Grand Rapids Morning Telegram

We arrived in Venice last evening, latitude 45 deg. 25 min. north, longitude 12 deg. 19 min. east.

Venice is the home of the Venetian, and also where the gondola has its nest and rears its young. This is the town where the "Merchant of Venice" used to do business, and the home of Shylock, a broker, who sheared the Venetian lamb at the corner of the Rialto and the Grand Canal. He is now no more. Shylock, during the great panic in Venice many years ago, it is said, had a chattel mortgage on more lives than you can shake a stick at. He would loan a small amount to a merchant at three per cent. a month, and secure it on a pound of the merchant's liver, or by a cut throat mortgage on his respiratory apparatus. Then, when the paper matured, he would go up to the house with a pair of scales and a pie-knife and demand it ferociously.

Venice is one of the best watered towns in Europe. You can hardly walk a block without getting your feet wet, unless you ride in a gondola. The gondola is a long, slim hack without wheels, and is worked around through the damp streets by a brunette man, whose breath should be a sad warning to us all. He is called the gondolier. Sometimes he sings in a low tone of voice and in a foreign tongue. I do not know where I have met so many foreigners as I have here in Europe, unless it was in New York at the polls. Wherever I go I hear a foreign tongue. I do not know whether these people talk in the Italian language just to show off or not. Perhaps they prefer it. London is the only place I have visited where the Boston dialect is used. London was originally settled by adventurers from Boston. The blood of some of the royal families of Massachusetts may be found in the veins of London people.

The Academia del Belle Arti of Venice is a large picture-store for Christmas presents. A painting by Titian, the Italian Prang, pleased me very much, but I couldn't beat them down in the price to where it would be any object to buy it. Besides, it would be a nuisance to carry such a picture around with me all over the Alps, up the Rhine and through St. Lawrence County. I finally decided to leave it in and secure something less awkward to carry and pay for.

The Italians are quite proud of their smoky old paintings. I have often thought that if Venice would run less to art and more to soap she would be more apt to win my respect. Art is all right to a certain extent, but as it can be seen in the ground. It breaks my heart to know how languish not here and cut ty interesting ste Wiwn condk gate s drop hetn he Hae nothae gandoliee