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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12184 ***
+
+[Illustration:
+
+_Lilian Bell_
+
+Duogravure
+
+From the Painting by Oliver Dennett Grover]
+
+
+
+
+Abroad with the Jimmies
+
+BY
+
+LILIAN BELL,
+
+
+AUTHOR OF
+
+"THE LOVE AFFAIRS OF AN OLD MAID," "THE EXPATRIATES," ETC.
+
+
+LONDON:
+
+WARD, LOCK & CO., LIMITED,
+
+NEW YORK & MELBOURNE.
+
+
+
+
+THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO _My Dear Father_, WHOSE HIGH TYPE OF
+PATRIOTISM, STEADFAST LOYALTY TO THE GOVERNMENT, AND DEVOTION TO HIS
+FAMILY HAVE TAUGHT ME WHEREIN LIE THE IDEALS OF LIFE.
+
+
+
+
+Preface
+
+
+If the critical public had cared to snub Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie and Bee, I,
+who am a fighting champion of theirs, would never have run the risk of
+boring it by a further chronicle of their travels. But from a careful
+survey of my mail, I may say that the present volume of their doings and
+undoings is a direct result of the friendships they formed in "As Seen
+by Me," and has almost literally been written by request.
+
+With which statement, as the flushed and nervous singer, who responds to
+friendly clappings, comes forward, bows, sings, and retires, so do I,
+and the curtain falls on the Jimmies and Bee and me, all kissing our
+hands to the gallery.
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+  CHAPTER
+
+      I. Our House-boat at Henley
+
+     II. Paris
+
+    III. Strasburg and Baden-Baden
+
+     IV. Stuttgart, Nuremberg, and Bayreuth
+
+      V. The Passion Play
+
+     VI. Munich to the Achensee
+
+    VII. Dancing in the Austrian Tyrol
+
+   VIII. Salzburg
+
+     IX. Ischl
+
+      X. Vienna
+
+     XI. My First Interview with Tolstoy
+
+    XII. At one of the Tolstoy Receptions
+
+   XIII. Shopping Experiences
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+OUR HOUSE-BOAT AT HENLEY
+
+It speaks volumes for an amiability I have always claimed for myself
+through sundry fierce disputes on the subject with my sister, that, even
+after two years of travel in Europe with her and Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie,
+they should still wish for my company for a journey across France and
+Germany to Russia. Bee says it speaks volumes for the tempers of the
+Jimmies, but then Bee is my sister, or to put it more properly, I am
+Bee's sister, and what woman is a heroine to her own sister?
+
+In any event I am not. Bee thinks I am a creature of feeble intelligence
+who must be "managed." Bee loves to "manage" people, and I, who love to
+watch her circuitous, diplomatic, velvety, crooked way to a straight
+end, allow myself to be so "managed;" and so after safely disposing of
+Billy in the grandmotherly care of Mamma for another six months, Bee and
+I gaily took ship and landed safely at the door of the Cecil, having
+been escorted up from Southampton by Jimmie.
+
+While repeated journeys to Europe lose the thrill of expectant
+uncertainty which one's first held, yet there is something very pleasing
+about "_going back_." And so we were particularly glad again to join
+forces with our friends the Jimmies and travel with them, for they, like
+Bee and me, travel aimlessly and are never hampered with plans.
+
+Everybody seems to know that we do not mean business, and nobody has
+ever dared to ask whether our intentions were serious or not.
+
+In this frame of mind we floated over to England and had a fortnight of
+"the season" in London. But this soon palled on us, and we fell into the
+idle mood of waiting for something to turn up.
+
+One Sunday morning Bee and Mrs. Jimmie and I were sitting at a little
+table near the entrance to the Cecil Hotel, when Jimmie came out of a
+side door and sat down in front of us, leaning his elbows on the table
+and grinning at us in a suspicious silence. We all waited for him to
+begin, but he simply sat and smoked and grinned.
+
+"Well! Well!" I said, impatiently, "What now?"
+
+You would know that Jimmie was an American by the way he smokes. He
+simply eats up cigars, inhales them, chews them. The end of his cigar
+blazes like a danger signal and breathes like an engine. He can hold his
+hands and feet still, but his nervousness crops out in his smoking.
+Finally, exasperated by his continued silence, Bee said, severely:
+
+"Jimmie, have you anything up your sleeve? If so, speak out!"
+
+"Well!" said Jimmie, brushing the cigar ashes off his wife's skirt, "I
+thought I'd take you all out to Henley this morning to look at the
+house-boat."
+
+"House-boat!" shrieked Bee and I in a whisper, clutching Jimmie by the
+sleeve and lapel of his coat and giving him an ecstatic shake.
+
+"Are we going to have a house-boat?" asked Bee.
+
+"We!" said Jimmie. "_I_ am going to have a house-boat, and I am going to
+take my wife. If you are good perhaps she will ask you out to tea one
+afternoon."
+
+"How many staterooms are there, Jimmie? Can we invite people to stay
+with us over night?" demanded Bee.
+
+"You cannot," said Jimmie, firmly. "I said a house-boat, not a house
+party."
+
+"I shall ask the duke," said Bee, clearing her throat in a pleased way.
+"Can't I, Mrs. Jimmie?"
+
+"Certainly, dear. Ask any one you like."
+
+"If you do," growled Jimmie, who hates the duke because he wears gloves
+in hot weather, "I'll invite the chambermaid and the head-waiter of this
+hotel."
+
+"We ought to be starting," said Mrs. Jimmie, pacifically, and we started
+and went and arrived.
+
+As we were driving to the station I noticed all the way along, and I had
+noticed them ever since we had been in London, large capital H's on a
+white background, posted on stone walls, street corners, lampposts, and
+occasionally on the sidewalks.
+
+"What are those H's for, Jimmie?" I asked. To which he replied with
+this record-breaking joke:
+
+"Those are the H's that Englishmen have been dropping for generations,
+and being characteristic of this solid nation, they thus ossified them."
+
+I forgave Jimmie a good deal for that joke.
+
+At the pier at Henley a man met us with a little boat and rowed us up
+the river, past dozens of house-boats moored along the bank.
+
+The river had been boomed off for the races, which were to begin the
+next day, with little openings here and there for small boats to cross
+and recross between races. Private house-boat flags, Union Jacks,
+bunting, and plants made all the house-boats gay, except ours, which
+looked bare and forlorn and guiltless of decoration of any sort. It was
+fortunately situated within plain view of where the races would finish,
+and by using glasses we could see the start.
+
+Several crews were out practising. One shell which flashed past us held
+a crew in orange and black sweaters. We had previously noticed that
+there was no American flag on any of the house-boats.
+
+Orange and black! We nearly stood up in our excitement.
+
+"What's your college?" yelled Jimmie, hoping they were Americans.
+
+"Princeton!" they yelled back.
+
+With that Jimmie ripped open a long pole he was carrying, and the stars
+and stripes floated out over our shell. The Princeton crew shipped their
+oars, snatched off their caps, and responded by giving their college
+yell, ending with "Old Glo-ree! Old Glo-ree!! Old Glo-ree!!!" yelled
+three times with all the strength of their deep lungs.
+
+That little glimpse of America made Bee and me shiver as if with ague,
+while Jimmie's chin quivered and he muttered something about "darned
+smoke in his eyes."
+
+"Jimmie," I said, excitedly, "they are rowing toward us to let us speak
+if we want to."
+
+Jimmie waved his hand to them and they pulled up alongside. We exchanged
+enthusiastic "How-do-do's" with them, although we had never seen one of
+them before.
+
+"Are you going to row to-morrow?" asked Jimmie.
+
+"If you are we will decorate the house-boat with orange and black," I
+said.
+
+Their faces fell.
+
+"We are only the Track Team," said one. "Princeton has no crew, you
+know."
+
+"No crew," I cried. "Why not?"
+
+"Well, we haven't any more water than we need to wash in, and we cannot
+row on the campus."
+
+"Too many trees," said another.
+
+"No water," I cried, "then won't you ever have a crew?"
+
+"Not until some one gives us a million dollars to dam up a natural
+formation that is there and turn the river into it," said one.
+
+"I'd give it to you in a minute, if I had it, the way I feel now," said
+Jimmie.
+
+"Well, don't we send crews over here to row?" asked Bee.
+
+"Cornell sent one, but they were beaten," said the Captain with a grin.
+
+"But you wouldn't be beaten," said Bee, decidedly, with her eye on the
+Captain.
+
+"Come to dinner, all of you, to-morrow night," I said, genially.
+
+Mrs. Jimmie looked frightened, but Bee and Jimmie so heartily seconded
+my generosity with Jimmie's boat that she resigned herself.
+
+"Wear your sweaters," commanded Bee.
+
+"To dinner?" they said.
+
+"Certainly!" said Bee, decidedly. "That's the only way people will know
+we are in it. We'll wear shirt-waists to keep you in countenance."
+
+They accepted with alacrity and we parted with mutual esteem.
+
+"I wonder what their names are," said Mrs. Jimmie, reproachfully.
+
+"And they don't know our boat," I added.
+
+"Hi, there!" Jimmie shouted back, "that's our boat yonder--the _Lulu_."
+
+And with that they all struck up "Lu, Lu, How I love my Lu," at which
+Bee blushed most unnecessarily, I thought, and murmured:
+
+"How well a handsome athlete looks with bare arms."
+
+"And bare legs," added Jimmie, genially.
+
+We found so much to do on the house-boat, and Jimmie had brought so much
+bunting and so many flags, that Bee volunteered to go back to the Cecil
+and have our clothes packed up by Mrs. Jimmie's maid, while we
+decorated the house-boat.
+
+The next morning bright and early we rowed down to the landing for Bee.
+Such a change had taken place on the Thames in twenty-four hours! There
+were hundreds upon hundreds of row-boats bearing girls in duck and men
+in flannels, and a funny sight it was to Americans to see fully half of
+them with the man lying at his ease on cushions at the end of the boat,
+while the girls did the rowing. English girls are very clever at
+punting, and look quite pretty standing up balancing in the boats and
+using the long pole with such skill.
+
+It may be sportsmanlike, but it cannot fail to look unchivalrous,
+especially to the Southern-born of Americans, to see how willing
+Englishmen are to permit their women to wait upon them even _before_
+they are married!
+
+American women are not very popular with English women, possibly because
+we get so many of their Englishmen away from them, and we are popular
+with only certain of Englishmen, perhaps the more susceptible, possibly
+the more broad-minded, but certain it was that as we rowed along we
+heard whispers from the English boats of "Americans" in much the same
+tone in which we say "Niggers."
+
+The river was literally alive with these small craft, going up and down,
+gathering their parties together and paying friendly little visits to
+the neighbouring house-boats, while gay parasols, striped shirt-waists,
+white flannels, sailor hats, house-boat flags, and gay coloured boat
+cushions, made the river flash in the sunshine like an electric lighted
+rainbow.
+
+Jimmie had spared no expense in illuminating and decorating the
+house-boat. He had the American shield in electric lights surmounted by
+the American Eagle holding in his beak a chain of electric bulbs which
+were festooned on each side down to the end of the boat and running down
+the poles to the water's edge. A band of red, white, and blue electric
+lights formed the balustrade of the upper deck, with a row of brilliant
+scarlet geraniums on the railing. The house-boat next to ours was called
+"The Primrose," and when they saw our American emblem they sent over a
+polite note asking where we got it, and at once ordered a St. George
+and the Dragon in electric lights, which never came until the Friday
+following, when all the races were over. Another house-boat, three boats
+from ours, was owned by a wealthy brewer and had a pavilion built on the
+land back of where it was moored and connected by a broad gangplank with
+the boat. They used this pavilion for dancing and vaudeville, but
+although it was very nice and we were immensely entertained, still we
+all decided that it was not much like a house-boat to be so much of the
+time on land.
+
+Each morning we would be wakened by the lapping of the water between the
+boat and the bank, caused by the early swims of the men from the
+neighbouring boats. The weather was just cool enough and just warm
+enough to be delightful. They told us that it generally rained during
+Henley week, but some one must have been a mascot, and we, with our
+usual becoming modesty, announced that it must have been our Eagle. The
+English, however, did not take kindly to that little pleasantry, and
+only said, "Fancy" whenever we got it off.
+
+The dining-room was too small to hold such a large dinner as we gave
+the night we entertained the Princeton Track Team, so we had the table
+spread on the upper deck in plain view of the craft on the river and our
+neighbours on each side. Jimmie had the piano brought up too, when he
+heard that two of them belonged to the Glee Club and could sing.
+
+It seemed such a simple thing to us to take up an upright baby grand
+piano that we never thought we were doing anything out of the common,
+until we looked down over the railing and saw that no less than fifty
+boats had ranged themselves in front of our house-boat, with as much
+curiosity in our proceedings as if we were going to have a trained
+animal exhibit. There were two English women dining with us, and I
+privately asked one of them what under the sun was the matter.
+
+"Oh! It is nothing much," she replied. "We cannot help thinking that you
+Americans are so queer."
+
+"Queer, or not!" I replied, stoutly, "we have things just as we want
+them wherever we go. If we wanted to bring the punt up here and put it
+on the dining-table filled with flowers, Jimmie would let us," to which
+she replied, "Fancy!"
+
+The table was very pretty that night. We had orange and black satin
+ribbon down the middle of it and across the sides, finishing in big
+bows. The centrepiece was made of black-eyed Susans. We women wore
+orange and black wherever we could, and the men wore their sweaters as
+they had been instructed. The dinner was slow in coming on, so between
+courses we got up and danced. Then the men sang college songs, much to
+the scandalisation of our English friends on the next boats, who seemed
+to regard dinner as a sacrament. Peters, the butler, would lie in wait
+for us while we were dancing, to whisper as we careered past him:
+
+"Miss, the fowl is getting cold," or "Miss, the ice cream is getting
+warm," but he did it once too often, so Bee waltzed on his foot. Whereat
+he limped off and we saw no more of him.
+
+Soon the professional entertainers who ply up and down the river during
+Henley week discovered the "Ammurikins," as they called us, and we had
+our first encounter that night with the Thames nigger, a creature
+painfully unlike that delightful commodity at home. The Thames nigger is
+generally a cockney covered with blackening, which only alters his skin
+and does not change his accent. To us it sounded deliciously funny to
+hear this self-styled African call us "Leddies," and say "Halways" and
+say "'Aven't yer, now?" They sang in a very indifferent manner, but were
+rather quick in their retorts.
+
+Our large uninvited, but welcome audience, who had drawn so near that
+they could not use their oars and only pulled their boats along by the
+gunwales of the other boats, laughed at these witticisms rather
+inquiringly. Always slightly unconvinced, they seemed to have no inward
+desire to laugh, but yielded politely to the requirements, owing to the
+niggers' harlequin costume and blackened face.
+
+To the student of human nature there is nothing so exquisitely
+ridiculous on the face of the globe as the typical British audience, at
+a show which appeals humourously to the intellect rather than to the
+eye. For this reason the Princetonians were indefatigable in their
+conversation with the niggers, for the electric lights of the _Lulu_
+illuminated the faces of our audience, which soon, in addition to the
+strolling craft of the river, numbered many canoes from the neighbouring
+house-boats, who were attracted by the gaiety and lights, thus forming a
+typical river audience, thoroughly mixed, seemingly on pleasure bent,
+good humoured, well behaved, polite, stolid, British.
+
+Jimmie is hospitable to the core of his being, and nothing pleased him
+better than to keep "open house-boat" for the entire floating population
+of the Thames during Henley week. Every afternoon it was particularly
+the custom about tea time for boats containing music hall quartettes or
+a boatload of Geisha girls to pull up in front of the house-boat and
+regale the occupants with the latest music hall songs.
+
+In one end of their boat is a little melodion apparently built for river
+travel, for I never saw one anywhere else. They have in addition velvet
+collection-boxes on long poles whereby to reach the upper decks of the
+house-boat for our coins. These things look for all the world like the
+old-fashioned collection-boxes which the deacons used to pass in church.
+
+There was one set of Geisha girls who were masked below the eyes, one of
+whom sang what she fondly imagined was a typical American song
+calculated to captivate her American audience. She sang through her
+nose, the better to imitate the nasal voices which to the British mind
+is the national characteristic of the American, and her song had the
+refrain beginning "For I am an Ammurikin Girl," telling how this
+"Ammurikin Girl" had come to England to marry a title and had finally
+secured an Earl, and ending with the statement that she had done all
+this "like the true Ammurikin Girl." This song, especially the nasal
+part, was received with such ill-concealed joy by our usual stolid river
+audience that one afternoon I took it upon myself to avenge our
+house-boat family for these truly British politenesses. So I went to the
+railing after our audience had thoroughly collected and said through my
+nose:
+
+"Won't you please sing that pretty song of yours about the 'Ammurikin
+Girl?' You know we are 'Ammurikin girls,' and we do so love the way you
+take off our 'Ammurikin' voices."
+
+At the same time I dropped a lot of small silver into their boat without
+waiting for the collection-box. I was delighted to see that some of it
+went overboard, for their consternation at that and at my having turned
+the tables on them put them into such a flutter that they couldn't sing
+at all, and they pulled away, saying that they would be back in half an
+hour. Our audience, too, suddenly remembered urgent business a mile or
+two up the river, and scattered as if by magic.
+
+Jimmie was deeply pleased by this _rencontre_, for the prejudice of the
+middle-class Britons (for the sake of occasionally being moderate, I
+will say middle class) against all classes of Americans is just about as
+deeply rooted and ineradicable as the prejudice of middle-class
+Americans against everything that flies the Union Jack. The travelled
+upper classes are inclined to be more moderate in their prejudice and to
+see fit either for political or social reasons to affect a friendship.
+But seriously I myself question if there is a nation more thoroughly
+foreign to America than the English.
+
+This, I take it, is because the middle classes of both countries are not
+abreast of the times, and take little notice of the trend of events.
+They are still influenced by the prejudice engendered by the wars of a
+century ago, which has partly been inherited and partly enhanced by
+marriages with England's hereditary foes, who take refuge with us in
+such numbers.
+
+However, the people could be influenced through their sympathies, and in
+the to-be-expected event of the death of England's queen, or a calamity
+of national importance on our own shores, the sympathy which would be
+extended from each to each, through the medium of the press, would do
+more to educate the masses along lines of sympathy between the two great
+English-speaking nations than any amount of statecraft or diplomacy. The
+people must be taught by the way of the heart, and touched by their
+emotions. Their brains would follow.
+
+As it is, the differences still exist. Take, for instance, their
+language, from which ours has so far departed and become so much more
+pure English, and has been enriched by so many clean-cut and descriptive
+adjectives that certain sentences in English and in American will be
+totally unintelligible to each other. On one occasion, going with a
+party of eight English people to the races, Bee looked out of the car
+window at the landscape, and said:
+
+"How thoroughly finished England is. Here we are running through a hill
+country where they are so complete and so neat in their landscape that
+they even sod the cuts. It is like going through a terraced garden."
+
+It may be that the phrase she used was academic, but I am at least
+reasonable in thinking that the average American would know what she
+meant. Not one of those eight English people caught even the shadow of
+her meaning, and when she explained what she meant by "sod your cuts,"
+they said that she meant "turf your cuttings." She replied that
+"cutting" with us was a greenhouse term and meant a part clipped from a
+plant or a tree. They said the word "cut" meant a cut of beef or
+mutton, to which she retorted that we might also use the term "cut" in a
+butcher shop, but when travelling in a hill country and looking out of
+the train window it meant the mountain cut. They said they never heard
+of the word sod, except used as a noun. She replied that she never heard
+the word "turf" used as a verb. We continued in an amiable wrangle which
+finally brought out the fact which even the most obstinate of them was
+obliged to admit, and that is that when traced to its proper root, the
+Americans speak purer English than the English.
+
+House-boat hospitality we discovered to be conducted on a very irregular
+plan, for it appeared that the casual afternoon caller always meant tea
+and sometimes dinner. This is all very well if the people happen to be
+agreeable and the food holds out, but even I, the least conservative of
+the three women, am conservative about invitations to guests, nothing
+being more offensive to me than to be politely forced into a dinner
+invitation to people I don't want. Another thing, it kept us constantly
+scurrying for more to eat, as house-boat provisions are all furnished
+by firms in town, and house-boat owners are expected to let the
+purveyors know beforehand how many guests to provide for at each meal.
+
+I like English people very much, but I cannot help observing that some
+who are very well born and are supposed to be exceedingly well bred,
+take advantage of American hospitality in a way in which they would
+never dream of pursuing with their English hosts. For instance,
+Americans were very free in remaining so dangerously close to the dinner
+hour that we were pushed into inviting them to remain, but never once
+did they make it obligatory to invite them to remain over night, while
+no less than half a dozen times during Henley week our English friends
+said to Jimmie:
+
+"I say, old man, beastly work getting back to town. Can't you put us up
+for the night?"
+
+As this occurred when every stateroom was filled, even Bee's sacred duke
+being among the number of our guests, these self-invited ones remained
+in every instance when they knew that it would force Jimmie to sleep
+upon a bench in the dining-room and be seriously inconvenienced. Toward
+the end of the week this supreme selfishness which I have noticed so
+often in otherwise worthy English gentlemen annoyed me to such an extent
+that with one Englishman who had thus insisted upon dispossessing Jimmie
+for the second time I resolved to make a test. So I said to him:
+
+"Of course it's a little hard on Jimmie, your way of turning him out of
+his stateroom to sleep on the table, so, as turn about is fair play, if
+you've quite decided to remain over night, my sister and I will let you
+have our room and we will sleep on the benches in the dining-room.
+Jimmie doesn't get much sleep you know--we keep it up so late, and of
+course you always wake him up when you turn out for your swim at six
+o'clock in the morning, so if you will promise not to disturb us until
+seven, and go out through the kitchen for your swim, you can have our
+room for to-night."
+
+"Oh, I say!" he replied, "that's awfully jolly of you. It _is_ a beastly
+shame to turn the old man out of his bed two nights in one week, but
+your boat is the only one on the river where a fellow feels at home, you
+know. Besides that, I couldn't get back to town before ten o'clock
+to-night if I started now, and where would I get my dinner? And if I
+wait to get my dinner here, I'd either have to sleep at Henley or be
+half the night in getting home. So you see I've got to stay, and thanks
+awfully for letting me have your room."
+
+Bee, who was standing near, pushed her veil up and cleared her throat.
+She looked at me.
+
+"Did you ever in all your life?" she said.
+
+"No, I never did," I said. "I never, never did."
+
+"Never did what?" said the English gentleman.
+
+"I never saw anybody like you in a book or out of it, but I suppose
+there are ten thousand more just as good-looking as you are; just as
+tall and well built and selfish."
+
+"Selfish," he blurted out with a very red face. "What is there selfish
+about me, I should like to know? You offered me your room, didn't you?"
+
+"Yes, she offered it," said Bee, sitting on a little table and tucking
+her feet on a chair. "She offered it to you just to see if you'd take
+it--just to see how far you _would_ go. You haven't known my sister very
+long, have you? Why, she'd no more let you have her room than I would
+let Jimmie turn himself out a second time for you. If you stay to-night
+_you'll_ be the one to sleep in the dining-room on that narrow bench."
+
+"Oh, I say," he said, turning still redder, "I can't do that, you know.
+It would be so very uncomfortable. It is very narrow."
+
+"You can lie on your side," said Bee. "You aren't too thick through that
+way, and we three women have decided to allow Jimmie to go to bed early
+to-night. We'll make it as comfortable as we can for you, and you'll get
+fully three hours' sleep, perhaps four. It is all Jimmie would get if he
+slept there."
+
+"Why, I don't believe that the old man will let me sleep there. I think
+he'd rather I had his room. He and his wife were so awfully good to me
+when I was in America. I stayed two months at their place and they
+entertained me royally."
+
+"Where's your wife?" I said, suddenly.
+
+"She's in our town house," he answered.
+
+"And that's in Upper Brooke Street?" said Bee.
+
+"And where's your sister, the Honourable Eleanor?" I said.
+
+"What's that got to do with it?" said our friend.
+
+"Nothing," I said. "I just wondered if you'd noticed that, every single
+time we have been in London for the past two years, neither your sister
+nor your wife has ever called on Mrs. Jimmie; although, as you have just
+admitted, you stayed two months with them in America. All that you have
+done in return for the mountain trip that Jimmie arranged for you,
+taking you in a private car to hunt big game, taking you fishing and
+arranging for you to see everything in America that you wanted, when you
+know that Jimmie isn't rich judged by the largest fortunes in
+America--all, all I say, that you have done for him in return for
+everything he did for you was to put him up at your club and take them
+to the races twice, and even though you saw your wife at a distance you
+never introduced them, although once you stopped and spoke to her. Now,
+what do you think of yourself?"
+
+"I think--I think," he stammered.
+
+"No, you don't think," said Bee. "You flatter yourself."
+
+He stared at us helplessly, but we were enjoying ourselves too
+maliciously to let up on him.
+
+"I never was talked to so in my life," he said.
+
+"No, perhaps not," I said, pleasantly. "But it has done you good, hasn't
+it? Confess now, don't you feel a little better?"
+
+His face, which was very red at all times, grew a little more claret
+coloured, and he evidently wanted very much to get angry, but Bee and I
+were so very cheerful, almost affectionate in our manner of mentally
+skinning him, that he couldn't seem to pull himself together.
+
+"He'll never stay after that," said Bee, complacently, to me afterward.
+But he _did_ stay, and although Jimmie was furious, he had every
+intention of letting him have his bedroom again, which Bee and I so
+fiercely resented that we locked Jimmie in his stateroom, where, after a
+few feeble pounds on the door, he resigned himself to his fate and got
+the only night's sleep that he had in the eight days of Henley.
+
+Whether the Honourable Edwardes Edwardes slept on his side on the bench
+or on his back on the dinner-table, or stood up all night, we never
+knew. He was a little cross at breakfast, and complained of feeling "a
+bit stiff." But nobody petted or sympathised with him or ran for the
+liniment. So by luncheon time he was drinking Jimmie's champagne again
+with the utmost good humour.
+
+One of the most amusing things we did was to go after dinner in little
+boats and form part of the river audience in front of some other
+house-boat where something was going on,--crowded in between other
+boats, having to ship our oars and pull ourselves along by our
+neighbours' gunwales, getting locked for perhaps half an hour, until
+suddenly our Geisha girls or niggers would start the cry "Up river,"
+when away we would all go, entertainers and entertained, pulling up the
+river to the lights of another house-boat, enjoying the music for a few
+minutes and then slipping away in the darkness toward the lights of
+Henley village, or perhaps back to the _Lulu_.
+
+Once or twice a boat would capsize, giving the occupants a severe
+wetting, but as river costumes are always washable and the river is not
+deep, no harm ever seemed to come of these aquatic diversions. Once,
+however, it was brought near home in this wise.
+
+Jimmie invited his wife to go canoeing. I went canoeing once on the
+Kennebunk River with an Indian to paddle, and after watching the
+manoeuvres of the paddlers on the Thames and the antics of those
+wretched little boats, I made the solemn promise with myself never to
+trust any one less skilled than an Indian again. But Jimmie, while he is
+not more conceited than most people, is what you might call confident,
+and he would have been all right in this instance, if he had noticed
+that a race had just been rowed and that the swell from the racers was
+just rippling over the boom and creeping gently toward the house-boat.
+The canoe was still at the house-boat steps. They were both seated
+comfortably and just about to paddle away when a swell came alongside
+and tilted the canoe in such a succession of little unexpected rolls
+that our two friends, in their anxiety to hold on to something which
+was not there to hold on to, overbalanced, and the canoe shipped enough
+water to submerge their legs entirely, giving them a nice cold hip bath.
+
+Mrs. Jimmie screamed, and we all rushed down and fished her out of the
+boat dripping like a mermaid and thoroughly chilled. Bee took her in to
+warm her with a brandy and to hurry her into dry clothes, while I
+remained to see what I could do for Jimmie, who was very wet, very mad,
+and very uncommunicative.
+
+"What a pity," I remarked, pleasantly, "that you are so thin. Shall I
+come down and hold the boat still while you get out? Wet flannel has
+such a clinging effect."
+
+Jimmie is a good deal of a gentleman, so he made no reply. I was just
+turning away, resolving in a Christian spirit to order him a hot Scotch,
+when I heard a splash and a remark which was full of exclamation points,
+asterisks, and other things, and looking down I saw the canoe bottom
+upwards, with Jimmie clinging to it indignantly blowing a large quantity
+of Thames water from his mouth in a manner which led me to know that the
+sooner I got away from there the better it would be for me. I kept out
+of his way until dinner-time, and only permitted him to suspect that I
+saw his disappearance by politely ignoring the fact that all his and
+Mrs. Jimmie's lingerie, to speak delicately, was floating about, hanging
+from pegs in unused portions of the house-boat. My silence was so
+suspicious that finally Jimmie could stand it no longer.
+
+"Did you see me go down?" he demanded.
+
+"I did not," I answered him, firmly, whereat he released my elbow and I
+edged around to the other side of the table.
+
+"But I saw you come up," I said, pleasantly, "and I saw what you said."
+
+"Saw?" said Jimmie. "Saw what I said?"
+
+"Certainly! There was enough blue light around your remarks for me to
+have seen them in the dark."
+
+"Well, what have you got to say about it?" he said, resigning himself.
+
+"Only this, and that is that this afternoon's performance in that canoe
+was the only instance in my life where I thoroughly approved of the
+workings of Providence. Ordinarily the good die young and the guilty
+one escapes."
+
+"Is that all?" growled Jimmie.
+
+"Yes," I said, hesitatingly, "I think it is. Did I mention before that I
+thought you were thin?"
+
+"You certainly did," said Jimmie.
+
+"Your legs," I went on, but just then I was interrupted by the
+reappearance of a little German musician, who had floated up the river
+two days before in a white flannel suit without change of linen and who
+played accompaniments of our singers so well that Jimmie permitted him
+to stay on without either actually inviting him or showing him that his
+presence was not any particular addition to our enjoyment.
+
+Jimmie objected violently to some of his sentiments, which the German
+was tactless enough to keep thrusting in our faces. He was as offensive
+to our English friends on the subject of England as he was to us
+concerning America, but one of the Englishmen sang and couldn't play a
+note, so Jimmie let the German stay, because Miss Wemyss wanted him to.
+
+Although secretly I think Jimmie and I hated him, we are sometimes
+polite enough not to say everything we think, but at any rate there
+never was a moment when Jimmie and I wouldn't leave off attacking each
+other, hoping for an opportunity for a fight with the German, which thus
+far he had escaped by the skin of his teeth.
+
+"Your sister sent me to tell you that there is a house-boat up near the
+Island flying the American flag and we are all going up there to see it.
+Would you like to go?"
+
+"Thanks so much for your invitation," said Jimmie, "but I've got some
+guests coming in half an hour, so I can't go."
+
+"I'll go. Just wait until I get my hat."
+
+One boat contained Bee, Mrs. Jimmie, and two Princeton men, and the
+other Miss Wemyss, the German, Miss Wemyss' fiancé, Sir George, and me.
+Side by side the two skiffs pulled up the river to the Island, where on
+a very small house-boat named the _Queen_ a large American flag was
+flying and beneath it were crossed a smaller American flag and the Union
+Jack.
+
+Sir George, who is one of the nicest Englishmen we ever met, pulled off
+his cap and cried out:
+
+"All hats off to the Stars and Stripes!"
+
+In an instant every hat was whipped off, ours included, although there
+was some wrestling with hat-pins before we could get them off. All, did
+I say? All--all except the German! He folded his arms across his breast
+and kept his hat on.
+
+"Didn't you hear Sir George?" I said to him.
+
+He had a nervous twitching of the eye at all times, and when he was
+excited the muscles of his face all jerked in unison like Saint Vitus'
+dance. At my question every muscle in his face, as the Princeton man in
+Bee's boat said, "began working over time."
+
+"Yes, I heard him. Of course I heard him," he said.
+
+"Then take your hat off!" said Miss Wemyss.
+
+"Yes, take your hat off!" came in a roar from all the others, none being
+louder and more peremptory than the Englishman's.
+
+"I will not take my hat off to that dirty rag," he said. "It means
+nothing to me. The flag of any country means nothing to me. I can go
+into a shop and buy that red, white, and blue! That is only a rag--that
+flag."
+
+Sir George leaned over with blazing eyes and took him by the collar.
+
+"Don't do that, George," said Miss Wemyss, excitedly. "His linen is not
+fit to touch."
+
+"Let's duck him," said the Princeton man.
+
+But Mrs. Jimmie interfered, saying in a quiet voice, although her hands
+were trembling:
+
+"Don't do anything to him until we take him back to the house-boat.
+Remember he is my guest."
+
+At this the German smiled with such insolence and pulled his hat further
+down on his brow with such a vicious look of satisfaction that I had all
+I could do to hold myself in. The boats flew back to the house-boat as
+if on wings.
+
+"You see, miss," he leaned forward and said to me in low tones. "You do
+not like me. You love your flag. Ah, ha, I revenge myself."
+
+"Just wait till I tell Jimmie," I said.
+
+"Ah, ha, he will do nothing! I play for his concert to-night."
+
+As the boats pulled up to the steps of the house-boat, Jimmie met us
+with his two friends, who had come during our absence. We had never seen
+them before.
+
+"What do you think, Jimmie?" stammered Bee, stumbling up the steps in
+her excitement.
+
+"And Jimmie, he wouldn't take his hat off to the flag!"
+
+"And Jimmie, I wish you had been there, you'd have drowned him!" came
+from all of us at once.
