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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Europe Revised, by Irvin S. Cobb
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Europe Revised
+
+Author: Irvin S. Cobb
+
+
+Release Date: October, 2003  [Etext #4551]
+This file was first posted on February 9, 2002
+[Last updated: October 21, 2015]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EUROPE REVISED ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Kirk Pearson with help from the Volunteers at
+The Distributed Proofreaders
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EUROPE REVISED
+
+By Irvin S. Cobb
+
+
+To My Small Daughter
+
+Who bade me shed a tear at the tomb of Napoleon, which I was very glad
+to do, because when I got there my feet certainly were hurting me.
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+The picture on page 81 purporting to show the undersigned leaping head
+first into a German feather-bed does the undersigned a cruel injustice.
+He has a prettier figure than that--oh, oh, much prettier!
+
+The reader is earnestly entreated not to look at the picture on page 81.
+It is the only blot on the McCutcheon of this book.
+
+Respectfully,
+
+The Author.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter I
+
+
+
+We Are Going Away From Here
+
+Foreword.--It has always seemed to me that the principal drawback
+about the average guidebook is that it is over-freighted with facts.
+Guidebooks heretofore have made a specialty of facts--have abounded in
+them; facts to be found on every page and in every paragraph. Reading
+such a work, you imagine that the besotted author said to himself, "I
+will just naturally fill this thing chock-full of facts"--and then went
+and did so to the extent of a prolonged debauch.
+
+Now personally I would be the last one in the world to decry facts as
+such. In the abstract I have the highest opinion of them. But facts,
+as someone has said, are stubborn things; and stubborn things, like
+stubborn people, are frequently tiresome. So it occurred to me that
+possibly there might be room for a guidebook on foreign travel which
+would not have a single indubitable fact concealed anywhere about its
+person. I have even dared to hope there might be an actual demand on
+the part of the general public for such a guidebook. I shall endeavor to
+meet that desire--if it exists.
+
+While we are on the subject I wish to say there is probably not
+a statement made by me here or hereafter which cannot readily be
+controverted. Communications from parties desiring to controvert this or
+that assertion will be considered in the order received. The line
+forms on the left and parties will kindly avoid crowding. Triflers and
+professional controverters save stamps.
+
+With these few introductory remarks we now proceed to the first subject,
+which is The Sea: Its Habits and Peculiarities, and the Quaint Creatures
+Found upon Its Bosom.
+
+From the very start of this expedition to Europe I labored under a
+misapprehension. Everybody told me that as soon as I had got my sea
+legs I would begin to love the sea with a vast and passionate love. As a
+matter of fact I experienced no trouble whatever in getting my sea legs.
+They were my regular legs, the same ones I use on land. It was my sea
+stomach that caused all the bother. First I was afraid I should not
+get it, and that worried me no little. Then I got it and was regretful.
+However, that detail will come up later in a more suitable place. I am
+concerned now with the departure.
+
+Somewhere forward a bugle blares; somewhere rearward a bell jangles. On
+the deck overhead is a scurry of feet. In the mysterious bowels of the
+ship a mighty mechanism opens its metal mouth and speaks out briskly.
+Later it will talk on steadily, with a measured and a regular voice;
+but now it is heard frequently, yet intermittently, like the click of
+a blind man's cane. Beneath your feet the ship, which has seemed until
+this moment as solid as a rock, stirs the least little bit, as though it
+had waked up. And now a shiver runs all through it and you are reminded
+of that passage from Pygmalion and Galatea where Pygmalion says with
+such feeling:
+
+She starts; she moves; she seems to feel the thrill of life along her
+keel.
+
+You are under way. You are finally committed to the great adventure. The
+necessary good-bys have already been said. Those who in the goodness of
+their hearts came to see you off have departed for shore, leaving sundry
+suitable and unsuitable gifts behind. You have examined your stateroom,
+with its hot and cold decorations, its running stewardess, its all-night
+throb service, and its windows overlooking the Hudson--a stateroom
+that seemed so large and commodious until you put one small submissive
+steamer trunk and two scared valises in it. You are tired, and yon white
+bed, with the high mudguards on it, looks mighty good to you; but you
+feel that you must go on deck to wave a fond farewell to the land you
+love and the friends you are leaving behind.
+
+You fight your way to the open through companionways full of frenzied
+persons who are apparently trying to travel in every direction at once.
+On the deck the illusion persists that it is the dock that is moving and
+the ship that is standing still. All about you your fellow passengers
+crowd the rails, waving and shouting messages to the people on the dock;
+the people on the dock wave back and shout answers. About every other
+person is begging somebody to tell auntie to be sure to write. You
+gather that auntie will be expected to write weekly, if not oftener.
+
+As the slice of dark water between boat and dock widens, those who are
+left behind begin running toward the pierhead in such numbers that each
+wide, bright-lit door-opening in turn suggests a flittering section of
+a moving-picture film. The only perfectly calm person in sight is a
+gorgeous, gold-laced creature standing on the outermost gunwale of the
+dock, wearing the kind of uniform that a rear admiral of the Swiss navy
+would wear--if the Swiss had any navy--and holding a speaking trumpet
+in his hand. This person is not excited, for he sends
+thirty-odd-thousand-ton ships off to Europe at frequent intervals, and
+so he is impressively and importantly blase about it; but everybody else
+is excited. You find yourself rather that way. You wave at persons you
+know and then at persons you do not know.
+
+You continue to wave until the man alongside you, who has spent years
+of his life learning to imitate a siren whistle with his face, suddenly
+twines his hands about his mouth and lets go a terrific blast right in
+your ear. Something seems to warn you that you are not going to care for
+this man.
+
+The pier, ceasing to be a long, outstretched finger, seems to fold back
+into itself, knuckle-fashion, and presently is but a part of the oddly
+foreshortened shoreline, distinguishable only by the black dot of
+watchers clustered under a battery of lights, like a swarm of hiving
+bees. Out in midstream the tugs, which have been convoying the ship, let
+go of her and scuttle off, one in this direction and one in that, like a
+brace of teal ducks getting out of a walrus' way.
+
+Almost imperceptibly her nose straightens down the river and soon on
+the starboard quarter--how quickly one picks up these nautical
+terms!--looming through the harbor mists, you behold the statue of Miss
+Liberty, in her popular specialty of enlightening the world. So you go
+below and turn in. Anyway, that is what I did; for certain of the larger
+ships of the Cunard line sail at midnight or even later, and this was
+such a ship.
+
+For some hours I lay awake, while above me and below me and all about me
+the boat settled down to her ordained ship's job, and began drawing the
+long, soothing snores that for five days and nights she was to continue
+drawing without cessation. There were so many things to think over.
+I tried to remember all the authoritative and conflicting advice that
+had been offered to me by traveled friends and well-wishers.
+
+Let's see, now: On shipboard I was to wear only light clothes, because
+nobody ever caught cold at sea. I was to wear the heaviest clothes I
+had, because the landlubber always caught cold at sea. I was to tip only
+those who served me. I was to tip all hands in moderation, whether they
+served me or not. If I felt squeamish I was to do the following things:
+Eat something. Quit eating. Drink something. Quit drinking. Stay on
+deck. Go below and lie perfectly flat. Seek company. Avoid same. Give it
+up. Keep it down.
+
+There was but one point on which all of them were agreed. On no account
+should I miss Naples; I must see Naples if I did not see another
+solitary thing in Europe. Well, I did both--I saw Naples; and now I
+should not miss Naples if I never saw it again, and I do not think I
+shall. As regards the other suggestions these friends of mine gave me, I
+learned in time that all of them were right and all of them were wrong.
+
+For example, there was the matter of a correct traveling costume.
+Between seasons on the Atlantic one wears what best pleases one. One
+sees at the same time women in furs and summer boys in white ducks.
