The guide I have spoken of is the only one we have had yet who knew any thing.  He was born in South Carolina, of slave parents.  They came to Venice while he was an infant.  He has grown up here.  He is well educated.  He reads, writes, and speaks English, Italian, Spanish, and French, with perfect facility; is a worshipper of art and thoroughly conversant with it; knows the history of Venice by heart and never tires of talking of her illustrious career.  He dresses better than any of us, I think, and is daintily polite.  Negroes are deemed as good as white people, in Venice, and so this man feels no desire to go back to his native land.  His judgment is correct.

I have had another shave.  I was writing in our front room this afternoon and trying hard to keep my attention on my work and refrain from looking out upon the canal.  I was resisting the soft influences of the climate as well as I could, and endeavoring to overcome the desire to be indolent and happy.  The boys sent for a barber.  They asked me if I would be shaved.  I reminded them of my tortures in Genoa, Milan, Como; of my declaration that I would suffer no more on Italian soil.  I said “Not any for me, if you please.”

I wrote on.  The barber began on the doctor.  I heard him say: 

“Dan, this is the easiest shave I have had since we left the ship.”

He said again, presently: 

“Why Dan, a man could go to sleep with this man shaving him.”

Dan took the chair.  Then he said: 

“Why this is Titian.  This is one of the old masters.”

I wrote on.  Directly Dan said: 

“Doctor, it is perfect luxury.  The ship’s barber isn’t any thing to him.”

My rough beard wee distressing me beyond measure.  The barber was rolling up his apparatus.  The temptation was too strong.  I said: 

“Hold on, please.  Shave me also.”

I sat down in the chair and closed my eyes.  The barber soaped my face, and then took his razor and gave me a rake that well nigh threw me into convulsions.  I jumped out of the chair:  Dan and the doctor were both wiping blood off their faces and laughing.

I said it was a mean, disgraceful fraud.

They said that the misery of this shave had gone so far beyond any thing they had ever experienced before, that they could not bear the idea of losing such a chance of hearing a cordial opinion from me on the subject.

It was shameful.  But there was no help for it.  The skinning was begun and had to be finished.  The tears flowed with every rake, and so did the fervent execrations.  The barber grew confused, and brought blood every time.  I think the boys enjoyed it better than any thing they have seen or heard since they left home.