venice and
the sea is restful in Venice, if you get lit
tie out of Venice. Go down to the Lido,
long reach of white, dry sand in the sea,
passing the pOpuOus madhouse on little
island and the tomb of Saint Helen on the
way. es, the world, the Venetian world,
all goes down TO the Lido to dine. Every
body who has a lire, shilling, goes down to
the Lido to dine. The gOndoliers start
about P. NJ They come back to Venice as
the sun rises. And the sunrise Well, that
is worth the trip to Venice-it is worth all
of Venice. And then you have escaped the
bearded bugs for the night | reckon that
| is why no one will sleep in Venice who can
| spend the night on the Lido, where Shelley
| and Byron so loved to liDger and bathe in
| the warm soft sea or sleep half buried
| in the warm, white sand. And the musicl
| Such music as only italy can give you. The
| Government provides it. a real military
band, and even the drummer boy or the
| beater OF the ciashlng castenets is arrayc3
| in a gorgeous uniform of gold, more than
that of a United States igadier-general.
| The band plays all night, with short inter-
vals now and then for firtatlOns and re-
! fTeshmeats.
Come to think of it. the paintings. too, as
well as the sunrise and The resttul music in
| Venice are worth the whole price of admis-
| sion. The patron saint of all fishermen is
here. Greek fishermen come from the isles
of Greece TO fall down and pray before
beautiful beautiful, piteously beautiful
Santa Barbara.
once saw a bent old Italian man praying
here for mis- son and daughter and all their
children, and San Francisco was on his lips
so often that l yentured to ask him if they
were in and OF my city San Francisco. He
fell on his face and held to my feet and
after praying to Santa Barbara and asking
her TO bear witness TO the truth of what he
sad, told me they were in San Francisco or
some such place IN South America and thar
he was starving
He had plate of "risotto' at the traterio
next door, but no money, for an English
artist told me he would spend it in drink,
and that if he had any children al all they
~, N h.fT - Ia a, IL
for he must have been we'll on to a century
old. And this reminds me of Titan, who
we'll nigh touched that time of years.
There is one positive and most commenda-
Bile thing about Venice or Italy. Whether
II be municipal or state, l do not know, but
the pretty, proud fact remains that Italy,
Venice, poor as poor Venice is, will not,
never has, never would, part with her
"Iitans' or "Tintorellos," except at the
point Of the sword. So they are here
mostly; and as they are here the
world has come and must continue
to come to see them. OF course there
are Titians and TintorellOs all around
and over the world, forgeries a lot Of them
too, but these here are the big good ones.
And, too, here is the lion of Saint Mark.
Napoleon the First took it down from atop
OF its lofty granite column and sent it to Paris
to crown the Arch of Triumph, and there
they wrote the rights of man In the open
bOok-the Bible-Ihat lies before him under
his terrible lifted paw. And so when it
came back the Nenetians said, "Yes, it is
our own dear old lion of Saint Mark, only
he has turned over a new leaf"
But in truth it is not any work of any
Venetian at all. What earthly business has
any lion, the king of the desert, in a city of
water and slime? The Venetians broughtit
from COnstantinOple, after the conquest by
"Ulina da Dandinello," and Constantinople
probably plundered it from the Orient be-
yond. If we only could find out, the glori-
Gus old beast was probably shaped 10 its
fearful symmetry in Babylon of old. The
Venetians are fond of telling you that when
Napoleon took their lion down from its
granite column up in the sea clouds it had
diamonds for eyes, and that these eyes were
so large and brilliant that they lighted the