+Tweed-enshrouded Englishmen and linen-clad American girls promenade
+together, giving to the decks that pleasing air of variety and
+individuality of apparel only to be found in southern California during
+the winter, and in those orthodox pictures in the book of Robinson
+Crusoe, where Robinson is depicted as completely wrapped up in
+goatskins, while Man Friday is pirouetting round as nude as a raw
+oyster and both of them are perfectly comfortable. I used to wonder
+how Robinson and Friday did it. Since taking an ocean trip I understand
+perfectly. I could do it myself now.
+
+There certainly were a lot of things to think over. I do not recall now
+exactly the moment when I ceased thinking them over. A blank that was
+measurable by hours ensued. I woke from a dream about a scrambled egg,
+in which I was the egg, to find that morning had arrived and the ship
+was behaving naughtily.
+
+Here was a ship almost as long as Main Street is back home, and six
+stories high, with an English basement; with restaurants and elevators
+and retail stores in her; and she was as broad as a courthouse; and
+while lying at the dock she had appeared to be about the most solid and
+dependable thing in creation--and yet in just a few hours' time she had
+altered her whole nature, and was rolling and sliding and charging and
+snorting like a warhorse. It was astonishing in the extreme, and you
+would not have expected it of her.
+
+Even as I focused my mind on this phenomenon the doorway was stealthily
+entered by a small man in a uniform that made him look something like an
+Eton schoolboy and something like a waiter in a dairy lunch. I was about
+to have the first illuminating experience with an English manservant.
+This was my bedroom steward, by name Lubly--William Lubly. My hat is off
+to William Lubly--to him and to all his kind. He was always on duty;
+he never seemed to sleep; he was always in a good humor, and he always
+thought of the very thing you wanted just a moment or two before you
+thought of it yourself, and came a-running and fetched it to you. Now
+he was softly stealing in to close my port. As he screwed the round,
+brass-faced window fast he glanced my way and caught my apprehensive
+eye.
+
+"Good morning, sir," he said, and said it in such a way as to convey a
+subtle compliment.
+
+"Is it getting rough outside?" I said--I knew about the inside. "Thank
+you," he said; "the sea 'as got up a bit, sir--thank you, sir."
+
+I was gratified--nay more, I was flattered. And it was so delicately
+done too. I really did not have the heart to tell him that I was not
+solely responsible--that I had, so to speak, collaborators; but Lubly
+stood ready always to accord me a proper amount of recognition for
+everything that happened on that ship. Only the next day, I think it
+was, I asked him where we were. This occurred on deck. He had just
+answered a lady who wanted to know whether we should have good weather
+on the day we landed at Fishguard and whether we should get in on time.
+Without a moment's hesitation he told her; and then he turned to me with
+the air of giving credit where credit is due, and said:
+
+"Thank you, sir--we are just off the Banks, thank you."
+
+Lubly ran true to form. The British serving classes are ever like that,
+whether met with at sea or on their native soil. They are a great and
+a noble institution. Give an English servant a kind word and he thanks
+you. Give him a harsh word and he still thanks you. Ask a question of a
+London policeman--he tells you fully and then he thanks you. Go into an
+English shop and buy something--the clerk who serves you thanks you with
+enthusiasm. Go in and fail to buy something--he still thanks you, but
+without the enthusiasm.
+
+One kind of Englishman says Thank you, sir; and one kind--the Cockney
+who has been educated--says Thenks; but the majority brief it into a
+short but expressive expletive and merely say: Kew. Kew is the commonest
+word in the British Isles. Stroidinary runs it a close second, but Kew
+comes first. You hear it everywhere. Hence Kew Gardens; they are named
+for it.
+
+All the types that travel on a big English-owned ship were on ours. I
+take it that there is a requirement in the maritime regulations to the
+effect that the set must be complete before a ship may put to sea. To
+begin with, there was a member of a British legation from somewhere
+going home on leave, for a holiday, or a funeral. At least I heard it
+was a holiday, but I should have said he was going home for the other
+occasion. He wore an Honorable attached to the front of his name and
+carried several extra initials behind in the rumble; and he was filled
+up with that true British reserve which a certain sort of Britisher
+always develops while traveling in foreign lands. He was upward of seven
+feet tall, as the crow flies, and very thin and rigid.
+
+Viewing him, you got the impression that his framework all ran straight
+up and down, like the wires in a bird cage, with barely enough perches
+extending across from side to side to keep him from caving in and
+crushing the canaries to death. On second thought I judge I had better
+make this comparison in the singular number--there would not have been
+room in him for more than one canary.
+
+Every morning for an hour, and again every afternoon for an hour, he
+marched solemnly round and round the promenade deck, always alone
+and always with his mournful gaze fixed on the far horizon. As I said
+before, however, he stood very high in the air, and it may have been he
+feared, if he ever did look down at his feet, he should turn dizzy and
+be seized with an uncontrollable desire to leap off and end all; so I am
+not blaming him for that.
+
+He would walk his hour out to the sixtieth second of the sixtieth minute
+and then he would sit in his steamer chair, as silent as a glacier and
+as inaccessible as one. If it were afternoon he would have his tea at
+five o'clock and then, with his soul still full of cracked ice, he would
+go below and dress for dinner; but he never spoke to anyone. His steamer
+chair was right-hand chair to mine and often we practically touched
+elbows; but he did not see me once.
+
+I had a terrible thought. Suppose now, I said to myself--just suppose
+that this ship were to sink and only we two were saved; and suppose we
+were cast away on a desert island and spent years and years there, never
+knowing each other's name and never mingling together socially until the
+rescue ship came along--and not even then unless there was some mutual
+acquaintance aboard her to introduce us properly! It was indeed a
+frightful thought! It made me shudder.
+
+Among our company was a younger son going home after a tour of the
+Colonies--Canada and Australia, and all that sort of bally rot. I
+believe there is always at least one younger son on every well-conducted
+English boat; the family keeps him on a remittance and seems to feel
+easier in its mind when he is traveling. The British statesman who
+said the sun never sets on British possessions spoke the truth, but
+the reporters in committing his memorable utterance to paper spelt the
+keyword wrong--undoubtedly he meant the other kind--the younger kind.
+
+This particular example of the species was in every way up to grade and
+sample. A happy combination of open air, open pores and open casegoods
+gave to his face the exact color of a slice of rare roast beef; it also
+had the expression of one. With a dab of English mustard in the lobe of
+one ear and a savory bit of watercress stuck in his hair for a garnish,
+he could have passed anywhere for a slice of cold roast beef.
+
+He was reasonably exclusive too. Not until the day we landed did he and
+the Honorable member of the legation learn--quite by chance--that they
+were third cousins--or something of that sort--to one another. And
+so, after the relationship had been thoroughly established through
+the kindly offices of a third party, they fraternized to the extent
+of riding up to London on the same boat-train, merely using different
+compartments of different carriages. The English aristocrat is a
+tolerably social animal when traveling; but, at the same time, he does
+not carry his sociability to an excess. He shows restraint.
+
+Also, we had with us the elderly gentleman of impaired disposition, who
+had crossed thirty times before and was now completing his thirty-first
+trip, and getting madder and madder about it every minute. I saw him
+only with his clothes on; but I should say, speaking offhand, that he
+had at least fourteen rattles and a button. His poison sacs hung 'way
+down. Others may have taken them for dewlaps, but I knew better; they
+were poison sacs.
+
+It was quite apparent that he abhorred the very idea of having to cross
+to Europe on the same ocean with the rest of us, let alone on the
+same ship. And for persons who were taking their first trip abroad his
+contempt was absolutely unutterable; he choked at the bare mention of
+such a criminal's name and offense. You would hear him communing with
+himself and a Scotch and soda.
+
+"Bah!" he would say bitterly, addressing the soda-bottle. "These idiots
+who've never been anywhere talking about this being rough weather! Rough
+weather, mind you! Bah! People shouldn't be allowed to go to sea until
+they know something about it. Bah!"
+
+By the fourth day out his gums were as blue as indigo, and he was so
+swelled up with his own venom he looked dropsical. I judged his bite
+would have caused death in from twelve to fourteen minutes, preceded by
+coma and convulsive rigors. We called him old Colonel Gila Monster or
+Judge Stinging Lizard, for short.
