“John P. Whitcomb, Etats Unis.  “Wm. L. Ainsworth, travailleur (he meant traveler, I suppose,) Etats Unis.  “George P. Morton et fils, d’Amerique.  “Lloyd B. Williams, et trois amis, ville de Boston, Amerique.  “J.  Ellsworth Baker, tout de suite de France, place de naissance Amerique, destination la Grand Bretagne.”

I love this sort of people.  A lady passenger of ours tells of a fellow-citizen of hers who spent eight weeks in Paris and then returned home and addressed his dearest old bosom friend Herbert as Mr.  “Er-bare!” He apologized, though, and said, “’Pon my soul it is aggravating, but I cahn’t help it—­I have got so used to speaking nothing but French, my dear Erbare—­damme there it goes again!—­got so used to French pronunciation that I cahn’t get rid of it—­it is positively annoying, I assure you.”  This entertaining idiot, whose name was Gordon, allowed himself to be hailed three times in the street before he paid any attention, and then begged a thousand pardons and said he had grown so accustomed to hearing himself addressed as “M’sieu Gor-r-dong,” with a roll to the r, that he had forgotten the legitimate sound of his name!  He wore a rose in his button-hole; he gave the French salutation—­two flips of the hand in front of the face; he called Paris Pairree in ordinary English conversation; he carried envelopes bearing foreign postmarks protruding from his breast-pocket; he cultivated a moustache and imperial, and did what else he could to suggest to the beholder his pet fancy that he resembled Louis Napoleon—­and in a spirit of thankfulness which is entirely unaccountable, considering the slim foundation there was for it, he praised his Maker that he was as he was, and went on enjoying his little life just the same as if he really had been deliberately designed and erected by the great Architect of the Universe.

Think of our Whitcombs, and our Ainsworths and our Williamses writing themselves down in dilapidated French in foreign hotel registers!  We laugh at Englishmen, when we are at home, for sticking so sturdily to their national ways and customs, but we look back upon it from abroad very forgivingly.  It is not pleasant to see an American thrusting his nationality forward obtrusively in a foreign land, but Oh, it is pitiable to see him making of himself a thing that is neither male nor female, neither fish, flesh, nor fowl—­a poor, miserable, hermaphrodite Frenchman!

Among a long list of churches, art galleries, and such things, visited by us in Venice, I shall mention only one—­the church of Santa Maria dei Frari.  It is about five hundred years old, I believe, and stands on twelve hundred thousand piles.  In it lie the body of Canova and the heart of Titian, under magnificent monuments.  Titian died at the age of almost one hundred years.  A plague which swept away fifty thousand lives was raging at the time, and there is notable evidence of the reverence in which the great painter was held, in the fact that to him alone the state permitted a public funeral in all that season of terror and death.