Page:The Innocents Abroad (1869).djvu/265

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CONTRABAND GUIDE.
241

yet who knew any thing. He was born in South Carolina, of Rialto Bridge and Bridge of Sighs. slave parents. They came to Venice while he was an infant. He has grown up here. He is well educated. He reads, writes, and speaks English, Italian, Spanish, and French, with perfect facility; is a worshipper of art and thoroughly conversant with it; knows the history of Venice by heart and never tires of talking of her illustrious career. He dresses better than any of us, I think, and is daintily polite. Negroes are deemed as good as white people, in Venice, and so this man feels no