+
+There was the spry and conversational gentleman who looked like an
+Englishman, but was of the type commonly denominated in our own land as
+breezy. So he could not have been an Englishman. Once in a while there
+comes along an Englishman who is windy, and frequently you meet one who
+is drafty; but there was never a breezy Englishman yet.
+
+With that interest in other people's business which the close communion
+of a ship so promptly breeds in most of us, we fell to wondering who
+and what he might be; but the minute the suspect came into the salon for
+dinner the first night out I read his secret at a glance. He belonged to
+a refined song-and-dance team doing sketches in vaudeville. He could not
+have been anything else--he had jet buttons on his evening clothes.
+
+There was the young woman--she had elocutionary talents, it turned
+out afterward, and had graduated with honors from a school of
+expression--who assisted in getting up the ship's concert and then took
+part in it, both of those acts being mistakes on her part, as it proved.
+
+And there was the official he-beauty of the ship. He was without a
+wrinkle in his clothes--or his mind either; and he managed to maneuver
+so that when he sat in the smoking room he always faced a mirror. That
+was company enough for him. He never grew lonely or bored then. Only one
+night he discovered something wrong about one of his eyebrows. He gave
+a pained start; and then, oblivious of those of us who hovered about
+enjoying the spectacle, he spent a long time working with the blemish.
+The eyebrow was stubborn, though, and he just couldn't make it behave;
+so he grew petulant and fretful, and finally went away to bed in a huff.
+Had it not been for fear of stopping his watch, I am sure he would have
+slapped himself on the wrist.
+
+This fair youth was one of the delights of the voyage. One felt that if
+he had merely a pair of tweezers and a mustache comb and a hand glass
+he would never, never be at a loss for a solution of the problem that
+worries so many writers for the farm journals--a way to spend the long
+winter evenings pleasantly.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter II
+
+
+
+My Bonny Lies over the Ocean--Lies and Lies and Lies
+
+Of course, we had a bridal couple and a troupe of professional deep-sea
+fishermen aboard. We just naturally had to have them. Without them, I
+doubt whether the ship could have sailed. The bridal couple were
+from somewhere in the central part of Ohio and they were taking their
+honeymoon tour; but, if I were a bridal couple from the central part
+of Ohio and had never been to sea before, as was the case in this
+particular instance, I should take my honeymoon ashore and keep it
+there. I most certainly should! This couple of ours came aboard billing
+and cooing to beat the lovebirds. They made it plain to all that they
+had just been married and were proud of it. Their baggage was brand-new,
+and the groom's shoes were shiny with that pristine shininess
+which, once destroyed, can never be restored; and the bride wore her
+going-and-giving-away outfit.
+
+Just prior to sailing and on the morning after they were all over the
+ship. Everywhere you went you seemed to meet them and they were always
+wrestling. You entered a quiet side passage--there they were, exchanging
+a kiss--one of the long-drawn, deep-siphoned, sirupy kind. You stepped
+into the writing room thinking to find it deserted, and at sight of you
+they broke grips and sprang apart, eyeing you like a pair of startled
+fawns surprised by the cruel huntsman in a forest glade. At all other
+times, though, they had eyes but for each other.
+
+A day came, however--and it was the second day out--when they were among
+the missing. For two days and two nights, while the good ship floundered
+on the tempestuous bosom of the overwrought ocean, they were gone from
+human ken. On the afternoon of the third day, the sea being calmer now,
+but still sufficiently rough to satisfy the most exacting, a few hardy
+and convalescent souls sat in a shawl-wrapped row on the lee side of the
+ship.
+
+There came two stewards, bearing with them pillows and blankets and
+rugs. These articles were disposed to advantage in two steamer chairs.
+Then the stewards hurried away; but presently they reappeared, dragging
+the limp and dangling forms of the bridal couple from the central part
+of Ohio. But oh, my countrymen, what a spectacle! And what a change from
+what had been!
+
+The going-away gown was wrinkled, as though worn for a period of time
+by one suddenly and sorely stricken in the midst of health. The bride's
+once well-coifed hair hung in lank disarray about a face that was the
+color of prime old sage cheese--yellow, with a fleck of green here and
+there--and in her wan and rolling eye was the hunted look of one who
+hears something unpleasant stirring a long way off and fears it is
+coming this way.
+
+Side by side the stewards stretched them prone on their chairs and
+tucked them in. Her face was turned from him. For some time both of
+them lay there without visible signs of life--just two muffled,
+misery-stricken heaps. Then, slowly and languidly, the youth stretched
+forth an arm from his wrappings and fingered the swaddling folds that
+enveloped the form of his beloved.
+
+It may have been he thought it was about time to begin picking the
+coverlid, or it may have been the promptings of reawakened romance, once
+more feebly astir within his bosom. At any rate, gently and softly, his
+hand fell on the rug about where her shoulder ought to be. She still had
+life enough left in her to shake it off--and she did. Hurt, he waited
+a moment, then caressed her again. "Stop that!" she cried in a low but
+venomous tone. "Don't you dare touch me!"
+
+So he touched her no more, but only lay there mute and motionless;
+and from his look one might plumb the sorrows of his soul and know how
+shocked he was, and how grieved and heartstricken! Love's young dream
+was o'er! He had thought she loved him, but now he knew better. Their
+marriage had been a terrible mistake and he would give her back her
+freedom; he would give it back to her as soon as he was able to sit up.
+Thus one interpreted his expression.
+
+On the day we landed, however, they were seen again. We were nosing
+northward through a dimpled duckpond of a sea, with the Welsh coast on
+one side and Ireland just over the way. People who had not been seen
+during the voyage came up to breathe, wearing the air of persons who had
+just returned from the valley of the shadow and were mighty glad to be
+back; and with those others came our bridal couple.
+
+I inadvertently stumbled on them in an obscure companionway. Their
+cheeks again wore the bloom of youth and health, and they were in a
+tight clinch; it was indeed a pretty sight. Love had returned on roseate
+pinions and the honeymoon had been resumed at the point where postponed
+on account of bad weather.
+
+They had not been seasick, though. I heard them say so. They had been
+indisposed, possibly from something they had eaten; but they had not
+been seasick. Well, I had my own periods of indisposition going over;
+and if it had been seasickness I should not hesitate a moment about
+coming right out and saying so. In these matters I believe in being
+absolutely frank and aboveboard. For the life of me I cannot understand
+why people will dissemble and lie about this thing of being seasick. To
+me their attitude is a source of constant wonderment.
+
+On land the average person is reasonably proud of having been
+sick--after he begins to get better. It gives him something to talk
+about. The pale and interesting invalid invariably commands respect
+ashore. In my own list of acquaintances I number several persons--mainly
+widowed ladies with satisfactory incomes--who never feel well unless
+they are ill. In the old days they would have had resort to patent
+medicines and the family lot at Laurel Grove Cemetery; but now they
+go in for rest cures and sea voyages, and the baths at Carlsbad and
+specialists, these same being main contributing causes to the present
+high cost of living, and also helping to explain what becomes of some
+of those large life-insurance policies you read about. Possibly you know
+the type I am describing--the lady who, when planning where she will
+spend the summer, sends for catalogues from all the leading sanatoriums.
+We had one such person with us.
+
+She had been surgically remodeled so many times that she dated
+everything from her last operation. At least six times in her life she
+had been down with something that was absolutely incurable, and she was
+now going to Homburg to have one of the newest and most fatal German
+diseases in its native haunts, where it would be at its best. She
+herself said that she was but a mere shell; and for the first few meals
+she ate like one--like a large, empty shell with plenty of curves inside
+it.
+
+However, when, after a subsequent period of seclusion, she emerged from
+her stateroom wearing the same disheveled look that Jonah must have worn
+when he and the whale parted company, do you think she would confess
+she had been seasick? Not by any means! She said she had had a raging
+headache. But she could not fool me. She had the stateroom next to mine
+and I had heard what I had heard. She was from near Boston and she had
+the near-Boston accent; and she was the only person I ever met who was
+seasick with the broad A.
