Evening Journal

THE GONDOLA.
Its Gliding and Guiding Through Venice's Intricate Canals.
The gondola is so perfectly adapted to its purpose that it is like a sentient thing in the gondolier's control. It obeys the slightest impulse of the oar. Through the narrow and intricate lanes of Venice, with the sharp and baffling turns, it glides with unfailing accuracy. The boatmen have about ten different calls by which they announce their approach, as they come to a corner, the turn they will take in a crowd, their way to right and left and all that. And these calls, half song, half cry, echo day and night, and yet so musical are they that they seem to be merely a part of the brooding silence of Venice
Indeed the wonder of Venice is how all things-the city and the sea, the boats and the people, the songs and the sky-combine to make one perfect whole, caressing and idle as one of Petrarch's sonnets, which one I care not. Here even death is not merely somber. It is friendly and familiar as well. I saw them put old Paolo to bed for the last time. He had been in his prime a stout gondolier of the traghetto of Santa Sofia, near the Rialto, but in old age was a ragged "hooker" of the gray. In his quarter, however, he was a respected man. Indeed to be old or to be a child is among the gondoliers a title to tenderness and respect. And so when a good man dies in the poorer quarters the neighbors combine and hire a brass band to celebrate his virtues.-Vance Thompson in Outing Magazine