F. Hopkinson Smith

“ Hurry up, you who have never known a gondola or a Luigi! A vile-smelling, chuggity-chug is forcing its way up every crooked canal, no matter how narrow. Two Venetian shipyards are hammering away on their hulls or polishing their motors. Soon the cost of production will drop to that of a gondola. Then look out! There are eight thousand machinists in the Arsenal earning but five francs a day, any one of whom can learn to run a motor boat in a week, thus doubling their wages. Worse yet—the world is getting keener every hour for speedy things. ”

“ A country so small that they build dykes to keep the inhabitants from being spilt off the edge, is hardly the place for a scandal—certainly not in stolid Dordrecht or in that fly-speck of a Papendrecht, whose dormer windows peer over the edge of the dyke as if in mortal fear of another inundation. ”

“ While I have been loafing with Luigi not only has the summer slipped away, but the cool winds of October have crept down from the Alps.. There are fresh subjects to tackle—some I have never seen. Athens beckons to me. The columns of the Parthenon loom up!
If there are half a dozen ways of getting into Papendrecht—there is only one of reaching Athens—that is, if you start from Venice. Trieste first, either by rail or boat, and then aboard one of the Austrian Lloyds and so on down the Adriatic to Patras. ”

“ Then my white umbrella would loom up as large as a circus : tent, the usual crowd surging about its doors. As you cannot see London for the people, so you cannot see the river for boats on these days—all sorts of boats—wherries, tubs, launches, racing craft, shells, punts— everything that can be poled, pulled, or wobbled, and in each one the invariable combination—a man, a girl and a dog—a dog, a girl and a man. ”

“ Here the river, crazy with delight, seems to lose its head and goes meandering about, poking its nose up back waters, creeping across meadows, flooding limpid shallows, mirroring oaks and willows upside down, surging up as if to sweep away a velvetshorn lawn, only to pour itself—its united self—into an open-mouthed lock, and so on to a saner life in a level stretch beyond. ”

“ He is the exact duplicate of the tramp in the comic opera of "Miss Hook of Holland"—except that the actor-sleeper occasionally topples over and has to be braced up. Bob is past-master of the art and goes it alone, without propping of any kind. He is the only man in Dordrecht, or Papendrecht, or the country round about, who can pull a boat and speak English. He says so, and I am forced not only to believe him, but to hire him. He wants it in advance, too—having had some experience with "painter-man," he explains to Herr Teitsma. ”

“ I shall, of course, miss my delightful William, but I am accustomed to that. And then, again, while Bob asleep is an interesting physiological study. Bob awake adds to the gaiety of nations, samples of which crowd about my easel, Holland being one of the main highways of the earth.
Keep the Traghetti Intact
There is no delight so keen to an artist as returning to a place he has once painted and loved. I have known Dort and the little 'drecht across the way for some fifteen years, five of which have slipped by since I last opened my umbrella along its quaint quays. ”