+
+Personally I abhor those evasions, which deceive no one. If I had been
+seasick I should not deny it here or elsewhere. For a time I thought
+I was seasick. I know now I was wrong--but I thought so. There was
+something about the sardels served at lunch--their look or their smell
+or something--which seemed to make them distasteful to me; and I excused
+myself from the company at the table and went up and out into the
+open air. But the deck was unpleasantly congested with great burly
+brutes--beefy, carnivorous, overfed creatures, gorged with victuals and
+smoking disgustingly strong black cigars, and grinning in an annoying
+and meaning sort of way every time they passed a body who preferred to
+lie quiet.
+
+The rail was also moving up and down in a manner that was annoying and
+wearisome for the eye to watch--first tipping up and up and up until
+half the sky was hidden, then dipping down and down and down until the
+gray and heaving sea seemed ready to leap over the side and engulf us.
+So I decided to go below and jot down a few notes. On arriving at my
+quarters I changed my mind again. I decided to let the notes wait a
+while and turn in.
+
+It is my usual custom when turning in to remove the left shoe as well as
+the right one and to put on my pajamas; but the pajamas were hanging
+on a hook away over on the opposite side of the stateroom, which had
+suddenly grown large and wide and full of great distances; and besides,
+I thought it was just as well to have the left shoe where I could put
+my hand on it when I needed it again. So I retired practically just as
+I was and endeavored, as per the admonitions of certain friends, to lie
+perfectly flat. No doubt this thing of lying flat is all very well for
+some people--but suppose a fellow has not that kind of a figure?
+
+Nevertheless, I tried. I lay as flat as I could, but the indisposition
+persisted; in fact, it increased materially. The manner in which my
+pajamas, limp and pendent from that hook, swayed and swung back and
+forth became extremely distasteful to me; and if by mental treatment I
+could have removed them from there I should assuredly have done so. But
+that was impossible.
+
+Along toward evening I began to think of food. I thought of it not from
+its gastronomic aspect, but rather in the capacity of ballast. I did
+not so much desire the taste of it as the feel of it. So I summoned
+Lubly--he, at least, did not smile at me in that patronizing,
+significant way--and ordered a dinner that included nearly everything
+on the dinner card except Lubly's thumb. The dinner was brought to me in
+relays and I ate it--ate it all! This step I know now was ill-advised.
+It is true that for a short time I felt as I imagine a python in a zoo
+feels when he is full of guinea-pigs--sort of gorged, you know, and
+sluggish, and only tolerably uncomfortable.
+
+Then ensued the frightful denouement. It ensued almost without warning.
+At the time I felt absolutely positive that I was seasick. I would have
+sworn to it. If somebody had put a Bible on my chest and held it there
+I would cheerfully have laid my right hand on it and taken a solemn
+oath that I was seasick. Indeed, I believed I was so seasick that I
+feared--hoped, rather--I might never recover from it. All I desired at
+the moment was to get it over with as quickly and as neatly as possible.
+
+As in the case of drowning persons, there passed in review before my
+eyes several of the more recent events of my past life--meals mostly.
+I shall, however, pass hastily over these distressing details, merely
+stating in parentheses, so to speak, that I did not remember those
+string-beans at all. I was positive then, and am yet, that I had not
+eaten string-beans for nearly a week. But enough of this!
+
+I was sure I was seasick; and I am convinced any inexperienced
+bystander, had there been one there, would have been misled by my
+demeanor into regarding me as a seasick person--but it was a wrong
+diagnosis. The steward told me so himself when he called the next
+morning. He came and found me stretched prone on the bed of affliction;
+and he asked me how I felt, to which I replied with a low and hollow
+groan--tolerably low and exceedingly hollow. It could not have been any
+hollower if I had been a megaphone.
+
+So he looked me over and told me that I had climate fever. We were
+passing through the Gulf Stream, where the water was warmer than
+elsewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, and I had a touch of climate fever. It
+was a very common complaint in that latitude; many persons suffered
+from it. The symptoms were akin to seasickness, it was true; yet the two
+maladies were in no way to be confused. As soon as we passed out of the
+Gulf Stream he felt sure I would be perfectly well. Meantime he would
+recommend that I get Lubly to take the rest of my things off and then
+remain perfectly quiet. He was right about it too.
+
+Regardless of what one may think oneself, one is bound to accept the
+statement of an authority on this subject; and if a steward on a big
+liner, who has traveled back and forth across the ocean for years, is
+not an authority on climate fever, who is? I looked at it in that light.
+And sure enough, when we had passed out of the Gulf Stream and the sea
+had smoothed itself out, I made a speedy and satisfactory recovery; but
+if it had been seasickness I should have confessed it in a minute. I
+have no patience with those who quibble and equivocate in regard to
+their having been seasick.
+
+I had one relapse--a short one, but painful. In an incautious moment,
+when I wist not wot I wotted, I accepted an invitation from the chief
+engineer to go below. We went below--miles and miles, I think--to where,
+standing on metal runways that were hot to the foot, overalled Scots
+ministered to the heart and the lungs and the bowels of that ship.
+Electricity spat cracklingly in our faces, and at our sides steel shafts
+as big as the pillars of a temple spun in coatings of spumy grease; and
+through the double skin of her we could hear, over our heads, a mighty
+Niagaralike churning as the slew-footed screws kicked us forward
+twenty-odd knots an hour. Someone raised the cover of a vat, and peering
+down into the opening we saw a small, vicious engine hard at work,
+entirely enveloped in twisty, coily, stewy depths of black oil, like a
+devil-fish writhing in sea-ooze and cuttle-juice.
+
+So then we descended another mile or two to an inferno, full of naked,
+sooty devils forever feeding sulphurous pitfires in the nethermost
+parlors of the damned; but they said this was the stokehole; and I was
+in no condition to argue with them, for I had suddenly begun to realize
+that I was far from being a well person. As one peering through a glass
+darkly, I saw one of the attendant demons sluice his blistered bare
+breast with cold water, so that the sweat and grime ran from him in
+streams like ink; and peering in at a furnace door I saw a great angry
+sore of coals all scabbed and crusted over. Then another demon, wielding
+a nine-foot bar daintily as a surgeon wields a scalpel, reached in and
+stabbed it in the center, so that the fire burst through and gushed up
+red and rich, like blood from a wound newly lanced.
+
+I had seen enough and to spare; but my guide brought me back by way of
+the steerage, in order that I might know how the other half lives.
+There was nothing here, either of smell or sight, to upset the human
+stomach--third class is better fed and better quartered now on those big
+ships than first class was in those good old early days--but I had
+held in as long as I could and now I relapsed. I relapsed in a vigorous
+manner--a whole-souled, boisterous manner. People halfway up the
+deck heard me relapsing, and I will warrant some of them were fooled
+too--they thought I was seasick.
+
+It was due to my attack of climate fever that I missed the most exciting
+thing which happened on the voyage. I refer to the incident of the
+professional gamblers and the youth from Jersey City. From the very
+first there was one passenger who had been picked out by all the knowing
+passengers as a professional gambler; for he was the very spit-and-image
+of a professional gambler as we have learned to know him in story books.
+Did he not dress in plain black, without any jewelry? He certainly did.
+Did he not have those long, slender, flexible fingers? Such was,
+indeed, the correct description of those fingers. Was not his eye a keen
+steely-blue eye that seemed to have the power of looking right through
+you? Steely-blue was the right word, all right. Well, then, what more
+could you ask?
+
+Behind his back sinister yet fascinating rumors circulated. He was the
+brilliant but unscrupulous scion of a haughty house in England. He had
+taken a first degree at Oxford, over there, and the third one at police
+headquarters, over here. Women simply could not resist him. Let him make
+up his mind to win a woman and she was a gone gosling. His picture
+was to be found in rogues' galleries and ladies' lockets. And sh-h-h!
