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"We see little girls and boys go out in gondolas with their nurses for an airing. We see staid families, with prayer book and beads, enter the gondola dressed in their Sunday best, and float away to church. And at midnight we see the theatre break up and discharge its swarm of hilarious youth and beauty; we hear the cries of the hackman-gondoliers, and behold the struggling crowd jump aboard, and the black multitude of boats go skimming down the moonlit avenues; we see them separate here and there, and disappear up divergent streets; we hear the faint sounds of laughter and of shouted farewells floating up out of the distance; and then, the strange pageant being gone, we have lonely stretches of glittering water--of stately buildings--of blotting shadows-- of weird stone faces creeping into the moonlight-- of deserted bridges--of motionless boats at anchor. And all over all broods that mysterious stillness, that stealthy quiet, that befits so well this old dreaming Venice."
--- Mark Twain, "Innocents Abroad" chapter 23.