The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-07-31
= CALIFORNIAN
ABROAD.
By Thomas Fitch
1884,
VENICE.
VENICE.

0@s~e~osesese 90 Q % . 90 Q -. o 90 be 90
The hackrnen of my native land are
the stupidest set of villains that ever
made Iegalized larceny a profession. By
their general and persistent exactions
they have caused US all to regard a
public carriage as something to be en-
ployed only occasionally under stress
OF necessity, and always with misgiv-
ings as to the result. Even those who
can afford it DO not care to pay two
or three dollars for a hack from the
Jersey Ferry TO the Fifth Avenue,
wherefore our street cars and automo-
bile onnibusses are crowded, while car
riages stand empty in long waiting
lines. Probably the hackmen are the
losers by their unfntelHgent seIfishness.
9or in Europe your carriage bin will be
Tour or five times as large as at home,
and yet the prices for service are less
than one-fourth as much. It is but
franc and a half 0hirty cents to go
from any point in Paris to any other
point within the fortifcations, although
YOU may be carried eight or ten miles.
In Italian cities the charge is only a.
franc The expense seems so trifiing
Ehat you do not even learn the omni-
bus and railroad routes, but employ
the t'voiture' continually. until the con-
venient, comfortable, insidious little in
stitution extracts from your purse in
the course of a month, three times as
much as you are IN the habit of paying
for carriage hire at home.
Tt is in Venice that you first observe
this, where the neigh of a horse, nor
the rattle of a wheel ever wakes the
echoes; in Venice, where your cab is a
.smooth-sliding black gondola, and your
-coachrnan is your horse as well. Our
4centaur,-or norman would be a better
7ferm,-harnessed himself to his oar in
the stern of the boat, and was hidden
from our view by the little black cubby-
house in the centre of the gondoia,
wherein we sat on soft cushions. We
could not even hear the dip of his oar,
and so, propelled as it were by fairy
powers, or waited by the breath Of
Hesperus, we skinned along the sur
face of the Grand Canal, our steel PROV
flashing in the sunshine. There are
beautiful palaces on either side, and
there are other buildings they call
palaces but which with us would be
designated as tenement houses. The
Palace ManZOn1 is a poem IN IIldrDleI
beautiful in design and elaborate in
finish. The Palace Benzon is an or
1e7inary-looking three-story stone house
with battered front, but Canova lived
there and conceived his creations of
marble. there Byron sang to the stars,
there Moore looked out upon singing
sgondoliers and signing Strephons, there
Feninore Cooper composed the dreary
Sclriyel of Leather Stocking and the
bombastic rhetoric of his good Injin,
and concocted the libel suits he after
wards poured upon the head of Horace
Greeley. The Palace Morolin, so called
because it once belonged to the family
of Lin, and afterwards was owned by
the Moro family, was once the residence
of Christoforo Moro, who wooed the
fair Desdenona and suffered the I'M
-speakable humiliation of being "cut
out by a thirteenth amendment. AND
so. gliding along between coal barges,
and omnibus gondolas, and private
boats gorgeous in their loads OF hverled
servftors we reach the famous arch of
stone. the Rialto.. Here is where Signor
Antonio was accustomed to make a
-spittoon of our friend Shy1ock, merely
because the party of the second part
charged three-quarters per cent per
day for carrying the longs on. Adri-
attic Central on a falling market, and
at the other end of the canal is the
Doge's Palace where pettifogging Por-
tia by a skilful demurrer to the COM
plain-interposed by leave of the Court