+Listen! Everybody knew he was the identical crook who, disguised in
+woman's clothes, escaped in the last lifeboat that left the sinking
+Titanic. Who said so? Why--er--everybody said so!
+
+It came as a grievous disappointment to all when we found out the truth,
+which was that he was the booking agent for a lyceum bureau, going
+abroad to sign up some foreign talent for next season's Chautauquas;
+and the only gambling he had ever done was on the chance of whether
+the Tyrolian Yodelers would draw better than our esteemed secretary of
+state--or vice versa.
+
+Meantime the real professionals had established themselves cozily and
+comfortably aboard, had rigged the trap and cheese-baited it, and were
+waiting for the coming of one of the class that is born so numerously in
+this country. If you should be traveling this year on one of the
+large trans-Atlantic ships, and there should come aboard two young
+well-dressed men and shortly afterward a middle-aged well-dressed man
+with a flat nose, who was apparently a stranger to the first two; and if
+on the second night out in the smoking room, while the pool on the next
+day's run was being auctioned, one of the younger men, whom we will call
+Mr. Y, should appear to be slightly under the influence of malt, vinous
+or spirituous liquors--or all three of them at once--and should, without
+seeming provocation, insist on picking a quarrel with the middle-aged
+stranger, whom we will call Mr. Z; and if further along in the voyage
+Mr. Z should introduce himself to you and suggest a little game of
+auction bridge for small stakes in order to while away the tedium of
+travel; and if it should so fall out that Mr. Y and his friend Mr.
+X chanced to be the only available candidates for a foursome at this
+fascinating pursuit; and if Mr. Z, being still hostile toward the
+sobered and repentant Mr. Y, should decline to take on either Mr. Y or
+his friend X as a partner, but chose you instead; and if on the second
+or third deal you picked up your cards and found you had an apparently
+unbeatable hand and should bid accordingly; and Mr. X should double you;
+and Mr. Z, sitting across from you should come gallantly right back and
+redouble it; and Mr. Y, catching the spirit of the moment, should double
+again--and so on and so forth until each point, instead of being worth
+only a paltry cent or two, had accumulated a value of a good many
+cents--if all these things or most of them should befall in the order
+enumerated--why, then, if I were you, gentle reader, I would have a
+care. And I should leave that game and go somewhere else to have it
+too--lest a worse thing befall you as it befell the guileless young
+Jerseyman on our ship. After he had paid out a considerable sum on being
+beaten--by just one card--upon the playing of his seemingly unbeatable
+hand and after the haunting and elusive odor of eau de rodent had become
+plainly perceptible all over the ship, he began, as the saying goes, to
+smell a rat himself, and straightway declined to make good his remaining
+losses, amounting to quite a tidy amount. Following this there were high
+words, meaning by that low ones, and accusations and recriminations, and
+at eventide when the sunset was a welter of purple and gold, there was
+a sudden smashing of glassware in the smoking room and a flurry of arms
+and legs in a far corner, and a couple of pained stewards scurrying
+about saying, "Ow, now, don't do that, sir, if you please, sir, thank
+you, sir!" And one of the belligerents came forth from the melee wearing
+a lavender eye with saffron trimmings, as though to match the sunset,
+and the other with a set of skinned knuckles, emblematic of the skinning
+operations previously undertaken. And through all the ship ran the
+hissing tongues of scandal and gossip.
+
+Out of wild rumor and cross-rumor, certain salient facts were eventually
+precipitated like sediment from a clouded solution. It seemed that the
+engaging Messrs. X, Y and Z had been induced, practically under false
+pretenses to book passage, they having read in the public prints that
+the prodigal and card-foolish son of a cheese-paring millionaire father
+meant to take the ship too; but he had grievously disappointed them
+by not coming aboard at all. Then, when in an effort to make their
+traveling expenses back, they uncorked their newest trick and device
+for inspiring confidence in gudgeons, the particular gudgeon of their
+choosing had refused to pay up. Naturally they were fretful and peevish
+in the extreme. It spoiled the whole trip for them.
+
+Except for this one small affair it was, on the whole, a pleasant
+voyage. We had only one storm and one ship's concert, and at the finish
+most of us were strong enough to have stood another storm. And the trip
+had been worth a lot to us--at least it had been worth a lot to me,
+for I had crossed the ocean on one of the biggest hotels afloat. I had
+amassed quite a lot of nautical terms that would come in very handy for
+stunning the folks at home when I got back. I had had my first thrill at
+the sight of foreign shores. And just by casual contact with members
+of the British aristocracy, I had acquired such a heavy load of true
+British hauteur that in parting on the landing dock I merely bowed
+distantly toward those of my fellow Americans to whom I had not been
+introduced; and they, having contracted the same disease, bowed back in
+the same haughty and distant manner.
+
+When some of us met again, however, in Vienna, the insulation had been
+entirely rubbed off and we rushed madly into one another's arms and
+exchanged names and addresses; and, babbling feverishly the while, we
+told one another what our favorite flower was, and our birthstone and
+our grandmother's maiden name, and what we thought of a race of
+people who regarded a cup of ostensible coffee and a dab of honey
+as constituting a man's-size breakfast. And, being pretty tolerably
+homesick by that time, we leaned in toward a common center and gave
+three loud, vehement cheers for the land of the country sausage and the
+home of the buckwheat cake--and, as giants refreshed, went on our ways
+rejoicing.
+
+That, though, was to come later. At present we are concerned with the
+trip over and what we had severally learned from it. I personally had
+learned, among other things, that the Atlantic Ocean, considered as
+such, is a considerably overrated body. Having been across it, even on
+so big and fine and well-ordered a ship as this ship was, the ocean, it
+seemed to me, was not at all what it had been cracked up to be.
+
+During the first day out it is a novelty and after that a
+monotony--except when it is rough; and then it is a doggoned nuisance.
+Poets without end have written of the sea, but I take it they stayed at
+home to do their writing. They were not on the bounding billow when they
+praised it; if they had been they might have decorated the billow, but
+they would never have praised it.
+
+As the old song so happily put it: My Bonny Lies Over the Ocean! And a
+lot of others have lied over it too; but I will not--at least not just
+yet. Perhaps later on I may feel moved to do so; but at this moment I
+am but newly landed from it and my heart is full of rankling resentment
+toward the ocean and all its works.
+
+I speak but a sober conviction when I say that the chief advantage to
+be derived from taking an ocean voyage is not that you took it, but that
+you have it to talk about afterward. And, to my mind, the most
+inspiring sight to be witnessed on a trip across the Atlantic is the
+Battery--viewed from the ocean side, coming back.
+
+Do I hear any seconds to that motion?
+
+
+
+
+Chapter III
+
+
+
+Bathing Oneself on the Other Side
+
+My first experience with the bathing habits of the native Aryan stocks
+of Europe came to pass on the morning after the night of our arrival in
+London.
+
+London disappointed me in one regard--when I opened my eyes that morning
+there was no fog. There was not the slightest sign of a fog. I had
+expected that my room would be full of fog of about the consistency of
+Scotch stage dialect--soupy, you know, and thick and bewildering. I
+had expected that servants with lighted tapers in their hands would be
+groping their way through corridors like caves, and that from the
+street without, would come the hoarse-voiced cries of cabmen lost in the
+enshrouding gray. You remember Dickens always had them hoarse-voiced.
+
+This was what I confidently expected. Such, however, was not to be. I
+woke to a consciousness that the place was flooded with indubitable and
+undoubted sunshine. To be sure, it was not the sharp, hard sunshine we
+have in America, which scours and bleaches all it touches, until
+the whole world has the look of having just been clear-starched and
+hot-ironed. It was a softened, smoke-edged, pastel-shaded sunshine;
+nevertheless it was plainly recognizable as the genuine article.
