inegar; and the effect, when I am not there, is
awe-stricken.

Next morning we took a gondola for the station, and slipped through the
gold and opal silence of the dawn on the canals away from Venice. No
one was up but the sun, who did as he liked with the facades and the
bridges in the water, and made strange lovelinesses in narrow darkling
places, and showed us things in the _calli_ that we did not know were in
the world. The Senator was really depressing until he gradually
lightened his spirits by working out a scheme for a direct line of
steamships between Venice and New York, to be based on an agreement with
the Venetian municipality as to garments of legitimate gaiety for the
gondoliers, the re-nomination of an annual Doge, who should be compelled
to wear his robes whenever he went out of doors, and the yearly
resurrection of the ancient ceremony of marrying Venice to the Adriatic,
during the months of July and August, when the tide of tourist traffic
sets across the Atlantic. "We should get every school ma'am in the
Union, to begin with," said poppa confidently, and by the time we
reached Verona he had floated the company, launched the first ship,
arrived in Venice with full orchestral accompaniment, and dined the
imitation Doge--if he couldn't get Umberto and Crispi--upon clam chowder
and canvas-backs to the solemn strains of Hail Columbia played up and
down the Grand Canal. "If it _could_ be worked," said poppa as we
descended upon the platform, "I'd like to have the Pope telephone us a
blessing on the banquet."

CHAPTER XXI.

It was the middle of the afternoon, and momma, having spent the morning
among the tombs of the Scaligeri, was lying down. The Scaligeri somehow
had got on her nerves; there were so many of them, and the panoply of
their individual bones was so imposing.

"Daughter," she had said to me on the way back to the hotel, "if you
point out another thing to me I'll slap you." In that frame of mind it
was always best to let momma lie down. The Senator had letters to write;
I think he wanted to communicate his Venetian steamship idea to a man in
Minneapolis. Dicky had already been round to the Hotel di Londres--we
were at the Colomba--and had found nothing, so when he asked me to come
out for a walk I prepared to be steeped in despondency. An unsuccessful
love affair is a severe test of friendship; but I went.

It was as I expected. Having secured a spectator to wreak his gloom
upon, M