+
+"What's that?" cried Jimmie in a rage at once, and:
+
+"What's that?" came from the men behind him. "Wouldn't take off his hat
+to the flag? Who wouldn't?"
+
+"That nasty little German!" cried Miss Wemyss.
+
+We were all out of the boats by that time except the unhappy object of
+our wrath, whose countenance by this time was working into patterns like
+a kaleidoscope.
+
+"Mr. Jimmie," he said, coming to the end of the boat with every
+intention of stepping out, "I apologise to you. I am very sorry."
+
+"Get back in that boat!" thundered Jimmie.
+
+"But, sir! Your concert to-night! I play for you!"
+
+"You go to the devil," said Jimmie. "You'll not put your foot on board
+this boat again. Off you go! Take him down to Henley!" he ordered the
+boatman.
+
+"Very well! Very well!" said the German, "I go, but I do not take my hat
+off to your flag."
+
+"Ah! Don't you?" cried the Princeton man, making a grab for the German's
+sailor hat with his long arm, just as the boat shot away. He stooped and
+took it up full of Thames water and flung it thus loaded squarely in the
+little wretch's face, while the man at the oars dexterously tossed it
+overboard, where it floated bottom upwards in the river, and the boat
+shot out toward Henley with the bareheaded and most excited specimen of
+the human race it was ever our lot to behold.
+
+Then Jimmie introduced his friends. Bee has just looked over this
+narrative of the pleasantest week we ever spent in England and she says:
+
+"You haven't said a word about the races."
+
+"So I haven't."
+
+But they were there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+PARIS
+
+"Now," said Jimmie as our train was pulling into Paris, "we are all
+decided, are we not, that we shall stay in Paris only two days?"
+
+His eyes met ours with apprehension and a determination that ended in a
+certain amount of questioning in their glance.
+
+"Certainly!" we all hastened to assure him. "Not over two days."
+
+"Just long enough," said Jimmie, beamingly, "to have one lunch at the
+Café Marguery for _sole à la Normande_--"
+
+"And one afternoon at the Louvre to see the Venus and the Victory--" I
+pleaded.
+
+"And the Father Tiber--" added Jimmie, waxing enthusiastic.
+
+"Yes, and one dinner at the Pavilion d'Armenonville to hear the
+Tziganes--" said Bee.
+
+"And one afternoon on the Seine to go to St. Cloud to see the brides
+dance at the Pavilion Bleu, and a supper afterward in the open to have a
+_poulet_ and a _pêche flambée_."
+
+Jimmie by this time was wriggling in ecstasy.
+
+"And just time to order two or three gowns apiece and have one look at
+hats," added Mrs. Jimmie, complacently.
+
+"'Two or three gowns apiece and one look at hats,'" cried Jimmie. "And
+how long will that take? We agreed on two days, and you never said a
+word about clothes. That means a whole week!"
+
+"Not at all, Jimmie," said Bee. "It's too late to do anything to-night.
+To-morrow morning we'll go and look. In the afternoon we'll think it
+over while we're doing the Louvre. It is always cool and quiet there,
+and looking at statuary always helps me to make up my mind about
+clothes. The next morning we'll go and order. In the afternoon we'll buy
+our hats, and with one day more for the first fittings, I believe we
+might manage and have the things sent after us to Baden-Baden."
+
+"Not at all," put in Mrs. Jimmie. "They will never be satisfactory
+unless we put our minds on the subject and give them plenty of time. We
+must stay at least two days more. Give us four days, Jimmie."
+
+I had to laugh at Jimmie's rueful face. He was about to remonstrate, but
+Bee switched him off diplomatically by saying, in her most deferential
+manner:
+
+"What hotel have you decided on, Jimmie? It's such a comfort to be
+getting to a Paris hotel. What one do you think would be best?"
+
+Bee's tone was so flattering that Jimmie forgot clothes and said:
+
+"Well, you know at the Binda you can get corn on the cob and American
+griddle cakes--"
+
+"Oh, but the rooms are so small and dark, and we could go there for
+luncheon to get those things," said his wife.
+
+"Do let's go to the Hotel Vouillemont," I begged. "We won't see any
+Americans there, and it is so lovely and old and French, and so heavenly
+quiet."
+
+"But then there is the new Élysée Palace," said Bee. "We haven't seen
+that."
+
+"And they say it's finer than the Waldorf," said Mrs. Jimmie.
+
+Jimmie and I looked at each other in comical despair.
+
+"Let 'em have their own way, Jimmie," I whispered in his ear, "while
+we're in their country. They know that we are going to make 'em dodge
+Switzerland and go up in the Austrian Tyrol and perhaps even get them to
+Russia, so we'll be obliged to give them their head part of the way.
+Let's be handsome about it."
+
+We went to the Élysée Palace, and we spent two weeks in Paris. Part of
+this time we were fashionable with Mrs. Jimmie and Bee, and part of the
+time they were Latin Quartery with us. We made them go to the Concert
+Rouge and to the Restaurant Foyot, and occasionally even to sit on the
+sidewalk at one of the little tables at Scossa's, where you have
+_déjeuner au choix_ for one franc fifty, including wine, and which they
+couldn't help enjoying in spite of pretending to despise it and us,
+while occasionally we went with them to call on the grand and
+distinguished personages to whom they had letters. But it remained for
+the last days of our stay for us to have our experiences. The first came
+about in this wise.
+
+I had brought a letter to Max Nordau from America, but I heard after I
+got to Paris that he was so fierce a woman hater, that I determined not
+to present it. I read it over every once in awhile, but failed to screw
+my courage to the sticking point, until one day I mentioned that I had
+this letter, and Jimmie to my surprise threw up both hands, exclaiming:
+
+"A letter to Max Nordau! Why, it is like owning a gold mine! Present it
+by all means, and then tell us what he is like."
+
+Afraid to present it in person, I sent it by mail, saying that I had
+heard that he hated women and that I was scared to death of him, but if
+he had a day in the near future on which he felt less fierce than usual,
+I would come to see him, and I asked permission to bring a friend. By
+"friend" I meant Jimmie.
+
+The most charming note came in answer that a polished man of the world
+could write--not in the least like the bear I had imagined him to be,
+but courteous and even merry. In it he said he should feel honoured if
+I would visit his poor abode, and he seemed to have read my books and
+knew all about me, so with very mixed feelings Jimmie and I called at
+the hour he named.
+
+He lives in one of the regulation apartment houses of Paris, of the
+meaner sort--by no means as fine as those in the American quarter. The
+most horrible odour of German cookery--cauliflower and boiled cabbage
+and vinegar and all that--floated out when the door opened. The room--a
+sort of living-room--into which we were ushered was a mixture of all
+sorts of furniture, black haircloth, dingy and old, with here and there
+a good picture or one fine chair, which I imagined had been presented to
+him.
+
+Jimmie was much excited at the idea of meeting him. Max Nordau is one of
+his idols,--Nordau's horrible power of invective fully meeting Jimmie's
+ideas of the way crimes of the bestial sort should be treated. Jimmie is
+often a surprise to me in his beliefs and ideals, but when Doctor Nordau
+entered the room I forgot Jimmie and everything else in the world except
+this one man.
+
+I can see him now as he stood before me--a thick-set man with a
+magnificent torso, but with legs which ought to have been longer. For
+that body he ought to have been six feet tall. When he is seated he
+appears to be a very large man. You would know that he was a physician
+from the way he shakes hands--even from the touch of his hand, which
+seems to be in itself a soothing of pain.
+
+He was exquisitely clean. Indeed he seemed, after one look into his
+face, to be one of the cleanest men I ever had seen. And to look into
+the face of a man in Paris and to be able to say that, _means_
+something.
+
+His eyes were gray blue--very clear in colour. Their whites were really
+white--not bloodshot nor yellow. His skin was the clear, beautiful
+colour which you sometimes see in a young and handsome Jew. There was
+the same clear red and white. This distinguishing quality of clearness
+was noticeable too in his lips, for his short white moustache shows them
+to be full, very red, and with the line where the red joins the white
+extremely clear cut. His teeth were large, full, even, and white, like
+those of a primitive man, who tore his rare meat with those same white
+teeth, and who never heard of a dentist. His hair was short, white, and
+bristling. He seemed to have some Jewish blood in him, but he seemed
+more than all to be perfectly well, perfectly normal, filled to the brim
+with abounding life. It was like a draught from the Elixir of Life to be
+in his presence. What a man!
+
+All at once the whole of "Degeneration" was made clear to me. How could
+any man as sane, as normal, as superbly health-loving and
+health-bestowing keep from writing such a book! I never met any one who
+so impressed me with his knowledge. Not pedantry, but with the
+deep-lying fundamental truth that humanity ought to know. His sympathies
+are so broad, his intuitions so keen, his understanding so subtle.
+
+He asked us at once into his study--a small room, lined with books bound
+in calf. Both the chair and his couch had burst out beneath, showing
+broken springs and general dilapidation. He speaks many languages, and
+his English is very pure and beautiful.
+
+Like all great men, his manner was extremely simple. He did not pose.
+He was interested in me, in my work, in my ambitions, hopes, and aims.
+He seemed to have no overpoweringly high idea of himself, nor of what he
+had achieved. He was thoroughly at home in French, German, English,
+Scandinavian, and Russian literature. He read them in the originals, and
+his knowledge of the classics seemed to be equally complete. The
+well-worn books upon his shelves testified to this.
+
+I asked him if he intended to come to America in the near future. To
+which he replied:
+
+"Unhappily I cannot tell. I should like to go. I consider America the
+country of the world at present. Whether we admit it or not, all nations
+are watching you. The rest of the world cannot live without you. Russia
+is the only country in the world which could go to war without your
+assistance. You must feed Europe. Your men are the financiers of the
+world and your women rule and educate and are the saviours of the men.
+Therefore to my mind the greatest factor in the world's civilisation
+to-day is the great body of the American women. You little know your
+power. _You_ seem to have got the ear of the American woman, and the
+only advice I have to give you is to be more bold. Don't be afraid of
+being too pedantic. You are too subtle. You bury your truths sometimes
+too deeply. The busy are too busy to dig for it, and the stupid do not
+know it is there."
+
+"I think 'Degeneration' is the most wonderful book ever written," Jimmie
+broke in at this point as if unable to keep silent any longer. Then he
+looked deeply embarrassed at Doctor Nordau's hearty laughter.
+
+"Thank you a thousand times," he said; "such a decided opinion I seldom
+hear. Your great country was the first to appreciate and read it. I have
+many friends there whom I never saw but who love me and whom I love.
+They often write to me."
+
+"And beg autographs and photographs of you," I said.
+
+"Oh, yes, but it is very easy to do what they ask. But one curious thing
+strikes me about America. See, here on my book shelves I have books
+written explaining the government of all countries in all
+languages--all countries, that is to say, except America. Why has no one
+ever written such an one about the United States?"
+
+Jimmie pricked up his ears as this phase of the conversation came home
+to him. He forgot his awe and said:
+
+"What's the matter with Bryce?"
+
+Doctor Nordau looked puzzled. He is a practising physician.
+
+"'What's the matter with Bryce?'" he repeated.
+
+Jimmie blushed.
+
+"Haven't you read 'Bryce's Commonwealth?'" I broke in, to give Jimmie
+time to get on his legs again.
+
+"Is there a book on American government by an American that I never
+heard of?" asked Nordau of Jimmie.
+
+"Well, Bryce is an Englishman, but he knows more about America than any
+American I know," answered Jimmie. "I'll send you the book if you would
+like to read it."
+
+Doctor Nordau thanked him and said he would be delighted to have it.
+While Jimmie was making a note of this, Doctor Nordau looked quizzically
+at me and said:
+
+"Do American publishers rob all foreign authors as I have been robbed,
+or am I mistaken in thinking that large numbers of 'Degeneration' have
+been sold in America?"
+
+Alas, wherever I go in Europe, I am obliged to hear this denunciation of
+our publishers! I cannot get beyond the sound of it. To hear foreign
+authors denounce American publishers by every term of opprobrium which
+could commonly be applied to Barabbas! I was puzzled to know whether
+they really are the most unscrupulous robbers in creation or if they
+only have the name of being.
+
+"You are not mistaken in thinking that large numbers of 'Degeneration'
+have been sold," I said, "and if your book was properly copyrighted and
+protected and you did not sign away all your rights to your American
+publishers for a song, as too many foreign authors do in their scorn of
+American appreciation of good literature, you should not be obliged to
+complain, for I distinctly remember that 'Degeneration' often led in the
+lists of best selling books which our booksellers report at the end of
+each week."
+
+"Then I will leave you to judge for yourself," said Doctor Nordau. "The
+entire amount I have received from my American publishers for
+'Degeneration' is fifty pounds! That is every sou!"
+
+"Fifty pounds!" cried Jimmie, in consternation. "Why that is only two
+hundred and fifty dollars of our money!"
+
+"I leave it to you to judge for yourselves," said Doctor Nordau again.
+
+We said nothing, for as Jimmie said after we left, there was really
+nothing to say.
+
+But evidently our consternation touched him, for he broke out into a big
+German laugh, saying:
+
+"Don't take it so deeply to heart! You are too sensitive. Do you take
+the criticisms of your books so deeply to heart as you take a criticism
+of your countrymen? Don't do it! Remember, there are few critics worth
+reading."
+
+"I never read them while they are fresh," I admitted. "I keep them until
+their heat has had time to cool. Then if they are favourable I say,
+'This is just so much extra pleasure that, as it is all over. I had no
+right to expect.' And if they are unfavourable I think, 'What
+difference does it make? It was published weeks ago and everybody has
+forgotten it by this time!'"
+
+"You have the right spirit," he said. "Where would I be if I had taken
+to heart the criticisms of the degenerates on 'Degeneration?' I sit back
+and laugh at them for holding a hand mirror up to their faces and
+unconsciously crying out 'I see a fool!' To understand great
+truths,--and great truths are seldom popular,--one must bring a willing
+mind. Yet how often it is that the very sick one wishes most to help are
+the ones who refuse, either from conceit or stupidity, to believe and be
+healed. Remember this: no one can get out of a book more than he brings
+to it. Readers of books seldom realise that by their written or spoken
+criticisms they are displaying themselves in all their weaknesses, all
+their vanities, all their strength for their hearers to make use of as
+they will."
+
+"I shouldn't think anything ever would disturb you," said Jimmie,
+regarding Doctor Nordau's gigantic strength admiringly.
+
+Doctor Nordau laughed.
+
+"It is the little things of this life, my friend, which often disturb a
+mental balance which is always poised to receive great shocks. The
+gnat-bites and mosquito buzzings are sometimes harder to bear than an
+operation with a surgeon's knife."
+
+I looked triumphantly at Jimmie as Doctor Nordau said that, for Jimmie
+never has got over it that I once dragged the whole party off a train
+and made them wait until the next one, because the wheels of our railway
+carriage squeaked. But Jimmie's mind is open to persuasion, especially
+from one whose opinions he admires as he admires Max Nordau's, for he
+looked at me with more tolerance, as he said:
+
+"It is the nervous organisation, I suppose. She can bear neuralgia for
+days at a time which would drive me crazy in an hour, but I've seen her
+burst into tears because a door slammed."
+
+"Exactly so!" said Doctor Nordau. "I understand perfectly."
+
+"Now, I never hear such noises," pursued Jimmie. "But I suppose there
+must be _some_ difference between you both, who can write books, and me,
+who can't even write a letter without dictating it!"
+
+Soon after this we came away, Jimmie beaming with delight over one idol
+who had not tumbled from his pedestal at a near view.
+
+We were still in the midst of the Paris season. It was very gay and Bee
+and Mrs. Jimmie had made some amiable friends among the very smartest of
+the Parisian smart set. When we went to tea or dinner with these people
+Jimmie and I had to be dragged along like dogs who are muzzled for the
+first time. Every once in awhile _en route_ we would plant our fore feet
+and try to rub our muzzles off, but the hands which held our chains were
+gentle but firm, and we always ended by going.
+
+On one Sunday we were invited to have _déjeuner_ with the Countess S.,
+and as it was her last day to receive she had invited us to remain and
+meet her friends. At the breakfast there were perhaps sixteen of us and
+the conversation fell upon palmistry. We had just seen Cheiro in London,
+and as he had amiably explained a good many of our lines to us, I was
+speaking of this when the old Duchesse de Z. thrust her little wrinkled
+paw loaded down with jewels across the plate of her neighbour and said:
+
+"Mademoiselle, can you see anything in the lines of my hand?"
+
+I make no pretence of understanding palmistry, but I saw in her hand a
+queer little mark that Cheiro had explained to us from a chart. I took
+her hand in mine and all the conversation ceased to hear the pearls of
+wisdom which were about to drop from my lips. The duchesse was very much
+interested in the occult and known to be given to table tipping and the
+invocation of spirits.
+
+"I see something here," I began, hesitatingly, "which looks to me as if
+you had once been threatened with a great danger, but had been
+miraculously preserved," I said.
+
+The old woman drew her hand away.
+
+"Humph," she muttered with her mouth full of homard. "I wondered if you
+would see that. It was assassination I escaped. It was enough to leave a
+mark, eh, mademoiselle?"
+
+"I should think so," I murmured.
+
+The young Count de X. on my right said, in a tone which the duchesse
+might have heard:
+
+"When she was a young girl, only nineteen, her husband tied her with
+ropes to her bed and set fire to the bed curtains. Her screams brought
+the servants and they rescued her."
+
+My fork fell with a clatter.
+
+"What an awful man!" I gasped.
+
+"He was my uncle, mademoiselle!" said the young man, imperturbably,
+arranging the gardenia in his buttonhole, "but as you say, he was a bad
+lot."
+
+"I beg your pardon!" I exclaimed.
+
+"It is nothing," he answered. "It is no secret. Everybody knows it."
+
+Later in the afternoon I took occasion to apologise to the duchesse for
+having referred to the subject.
+
+"Why should you be distressed, mademoiselle," said the old woman,
+peering up into my face from beneath her majenta bonnet with her little
+watery brown eyes, "such things will go into books and be history a few
+years hence. We make history, such families as ours," she added,
+proudly.
+
+I turned away rather bewildered and for an hour or two watched Bee and
+Mrs. Jimmie being presented to those who called to pay their respects to
+our hostess. They were of all descriptions and fascinating to a degree.
+Finally the duchesse came up to me bringing a lady whom she introduced
+as the Countess Y.
+
+"She is a compatriot of yours, mademoiselle."
+
+It so happened that Bee and Mrs. Jimmie were standing near me and
+overheard.
+
+"Ah, you are an American," I said.
+
+"Well," said the countess, moving her shoulders a little uneasily, "I am
+an American, but my husband does not like to have me admit it."
+
+It was a small thing. She had a right to deny her nationality if she
+liked, but in some way it shocked the three of us alike and we moved
+forward as if pulled by one string.
+
+"I think we must be going," said Bee, haughtily.
+
+Jimmie's jaw was so set as we left the house of the countess, and Bee
+and Mrs. Jimmie looked so disturbed that I suggested that we drive down
+to the Louvre and take one last look at our treasures. Mine are the
+Venus de Milo and the Victory, and Jimmie's is the colossal statue of
+the river Tiber. Jimmie loves that old giant, Father Tiber, lying there
+with the horn of plenty and dear little Romulus and Remus with their
+foster mother under his right hand. Jimmie says the _toes_ of the giant
+fascinate him.
+
+It looked like rain, so we hastily checked our parasols and Jimmie's
+stick and cut down the left corridor to the stairs, and so on down to
+the chamber where we left Jimmie and the Tiber to stare each other out
+of countenance. The rest of us continued our way to the room where the
+Venus stands enthroned in her silent majesty. We sat down to rest and
+worship, and then coming up the steps again and mounting another flight,
+we stood looking across the arcade at the brilliant electric poise of
+the Victory, and in taking our last look at her, we did not notice that
+it had gradually grown very dark.
+
+When we came out, rested, uplifted, and calmed as the effect of that
+glorious Venus always is upon our fretted spirits, we discovered that
+the most terrific rainstorm was in progress it ever was our luck to
+behold. The water came down in cataracts and blinding sheets of rain.
+Every one except us had been warned by the darkness and had got
+themselves home. The streets were empty except for the cabs and
+carriages which skurried by with fares. Our frantic signals and Jimmie's
+dashes into the street were of no avail.
+
+We would have walked except that Bee and I had colds, and big, beautiful
+Mrs. Jimmie was subject to croup, which as every one knows is terrible
+in its attacks upon grown people.
+
+Poor Jimmie ran in every direction in his wild efforts for a carriage,
+but none was to be had. We waited two hours, then Mrs. Jimmie saw a
+black covered wagon approaching and she gathered up her skirts and
+hailed it. The driver obligingly pulled up at the curb.
+
+"You must drive us to our hotel." she said, firmly. "We have waited two
+hours."
+
+"Impossible, madame!" said the man.
+
+"But you _must_," we all said in chorus.
+
+"You shall have much money," said Jimmie in his worst French.
+
+"All the same it is impossible, monsieur," said the man.
+
+He regretted exceedingly his inability to oblige the ladies, but--and he
+prepared to drive off.
+
+"Get in, girls," said Mrs. Jimmie, firmly, pushing us in at the back of
+the wagon. The man expostulated, not in anger but appealingly. Mrs.
+Jimmie would not listen. She said there ought to be more cabs in Paris,
+and that she regretted it as much as he did, but she climbed in as she
+talked, and gave the address of the hotel.
+
+"You shall have three times your fare," she said, calmly, "drive on!"
+
+"But what madame demands is impossible," pleaded the poor man. "I am on
+my way for another body. Madame sits in the morgue wagon!"
+
+But there he was mistaken, for madame sat nowhere. Before he had done
+speaking madame was flying through the air, alighting on poor Jimmie's
+foot, while Bee and I clawed at our dripping skirts in a mad effort to
+follow suit.
+
+The morgue wagon pursued its way down the Rue de Rivoli, while we risked
+colds, croup, and everything else in an endeavour to find a "_grand
+bain_," splashing through puddles but marching steadily on, Jimmie in a
+somewhat strained silence limping uncomplainingly at our side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+STRASBURG AND BADEN-BADEN
+
+We are on our way to the Passion Play, and although each of the four of
+us is a monument of amiability when taken individually, as a quartet we
+sometimes clash. At present we are fighting over the route we shall take
+between Paris and Oberammergau. Bee and Mrs. Jimmie have replenished
+their wardrobes in the Rue de la Paix, and wish to follow the trail of
+American tourists going to Baden-Baden, while Jimmie and I, having
+rooted out of a German student in the Latin Quarter two or three unknown
+carriage routes through the mountains which lead to unknown spots not
+double starred, starred, or even mentioned in Baedeker, are wondering
+how the battle between clothes and Bohemianism will end.
+
+We arrived at Strasburg still in an amiable wrangle, but all four agreed
+on seeing the clock which has made the town famous. Our time was so
+limited that there was not, as is often the case, an opportunity for all
+four of us to get our own way.
+
+Anybody who did not know her, would imagine by the quiet way that Bee
+has let the subject of Baden-Baden alone for the whole day, that she had
+quite given up going there, but I know Bee. She has left Jimmie and me
+to defend the front of the fortress, while she is bringing all her
+troops up in the rear. Bee does not believe in a charge with plenty of
+shouting and galloping and noise. Bee's manoeuvres never raise any dust,
+but on a flank movement, a midnight sortie or an ambush, Bee could
+outgeneral Napoleon and Alexander and General Grant and every other man
+who has helped change the maps of the world. Only by indication and past
+sad experience do I know what she is up to. One thing to-day has given
+me a clue. I have a necktie--the only really saucy thing about the whole
+of my wardrobe, the only distinguishing smartness to my toilet--upon
+which Bee has fixed her affection, and which she means to get away from
+me. I don't know how I came to buy it in the first place. However, I
+sha'n't have it long. Bee is bargaining for it--that means that we are
+going to Baden-Baden. She is not openly bargaining, for that would let
+me know how much she wants it, but she has admired it pointedly. She
+tied my veil on for me this morning, and even as I write, she is sewing
+a button on my glove. Bee in the politest way possible is going to force
+me to give her that tie. I wish she wouldn't, for I really need it, but
+I must get all the wear I expect to have out of it in the next two days,
+for by the end of the week, if these attentions continue, that Charvet
+tie will belong to Bee.
+
+Last night, as soon as we arrived and had our dinner, we went to the
+Orangerie. This great park with myriads of walks is one of the most
+attractive things about Strasburg. A very good band was playing a Sousa
+march as we came in and took our seats at one of the little tables.
+
+But just here let me record something which has surprised me all during
+my travels in Europe; and that is the small amount of good music one
+hears outside of opera. I have always imagined Germany to be
+distinguished equally by her music and her beer. I have not been
+disappointed in the beer, for it is there by the tub, but as to the
+music, there is not in my opinion in the whole of Germany or Austria one
+such as Sousa's, and as to men choruses, not one that I have heard, and
+I have followed them closely wherever I heard of their existence, is to
+be compared with any of our College Glee Clubs. In my opinion the casual
+open-air music of Germany is another of the disappointments of
+Europe--to be set down in the same category with the linden trees of
+Berlin and the trousers of the French Army.
+
+German music seems to be too universally indulged in to be good. It is
+performed with more earnestness than skill and the programme is gone
+through with with more fervour than taste. The musicians of a typical
+German band dig through the evening's numbers with the same dogged
+perseverance and perspiration that they would exercise in tunnelling
+through a mountain. In this connection I am not speaking of any of the
+trained orchestras, but solely of the band music that one hears all
+through the Rhine land. It is only tradition that Germans are the most
+musical people in the world, for in my opinion the rank and file of
+Germans have no ear for key. That they listen well and perform earnestly
+is perfectly true. That they respect music and give it proper attention
+is equally true, but that they know the difference between a number
+performed with no expression, with one or two instruments or voices, as
+the case may be, entirely out of pitch, and the same number correctly
+rendered, is impossible to believe by one who has watched them as
+carefully as I.
+
+Sousa once made the statement to the American Press that in his opinion
+the American nation was the most musical nation in the world. He based
+this astonishing belief, which was violently attacked by the
+German-American Press, upon his observation of his audiences and by the
+street music, even including whistling and singing. I agree with his
+opinion with all my heart. In an American audience of the most common
+sort an instrument off the key or improperly tuned will be sure to be
+detected. It may be, nay, it probably is true, that the person so
+detecting the discord will not know where the trouble lies or of what it
+consists, but his ear, untrained as it is, tells him that something is
+wrong, and he shows his discomfort and disapproval. I claim that the
+ordinary American--the common or garden variety of American--has a more
+correct ear than the common or garden variety of German. I claim that
+the rank and file in America is for this reason more truly musical than
+the same class in the German nation, although the German nation has a
+technical knowledge of music which it will take the Americans a thousand
+years to equal. For this reason an open-air concert in America is so
+much more enjoyable both from the numbers selected and the spirit of
+their playing, that the two performances are not to be mentioned in the
+same day.
+
+A criticism which the wayfaring man will whip out to floor me at this
+point, viz., that nearly all performers in American bands are Germans,
+will not cause me to wink an eyelash, for the effect of American
+audiences on German performers has raised the standard of their music so
+that I am informed by Germans and Austrians that the most annoying,
+irritating, and insulting factor in their otherwise peaceful lives is
+the return of a German-American to his native heath. They tell me that
+his arrogance and conceit are unbearable--that he claims that Americans
+alone know how to make practical use of the technical knowledge of the
+German--that the Teuton gathers the knowledge, the Yankee applies it.
+This goes to prove my point.
+
+We Americans are a curious people. We get better music under our own
+vine and fig-tree than they have anywhere else in the world but we don't
+know it. There is no such band on earth as Sousa's, no better orchestra
+than Theodore Thomas's or the Boston Symphony, and we hear the
+Metropolitan and French operas.
+
+Take also our chamber music and from that come down to our street
+ballads, and then to the whistling and singing heard in the streets,
+with no thought of audience or even listeners.
+
+I have followed German music closely, and I claim that German
+musicians, or rather let me say German producers of music, lack ear just
+about half of the time. Their students cannot compare with our college
+singing, their pedestrian parties, which one meets all through the
+country, singing, often from notes (and if you take the trouble to
+inquire, they will frequently tell you with pride that they belong to
+such and such a singing society) almost drive sensitive ears crazy. But
+they love it--they adore music, they take such comfort out of it, that
+one is forced to forgive this lack of ear and this polyglot pitch, or
+else be considered a churl.
+
+The Orangerie has, however, a very good average band--for Germany. The
+picture of the great crowd of people gathered at little tables around
+the band-stand, whole families together; of a tiny boy baby, just able
+to toddle around, being dragged about by an enormous St. Bernard dog,
+whose chain the baby tugged at most valiantly; the long dim avenues
+under the trees where an occasional young couple lost themselves from
+fathers and mothers; the music; the cheerful beer-drinking; the general
+air of rosy-cheeked contentment has formed in my mind a most agreeable
+recollection of the Orangerie of Strasburg.
+
+Strasburg has, however, much more to boast of than her clock. The city
+was founded by the Romans, and in the middle ages was one of the most
+powerful of the free cities of the German Empire, on the occasions of
+imperial processions her citizens enjoying the proud distinction of
+having their banner borne second only to the imperial eagle.
+
+Then, because of its strategical importance, in a time of peace, Louis
+XIV. of France seized the city of Strasburg, and this delicate attention
+on his part was confirmed by the Peace of Ryswick in 1679, thereby
+giving Strasburg to France. The French kept it nearly two hundred years,
+but Germany got it back at the Peace of Frankfort, 1871, and it is now
+the capital of German Alsace and Lorraine.
+
+I never think of Alsace and Lorraine that I do not recall the statue in
+the Place de la Concorde, with gay coloured wreaths looking more like a
+festival of joy than mourning,--in fact I never think of Paris mourning
+for anything, from a relative to a dead dog, that I can keep my
+countenance.
+
+On the Jour des Morts, I once went to the Père-Lachaise and found in the
+family lot of a duchesse with a grand name, a stuffed dog of the rare
+old breed known as mongrel. In America he would have slouched at the
+heels of a stevedore--or any sort of a man who shuffles in his walk and
+smokes a short black pipe. But this yellow cur was in a glass case
+mounted on a marble pedestal, and his yellowness in life was represented
+by a coat of small yellow beads put on in patches where the hair had
+disappeared. His yellow glass eyes peered staringly at the passer-by and
+his tomb was literally heaped with expensive _couronnes_ tied with long
+streamers of crape, while _couronnes_ on the grass-grown tomb of the
+defunct husband of the duchesse, buried in the back of the lot behind
+the dog, were conspicuous by their absence. I wondered if the widow took
+this ingenious method of publishing to the world that in life her
+husband had been less to her than her dog.
+
+Paris crape is this slippery, shiny sort of stuff, like thin
+haircloth--the kind they used to cover furniture with. It is made up
+into "costumes" which have such an air of fashion that the deceased
+relative is instantly forgotten in one's interest in the cut and fit of
+the gown. A butterfly of a bonnet, a tiny face veil coming just to the
+tip of the nose, with the long one in the back sweeping almost to the
+ground, completes a picture of such a jaunty grief, such a saucy sorrow,
+that one would be quite willing to lose one or two distant relatives in
+order to be clad in such a manner.
+
+The University of Strasburg changed its nationality as often as the
+town, but not at the same time. In one of its German periods Goethe
+graduated there as doctor of laws--which fact ought to be better known.
+At least _I_ didn't know it. But Bee says that doesn't signify, because
+I know so little. But Bee only says that when she has asked me some
+stupid date that nobody ever knows or ever did know except in a history
+class.
+
+The next day after our evening at the Orangerie, at half after eleven,
+we went to the Cathedral to see the clock. It only performs all its
+functions at noon, and as there is always a crowd of tourists about it,
+we went early.
+
+The most wonderful feature of this clock to Jimmie is that it regulates
+itself and adapts its motions to the revolutions of the seasons, year
+after year and year after year, as if it had a wonderful living human
+mind somewhere in its insides. Its perpetual calendar, too, is a marvel!
+How can that insensate clock tell when to put twenty-eight days and when
+to give thirty-one, when I can't even do it myself without saying:
+
+    "Thirty days hath September,
+    April, June, and November,
+    All the rest have thirty-one,
+    Except February alone,
+    Which has but twenty-eight in fine
+    Till leap-year gives it twenty-nine."
+
+And who tells that clock when leap year comes, and when the moon
+changes, and when it's going to rain, and when hoop-skirts will be worn
+again? Wonderful people, these Germans.
+
+We were there on Monday when the clock struck noon. Monday is the day
+when Diana steps out upon the first gallery. Each day has its
+deity--Apollo on Sunday, Diana on Monday, etc.
+
+On the first gallery an angel strikes the quarters on a bell in his
+little mechanical hand. Then a gentleman who has nothing else to do the
+whole year round reverses an hour-glass each hour in the twenty-four; so
+that you can tell the time by counting the grains of sand or by glancing
+at the face of the clock,--whichever way you have been brought up to
+tell time.
+
+Above this there is a skeleton, which strikes the hours, and evidently
+cheerfully reminds us what our end will be, around which are grouped the
+quarter-hours, represented by the four figures, boyhood, youth, manhood,
+and old age.
+
+But the two most remarkable things are those which crown the clock. In
+the highest niche, at noon, the twelve apostles, also representing the
+hours, come out of a door and march around the figure of the Saviour.
+Judas hangs his head, and the eyes of the Christ follow him until he
+disappears. Then on the highest pinnacle of all, a cock comes out,
+preens himself, flaps his wings, and gives such an exultant crow that
+Peter pauses in his walk, then drops his head forward on his breast, and
+so passes out of sight.