+
+Nor was your London shadow the sharply outlined companion in black who
+accompanies you when the weather is fine in America. Your shadow in
+London was rather a dim and wavery gentleman who caught up with you as
+you turned out of the shaded by-street; who went with you a distance
+and then shyly vanished, but was good company while he stayed, being
+restful, as your well-bred Englishman nearly always is, and not overly
+aggressive.
+
+There was no fog that first morning, or the next morning, or any morning
+of the twenty-odd we spent in England. Often the weather was cloudy,
+and occasionally it was rainy; and then London would be drenched in that
+wonderful gray color which makes it, scenically speaking, one of the
+most fascinating spots on earth; but it was never downright foggy and
+never downright cold. English friends used to speak to me about it. They
+apologized for good weather at that season of the year, just as natives
+of a Florida winter resort will apologize for bad.
+
+"You know, old dear," they would say, "this is most unusual--most
+stroidinary, in fact. It ought to be raw and nasty and foggy at this
+time of the year, and here the cursed weather is perfectly fine--blast
+it!" You could tell they were grieved about it, and disappointed too.
+Anything that is not regular upsets Englishmen frightfully. Maybe that
+is why they enforce their laws so rigidly and obey them so beautifully.
+
+Anyway I woke to find the fog absent, and I rose and prepared to take
+my customary cold bath. I am much given to taking a cold bath in the
+morning and speaking of it afterward. People who take a cold bath every
+day always like to brag about it, whether they take it or not.
+
+The bathroom adjoined the bedroom, but did not directly connect with it,
+being reached by means of a small semi-private hallway. It was a
+fine, noble bathroom, white tiled and spotless; and one side of it
+was occupied by the longest, narrowest bathtub I ever saw. Apparently
+English bathtubs are constructed on the principle that every Englishman
+who bathes is nine feet long and about eighteen inches wide, whereas the
+approximate contrary is frequently the case. Draped over a chair was the
+biggest, widest, softest bathtowel ever made. Shem, Ham and Japhet could
+have dried themselves on that bathtowel, and there would still have been
+enough dry territory left for some of the animals--not the large, woolly
+animals like the Siberian yak, but the small, slick, porous animals such
+as the armadillo and the Mexican hairless dog.
+
+So I wedged myself into the tub and had a snug-fitting but most
+luxurious bath; and when I got back to my room the maid had arrived with
+the shaving water. There was a knock at the door, and when I opened
+it there stood a maid with a lukewarm pint of water in a long-waisted,
+thin-lipped pewter pitcher. There was plenty of hot water to be had in
+the bathroom, with faucets and sinks all handy and convenient, and a
+person might shave himself there in absolute comfort; but long before
+the days of pipes and taps an Englishman got his shaving water in a
+pewter ewer, and he still gets it so. It is one of the things guaranteed
+him under Magna Charta and he demands it as a right; but I, being but a
+benighted foreigner, left mine in the pitcher, and that evening the maid
+checked me up.
+
+"You didn't use the shaving water I brought you to-day, sir!" she said.
+"It was still in the jug when I came in to tidy up, sir."
+
+Her tone was grieved; so, after that, to spare her feelings, I used to
+pour it down the sink. But if I were doing the trip over again I would
+drink it for breakfast instead of the coffee the waiter brought me--the
+shaving water being warmish and containing, so far as I could tell, no
+deleterious substances. And if the bathroom were occupied at the time
+I would shave myself with the coffee. I judge it might work up into
+a thick and durable lather. It is certainly not adapted for drinking
+purposes.
+
+The English, as a race, excel at making tea and at drinking it after it
+is made; but among them coffee is still a mysterious and murky compound
+full of strange by-products. By first weakening it and wearing it down
+with warm milk one may imbibe it; but it is not to be reckoned among the
+pleasures of life. It is a solemn and a painful duty.
+
+On the second morning I was splashing in my tub, gratifying that
+amphibious instinct which has come down to us from the dim evolutionary
+time when we were paleozoic polliwogs, when I made the discovery that
+there were no towels in the bathroom. I glanced about keenly, seeking
+for help and guidance in such an emergency. Set in the wall directly
+above the rim of the tub was a brass plate containing two pushbuttons.
+One button, the uppermost one, was labeled Waiter--the other was labeled
+Maid.
+
+This was disconcerting. Even in so short a stay under the roof of
+an English hotel I had learned that at this hour the waiter would
+be hastening from room to room, ministering to Englishmen engaged in
+gumming their vital organs into an impenetrable mass with the national
+dish of marmalade; and that the maid would also be busy carrying shaving
+water to people who did not need it. Besides, of all the classes I
+distinctly do not require when I am bathing, one is waiters and the
+other is maids. For some minutes I considered the situation, without
+making any headway toward a suitable solution of it; meantime I was
+getting chilled. So I dried myself--sketchily--with a toothbrush and the
+edge of the window-shade; then I dressed, and in a still somewhat moist
+state I went down to interview the management about it. I first visited
+the information desk and told the youth in charge there I wished to
+converse with some one in authority on the subject of towels. After
+gazing at me a spell in a puzzled manner he directed me to go across
+the lobby to the cashier's department. Here I found a gentleman of truly
+regal aspect. His tie was a perfect dream of a tie, and he wore a frock
+coat so slim and long and black it made him look as though he were
+climbing out of a smokestack. Presenting the case as though it were a
+supposititious one purely, I said to him:
+
+"Presuming now that one of your guests is in a bathtub and finds he has
+forgotten to lay in any towels beforehand--such a thing might possibly
+occur, you know--how does he go about summoning the man-servant or the
+valet with a view to getting some?"
+
+"Oh, sir," he replied, "that's very simple. You noticed two pushbuttons
+in your bathroom, didn't you?"
+
+"I did," I said, "and that's just the difficulty. One of them is for the
+maid and the other is for the waiter."
+
+"Quite so, sir," he said, "quite so. Very well, then, sir: You ring for
+the waiter or the maid--or, if you should charnce to be in a hurry, for
+both of them; because, you see, one of them might charnce to be en--"
+
+"One moment," I said. "Let me make my position clear in this matter:
+This Lady Susanna--I do not know her last name, but you will doubtless
+recall the person I mean, because I saw several pictures of her
+yesterday in your national art gallery--this Lady Susanna may have
+enjoyed taking a bath with a lot of snoopy old elders lurking round in
+the background; but I am not so constituted. I was raised differently
+from that. With me, bathing has ever been a solitary pleasure. This may
+denote selfishness on my part; but such is my nature and I cannot alter
+it. All my folks feel about it as I do. We are a very peculiar family
+that way. When bathing we do not invite an audience. Nor do I want one.
+A crowd would only embarrass me. I merely desire a little privacy and,
+here and there, a towel."
+
+"Ah, yes! Quite so, sir," he said; "but you do not understand me. As I
+said before, you ring for the waiter or the maid. When one of them comes
+you tell them to send you the manservant on your floor; and when he
+comes you tell him you require towels, and he goes to the linen cupboard
+and gets them and fetches them to you, sir. It's very simple, sir."
+
+"But why," I persisted, "why do this thing by a relay system? I
+don't want any famishing gentleman in this place to go practically
+unmarmaladed at breakfast because I am using the waiter to conduct
+preliminary negotiations with a third party in regard to a bathtowel."
+
+"But it is so very simple, sir," he repeated patiently. "You ring for
+the waiter or the ma--"
+
+I checked him with a gesture. I felt that I knew what he meant to say; I
+also felt that if any word of mine might serve to put this establishment
+on an easy-running basis they could have it and welcome.
+
+"Listen!" I said. "You will kindly pardon the ignorance of a poor, red,
+partly damp American who has shed his eagle feathers but still has his
+native curiosity with him! Why not put a third button in that bathroom
+labeled Manservant or Valet or Towel Boy, or something of that general
+nature? And then when a sufferer wanted towels, and wanted 'em quick, he
+could get them without blocking the wheels of progress and industry.
