Chapter I

Yes, I promised to write, but how shall I write to you, darling?
Venice we reached last Monday, wild for canals and for color,
Palaces, prisons, lagoons, and gondolas, bravoes, and moonlight,
All the mysterious, dreadful, beautiful things in existence.
Fred had joined us at Naples, insuff'rably knowing and travelled,
Wise in the prices of things and great at tempestuous bargains,
Rich in the costly nothing our youthful travellers buy here,
At a prodigious outlay of time and money and trouble;
Utter confusion of facts, and talking the wildest of pictures,--
Pyramids, battle-fields, bills, and examinations of luggage,
Passports, policemen, porters, and how he got through his
tobacco,--
Ignorant, handsome, full-bearded, brown, and good-natured as ever:
Annie thinks him perfect, and I well enough for a brother.
Also, a friend of Fred's came with us from Naples to Venice;
And, altogether, I think, we are rather agreeable people,
For we've been taking our pleasure at all times in perfect
good-humor;
Which is an excellent thing that you'll understand when you've
travelled,
Seen Recreation dead-beat and cross, and learnt what a burden
Frescos, for instance, can be, and, in general, what an affliction
Life is apt to become among the antiques and old masters.

Venice we've thoroughly done, and it's perfectly true of the
pictures--
Titians and Tintorettos, and Palmas and Paul Veroneses;
Neither are gondolas fictions, but verities, hearse-like and
swan-like,
Quite as the heart could wish. And one finds, to one's infinite
comfort,
Venice just as unique as one's fondest visions have made it:
Palaces and mosquitoes rise from the water together,
And, in the city's streets, the salt-sea is ebbing and flowing
Several inches or more.

--Ah! let me not wrong thee, O Venice!
Fairest, forlornest, and saddest of all the cities, and dearest!
Dear, for my heart has won here deep peace from cruel confusion;
And in this lucent air, whose night is but tenderer noon-day,
Fear is forever dead, and hope has put on the immortal!
--There! and you need not laugh. I'm coming to something directly.
One thing: I've bought you a chain of the famous fabric of Venice--
Something peculiar and quaint, and of such a delicate texture
That you must wear it embroidered upon a riband of velvet,
If you would have the effect of its exquisite fineness and beauty.
"Isn't it very frail?" I asked of the workman who made it.
"Strong enough, if you will, to bind a lover, signora,"--
With an expensive smile. 'Twas bought near the Bridge of Rialto.
(Shylock, you know.) In our shopping, Aunt May and Fred do the
talking:
Fred begins always in French, with the most delicious effront'ry,
Only to end in profoundest humiliation and English.
Aunt, however, scorns to speak any tongue but Italian:
"Quanto per these ones here?" and "What did you say was the
prezzo?"
"Ah! troppo caro! _Too much!_ No, no! Don't I _tell_ you it's
troppo?"
All the while insists that the gondolieri shall show us
What she calls Titian's palazzo, and pines for the house of
Othello.
Annie, the dear little goose, believes in Fred and her mother
With an enchanting abandon. She doesn't at all understand them,
But she has some twilight views of their cleverness. Father is
quiet,
Now and then ventures some French when he fancies that nobody hears
him,
In an aside to the valet-de-place--I never detect him--
Buys things for mother and me with a quite supernatural sweetness,
Tolerates all Fred's airs, and is indispensably pleasant.