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Bangs, John Kendrick, 1862-1922

"The Water Ghost and Others"


"By-the-way," he said, "let me say parenthetically that I think our
foreign trips will have a far greater _vraisemblance_ if we heighten the
illusion with a few photographs, don't you? They cost about a quarter
apiece at Blank's, in Twenty-third Street."
"A good idea that," I answered, amused at the thoroughness with which
Bragdon was "doing" Venice. "We can remember what we haven't seen so very
much more easily."
"Yes," Bragdon said, "and besides, they'll keep us from exaggeration."
And then he went on to tell me of his month in Venice; how he chartered a
gondola for the whole of his stay there from a handsome romantic Venetian
youth, whose name was on a card Tom had had printed for the occasion,
reading:
GIUSEPPE ZOCCO
Gondolas at all Hours
Cor. Grand Canal and Garibaldi St.
"Giuseppe was a character," Bragdon said. "One of the remnants of a
by-gone age. He could sing like a bird, and at night he used to bring his
friends around to the front of my palace and hitch up to one of the piles
that were driven beside my doorstep, and there they'd sing their soft
Italian melodies for me by the hour.


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