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Italian Hours by Henry James
page 49 of 414 (11%)
themselves forward to a constant recovery has the double value of
being, at the fag-end of greatness, the only energetic note. The
people from the hotels are always afloat, and, at the hotel pace,
the solitary gondolier (like the solitary horseman of the old-
fashioned novel) is, I confess, a somewhat melancholy figure.
Perched on his poop without a mate, he re-enacts perpetually, in
high relief, with his toes turned out, the comedy of his odd and
charming movement. He always has a little the look of an absent-
minded nursery-maid pushing her small charges in a perambulator.

But why should I risk too free a comparison, where this
picturesque and amiable class are concerned? I delight in their
sun-burnt complexions and their childish dialect; I know them
only by their merits, and I am grossly prejudiced in their
favour. They are interesting and touching, and alike in their
virtues and their defects human nature is simplified as with a
big effective brush. Affecting above all is their dependence on
the stranger, the whimsical stranger who swims out of their ken,
yet whom Providence sometimes restores. The best of them at any
rate are in their line great artists. On the swarming feast-
days, on the strange feast-night of the Redentore, their steering
is a miracle of ease. The master-hands, the celebrities and
winners of prizes--you may see them on the private gondolas in
spotless white, with brilliant sashes and ribbons, and often with
very handsome persons--take the right of way with a pardonable
insolence. They penetrate the crush of boats with an authority of
their own. The crush of boats, the universal sociable bumping and
squeezing, is great when, on the summer nights, the ladies shriek
with alarm, the city pays the fiddlers, and the illuminated
barges, scattering music and song, lead a long train down the
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