Francis Hopkinson Smith

“ 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. ”

“ A country so small that they build dikes 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 dike as if in mortal fear of another inundation. ”

“ Here the river, crazy with delight, seems to lose its head and goes meandering about, poking its nose up backwaters, creeping across meadows, flooding limpid shallows, mirroring oaks and willows upside down, surging up as if to sweep away a velvet-shorn 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. ”

“ Seventeen years now since he bent to his oar behind my cushions—twenty-six in all since I began to idle about her canals. It is either the little canal next the Public Garden, or up the Giudecca, or under the bronze horses of San Marco; or it may be we are camped out in the Piazzetta before the Porta della Carta; or perhaps up the narrow canal of San Rocco, or in the Fruit Market near the Rialto while the boats unload their cargoes.
All old subjects and yet ever new; each has been painted a thousand times, and in as many different lights and perspectives. ”

“ My dear friend, Herr Boudier, of years gone by, has retired from its ownership, but his successor, Herr Teitsma, is as hearty in his welcome. Peter, my old boatman, too, pulled his last oar some two years back, and one “Bop” takes his place. There is another “p” and an “e” tacked on to Bop, but I have eliminated the unnecessary and call him “Bob” for short. They made Bob out of what was left of Peter, but they left out all trace of William. ”

“ The only hope rests with the Venetians themselves. They have restored the scarred Library, and are rebuilding the Campanile, with a reverence for the things which made their past glorious that commands the respect of the artistic world. ”

“ 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 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 gayety of nations, samples of which crowd about my easel, Holland being one of the main highways of the earth.
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. To my great joy nothing has changed. ”

“ Got this clip outside Kimberly—” and he touched his ear. “Been all my life on the river—Maidenhead and Bourne's End mostly—and so when my time was up I come home and the boss here put me on.”
“A soldier! I thought so. I see now why you got mad. Wonder you didn't throw that chap into the river.” I am a crank on the happiness one gets from the giving of tips—and a half-penny man is the rock bottom of meanness.
His face straightened.
“Well, we can't do that, sor—we can't never talk back. Got to grin and bear it or lose yer job. Learned that in the Hussahs. ”