Not all the arrows of Attila can do the damage of a trickle of sand in an hour-glass! Tyre and Sidon, Carthage, ancient Babylon, and Venice, queen of them all.
I am describing Venice to you for this reason.

You might now stand where Troy's walls once were and say to yourself: "Was this where Helen walked with her little son?
Was this where the loveliest face of ages wept ?" And a chill of doubt would come on you, and you would think, "I've been wasting my sorrow and wasting my love, for it was all nothing but an old tale made up in a minstrel's head." And sometime in Venice, after your dinner in a hotel, you'd go out for a while in a BARCA, that would have no more romance to it nor the bark a gillie would row, and you salmon-fishing on a cold, blustery day, and you would feel disappointed, you having come so far, and you'd say: "It was a grand story surely, and bravely did it pass the winter evening; but wasn't old Malachi of the Long Glen the liar of the world!" I wouldn't have you saying that, and I dead.

In all I'm telling you, I'd have you to know there's not a ha'porth of lie..