pa, as a stranger and unaccustomed to the motion, hoped this would
not be the case, but I knew him well enough to predict that if it were
so he would vindicate American gallantry at all risks.

Thus it was that, from the moment momma put her head out of the car
window, after Mestre, and exclaimed, "It's getting wateryer and
wateryer," Venice was a source of the completest joy and satisfaction to
both my parents. Dicky and I took it with the more moderate appreciation
natural to our years, but it gave us the greatest pleasure to watch the
simple and unrestrained delight of momma and poppa, and to revert, as it
were, in their experience, to what our own enjoyment might have been had
we been born when they were. "No express agents, no delivery carts, no
baggage checks," murmured poppa, as our trunks glided up to the hotel
steps, "but it gets there all the same." This was the keynote of his
admiration--everything got there all the same. The surprise of it was
repeated every time anything got there, and was only dashed once when we
saw brown-paper parcels being delivered by a boy at the back door of the
Palazzo Balbi, who had evidently walked all the way. The Senator
commented upon that boy and his groceries as an inconsistency, and
thereafter carefully closed his eyes to the fact that even our own
hotel, which faced upon the Grand Canal, had communications to the rear
by which its guests could explore a large part of commercial Venice
without going in a gondola at all. The canals were the only highways he
would recognise, and he went three times to St. Maria della Salute,
which was immediately opposite, for the sake of crossing the street in
the Venetian way. Momma became really hopeful about the stimulus to his
imagination; she told him so. "It appeals to you, Alexander," she said.
"Its poetry comes home to you--you needn't deny it;" and poppa cordially
admitted it. "Yes," he said, "Ruskin, according to the guide-book,
doesn't seem as if he could say too much about this city, and Bramley
was just the same. They're both right, and if we were going to be here
long enough I'd be like that myself. There's something about it that
makes you willing to take a lot of trouble to describe it. There's no
use saying it's the canals, or the reflections in the water, or the
bridges, or the pigeons, or the gargoyles, or the gondolas----"

"Or Salviati, or Jesurum," said momma, in lighter vein.

"Your memory, Augusta, for the names of ol