ere the words "you bet your life," and
"you're dam right," but dad took him because it seemed so homelike, and
we have been riding in gondolas every day.

On the water you can get away from the beggars. This is an ideal
existence. You just get in the gondola, under a canopy, and the
gondolier does the work, and you glide along between build ings and
wonder who lives there, and when they wake up, as all day long the
blinds are closed, and everybody seems to be dead. But at night, when
the canals are lighted, and the moon shines, the people put on their
dress clothes and sit on verandas, or eat and drink, and talk Eyetalian,
and ride in gondolas, and play guitars, and smoke cigarettes, and talk
love. It is so warm you can wear your summer pants, and the water smells
of clams that died long ago. It is just as though Chicago was flooded
by the bursting of the sewers, and people had to go around State street,
and all the cross streets, and Michigan avenue, in fishing boats, with
three feet of water on top of the pavements. Imagine the people of
Chicago taking gondolas and riding along the streets, landing at the
stores and hotels, just as they do now from carriages.

We had been riding in gondolas for two days, getting around in the mud
when the tide was out, and going to sleep and waiting for the tide to
come in, when it seemed to me that dad needed some excitement, and last
night I gave it to him.

We were out in our gondola, and the moon was shining, and the electric
lights made the canal near the Rialto bridge as light as day. The Rialto
bridge crosses the Grand canal, and has been the meeting place for
lovers for thousands of years. It is a grand structure, of carved
marble, but it wouldn't hold up a threshing machine engine half as
well as an iron bridge. Well, the canal was filled with thousands of
gondolas, loaded with the flower of Venetian society, and the music just
made you want to fall in love. Dad said if he didn't fall in love, or
something, before morning, he would quit the place. I made up my mind he
should fall into something, so I began by telling dad it seemed strange
to me that nobody but Eyetalians could run a gondola. Dad said he could
run a gondola as well as any foreigner, and I told him he couldn't run
a gondola for shucks, and he said he would show me, so he got out of the
hen house where we were seated, and went back on to the pointed end
of the gondola, and grabbed the pole or paddle from the g