+
+When the performance is over, the crowd melts away. Some few stay to do
+the Cathedral, but we went to luncheon. At luncheon it was decided to go
+to Baden-Baden. Jimmie and I compromised on three days of it.
+
+There is nothing particularly interesting about the journey thither.
+When you come to the village of Oos, you get off the train and take a
+little train which is waiting on a siding, and in less than five
+minutes, before you have time to sit down, in fact, you are at Baden, at
+the entrance of the Black Forest, and find it beautiful.
+
+It was the height of the season and we went to a very smart hotel, where
+they have very badly dressed people, because nearly everybody there
+except us had money and titles.
+
+Now the height of the season at any watering-place depresses me. If I
+could wear fern seed in my shoes to make me invisible, and sit on the
+_piazza_ railing in a shirt-waist and a short skirt, I would love it.
+But both Bee and Mrs. Jimmie, with the light of heaven in their eyes,
+pulled out and put on their most be-yew-tiful Paris clothes, and if I do
+say it of my sister--well, for modesty's sake, I will only say that Mrs.
+Jimmie looked ripping. _I_ was happily travelling with a steamer trunk
+and a big hat-box, and had hitherto rejoiced that my lack of clothes
+would prevent my being obliged to dress. I thought perhaps Jimmie and I
+would be allowed to roam about hunting little queer restaurants like Old
+Tom's or the Cheshire Cheese. But when Jimmie's boyish face appeared
+over a white expanse of tucked shirt front, I sank down in a dejected
+heap.
+
+"And thou, Brutus?" I said.
+
+"Couldn't help it," he answered, laconically. "We'd better give in
+handsomely for three days. It'll pay us in the end. Get into your 'glad
+rags' and be good."
+
+"But I didn't bring my 'glad rags,'" I said.
+
+Just then Bee looked around from fastening a lace butterfly in her hair
+on a jewelled spiral.
+
+"I had two extra trays in my trunk and I put a few of your things in.
+Would you like to wear your lace gown? You've never even tried it on."
+
+My mouth flew open, contrary to politeness and my excellent bringing-up.
+Jimmie collapsed with a silent grin, while I meekly followed Bee into my
+room.
+
+When I saw my new gown all full of rolls of tissue-paper, packed by poor
+dear Bee, I went to my trunk and pulled out my smart Charvet tie. I
+handed it to her in silence.
+
+"Take it," I said. "I hate to give it up, but you deserve it."
+
+Bee accepted it gratefully.
+
+"It's good of you to give it to me," she said. "You really need it more
+than I do, only this peculiar shade of blue is so becoming to me. I'll
+tell you what I'll do though," she added, heroically. "I'll _lend_ it to
+you whenever you want it."
+
+I thanked her, dressed, and then humbly trailed down to dinner in the
+wake of my gorgeous party.
+
+Jimmie had engaged a table on the piazza, nearest the street and
+commanding the best view of all the other diners. I very willingly sat
+with my back to all the people, with the panorama of the Lichtenthaler
+Strasse passing before my eyes, and in quiet moments the sounds of the
+great military band playing on the promenade in front of the
+_Conversationshaus_ coming to our ears.
+
+A great deal of grandeur always makes me homesick. It isn't envy. I
+don't want to be a princess and have the bother of winding a horn for my
+outriders when I want to run to the drug-store for postage stamps, but
+pomp depresses me. Everybody was strange, foreign languages were pelting
+me from the rear, noiseless flunkies were carrying pampered lap-dogs
+with crests on their nasty little embroidered blankets, fat old women
+with epilepsy and gouty old men with scrofula, representing the
+aristocracy at its best, were being half carried to and from tables, and
+the degeneracy of noble Europe was being borne in upon my soul with a
+sickening force.
+
+The purple twilight was turning black on the distant hills, and the
+silent stars were slowly coming into view. Clean, health-giving
+Baden-Baden, in the Valley of the Oos, with its beauty and its pure air,
+was holding out her arms to all the disease and filth that degenerate
+riches produce.
+
+I wasn't exactly blue, but I was gently melancholy. Jimmie was smoking,
+and Bee and Mrs. Jimmie had their heads together, casting politely
+furtive glances at a table which held royalty. I certainly _was_ feeling
+neglected.
+
+Suddenly a voice in English at my elbow said:
+
+"Pardon me, madame, but were not you at the Grand Hotel at Rome last
+winter?"
+
+"Yes," I said.
+
+"I mean no impertinence in addressing you. I am the head waiter there in
+winter, here in summer. I remembered you at once, and I came to say that
+if anything goes wrong with any of your distinguished party during your
+stay, I shall count it a favour if you will permit me to remedy it. The
+hotel is at your disposal. I will send a private maid to attend you
+during your stay. I hope you will be happy here, madame."
+
+Then with a bow he was gone.
+
+I was in a state of exhilaration inside which threatened to break
+through at the sudden attentions of my party.
+
+"Who's your friend?" said Jimmie.
+
+"How nice of him!" commented his wife.
+
+"Servants never remember me, yet I always fee better than you do,"
+complained Bee.
+
+"Console yourself. It is only porters and head waiters who care whether
+I am happy or not," I said, bitterly.
+
+"Deary me!" said Jimmie, sitting up. "Come, let's get out of this. We
+must walk her over where she'll hear some music and see some pretty
+lights or she'll drown herself in her bath to-morrow."
+
+We went, we promenaded, we showed our clothes, and came home smirking
+with satisfaction. We had been pointed out everywhere for Americans,
+which spoke volumes for our clothes and the smallness of our feet.
+
+During two mortal weeks we stayed at Baden-Baden, taking the baths,
+improving our German and driving through the Black Forest and the Oos
+Valley to the green hills beyond.
+
+Then on one happy day we were all packed to go. We sent our trunks
+down, saw every drawer emptied, pulled the bed to pieces, looked under
+it and decided that _this_ time we hadn't left so much as a pin. Bee
+stuck her "_blaue cravatte_," as we now called the necktie, under the
+bureau mat to put on when we came up, and then we snatched a hasty
+luncheon. In the meantime we turned our "private maid" and the
+chambermaid loose to see if we had overlooked anything.
+
+When we came up they were still rummaging, but had found nothing.
+
+Bee hurried to the bureau and looked under the mat. No tie. She asked
+the two women. They had not seen it. Then everybody hunted. Jimmie swore
+we had packed it. But Bee's gray eyes turned to green as she watched the
+flurried movements of the two maids. She walked up to them.
+
+"Give me that blue necktie," she said, in awful German.
+
+At that Jimmie, who hates a row when it is not of his own making,
+interfered and insisted that we must have packed it--he remembered
+numbers of times when we had made a fuss over nothing--it was of no
+account anyway, and if we would only come along and not miss the train
+he would send back to Charvet and get Bee another "_blaue cravatte_."
+
+"For heaven's sake, take that man downstairs," I said to Mrs. Jimmie,
+"and let us manage this affair."
+
+So poor Jimmie was whisked from the scene of action, still protesting
+and gesticulating, and being soothed but marched steadily onward by his
+wife.
+
+When we came down we were heated but unsuccessful. I insisted upon
+reporting the affair to my friend the head waiter. He almost went back
+on his devotion to me in his assurances that those maids were honest.
+Then Jimmie had to come up and interfere, and those two men decided that
+we had packed it.
+
+Bee was in a cold ladylike fury.
+
+We gave all the servants double fees to assure them that meanness had
+not prompted the search, and got into the carriage.
+
+"Remember," said Bee, "I claim that one of those women has that tie in
+her pocket now, because all four of us looked every inch of the rooms
+over together. I advise you to have them searched. On the other hand I
+will telegraph you from Nuremberg if I find it in my trunks."
+
+We had half an hour before the train left. Bee, who was riding backward,
+kept looking out down the road whence we had come with a curious
+expression on her face. Jimmie, in spite of warning pressures from his
+wife's foot, kept sputtering about women's poor memories, etc. Bee
+didn't even seem to hear.
+
+Presently, in a cloud of dust, up drove one of the men from the hotel,
+with a little package in his hand.
+
+"_Blaue cravatte,_" he said, bowing.
+
+"Where did you find it?" demanded Mrs. Jimmie.
+
+"Between the mattress and the springs of the bed. Madame must have put
+it there to press it."
+
+Jimmie looked sheepish and put us into the train with a red face. Bee
+simply slipped the tie into her satchel and put on her travelling-cap
+without a word, and began to read. Bee never nags or crows.
+
+So much for Baden-Baden.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+STUTTGART, NUREMBERG, AND BAYREUTH
+
+We had planned to go to Stuttgart next, but as we were nearing the town,
+Bee pushed up her veil and said:
+
+"I don't see why we are going to Stuttgart. I never heard of it except
+in connection with men who 'studied' in Stuttgart. What's there, Jimmie?
+An Academy?"
+
+"I should say," said Jimmie, waking up. "The Academy where Schiller
+studied."
+
+"That's very interesting," I broke in, "but it's hardly enough to keep
+_me_ there very long. Are there any queer little places--"
+
+"Any concert-gardens?" asked Bee.
+
+"Are the hotels good?" asked his wife.
+
+"There is one hotel called Hotel Billfinger, which I'd like to try,
+because Mark Twain's guide in 'Innocents Abroad' was named Billfinger.
+Remember?"
+
+"He afterwards called him Ferguson, which I think is against the name
+and against the hotel," I said. "Why do we stop except to break the
+journey?"
+
+"Well, the real reason," said Jimmie, with that timid air of his, "is
+because Baedeker says that in the Royal Library there are 7,200 Bibles
+in more than one hundred languages, and I thought if you stayed by them
+long enough you might get enough religion so that you would be less
+wearing on my nerves as a travelling companion. It wouldn't take you
+long to master them. While you are studying, the rest of us will refresh
+ourselves in the Stadt-Garten, where Bee will find a band, where I shall
+find a restaurant, and where my wife can ponder over Baedeker's choice
+information of the places where it is not proper to take a lady."
+
+Nobody pays any attention to Jimmie, so we all stared out of the windows
+to see that the town was beautifully situated, almost upon the Neckar,
+and surrounded by such vine-clad hills and green wooded heights as to
+make it seem like a painting.
+
+But Bee was still unconvinced.
+
+"It is the capital of Nuremberg and used to be the favourite residence
+of the Dukes of Nuremberg," said Mrs. Jimmie, as we drove up to the
+hotel, not the Billfinger, let me remark in passing.
+
+We found a band for Bee, and in the course of our stay in Stuttgart we
+heard any number of men's choruses, students' singing and the like.
+There was, too, the Museum of Art, and a fine one. There was also a
+lovely view, from the Eugen-Platz, of the city which lies below it. But
+after all, the Schloss-Garten and concerts to the contrary
+notwithstanding, there is an atmosphere about the law schools, museums,
+and collections of Stuttgart, which led frivolous pleasure-seekers like
+us to depart on the second day, for Nuremberg.
+
+Jimmie has a curious way of selecting hotels. As the train neared that
+quaintest of old cities, toward which my heart warms anew as I think of
+it, he broke the silence as though we had held a long and heated
+argument on the matter.
+
+"You might as well cease this useless discussion. I have decided to go
+to the Wittelsbacher Hof, Pfannenschmiedsgasse 22."
+
+"Good heavens!" I murmured.
+
+"There you go, _arguing!_" cried Jimmie. "But can't you see the
+advantages of all those extra letters on your note-paper when you write
+home?"
+
+"Besides, it's a very good hotel, I've been told," said his wife,
+affably.
+
+It _was_ a very good hotel, and there was a lunch-room half-way up the
+main flight of stairs at the right as you enter, which I remember with
+peculiar pleasure. Travellers like us may well be excused for
+remembering a first luncheon such as that which we had at the
+Wittelsbacher Hof.
+
+Then we all strolled out in the early summer twilight and took our first
+look at Nuremberg. Tell me if you can why we went into such ecstasies
+over Nuremberg and stayed there two weeks, when we could barely persuade
+ourselves to remain one day in Stuttgart. But the picturesqueness of
+Nuremberg is particularly enticing. The streets run "every which way,"
+as the children say, and the architecture is so queer and ancient that
+the houses look as if they had stepped out of old prints.
+
+It was so hot when we arrived that we were on terms of the most distant
+civility with each other. Indeed, it was dangerous to make the simplest
+observation, for the other three guns were trained upon the inoffensive
+speaker with such promptness and such an evident desire to fight that
+for the most part we maintained a dignified but safe silence.
+
+Mrs. Jimmie bearded Jimmie in his den long enough to ask him to see
+about our opera tickets at once. Everybody said we could not get any,
+but trust Jimmie! The agent of whom he bought them had embroidered a
+generous romance of how he had got them of a lady who ordered them the
+January before, but whose husband having just died, her feelings would
+not permit her to use them, and so as a great accommodation, etc., etc.
+
+Everybody knows these stories. Suffice it to say that Jimmie really had,
+at the last moment, secured admirable seats near the middle of the
+house, and everybody said it was a miracle. In looking back over the
+experiences of that one opera of "Parsifal," I cannot deny that there
+was something of a miracle about it. However, "Parsifal" was three days
+distant, and Nuremberg was at hand.
+
+I love to think of Nuremberg. The recollection of it comes back to me
+again and again through a gentle haze of happy memories. The narrow
+streets were lined with houses which leaned toward each other after the
+gossipy manner of old friends whose confidence in each other is
+established. The windows jutted queerly, and odd balconies looped
+themselves on corners where no one expected them. They call these pretty
+old houses the best examples of domestic architecture, but warn you that
+the quaint peaked roofs are Gothic and the surprises are Renaissance--a
+mixture of which purists do not approve. But I am a pagan. I like
+mixtures. They give you little flutters of delight in your heart, and
+one of the most satisfactory of experiences is not to be able to analyse
+your emotions or to tell why you are pleased, but to feel at liberty to
+answer art questions with "Just because!"
+
+So Nuremberg. Its fortifications are rugged and strong. Its towers
+imposing. It dates back to the Huns. Frederick Barbarossa frequently
+occupied the castle which frowns down on you from the heights. Hans
+Sachs, the poet, sang here. Albrecht Durer painted here. Peter Vischer
+perhaps dreamed out the noble original of my beautiful King Arthur here.
+
+From the quaint and awkward statues of saints and heroes in church and
+state, to such delicate examples of sculpture as the figure of the
+Virgin in the Hirschelgasse, so delicate and graceful that it was once
+attributed to an Italian master, you realise how early the arts were
+established here and how sedulously they were pursued. Everywhere are
+works of art, from the cruder decorations over doorways and windows to
+the paintings of Durer in the Germanic Museum. It is a sad reflection to
+me that most of Durer's work, and all of his masterpieces, are in other
+cities--Munich, Berlin, and Vienna, and that, as it is in Greece, only
+their fame remains to glorify the city of his birth.
+
+His statue, copied from a portrait painted by himself, stands in the
+Albrecht-Durer Platz, and in his little house are copies of his
+masterpieces and a collection of typical antique German furniture and
+utensils. The exquisite art of glass-staining is the suitable occupation
+of the custodian who shows you about the house.
+
+Indeed, wood carving, glass staining, engraving of medals and
+medallions, copying ancient cabinets and quaint furniture are, if not
+the principal, at least the most interesting occupations pursued in
+Nuremberg to-day. In searching out the little shops I also found that
+table linen, superbly embroidered and decorated with drawn-work of
+intricate patterns was here in a bewildering display.
+
+Dear Nuremberg! A stroll through your lovely streets is a feast for the
+eye and a whip to the imagination that no other city in the German
+Empire can duplicate or approach. You abound in quaint doorways, over
+which if I step, I find myself transplanted to the scenes of tapestries
+and old prints, and I can easily imagine myself framed and hanging on
+the wall quite comfortable and happy.
+
+One of these tiny doorways led us, on a bright Sunday afternoon, into
+one of the oddest places we ever saw. It was the
+Bratwurst-Glocklein--such a restaurant as Doctor Johnson would have
+deserted the Cheshire Cheese for, and revelled in the change.
+
+It appeared to be a thousand years old. Perhaps Melanchthon expounded
+the theories of the Reformation on the very benches on which we sat.
+
+The door-sill was high, and we stepped over it on to a stone floor, the
+flagging of which was sunken in many places, causing pitfalls to the
+unwary. The room was small and only half lighted by infinitesimal
+windows. One end of the room was given up to what appeared to be a
+charcoal furnace built of bricks, over which in plain view buxom maids,
+whose red cheeks were purple from the heat, were frying delicious little
+sausages in strings. We squeezed ourselves into a narrow bench behind
+one of the tables whose rudeness was picturesque. I have seen schoolboy
+desks at Harrow and Eton worn to the smoothness of these tables here and
+carved as deeply with names. There was not a vestige of a cloth or
+napkins. The plates and knives and forks were rude enough to bear out
+the surroundings. In fact, the clumsiness and apparent age of everything
+almost transported us, in imagination, to the stone age, but the
+sensation was delightful.
+
+One of the maids brought a string of sausages sizzling hot from the pan
+and deftly snipped off as many as were called for upon each of our
+plates. We drank our beer from steins so heavy that each one took both
+hands. A person with a mouth of the rosebud variety would have found it
+exceedingly difficult to obtain any of the beer, the stein presenting
+such unassailable fortifications.
+
+It was too hot when we were there to appreciate to the full this
+delicious old spot, but on a winter evening, after the theatre, which
+closes about ten o'clock, think what a delightful thing it would be, O
+ye Bohemian Americans, with fashionable wives who insist upon the
+Waldorf or Sherry's after the theatre, to go instead to the
+Bratwurst-Glocklein! There you smoke at your ease, put your elbows on
+the table and dream dreams of your student days when the dinner coat
+vexed not your peaceful spirit.
+
+Owing to our late arrival and the enormous crowd of people at Bayreuth,
+we found it expedient to remain in Nuremberg and go up to Bayreuth for
+the opera. The day of our performance of "Parsifal" was one of the
+hottest of the year. Not even Philadelphia can boast of heat more
+consolidated and unswerving than that of North Germany on this
+particular day.
+
+We put on muslin dresses and carried fans and smelling salts, and Jimmie
+had to use force to make us carry wraps for the return. The journey,
+lovely in itself, was rendered hideous to us by the heat, but when we
+arrived at Bayreuth the babel of English voices was so delightfully
+homelike, American clothes on American women were so good to see, and
+Bayreuth itself was so picturesque, that we forgot the heat and drove to
+the opera-house full of delight.
+
+I am sorry that it is fashionable to like Wagner, for I really should
+like to explain the feelings of perfect delight which tingled in my
+blood as I realised that I was in the home of German opera--in the city
+where the master musician lived and wrote, and where his widow and son
+still maintain their unswerving faithfulness toward his glorious music.
+I am a little sensitive, too, about admitting that I like Carlyle and
+Browning. I suppose this is because I have belonged to a Browning and
+Carlyle club, where I have heard some of the most idiotic women it was
+ever my privilege to encounter, express glib sentiments concerning these
+masters, which in me lay too deep for utterance. It is something like
+the occasional horror which overpowers me when I think that perhaps I am
+doomed to go to heaven. If certain people here on earth upon whom I have
+lavished my valuable hatred are going there, heaven is the last place I
+should want to inhabit. So with Wagner.
+
+"Parsifal!" That sacred opera which has never been performed outside of
+this little hamlet. I was to see it at last!
+
+I was prepared to be delighted with everything, and the childishness of
+the little maid who took charge of our hats before we went in to the
+opera charmed me. My hat was heavy and hot, and I particularly disliked
+it, owing to the weight of the seagull which composed one entire side of
+it, and always pulled it crooked on my head. The little maid took the
+hat in both her arms, laid her round red cheek against the soft feathers
+of the gull, kissed its glass bead eyes, and smilingly said in German:
+
+"This is the finest hat that has been left in my charge to-day!"
+
+Verily, the opera of "Parsifal" began auspiciously. Quite puffed up with
+vainglorious pride over the little maiden's admiration of one of my
+modest possessions, while Bee's and Mrs. Jimmie's ravishing masterpieces
+had received not even a look, we met Jimmie bustling up with programmes
+and opera-glasses, and went toward the main entrance. We showed our
+tickets, and were sent to the side door. We went to the side door, and
+were sent to the back door. At the back door, to our indignation, we
+were sent up-stairs. In vain Jimmie expostulated, and said that these
+seats were well in the middle of the house on the ground floor. The
+doorkeepers were inexorable. On the second floor, they sent us to the
+third, and on the third they would have sent us to the roof if there had
+been any way of getting up there. As it was, they permitted us to stop
+at the top gallery, and, to our unmitigated horror, the usher said that
+our seats were there. Jimmie was furious, but I, not knowing how much he
+had paid for them, endeavoured to soothe him by pointing out that all
+true musicians sat in the gallery, because music rises and blends in the
+rising.
+
+"We are sure to get the best effect up here, Jimmie, and those front
+rows, especially, if our seats happen to be in the middle, won't be at
+all bad. Don't let's fuss any more about it, but come along like an
+angel."
+
+I will admit, however, that even my ardour was dampened when we
+discovered that our seats were absolutely in the back and top row, so
+that we leaned against the wall of the building, and were not even
+furnished with chairs, but sat on a hard bench without relief of any
+description.
+
+And the price Jimmie hurled at us that he had paid for those tickets! I
+am ashamed to tell it.
+
+Now Jimmie hates German opera in the most picturesque fashion. He hates
+in every form, colour, and key, and in all my life I was never so sorry
+for any one as I was for Jimmie that day at Bayreuth. The heat was
+stifling, his rage choked him and effectually prevented his going to
+sleep, as otherwise he might have done in peace and quiet. He sat there
+in such a steam and fury that it was truly pitiable. He went out once to
+get a breath of air, and they turned the lights out before he could get
+back, so that he stumbled over people, and one man kicked him. With that
+Jimmie stepped on the German's other foot, and they swore at each other
+in two languages and got hissed by the people around them. When he
+finally got back to us, we found it expedient not to make any remarks at
+all, and I was glad it was too dark for him to see our faces.
+
+Yet, in spite of Jimmie and the heat and the ache in our backs and the
+hard unyielding bench, that afternoon at "Parsifal" is one of the
+experiences of a lifetime.
+
+People tell us now that we were there on an "Off day." By that they mean
+that no singers with great names took part. How like Americans to think
+of that! Germans go to the opera for the music. Americans go to hear and
+see the operatic stars.
+
+Happily unvexed by my ignorance, I heard a perfect "Parsifal" without
+knowing that, from an American point of view, I ought not to have been
+so delighted. The orchestra was conducted by Siegfried Wagner, and
+Madame Wagner sat in full view from even our eyrie.
+
+And then--the opera! Perfection in every detail! I believed then that
+not even the Passion Play could hold my spirit, so in leash with its
+symbolism, its deep devotion, and its enthralling charms.
+
+The day on which I saw "Parsifal" at Bayreuth was a day to be marked
+with a white stone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+THE PASSION PLAY
+
+Jimmie came into the sitting-room this morning (for, by travelling with
+the Jimmies, Bee and I can be very grand, and share the luxury of a
+third room with them), but I suspected him from the moment I saw his
+face. It was too innocent to be natural.
+
+"What you got, Jimmie?" I said. Jimmie's manner of life invites
+abbreviated conversation.
+
+"Only the letter from the Burgomeister of Oberammergau, assigning our
+lodgings," he replied, carelessly. He yawned and put the letter in his
+pocket.
+
+"Oh, Jimmie!" we all cried out. "Have they--"
+
+"Have they what?" asked Jimmie, opening his eyes.
+
+"Don't be an idiot," I said, savagely. "You know I have hardly been able
+to sleep, wondering if we'd have to go to ordinary lodgings or if they
+would assign us to some of the leading actors in the play. Tell us! Let
+me see the letter!"
+
+"Now wait a minute," said Jimmie, and then I knew that he was going to
+be exasperating.
+
+"Don't you let him fool you," said Bee, who always doubts everybody's
+good intentions and discounts their bad ones, which worthy plan of life
+permits her to count up at the end of the year only half as many mental
+bruises as I, let me pause to remark. "You know that not one in ten
+thousand has influence enough to obtain lodgings with the chief actors,
+and who are _we_, I should like to know, except in our own estimation?"
+
+"Well," said Jimmie, meekly, "in the estimation of the Burgomeister of
+Oberammergau, my wife is an American princess, travelling incognito as
+plain Mrs. Jimmie, to avoid being mobbed by entertainers. He promises in
+solemn German, which I had Franz translate, not to betray her disguise."
+
+"That makes a prince of _you_, Jimmie," I said, sternly. "A pretty
+looking prince _you_ are."
+
+"Not at all," said Jimmie modestly. "I felt that I could not do the
+princely act very long either as to looks or fees, so I said that the
+princess had made a morganatic marriage, and that I was it."
+
+"Jimmie!" said his wife, blushing scarlet. "How _could_ you? Why, a
+morganatic marriage isn't respectable. It's left-handed."
+
+"My love! You are thinking of a broomstick marriage. Trust me. We are
+still legally married, and if I should try to sneak out of my
+obligations to you by this performance, I should still be liable in the
+eyes of the law for your debts. Let that console you."
+
+"But--" said Mrs. Jimmie, still blushing, "by this plan they won't let
+us be together, will they?"
+
+"They wouldn't anyway, as I discovered from their first letter. We are
+all to be lodged separately, and from the tone of that first letter, in
+which they addressed me as their prince, I hit on the morganatic
+marriage as more economical in letting him down easy, without telling
+him I had lied or having to pay for my lie," said Jimmie, with timid
+appeal in his innocent blue eyes.
+
+"But where do I come in, Jimmie?" I said, impatiently.
+
+"You come in with Judas Iscariot. Where you belong!" said Jimmie,
+severely.
+
+Bee howled. Mrs. Jimmie looked startled.
+
+"Nonsense!" I said, indignantly. "That is going a little too far. I
+won't be put there. I believe you asked 'em on purpose, just so that you
+could crow over me afterward."
+
+"You are getting slightly mixed," said Jimmie, politely. "If you mention
+crowing, 'tis Peter you ought to have been lodged with."
+
+"What a fool you are, Jimmie!"
+
+Jimmie gave an ecstatic bounce. Whenever he has completely exasperated
+anybody he simply beams with joy.
+
+"Where have they put me, Jimmie?" asked Bee.
+
+"They have thoughtfully assigned you to Thomas,--last name not
+mentioned,--where you can sit down and hold regular doubting conventions
+with each other and both have the time of your lives."
+
+"I don't believe you!"
+
+"Look and see, O doubtful--doubting one, I mean!"
+
+"My word! He is telling the truth!" cried Bee in astonishment.
+
+"I tried to get--" began Jimmie to his wife, but she stopped him.
+
+"Don't, dear," she said, gently. "You know I love your jokes, but don't
+be sacrilegious. Leave His name out of this nonsense. I--I couldn't
+quite bear that."
+
+Jimmie got up and kissed her.
+
+"They have lodged you with the Virgin Mary, sweetheart, and the two most
+lovely Marys in the world will be in the same house together," he said.
+
+Mrs. Jimmie blushed and smoothed Jimmie's riotous hair tenderly.
+
+"And have they separated you and me, dear? Where have they lodged you?"
+
+"I have secured an apartment with Mary Magdalene--in her house, I mean!"
+said Jimmie, straightening up.
+
+Bee and I shrieked. Jimmie edged toward the door.
+
+"Jimmie!" said his wife in horror. "_Please_ don't--"
+
+"Don't what?"
+
+His wife rose from her chair and turned away.
+
+"Don't what?" he repeated.
+
+"I was only going to say," said Mrs. Jimmie, "don't make a joke of
+every--"
+
+"Well, if you don't want me to go there, I'll trade places with the
+scribe and put _her_ with the lady who is generally represented
+reclining on the ground in a blue dress improving her mind by reading.
+Perhaps you would feel more comfortable if I lodged with Judas?"
+
+"No, indeed! and put _her_ with Mary Magdalene?" said Mrs. Jimmie, whose
+serious turn of mind was as a well-spring in a thirsty land to Jimmie.
+
+"My dear," he said, impressively, with his hand on the door-knob. "Two
+things seem to have escaped your mind. One is that this is only
+play-acting, and the other is that Mary Magdalene, when history let go
+of her, was a reformed character anyway."
+
+The door slammed. We both looked expectantly at Mrs. Jimmie. Her
+apologies for Jimmie's most delicious impertinences are so sincere and
+her sense of humour so absolutely wanting that we love her almost as
+dearly as we love Jimmie.
+
+Mrs. Jimmie, large, placid, fair and beautiful as a Madonna, rose and
+looked doubtfully at us after Jimmie had fled.
+
+"You mustn't mind his--what he said or implied," she said, the colour
+again rising in her creamy cheeks. "Jimmie never realises how things
+will sound, or I think he wouldn't--or I don't know--" She hesitated
+between her desire to clear Jimmie and her absolute truthfulness. She
+changed the conversation by coming over to me and laying her hand
+tenderly on my hair.
+
+"You are _sure_, dear, that you don't mind lodging with Judas Iscariot?"
+
+Bee stuffed her handkerchief into her mouth and politely turned her
+back. I bit my lip. It hurts her feelings to be laughed at.
+
+"Not a bit, Mrs. Jimmie. I shall love it."
+
+"Because I was going to say that if you did, I would gladly exchange
+with you, and you could lodge with Mary."
+
+"Mrs. Jimmie," I said, "you are an angel. That's what you are."
+
+"And now," said Bee, cheerfully, who hates sentiment, "let's pack, for
+we leave at noon."
+
+I don't apologise for Jimmie's ribald conversation, because many people,
+until they have seen the Passion Play, make frivolous remarks, which
+would be impossible after viewing it, except to the totally insensible
+or irreligious.
+
+Jimmie is irreligious, but not insensible. He really had gone to no end
+of trouble to obtain these lodgings for us, and he had insisted so
+tenaciously that we must be lodged with the principals that we were
+obliged to wait for an extra performance, and live in Munich meanwhile.
+
+We all four made the journey from Munich to Oberammergau, which lies in
+so picturesque a spot in the Bavarian Alps, from very different motives.
+Mrs. Jimmie, who is an ardent churchwoman, went in a spirit of deep
+devotion. Bee went because one agent told her that over twelve thousand
+Americans had been booked through their company alone. Bee goes to
+everything that everybody else goes to. Jimmie went in exactly the same
+spirit of boyish, alert curiosity with which, when he is in New York,
+he goes to each new attraction at Weber and Field's.
+
+As we got off the train the little town looked like an exposition,
+except that there were no exhibits. English, German, and French spoken
+constantly, and not infrequently Russian, Spanish, and Italian assailed
+our ears the whole time we were there. Only one thing was
+characteristic. The native peasants looked different. The picturesque
+costume of the Tyrolese men, consisting of velveteen knee breeches, gay
+coloured stockings, embroidered white blouse, and short bolero jacket
+with gold braid or fringe, and the Alpine hat, with a pheasant or eagle
+feather in it, sat jauntily upon most of the young men, whose bold
+glances and sinewy movements suggested their alert, out-of-door life in
+their mountain homes. But the Oberammergau peasants walked with a slower
+step. Their eyes were meek instead of roving, their smiles tender
+instead of saucy, and they say it is all the influence of the Passion
+Play, which for over three hundred years has dominated their lives. No
+one who commits a crime, or who lives an impure life, can act in the
+great drama, nor can any except natives take part. And as the ambition
+of every man, woman, and child in Oberammergau is to form part of this
+glorious company, the reason for the purity of their aspect is at once
+to be seen. No murder, robbery, or crime of any description has been
+committed in Oberammergau for three hundred years.
+
+The peasants of this little mountain village live their whole lives
+under the shadow of the cross.
+
+Nor was it long before our little party came under this strange
+influence. My own sense of the eternal fitness of things is so highly
+developed that I was under the tense strain of nervous excitement which
+always wrecks me after reading a strong novel or witnessing a tragic
+play. I was afraid to see the Passion Play for two reasons. One that I
+could not bear to see the Saviour of mankind personified, and the other
+that I was afraid that the audience would misbehave. If I am going to
+have my emotions wrenched, I never want any one near me. To my mind the
+mad King Ludwig of Bavaria obtained the highest enjoyment possible from
+having performances of magnificent merit with himself as the sole
+auditor. This world is so mixed anyway, and audiences at any
+entertainment so hopelessly beyond my control. Nothing, for example,
+makes me feel so murderous as for an audience to go mad and stamp and
+kick and howl over a cornet solo with variations, no matter how ribald,
+and beg for more of it. And they always _do_!
+
+The Passion Play, up to a comparatively few years ago, had comic
+characters and scenes, as for instance, there was once a scene in hell
+where the Devil, as chief comedian, ripped open the bowels of Judas and
+took therefrom a string of sausages. This vulgar and hideous buffoonery
+was in the habit of being received with delight by the peasants from
+neighbouring hamlets, which, up to fifty years ago, formed the principal
+part of the Passion Play audiences.
+
+And as tradition, the handing down of legends from father to son, forms
+such a part of the mountaineer's education, I was not surprised to hear
+a party of Tyrolese giggle at moments when the deeper meaning of the
+play was holding the rest of us in a spell so tense that it hurt.
+
+I remember in Modjeska's rendition of Frou-frou, when Frou-frou's lover
+is breaking her heart, and the strain becomes almost unbearable,
+Modjeska's nervous hands tear her valuable lace handkerchief into bits.
+It is a piece of inspired acting to make the discriminating weep, but my
+friend the audience always giggled irresistibly, as if the sound of
+rending lace, when a woman's agony was the most intense, were a bit of
+exquisite comedy.
