money. I'll give you as much for that as for all the rest. Charles. Don't tease me, master broker; I tell you I'll not part with it, and there's an end of it.

Sir Oliver (aside). How like his father he is! (Aloud) Well, well, I have done. (Aside) I did not perceive it 5 before, but I think I never saw such a striking resemblance. (Aloud) Here is a draft for the sum.

Charles. Why, 't is for eight hundred pounds!

Sir Oliver. You will not let Sir Oliver

go ?

Charles. Zounds! no! I tell you once more.

Sir Oliver. Then never mind the difference; we'll balance that another time. But give me your hand on the bargain; you are an honest fellow, Charles; I beg pardon, sir, for being so free. Come, Moses.

10

Charles. This is a whimsical old fellow! But, hark'ee, 15 Premium, you'll prepare lodgings for these gentlemen.

Sir Oliver. Yes, yes, I'll send for them in a day or two. * Charles. But hold; do now send a genteel conveyance for them, for I assure you they were most of them used to ride in their own carriages.

Sir Oliver. I will, I will-for all but Oliver.

Charles. Ay, all but the little nabob.

Sir Oliver. You're fixed on that?

Charles. Peremptorily.

20

Sir Oliver (aside). A dear extravagant rogue! (Aloud) 25 Good day! Come, Moses. (Aside) Let me hear now who dares call him profligate.

Careless. Why, this is the oddest genius of the sort I ever met with.

Charles. He is the prince of brokers, I think. I wonder how Moses got acquainted with so honest a fellow..

Exit Careless

5 Let me see, two thirds of these five hundred and thirty odd pounds are mine by right. I find one's ancestors are more valuable relations than I took them for! Ladies and gentlemen, your most obedient and grateful servant. (Bows ceremoniously to the pictures)

CURTAIN

--

Conquest: the Norman Conquest of England was in 1066. — genealogy : line of descent; names of direct ancestors. — family tree: a family record, often drawn in the form of a tree. -knock down: assign to a bidder at an auction by a blow of the auctioneer's hammer. - Marlborough: a famous English general. — Malplaquet (mål plå kě ́): a French village, famous for an English victory in 1709.— speak: name a price. Kneller (něl ́ēr): a German-English portrait painter of the eighteenth century. — five pounds ten: five pounds ten shillings, or about $26.50.-— Careless!: Charles is calling the auctioneer's attention to another sale. guinea: a former gold coin worth twenty-one shillings. Certain bills are still reckoned in guineas, though the coin is no longer made. woolsack: the seat of the Lord Chancellor of England in the House of Lords. It is a large square sack of wool, resembling a divan, and its purpose is to keep in mind the value of wool as a source of national wealth. Norwich (nôr'wich; often pronounced nor′íj): an old city of England. inveterate: old, obstinate. draft: an order for the payment of money.. hark'ee: listen. — hold: stop. — nabob: one who returns from the East with great wealth. - peremptorily (pěrˇěmpto ri ly): decidedly; absolutely.

VENICE

JOHN RUSKIN

JOHN RUSKIN (1819-1900) was an English artist and writer. He had a keen sense of social obligation and longed to bring about a popular appreciation of the beautiful in nature and art.

From the mouths of the Adige to those of the Piave there stretches, at a variable distance of from three to 5 five miles from the actual shore, a bank of sand, divided into long islands by narrow channels of sea. The space between this bank and the true shore consists of a great plain of calcareous mud, covered, in the neighborhood of Venice, by the sea at high water, to the depth in most 10 places of a foot or a foot and a half, and nearly everywhere exposed at low tide, but divided by an intricate network of narrow and winding channels, from which the sea never retires.

In some places, according to the run of the currents, the 15 land has risen into marshy islets, consolidated, some by art and some by time, into ground firm enough to be built upon or fruitful enough to be cultivated. In others, on the contrary, it has not reached the sea level; so that at the average low water shallow lakelets glitter among its 20 irregularly exposed fields of seaweed.

In the midst of the largest of these, increased in importance by the confluence of several large river channels.

towards one of the openings in the sea bank, the city of Venice itself is built, on a crowded cluster of islands. The various plots of higher ground which appear to the north and south of this central cluster have at different periods 5 been also thickly inhabited, and now bear, according to their size, the remains of cities, villages, or isolated convents and churches scattered among spaces of open ground, partly waste and encumbered by ruins, partly under cultivation for the supply of the metropolis.

10 The average rise and fall of the tide is about three feet (varying considerably with the seasons); but this fall, on so flat a shore, is enough to cause continual movement in the waters, and in the main canals to produce a reflux which frequently runs like a mill stream. At high water 15 no land is visible for many miles to the north or south of Venice, except in the form of small islands crowned with towers or gleaming with villages.

There is a channel some three miles wide between the city and the mainland, and some mile and a half wide be20 tween it and the sandy breakwater which divides the lagoon from the Adriatic. This is so low as hardly to disturb the impression of the city's having been built in the midst of the ocean, although the secret of its true position is partly betrayed by the clusters of piles set to 25 mark the deep-water channels, which undulate far away in spotty chains like the studded backs of huge sea snakes, and by the quick glittering of the crisped and crowded

waves that flicker and dance before the strong winds upon the unlifted level of the shallow sea.

But the scene is widely different at low tide. A fall of eighteen or twenty inches is enough to show ground over the greater part of the lagoon; and at the complete ebb 5 the city is seen standing in the midst of a dark plain of seaweed. Through this salt and somber plain the gondola and the fishing boat advance by tortuous channels, seldom more than four or five feet deep and often so choked with slime that the heavier keels furrow the bottom till their 10 crossing tracks are seen through the clear sea water like the ruts upon a wintry road, and the oar leaves blue gashes upon the ground at every stroke or is entangled among the thick weed that fringes the banks with the weight of its sullen waves, leaning to and fro upon the uncertain sway 15 of the exhausted tide.

The scene is often profoundly oppressive even at this day, when every plot of higher ground bears some fragment of fair building; but in order to know what it was once, let the traveler follow in his boat at evening the 20 windings of some unfrequented channel far into the midst. of the melancholy plain; let him remove, in his imagination, the brightness of the great city that still extends itself in the distance, and the walls and towers from the islands that are near; and so wait, until the sweet warmth 25 of the sunset is withdrawn from the waters, and the black desert of their shore lies in its nakedness beneath the