In Venice not only the guides and the hotel clerks and porters but even the simple gondolier has a secret understanding with all branches of the retail trade.  You get into a long, snaky, black gondola and fee the beggar who pushes you off, and all the other beggars who have assisted in the pushing off or have merely contributed to the success of the operation by being present, and you tell your gondolier in your best Italian or your worst pidgin English where you wish to go.  It may be you are bound for the Rialto; or for the Bridge of Sighs, which is chiefly distinguished from all the other bridges by being the only covered one in the lot; or for the house of the lady Desdemona.  The lady Desdemona never lived there or anywhere else, but the house where she would have lived, had she lived, is on exhibition daily from nine to five, admission one lira.  Or perchance you want to visit one of the ducal palaces that are so numerous in Venice.  These palaces are still tenanted by the descendants of the original proprietors; one family has perhaps been living in one palace three or four hundred years.  But now the family inhabits the top floor, doing light housekeeping up there, and the lower floor, where the art treasures, the tapestries and the family relics are, is in charge of a caretaker, who collects at the door and then leads you through.

Having given the boatman explicit directions you settle back in your cushion seat to enjoy the trip.  You marvel how he, standing at the stern, with his single oar fitted into a shallow notch of his steering post, propels the craft so swiftly and guides it so surely by those short, twisting strokes of his.  Really, you reflect, it is rowing by shorthand.  You are feasting your eyes on the wonderful color effects and the groupings that so enthuse the artist, and which he generally manages to botch and boggle when he seeks to commit them to canvas; and betweenwhiles you are wondering why all the despondent cats in Venice should have picked out the Grand Canal as the most suitable place in which to commit suicide, when—­bump!—­your gondola swings up against the landing piles in front of a glass factory and the entire force of helpers rush out and seize you by your arms—­or by your legs, if handier —­and try to drag you inside, while the affable and accommodating gondolier boosts you from behind.  You fight them off, declaring passionately that you are not in the market for colored glass at this time.  The hired hands protest; and the gondolier, cheated out of his commission, sorrows greatly, but obeys your command to move on.  At least he pretends to obey it; but a minute later he brings you up broadside at the water-level doors of a shop dealing in antiques, known appropriately as antichitas, or at a mosaic shop or a curio shop.  If ever you do succeed in reaching your destination it is by the exercise of much profanity and great firmness of will.