On summer evenings, when the city wakes to life and music, the famous square bursts into the gaiety of a ball-room, and is the favorite rendezvous of all lovers and pleasure-seekers, whether natives or foreigners. Here, several times a week, fine military music floats upon the air, and hundreds of men and women stroll along these marble blocks, which in the moonlight seem as white as snow. Others, meantime, are seated beneath the neighboring arches, sipping coffee or sherbet, laughing and talking in the soft Venetian dialect, and, like the Japanese, seeming to appreciate the mere joy of living, an art which many of us, alas, have lost.
One pretty feature of this historic area is its pigeons. Their homes are in the marble arches of the adjoining buildings; and shortly after midday, every afternoon, they suddenly appear in great numbers; now rising in a pretty cloud of fluttering wings; now grouped together like an undulating wave of eider-down. Foreigners, in particular, love to feed them; and in return for the kindness they receive, the pigeons at times alight upon the shoulders of a stranger or courageously pick up crumbs from outstretched hands. It is not strange that Venice should guard these birds so tenderly. Six centuries ago, when the Venetians were blockading the island of Candia, the Doge's officers observed that pigeons frequently flew above their heads. Suspecting something, they contrived to shoot a few, and each was found to have beneath its wing a message to the enemy. Acting on information thus acquired, the Venetian admiral made his attack at once and captured the island in twelve hours. The carrier-pigeons which they found there were therefore taken home to Venice and treated with the utmost kindness, and their descendants have ever since been favorites of the people.
On walking from the Piazza toward the Grand Canal, one always finds at the extremity of the Piazzetta a line of waiting gondolas. At once a shower of soft Italian syllables falls musically on the air: "Una gondola, Signore! Commanda una gondola; Una barca, Signore; Una bellissima barca; Vuol' andare? Eccomi pronto!" The speakers are Venetian coachmen, and the contrast is a startling one between the liquid vowels of their speech and the rasping cries of our American drivers: "Want a cow-pay, lady?" "Want a kerridge?" "Want a hack—hack—hack?" As for the gondoliers themselves, how picturesque they look with their white suits and colored scarfs! Who can resist the impulse to enter one of these pretty barges and give oneself to the enjoyment of the hour?