+
+I am constrained to believe, however, that in almost entirely
+remodelling the Passion Play, the village priest, Daisenberger, was not
+moved by any consideration of what an ignorant audience might do, but
+rather by the noble, Oberammergau spirit of a life of devotion,
+dedicated to the rewriting, rehearsing, and directing of the
+performance.
+
+The history of this man illustrates what I mean by the Oberammergau
+spirit. In 1830 he was a young peasant who saw the possibilities of the
+Passion Play. He went to the head of the Monastery at Ettal, and vowed
+to consecrate his whole life to this work, if they would make him a
+priest and permit him to become the spiritual director of the people of
+the village. But he was obliged to study seven years before they gave
+him the position. He was seventy years old when he died, having so nobly
+fulfilled his vow that he is called "The Shakespeare of the Passion
+Play." For forty-five years he superintended every performance and every
+public rehearsal, and as these rehearsals take place in some form or
+other almost every night during the ten years which intervene between
+one performance and another, something of the depth of his devotion to
+his beloved task may be gathered.
+
+Jimmie marvelled that he could leave his money and his valuables around,
+and his room door unlocked, until they told him that the street door was
+never locked either. At this information Jimmie grew suspicious, and
+locked his bedroom door, much to the affliction of the gentle family of
+Bertha Wolf, who plays Mary Magdalene. He explained to them that there
+were plenty of Italian, French, and English robbers, even if there were
+no Tyrolese. "And are there no American robbers?" they asked, simply, to
+which Jimmie replied with equal guilelessness that Americans in Europe
+had no time to rob other people, they were so busy in being robbed.
+
+"People think we are so very rich, you see," he explained, when they
+gazed at him uncomprehendingly. Then he gave the little brown-eyed boy
+who clings to his mother's skirt in one of the tableaux five pfennigs to
+see him clap his hands twice and bob his yellow head, which is the way
+Tyrolese children express their thanks.
+
+This living in the families of the actors was most interesting, except
+for the autograph fiends, who simply mobbed the Christus, Anton Lang,
+and Josef Maier, the Christus of the last three performances, who now
+takes the part of the speaker of the prologue. Those dear people were so
+obliging that no one was ever refused, consequently thousands of
+tourists must possess autographs of most of the principals. Not one of
+our party asked an autograph of anybody. I hope they are grateful to us.
+I should think they would remember us for that alone.
+
+Mrs. Jimmie was not at all disturbed by the somewhat wooden and
+inadequate acting of Anna Flunger, who plays Mary, and loved, I believe
+almost worshipped, that young peasant girl, who walked bareheaded and
+with downcast eyes through the streets, or who waited upon the guests in
+her father's house with such sweet simplicity. To Mrs. Jimmie, Anna
+Flunger was the real Virgin Mary, so real, indeed, that I believe that
+Mrs. Jimmie could almost have prayed to her.
+
+Even Bee was intensely touched by an act of Peter,--for her lodging was
+changed to the house of Thomas and Peter Rendl after we arrived. The
+father, Thomas Rendl, plays St. Peter, while his son is again John, the
+beloved disciple. He played John in 1890, at the age of seventeen, but
+they say that there is not a line in his beautiful, spiritual face to
+show the flight of time. His large liquid eyes follow the every movement
+of the Master's on the stage, and their expression is so hauntingly
+beautiful that even Bee admitted its influence. Bee said that one
+evening, as they were sitting around the table, resting for a moment
+after supper was finished, the village church bell began to ring for the
+Angelus. In an instant the two men and the two women politely made
+their excuses and rising, stood in the middle of the room facing
+eastward, crossing their hands upon their breasts in silent prayer. Bee
+said it was most beautiful to see how simply they performed this little
+act of devotion.
+
+I wouldn't let Jimmie know of it for the world, but it has been quite a
+trial to me to live in the house with Judas. He plays with such
+tremendous power--he makes it seem so real, so close, so near. Once I
+asked him if he liked the part, and he broke down and wept. He said he
+hated it--that he loathed himself for playing it, and that his one
+ambition was to be allowed to play the Christus for just one time before
+he died, in order to wipe out the disgrace of his part as Judas and to
+cleanse his soul. I cried too, for I knew that his ambition could never
+be realised. I told him that perhaps they would allow him to act the
+part at a rehearsal, if he told them of his ambition, and the thought
+seemed to cheer him. He said he knew the part perfectly, and had often
+rehearsed it in private to comfort his own soul.
+
+Such was his sincerity and grief, such his contrition and remorse after
+a performance, that it would not surprise me some day to know that the
+part had overpowered him, and that he had actually hanged himself.
+
+As to the play itself--I wish I need say nothing about it. My mind, my
+heart, my soul, have all been wrenched and twisted with such emotion as
+is not pleasant to feel nor expedient to speak about. It was too real,
+too heart-rending, too awful. I hate, I abhor myself for feeling things
+so acutely. I wish I were a skeptic, a scoffer, an atheist. I wish I
+could put my mind on the mechanism of the play. I wish I could believe
+that it all took place two thousand years ago. I wish I didn't know that
+this suffering on the stage was all actual. I wish I thought these
+people were really Tyrolese peasants, wood-carvers and potters, and that
+all this agony was only a play. I hate the women who are weeping all
+around me. I hate the men who let the tears run down their cheeks, and
+whose shoulders heave with their sobs. It is so awful to see a man cry.
+
+But no, it is all true. It is taking place now. I am one of the women
+at the foot of the cross. The anguish, the cries, the sobs are all
+actual. They pierce my heart. The cross with its piteous burden is
+outlined against the real sky. The green hill beyond is Calvary. Doves
+flutter in and out, and butterflies dart across the shafts of sunlight.
+The expression of Christ's face is one of anguish, forgiveness, and pity
+unspeakable. Then his head drops forward on his breast. It grows dark.
+The weeping becomes lamentation, and as they approach to thrust the
+spear into His side, from which I have been told the blood and water
+really may be seen to pour forth, I turn faint and sick and close my
+eyes. It has gone too far. I no longer am myself, but a disorganised
+heap of racked nerves and hysterical weeping, and not even the descent
+from the cross, the rising from the dead, nor the triumphant ascension
+can console me nor restore my balance.
+
+The Passion Play but once in a lifetime!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+MUNICH TO THE ACHENSEE
+
+If there were a country where the crowned heads of Europe in ball
+costume sat in a magnificent hall, drinking nothing less than champagne,
+while the court band discoursed bewitching music, and the electric
+lights flashed on myriads of jewels, Bee and Mrs. Jimmie would declare
+that sort of Bohemia to be quite in their line. And because that kind of
+refined stupidity would bore Jimmie and me to the verge of extinction,
+and because we really prefer an open-air concert-garden with beer, where
+the people are likely to be any sort of cattle whom nobody would want to
+know, yet who are interesting to speculate about, I really believe that
+Bee and Mrs. Jimmie think we are a little low.
+
+However, their impossible tastes being happily for us unattainable,
+three hours after our arrival in Munich found Jimmie proudly marching
+three sailor-hat and shirt-waist women into the Lowenbraukeller.
+
+It was about four o'clock in the afternoon when we arrived, and we took
+our seats at a little table in the terraced garden. A rosy-cheeked maid,
+who evidently had violent objections to soap, brought us our beer, and
+then we looked around. There was music, not very good, only a few people
+smoking china pipes and not even drinking beer, a few idly reading the
+paper, and a general air over everybody of Mr. Micawber waiting for
+something to turn up.
+
+Jimmie glanced around anxiously. The length of our stay depended upon
+our ability to please Mrs. Jimmie and Bee, who were easily fatigued by
+the populistic element of society.
+
+"Nothin' doin'," growled Jimmie in my ear. "Wake 'em up, can't you?
+Create a riot. Let's smash our beer-mugs, and shout 'Down with the
+Kaiser!'"
+
+"You'd find you would stay longer than you wanted to if you did that," I
+said. "What do you suppose they are all _waiting_ for?"
+
+Jimmie called the redolent maiden, and in German which made her quiver
+put the question.
+
+"At five o'clock they will open a fresh hogshead of beer--the
+Lowenbrau," she answered him.
+
+"_Fresh_ beer?" cried Jimmie. "How long has this been opened?"
+
+"Since three."
+
+"Great Scott!" whispered Jimmie. "Think of me brought up on a bottle,
+coming to a land where men will sit for an hour to get beer the first
+five minutes it is opened."
+
+"See, they are opening it now," said the maid.
+
+Sure enough, every man in the garden slowly rose and ambled leisurely to
+a horse-trough in the centre of the garden in which lay perhaps a score
+of mugs in running water. Each took a stein or two or three, depending
+on his party, and formed in line in front of the counter across which
+the beer was passed.
+
+"Come, Jimmie," I said. "I'm going to get my own stein."
+
+"Why do they do that?" asked Mrs. Jimmie, after we had got in line.
+
+"It saves the half-cent charged for service," answered the maid.
+
+"Now isn't she funny!" complained Bee of me as I returned beaming with
+content. "She _likes_ to go and do a queer thing like that instead of
+sitting still to be waited on, like a lady."
+
+"Been waited on a million times like a lady," I ventured to respond. "It
+isn't every day one _can_ get a cool mug and see the beer drawn fresh
+and foaming like that. I felt like a Holbein painting."
+
+Bee, as at Baden-Baden, plaintively gave the attendant a double fee to
+show that meanness had not caused my apparently thrifty act. Then for
+the first time in our lives we found what fresh beer really meant.
+
+Even Bee and Mrs. Jimmie admitted that it was worth while coming, and
+let me record in advance that when we got to Vienna, and they served us
+an equally delicious beer in long thin glasses as delicate as an
+eggshell, Bee grew so enthusiastic in the process of beer drinking that
+Jimmie grew absurdly proud of his pupil, and professed to think that she
+was "coming round after all." But Bee declared that it was the thinness
+of the glasses which attracted her, and insisted that beer out of a
+German stein was like trying to drink over a stone wall.
+
+We went many times after that, generally in the evening, when the
+concert was held in a hall which must have contained two thousand
+people, even when all seated at little tables, and where the band would
+have deafened you if the hall had not been so large. Here Jimmie and the
+waitress prevailed upon us to taste the most inhuman dishes with names a
+yard long, which the maid declared we would find to be "wunderschön."
+
+We began in a spirit of adventure, but Jimmie's taste in food is so
+depraved that if he followed the precedent all through his life,
+Lombroso would class him as a degenerate. As it was, he soon had us
+distanced. But we let him eat pickles and cherries and herring and cream
+and tripe and garlic and pig's feet all stewed up together, while we
+listened to the music, and planned what we would bury him in.
+
+The pictures in Munich we loved. I must say that I enjoy the atmosphere
+of the Munich school better than any other. There is a healthiness about
+German realism that one is not afraid nor ashamed to admire. French
+realism is like a suggestive story, expunged of all but the surface fun
+for girls' hearing. You are afraid of the laugh it raises for fear there
+is something beneath it all that you don't understand. But the modern
+Munich galleries were not the task that picture galleries often are.
+They were a sincere delight, and let me pause to say that Munich art was
+one thing that we four were unanimous in praising and enjoying as a
+happy and united family.
+
+It was here that Jimmie proceeded to go mad over Verboeckhoven's sheep
+pictures, and Mrs. Jimmie and Bee over the crown jewels in the Treasury
+of the Alte Residenz. To be sure they _are_ fine. For example, there is
+the famous "Pearl of the Palatinate," which is half black, and a
+glorious blue diamond about twice as fine as the one owned by Lord
+Francis Hope, which his family went to law to prevent his selling not
+long ago, and a superb group of St. George and the dragon, the knight
+being in chased gold, the dragon made entirely of jasper, and the whole
+thing studded thickly with precious stones of every description. But,
+except that these things are historic and kept in royal vaults, they are
+no more wonderful than jewellers' exhibits at the expositions.
+
+But if you want to be thoroughly mixed up on the Nibelungenlied, after
+you think you have got those depraved old parties with their iniquitous
+marriages and loose morals pretty well adjusted by a faithful attendance
+at Walter Damrosch's lectures and Wagner operas, just go through the
+Königsbau, and let one of those automatic conductors in uniform take you
+through the Schnorr Nibelungen Frescoes, and from personal experience I
+will guarantee that, when you have completed the rounds, you won't even
+know who Siegfried is.
+
+There is one thing particularly worth mentioning about Munich, and that
+is that also in Alte Residenz, in the Festsaalbau, which faces on the
+Hofgarten, and is 256 yards, not feet, long, are two small card rooms,
+with what they call a "gallery of beauties."
+
+Now everybody knows how disappointing professional beauties are. Think
+over the names of actresses heralded as "beauties;" of belles, who have
+been said to turn men's heads by the score; of Venuses, and Psyches, and
+Madonnas of the galleries of Europe, and tell me your honest opinion.
+Aren't most of them really--well, _trying,_ to say the least?
+
+Titian's beauties all need an obesity remedy, and Jimmie criticises most
+"beauties" so severely that we have got to searching them out, when we
+are tired and cross, just to vent our spleen upon.
+
+Jimmie's favourite story is the old, old one of the old woman who saw a
+hippopotamus for the first time. She looked at him a moment in silence
+and then said: "My! ain't he plain!"
+
+It is pre-historic, that story, but it has saved our lives many a time
+in Europe. It fits so many cases, and I mention it here just to prove my
+point. Go, then, to the "Gallery of Beauties" in the Palace, and you
+will find thirty-six portraits by Steiler, of thirty-six of the most
+exquisite women conceivable to the mind of man. Some of these are
+women, like the Empress of Austria, who were justly famed for a beauty
+which is not often the gift of royalty. Others are women of whom you
+have never heard, but so lovely that it would be impossible not to
+remember their loveliness for ever and a day.
+
+We all enthusiastically bought photographs of the painting of the
+Empress Elizabeth at the age of eighteen, which to my mind is one of the
+most exquisite faces ever put upon canvas, and then, highly elated with
+our presentation of Munich to Mrs. Jimmie and Bee, we gaily wended our
+way southward, following the river Isar for a time, until we reached
+Innsbruck, on our way to the Achensee.
+
+At Innsbruck we halted for a sentimental reason which I am not ashamed
+to divulge, as the ridicule of the public would be sweet approval
+compared to the way Jimmie wore himself to a shadow in the violence of
+his jeers. But the fact is that the King Arthur of Tennyson has always
+been one of my heroes, and in the Franciscan Church or the Hofkirche in
+Innsbruck, there were twenty-eight heroic bronze statues, the finest of
+these being of Arthur, König von England, by the famous Peter Vischer
+of Nuremberg.
+
+So in Innsbruck we paused for a few days, finding it delightful beyond
+our ideas of it, and exquisitely picturesque, situated on both banks of
+a dear little foaming, yellow river, with foot-bridges upon which you
+may stand and watch it rage and churn, and around it on all sides rising
+the mountains of the Bavarian Alps, which are not so near as to crowd
+you. Mountains smother me as a rule.
+
+Jimmie obligingly took us at once to the Hofkirche, to get to which we
+passed under the Triumphal Gate, erected by the citizens on the occasion
+of the entry of the Emperor Francis I. and the Empress Maria Theresa, to
+commemorate the marriage of Prince Leopold, who afterward became the
+Emperor Leopold II., with the Infanta Maria Ludovica. This magnificent
+arch is of granite and will last thousands of years. It reminded me of
+the Dewey Arch in New York--it was so different.
+
+The Emperor Maximilian I. directed in his will that the Hofkirche should
+be built, and in the centre of the nave he is represented kneeling by a
+sumptuous bronze statue, surrounded by the statues I had come to see.
+Jimmie declared that the marble sarcophagus upon which the statue of
+Maximilian is placed was "worth the price of admission," but Jimmie's
+opinion is of no value except when he is accidentally right, as in this
+instance. He studied this and the monument of Andreas Hofer, whose
+remains are buried here, under a magnificent sarcophagus of Tyrolese
+marble, leaving us to our bronze statues.
+
+I found my King Arthur perfectly satisfactory, much to my surprise, for
+I am always prepared to be disappointed. Some of the statues are
+ridiculous in the extreme, but these monstrosities served the better to
+emphasise the dignity of King Arthur's pose and the nobility of his
+countenance.
+
+Just after you leave the Hofkirche, you find yourself just opposite to
+the "Golden Dachl," which the natives tell you is a roof built of pure
+gold, but which the skeptical declare to be copper gilded. This roof
+covers a handsome Gothic balcony and blazes as splendidly as if it were
+gold, as Bee and Mrs. Jimmie preferred to believe. It is said to have
+cost seventy thousand dollars, and was built by Count Frederick of
+Tyrol, who was called "The Count of the Empty Pockets," to refute his
+nickname.
+
+While we were taking infinite satisfaction in this little history, we
+lost Jimmie. He emerged presently from a handsome shop near by followed
+by a man bearing a large box.
+
+"What have you been buying, Jimmie?" we demanded, suspiciously.
+
+"Only a replica of Maximilian's statue," he answered, blandly.
+
+"You mean a 'copy,' my darling," I corrected him, sweetly.
+
+Now Jimmie loves a fight and so do I, so we immediately offered battle
+to each other, Jimmie insisting on his replica, and I declaring that a
+replica meant that the same artist must have made both the original and
+the second article, which when made by another craftsman became a
+"copy."
+
+Jimmie got red in the face and abusive, while I remained cool and
+exasperating. I was getting even with Jimmie for everything since Paris.
+
+But conceive, if you can, my utter humiliation when, upon arriving at
+the hotel, I discovered that the box contained, not Maximilian, but my
+dear King Arthur, and that Jimmie had bought it for _me!_
+
+I really cried.
+
+"Jimmie," I said in a meek and lowly voice, "you are an angel--a bright,
+beautiful, golden angel, and from now on, I'll call this a
+replica,--when I'm talking to a wayfaring man. And I'll never, never
+fight with you again!"
+
+"Then gimme back that bronze man!" declared Jimmie. "If you give up the
+battlefield I'll start home to-morrow!" Which shows you where I got
+encouragement to be "ungentlemanly," as Jimmie calls me.
+
+Innsbruck is the capital of Tyrol, and the whole country of Tyrol is
+like a picture-book. Its history is so stirring, its country so
+beautiful, its people are so picturesque. There are any number of dainty
+little lakes lying in among its mountains, which are accessible to the
+tourist, and therefore semi-public, by which I mean not as public as the
+Swiss or Italian lakes. But up the Inn River a few miles, and completely
+hidden from the tourist, being out of the way and little known to
+Americans, there lies the most lovely lake of all, the Achensee, and all
+around it the Tyrolese peasants, as they ought to be allowed to remain,
+simple, primitive, natural. We wanted to see them dance. So regardless
+of whether an iron bound itinerary would take us there next, we folded
+away our maps, put our trust in our little yellow coupon ticket book,
+and started for the Achensee. From the moment we began to see less of
+tourists and more of the natives, Jimmie's and my spirits rose. Chiffon
+and patent leather might belong to Bee and Mrs. Jimmie, but here in the
+Austrian Tyrol, Jimmie and I were getting our innings.
+
+We got off the train at Jenbach and left our trunks there. Then on the
+same platform, but behind it, and a few yards beyond the station, there
+is a curious little hunchbacked engine and an open car. Into this car we
+climbed with our handbags, and beheld on the same seat with Mrs. Jimmie
+a beautiful woman in a gown unmistakably from Paris, who looked so
+familiar that we could scarcely keep from staring her out of
+countenance. Finally Bee leaned across and whispered:
+
+"Don't look, but isn't that Madame Carreño?"
+
+Without heeding Bee's polite warning, I turned and pounced upon my idol.
+
+"Madame Carreño!"
+
+"My _dear_ child!"
+
+"What in the world are you doing here?"
+
+"Why I _live_ here! And you? How came _you_ to find your way to this
+inaccessible spot?"
+
+"We are going to the Achensee--to the Hotel Rhiner, to hear Fräulein
+Therese--"
+
+"You have heard of my little friend Therese, and you have come--how many
+thousand miles?--to hear her sing and play on her zither?"
+
+"To do all that, but mostly to see if she will tell me her love story."
+
+"How do you know she had one?" inquired Madame Carreño, quickly.
+
+"I heard of it in England. Some one who knew the duke told me."
+
+"It was a lucky escape for her, and I think she will tell you all about
+it. You see it happened, ah, so many years ago."
+
+To my mind, Madame Carreño is the most wonderful genius of modern times
+at the piano. I have heard all the others scores of times, so don't
+argue with me. You may all worship whom you will, but the whole musical
+part of my heart is at Madame Carreño's feet, with a small corner saved
+for Vladimir de Pachmann, when he plays Chopin. She claims to be an
+American, but she plays with a heart of a Slav, and as one whose untamed
+spirit can never be held in leash even by her music. Her playing is so
+intoxicating that it goes through my veins like wine. The last time I
+heard her play was in an enormous hall in the West, when her audience
+was composed of music lovers of every class and description. Just back
+of me was a woman whose whole soul seemed to respond to Carreño's
+hypnotic genius. Carreño had just finished Liszt's "Rhapsodic Hongroise"
+No. 2, and had followed it up with a mad Tschaikowsky fragment. I was so
+excited I was on the verge of tears when I heard the woman behind me
+catch her breath with a sob and exclaim:
+
+"My Lord! Ain't she got _vinegar_!"
+
+I repeated this to Madame Carreño at Jenbach, and she seized my hands
+and shouted with laughter. Such a grip as she has! Her hands are filled
+with steel wires instead of muscles, and her arms have the strength of
+an athlete in training.
+
+The car propelled by the hunchbacked engine grated and bumped its way
+over its cog-wheel road, pushing its delighted quota of passengers
+higher and higher into the mountains. The Inn valley fell away from our
+view, and wooded slopes, fir-trees, patches of snow on far hillsides,
+and tiny hamlets took its place.
+
+"Here and there among these little villages live my summer pupils," said
+Madame Carreño. "I have six. One from San Francisco, one from Australia,
+one from Paris, one from Geneva, and two from Russia--all young girls,
+and with _such_ talent! They live all the way from Jenbach to the
+Achensee, and come to see me once a week."
+
+The train stopped with a final squeal of the chain, and a lurch which
+loosened our joints.
+
+Before us spread a sheet of water of such a blueness, such a limpid,
+clear, deep sapphire blue as I never saw in water before.
+
+Around it rose the hills of Tyrol, guarding it like sentinels.
+
+It was the Achensee!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+DANCING IN THE AUSTRIAN TYROL
+
+Jimmie is such a curious mixture that it is really very much worth while
+to study his emotions. I think perhaps that even I, who find it so hard
+to discover either man, woman, child, or dog whom I would designate as
+"typically American," am forced to admit that Jimmie's mental make-up is
+perfect as a certain type of the American business man, travelling
+extensively in Europe. The real bread of life to Jimmie is the New York
+Stock Exchange; but being on the verge of a nervous breakdown, he
+brought his fine steel-wire will to bear upon his recreation with as
+much nervous force as he ever expended in a deal in Third Avenue or
+Union Pacific.
+
+Hence he travels nervously yet deliberately, and views Europe from the
+point of view of the American stock market, scoffing at my enthusiasm,
+ironical of Bee's most cherished preferences, patient with his wife's
+serious love of society, and chivalrously tolerant, as only the American
+man can be, of the prejudices of his travelling family.
+
+I notice that he is taking on a certain amount of true culture. He is
+broadening. Jimmie is beginning to let his emotions out; however, very
+gradually, with a firm, nervous hand on the throttle-valve, with the
+sensitive American's fear of ridicule as his steam-gauge.
+
+I watched Jimmie as he first saw the Achensee. The colour came into his
+face, his eyes brightened, and he clenched his hands--a sure sign of
+feeling in Jimmie.
+
+There was a little white steamboat at the pier. The lake spread out
+before us was of the colour which you see when you look down into the
+depths of some fine unmounted sapphire at Tiffany's. The pebbles on the
+beach under the water looked as if they were in a basin of blueing. I
+reached in to take one out, and thoroughly expected to find my hand
+stained when I withdrew it. Around the lake arose little hills of the
+same beauty and verdure as our Berkshires, with the exception that these
+hills possessed a certain purplish, bluish haze with a gray mist over
+them, which gave to their colouring the same softness that a woman
+imparts to her complexion when she wears white chiffon under a black
+lace veil.
+
+I cannot understand what makes the Achensee so blue and the Königsee so
+green. Chemically analysed, the waters are almost identical, and the
+verdure surrounding them is very similar, and yet the Königsee is as
+green as the Achensee is blue.
+
+A little steamer took us around the edge of the lake, where at the first
+landing-place Madame Carreño left us. We could only see the roof of her
+cottage in the grove of trees.
+
+There is a new hotel somewhere along the lake; but we left that, with
+its modern equipments and electric lights, and went where we had been
+directed--to the Hotel Rhiner. Fräulein Therese met us at the landing.
+Alas! she was no longer the beauty of her love story of thirty years
+before. She was ample. Her short hair curled like a boy's, as without a
+hat she stood under a green umbrella, to welcome her guests. She had
+large feet, large hips, a large waist, and large lungs; but as she took
+our hands in the friendliest of greetings, and beamed on us from her
+full-moon face, we felt how delightful it was to get home once more.
+
+The Hotel Rhiner is severely plain,--almost unfurnished,--and its
+appointments are primitive in the extreme. There was no carpet upon the
+floor of our rooms. Two little single beds stood side by side. A single
+candle was supposed to furnish light, and the wash-bowl was about the
+size of your hand. Yet everything was exquisitely clean, and from the
+windows of our corner room stretched away the blue Achensee and the
+mountains of the Tyrol, making a view which made you forget that the
+sheets were damp, and that the chairs were uncushioned.
+
+Physically, I am sure that I was never more uncomfortable than I was at
+the Hotel Rhiner. The bed squeaked; the mattress, I think, was filled
+with corn-shucks, the hard part of which had an ungentle way of
+assailing you when you least expected it. Yet, if now were given to me
+the choice of going back to the Élysée Palace in Paris, or the Hotel
+Rhiner on the Achensee, it would not take me two seconds to start for
+the corn-shucks.
+
+A rosy-cheeked, amply proportioned maid, named Rosa, dressed in the
+picturesque costume of the Tyrolese peasants, installed us in our rooms
+and advised us to row upon the lake and see the sunset before supper.
+
+Tourists from the other hotels were being landed at our pier from tiny
+boats, to have their supper at the Hotel Rhiner, for the cooking is
+famous. Jimmie came and pounded on our door, executing a small war-dance
+in the corridor when we appeared,
+
+"We've struck our gait," he said, ecstatically, to me. "Virtue is its
+own reward. This pays us for Baden-Baden and Paris. What do you think?
+The Rhiner family themselves do the cooking. There are the old mother,
+Fräulein Therese, three sons, two daughters-in-law, and five
+grandchildren who run this house. I have ordered the corner table on
+the veranda for supper--and such a table! And afterward there is going
+to be a dance in the kitchen. Fräulein Therese has promised to play for
+us on her zither, and there is going to be singing. Now, come along and
+let's do the sunset stunt."
+
+Bee and Mrs. Jimmie followed us with gentle apprehension, for they are
+always a little suspicious of anything that Jimmie and I particularly
+like. Under a long, sloping roof we found several dozen little
+row-boats, with the "shipmaster," a peasant whose costume might have
+come out of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. He launched us, however, and
+the boat shot out into the lake, with Jimmie and me at the oars, and
+then we saw a sight that none of us had ever seen before. The air was
+wonderfully calm and still. The only ripple on the lake was that which
+was left by our boat as we rowed out to where there was a break in the
+hills. On the east and west, there the tallest hills fall away from the
+Achensee and make an undulating line on the horizon. As we reached this
+break, we stopped rowing, transfixed by the glory of the scene.
+
+The sun was just setting, a great molten mass of flame, splashing down
+in the crimson clouds, which showed in the aperture between the hills.
+Little thin wraiths of mist or haze curled up from this molten mass into
+the rosy sky above, as if the gods on Olympus were mulling claret for a
+marriage feast. The purple hills curved down on each side in the exact
+shape of an amethyst punch-bowl, and the radiance of colouring fairly
+blinded us. On the other hand, the full moon was rising above the
+eastern hills in a haze of silver, but with a calmness and serene
+majesty which formed a direct antithesis to the sinking sun she faced.
+
+Lower and lower sank the king, going down out of sight finally in a
+blaze of splendour which left the western sky aflame with light. In the
+east higher and higher rose the queen, rising from her silver mists into
+the clear pale blue of the sky, and sending her white lances gliding
+across the blue waters of the Achensee, till their tips touched our
+oars.
+
+We watched it, hushed, breathless, awed. I looked at Jimmie.
+
+"What is it like?" murmured Bee.
+
+And to my surprise, Jimmie answered her from out of the spell this magic
+scene had caused, saying:
+
+"It is like a glimpse of the splendours of the New Jerusalem."
+
+We had supper that night in the open air of the veranda, where Jimmie
+had engaged the table. Hedwig, a waitress, whispered into my ear
+confidentially that we would find the fish delicious, as they were some
+of those the priests had not needed.
+
+The Tyrol, especially in the vicinity of the Achensee, is absolutely
+priest-ridden, every one, from the peasants to the gentry, contributing,
+and the best in the land going into their larders and their coffers.
+
+We were indebted to the overfeeding of these fat priests for a delicacy
+which was then unknown to me--broiled goose liver with onions. It is a
+German dish, but a rarity not to be had in even all first-class hotels
+in Germany and Austria. When you have it, it is announced to the guests
+personally, with something the same air as if the proprietor should say:
+
+"Madame, the Emperor and his suite will dine at this hotel to-night, at
+eight."
+
+Goose liver may not sound tempting to some, but as I saw it that night,
+cooked by the old mother of Fräulein Therese, a luscious white meat
+delicately browned and smothered in onions as we smother a steak, and so
+delicate that it melted in the mouth like an aspic jelly, it was one of
+the most delicious dishes I ever essayed.
+
+As we were eating our dessert, a _gemischtes compote_ so rich that it
+nearly sent us to our eternal rest, Fräulein Therese came and asked us
+to have our coffee in the kitchen. A long, low-ceiled room, three steps
+below the level of the ground, with seats against the wall, and a raised
+platform on each side, with little tables for coffee, adjoined the
+hotel. This room at one time perhaps had been a real kitchen, where
+cooking was done. Now it was turned into a place of recreation. Around
+the walls were seated a variegated, almost motley, array of men and
+women, from the dear old fat mother of Fräulein Therese and the three
+boys, the daughters-in-law, the granddaughters, to a picturesque old
+man, whose coal-black beard fell almost to his waist, our friend the
+"shipmaster," and the band of four musicians, all dressed in the
+Tyrolese costume, with the exception of the women of the Rhiner family.
+
+Some thirty years ago the father Rhiner, now dead and gone, the mother,
+whose voice is still a wonder, Fräulein Therese, and the three boys
+journeyed to London to sing before the Queen at her jubilee. This made
+them famous, and was the beginning of the Fräulein's love story, which
+was told me in London by Lady J., a relative of the duke who so nearly
+wrecked the Fräulein's life.
+
+By telling the Fräulein that I knew Lady J., I induced her to repeat the
+story to me.
+
+"It was in St. Petersburg that I saw him for the second time. He was
+then the Marquis of B., in the suite of the Prince of Wales, when he
+went to pay a visit to the Tzar's court. The marquis loved me, as I
+thought sincerely. I was very young, and I believed him. After he went
+back to London, he arranged for me to sing in grand opera; they tell me
+that it was a lie; that I could not have sung in opera; that he only
+wanted to get me away from my family. They tell me that it was a wise
+thing, directed by God, that I should drop the letter in which he gave
+me directions how to meet him, that my sister-in-law should find it, and
+that my brother should overtake me at the train, and prevent my going. I
+do not know. I only know that I have always loved him. Even after he
+became the Duke of M., and married one of your countrywomen, I still
+loved him. Now he is dead, and I love him still. See, I wear this black
+ribbon always in his memory. Yet they tell me that he lied to me, and
+that it was for the best. Well, we are all in God's hands." And she
+sighed deeply.
+
+She drew her zither toward her, and began to play as I never heard that
+simple little instrument played before. Then one by one they began to
+sing. It was amazing how little of the freshness of their voices has
+been lost during all this time. I never heard such singing. A bass voice
+which would have graced the Tzar's choir, came booming from the old man
+with the black beard, as they yodeled and sang and sang and yodeled
+again, until their little audience went quite wild with delight.
+
+Bee and Mrs. Jimmie were beginning to forgive us. Jimmie dashed over to
+Fräulein Therese, at Bee's request, to ask who the old man was.
+
+"It's the cowherd," he announced, with his evil-minded simplicity, and
+seemed to obtain a huge interior enjoyment from the way Bee pushed her
+chair back out of range, and looked disgusted.
+
+Presently came Rosa, the chambermaid, and Hedwig, the waitress, and a
+dozen young men from the neighbouring hamlet, and began to dance the
+"schuplattle." I have seen this wonderful dance performed on the stage
+and in other Tyrolese villages, but never have I seen it danced with the
+abandonment of those young peasants in that little kitchen on the
+Achensee. They were all beautiful dancers. The young "shipmaster" seized
+our pretty Rosa around the waist, and they began to waltz. Suddenly,
+without a moment's warning, they fell apart, with a yell from the boy
+which curdled the blood in our veins. Rosa continued waltzing alone,
+with her hands on her hips, while her partner did a series of
+cart-wheels around the room, bringing up just in front of her, and
+waltzing with her again without either of them losing a step. Then he
+lifted her hands by the finger tips high above her head, and they
+writhed their bodies in and out under this arch, he occasionally
+stooping to snatch a kiss, and all the time their feet waltzing in
+perfect time to the music. Suddenly, with another yell, he leaped into
+the air, and, with Rosa waltzing demurely in front of him, began the
+fantastic part of the schuplattle, which consists, as Jimmie says, "of
+making tambourines all over yourself, spanking yourself on the arms,
+thighs, legs, and soles of your feet, and the crown of your head, and
+winding up by boxing your partner's ears or kissing her, just as you
+feel inclined."
