"Once did she hold," Randall quoted, "the gorgeous East in fee;
And was the safeguard of the West; the worth
Of Venice did not fall below her birth,
Venice, the eldest Child of Liberty.
She was a maiden city, bright and free;
No guile seduced, no force could violate;
And, when she took unto herself a mate,
She must espouse the everlasting Sea!"

Time is the greatest rogue of all. Not all the arrows of Attila
can do the damage of a trickle of sand in an hour-glass! Tyre and
Sidon, Carthage, ancient Babylon, and Venice, queen of them all.

I am describing Venice to you for this reason. You might now stand
where Troy's walls once were and say to yourself: "Was this where
Helen walked with her little son? Was this where the loveliest face
of ages wept?" And a chill of doubt would come on you, and you would
think, "I've been wasting my sorrow and wasting my love, for it was
all nothing but an old tale made up in a minstrel's head."

And sometime in Venice, after your dinner in a hotel, you'd go out
for a while in a BARCA, that would have no more romance to it nor
the bark a gillie would row, and you salmon-fishing on a cold,
blustery day, and you would feel disappointed, you having come
so far, and you'd say: "It was a grand story surely, and bravely
did it pass the winter evening; but wasn't old Malachi of the
Long Glen the liar of the world!"

I wouldn't have you saying that, and I dead. In all I'm telling you,
I'd have you to know there's not a ha'porth of lie.