The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-06-08
VENICE.
Her Charms Are Ever New to An
 Artists Eyes.
F. Hopkinson Smith in scribner's Maga-

 F. Hopkinson Smith in Scrbners Nigga
 zine.
 Luigi meets me inside the station It takes a soldo to get in, and Luigi has but few of them, but he is always there. His gondola is moored to the landing steps outside-a black swan of a boat, all mo- rocco cushions and silk fringes; the prod uct of a thousand years of tinkering by the most fastidious and luxurious people of ancient or modern times, and still to- day the most comfortable Nconveyance known to man.
 Hurry up you who have never known a gondola or a Luigi! A vile-smelling. chuggity-ohug is forcing it's way up every crooked canal, no matter how narrow. Two Venetian shipyards are hammering away on their hulls or polishing their motors. Soon the cost of production will drop to that of a gondola. Then look out! There are 5000 machinists. in the arsenal earning but francs day, any one of whom can learn to run a motor boat in a week. thus doubling their wages Worse yet-the world is getting keener every hour for speedy things. may be wrong-I hope and pray I am but it seems to me that the handwrit ing is already on the wall. This way to the Musea Civico," it reads-"if you want to find a gondola of 20 years ago. As for the Luigls and the Esperos-they will then have given up the unequal struggle.
 The only hope rests with the Venetians themselves. They have restored the scared Library and-they are rebuilding the. Campanile, with a reverence for the things which made their past glorious that commands the respect of the artistic world The gondola is as much part of Venice as its sunsets, pigeons and palaces. Let them by special license keep the Traghetti intact, with their shuttles of gondolas crossing back and forth then, perhaps the catastrophe may be deferred for a few decades.
 Excepting these beastly, vile-smelling boats there is nothing new. thank God! Everything else is faded, weather worn and old, everything filled with sensuous beauty-sky, earth, lagoon, garden wall, murmuring ripples-the same wonderful Venice that thrills its lovers the world over.
 And the old painters are still here Walter Brown, Bunce, Bompard, Faulk- ner and the rest-sueoessors of Elem and Rico-men who have loved her all their lives And with them a new band of devotees-Monet and Louis Aston Knight among them. ''For a few days" they said, in explanation, but it was weeks before they left-only to return, pre- 6ict as long as they can hold a brush,
 As for Luigi and me-we keep our ac- customed way, leading our accustomed lives. Seventeen years now since he bent to his oar behind my cushions-twenty- six in all since I began to idle about her canals. It is either the little canal next the public garden or up the Giudecca, or under the bronze horses of San Marco; or it may be we are camped out in the Piazetta before the Porta della Carta; or perhaps up the narrow canal of San Rocco, or in the fruit market near the Rialto while the boats unload their car goes.
 All old subjects and yet ever new; each has been painted a thousand times, and in as many different lights and perpec- tives And yet each canvas differs from it's fellows as do two ripples or two morning skies.
 For weeks we drift about. One day Carlotta, the fishwife up the Fondamenta della Pallada, makes us our coffee; the next Luigi buys 1t of some smart care on the Piazza This with a roll, bit or Gorgonzola and bunch of grapes, or half a dozen figs, Is our luncheon, to which is added two eurls of blue smoke, one from Luigi's pipe and the other from my cigarette Then we fall to work again.