+
+I never saw anything like it. I never heard anything like it. It was so
+exhilarating it aroused even the cowherd's enthusiasm, so that he came
+and did a turn with Fräulein Therese.
+
+Then more of the peasants joined in the schuplattle, and in a moment the
+kitchen was a mass of flying feet, waving arms, leaping, shouting men
+and laughing girls, the dance growing wilder and wilder, until, with a
+final yell that split the ears of the groundlings, the music stopped,
+and the dancers sank breathless into their seats. The excitement was
+contagious. One after another got up and danced singly, each attempting
+to outdo the other.
+
+The other guests, who had seen this before, by this time had finished
+their coffee and left. Our little party remained. The Fräulein Therese
+came over to our table, saying that the "shipmaster" would like very
+much to dance with me. I don't blush often, but I actually felt my whole
+face blaze at the proposition. I protested that I couldn't, and
+wouldn't; that I should die of fright if he yelled in my ear, and that
+he would split my sleeves out if he tried "London bridge" with me. She
+urged, and Jimmie urged, and Bee and Mrs. Jimmie joined. So finally I
+did, the Fräulein having warned him that I would simply consent to
+waltz, with nothing else. They never reverse, the music was fast and
+furious, and the room was as hot as a desert at midday. After I had gone
+around that room twice with the "shipmaster," he whirled me to my seat,
+and for fully five minutes the room, the musicians, and the tables
+continued the waltz that I had left off. It makes me dizzy to think of
+it even now.
+
+When I got my sight back, I looked apprehensively at Bee, to see if I
+had gone beyond the limit which her own perfectly ladylike manner always
+sets for me; but to my surprise her foot was tapping the floor, and
+there was a gleam in her eyes which told the mischievous Jimmie that the
+music was getting into Bee's blood. Jimmie wrenched my little finger
+under the table and whispered:
+
+"For two cents, Bee would do the skirt dance!"
+
+"Ask her," I whispered back.
+
+He jogged her elbow and said:
+
+"Give 'um the skirt dance, Bee. You could knock 'um all silly with the
+way you dance."
+
+Bee needed no urging. It was quite evident she had made up her mind to
+do it before we asked. She arose with a look of determination in her
+eyes, which would have carried her through a murder. When Bee makes up
+her mind to do a thing, she'll put it through, good or bad, determined
+and remorseless, from giving a dinner to the poor to robbing a grave,
+and nobody can stop her, or laugh her out of it any more than you can
+persuade her to do it, if she doesn't want to. Nobody is responsible for
+Bee's acts but herself. Therefore, I recall that scene with a peculiar
+and exquisite joy which the truly good never feel.
+
+Bee's travelling-skirt was tailor-made, tight at the belt, and of ample
+fulness around the bottom. She had on a shirt-waist, a linen collar, the
+Charvet tie, a black hat with a few gay coloured flowers on it, and a
+lace petticoat from the Rue de la Paix. At the first strains of the
+skirt dance from the delighted band Bee seized her skirts firmly and
+began the dance which is so familiar to us, but which those Tyrolese
+peasants had never seen before. Jimmie says he would rather see Bee do
+the skirt dance than any professional he ever saw on any stage. He says
+that her kicks are such poems that he forgives her everything when he
+thinks of them, but when she danced that night, Jimmie was so tickled
+by the excitement and polite interest she created in her primitive
+audience, that he stretched himself out on the bench in such shrieks of
+laughter that even Bee grinned at him, while I simply passed away. She
+sat down, flushed, breathless, but triumphant.
+
+Instantly she was surrounded by every young fellow in the room,
+imploring her to dance with him, and at once Bee became the belle of the
+ball. And, if you will believe it, when Mrs. Jimmie and I went outside
+to get a breath of air, Bee, the ladylike; Bee, the conservative;
+haughty, intolerant Bee, was dancing with the cowherd!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+SALZBURG
+
+We had our breakfast the next morning on the same piazza where we had
+dined and where the early morning sun gave an entirely new aspect to the
+eternal blueness of the Achensee. Oh, you who have seen only Italian
+lakes, think not that you know blue when you see it, until you have seen
+the Achensee!
+
+"If you would only get back into yourself," said Jimmie, addressing my
+absent spirit, "you might help me decide where we shall go next."
+
+"I can't leave here," I replied. "I cannot tear myself away from this
+spot."
+
+"It _is_ beautiful," murmured Bee, dreamily, but she murmured dreamily
+not so much because of the beauty of the scene as because eating in the
+open air that early in the morning always makes her sleepy.
+
+"'Tis not that," I responded. "'Tis because, while some few modest
+triumphs have come my way, I think I never achieved one which gave me
+such acute physical satisfaction as I underwent last night at my sister
+Bee's success as a _première danseuse_. Shall I ever forget it? Shall
+danger, or sickness, or poverty, or disaster ever blot from my mind that
+scene? Jimmie, never again can she scorn us for our sawdust-ring
+proclivities, for do you know, _I_ shouldn't be surprised to see her end
+her days on the trapeze!"
+
+But if I fondly hoped to make Bee waver in her thorough approval of her
+own acts, this cheerful exchange of badinage, where the exchange was all
+on my part, undeceived me, for Bee simply looked at me without replying,
+so Jimmie uncoiled himself and handed the map to Bee.
+
+"Jimmie has talked nothing but salt mines for a fortnight," said Bee,
+finally, "yet by coming here we have left Salzburg behind us."
+
+"Let's go back then," he said. "It isn't far, and it's all through a
+beautiful country."
+
+For a wonder, we all agreed to this plan without the usual discussion of
+individual tastes which usually follows the most tentative suggestion
+on the part of any one of us who has the temerity to leap into the arena
+to be worried.
+
+The whole Rhiner family, including the chambermaid, the shipmaster, and
+Bee's friend the cowherd, were on the little pier, under some pretext or
+other, to see us off, and not only feeling but knowing that we left real
+friends behind us, we started on our way to Jenbach, down the same
+little cog-wheel road up which we had climbed, and, as Jimmie said:
+"literally getting back to earth again," for the descent was like being
+dropped from the clouds.
+
+The journey from Jenbach to Salzburg was indeed marvellously beautiful,
+but some little time before we arrived Jimmie emerged from his
+guide-book to say, somewhat timidly:
+
+"Are you tired of lakes?"
+
+"Tired of lakes? How could we be when we've only seen one this week?"
+
+"And that the most exquisite spot we have found this summer!"
+
+"Certainly we are not tired of the beautiful things!"
+
+From this avalanche of replies Jimmie gathered an idea of our attitude.
+
+"Thank you!" he said, politely. "I think I understand. Would you consent
+to turn aside to see the Königsee, another small lake which belongs more
+to the natives than to the tourists?"
+
+For reply, we simply rose in concert. Mrs. Jimmie drew on her gloves and
+Bee pulled down her veil.
+
+"When do we get off, Jimmie?"
+
+"In ten minutes," he said with a delighted grin. And in another ten
+minutes we were off, and Salzburg was removed another twenty-four hours
+from us.
+
+But after the Achensee, the Königsee was something of an anticlimax,
+although the natives were perfectly satisfactory, and not an English
+word was spoken outside of our party. But as Jimmie speaks
+German-American, we got what we wanted in the way of a boat, and found
+that the Königsee is quite as green as the Achensee is blue. At least it
+was the day we were there. The tiny Tyrolese lad who went with us as
+guide, told us that it was sometimes as blue as the sky. But the black
+shadows cast upon its waters by the steep cliffs which rise sheerly from
+its sides, give back their darkness to the depths of the lake, and for
+the scene of a picturesque murder it would be perfect. There is a
+magnificent echo around certain parts of the Königsee, and swans sailing
+majestically on the breast of the lake remind one of the Lohengrin
+country.
+
+We rested that night at a dear little inn and the next morning took up
+our interrupted journey to Salzburg.
+
+On the way Jimmie talked salt mines to us until, when we arrived at
+Salzburg, we imagined the whole town must be given up to them. But to
+our surprise, and no less to our delight, we found Salzburg not only one
+of the most picturesque towns we had met with, but interesting and
+highly satisfactory, while the salt mines are not at Salzburg at all,
+but half a day's drive away. Salzburg satisfied the entire emotional
+gamut of our diversified and centrifugal party. It had mountains for
+Jimmie, the rushing, roaring, picturesque little river Salzach for me,
+the Residenz-Schloss, where the Grand Duke of Tuscany lives part of his
+time, for Mrs. Jimmie and Bee, and the glorious views from every
+direction for all of us. Here, also, Bee found her restaurants, with
+bands, situated more delightfully than any we had found before.
+
+Hills bound the town on two sides--thickly wooded, with ravishing shades
+of green, to the side of which a schloss, or convent, or perhaps only a
+terraced restaurant, clings like a swallow's nest. All the bridle-paths,
+walks, and drives around Salzburg lead somewhere. You may be quite
+certain that no matter what road you follow you will find your diligence
+rewarded.
+
+There is one curious restaurant where we went for our first dinner,
+because two rival singing societies were to furnish the programme. It is
+reached by an enormous elevator which takes you up some two hundred
+feet, where there spreads before you a series of terraces, each with
+tables and diners, and above all the band-stand. Here were the singers
+singing quite abominably out of key, but with great vigour and
+earnestness, and always applauded to the echo, but getting quite a
+little overcome by their exhilaration later in the evening. Then there
+is the fortress protecting the town, the Nonnberg, the cloisters in
+whose church are the oldest in Germany, and they won't let you in to see
+them at any price. This of itself is an attraction, for as a rule there
+is no spot so sacred, so old, or so queer in all Europe that you can't
+buy admission to it. But when I found the cloisters of the Convent
+Church closed to the gaping public, I thanked God and took courage. We
+found another spot in Salzburg where they allow only men to enter, but
+as we found plenty of those in Turkey, we paid no particular attention
+to the Franciscan Monastery for barring women, except that we had some
+curiosity to hear the performance which is given daily on the
+pansymphonicon, a queer instrument invented by one of the monks. Jimmie,
+of course, came out fairly bursting with unnecessary pride, and to this
+day pretends that you have lived only half your life if you haven't
+heard the pansymphonicon. We gave him little satisfaction by asking no
+questions and yawning or asking what time it was every time he tried to
+whet our curiosity by vague references and half descriptions of it.
+Jimmie is a frightful liar, and would sacrifice his hope of heaven to
+torture us successfully for half a day. I don't believe one word of all
+he has said or hinted or drawn or sung about that thing, and yet, I
+would give everything I possess, and all Bee's good clothes, and all
+Mrs. Jimmie's jewels, if I could hear and see the pansymphonicon _just
+once_!
+
+One of the most romantic things we did was to take the little railway
+leading to the top of the Gaisberg, where we spent the night at the
+little Hotel Gaisbergspilze, and saw Salzburg lying beneath us,
+twinkling with lights, and making a sight to be remembered for ever.
+Tucked in among the Salzburg Alps you can see seven little lakes, and
+the colouring, the dark shadows, and fleecy belts of clouds make it a
+ravishing view, and full of a tender, poetic melancholy. Mr. and Mrs.
+Jimmie sat very close together, and renewed the days of their courting,
+but poor Bee and I held each other's hands and felt lonely.
+
+The romance of the situation drove me to poetry, and reduced Bee to the
+submission of listening to it--for a short time. Trust me! I know how
+far to trespass on my sister's patience! But when I said, mournfully:
+
+    "Never the time and place
+    And the loved one all together,"
+
+Bee nodded a plaintive acquiescence.
+
+In the morning, we _almost_ saw the sun rise, but not quite. Aigen, the
+chateau of Prince Schwarzenberg, was more cheerful; so was Mozart's
+statue and his _Geburthaus_. _I_ didn't know that Mozart was born in
+Salzburg, but he was. There is something actually furtive about the way
+certain facts have a habit of existing and I not learning of them until
+everybody else has forgotten them.
+
+We decided to make the excursion to the salt mine on Monday, and on the
+Sunday Jimmie arranged for us to visit the Imperial chateau of Helbrun,
+built in the seventeenth century, and promising us several new features
+of amusement and interest not generally to be met with. Our hotel being
+a very smart one, filled with Americans, we naturally had on rather good
+frocks, for it was Sunday, and we were to drive instead of taking the
+train. We had all been to the church in the morning, and felt at liberty
+to escape from the gossip of the piazzas, and to amuse ourselves in this
+decorous way.
+
+Now, Jimmie is thoroughly ashamed of himself, and would give anything if
+I would not tell this, but I have recently suffered an attack of
+pansymphonicon, and this is my revenge.
+
+I noticed something suspicious in Jimmie's childlike innocence and
+elaborate amiability during our drive. If Jimmie is business-like and
+somewhat indifferent, he is behaving himself. If he is officiously
+attentive to our comfort, and his countenance is frank and open, look
+out for him. I hate practical jokes, and on that Sunday I almost hated
+Jimmie.
+
+We drove first into a great yard surrounded by high trees. The horses
+were immediately taken from our carriage, as if our stay was to be a
+long one. Then we made our way through the gates into what appeared to
+be a lovely garden or park with gravelled walks, flowering shrubs, and
+large shade trees. There were any number of pleasure seekers there
+besides ourselves. Father, mother, and six or seven children in one
+party, with the air of cheerfulness and light-heartedness--an air of
+those who have no burdens to carry, and no bills to pay, which
+characterises the Continental middle class on its Sunday outing. It was
+impossible to escape them, for their cheerful interest in our clothes,
+their friendly smiling countenances robbed their attendance of all
+impertinence. Thus, somewhat of their company, although not strictly
+belonging to it, we went to the Steinerne Theatre, hewn in the rock,
+where pastorals and operas were at one time performed under the
+direction of the prince-bishops.
+
+Then, in front of the Mechanical Theatre, there is a flight of great
+stone steps and balustrades of granite upon which, in company with our
+German friends, we hung and climbed and stood, while the most ingenious
+little play was performed by tiny puppets that I ever had the good
+fortune to behold. Over and over again the midgets went through every
+performance of mechanicism with such precision and accuracy that it took
+me back to the first mechanical toy I ever possessed. This little
+mechanical theatre is really a wonder.
+
+I have never been sure how seriously to blame Jimmie for what followed.
+At any rate, he knew something of the trick, and I have a distant
+recollection of the gleam in his eyes when he led his unsuspecting party
+along the gravel walk to the side of a certain granite building, whose
+function I have forgotten. I remember standing there and looking up the
+stone steps at our German friends, when suddenly out from behind the
+stones of this building, from the cornice, from above and from beneath,
+shot jets of water, drenching me and all others who were back of me, and
+sending us forward in a mad rush to gain the top of those stone steps,
+and so to safety. A stout German frau, weighing something between three
+and four hundred pounds, trod on the train of my gown, and the gathers
+gave way at the belt with that horrid ripping noise which every woman
+has heard at some time of her life. It generally means a man. It makes
+no difference, however; man or woman, the result is the same. As I could
+not shake her off, and we were both bound for the same place, she
+continued walking up my back, and in this manner we gained the top of
+the steps and the gravelled walk, only to find that thin streams of
+water from subterranean fountains were shooting up through the gravel,
+making it useless to try to escape. It was all over in a minute, but in
+the meantime we were drenched within and without and in such a fury that
+I for one am not recovered from it. It seems that this is one of the
+practical jokes of which the German mind is capable. Practical jokes
+seem to me worse than, and on the order of, calamities. Unfortunately
+Mrs. Jimmie was the wettest of any of us. She had on better clothes than
+Bee or I, and she refused to run, and she got soaking wet. I really pity
+Jimmie as I look back on it.
+
+The visit to the salt mine we had planned for the next day. It was
+necessarily put off. Two of us were not on speaking terms with
+Jimmie,--Bee and I,--while Mrs. Jimmie, from driving back to the hotel
+in her wet clothes, had a slight attack of her strange trouble, croup.
+Poor dear Mrs. Jimmie! However, Jimmie's repentance was so deep and
+sincere, he was so thoroughly scared by the extent of the calamity, so
+deeply sorry for our ruined clothes, apart from his anxiety over his
+wife, that we finally forgave him and took him into our favour again, to
+escape his remorseful attentions to us. So one day late, but on a better
+day, we took a fine large carriage, having previously tested the
+springs, and started for the salt mines. A description of that drive is
+almost impossible. To be sure, it was hot, dusty, and long. Before we
+got to the first wayside inn we were ravenous, and Jimmie's thirst could
+be indicated only by capital letters. But winding in and out among
+farmhouses with flower gardens of hollyhocks, poppies, and roses;
+passing now a wayside shrine with the crucifixion exploited in heroic
+size; houses and barns and stables all under one roof; and now curiously
+painted doors peculiar to Bavarian houses; the country inns with their
+wooden benches and deal tables spread under the shade of the trees;
+parties of pedestrians, members of Alpine clubs, taking their vacations
+by tramping through this wonderful district; the sloping hills over and
+around which the road winds; the blues and greens and shadows of the
+more distant mountains, all combine to make this road from Salzburg to
+the salt mines one of the most interesting to be found in all Germany.
+
+Never did small cheese sandwiches and little German sausages taste so
+delicious as at our first stop on our way to the salt mines. Jimmie said
+never was anything to drink so long in coming. Near us sat eight members
+of a _Mannerchor_, whose first act was to unsling a long curved horn
+capable of holding a gallon. This was filled with beer, and formed a
+loving-cup. Afterward, at the request of the landlord, and evidently to
+their great gratification, these men regaled us with songs, all sung
+with exceeding great earnestness, little regard to tune, and great
+carelessness as to pitch; but, if one may judge from their smiling and
+streaming countenances, the music had proved perfectly satisfactory to
+the singers themselves. Another drive, and soon we were at the mouth of
+the salt mine. We had learned previously that the better way would be to
+go as a private party and pay a small fee, as otherwise we would find
+ourselves in as great a crowd as on a free day at a museum. If I
+remember rightly, four o'clock marks the free hour. It had commenced to
+rain a little,--a fine, thin mountain shower,--but the carriage was
+closed up, the horses led away to be rested, and we three women pushed
+our way through the crowd of summer tourists waiting for the free hour
+to strike in the courtyard, and found ourselves in a room in which women
+were being arrayed in the salt mine costume. This costume is so absurd
+that it requires a specific description.
+
+Two or three motherly-looking German attendants gave us instructions.
+Our costumes consisted of white duck trousers, clean, but still damp
+from recent washing, a thick leather apron, a short duck blouse,
+something like those worn by bakers, and a cap. The trousers, being all
+the same size and same length, came to Bee's ankles, were knickerbockers
+for me and tights for Mrs. Jimmie.
+
+European travel hardens one to many of the hitherto essential delicacies
+of refinement, which, however, the American instantly resumes upon
+landing upon the New York pier; it being, I think, simply the instinct
+of "when in Rome do as the Romans do," which compels us to pretend that
+we do not object to things which, nevertheless, are never-ending shocks.
+I have seldom undergone anything more difficult than the walk in broad
+daylight, across that courtyard to the mouth of the salt mine. We were
+borne up by the fact that perhaps one hundred other women were similarly
+attired, and that both men and women looked upon it as a huge joke and
+nothing more. One rather incomprehensible thing struck us as we left the
+attiring-room. This was the use of the leather apron. The attendant
+switched it around in the back and tied it firmly in place, and when we
+demanded to know the reason, she said, in German, "It is for the swift
+descent."
+
+Jimmie was similarly arrayed when he met us at the door, but he seemed
+to know no more about it than we did. At the mouth of the salt mine we
+were met by our conductor, who took us along a dark passage, where all
+the lights furnished were those from the covered candles fastened to
+our belts, something on the order of the miner's lamp.
+
+Further and further into the blackness we went, our shoes grinding into
+the coarse salt mixed with dirt, and the dampness smelling like the
+spray from the sea. Presently we came to the mouth of something that
+evidently led down somewhere. Blindly following our guide who sat
+astride of a pole, Jimmie planted himself beside him, astride of the
+guide's back; Mrs. Jimmie, after having absolutely refused, was finally
+persuaded to place herself behind Jimmie, then came Bee, and last of all
+myself.
+
+Our German is not fluent, nevertheless we asked many questions of the
+guide, whose only instructions were to hold on tight. He then asked us
+if we were ready.
+
+"Ready for what?" we said.
+
+"For the swift descent," he answered.
+
+"The descent into what?" said Jimmie.
+
+But at that, and as if disdaining our ignorance, we suddenly began to
+shoot downward with fearful rapidity on nothing at all. All at once the
+high polish on the leather aprons was explained to me. We were not on
+any toboggan; we formed one ourselves.
+
+When we arrived they said we had descended three hundred feet. But we
+women had done nothing but emit piercing shrieks the entire way, and it
+might have been three hundred feet or three hundred miles, for all we
+knew. After our fierce refusal to start and our horrible screams during
+the descent, Jimmie's disgust was something unspeakable when we
+instantly said we wished we could do it again. Our guide, however, being
+matter of fact, and utterly without imagination, was as indifferent to
+our appreciation as he had been to our screams.
+
+He unmoored a boat, and we were rowed across a subterranean lake which
+was nothing more or less than liquid salt. We were in an enormous
+cavern, lighted only by candles here and there on the banks of the lake.
+The walls glittered fitfully with the crystals of salt, and there was
+not a sound except the dipping of the oars into the dark water.
+
+Arriving at the other side, we continued to go down corridor after
+corridor, sometimes descending, sometimes mounting flights of steps,
+always seeing nothing but salt--salt--salt.
+
+In one place, artificially lighted, there are exhibited all the curious
+formations of salt, with their beautiful crystals and varied colours. It
+takes about an hour to explore the mine, and then comes what to us was
+the pleasantest part of all. There is a tiny narrow gauge road, possibly
+not over eighteen inches broad, upon which are eight-seated, little open
+cars. It seems that, in spite of sometimes descending, we had, after
+all, been ascending most of the time, for these cars descend of their
+own momentum from the highest point of the salt mine to its mouth. The
+roar of that little car, the occasional parties of pedestrians we
+passed, crowded into cavities in the salty walls (for the free hour had
+struck), who shouted to us a friendly good luck, the salt wind whistling
+past our ears and blowing out our lanterns, made of that final ride one
+of the most exhilarating that we ever took.
+
+But, of course, from now on in describing rides we must always except
+"the swift descent."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+ISCHL
+
+We were wondering where we should go next with the delicious idle wonder
+of those who drop off the train at a moment's notice if a fellow
+passenger vouchsafes an alluring description of a certain village, or if
+the approach from the car window attracts. Only those who have bound
+themselves down on a European tour to an itinerary can understand the
+freedom and delight of idle wanderings such as ours. We never feel
+compelled to go on even one mile from where we thought for a moment we
+should like to stop.
+
+It was Jimmie who made this plan possible, without the friction and
+unnecessary expense which we should have incurred had we followed this
+plan, and bought tickets from one city to another, but in fussing around
+information bureaux and railway stations, Jimmie unearthed the
+information that one can buy circular tickets of a certain route,
+embodying from one to three months in time, and including all the spice
+for a picturesque trip of Germany and Austria, where one would naturally
+like to travel. By purchasing these little books with the tickets in the
+form of coupons at the railway station we saved the additional fee which
+the tourist agent usually exacts, and this frugal act so filled us with
+joy that our trip proved unusually expensive, for at every stop we
+indulged in a small extravagance which we felt that we could well afford
+on account of this accidental saving at the start. We have been so amply
+repaid at every pause on our journey that it has become a matter of
+pride with Jimmie and me to have no falling off from the standard we had
+set. Therefore Jimmie came and sat down by me one morning and said:
+
+"Ever hear of Ischl?"
+
+"No," I said, "what is it? But I warn you beforehand that I sha'n't
+touch it if it's a mixture of sarsaparilla and ginger ale, or lime juice
+and red ink, or anything like that thing you--"
+
+"It isn't a drink," said Jimmie, in disgust. "It's a town! If people
+who read your stuff realised how little you know--"
+
+"I am perfectly satisfied," I said, looking at him firmly, "that it
+isn't twenty minutes since you found what Ischl is yourself. You never
+learned a thing in your life that you didn't bring it to me as though
+you had known it for ever, whereas your information is always so fresh
+that it's still bubbling, and if Kissingen is a town as well as a drink,
+why shouldn't Ischl be a drink as well as a town?"
+
+My triumphant manner was a little annoying that early in the morning,
+but as Jimmie really had something to say, my gauntlet lay where I cast
+it, unnoticed by the adversary.
+
+"Now Ischl," said Jimmie, "is where the Austrian Emperor has his summer
+residence. It is tucked up in the hills with drives which you would call
+'heavenly.' People from all over Austria gather there during the season.
+There will be royalty for my wife; German officers for Bee; heaps of
+people for you to stare at, and as for me, I don't need any attraction.
+I can be perfectly happy where there is no strife and where I can enjoy
+the delight of a small but interesting family party."
+
+I smiled at this statement, for when Jimmie is not carefully stirring me
+up for argument or battle, I always feel his pulse to see if he is ill.
+
+"It will probably please Bee and Mrs. Jimmie," I said, doubtfully, "and
+they have been _so_ good to us at the Achensee and Salzburg, perhaps--"
+
+"That's just what I was thinking," said Jimmie. "You're a good old sort.
+You're as square as a man."
+
+At this, I positively gurgled with delight, for it is not once in a
+million--no, not once in ten million years that Jimmie says anything
+decent about me to my face. I sometimes hear rumours of approving
+remarks that he makes behind my back, but I never have been able to run
+any of them to earth.
+
+"If Ischl is a royal country-seat," said Jimmie, "I'll bet you a '_blaue
+cravatte_' for yourself against a '_blaue cravatte_' for myself--both to
+come from Charvet's--that Bee will know all about it."
+
+"You can't bet with me on that because I know I'd lose. I'll bet that
+they both know all about it. Let's ask them."
+
+"Ever hear of Ischl, Bee?" said Jimmie, as Bee appeared as smartly got
+up as if she were in New Bond Street.
+
+"Did I ever hear of Ischl?" repeated Bee, in surprise. "Why, certainly.
+Ischl is where Emperor Franz Josef has his summer home. He is there now
+with his entire suite, and next Wednesday is his birthday."
+
+"Say 'geburt-day,' Bee," I pleaded. Nobody paid any attention. Jimmie
+looked meekly at Bee.
+
+"Have you decided on a hotel there?" he asked, ironically. But Bee
+flinched not.
+
+"There are two good ones--the 'Kaiserin Elisabeth' and the 'Goldenes
+Kreuz.' It will probably be very crowded, for they always celebrate the
+Emperor's birthday."
+
+Jimmie and I looked at each other helplessly. She knew all about Ischl,
+and had intended to steer the whole four of us there, while Jimmie and I
+had just heard of it, and were planning to give her a nice little
+surprise!
+
+Jimmie said nothing, but took his hat and went out to telegraph for
+rooms.
+
+"I'm glad I didn't bet with you, Jimmie," I whispered as he passed me.
+
+It is the merest suspicion of a journey from Salzburg to Ischl, but it
+consumes several hours, because every inch of the country on both sides
+of the car is worth looking at. The little train creeps along now at the
+foot of a mountain, now at the edge of a lake, and it is such a vision
+of loveliness that even those unfeeling persons who "don't care for
+scenery" would be roused from their lethargy by the gentle seductiveness
+of its beauty. Ischl appears when you are least looking for it, tucked
+in the hollow of a mountain's arm as lovingly as ever a baby was
+cradled.
+
+Our rooms at the Goldenes Kreuz had a wide balcony where our breakfasts
+were served, and commanded not only a view of the mountains and valleys,
+and a rushing stream, but afforded us our only meal where we could get
+plenty of air.
+
+Our first experience in the general dining-room was a revelation of many
+things. The room was air-tight. Not a window or door was permitted to
+be opened the smallest crack. The men smoked all through dinner, and
+quite a number of women smoked from one to a dozen cigarettes held in
+all manner of curious cigarette-holders, some of which were only a
+handle with a ring for the cigarette, something like our opera-glass
+handles, while others were the more familiar mouthpieces. But all were
+jewelled and handsome, and the women who used them were all elderly. Two
+women smoked strong black cigars, but as the smokers were very smart and
+went in court society, Bee's eyes only grew round and big, and she
+ventured no word of criticism.
+
+But all this smoke and lack of ventilation made the air very thick and
+hot and unbreathable for us, so that we complained to the proprietor,
+who sympathised with us so deeply that he nearly wept, but he assured us
+that Austrians were even worse than the French in their fear of a
+draught, and he declared that while he would very willingly open all the
+windows, and as far as he was concerned, he himself revelled in fresh
+air,--nevertheless, if he should follow our advice, his hotel would be
+emptied the next day of all but our one American party.
+
+In vain we reminded him that it was August. Not a window nor a door was
+opened in that dining-room while we were there.
+
+But we got along very well, for we are not too strenuous in our
+demands,--especially when we realise that we cannot get them acceded
+to,--so in lieu of air we breathed smoke, and in watching the people we
+soon forgot all about it. Air is not essential after all when royalty is
+present.
+
+If not royalty, at least the next thing to it. The gorgeous and glorious
+officers of his Majesty's suite, handsome, distinguished, young, and
+ever near the throne! Bee's eyes were glued to their table. We were
+afraid the poor dear would never pull through. She scarcely ate any
+dinner.
+
+"Bee," I whispered, pulling her dress under the table, "you really must
+not pay them such marked attention. Remember your husband and baby--far
+away, to be sure, but still _there_!"
+
+"What difference does it make, I should like to know," was Bee's
+callous reply. "They can't speak English."
+
+Now of all the irrelevant retorts!
+
+Bee had so evidently capitulated to the whole lot that I stole a few
+furtive glances myself, and while I was rewarded by some brief interest
+from their table, and I felt sure that they were talking about us, it
+seemed to me that the interest of _The One_, the tallest, handsomest,
+and the one most suited for a pedestal in Central Park, was overlooking
+both Bee's and my undeniable attractions, and was concentrating all his
+fiery, hawk-like glances upon Mrs. Jimmie, whose total unconsciousness
+of her great beauty is one of her supreme charms. She wore a black lace
+gown that night with sleeves which came not quite to her elbow; no
+bracelets to mar those perfect arms, but her hands fairly loaded with
+rings. She never looks at any other man except Jimmie, and Jimmie thinks
+that the earth exists simply for her. Poor Jimmie never can express his
+emotion in proper words, but I have seen his eyes fill with tears of
+love and pride as he whispered to me, "Isn't she ripping to-night?"
+
+She certainly was "ripping" that first night at Ischl--far more ripping
+than any titled dame there, upon whose mature ugliness all her calm
+attention was bestowed, while I was on the verge of collapse when I saw
+that Bee's love was like to go unrequited, while Mrs. Jimmie's rings and
+beauty--I name her attractions in their proper order as far as I was
+able to gather from the enamoured officer's glances--snatched the prize.
+
+The situation as it bade fair to develop was far, far too sacred to
+permit of ribald speech, so with the greatest difficulty I held my
+tongue. For my only natural confidant, Jimmie, was plainly disqualified
+in this case.
+
+The next morning Jimmie wanted us to drive, but I, hoping to give
+matters an onward fillip, spoke so warmly in favour of a morning stroll
+in the promenade "to see people" that he gave in, and Bee's attentions
+to me while garbing ourselves were so marked that I almost hoped I had
+been wrong the night before.
+
+But alas for our ignorance of officers' duties! Not one of those in his
+Majesty's suite was visible, although all the old ladies were out in
+force, and some very pretty Austrian girls appeared, smartly gowned, and
+most of them carrying slender little gold or silver mounted sticks.
+Those sticks caught Bee's eye at once, and she bought one before the
+hour was over, much to Jimmie's disgust.
+
+But his expostulations produced no effect. It seemed queer to me--her
+sister--that he should waste his breath. But Jimmie was obliged to
+relieve his mind by saying that it looked too pronounced.
+
+"It's all right for an Austrian," said Jimmie, wagging his head. "But
+everybody knows you are an American, and it doesn't look right."
+
+"Doesn't it go with my costume, Jimmie?" demanded Bee. "Look me over!
+Doesn't it match?"
+
+Alas for Jimmie! It _did_ match. Bee's carrying it simply looked saucy,
+not loud. I couldn't have carried it--I should have tripped over it, and
+fallen down. Mrs. Jimmie would have dropped or broken it. Bee and that
+stick simply fitted each other--there in Ischl! Nowhere else.
+
+At luncheon, just as we were going out, the four officers came in. We
+passed them in the doorway. Bee looked desperate. They lined up to allow
+us to pass, and for a moment I thought Bee was going to snatch one, and
+make her escape. But she compromised, on seeing them seat themselves at
+the table we had just left, by sending Jimmie back to look for her
+handkerchief.
+
+"If that doesn't fetch an acquaintance," Bee's look seemed to say, "with
+Jimmie burrowing around on the floor among their boots and spurs, I
+shall have but a poor opinion of Austrian ingenuity."
+
+Jimmie was gone half an hour. When he came back, his face was too
+innocent. He seated himself quietly, and after saying, "It wasn't there,
+Bee," he went on smoking placidly.