+We may still be shooting Mohawk Indians and the American bison in
+the streets of Buffalo, New York; and we may still be saying: 'By
+Geehosaphat, I swan to calculate!--anyway, I note that we still say
+that in all your leading comic papers; but when a man in my land
+goes a-toweling, he goes a-toweling--and that is all there is to it,
+positively! In our secret lodges it may happen that the worshipful
+master calls the august swordbearer to him and bids him communicate
+with the grand outer guardian and see whether the candidate is suitably
+attired for admission; but in ordinary life we cut out the middleman
+wherever possible. Do you get my drift?"
+
+"Oh, yes, sir," he said; "but I fear you do not understand me. As I
+told you, it's very simple--so very simple, sir. We've never found it
+necessary to make a change. You ring for the waiter or for the maid, and
+you tell them to tell the manservant--"
+
+"All right," I said, breaking in. I could see that his arguments were of
+the circular variety that always came back to the starting point. "But,
+as a favor to me, would you kindly ask the proprietor to request the
+head cook to communicate with the carriage starter and have him inform
+the waiter that when in future I ring the bathroom bell in a given
+manner--to wit: one long, determined ring followed by three short,
+passionate rings--it may be regarded as a signal for towels?"
+
+So saying, I turned on my heel and went away, for I could tell he was
+getting ready to begin all over again. Later on I found out for myself
+that, in this particular hotel, when you ring for the waiter or the
+maid the bell sounds in the service room, where those functionaries are
+supposed to be stationed; but when you ring for the manservant a small
+arm-shaped device like a semaphore drops down over your outer door.
+But what has the manservant done that he should be thus discriminated
+against? Why should he not have a bell of his own? So far as I might
+judge, the poor fellow has few enough pleasures in life as it is. Why
+should he battle with the intricacies of a block-signal system when
+everybody else round the place has a separate bell? And why all this
+mystery and mummery over so simple and elemental a thing as a towel?
+
+To my mind, it merely helps to prove that among the English the art of
+bathing is still in its infancy. The English claim to have discovered
+the human bath and they resent mildly the assumption that any other
+nation should become addicted to it; whereas I argue that the burden of
+the proof shows we do more bathing to the square inch of surface than
+the English ever did. At least, we have superior accommodations for it.
+
+The day is gone in this country when Saturday night was the big night
+for indoor aquatic sports and pastimes; and no gentleman as was a
+gentleman would call on his ladylove and break up her plans for the
+great weekly ceremony. There may have been a time in certain rural
+districts when the bathing season for males practically ended on
+September fifteenth, owing to the water in the horsepond becoming
+chilled; but that time has passed. Along with every modern house that
+is built to-day, in country or town, we expect bathrooms and plenty of
+them. With us the presence of a few bathtubs more or less creates no
+great amount of excitement--nor does the mere sight of open plumbing
+particularly stir our people; whereas in England a hotelkeeper who has
+bathrooms on the premises advertises the fact on his stationery.
+
+If in addition to a few bathrooms a Continental hotelkeeper has a
+decrepit elevator he makes more noise over it than we do over a Pompeian
+palmroom or an Etruscan roofgarden; he hangs a sign above his front door
+testifying to his magnificent enterprise in this regard. The Continental
+may be a born hotelkeeper, as has been frequently claimed for him; but
+the trouble is he usually has no hotel to keep. It is as though you set
+an interior decorator to run a livery stable and expected him to make
+it attractive. He may have the talents, but he is lacking in the raw
+material.
+
+It was in a London apartment house, out Maida Vale way, that I first
+beheld the official bathtub of an English family establishment. It was
+one of those bathtubs that flourished in our own land at about the time
+of the Green-back craze--a coffin-shaped, boxed-in affair lined with
+zinc; and the zinc was suffering from tetter or other serious skin
+trouble and was peeling badly. There was a current superstition about
+the place to the effect that the bathroom and the water supply might on
+occasion be heated with a device known in the vernacular as a geezer.
+
+The geezer was a sheet-iron contraption in the shape of a pocket
+inkstand, and it stood on a perch in the corner, like a Russian icon,
+with a small blue flame flickering beneath it. It looked as though its
+sire might have been a snare-drum and its dam a dark lantern, and
+that it got its looks from its father and its heating powers from the
+mother's side of the family. And the plumbing fixtures were of the type
+that passed out of general use on the American side of the water with
+the Rutherford B. Hayes administration. I was given to understand
+that this was a fair sample of the average residential London
+bathroom--though the newer apartment houses that are going up have
+better ones, they told me.
+
+In English country houses the dearth of bathing appliances must be even
+more dearthful. I ran through the columns of the leading English fashion
+journal and read the descriptions of the large country places that were
+there offered for sale or lease. In many instances the advertisements
+were accompanied by photographic reproductions in half tone showing
+magnificent old places, with Queen Anne fronts and Tudor towers and
+Elizabethan entails and Georgian mortgages, and what not.
+
+Seeing these views I could conjure up visions of rooks cawing in the
+elms; of young curates in flat hats imbibing tea on green lawns; of
+housekeepers named Meadows or Fleming, in rustling black silk; of old
+Giles--fifty years, man and boy, on the place--wearing a smock frock
+and leaning on a pitchfork, with a wisp of hay caught in the tines,
+lamenting that the 'All 'asn't been the same, zur, since the young
+marster was killed ridin' to 'ounds; and then pensively wiping his eyes
+on a stray strand of the hay.
+
+With no great stretch of the imagination I could picture a gouty, morose
+old lord with a secret sorrow and a brandy breath; I could picture a
+profligate heir going deeper and deeper in debt, but refusing to the
+bitter end to put the ax to the roots of the ancestral oaks. I could
+imagine these parties readily, because I had frequently read about both
+of them in the standard English novels; and I had seen them depicted in
+all the orthodox English dramas I ever patronized. But I did not
+notice in the appended descriptions any extended notice of heating
+arrangements; most of the advertisements seemed to slur over that point
+altogether.
+
+And, as regards bathing facilities in their relation to the capacities
+of these country places, I quote at random from the figures given:
+Eighteen rooms and one bath; sixteen rooms and two baths; fourteen rooms
+and one bath; twenty-one rooms and two baths; eleven rooms and one bath;
+thirty-four rooms and two baths. Remember that by rooms bedrooms were
+meant; the reception rooms and parlors and dining halls and offices, and
+the like, were listed separately.
+
+I asked a well-informed Englishman how he could reconcile this
+discrepancy between bedrooms and bathrooms with the current belief that
+the English had a practical monopoly of the habit of bathing. After
+considering the proposition at some length he said I should understand
+there was a difference in England between taking a bath and taking a
+tub--that, though an Englishman might not be particularly addicted to
+a bath, he must have his tub every morning. But I submit that the facts
+prove this explanation to have been but a feeble subterfuge.
+
+Let us, for an especially conspicuous example, take the house that has
+thirty-four sleeping chambers and only two baths. Let us imagine the
+house to be full of guests, with every bedroom occupied; and, if it is
+possible to do so without blushing, let us further imagine a couple
+of pink-and-white English gentlemen in the two baths. If preferable,
+members of the opposite sex may imagine two ladies. Very well, then;
+this leaves the occupants of thirty-two bedrooms all to be provided
+with large tin tubs at approximately the same hour of the morning. Where
+would any household muster the crews to man all those portable tin tubs?
+And where would the proprietor keep his battery of thirty-two tubs when
+they were not in use? Not in the family picture gallery, surely!
+
+From my readings of works of fiction describing the daily life of the
+English upper classes I know full well that the picture gallery is lined
+with family portraits; that each canvased countenance there shows the
+haughtily aquiline but slightly catarrhal nose, which is a heritage
+of this house; that each pair of dark and brooding eyes hide in their
+depths the shadow of that dread Nemesis which, through all the fateful
+centuries, has dogged this brave but ill-starred race until now, alas!
+the place must be let, furnished, to some beastly creature in trade,
+such as an American millionaire.
