etin'.
And Tommy himself had letters from his pa and ma full of love and good
advice, about half and half.

One of the most interestin' places in Venice is the Doges Palace, and
I spoze Josiah never gin up his idee about it until we stood right in
front of it. But when he see that marble front, full of noble columns,
elaborate carvin', arches, balustrades and base reliefs, he had to gin
up such a place as that wuz never rared up to a dog or to any number
on 'em, though he said when I convinced him of his mistake: "Snip wuz
too good to mingle with 'em, he was likelier than any Doge that ever
lived there, no matter whether you spelt 'em dog or doge."

And I sez soothin'ly: "Like as not and 'tennyrate how I would love to
hear Snip bark out a welcome to us once more."

"Yes," sez Josiah, "it will be the happiest hour of my life when I
behold Snip and the cat and the children and grandchildren and the
rest of the Jonesvillians once more."

Here in the marble pavement are two great bronze cisterns elegantly
sculptured, and you can look up the Grand Staircase with two statutes
at the top on either side, Neptune and Mars; and that wuz the place
where the old Doges wuz crowned.

On the staircase on each side are beautiful statutes and columns,
elaborate carving and richly colored marbles. The Hall of the Great
Council is one hundred and seventy-five feet long and most a hundred
in width, broad enough and high enough to entertain broader and nobler
views than wuz promulgated there. But it contains costly and beautiful
pictures; one by Tintoretto is eighty-four feet wide and most forty
feet high, the largest picture on canvas in the world so I've hearn,
and others by Paul Veronese and the other great masters.

All round the wall, like a border in a Jonesville parlor, are the
portraits of the Doges of Venice in their red robes and round-topped
caps. But where Marino Faliero should have hung wuz a black curtain.
Well, he wuz a mean creeter; it is a good thing he can be shut out
with a curtain. Josiah said he thought it would be a crackin' good
plan to have a black curtain hung before the pictures of some of our
public men, but Arvilly said, in a real dry tone, that "If we begun
that it would bring up the price of black cloth enormously."

She mourns yet quite a good deal in her best dresses, and looked
ahead, and didn't want the price of crape and bombazine riz.

Among the pictures of these old Doges wuz one who led the arm