+
+Now, any one who knows anything about anything, cannot fail to admit
+that my sister ought either to be at the head of Tammany Hall or the
+army. She gave one look at Jimmie's suspiciously bland countenance, then
+gathered up her gloves, her veil and stick, and went slowly up-stairs,
+apparently in a brown study.
+
+Jimmie is clever, but he is no match for a clever woman. No man _is_,
+for that matter.
+
+The moment she was out of sight, he began to chuckle.
+
+"Great Scott," he whispered, bringing our three heads together by a
+gesture. "If Bee knew that all those officers we just passed went right
+in, and sat down at the very table we left, so that when she sent me for
+her handkerchief I had to run bang into them, I wonder if she would have
+gone up-stairs so calmly!"
+
+"Why didn't you tell her?" I cried.
+
+"I was going to--after I had got her curiosity up a little. They were
+very polite, and nothing would do but I must sit down, and have a glass
+of beer with them. I didn't want that, so I took a cigar, and they all
+nearly fell over themselves to offer me one--from the most beautiful
+cigar cases you ever saw. That tall chap with the eyes had one of gold,
+with the Tzar's face done in enamel, surmounted by the imperial crown in
+diamonds, and an inscription on the inside showing that the Tzar gave
+it to him. I took one out of that case for Bee's sake. I'll save her the
+stub!"
+
+"Did they ask any questions about us?" I said, guilelessly.
+
+"Yes, heaps. And when I told them how devoted my wife was to the Empress
+Elizabeth they offered to make up a party to show us two of the shrines
+she built near here, and invited us to dine afterward. So I made it for
+this afternoon at three. Don't tell Bee. Let's surprise her. Her eyes
+will pop clear out of her head when she sees them."
+
+Within ten minutes I had told Bee everything I knew, and had even
+enlarged upon it a little, and Bee, in a holy delight, was preparing to
+robe herself in costly array. She solemnly promised me to be surprised
+when she saw them.
+
+Only two of them could leave--The One, whose name shall be Count Andreae
+von Engel, and the other, Baron Oscar von Furzmann. They had a
+four-seated carriage for us, while they accompanied us on horseback.
+
+That drive was one of the most romantic episodes which ever came into
+my prosaic life. To be sure I was not in the romance at all,--neither
+one of those bottle-green knights had an eye for _me_--but I was there,
+and I saw and heard and enjoyed it more than anybody.
+
+Bee, with the craft of a fox, offered to sit riding backward with
+Jimmie, knowing that she must thus perforce be face to face with the
+horsemen. But in this she was outwitted by a mere man, but a man skilled
+in intrigue and court diplomacy. Although the road was narrow and
+dangerous, twisting over mountains and beside rushing streams, The One,
+in order to feast his eyes on Mrs. Jimmie, permitted his horse to curvet
+and caracole as if he were in tourney. Jimmie, while the count was doing
+it, managed to whisper to me: "Tom Sawyer showing off," but _I_ knew
+that it was for a second purpose which counted for even more than the
+first.
+
+I must admit that this Austrian diplomat was very skilful, and managed
+it in a way to throw the unsuspicious wholly off his guard, for, in
+order not to make his manoeuvres too marked, he often rode ahead of the
+carriage, when, by turning in his saddle, he could look back and fling
+his ardent glances in our direction. They not only overshot me, but
+glanced as harmlessly off Mrs. Jimmie's arrow-proof armour of complete
+unconsciousness as if they had hurtled aimlessly over her handsome head.
+
+I was in ecstasies, for Bee's wholesome admiration of her stunning
+officer and his undeniably unusual horsemanship prevented her from being
+rendered in any way uncomfortable by his action, for truth to tell, Bee
+_was_ a target for the roving glances of Baron von Furzmann, but he was
+so hopelessly the wrong man that she not only was unaware of it then but
+vehemently disclaimed it when I enlightened her later. Alas and alack!
+The wrong man is always the wrong man, and never can take the place of
+the right man, no matter what his country or speech.
+
+It was supremely interesting to talk with men who had known the
+beautiful Empress well; to whom her living beauty was as familiar as her
+pictured loveliness was to us. We plied them with countless questions as
+to her wonderful horsemanship, her daily appearance, her dress, her
+conversation, and her learning. Their enthusiastic praise of her was
+genuine and spontaneous.
+
+I was dying to ask minute questions about the Crown Prince's affair, but
+just enough sense was left in my make-up to know that I must not. They
+might whisper their gossip to each other who knew all of the truth
+anyway, but to strangers their loyalty would compel them to suppress not
+only what they themselves knew but what we knew to be the truth. Both of
+these officers had known Prince Rudie well; had hunted with him;
+travelled with him; served with him; had often been at his hunting-lodge
+Mayerling, where he died, but, when they came to refer to this part of
+their narrative, they were so visibly embarrassed that we changed the
+subject to the Princess Stephanie. Here, although they were studiously
+careful to put nothing into actual words, their manner plainly indicated
+their contempt and dislike of the heavy Belgian Princess, who was so
+poor a helpmeet for the graceful and picturesque figure of the Crown
+Prince of Austria.
+
+"Did you know the lady in her Majesty's suite who wrote 'The Martyrdom
+of an Empress?'" I demanded, boldly.
+
+Von Engel's face flushed darkly.
+
+"I do not know. I am not certain," he stammered.
+
+"Never mind. Don't commit yourself. She was exiled, wasn't she, for
+arranging meetings between Prince Rudolph and his _belle amie?_ She was
+a dear thing, whoever she was, for she gave him what was probably the
+only real happiness he ever knew. And when people love each other well
+enough to die together, it means more than most men and women can
+boast."
+
+Jimmie trod on my foot just here, so I stopped, but, to his and my
+surprise, Mrs. Jimmie not only agreed with me, but added:
+
+"What a misfortune it is that princes and kings and queens must marry
+for state reasons, so that love can play no part."
+
+I don't know whether Von Engel had not then put two and two together, so
+that he knew that Mrs. Jimmie had her own husband in mind when she made
+that speech about love or not. I think not, for I happened to be looking
+at him, and for a moment I thought he was going to spring from his
+horse right into her lap.
+
+To me the two loveliest women rulers of the world, the ones whose
+histories I most grieve over, and with whose temperaments I am most in
+sympathy, are the Empress Eugenie of the French and the Empress
+Elizabeth of Austria. The Empress Elizabeth was of such a high-strung,
+nervous, proud temperament that had there not been madness in her
+unfortunate family, all her apparently unbalanced acts could be
+accounted for by her imperious and imperial nature, and the stigma of a
+mind even partially unbalanced need never have been hers. Many a wife in
+the common walks of life has been driven to more insane acts in the eyes
+of an unfeeling and critical world than ever the unhappy Empress
+Elizabeth committed, and for the same causes. An inhumanly tyrannical
+mother-in-law, the most vicious of her vicious kind, whose chief delight
+was to torture the high-strung nature she was too small to comprehend; a
+husband, encouraged in his not-to-be-borne gallantries by his own
+mother, this same monstrous mother-in-law of the Empress; her
+children's love aborted by this same fiend in woman form--is it any
+marvel that the proud Empress broke away from her splendid torture and
+found a sad comfort in travel and study? The wonder of it is that she
+chose so mild a remedy. She might have murdered her husband's mother,
+and those who knew would have declared her justified. If she had done so
+she could scarcely have suffered in her mind more than she did.
+
+When I expressed some of these opinions I discovered that both officers
+looked at me with undisguised sympathy. They themselves dared not put
+into words such incendiary thoughts, but they welcomed their expression
+from another. This was not the first time I had worded the inner
+thoughts of a company who dared not speak out themselves, but, as
+catspaws are invariably burned, I cannot lay to my soul the flattering
+unction that I have escaped their common lot. Bee says I am generally
+burned to a cinder.
+
+We had just visited the last of the shrines, which were interesting only
+because erected by the Empress, when we were overtaken by a terrific
+mountain storm which broke over our heads without warning. The rain came
+down in torrents, but not even the officers got wet, for they instantly
+produced from some mysterious region rubber capes which completely
+enveloped their beautiful uniforms.
+
+I was not sure, but, in the general confusion of closing the carriage
+top, I thought I saw Count Andreae whisper to Mrs. Jimmie. I am positive
+I heard Von Furzmann whisper to Bee. So, not to be outdone, I leaned
+over and whispered to Jimmie. I do so hate to be left out of a thing.
+
+We had a gay little supper at the Kaiserin Elisabeth, but I could not
+see that Count Andreae "got any forrarder," as Jimmie would say, for he
+literally could not concentrate his attention on Mrs. Jimmie on account
+of Bee's attentions to him. Poor Von Furzmann had to content himself
+with Jimmie and me.
+
+The next day being the Emperor's birthday, the whole town was gloriously
+illuminated, and the splendid old Franz Josef--splendid in spite of his
+past irregularities--appeared before his adoring people, with Bee the
+most adoring of all his subjects.
+
+There were any number of little parties made up after that, for, of
+course, we returned the civility of the officers. But after awhile
+Ischl, in spite of the bracing air, and bewitching drives, and
+occasional glimpses of royalty, and daily meetings with our beloved
+officers, Jimmie and I began to think longingly of green fields and
+pastures new. It was a little hard on Bee, and even on Mrs. Jimmie, to
+drag them away from the morning promenade, where they always saw the
+rank and fashion of Austria. I wondered what Bee's feelings would be at
+parting with her loved ones, for most of our conversations lately had
+tended toward turning our journeyings aside from Vienna to go north to
+the September manoeuvres, in which our friends were to take part. We in
+turn combated this by begging them to meet us in Italy in three months.
+You should have seen their anguished faces when Jimmie and I mentioned
+three months! A week's separation was more than they could think of
+without tying crape on their arms. To our amazement they assured us that
+a leave was out of the question. Von Engel declared that he had not had
+a leave of absence for ten years and he doubted if he could obtain one
+on any excuse short of a death in the family.
+
+At last, however, one fine day, with farewell notes and loaded with
+flowers, and with the prettiest of parting speeches, we tore ourselves
+away and were off for Vienna.
+
+As Bee leaned back in the railway carriage with one glove missing, I
+looked to see her very low in her mind, but to my surprise she was
+smiling slowly.
+
+"You don't seem to mind leaving them very much," I observed, curiously.
+
+"I haven't left them for long," she replied, drawing her face into
+complacent lines. "They are both coming to Vienna on leave."
+
+"On _leave_?" I cried.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+VIENNA
+
+If Americans continue to flock to Europe in such numbers, the whole
+country will in time be as Americanised as the hotels are becoming.
+Vienna, with her beautiful Hotel Bristol, is such an advance in modern
+comfort from the best of her accommodations for travellers of a few
+years ago that she affords an excellent example, although for every
+steam-heater, modern lift, and American comfort you gain, you lose a
+quaintness and picturesqueness, the like of which makes Europe so worth
+while. The whole of civilised Europe is now engaged in a flurried debate
+as to the propriety of remodelling its travelled portions for the
+benefit of ease-loving American millionaires.
+
+It was not the season when we arrived in Vienna, but we had letters to
+the old Countess von Schimpfurmann, who had been lady-in-waiting to the
+Empress Elizabeth when she first came to the court of Austria, a mere
+slip of a girl, with that marvellous hair of hers whose length was the
+wonder of Europe, dressed high for the first time, but oftenest flowing
+silkily to the hem of her skirt. The countess was something of an
+invalid, and happened to be in town when we arrived. Her husband, the
+old count, had been a very distinguished man in his day, standing high
+in the Emperor's favour, and died full of years and honour, and more
+appreciated, so rumour had it, by his wife in his death than in his
+life.
+
+We also had letters from a lady whose friendship Mrs. Jimmie made at
+Ischl, to her daughter-in-law, Baroness von Schumann, the baron being
+attached to an Austrian commission then in Italy; to several officers
+who were friends of our officers in Ischl, and, last but not least, to a
+little Hungarian, to whom I had a letter from America, who was so kind,
+so attentive, so fatherly to us, that he went by the name of "Little
+Papa"--a soubriquet which seemed to give him no end of pleasure.
+
+Thus well equipped, we prepared to fall in love with Vienna, and we
+found it an easy task, for in spite of it being out of season, we were
+vastly entertained, and in all likelihood obtained a more intimate
+knowledge of the inner life of our Vienna friends than we could have
+done if we had arrived in the season of formal and more elaborate
+entertainment.
+
+The opera was there, and, with all due respect to Mr. Grau, I must admit
+that we saw the most perfect production of "Faust" in Vienna than I ever
+saw on any stage.
+
+The carnival was going on, where no Viennese lady, so the baroness
+declared, would _think_ of being seen, because confetti-throwing was
+only resorted to by the _canaille_ (and officers and husbands of
+high-born ladies, who went there with their little friends of the ballet
+and chorus), but where we _did_ go, contrary to all precedent,
+persuading the baroness to make up a smart party and "go slumming." Her
+husband being in Italy, she had no fear of meeting _him_ there, and she
+took good care to send an invitation to any one who might have been
+inclined to be critical, to be of the party, which, after one mighty
+protest as to the propriety of it, they one and all accepted with
+suspicious alacrity.
+
+It was not so very amusing. It consisted of merely walking along a broad
+avenue lined with booths, and flinging confetti into people's faces.
+More rude than lively or even amusing, it seemed to me, and my curiosity
+was so easily satisfied that I was ready to go after a quarter of an
+hour. But do you think we could persuade the other ladies to give it up?
+Indeed, no! Like mischievous children, with Americans for an excuse,
+they remained until the last ones, laughing immoderately when they
+encountered men they knew. But as these men always claimed that they had
+heard we were coming, and immediately attached themselves to our party
+as a sort of sheet armour of protection against possible tales out of
+school, our supper party afterward was quite large. A carnival like that
+in America would end in a fight, if not in murder, for the American
+loses sight of the fact that it is simply rude play, and when he sees a
+handful of coloured paper flung in his wife's face, it might as well be
+water or pebbles for the stirring effect it has on his fighting blood.
+
+The baroness had such a beautiful evening that she quite sighed when it
+was over.
+
+"Don't you ever have this in America?" she asked Bee.
+
+"No, indeed," said Bee. "And if we did, we wouldn't go to it. We reserve
+such frolics for Europe."
+
+"Exactly as it is with us," declared the baroness; "Carl and I always go
+in Paris and Nice, but here--well, we had to have you for an excuse. I
+must thank you for giving us such an amusing evening!" she added, gaily.
+"After all, it is so much more diverting to catch one's friends in
+mischief than strangers whom no one cares about!"
+
+I suppose, in showing Vienna to us, we showed more of Vienna to the
+baroness and her friends than they ever had seen before. We went into
+all the booths and shows; we were in St. Stephen's Church at sunset to
+see the light filter through those marvels of stained-glass windows.
+Instead of stately drives in the Prater, we took little excursions into
+the country and dined at blissful open-air restaurants, with views of
+the Danube and distant Vienna, which they never had seen before. They
+became quite enthusiastic over seeking out new diversions for us, and,
+through their court influence, I feel sure that few Americans could have
+got a more intimate knowledge of Vienna than we.
+
+An amusing coincidence happened while we were there, concerning the gown
+Mrs. Jimmie was to be painted in. The baroness's brother, Count Georg
+Brunow, was an authority on dress, and, as he designed all the gowns for
+his cousin, who was also in the Emperor's suite, he begged permission to
+design Mrs. Jimmie's. His English was a little queer, so this is what he
+said after an anxious scrutiny of Mrs. Jimmie's beauty:
+
+"You must have a gown of white--soft white chiffon or mull over a white
+satin slip. It must be very full and fluffy around the foot, and be
+looped up on the skirt and around the decollete corsage with festoons of
+small pink considerations."
+
+"Considerations?" said Mrs. Jimmie.
+
+"Carnations, you mean," said Bee.
+
+"Yes, thank you. My English is so rusty. I mean pink carnations."
+
+Mrs. Jimmie thanked him, and we all discussed it approvingly. Still,
+she told me privately that she would not decide until she got back to
+Paris to her own man, who knew her taste and style.
+
+"You know, for a portrait," said Count Georg, "you do not want anything
+pronounced. It must be quite simple, so that in fifty years it will
+still be beautiful."
+
+When we got back to Paris, we presented ourselves before Mrs. Jimmie's
+dressmaker, who has dressed her ever since she was sixteen. She told him
+to design a gown for a full-length portrait. He looked at her carefully
+and said, slowly:
+
+"I would suggest a gown of soft white over a white satin slip. It should
+be cut low in the corsage, and have no sleeves. A touch of colour in the
+shape of loops of small pink roses at the foot, heading a triple flounce
+of white, and on the shoulders and around the top of the bodice. You
+know for a portrait, madame, you want no epoch-making effect. It should
+be quite simple, so that in the years to come it may still please the
+eye as a work of art and not a creation of the dressmaker's skill."
+
+Bee and I nearly had to be removed in an ambulance, and even Mrs.
+Jimmie looked startled.
+
+"Order it," I whispered. "Plainly, Providence has a hand in this design.
+It might be dangerous to flout such a sign from heaven."
+
+All of which goes to prove that the eye of the artist is true the world
+over. Or, at least, that is the deduction I drew. Bee is more skeptical.
+
+The Countess von Schimpfurmann lived in a marvellous old house, to which
+we were invited again and again, her dear old politeness causing her to
+give three handsome entertainments for us, so that each could be a guest
+of honour at least once, and be distinguished by a seat on the sofa. The
+Emperor being at Ischl, we were permitted all sorts of intimate
+privileges with the Imperial Residenz, the court stables and private
+views not ordinarily shown to travellers, which were more interesting
+from being personally conducted than by the marvels we saw, for several
+years of continuous travel rather blunt one's ecstasy and effectively
+wear out one's adjectives.
+
+Again, as in Munich, we were never tired of the picture-galleries, the
+whole school of German and Austrian art being quite to our taste, while
+if there exists anywhere else a more wonderful collection of original
+drawings of such masters as Raphael, Durer, Rubens, and Rembrandt which
+comprise the Albertina in the palace of the Archduke Albert, I do not
+know of it.
+
+The old countess had numerous anecdotes to tell of the beautiful
+Empress, all of which confirmed and strengthened my belief that she was
+most of all a glorious woman gloriously misunderstood by her nearest and
+dearest. What other prince or princess of Europe in all history turned
+to so noble a pursuit as culture, learning, and travel to cure a broken
+heart and a wrecked existence in the majestic manner of this silent,
+haughty, noble soul? The excesses, dissipation, and intrigue which
+served to divert other bruised royal hearts were as far beneath this
+imperial nature as if they did not exist. Her life, in its crystal
+purity and its scorn of intrigue, is unique in royal history. Yet she,
+this blameless princess, this woman of imperial beauty, this noblest of
+all empresses, was marked to be stricken down by the red hand of
+anarchy, to whose crime, and poison, and danger we open our national
+ports with an unwisdom which is criminal stupidity, and of which we
+shall inevitably reap the benefit. America cannot warm the asp of
+anarchy in her bosom without expecting it to turn and sting her.
+
+The deference paid to royalty is so difficult of comprehension to the
+republican mind that every time we encountered it it gave us a separate
+shock of surprise. At least, it gave it to me. I have an idea from the
+way events finally shaped themselves that Bee and Mrs. Jimmie were a
+little more alive to its possibilities than I was.
+
+The Bristol was quite full when we arrived and Jimmie could not get
+communicating rooms, nor very good ones. I did not particularly notice
+it at the time, but I remembered afterward that Bee kept urging him to
+change them, and Jimmie made two or three endeavours, but seemed to
+obtain no favour at the hands of the proprietor.
+
+One morning, however, when Jimmie started to leave the sitting-room, he
+opened the door and closed it again suddenly. We were sitting there
+waiting for breakfast to be served, and we were all three struck by the
+expression on his face.
+
+"What's the matter, Jimmie?"
+
+He looked at us queerly.
+
+"What have you three been up to?" he asked.
+
+"Nothing. Honestly and truly!" we cried. "What's out in the hall? Or are
+you just pretending?"
+
+"The hall is full of menials and officials and gold lace and brass
+buttons. I hope you haven't done anything to be arrested for!"
+
+Bee began to look knowing, and just then came a knock at the door.
+
+"If you please," said the interpreter, bowing at every other word, "here
+is one of the Emperor's couriers just from Ischl, with despatches from
+the court of his Imperial Majesty for the ladies if they are ready to
+receive them. The courier had orders not to disturb their sleep. He
+waited here in the corridor until he heard voices. Will the excellent
+ladies be pleased to receive them? His orders are to wait for answers."
+
+Jimmie signified that we would receive them, when forth stepped a man
+in the imperial liveries and handed him a packet on a silver tray.
+Jimmie had the wit to lay a gold piece on the tray, at which the courier
+almost knelt to express his thanks. The other attendants drew long
+envious breaths.
+
+The door was shut, and Mrs. Jimmie and Bee opened their letters. Both
+were from Count Andreae von Engel, saying that he and Von Furzmann,
+rendered desperate by the near departure of his Majesty for the
+manoeuvres, had resolved to risk dismissal from his suite by absence
+without leave. The letter said that on that day--the day on which it was
+written--they had both attended his Majesty on a hunt, and as he seldom
+hunted with the same officers two days in succession, they bade fair not
+to be on duty after noon the next day. Therefore, if we heard nothing to
+the contrary, they would leave Ischl on the one o'clock train in
+uniform, as if on official business. Their servants would board the
+train at Gmund with citizens' clothes, and they would be with us soon
+after seven that night. They begged leave to dine with us in our
+private dining-room that evening, and would we be so gracious as to
+receive them until midnight, when they must take train for Ischl, and be
+on duty in uniform by seven in the morning.
+
+I simply shrieked, as I looked at Jimmie's perplexed face.
+
+"What shall we do?" he said. "We can't have 'em here! We must stop 'em!
+Get a telegraph blank, Bee! We haven't any private dining-room, anyhow,
+and if they got caught we might be dragged into it! Well, what is it?"
+
+He turned to the door half savagely, and there stood the proprietor,
+with some ten or twelve servants at his heels.
+
+"You were speaking to me the other day about better rooms? Will it
+please you to look at some on the second floor, which have never been
+occupied since they were done over? There are five rooms _en
+suite_--just about what your Excellency desires."
+
+Jimmie turned to us with a sickly grin.
+
+We all waited for Mrs. Jimmie to speak.
+
+"Jimmie, dear," she said at last, "if you don't object, I think it would
+be very nice to take those rooms, and entertain the gentlemen this
+evening. Of course, they cannot be seen in the public dining-room, and,
+after all, they _are_ gentlemen and in the Emperor's suite, so their
+attentions to us, while a little more pronounced than we are accustomed
+to, _are_ an honour."
+
+Jimmie said nothing, but went to the door and signified that we would
+look at the rooms.
+
+We did look; we took them, and before noon every handsome piece of
+furniture from all over the house had been placed in our suite; flowers
+were everywhere, and servants fairly swarmed at our commands.
+
+Jimmie, in reality, was not at all pleased by any of this, but he has
+such a blissful sense of humour that he could not help seeing the
+pitiful front it put upon human nature, both Austrian and American. He
+permitted himself, however, only one remark. This was now done with his
+wife's sanction, and loyalty to her closed his lips. But he beckoned me
+over to the window, and, handing me a paper-knife, he turned up the sole
+of his shoe, saying:
+
+"Scrape 'em off!"
+
+"Scrape what off, Jimmie?"
+
+"The servants! I haven't been able to step to-day without crushing a
+dozen of 'em!"
+
+As I turned away he called out:
+
+"There aren't any on the shoes I wore yesterday!"
+
+A rumour somewhat near the truth had swept through the hotel, for
+wherever we appeared we found ourselves the object of the deepest
+attention, not only by the slavish minions of the hotel from the
+proprietor down, but from the other guests.
+
+It was so pronounced that my feeble spirit quaked, so to borrow some of
+my sister's soul-sustaining joy, I went into her room and said:
+
+"Bee, what does all this mean, anyhow? Where will it land us?"
+
+Bee's eyes gleamed.
+
+"If you aren't actually blind to opportunity," she said, slowly, "you
+certainly are hopelessly near-sighted. Don't you understand how nobody
+can do anything or be anybody without royal approval? Haven't you seen
+enough here to-day, to say nothing of the attentions we had from women
+in Ischl, to know what all this counts for?"
+
+"Yes, I know," I hastened to say. "But what of these men? You know what
+they will think; they are Austrians, Russians, and Hungarians, remember,
+not Americans!"
+
+Bee laughed.
+
+"A man is a man," she said, sententiously. "Don't worry for fear the
+poor dears' hearts will be broken. Now I'll tell you something. Mrs.
+Jimmie's sincere indifference and my silent eye-homage have stirred
+these blasé officers out of their usual calm. There you have the whole
+thing. Von Engel thinks Mrs. Jimmie's indifference is assumed, and both
+Von Engel and Von Furzmann are determined that my silence shall voice
+itself. I have no doubt that they would like to have me _write_ it, so
+that they could boast of it afterward to their fellow officers. Now, as
+Jimmie would say in his frightful slang, 'I'm going to give them a run
+for their money.' Von Engel will probably beseech you to arrange to keep
+Jimmie at your side, so that he can have a few words with Mrs. Jimmie.
+Von Furzmann will plead with you to permit him a word with me. I need
+hardly tell you that your role to-night is to make yourself as
+disagreeable as possible to both of them by keeping the conversation
+general, and by cutting in at any attempt at a _tête-à-tête_."
+
+I felt limp and weak. "And all this display, this dinner, this added
+expense?"
+
+"Part of the game, my dear!"
+
+"And the end of it all? When they come back from the manoeuvres?"
+
+"We shall be gone! Without a word!"
+
+"Then this _isn't_ a flirtation?"
+
+"Only on their parts. They are after our scalps. But we are actuated by
+the true missionary spirit."
+
+We leaned over and shook hands solemnly. I do _love_ Bee!
+
+That night--shall I ever forget it? Those stunning men dashed into our
+rooms muffled in military cloaks, which they tossed aside with such
+grace that they nearly secured _my_ scalp, for all they were after Bee's
+and Mrs. Jimmie's. They were in velveteen hunting costumes; we in the
+smartest of evening dress. Jimmie had given his fancy free rein in
+ordering the dinner, but, to his amazement and indignation, the little
+game being played by the rest of us so surprised and baffled our guests
+that Jimmie's delicacies were removed with course after course untasted.
+The officers searched the brilliant room with their eyes, hoping for a
+quiet nook, or balcony. There was none, and their disguise effectually
+prevented them from suggesting to go out. I saw that, finally, they
+pinned their hopes to me, and the way I clung to Jimmie to prevent their
+speaking to me almost roused his suspicions that I was in love with him.
+We stuck doggedly to the table, even after dinner was over and the
+servants dismissed. Finally, Von Furzmann, who spoke English rather
+well, rose in a determined manner, and quite forgetful of our proximity,
+said to Bee in a loud, distinct tone:
+
+"My heart is on fire!"
+
+It was too much. Jimmie and I led the way in a general shout of
+laughter, and then, as a happy family party, we adjourned to the single
+salon, where we grouped ourselves together, and, strive as they might,
+the officers could not outwit my sister nor upset her plan.
+
+Toward midnight, when the hour of parting drew near, they grew so
+desperate I almost feared that they would say something rash. But they
+were diplomats and game. Occasionally a gleam of suspicion would appear
+on their countenances--it was so very unusual, I imagined, for their
+plans so persistently to miscarry--but both Bee and I have an extremely
+guiltless and innocent eye, and we used an unwinking gaze of genial
+friendliness which disarmed them.
+
+At last they flung their cloaks around them, as their servants announced
+their carriage for the third time.
+
+"_Such_ an evening!" moaned Von Engel.
+
+It might mean anything!
+
+Bee bit her lip.
+
+"I was never more loath to leave. Promise that you will be here when we
+return. It will only be ten days! Promise us!"
+
+"I hardly think--" began Jimmie, but Bee trod on his foot.
+
+"Ouch!" said Jimmie, fiercely.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Jimmie, dear!" murmured Bee. "It is possible," said
+Bee to Von Engel. "We never make plans, you know. We go whenever we are
+bored, or when we have nothing pleasant to look forward to."
+
+"Oh, then, pray remain! We shall _fly_ to see you the moment we are
+free!"
+
+"That surely is an inducement," said Bee, with a little laugh, which
+caused Von Engel to colour.
+
+Von Engel's servant, under pretext of arranging the collar of his
+master's cloak, here whispered peremptorily to him, and the officer
+started with a hurried "Yes, yes!" to his servant.
+
+They bent and kissed our hands, and Von Furzmann, in the violence of his
+emotion, flung his arms around Jimmie and kissed him on the cheek. Then
+they dashed away down the long corridor, looking back and waving their
+hands to us.
+
+Jimmie came into the room with his hand on the spot where Von Furzmann
+had kissed him.
+
+"Well, I'll be damned!" he said. "That was all _your_ fault," he added,
+looking at Bee.
+
+"I've always said somebody would steal you, Jimmie!" I said.
+
+"Did you enjoy yourself, dear?" asked Mrs. Jimmie kindly of Bee.
+
+Bee stood up yawning.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," she said. "These officers try to be so impressive.
+They urge you to take a little more pepper in the same tone that they
+would ask you to elope."
+
+Jimmie beamed on her.
+
+When Bee and I were alone, I dropped limply on the bed. Bee turned to
+the light and read a crumpled note which Von Furzmann had thrust into
+her hand at parting. She handed it to me:
+
+"I shall write every day, and shall count the hours until I see you
+again!" it read. I could just hear him shouting, "My heart is on fire!"
+
+"Well, did you enjoy it?" I asked her.
+
+"Enjoy it? Certainly not!"
+
+"Why, I thought you were having the time of your life!" I cried.
+
+She laughed.
+
+"Oh, yes, in a way it was amusing. But did it ever occur to you that it
+wasn't very flattering for those two unmarried officers to select the
+two married women in our party for their attentions when you, being
+unmarried, were the only legitimate object of their interest?"
+
+I said nothing. To tell the truth I had _not_ thought of it.
+
+"No, these officers need just a few kinks taken out of their brains
+concerning women, and I propose to do it. I told Jimmie to-day that if
+he would be handsome about to-night, I would start to-morrow for Moscow.
+Mrs. Jimmie is perfectly willing, and I know you are dying to get on to
+Tolstoy. I've only stayed over for to-night. I knew this was coming when
+we were in Ischl, and I wanted them to see how lightly we viewed their
+risking dismissal from his Majesty's service for us. We have paid up all
+our indebtedness to everybody else, so nothing but farewell calls need
+detain us."
+
+"And the officers?" I stammered. "How will they know?"
+
+"I'll get Jimmie to send them a wire saying we have gone. They won't
+know where. Hurry up and turn out the lights. They hurt my eyes."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+MY FIRST INTERVIEW WITH TOLSTOY
+
+At the critical point of relating the difficulty attending my first
+audience with Tolstoy, I am constrained to mention a few of the
+obstacles encountered by a person bearing indifferent letters of
+introduction, and if by so doing I persuade any man or woman to write
+one worthy letter introducing one strange man or woman in a foreign
+country to a foreign host, I shall feel that I have not lived in vain.
+
+No one, who has not travelled abroad unknown and depending for all
+society upon written introductions, can form any idea of the utter
+inadequacy of the ordinary letter of introduction. When I first
+announced my intention of several years' travel in Europe, I accepted
+the generously offered letters of friends and acquaintances, and, in
+some instances, of kind persons who were almost total strangers to me,
+careless of the wording of these letters and only grateful for the
+goodness of heart they evinced.
+
+In one instance, a man who had lived in Berlin sent me a dozen of his
+visiting-cards, on the reverse side of which were written the names of
+his German friends and under them the scanty words, "Introducing Miss
+So-and-So." He took pains also to call upon me several times, and to ask
+as a special favour that I would present these letters. Forgetful of the
+fact that his German acquaintances would have no idea who I was, that
+there was no explanation upon the card, and without thinking that he
+would not take the trouble to write letters of explanation beforehand, I
+presented these twelve cards without the least reluctance, simply
+because I had given my word. Out of the twelve, ten returned my calls
+and we discussed nothing more important than the weather. We knew
+nothing of each other except our names, and all of these I dare say were
+mispronounced. Two out of the twelve entertained me at dinner, and three
+years afterward, when I returned to America, I received a letter of the
+sincerest apology from one, saying that she had learned more of me
+through the ambassador, and reproaching me for not having volunteered
+information about myself, which might have led at least to conversation
+of a more intimate nature.
+
+I was armed at that time with many of these visiting-cards of
+introduction, and after this instance I filed them with great care in
+the waste-basket. I then examined my other letters. It is idle to
+describe to those who have never depended upon such documents in foreign
+countries the inadequacy of half of them. In spite of the kindest
+intentions, they were really worthless.
+
+It was only after I got to Poland and Russia, where the hospitality
+springs from the heart, that my introductions began to bear fruit
+satisfactory to a sensitive mind. It is, therefore, with feelings of the
+liveliest appreciation that I look back on the letter given me by
+Ambassador White in Berlin to Count Leo Tolstoy. A lifetime of
+diplomacy, added to the sincerest and most generous appreciation of what
+an ideal hospitality should be, have served to make this representative
+of the American people perfect in details of kindness, which can only
+be fully appreciated when one is far from home. Nothing short of the
+completeness and yet brevity of this letter would have served to obtain
+an audience with that great author, who must needs protect himself from
+the idle and curious, and the only drawback to my first interview with
+Tolstoy was the fact that I had to part company with this precious
+letter. It was so kind, so generous, so appreciative, that up to the
+time I relinquished it, I cured the worst attacks of homesickness simply
+by reading it over, and from the lowest depths of despair it not only
+brought me back my self-respect, but so exquisitely tickled my vanity
+that I was proud of my own acquaintance with myself.
