People's Pilot, Volume 3, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 July 1893 — POETICAL DREAMS SHATTERED. [ARTICLE]

POETICAL DREAMS SHATTERED.

Influence of a Gondola Ride Through th* togeons of the Fair. The music came softly, sweetly out to the old man and his daughter as they sat, half reclining, on the luxurious cushions of the gondola, gayly decorated with Japanese lanterns. The myriad of gay lights from the cornices, from the roofs, from the water's edge reflected in silver and gold the ripples of the lagoon. High up along the balcony they could see the flaming torches, flickering with Roman reminiscence, and the white, ghastly faces and dark forms of the people looking down on the beautiful scene, while all around the lagoon, sitting upon the wide rail of the fence, leaning against the statuary, or moving about with eager, restless tread, they could see the thousands of sightseers. In the distance they saw the shimmering, multi-colored waters and heard the gurgling murmur of the fountains. The stoical gondoliers dextronsly swung the gondola here and there among the gay craft, laden to the water’s edge with merry parties of lagoon tourists. Once, in a pause of the orchestral music there came to them the twang of a banjo, then a happy French song came rippling across the dancing wavesFor a long time they were silent, says the Chicago- Tribune. Then she clasped her fingers, sparkling with diamonds, across the old man’s knee, and said; “Papa, I am so happy, I feel so dreamy, so poetical, something Byron or Browning like. Ah, the Bridge of Sighs and Byron. 0, I could love Byron to-night and Venice, too. Papa, Browning is buried there.” Possibly the old man thought Browning was one of her old dude lovers; they all looked consumptive; probably he had croaked in Venice. The old man sympathetically sighed. “If Byron and Browning coold have lived to see this, papa, what poetry we would have from them. They never saw anything to equal this.”' “Well, 1 guess there air few towns could beat this show,” the old man complacently remarked “How dreamily poetical Howells makes Venetian life,” she mused; “it must be something like this. How I should like to live in Venice always.” “Do you mean to say you’d rather live in that perennial flood town, Venice, than Chicago?” he sharply interro?ated. “Papa, my life would be a happy iream in Venice.” “Now, look-a-here, Maria,” he savagely said, “I won’t have that bowlegged dude fellow of yours prowling ’round the house any longer. He puts you up to all this moonshine business, and 1 won’t stand any more of this comic opera gondolier business, d’y’ hear? I ain’t going to be paddled 'round in. a canoe by a pair of opera bouffe scullers. We’ll land and take an electric or steam launch, something that can get a move on.” | Ho prodded the nearest gondolier with his umbrella and ordered an im» i mediate disembarkation. I Emin Pasha would make a good pet name ! for a eat on nbe basis of th« uiue-dfiaths anal, Ofy.-CmcinUu Pott. “ 8 “