"
"Sorry I can't oblige you, poppa," I said. I certainly was not going to
have any reconciliation effected by poppa.
"You'd better just consider it, daughter. I don't want to interfere--but
you know my desire, my command."
"Senator," said I, "you don't seem to realise that it takes more than a
gondola to make a paternal Doge. I've got to ask you to remember that I
was born in Chicago. And it's my bed time. Gondolier! _Albergo! Andate
presto!_"
"He seems to understand you," said poppa meekly.
So we dropped Arthur--dropped him, so to speak, into the Grand Canal,
and I really felt callous at the time as to whether he should ever come
up again.
But the Senator's joy in Venice found other means of expressing itself.
One was an active and disinterested appeal to the gondoliers to be a
little less modern in their costume. He approached this subject through
the guide with every gondolier in turn, and the smiling impassiveness
with which his suggestions were received still causes him wonder and
disgust. "I presume," he remonstrated, "you think you earn your living
because tourists have got to get from the Accademia to St.
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