+
+My introduction to Princess Sophy Golitzin, in Moscow, was of such a
+sort that we at once received an invitation from her to meet her
+choicest friends, at her house the next day. When we arrived, we found
+some thirty or forty charming Russians in a long, handsomely furnished
+salon, all speaking their own language. But upon our approach, every one
+began speaking English, and so continued during our stay. Twice,
+however, little groups fell into French and German at the advent of one
+or two persons who spoke no English.
+
+Russians do not show off at their best in foreign environments. I have
+met them in Germany, France, England, Italy, and America, and while
+their culture is always complete, their distinguishing trait is their
+hospitality, generous and free beyond any I have ever known, which, of
+course, is best exploited in their own country and among their own
+people.
+
+At the Princess Golitzin's, I was told that the Countess Tolstoy and her
+daughter had been there earlier in the afternoon, but, owing to the
+distance at which they lived, they had been obliged to leave early.
+They, however, left their compliments for all of us, and asked the
+princess to say that they had remained as long as they had dared, hoping
+for the pleasure of meeting us.
+
+Being only a modest American, I confess that I opened my eyes with
+wonder that a personage of such renown as the Countess Tolstoy, the wife
+of the greatest living man of letters, should take the trouble to leave
+so kind a message for me.
+
+When Bee and Mrs. Jimmie heard it, they treated me with almost the same
+respect as when they discovered that I knew the head waiter at
+Baden-Baden. But not quite.
+
+As, however, our one ambition in coming to Russia had been to see
+Tolstoy himself, we at once began to ask questions of the princess as to
+how we might best accomplish our object, but to our disappointment her
+answers were far from encouraging. He was, I was told by everybody, ill,
+cross as a bear, and in the throes of composition. Could there be a
+worse possible combination for my purpose?
+
+So much was said discouraging our project that Jimmie was for giving it
+up, but I think one man never received three such simultaneously
+contemptuous glances as we three levelled at Jimmie for his craven
+suggestion. So it happened that one Sunday morning we took a carriage,
+and, having invited the consul, who spoke Russian, we drove to Tolstoy's
+town house, some little distance out of Moscow.
+
+We gave the letter and our visiting-cards to the consul, and he
+explained our wish to see Tolstoy to the footman who answered our ring.
+Having evidently received instructions to admit no one, he not only
+refused us admittance, but declined to take our cards. The consul
+translated his refusal, and seemed vanquished, but I urged him to make
+another attempt, and he did so, which was followed by the announcement
+that the countess was asleep, and the count was out. This being
+translated to me, I announced, in cheerful English which the footman
+could not understand, that both of these statements were lies, and for
+my part I had no doubt that the footman was a direct descendant of
+Beelzebub.
+
+"Tell him that you know better," I said. "Tell him that we know the
+count is too ill to leave the house, and that the countess could not
+possibly be asleep at this time of day. Tell him if he expects us to
+believe him, to make up a better one than that."
+
+"Say something," urged Bee. "Get us inside the house, if no more."
+
+"Tell him how far we have come, and how anxious we are to see the
+count," said Mrs. Jimmie.
+
+"Oh, better give it up," said Jimmie, "and come on home."
+
+The consul obligingly made the desired effort, evidently combining all
+of our instructions, politely softened by his own judgment. The
+footman's face betrayed no yielding, and in order the better to refuse
+to take our cards he put his hands behind him.
+
+"You see, it's no use," said the consul. "Hadn't we better give it up?"
+
+"He won't let you in," said Jimmie, "so don't make a fuss."
+
+"I shall make no fuss," I said, quietly. "But I'll get in, and I'll see
+Tolstoy, and I'll get all the rest of you in. Give me those cards."
+
+I took two rubles from my purse, and, taking the cards and letter, I
+handed them all to the footman, saying in lucid English:
+
+"We are coming in, and you are to take these cards to Count Tolstoy."
+
+At the same time, I pointed a decisive forefinger in the direction in
+which I thought the count was concealed. The obsequious menial took our
+cards, bowed low, and invited us to enter with true servant's
+hospitality.
+
+In all Russian houses, as, doubtless, everybody knows, the first floor
+is given up to an _antechambre_, where guests remove their wraps and
+goloshes, and behind this room are the kitchen and servants' quarters.
+All the living-rooms of the family are generally on the floor above.
+Having once entered this _antechambre_, my Bob Acres courage began to
+ooze.
+
+"Now, I am not going to be rude," I said. "We'll just pretend to be
+taking off our wraps until we find whether we can be received. I don't
+mind forcing myself on a servant, but I do object to inconveniencing the
+master of the house.
+
+"You're weakening," said Jimmie, derisively. "You're scared!"
+
+"I am not," I declared, indignantly. "I am only trying to be polite, and
+it's a hard pull, I can tell you, when I want anything as much as I want
+to see Tolstoy. If he won't see us after he reads that letter, I can at
+least go away knowing that I put forth my best efforts to see him, but
+if I had taken a servant's refusal, I should feel myself a coward."
+
+I looked anxiously at my friends for approval. Jimmie and the consul
+looked dubious, but Bee and Mrs. Jimmie patted me on the back and said I
+had done just right.
+
+While we were engaged in this conversation, and while the man was still
+up-stairs, the door from the kitchen burst open, and in came a handsome
+young fellow of about eighteen, whistling. Now my brother whistles and
+slams doors just like this young Russian. So my understanding of boys
+made me feel friendly with this one at once. Seeing us, he stopped and
+bowed politely.
+
+"Good morning," I said, cheerfully. "We are Americans, and we have
+travelled five thousand miles for the purpose of seeing Count Tolstoy,
+and when we got here this morning the servant wouldn't even let us in
+until I made him, and we are waiting to see if the count will receive
+us."
+
+"Why, I am just sure papa will see you," said the boy in perfect
+English. "How disgusting of Dmitri. He is a blockhead, that Dmitri. I
+shall tell mamma how he treated you. The idea of leaving you standing
+down here while he took your cards up."
+
+"It is partly our fault," I said, defending Dmitri. "We sent him up to
+ask."
+
+"Nevertheless, he should have had you wait in the salon. Dmitri is a
+fool."
+
+"His manner wasn't very cordial," I admitted, as we followed him
+up-stairs and into a large well-furnished, but rather plain, room
+containing no ornaments.
+
+"But as I had a letter from the ambassador," I went on, "I felt that I
+must at least present it."
+
+The boy turned back, as he started to leave the room, and said:
+
+"Oh! From Mr. White? Your ambassador wrote about you, and also some
+friends of ours from Petersburg. Papa has been expecting you this long
+time. He would have been so annoyed if he had failed to see you. I'll
+tell him how badly Dmitri treated you. What must you think of the
+Russians?"
+
+He said all this hurrying to the door to find his father. We sat down
+and regarded each other in silence. Jimmie and the consul looked into
+their hats with a somewhat sheepish countenance. Bee cleared her throat
+with pleasure, and Mrs. Jimmie carefully assumed an attitude of
+unstudied grace, smoothing her silk dress over her knee with her gloved
+hand, and involuntarily looking at her glove the way we do in America.
+Then the door opened and Count Tolstoy came in.
+
+To begin with, he speaks perfect English, and his cordial welcome,
+beginning as he entered the door, continued while he traversed the
+length of the long room, holding out both hands to me, in one of which
+was my letter from the ambassador. He examined our party with as much
+curiosity and interest as we studied him. He wore the ordinary peasant's
+costume. His blue blouse and white under-garment, which showed around
+the neck, had brown stains on it which might be from either coffee or
+tobacco. His eyes were set widely apart and were benignant and kind in
+expression. His brow was benevolent, and counteracted the lower part of
+his face, which in itself would be pugnacious. His nose was short,
+broad, and thick. His jaw betrayed the determination of the bulldog. The
+combination made an exceedingly interesting study. His coarse clothes
+formed a curious contrast to the elegance of his speech and the grace of
+his manner. He was simple, unaffected, gentle, and possessed, in common
+with all his race, the trait upon which I have remarked before, a keen,
+intelligent interest in America and Americans.
+
+While he was still welcoming us and apologising for the behaviour of his
+servant, the countess came in, followed by the young countess, their
+daughter. The Countess Tolstoy has one of the sweetest faces I ever saw,
+and, although she has had thirteen children, she looks as if she were
+not over forty-three years old. Her smooth brown hair had not one silver
+thread, and its gloss might be envied by many a girl of eighteen. Her
+eyes were brown, alert, and fun-loving, her manner quick, and her speech
+enthusiastic. Her plain silk gown was well made, and its richness was in
+strange contrast to the peasant's costume of her illustrious husband.
+
+The little countess had short red brown hair parted on the side like a
+boy's and softly waving about her face, red brown eyes, and a skin so
+delicate that little freckles showed against its clearness. Her modest,
+quiet manner gave her at once an air of breeding. Her manner was older
+and more subdued than that of her mother, from whom the cares and
+anxieties of her large family and varied interests had evidently rolled
+softly and easily, leaving no trace behind.
+
+All three of them began questioning us about our plans, our homes, our
+families, wondering at the ease with which we took long journeys,
+envying our leisure to enjoy ourselves, and constantly interrupting
+themselves with true expressions of welcome.
+
+It is, perhaps, only a fair example of the bountiful hospitality we
+received all through Poland and Russia to chronicle here that Count
+Tolstoy invited us to his house in the country, whither they expected to
+go shortly, to remain several months, and, as he afterward explained it,
+"for as long as you can be happy with us."
+
+His book on "What is Art?" was then attracting a great deal of
+attention, but he was deeply engaged in the one which has since
+appeared, first under the title of "The Awakening," and afterward
+called "Resurrection." It is said that he wrote this book twelve years
+ago, and only rewrote it at the instance of the publishers, but no one
+who has met Tolstoy and become acquainted with him can doubt that he has
+been collecting material, thinking, planning, and writing on that book
+for a lifetime.
+
+Many consider Tolstoy a _poseur_, but he sincerely believes in himself.
+He had only the day before worked all day in the shop of a peasant,
+making shoes for which he had been paid fifty copecks, and we were told
+that not infrequently he might be seen working in the forest or field,
+bending his back to the same burdens as his peasants, sharing their
+hardships, and receiving no more pay than they.
+
+It was a wonderful experience to sit opposite him, to look into his
+eyes, and to hear him talk.
+
+"It is a great country, yours," he said. "To me the most interesting in
+the world just at present. What are you going to do with your problems?
+How are you going to deal with anarchy and the Indian and negro
+questions? You have a blessed liberty in your country."
+
+"If you will excuse me for saying so, I think we have a very _un_blessed
+liberty in our country! Too much liberty is what has brought about the
+very conditions of anarchy and the race problem which now threaten us."
+
+"Do you think the negroes ought not to have been given the franchise?"
+
+"That is a difficult question," I said. "Let me answer it by giving you
+another. Is it a good thing to turn loose on a young republic a mass of
+consolidated ignorance, such as the average negro represented at the
+close of the war, and put votes into their hands with not one
+restraining influence to counteract it? You continentals can form no
+idea of the Southern negro. The case of your serfs is by no means a
+parallel. But it is too late now. You cannot take the franchise away
+from them. They must work out their own salvation."
+
+"Would you take it away from them, if you could?" asked Tolstoy.
+
+"Most certainly I would," I answered, "although my opinion is of no
+value, and I am only wasting your time by expressing it. I would take
+away the franchise from the negroes and from all foreigners until they
+had lived in our country twenty-one years, as our American men must do,
+and I would establish a property and educational qualification for every
+voter. I would not permit a man to vote upon property issues unless he
+were a property owner."
+
+"Would you enfranchise the women?" asked the countess.
+
+"I would, but under the same conditions."
+
+"But would your best element of women exercise the privilege?" asked the
+little countess.
+
+"Not all of them at first, and some of them never, I suppose; but when
+once our country awakens to the meaning of patriotism, and our women
+understand that they are citizens exactly as the men are citizens, they
+will do their duty, and do it more conscientiously than the men."
+
+"It is a very interesting subject," said the count; "and your
+suggestions open up many possibilities. Women do vote in several of your
+States, I am told."
+
+"How I would love to see a woman who had voted," cried the countess,
+clasping her hands with all the vivacity of a French woman.
+
+"Why, I have voted," said Bee, laughing. "I voted for President McKinley
+in the State of Colorado, and my sister and Mrs. Jimmie voted for school
+trustee in Illinois." All three of the Tolstoys turned eagerly toward
+Bee.
+
+"Do tell me about it," said the count.
+
+"There is very little to tell. I simply went and stood in line and cast
+my ballot."
+
+"But was there no shooting, no bribery, no excitement?" cried the
+countess. "Do they go dressed as you are now?"
+
+"No, I dressed much better. I wore my best Paris gown, and drove down in
+my victoria. While I was in the line half a dozen gentlemen, who
+attended my receptions, came up and chatted with me, showed me how to
+fold my ballot, and attended me as if we were at a concert. When I came
+away, I took a street-car home, and sent my carriage for several ladies
+who otherwise would not have come."
+
+"And you," said the countess, turning to Mrs. Jimmie.
+
+"It was in a barber shop," she said, laughing. "When I went in, the men
+had their feet on the table, their hats on their heads, and they were
+all smoking, but at my entrance all these things changed. Hats came off,
+cigars were laid down, and feet disappeared. I was politely treated, and
+enjoyed it immensely."
+
+"How very interesting," said Tolstoy. "But are there not societies for
+and against suffrage? Why do your women combine against it?"
+
+"Because American women have not awakened to the meaning of good
+citizenship, and they prefer chivalry to justice, regardless of the love
+of country. I never belonged to any suffrage society, never wrote or
+spoke or talked about it. I think the responsibility of voting would be
+heavy and often disagreeable, but, if the women were enfranchised, I
+would vote from a sense of duty, just as I think many others would; and,
+as to the good which might accrue, I think you will agree with me that
+women's standards are higher than men's. There would be far less
+bribery in politics than there is now."
+
+"Is there much bribery?" asked Tolstoy.
+
+"Unfortunately, I suppose there is. Have you heard how the ex-Speaker of
+the House of Representatives, Tom Reed, defines an honest man in
+politics? 'An honest man is a man that will stay bought!'"
+
+There is no use in denying the truth. Tolstoy is always the teacher and
+the author. I could not imagine him the husband and the father. He
+seemed in the act of getting copy, and had a way of asking a question,
+and then scrutinising both the question and the answer as one who had
+set a mechanical toy in motion by winding it up. Tolstoy would make an
+excellent reporter for an American newspaper. He could obtain an
+interview with the most reticent politician. But I had a feeling that
+his methods were as the methods of Goethe.
+
+His wife evidently does not share his own opinion of himself. She
+listened with obvious impatience to the conversation, then she drew Bee
+and Mrs. Jimmie aside, and they were soon in the midst of an animated
+discussion of the Rue de la Paix.
+
+Tolstoy overheard snatches of their talk without a sign of disapproval.
+I have seen a big Newfoundland watch the graceful antics of a kitten
+with the same air of indifference with which Tolstoy regarded his wife's
+humanity and naturalness. Tolstoy takes himself with profound
+seriousness, but, in spite of his influence on Russia and the outside
+world, the great teacher has been unable to cure his wife's interest in
+millinery.
+
+Nordau told me in Paris that Tolstoy was a combination of genius and
+insanity. Undoubtedly Tolstoy is actuated by a genuine desire to free
+Russia, but the idea was unmistakably imbedded in my mind that his
+Christianity was like Napoleon's description of a Russian. Scratch it
+and you would find Tartar fanaticism under it,--the fanaticism of the
+ascetic who would drive his own flesh and blood into the flames to save
+the soul of his domestics. This impression grew as I watched the
+attitude of the countess toward her husband. What must a wife think of
+such a husband's views of marriage when she is the mother of thirteen of
+his children? What must she think of insincerity when he refuses to
+copyright his books because he thinks it wrong to take money for
+teaching, yet permits _her_ to copyright them and draw the royalties for
+the support of the family?
+
+Her opinion of her famous husband lies beneath her manner, covered
+lightly by a charming and graceful impatience,--the impatience of a
+spoiled child.
+
+When we got into the carriage I said:
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well," said our friend the consul, who had not spoken during the
+interview, "he is the queerest man I ever met. But how he pumped you!"
+
+"We are all 'copy' to him," said Jimmie. "He wanted information at first
+hand."
+
+"Sometime he may succeed in convincing his daughter," said Mrs. Jimmie,
+"but never his wife. She knows him too well."
+
+"Yet he seemed interested in you and Jimmie," said Bee, ruefully. Then
+more cheerfully, "but we're asked to come again!"
+
+"We are living documents; that's why."
+
+"What do you think of him?" said Jimmie to me with a grin of
+comradeship.
+
+"I don't know. My impressions have got to settle and be skimmed and
+drained off before I know."
+
+"Well, we'll go to their reception anyway," said Bee, comfortably, with
+the air of one who had no problems to wrestle with.
+
+"What are you going to wear?"
+
+To be sure! That was the main question after all. What were we going to
+wear?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+AT ONE OF THE TOLSTOY RECEPTIONS
+
+When we arrived the next evening, it was to find a curious situation.
+The Countess Tolstoy and her daughter and young son, in European
+costume,--the countess in velvet and lace, and the little countess in a
+pretty taffeta silk,--were receiving their guests in the main salon, and
+later served them to a magnificent supper with champagne. The count, we
+were told, was elsewhere receiving his guests, who would not join us.
+Later he came in, still in his peasant's costume, and refused all
+refreshment. He was exceedingly civil to all his guests, but signalled
+out the Americans in a manner truly flattering.
+
+It was a charming evening, and we met agreeable people, but, although
+they stayed late, we remained, at Tolstoy's request, still later, and
+when the last guest had departed, we sat down, drawing our chairs quite
+close together after the manner of a cheerful family party.
+
+After inquiring how we had spent our day, and giving us some valuable
+hints about different points of interest for the morrow, Tolstoy plunged
+at once into the conversation which had been broken off the day before.
+It was evident that he had been thinking about our country, and was
+eager for more information.
+
+"I became very well acquainted with your ambassador, Mr. White, while he
+was in this country," he began. "I found him a man of wide experience,
+of great culture, and of much originality in thought. I learned a great
+deal about America from him. It must be wonderful to live in a country
+where there is no Orthodox Church, where one can worship as one pleases,
+and where every one's vote is counted."
+
+Jimmie coughed politely, and looked at me.
+
+"It encourages individuality," he added. "Do you not find your own
+countrymen more individual than those of any other nation?" he added,
+addressing Jimmie directly for the first time.
+
+"I think I do," said Jimmie, carefully weighing out his words as if on
+invisible scales. Jimmie is largely imbued with that absurd fear of a
+man who has written books, which is to me so inexplicable.
+
+"Your country appeals to Russians, strongly," pursued the count,
+evidently bent upon drawing Jimmie out.
+
+"I have often wondered why," said Jimmie. "It couldn't have been the
+wheat?"
+
+"No, not entirely the wheat, although the news of your generosity spread
+like wildfire through all classes of society, and served to open the
+hearts of the peasants toward America as they are opened toward no other
+country in the world. The word 'Amerikanski' is an _open sesame_ all
+through Russia. Have you noticed it?"
+
+"Often," said Jimmie. "And often wondered at it. But that wheat was a
+small enterprise to gain a nation's gratitude. It is the more surprising
+to us because it was not a national gift, but the result of the
+generosity and large-mindedness of a handful of men, who pushed it
+through so quietly and unostentatiously that millions of people in
+America to this day do not know that it was ever done, but over here we
+have not met a single Russian who has not spoken of it immediately."
+
+"The Russians are a grateful people," observed Mrs. Jimmie, "but it
+seems a little strange to me to discover such ardent gratitude among the
+nobility for assistance which reached people hundreds of miles away from
+them, and in whose welfare they could have only a general interest,
+prompted by humanity."
+
+"Ah! but madame, Russians are more keenly alive to the problem of our
+serfs than any other. Many of our wealthy people are doing all that they
+can to assist them, and, when a crisis like the famine comes, it is
+heart-breaking not to be able to relieve their suffering. Consequently,
+the sending of that wheat touched every heart."
+
+"Then, too, we are not divided,--the North against the South, as you
+were on your negro question," said the little countess. "The peasant
+problem stretches from one end of Russia to the other."
+
+"We are a diffuse people," I said. "Perhaps that is the result of our
+mixed blood and the individuality that you spoke of, but your books are
+so widely read in America that I believe people in the North are quite
+as well informed and quite as much interested in the problem of the
+Russian serf as in our own negro problem."
+
+Bee gave me a look which in sign language meant, "And that isn't saying
+half as much as it sounds."
+
+"Undoubtedly there is a strong point of sympathy between our two
+countries. Like you, we have many mixed strains of blood, and, though we
+are so much older, we have civilised more slowly, so that we are both in
+youthful stages of progress. Your great prairies correspond in a large
+measure to our steppes. America and Russia are the greatest
+wheat-growing countries in the world. Our internal resources are the
+only ones vast enough to support us without assistance from other
+countries."
+
+"Is that true of Russia?" Jimmie cut in, his commercial instinct getting
+the better of his awe of Tolstoy. "Where would you get your coal?"
+
+"True," said Tolstoy, "we could not do it as completely as you, and
+your very resources are one reason for our admiration of America."
+
+"In case of war, now,--" went on Jimmie. He stopped speaking, and looked
+down in deep embarrassment, remembering Tolstoy's hatred of war.
+
+"Yes," said Tolstoy, kindly. "In case the whole civilised world waged
+war on the United States, I dare say you could still remain a tolerably
+prosperous people."
+
+"At any rate," said Jimmie, recovering himself, "it would be a good many
+years before we would be a hungry nation, and, in the meantime, we could
+practically starve out the enemy by cutting off their food supply, and
+disable their fleets and commerce for want of coal, so there is hardly
+any danger, from the prudent point of view, of the world combining
+against us."
+
+"If the diplomacy at Washington continues in its present trend, under
+your great President McKinley, your country will not allow herself to be
+dragged into the quarrels of Europe. We older nations might well learn
+a lesson from your present government."
+
+"Oh!" I cried, "how good of you to say that. It is the first time in all
+Europe that I have heard our government praised for its diplomacy, and
+coming from you, I am so grateful."
+
+Jimmie and the consul also beamed at Tolstoy's complimentary comment.
+
+"Now, about your men of letters?" said Tolstoy. "It is some time since I
+have had such direct news from America. What are the great names among
+you now?"
+
+At this juncture Countess Tolstoy drew nearer to Bee and Mrs. Jimmie,
+and our groups somewhat separated.
+
+"Our great names?" I repeated. "Either we have no great names now, or we
+are too close to them to realise how great they are. We seem to be
+between generations. We have lost our Lowell, and Longfellow, and Poe,
+and Hawthorne, and Emerson, and we have no others to take their places."
+
+"But a young school will spring up, some of whom may take their places,"
+said Tolstoy.
+
+"It has already sprung up," I said, "and is well on the way to manhood.
+One great drawback, however, I find in mentioning the names of all of
+them to a European, or even to an Englishman, is the fact that so many
+of our characteristic American authors write in a dialect which is all
+that we Americans can do to understand. For instance, take the negro
+stories, which to me are like my mother tongue, brought up as I was in
+the South. Thousands of Northern people who have never been South are
+unable to read it, and to them it holds no humour and no pathos. To the
+ordinary Englishman, it is like so much Greek, and to the continental
+English-speaking person it is like Sanskrit. In the same way the New
+England stories, which are written in Yankee dialect, cannot be
+understood by people in the South who have never been North. How then
+can we expect Europeans to manage them?"
+
+"How extraordinary," said Tolstoy. "And both are equally typical, I
+suppose?"
+
+"Equally so," I replied.
+
+"The reason she understands them both," broke in Jimmie, "is because her
+mother comes from the northernmost part of the northernmost State in
+the Union, and her father from a point almost equally in the South.
+There is but one State between his birthplace and the Gulf of Mexico."
+
+"About the same distance," said Tolstoy, "as if your mother came from
+Petersburg and your father from Odessa."
+
+"But there are others who write English which is not distorted in its
+spelling. James Lane Alien and Henry B. Fuller are particularly noted
+for their lucid English and literary style; Cable writes Creole stories
+of Louisiana; Mary Hartwell Catherwood, stories of French Canadians and
+the early French settlers in America; Bret Harte, stories of California
+mining camps; Mary Hallock Foote, civil engineering stories around the
+Rocky Mountains; Weir Mitchell, Quaker stories of Pennsylvania; and
+Charles Egbert Craddock lays her plots in the Tennessee mountains. Of
+all these authors, each has written at least two books along the lines I
+have indicated, and I mention them, thinking they would be particularly
+interesting to you as descriptive of portions of the United States."
+
+"All these," said Tolstoy, meditatively, "in one country."
+
+"Not only that," I said, "but no two alike, and most of them as widely
+different as if one wrote in French and the other in German."
+
+"A wonderful country," murmured Tolstoy again. "I have often thought of
+going there, but now I am too old."
+
+"There is no one in the world," I answered him, "in the realm of letters
+or social economics, whom the people of America would rather see than
+you."
+
+He bowed gracefully, and only answered again:
+
+"No, I am too old now. I wish I had gone there when I could. But tell
+me," he added, "have you no authors who write universally?"
+
+"Universally," I repeated. "That is a large word. Yes, we have Mark
+Twain. He is our most eminent literary figure at present."
+
+"Ah! Mark Twain," repeated Tolstoy. "I have heard of him."
+
+"Have you indeed? I thought no one was known in Europe, except Fenimore
+Cooper. He is supposed to have written universally of America, because
+he never wrote anything but Indian stories! In France, they know of Poe,
+and like him because they tell me that he was like themselves."
+
+"He was insane, was he not?" said Tolstoy, innocently.
+
+I bit my lip to keep from laughing, for Tolstoy had not perpetrated that
+as a jest.
+
+"But many of our most whimsical and most delicious authors could not be
+appreciated by Europe in general, because Europeans are all so ignorant
+of us. There is Frank Stockton, whose humour continentals would be sure
+to take seriously, and then Thomas Nelson Page writes most effectively
+when he uses negro dialect. His story 'Marse Chan,' which made him
+famous, I consider the best short story ever written in America.
+Hopkinson Smith, too, has written a book which deserves to live for
+ever, depicting as it does a phase of the reconstruction period, when
+Southern gentlemen of the old school came into contact with the Northern
+business methods. Books like these would seem trivial to a European,
+because they represent but a single step in our curious history."
+
+"I understand," said Tolstoy, sympathetically. "Of course it is
+difficult for us to realise that America is not one nation, but an
+amalgamation of all nations. To the casual thinker, America is an
+off-shoot of England."
+
+"Perfectly true," said Jimmie, "and that barring the fact that we speak
+a language which is, in some respects, similar to the English, no
+nations are more foreign to each other than the United States and
+England. It would be better for the English if they had a few more
+Bryces among them."
+
+"If it weren't for the dialects," said Tolstoy, "I think more Europeans
+would be interested in American literature."
+
+"That is true," I said, "and yet, without dialects, you wouldn't get the
+United States as it really is. There are heaps and heaps of Americans
+who won't read dialect themselves, but they miss a great deal. Take, for
+instance, James Whitcomb Riley, a poet who, to my mind, possesses
+absolute genius,--the genius of the commonplace. His best things are
+all in dialect, which a great many find difficult, and yet, when he
+gives public readings from his own poems, he draws audiences which test
+the capacity of the largest halls. I myself have seen him recalled
+nineteen times."
+
+"America and Russia are growing closer together every day," said
+Tolstoy. "Every year we use more of your American machinery; your plows,
+and threshers, and mowing-machines, and all agricultural implements are
+coming into use here. Every year some Americans settle in Russia from
+business interests, and we are rapidly becoming dependent on you for our
+coal. If you had a larger merchant marine, it would benefit our mutual
+interests wonderfully. Is your country as much interested in Russia as
+we are in you?"
+
+"Equally so," I said. "Russian literature is very well understood in
+America. We read all your books. We know Pushkin and Tourguenieff. Your
+Russian music is played by our orchestras, and your Russian painter,
+Verestchagin, exhibited his paintings in all the large cities, and made
+us familiar with his genius."
+
+"All art, all music has a moral effect upon the soul. Verestchagin
+paints war--hideous war! Moral questions should be talked about and
+discussed, and a remedy found for them. In America you will not discuss
+many questions. Even in the translations of my books, parts which seem
+important to me are left out. Why is that? It limits you, does it not?"
+
+"I suppose the demand creates the supply," I ventured. "We may be
+prudish, but as yet the moral questions you speak of have not such a
+hold on our young republic that they need drastic measures. When we
+become more civilised, and society more cancerous, doubtless the public
+mind will permit these questions to be discussed."
+
+"The time for repentance is in advance of the crime," said Tolstoy.
+
+"American prudery is narrowing in its effect on our art," I ventured,
+timidly.
+
+"Is that the reason for many of your artists and authors living abroad?"
+
+"It may be. We certainly are not encouraged in America to depict life as
+it is. That is one reason I think why foreign authors sell their books
+by the thousands in America, and by the hundreds in their own country."
+
+"Then the taste is there, is it?" asked Tolstoy.
+
+"The common sense is there," I said, bluntly,--"the common sense to know
+that our authors are limited to depicting a phase instead of the whole
+life, and then, if you are going to get the whole life, you must read
+foreign authors. It's just as if a sculptor should confine himself to
+shaping fingers, and toes, and noses, and ears because the public
+refuses to take a finished study."
+
+"But why, why is it?" said Tolstoy, with a touch of impatience. "If you
+will read the whole thing when written by foreign authors, why do you
+not encourage your own?"
+
+"I am sure I don't know," I said, "unless it is on the simple principle
+that many men enjoy the ballet scene in opera, while they would not
+permit their wives and daughters to take part in it."
+
+"America is the protector of the family," said Jimmie, regarding me
+with a hostile eye.
+
+Tolstoy tactfully changed the subject out of deference to Jimmie's
+displeasure.
+
+"Do many Russians visit America?" asked Tolstoy.
+
+"Oh, yes, quite a number, and they are among our most agreeable
+visitors. Prince Serge Wolkonsky travelled so much and made so many
+addresses that he made Russia more popular than ever."
+
+"Do you know how popular you are in America?" said Jimmie, blushing at
+his own temerity.
+
+"I know how many of my books are sold there, and I get many kind letters
+from Americans."
+
+"Isn't he considered the greatest living man of letters in America?"
+said Jimmie, appealingly to me boyishly.
+
+"Undoubtedly," I replied, smiling, because Tolstoy smiled.
+
+"Whom do you consider the greatest living author?" asked Jimmie.
+
+"Mrs. Humphrey Ward," said Tolstoy, decisively.
+
+This was a thunderbolt which stopped the conversation of the other
+members of the party.
+
+"And one of your greatest Americans," went on Tolstoy, "was Henry
+George."
+
+"From a literary point of view, or--"
+
+"From the point of view of humanity and of the Christian."
+
+Jimmie and I leaned back involuntarily. Judged by these standards, we
+were none of us either Christians or human, in our party at least.
+
+The Countess Tolstoy, who seemed to be in not the slightest awe of her
+illustrious husband, having become somewhat impatient during this
+conversation, now turned to me and said:
+
+"It has been so interesting to talk with your sister and Mrs. Jimmie
+about Paris fashions. We see so little here that is not second hand, and
+your journey is so fascinating. It seems incredible that you can be
+travelling simply for pleasure and over such a number of countries!
+Where do you go next?"
+
+"We have come from everywhere," I said, laughing, "and we are going
+anywhere."
+
+The countess clasped her hands and said:
+
+"How I envy you, but doesn't it cost you a great deal of money?"
+
+"I suppose it does," I said, regretfully. "I am going to travel as long
+as my money holds out, but the rest are not so hampered."
+
+"Alas, if I could only go with you," said the countess, "but we are
+under such heavy expense now. It used to be easier when we had three or
+four children nearer of an age who could be educated together. Then it
+cost less. But now this boy, my youngest, necessitates different tutors
+for everything, and it costs as much to educate this last one of
+thirteen as it did any four of the others."
+
+"But then you educate so thoroughly," I said. "Russians always speak
+five or six, sometimes ten languages, including dialects. With us our
+wealthy people generally send their children to a good private school
+and afterward prepare them by tutor for college. Then the richest send
+them for a trip around the world, or perhaps a year abroad, and that
+ends it. But the ordinary American has only a public school education.
+Americans are not linguists naturally."
+
+"Ah! but here we are obliged to be linguists, because, if we travel at
+all, we must speak other languages, and, if we entertain at all, we meet
+people who cannot speak ours, which is very difficult to learn. But
+languages are easy."
+
+"Oh! _are_ they?" said Jimmie, involuntarily, and everybody laughed.
+
+"Jimmie's languages are unique," said Bee.
+
+"Are you going to Italy?" said the countess.
+
+"Yes, we hope to spend next spring in Italy, beginning with Sicily and
+working slowly northward."
+
+"How delightful! How charming!" cried the countess. "How I wish, how I
+_wish_ I could go with you."
+
+"Go with us?" I cried in delight. "Could you manage it? We should be so
+flattered to have your company."
+
+"Oh, if I could! I shall ask. It will do no harm to ask."
+
+We had all stood up to go and had begun to shake hands when she cried
+across to her husband:
+
+"Leo, Leo, may I go--"
+
+Then seeing she had not engaged her husband's attention, who was
+talking to Jimmie about single tax, she went over and pulled his sleeve.
