the traveler is all on the surface. The nobleman in his palace
if there be any palace that is not turned into a hotel, or a magazine of
curiosities, or a municipal office--can live on a diet that would make an
American workman strike, simply because he has learned to float through
life; and the laborer is equally happy on little because he has learned
to wait without much labor. The gliding, easy motion of the gondola
expresses the whole situation; and the gondolier who with consummate
skill urges his dreamy bark amid the throng and in the tortuous canals
for an hour or two, and then sleeps in the sun, is a type of that rest in
labor which we do not attain. What happiness there is in a dish of
polenta, or of a few fried fish, in a cup of coffee, and in one of those
apologies for cigars which the government furnishes, dear at a cent--the
cigar with a straw in it, as if it were a julep, which it needs five
minutes to ignite, and then will furnish occupation for a whole evening!
Is it a hard lot, that of the fishermen and the mariners of the Adriatic?
The lights are burning all night long in a cafe on the Riva del
Schiavoni, and the sailors and idlers of the shore sit there jabbering
and singing and trying their voices in lusty hallooing till the morning
light begins to make the lagoon opalescent. The traveler who lodges near
cannot sleep, but no more can the sailors, who steal away in the dawn,
wafted by painted sails. In the heat of the day, when the fish will not
bite, comes the siesta. Why should the royal night be wasted in slumber?
The shore of the Riva, the Grand Canal, the islands, gleam with twinkling
lamps; the dark boats glide along with a star in the prow, bearing youth
and beauty and sin and ugliness, all alike softened by the shadows; the
electric lights from the shores and the huge steamers shoot gleams on
towers and facades; the moon wades among the fleecy clouds; here and
there a barge with colored globes of light carries a band of singing men
and women and players on the mandolin and the fiddle, and from every side
the songs of Italy, pathetic in their worn gayety, float to the entranced
ears of those who lean from balconies, or lounge in gondolas and listen
with hearts made a little heavy and wistful with so much beauty.

Can any one float in such scenes and be so contentedly idle anywhere in
our happy land? Have we learned yet the simple art of easy enjoyment? Can
we buy it with money quickly, or is it a