where the old flintlocks
hung--a busy merry populous scene, entitled: _St. Mark's Square in
Venice_. This picture, from the first, had singularly taken little
Tony's fancy. His unformulated criticism on the others was that they
lacked action. True, in the view of St. Peter's an experienced-looking
gentleman in a full-bottomed wig was pointing out the fairly obvious
monument to a bashful companion, who had presumably not ventured to
raise his eyes to it; while, at the doors of the Seraglio, a group of
turbaned infidels observed with less hesitancy the approach of a veiled
lady on a camel. But in Venice so many things were happening at
once--more, Tony was sure, than had ever happened in Boston in a
twelve-month or in Salem in a long lifetime. For here, by their garb,
were people of every nation on earth, Chinamen, Turks, Spaniards, and
many more, mixed with a parti-coloured throng of gentry, lacqueys,
chapmen, hucksters, and tall personages in parsons' gowns who stalked
through the crowd with an air of mastery, a string of parasites at
their heels. And all these people seemed to be diverting themselves
hugely, chaffering with the hucksters, watching the antics of trained
dogs and monkeys, distributing doles to maimed beggars or having their
pockets picked by slippery-looking fellows in black--the whole with
such an air of ease and good-humour that one felt the cut-purses to be
as much a part of the show as the tumbling acrobats and animals.

As Tony advanced in years and experience this childish mumming lost its
magic; but not so the early imaginings it had excited. For the old
picture had been but the spring-board of fancy, the first step of a
cloud-ladder leading to a land of dreams. With these dreams the name of
Venice remained associated; and all that observation or report
subsequently brought him concerning the place seemed, on a sober
warranty of fact, to confirm its claim to stand midway between reality
and illusion. There was, for instance, a slender Venice glass,
gold-powdered as with lily-pollen or the dust of sunbeams, that,
standing in the corner cabinet betwixt two Lowestoft caddies, seemed,
among its lifeless neighbours, to palpitate like an impaled butterfly.
There was, farther, a gold chain of his mother's, spun of that same
sun-pollen, so thread-like, impalpable, that it slipped through the
fingers like light, yet so strong that it carried a heavy pendant which
seemed held in air as if by magic. _Magic!