"Well, now, I want it straight,"--and he lowered his voice,--"what
does a sensible man find in an old waterlogged town like this?"
I gave him the customary answer: the glories of her past; the
picturesque life of the lagoons; the beauty of her palaces, churches,
and gardens; the luxurious gondolas, etc., etc.
"Don't see it," he broke out before I had half finished. "As for the
gon-do-las, you're dead right, and no mistake. First time I settled on
one of them cushions I felt just as if I'd settled in a basket of
kittens; but as for palaces! Why, the State House at Al-ba-ny knocks
'em cold; and as for gardens! Lord! when I think of mine at home all
chock-full of hollyhocks and sunflowers and morning-glories, and then
think what a first-class cast-iron idiot I am wandering around
here"---- He gazed abstractedly at the ceiling for a moment as if the
thought overpowered him, and then went on, "I've got a stock-farm six
miles from Unionville, where I've got some three-year-olds can trot in
2.23--Gardens!"--suddenly remembering his first train of thought,--"they
simply ain't in it. And as for ler-goons! We've got a river sailing
along in front of Troy that mayn't be so wide, but it's a durned sight
safer and longer, and there ain't a gallon of water in it that ain't
as sweet as a daisy; and that's what you can't say of these streaks of
mud around here, that smell like a dumping-ground." Here he rose from
his chair, his voice filling the room, the words dropping slowly:
"I--ain't--got--no--use--for--a--place--where--there--ain't--a--horse
--in--the--town,--and every--cellar--is--half--full--of--water."
A few mornings after, I was stepping into my gondola when I caught
sight of the man from Troy sitting in a gondola surrounded by his
trunks. His face expressed supreme content, illumined by a sort of
grim humor, as if some master effort of his life had been rewarded
with more than usual success. Eliza-beth was tucked away on "the
basket of kittens," half hidden by the linen curtains.
"Off?" I said inquiringly.
"You bet!"
"Which way?"
"Paris, and then a bee-line for New York."
"But you are an hour too early for your train."
He held his finger to his lips and knitted his eyebrows.
"What's that?" came a shrill plaintive voice from the curtains. "An
hour more? George, please ask the gentleman to tell the gondolier to
take us to Salviate's; we've got time for that glass mirror, and I
can't bear to leave Venice without"----
"Eliza-beth, you sit where you air, if it takes a week. No Salviate's
in mine, and no glass mirror. We are stuffed now so jammed full of
wooden goats, glass bottles, copper buckets, and old church rags that
I had to jump on my trunk to lock it." Then waving his hand to me, he
called out as I floated off, "This craft is pointed for home, and
don't you forget it."