Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Off for a Summer Day. CHAPTER II. A SUMMER DAY. VENICE in summer with a marine artist for a companion, — could anything be better ? An artist from early dawn to dark, from the top of his curly head to the soles of his feet; an artist who indeed appreciates — no, perhaps approves would be more nearly true — the pictures of Titian and Tintoretto on a rainy day, but will have none of them in any kind of weather when the sea can be studied and painted. The summer is the only season when one can really know modern Venice; the only time when one can in any good degree separate himself from the long ago and live in the present; the time when he will, in spite of himself, turn his back on the works of man and live out in the world that God created before palaces and churches, arsenals and towers, had been invented. The most delicious of days is that when in the cool morning we take to our gondola, with our artist and his traps, the books that we think we shall read but rarely do, the fancy work which soon loses its interest, the rugs on which to lie for the afternoon siesta, the basket with the solid luncheon, a second with fruit and sweets, and a third with wine. And when our little maid Anita, so busy in the house that she can scarcely leave it, comes with her gay handkerchief but half arranged about her shoulders, begging pardon for her tardiness and smiling at our gondolier, Giacomo, whom she calls her cousin (?), all is ready. We pass into a side canal to do a necessary housekeeping errand; for we live not in hotels, — not we, — and sometimes, we will admit, our furniture requires repairs, and frequently we must buy some needful article which we fail to find in our " completely furnished lodgings." But the effect of the historic name of our palace is to make us feel...