River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1905-06-15

GUAGE, AND ONE In EYEIALlAN.
dress clothes and sit on verandas, or
eat and drink, and talk Eyetalian, and
ride in gondolas, and play guitars, and
smoke cigarettes, and talk love. 1t
is SO warm you can wear your sum-
mer pants, and the water smells Of clans
that died long ago. 1t is just as
though Chicago was flooded by the
bursting of the sewers, and people had
to go around State street, and all the
cross streets, and Michigan avenue, in
fishing boats, with three feet of water
on top of the pavements. Imagine
the people of Chicago taking gondolas
and riding along the streets, landing
at the stores and hotels, just as they
do now from carriages
We had been riding in gondolas for
two days, getting aground in the mud
when the tide was out, and going TO
sleep and waiting for the tide to come
in, when it seemed to me that dad
needed some excitement and last night
1 gave it to him.
We were out in our gondola, and the
moon was shining, and the electric
lights made the canal near the Rialto
bridge as light as day. The Rialto
bridge crosses the Grand canal, and
has been the meeting place for lovers
for thousands of years. 1t is a grand
structure, of carved marble, but it
wouldn't hold up threshing machine
engine half as well as an iron bridge.
Well, the canal was filled with thou
sands of gondolas, loaded with the
flower of Venetian society, and the
music just made you want to fall in
love. Dad said if he didn't fall in love,
or something, before morning, he
would quit the place. I made up my
mind he should fall into something, so
1 began by telling dad it seemed
strange to me that nobody but Eye
Italians could run gondola Dad said
he could run gondola as well as any
foreigner, and I told him he couldn't
run a gondola for shucks, and he said
he would show me, so he got out of
the hen house where we were seated,
and went back on to the pointed end
of the gondola, and grabbed the pole
or paddle from the gondolier, and said:
Now, Garibaldi, you go inside the
pup tent with Hennery, and let me
punt this ark around awhile"
Garibaldi thought dad was crazy,
but he gave up the pole, and just then,
when they were both on the extreme
point of the gondola, and she was
wabbling some, peeked out through
the curtains and thought the fruit was
about ripe enough to pick, so | threw
myself over to one side of the gondola,
and, by gosh, if dad and Garibaldi
didn't both go overheard with a splash,
and one yell in the English language,
and one in Eyetalian, ard l rushed
out Of the cabin and such a sight you
never saw.
Dad retained the paddle, and had his
head out of water, but nothing showed
above the water where Garibaldi was
except a red patch on his black pants.
Dad was yelling for help, and finally
the gondolier got his head out of the
water, and said something that sound
ed like grinding a butcher knife on a
grindstone, and l yelled, toe, and the
gondolas began to gather around us,
and the two men were rescued. The
gondolier had been gondoling all his
life and he had never been in the water
before, and they thought it would
strike in and kill him, so they
wrapped him up in blankets and put