+
+"Leo, may I go with them to Italy in the spring? Please, dear Leo, say
+yes."
+
+He shook his head gravely, and the little countess smiled at her
+mother's enthusiasm.
+
+"It would cost too much," said Tolstoy, "besides, I cannot spare you. I
+need you."
+
+"You need me!" cried the countess in gay derision. Then pleadingly, "Do
+let me go."
+
+"I cannot," said Tolstoy, turning to Jimmie again.
+
+The countess came back to us with a face full of disappointment.
+
+"He doesn't need me at all," she whispered. "I'd go anyway if I had the
+money."
+
+As I said before, Russia and America are very much alike.
+
+As we left the house my mind recurred to Max Nordau, whose personality
+and methods I have so imperfectly presented. The contrast to Tolstoy
+would intrude itself. In all the conversations I ever had with Max
+Nordau, he spent most of the time in trying to be a help and a benefit
+to me. The physician in him was always at the front. His aim was
+healing, and I only regret that their intimate personality prevents me
+from relating them word for word, as they would interest and benefit
+others quite as much as they did me.
+
+The difference between these two great leaders of thought--these two
+great reformers, Nordau and Tolstoy--is the theme of many learned
+discussions, and admits many different points of view.
+
+To me they present this aspect: Tolstoy, like Goethe, is an interesting
+combination of genius and hypocrisy. He preaches unselfishness, while
+himself the embodiment of self. Max Nordau is his antithesis. Nordau
+gives with generous enthusiasm--of his time, his learning, his genius,
+most of all, of himself. Tolstoy fastens himself upon each newcomer
+politely, like a courteous leech, sucks him dry, and then writes.
+
+Max Nordau, like Shakespeare, absorbs humanity as a whole. Tolstoy
+considers the Bible the most dramatic work ever written, and turns this
+knowledge of the world's demand for religion to theatrical account.
+Tolstoy is outwardly a Christian, Nordau outwardly a pagan. Tolstoy
+openly acknowledges God, but exemplifies the ideas of man, while Max
+Nordau's private life embodies the noble teachings of the Christ whom he
+denies.
+
+It was not until months afterward, we were back in London in fact, when
+Jimmie's opinion of Tolstoy seemed to have crystallised. He came to me
+one morning and said:
+
+"I've read everything, since we left Moscow, that Tolstoy has written.
+Now you know I don't pretend to know anything about literary style and
+all that rot that you're so keen about, but I do know something about
+human nature, and I do know a grand-stand play when I see one. Now
+Tolstoy is a genius, there's no gainsaying that, but it's all covered up
+and smothered in that religious rubbish that he has caught the ear of
+the world with. If you want to be admired while you are alive, write a
+religious novel and let the hoi polloi snivel over you and give you gold
+dollars while you can enjoy 'em and spend 'em. That's where Tolstoy is a
+fox. So is Mrs. Humphrey Ward. She's a fox, too. They are getting all
+the fun _now_. But it's all gallery play with both of 'em."
+
+I said nothing, and he smoked in silence for a moment. Then he added:
+
+"But I _say_, what a ripper Tolstoy could write if he'd just cut loose
+from religion for a minute and write a novel that didn't have any damned
+_purpose_ in it!"
+
+Verily, Jimmie is no fool.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+SHOPPING EXPERIENCES
+
+In going to Europe timid persons often cover their real design by
+claiming the intention of taking German baths, of "doing" Switzerland,
+or of learning languages. But everybody knows that the real reason why
+most women go abroad is to shop. What cathedral can bring such a look of
+rapture to a woman's face as New Bond Street or what scenery such
+ecstasy as the Rue de la Paix?
+
+Therefore, as I believe my lot in shopping to be the common lot of all,
+let me tell my tale, so that to all who have suffered the same agonies
+and delights this may come as a personal reminiscence of their own,
+while to you who have Europe yet to view for that blissful first time,
+which is the best of all, this is what you will go through.
+
+When I first went to Europe I had all of the average American woman's
+timidity about asserting herself in the face of a shopgirl or salesman.
+Many years of shopping in America had thoroughly broken a spirit which
+was once proud. I therefore suffered unnecessary annoyance during my
+first shopping in London, because I was overwhelmingly polite and
+affable to the man behind the counter. I said "please," and "If you
+don't mind," and "I would like to see," instead of using the martial
+command of the ordinary Englishwoman, who marches up to the show-case in
+flat-heeled boots and says in a tone of an officer ordering "Shoulder
+arms," "Show me your gauze fans!" I used to listen to them standing next
+me at a counter, momentarily expecting to see them knocked down by the
+indignant salesman and carried to a hospital in an ambulance.
+
+My own tones were so conversational when I said, "Will you please show
+me your black satin ribbon?" that, while I did not say it, my voice
+implied such questions as "How are your father and mother?" and "I hope
+the baby is better?" and "Doesn't that draught there on your back annoy
+you?" and "Don't you get very tired standing up all day?"
+
+It was Bee, as usual, who gave me my first lesson in the insolent
+bearing which alone obtains the best results from the average British
+shopman.
+
+Still without having thoroughly asserted myself, not having been to that
+particular manner born, I went next to Paris, where my politeness met
+with the just reward which virtue is always supposed to get and seldom
+does.
+
+I consider shopping in Paris one of the greatest pleasures to be found
+in this vale of tears. The shops, with the exception of the Louvre, the
+Bon Marché, and one or two of the large department stores of similar
+scope, are all small--tiny, in fact, and exploit but one or two things.
+A little shop for fans will be next to a milliner who makes a specialty
+of nothing but gauze theatre bonnets. Perhaps next will come a linen
+store, where the windows will have nothing but the most fascinating
+embroidery, handkerchiefs, and neckware. Then comes the man who sells
+belts of every description, and parasol handles. Perhaps your next
+window will have such a display of diamond necklaces as would justify
+you in supposing that his stock would make Tiffany choke with envy, but
+if you enter, you will find yourself in an aperture in the wall, holding
+an iron safe, a two-by-four show-case, and three chairs, and you will
+find that everything of value he has, except the clothes he wears, are
+all in his window.
+
+As long as these shops are all crowded together and so small, to shop in
+Paris is really much more convenient than in one of our large department
+stores at home, with the additional delight of having smiling interested
+service. The proprietor himself enters into your wants, and uses all his
+quickness and intelligence to supply your demands. He may be, very
+likely he is, doubling the price on you, because you are an American,
+but, if your bruised spirit is like mine, you will be perfectly willing
+to pay a little extra for politeness.
+
+It is a truth that I have brought home with me no article from Paris
+which does not carry with it pleasant recollections of the way I bought
+it. Can any woman who has shopped only in America bring forward a
+similar statement?
+
+All this changes, however, when once you get into the clutches of the
+average French dressmaker. By his side, Barabbas would appear a
+gentleman of exceptional honesty. I have often, in idle moments,
+imagined myself a cannibal, and, in preparing my daily menu, my first
+dish would be a fricassee of French dressmakers. Perhaps in that I am
+unjust. In thinking it over, I will amend it by saying a fricassee of
+_all_ dressmakers. It would be unfair to limit it to the French.
+
+There is one thing particularly noticeable about the charm which French
+shop-windows in one of the smart streets like the rue de la Paix
+exercises upon the American woman, and that is that it very soon wears
+off, and she sees that most of the things exploited are beyond her
+means, or are totally unsuited to her needs. I defy any woman to walk
+down one of these brilliant shop-lined streets of Paris for the first
+time, and not want to buy every individual thing she sees, and she will
+want to do it a second time and a third time, and, if she goes away from
+Paris and stays two months, the first time she sees these things on her
+return all the old fascination is there. To overcome it, to stamp it out
+of the system, she must stay long enough in Paris to live it down, for,
+if she buys rashly while under the influence of this first glamour, she
+is sure to regret it.
+
+Dresden and Berlin differ materially from Paris in this respect. Their
+shop-windows exploit things less expensive, more suitable to your
+every-day needs, and equally unattainable at home. So that if you have
+gained some experience by your mistakes in Paris, your outlay in these
+German cities will be much more rational.
+
+Leather goods in Germany are simply distracting. There are shops in
+Dresden where no woman who appreciates bags, satchels, card-cases,
+photograph-frames, book-covers, and purses could refrain from buying
+without disastrous results. I remember my first pilgrimage through the
+streets of Dresden. Between the porcelains and toilet sets, the
+Madonnas, the belts, and card-cases, I nearly lost my mind. The modest
+prices of the coveted articles were each time a separate shock of joy.
+If these sturdy Germans had wished to take advantage of my indiscreet
+expressions of surprise and delight, they might easily have raised their
+prices without our ever having discovered it. But day after day we
+returned, not only to find that the prices remained the same, but that,
+in many instances, if we bought several articles, they voluntarily took
+off a mark or two on account of the generosity of our purchases.
+
+Dresden is a city where works of art are most cunningly copied. You can
+order, if you like, copies of any but the most intricate of the
+treasures of the Green Vaults, and you will not be disappointed with the
+results. You can order copies of any of the most famous pictures in the
+Dresden galleries, and have them executed with like exquisite skill. Nor
+is there any city in all Europe where it is so satisfactory to buy a
+souvenir of a town, which you will not want to throw away when you get
+home and try to find a place for it. Because souvenirs of Dresden appeal
+to your love of art and the highest in your nature. Leather you will
+find elsewhere, but the Dresden works of art are peculiarly its own.
+
+In Austria manners differ considerably both from those of Paris and
+upper Germany. I should say they were a cross between the two. We
+shopped in Ischl, which has shops quite out of proportion to its size on
+account of being the summer home of the Emperor, and there we met with a
+politeness which was delightful.
+
+In Vienna we had occasion to accompany Jimmie and "Little Papa" on
+business expeditions which led him into the wholesale district. There it
+was universal for all the clerks to be seated at their work,
+particularly in the jeweller's shops. At our entrance, every man and
+woman there, from the proprietor to the errand boys, rose to their feet,
+bowed, and said "Good day."
+
+When we finished our purchases, or even if we only looked and came away
+without buying, this was all repeated, which sometimes gave me the
+sensation of having been to a court function.
+
+Vienna fashions are very elegant. Being the seat of the court, there is
+a great deal of dress. There is wealth, and the shops are magnificent.
+Personally, I much prefer the fashions of Vienna to those of Paris.
+Prices are perhaps a little more moderate, but the truly Paris creation
+generally has the effect of making one think it would be beautiful on
+somebody else. I can go to Worth, Felix, and Doucet, and half a dozen
+others equally as smart, and not see ten models that I would like to
+own. In Vienna there were Paris clothes, of course, but the Viennese
+have modified them, producing somewhat the same effect as American
+influence on Paris fashions. To my mind they are more elegant, having
+more of reserve and dignity in their style, and a distinct morality.
+Paris clothes generally look immoral when you buy them, and feel immoral
+when you get them on. There is a distinct spiritual atmosphere about
+clothes. In Vienna this was very noticeable. I speak more of clothes in
+Paris and Vienna, as there are only four cities in the world where one
+would naturally buy clothes,--Paris, Vienna, London, and New York. In
+other cities you buy other things, articles perhaps distinctive of the
+country.
+
+When you get to St. Petersburg, in your shopping experiences, you will
+find a mixture of Teuton and Slav which is very perplexing. We were
+particularly anxious to get some good specimens of Russian enamel, which
+naturally one supposes to be more inexpensive in the country which
+creates them, but to our distress we discovered Avenue de l'Opera prices
+on everything we wished. Each time that we went back the price was
+different. The market seemed to fluctuate. One blue enamelled belt, upon
+which I had set my heart, varied in price from one to three dollars each
+time I looked at it. Finally, one day I hit upon a plan. I asked my
+friend, Mile, de Falk, to follow me into this shop and not speak to me,
+but to notice the particular belt I held in my hand. I then went out
+without purchasing, and the next day my friend sent her sister, who
+speaks nothing but Russian and French, to this shop. She purchased the
+belt for ten dollars less than it had been offered to me. She ordered a
+different lining made for it, and the shopkeeper said in guileless
+Russian, "How strange it is that ladies all over the world are alike.
+For a week two American young ladies have been in here looking at this
+belt, and by a strange coincidence they also wished this same lining."
+
+For once I flatter myself that I "did" a Russian Jew, but his
+companions in crime have so thoroughly "done" me in other corners of the
+world that I need not plume myself unnecessarily. He is more than even
+with me.
+
+All through Russia we contented ourselves with buying Russian
+engravings, which are among the finest in the world. Perhaps some of
+their charm is in the subject portrayed, which, being unfamiliar,
+arouses curiosity. Russian operas, paintings, theatricals, the national
+ballet, the interior of churches and mosques are different from those of
+every other country. There is in the churches such a strange admixture
+of the spiritual and the theatrical. So that the engravings of these
+things have for me at least more interest than anything else.
+
+Occasionally we were betrayed into buying a peasant's costume, an ikon,
+or an enamel, but in Moscow and Kief, the only way that we could
+reproduce to our friends at home the glories and splendours of these two
+beautiful cities was by photographs, in which the brilliancy of their
+colours brings back the sensations of delight which we experienced.
+
+Shopping in Constantinople is not shopping as we Americans understand
+it, unless you happen to be an Indian trader by profession. I am not.
+Therefore, the system of bargaining, of going away from a bazaar and
+pretending you never intended buying, never wanted it anyhow, of coming
+back to sit down and take a cup of coffee, was like acting in private
+theatricals. By nature I am not a diplomat, but if I had stayed longer
+in the Orient, I think I would have learned to be as tricky as Chinese
+diplomacy.
+
+We were given, by several of our Turkish friends, two or three rules
+which should govern conduct when shopping in the Orient. One is to look
+bored; the second, never to show interest in what pleases you; the
+third, never to let your robber salesman have an idea of what you really
+intend to buy. This comes hard at first, but after you have once learned
+it, to go shopping is one of the most exciting experiences that I can
+remember. I have always thought that burglary must be an exhilarating
+profession, second only to that of the detective who traps him. In
+shopping in the Orient, the bazaars are dens of thieves, and you, the
+purchaser, are the detective. We found in Constantinople little
+opportunity to exercise our new-found knowledge, because we were
+accompanied by our Turkish friends, who saw to it that we made no
+indiscreet purchases. On several occasions they made us send things back
+because we had been overcharged, and they found us better articles at
+less price. Of course we bought a fez, embroidered capes, bolero
+jackets, embroidered curtains, and rugs, but we, ourselves, were waiting
+to get to Smyrna for the real purchase of rugs, and it was there that I
+personally first brought into play the guile that I had learned of the
+Turks.
+
+I remember Smyrna with particular delight. The quay curves in like a
+giant horseshoe of white cement. The piers jut out into the sapphire
+blue of this artificial bay, and are surrounded by myriads of tiny
+rowing shells, in which you must trust yourself to get to land, as your
+big ship anchors a mile or more from shore.
+
+It was the brightest, most brilliant Mediterranean sunshine which
+irradiated the scene the morning on which we arrived at Smyrna. A score
+of gaily clad boatmen, whose very patches on their trousers were as
+picturesque as the patches on Italian sails, held out their hands to
+enable us to step from one cockle-shell to another, to reach the pier.
+In the way the boats touch each other in the harbour at Smyrna, I was
+reminded of the Thames in Henley week. We climbed through perhaps a
+dozen of these boats before we landed on the pier, and in three minutes'
+walk we were in the rug bazaars of Smyrna. Such treasures as we saw!
+
+We were received by the smiling merchants as if we were long-lost
+daughters suddenly restored, but we practised our newly acquired
+diplomacy on them to such an extent that their faces soon began to
+betray the most comic astonishment. These people are like children, and
+exhibit their emotions in a manner which seems almost infantile to the
+Caucasian. Alas, we were not the prey they had hoped for. We sneered at
+their rugs; we laughed at their embroideries; we turned up our noses at
+their jewelled weapons; we drank their coffee, and walked out of their
+shops without buying. They followed us into the street, and there
+implored us to come back, but we pretended to be returning to our ship.
+On our way back through this same street, every proprietor was out in
+front of his shop, holding up some special rug or embroidery which he
+had hastily dug out of his secret treasures in the vain hope of
+compelling our respect. Some of these were Persian silk rugs worth from
+one to three thousand dollars each. Although we would have committed any
+crime in order to possess these treasures, having got thoroughly into
+the spirit of the thing, we turned these rugs on their backs and
+pretended to find flaws in them, jeered at their colouring, and went on
+our way, followed by a jabbering, excited, perplexed, and nettled horde,
+who recklessly slaughtered their prices and almost tore up their mud
+floors in their wild anxiety to prove that they had
+something--anything--which we would buy. They called upon Allah to
+witness that they never had been treated so in their lives, but would we
+not stop just once more again to cast our eyes on their unworthy stock?
+
+Having had all the amusement we wanted, and it being nearly time for
+luncheon, we went in, and in half an hour we had bought all that we had
+intended to buy from the first moment our eyes were cast upon them, and
+at about one-half the price they were offered to us three hours before.
+Now, if that isn't what you call enjoying yourself, I should like to ask
+what you expect.
+
+Ephesus, the graves of the Seven Sleepers, the tomb of St. Luke, the
+ruins of the Temple of Diana ("Great is Diana of the Ephesians"), the
+prison of St. Paul, are only a part of my vivid experiences in Smyrna.
+
+In Athens we bought nothing modern, but found several antique shops with
+Byzantine treasures, also silver ornaments, ancient curios, more
+beautiful than anything we found in Italy, and ancient sacred brass
+candlesticks of the Greek Church, which bore the test of being
+transplanted to an American setting.
+
+In truth, some of my richest experiences have been in exploring with
+Jimmie tiny second-hand shops, pawn-shops, and dark, almost squalid
+corners, where, amid piles of rubbish, we found some really exquisite
+treasures. Mrs. Jimmie and Bee would have been afraid they would catch
+leprosy if they had gone with us on some of our expeditions, but Jimmie
+and I trusted in that Providence which always watches over children and
+fools, and even in England we found bits of old silver, china, and
+porcelain which amply repaid us for all the risk we ran. We often
+encountered shopkeepers who spoke a language utterly unknown to us and
+who understood not one word of English, and with whom we communicated by
+writing down the figures on paper which we would pay, or showing them
+the money in our hands. Perhaps we were cheated now and then--in fact,
+in our secret hearts we are guiltily sure of it, but what difference
+does that make?
+
+When you get to Cairo, it being the jumping-off place, you naturally
+expect the most curious admixture of stuffs for sale that your mind can
+imagine, but, after having passed through the first stages of
+bewilderment, you soon see that there are only a few things that you
+really care for. For instance, you can't resist the turquoises. If you
+go home from Egypt without buying any you will be sorry all the rest of
+your lives. Nor ought you to hold yourself back from your natural
+leaning toward crude ostrich feathers from the ostrich farms, and to
+bottle up your emotion at seeing uncut amber in pieces the size of a
+lump of chalk is to render yourself explosive and dangerous to your
+friends. Shirt studs, long chains for your vinaigrette or your fan, cuff
+buttons, antique belts of curious stones (generally clumsy and
+unbecoming to the waist, but not to be withstood), carved ostrich eggs,
+jewelled fly-brushes, carved brass coffee-pots and finger bowls, cigar
+sets of brilliant but rude enamel, to say nothing of the rugs and
+embroideries, are some of the things which I defy you to refrain from
+buying. To be sure, there are thousands of other attractions, which, if
+you are strong-minded, you can leave alone, but these things I have
+enumerated you will find that you cannot live without. Of course, I mean
+by this that these things are within reach of your purse, and cheaper
+than you can get them anywhere else, unless perhaps you go into the
+adjacent countries from which they come.
+
+As you go up the Nile, your shopping becomes more primitive. On the mud
+banks, at the stations at which your boat stops, Arabians, Nubians, and
+Egyptians sit squatting on the caked mud with their gaudy clothes,
+brilliant embroideries, and rugs piled around them all within arm's
+reach. Here also you must bring the guile which I have described into
+play.
+
+It may be that at Assuan, near the first cataract, I really got into
+some little danger. I never knew why, but in the bazaars there I
+developed an awful, insatiable desire to make a complete collection of
+Abyssinian weapons of warfare. For this purpose, one day, I got on my
+donkey and took with me only a little Scotchman, who had presented me
+with countless bead necklaces and so many baskets all the way up the
+Nile that at night I was obliged to put them overboard in order to get
+into my stateroom, and who wore, besides his goggles, a green veil over
+his face. We made our way across the sand, into which our donkeys' feet
+sank above their fetlocks, to the bazaars of Assuan.
+
+These bazaars deserve more than a passing mention, as they are unlike
+any that I ever saw. They are all under one roof on both sides of tiny
+streets or broad aisles, just as you choose to call them, and through
+these aisles your donkey is privileged to go, while you sit calmly on
+his back, bargaining with the cross-legged merchants, who scream at you
+as you pass, thrusting their wares into your face, and, even if you
+attempt to pass on, they stop your donkey by pulling his tail. On this
+particular day I left my donkey at the door and made my way on foot, as
+I was eager to make my purchases.
+
+Perhaps I was careless and ought to have taken better care of my
+Scotchman, because he was so little and so far from home, but I regret
+to say that I lost him soon after I went into the bazaar, and I didn't
+see him again for three hours. Never shall I forget those three hours.
+
+In Smyrna, Turkey, and Egypt the bargaining language is about the same.
+
+"What you give, lady?"
+
+"I won't give anything! I don't want it! What! Do you think I would
+carry that back home?"
+
+"But you take hold of him; you feel him silk; I think you want to buy.
+Ver' cheap, only four pound!"
+
+"Four pounds!" I say in French. "Oh, you don't want to sell. You want to
+keep it. And at such a price you will keep it."
+
+"Keep it!" in a shrill scream. "Not want to sell? Me? I _here_ to sell!
+I sell you everything you see! I sell you the _shop_!" and then more
+wheedlingly, "You give me forty francs?"
+
+"No," in English again. "I'll give you two dollars."
+
+"America! Liberty!" he cries, having cunningly established my
+nationality, and flattering my country with Oriental guile.
+
+"Exactly," I say, "liberty for such as you if you go there. None for me.
+Liberty in America is only free to the lower classes. The others are
+obliged to _buy_ theirs."
+
+He shakes his head uncomprehendingly. "How much you give for him? Last
+price now! Six dollars!"
+
+We haggle over "last prices" for a quarter of an hour more, and after
+two cups of coffee, amiably taken together, and some general
+conversation, I buy the thing for three dollars.
+
+Bee says my tastes are low, but at any rate I can truthfully say that I
+get on uncommonly well with the common herd. I got about thirty of these
+jargon-speaking merchants so excited with my spirited method of not
+buying what they wanted me to that a large Englishman and a tall, gaunt
+Australian, thinking there was a fight going on, came to where I sat
+drinking coffee, and found that the screams, gesticulations, appeals to
+Allah, smiting of foreheads, brandishing of fists, and the general
+uproar were all caused by a quiet and well-behaved American girl sitting
+in their midst, while no less than four of them held a fold of her
+skirt, twitching it now and then to call attention to their particular
+howl of resentment. They rescued me, loaded my purchases on my donkey
+boy, and found my donkey for me, beside which, sitting patiently on the
+ground and humbly waiting my return, I found my little Scotchman.
+
+With all this cumulative experience, as Jimmie says, "of how to
+misbehave in shops," we got back to London, where I could bring it into
+play, and in a manner avenge myself for past slights.
+
+I was so grateful to Jimmie for the King Arthur that he gave me at
+Innsbruck that I decided to surprise him by something really handsome on
+his birthday.
+
+When we got to Paris, there seemed to be an epidemic of gun-metal
+ornaments set with tiny pearls, diamonds, or sapphires. Of these I
+noticed that Jimmie admired the pearl-studded cigar-cases and
+match-safes most, but for some reason I waited to make my purchase in
+London, which was one of the most foolish things I ever have done in all
+my foolish career, and right here let me say that there is nothing so
+unsatisfactory as to postpone a purchase, thinking either that you will
+come back to the same place or that you will see better further along,
+for in nine cases out of ten you never see it again.
+
+When we got to London, Bee and I put on our best street clothes and
+started out to buy Jimmie his birthday present. We searched everywhere,
+but found that all gun-metal articles in London were either plain or
+studded with diamonds. We couldn't find a pearl. Finally in one shop I
+explained my search to a tall, heavy man, evidently the proprietor, who
+had small green eyes set quite closely together, a florid complexion,
+and hay-coloured side-whiskers. His whiskers irritated me quite as much
+as the fact that he hadn't what I wanted. Perhaps my hat vexed him, but
+at any rate he looked as though he were glad he didn't have the pearls,
+and he finally permitted his annoyance, or his general British rudeness,
+to voice itself in this way:
+
+"Pardon me, madame," he said, "but you will never find cigar-cases of
+gun-metal studded with pearls, no matter how much you may desire it, for
+it is not good taste."
+
+I was warm, irritated, and my dress was too tight in the belt, so I just
+leaned my two elbows on that show-case, and I said to him:
+
+"Do you mean to have the impertinence, my good man, to tell two American
+ladies that what they are looking for is not in good taste, simply
+because you are so stupid and insular as not to keep it in stock? Do you
+presume to express your opinion on taste when you are wearing a green
+satin necktie with a pink shirt? If you had ever been off this little
+island, and had gone to a land where taste in dress, and particularly in
+jewels, is understood, you would realise the impertinence of criticising
+the taste of an American woman, who is trying to find something worth
+while buying in so hopelessly British a shop as this. Now, my good man,"
+I added, taking up my parasol and purse, "I shall not report your
+rudeness to the proprietor, because doubtless you have a family to
+support, and I don't wish to make you lose your place, but let this be a
+warning to you never to be so insolent again," and with that, I simply
+swept out of his shop. I seldom sweep out. Bee says I generally crawl
+out, but this time I was so inflated with an unholy joy that I
+recklessly cabled to Paris for Jimmie's pearls, and to this day I
+rejoice at the way that man covered his green satin tie with his large
+hairy red hand, and at the ecstatic smiles on the faces of two clerks
+standing near, for I _knew_ he was the proprietor when I called him "My
+good man."
+
+If you want to open an account in London, you have to be vouched for by
+another commercial house. They won't take your personal friends, no
+matter how wealthy, no matter if they are titled. Your bank's opinion of
+you is no good. Neither does it avail you how well and favourably you
+are known at your hotel for paying your bill promptly. This, and the
+custom in several large department stores of never returning your money
+if you take back goods, but making you spend it, not in the store, but
+in the department in which you have bought, makes shopping for dry goods
+excessively annoying to Americans.
+
+I took back two silk blouses out of five that I bought at a large shop
+in Regent Street much frequented by Americans, which carries on a store
+near by under the same name, exclusively for mourning goods. To my
+astonishment, I discovered that I must buy three more blouses, or else
+lose all the money I paid for them. In my thirst for information, I
+asked the reason for this. In America, a lady would consider the reason
+they gave an insult. The shopwoman told me that ladies' maids are so
+expert at copying that many ladies have six or eight garments sent home,
+kept a few days, copied by their maids and returned, and that this
+became so much the custom that they were finally forced to make that
+obnoxious rule.
+
+I have heard complaints made in America by proprietors of large
+importing houses that women who keep accounts frequently order a
+handsome gown, wrap, or hat sent home on approval, wear it, and return
+it the next day. If this is the custom among decent self-respecting
+American women, who masquerade in society in the guise of women of
+refinement and culture, no wonder that shopkeepers are obliged to
+protect themselves. There is nowhere that the saying, "the innocent must
+suffer with the guilty," obtains with so much force as in shopping,
+particularly in London.
+
+It is a characteristic difference between the clever American and the
+insular British shopkeeper that in America, when a thing such as I have
+mentioned is suspected, the saleswoman or a private detective is sent to
+shadow the suspect, and ascertain if she really wore the garment in
+question. In such cases, the garment is returned to her with a note,
+saying that she was seen wearing it, when it is generally paid for
+without a word. If not, the shop is in danger of losing one otherwise
+valuable customer, as she is placed on what is known as the "blacklist,"
+which means that a double scrutiny is placed on all her purchases, as
+she is suspected of trickery.
+
+In this same shop in Regent Street, of which I have been speaking, we
+submitted to several petty annoyances of this description without
+complaint, the last and pettiest of which was when Mrs. Jimmie, being
+captivated by an exquisite hundred-guinea gown of pale gray, embroidered
+in pink silk roses, and veiled with black Chantilly lace, bought it and
+ordered it altered to her figure. For this they charged her two pounds
+ten in addition to that frightful price for about an hour's work about
+the collar. Mrs. Jimmie seldom resents anything, and in her gentleness
+is easily governed, so this time I persuaded her to protest, and
+dictated a furious letter of remonstrance to the proprietor, citing only
+this one case of extortion. Jimmie sat by, smoking and encouraging me,
+as I paced up and down the room with my hands behind my back, giving
+vent to sentences which, when copied down in Mrs. Jimmie's ladylike
+handwriting, made Jimmie scream with joy. I think Mrs. Jimmie never had
+any intention of sending the letter, having written it down as a
+safety-valve for my rather explosive nature, but Jimmie was so carried
+away by the artistic incongruities of the situation that he whipped a
+stamp on it and mailed it before his wife could wink.
+
+To his delight, Mrs. Jimmie received, three days later, a letter from
+the astonished proprietor, which showed in every line of it the jolt
+that my letter must have been to his stolid British nerveless system. He
+began by thanking her for having reported the matter to him, apologised
+humbly, as a British tradesman always does apologise to the bloated
+power of wealth, and said that her letter had been sent to all the
+various heads of departments for their perusal. He declared that for
+five years he had been endeavouring to bring the directors to see that,
+if they were to possess the coveted American patronage for which they
+always strove, they must accommodate themselves to certain American
+prejudices, one of which was the unalterable distaste Americans
+displayed in paying for refitting handsome gowns. He was delighted to
+say that her letter had been couched in such firm, decisive, and
+righteously indignant language, such as he himself never would have been
+capable of commanding, had carried such weight, and had been productive
+of such definite results with the directors that he was pleased to
+announce that henceforward a radical change would appear in the
+government of their house, and that never again would an extra charge be
+made for refitting any garment costing over ten pounds. He thanked her
+again for her letter, but could not resist saying at the close that it
+was the most astonishing letter he had ever received in his life, and he
+begged to enclose the two pounds ten overcharge.
+
+Jimmie fairly howled for joy as he read this letter aloud; Bee looked
+very much mortified; Mrs. Jimmie exceedingly perplexed, as if uncertain
+what to think, but I confess that all my irritation against British
+shopkeepers fell away from me as a cast-off garment. I blush to say that
+I shared Jimmie's delight, and when he solemnly made me a present of the
+two pounds ten I had so heroically earned, I soothed my ladylike
+sister's refined resentment by inviting all three to have broiled
+lobster with me at Scott's.
+
+I imagine, however, that one woman's experience with dressmakers is like
+all others. I have noticed that to introduce the subject of my personal
+woes in the matter is to make the conversation general, in fact I might
+say composite, no matter how formal the gathering of women. Like the
+subject of servants, it is as provocative of conversation as classical
+music.
+
+Far be it from me, however, to class all shopping in London under the
+head of dry goods, or the rage one gets into with every dressmaker. In
+most of the shops, in fact, I may say, in all of them (for the one
+unfortunate experience I have related in the jeweller's shop was the
+only one of the kind I ever had in London), the clerks are universally
+polite, interested, and obliging, no matter how smart the shop may be.
+Take for instance, Jay's, or Lewis and Allenby's. The instant you stop
+before the smallest object a saleswoman approaches and says, "Good
+morning." You say, "What a very pretty parasol!" and she replies, "It
+_is_ pretty, isn't it, modom?" She wears a skin-tight black cashmere
+gown with a little tail to it. Her beautiful broad shoulders, flat back,
+tiny waist, bun at the back of her head, and the invisible net over the
+fringe, all proclaim her to be an Englishwoman, but her pronunciation of
+the simplest words, and the way her voice goes up and down two or three
+times in a single sentence, sometimes twice in a single word, might
+sometimes lead you to think she spoke a foreign tongue.
+
+The English call all our voices monotonous, but it was several weeks
+after I reached London for the first time before I could catch the
+significance of a sentence the first time it was pronounced. All over
+Europe our watchword with the Russians, Turks, Egyptians, Arabs, French,
+Germans, and Italians was always "Do you speak English?" and in London
+it is Jimmie's crowning act of revenge to ask the railway guards and
+cab-drivers the same insulting question. Imagine asking London cabbies
+the question, "Do you speak English?" It puts him in a purple rage
+directly.
+
+But shopkeepers all over Europe are quick to anticipate all your wants,
+to suggest tempting things which have not occurred to you to buy, and
+to offer to have things made, if nothing in stock suits you. I suppose I
+am naturally slow and stupid. Bee says I am, but having been brought up
+in America, in the South, where nothing is ever made, and where we had
+to send to New York for everything, and where even New York has to
+depend on Europe for many of its staples, my surprise overpowered me so
+that it mortified Bee, when they offered to have silk stockings made for
+me in Paris.
+
+Like most Americans, I am in the habit of turning away disappointed, and
+preparing to go without things if I cannot find what I want in the
+shops, but in London and Paris they will offer of their own accord to
+make for you anything you may describe to them, from a pair of gloves to
+a pattern of brocade. This is one and perhaps the only glory of being an
+American in Europe, for, as my friend in Naples, of the firm of Ananias,
+Barabbas, and Company, said to me:
+
+"Behold! you are an American, and by Americans do we not live?"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Abroad with the Jimmies, by Lilian Bell
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12184 ***