Rio Giuseppe--all of
it--from the beginning of the red wall where the sailors land, along
its crookednesses to the side entrance of the Public Garden, and so
past the rookeries to the lagoon, where the tower of Castello is ready
to topple into the sea.

Not much of a canal--not much of a painting ground really, to the
masters who have gone before and are still at work, but a truly
lovable, lovely, and most enchanting possession to me their humble
disciple. Once you get into it you never want to get out, and, once
out, you are miserable until you get back again. On one side stretches
a row of rookeries--a maze of hanging clothes, fish-nets, balconies
hooded by awnings and topped by nondescript chimneys of all sizes and
patterns, with here and there a dab of vermilion and light red, the
whole brilliant against a china-blue sky. On the other runs the long
brick wall of the garden,--soggy, begrimed; streaked with moss and
lichen in bands of black-green and yellow ochre, over which mass and
sway the great sycamores that Ziem loves, their lower branches
interwoven with zinnober cedars gleaming in spots where the prying sun
drips gold.

Only wide enough for a barca and two gondolas to pass--this canal of
mine. Only deep enough to let a wine barge through; so narrow you must
go all the way back to the lagoon if you would turn your gondola; so
short you can row through it in five minutes; every inch of its water
surface part of everything about it, so clear are the reflections; full
of moods, whims, and fancies, this wave space--one moment in a broad
laugh coquetting with a bit of blue sky peeping from behind a cloud,
its cheeks dimpled with sly undercurrents, the next swept by flurries
of little winds, soft as the breath of a child on a mirror; then, when
aroused by a passing boat, breaking out into ribbons of color--swirls
of twisted doorways, flags, awnings, flower-laden balconies,
black-shawled Venetian beauties all upside down, interwoven with strips
of turquoise sky and green waters--a bewildering, intoxicating jumble
of tatters and tangles, maddening in detail, brilliant in color,
harmonious in tone: the whole scintillating with a picturesqueness
beyond the ken or brush of any painter living or dead.

On summer days--none other for me in Venice (the other fellow can have
it in winter)--everybody living in the rookeries camps out on the quay,
the women sitting in groups stringing beads, the men flat on the
pavement men