hose huge pent-house roof projects two
feet or more across the hearth. When they had served the table they took
their seat on low stools, knitted stockings, or drank out of glasses
handed across the shoulder to them by their lords. Some of these women
were clearly notable housewives, and I have no reason to suppose that
they do not take their full share of the housework. Boys and girls came
in and out, and got a portion of the dinner to consume where they
thought best. Children went tottering about upon the red-brick floor,
the playthings of those hulking fellows, who handled them very gently
and spoke kindly in a sort of confidential whisper to their ears. These
little ears were mostly pierced for earrings, and the light blue eyes of
the urchins peeped maliciously beneath shocks of yellow hair. A dog was
often of the party. He ate fish like his masters, and was made to beg
for it by sitting up and rowing with his paws. _Voga, Azzo, voga!_ The
Anzolo who talked thus to his little brown Spitz-dog has the hoarse
voice of a Triton and the movement of an animated sea-wave. Azzo
performed his trick, swallowed his fish-bones, and the fiery Anzolo
looked round approvingly.

On all these occasions I have found these gondoliers the same
sympathetic, industrious, cheery affectionate folk. They live in many
respects a hard and precarious life. The winter in particular is a time
of anxiety, and sometimes of privation, even to the well-to-do among
them. Work then is scarce, and what there is, is rendered disagreeable
to them by the cold. Yet they take their chance with facile temper, and
are not soured by hardships. The amenities of the Venetian sea and air,
the healthiness of the lagoons, the cheerful bustle of the poorer
quarters, the brilliancy of this Southern sunlight, and the beauty which
is everywhere apparent, must be reckoned as important factors in the
formation of their character. And of that character, as I have said, the
final note is playfulness. In spite of difficulties, their life has
never been stern enough to sadden them. Bare necessities are
marvellously cheap, and the pinch of real bad weather--such frost as
locked the lagoons in ice two years ago, or such south-western gales as
flooded the basement floors of all the houses on the Zattere--is rare
and does not last long. On the other hand, their life has never been so
lazy as to reduce them to the savagery of the traditional Neapolitan
lazzaroni. They have had to