His unformulated criticism on the others was that they lackedaction. This picture, from the first, had singularly taken little Tony'sfancy. Peter's Church in Rome and, in a corner - the corner nearest the rack where the old flintlockshung - a busy merry populous scene, entitled: ST. In the hall of the old Bracknell house at Salemthere hung a series of yellowing prints which Uncle Richard Saulsbee hadbrought home from one of his long voyages: views of heathen mosques andpalaces, of the Grand Turk's Seraglio, of St.
Venice! The name, since childhood, had been amagician's wand to him. This is the story that, in the dining-room of the old Beacon Streethouse (now the Aldebaran Club), Judge Anthony Bracknell, of the famousEast India firm of Bracknell & Saulsbee, when the ladies had withdrawnto the oval parlour (and Maria's harp was throwing its gauzy web ofsound across the Common), used to relate to his grandsons, about theyear that Buonaparte marched upon Moscow.I'Him Venice!' said the Lascar with the big earrings and Tony Bracknell,leaning on the high gunwale of his father's East Indiaman, the HepzibahB., saw far off, across the morning sea, a faint vision of towers anddomes dissolved in golden air.It was a rare February day of the year 1760, and a young Tony,newly of age, and bound on the grand tour aboard the crack merchantmanof old Bracknell's fleet, felt his heart leap up as the distant citytrembled into shape.