+
+Here at this end we have the founder of the line, dubbed a knight on the
+gory field of Hastings; and there at that end we have the present heir,
+a knighted dub. We know they cannot put the tubs in the family picture
+gallery; there is no room. They need an armory for that outfit, and no
+armory is specified in the advertisement.
+
+So I, for one, must decline to be misled or deceived by specious
+generalities. If you are asking me my opinion I shall simply say that
+the bathing habit of Merrie England is a venerable myth, and likewise
+so is the fresh-air fetish. The error an Englishman makes is that he
+mistakes cold air for fresh air.
+
+In cold weather an Englishman arranges a few splintered jackstraws,
+kindling fashion, in an open grate somewhat resembling in size and
+shape a wallpocket for bedroom slippers. On this substructure he gently
+deposits one or more carboniferous nodules the size of a pigeon egg, and
+touches a match to the whole. In the more fortunate instances the result
+is a small, reddish ember smoking intermittently. He stands by and
+feeds the glow with a dessert-spoonful of fuel administered at half-hour
+intervals, and imagines he really has a fire and that he is really being
+warmed.
+
+Why the English insist on speaking of coal in the plural when they use
+it only in the singular is more than I can understand. Conceded that
+we overheat our houses and our railroad trains and our hotel lobbies
+in America, nevertheless we do heat them. In winter their interiors are
+warmer and less damp than the outer air--which is more than can be said
+for the lands across the sea, where you have to go outdoors to thaw.
+
+If there are any outdoor sleeping porches in England I missed them when
+I was there; but as regards the ventilation of an English hotel I may
+speak with authority, having patronized one. To begin with, the windows
+have heavy shades. Back of these in turn are folding blinds; then long,
+close curtains of muslin; then, finally, thick, manifolding, shrouding
+draperies of some airproof woolen stuff. At nighttime the maid enters
+your room, seals the windows, pulls down the shades, locks the shutters,
+closes the curtains, draws the draperies--and then, I think, calks all
+the cracks with oakum. When the occupant of that chamber retires to rest
+he is as hermetic as old Rameses the First, safe in his tomb, ever dared
+to hope to be. That reddish aspect of the face noted in connection with
+the average Englishman is not due to fresh air, as has been popularly
+supposed; it is due to the lack of it. It is caused by congestion. For
+years he has been going along, trying to breathe without having the
+necessary ingredients at hand.
+
+At that, England excels the rest of Europe in fresh air, just as it
+excels it in the matter of bathing facilities. There is some fresh air
+left in England--an abundant supply in warm weather, and a stray bit
+here and there in cold. On the Continent there is none to speak of.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IV
+
+
+
+Jacques, the Forsaken
+
+In Germany the last fresh air was used during the Thirty Years' War,
+and there has since been no demand for any. Austria has no fresh air at
+all--never did have any, and therefore has never felt the need of having
+any. Italy--the northern part of it anyhow--is also reasonably shy of
+this commodity.
+
+In the German-speaking countries all street cars and all railway trains
+sail with battened hatches. In their palmiest days the Jimmy Hope gang
+could not have opened a window in a German sleeping car--not without
+blasting; and trying to open a window in the ordinary first or second
+class carriage provides healthful exercise for an American tourist,
+while affording a cheap and simple form of amusement for his fellow
+passengers. If, by superhuman efforts and at the cost of a fingernail
+or two, he should get one open, somebody else in the compartment as
+a matter of principle, immediately objects; and the retired
+brigadier-general, who is always in charge of a German train, comes
+and seals it up again, for that is the rule and the law; and then the
+natives are satisfied and sit in sweet content together, breathing a
+line of second-handed air that would choke a salamander.
+
+Once, a good many years ago--in the century before the last I think it
+was--a member of the Teutonic racial stock was accidentally caught out
+in the fresh air and some of it got into his lungs. And, being a strange
+and a foreign influence to which the lungs were unused, it sickened
+him; in fact I am not sure but that it killed him on the spot. So the
+emperors of Germany and Austria got together and issued a joint ukase on
+the subject and, so far as the traveling public was concerned, forever
+abolished those dangerous experiments. Over there they think a draft is
+deadly, and I presume it is if you have never tampered with one. They
+have a saying: A little window is a dangerous thing.
+
+As with fresh air on the Continent, so also with baths--except perhaps
+more so. In deference to the strange and unaccountable desires of
+their English-speaking guests the larger hotels in Paris are abundantly
+equipped with bathrooms now, but the Parisian boulevardiers continue to
+look with darkling suspicion on a party who will deliberately immerse
+his person in cold water; their beings seem to recoil in horror from the
+bare prospect of such a thing. It is plainly to be seen they think his
+intelligence has been attainted by cold water externally applied; they
+fear that through a complete undermining of his reason he may next be
+committing these acts of violence on innocent bystanders rather than on
+himself, as in the present distressing stages of his mania. Especially,
+I would say, is this the attitude of the habitue of Montmartre.
+
+I can offer no visual proof to back my word; but by other testimony I
+venture the assertion that when a boulevardier feels the need of a bath
+he hangs a musk bag round his neck--and then, as the saying is, the
+warmer the sweeter. His companion of the gentler sex apparently has the
+same idea of performing daily ablutions that a tabby cat has. You recall
+the tabby-cat system, do you not?--two swipes over the brow with the
+moistened paw, one forward swipe over each ear, a kind of circular
+rubbing effect across the face--and call it a day! Drowning must be the
+most frightful death that a Parisian sidewalk favorite can die. It is
+not so much the death itself--it is the attendant circumstances.
+
+Across the river, in the older quarters of Paris, there is excitement
+when anybody on the block takes a bath--not so much excitement as for a
+fire, perhaps, but more than for a funeral. On the eve of the fatal day
+the news spreads through the district that to-morrow poor Jacques is
+going to take a bath! A further reprieve has been denied him. He cannot
+put it off for another month, or even for another two weeks. His doom is
+nigh at hand; there is no hope--none!
+
+Kindly old Angeline, the midwife, shakes her head sadly as she goes
+about her simple duties.
+
+On the morrow the condemned man rises early and sees his spiritual
+adviser. He eats a hearty breakfast, takes an affectionate leave of his
+family and says he is prepared for the worst. At the appointed hour the
+tumbrel enters the street, driven by the paid executioner--a descendant
+of the original Sanson--and bearing the dread instrument of punishment,
+a large oblong tin tub.
+
+The rumble of the heavy wheels over the cobbles seems to wake an
+agonized chord in every bosom. To-day this dread visitation descends on
+Jacques; but who can tell--so the neighbors say to themselves--when the
+same fate may strike some other household now happily unconscious! All
+along the narrow way sorrow-drooped heads protrude in rows; from every
+casement dangle whiskers, lank and stringy with sympathy--for in this
+section every true Frenchman has whiskers, and if by chance he has not
+his wife has; so that there are whiskers for all.
+
+From the window of the doomed wretch's apartments a derrick protrudes--a
+crossarm with a pulley and a rope attached. It bears a grimly
+significant resemblance to a gallows tree. Under the direction of the
+presiding functionary the tub is made fast to the tackle and hoisted
+upward as pianos and safes are hoisted in American cities. It halts at
+the open casement. It vanishes within. The whole place resounds with low
+murmurs of horror and commiseration.
+
+Ah, the poor Jacques--how he must suffer! Hark to that low, sickening
+thud! 'Tis the accursed soap dropping from his nerveless grasp. Hist to
+that sound--like unto a death rattle! It is the water gurgling in the
+tub. And what means that low, poignant, smothered gasp? It is the last
+convulsive cry of Jacques descending into the depths. All is over! Let
+us pray!
+
+The tub, emptied but stained, is lowered to the waiting cart. The
+executioner kisses the citizen who has held his horse for him during his
+absence and departs; the whole district still hums with ill-suppressed
+excitement. Questions fly from tongue to tongue. Was the victim brave
+at the last? Was he resigned when the dread moment came? And how is the
+family bearing up? It is hours before the place settles down again to
+that calm which will endure for another month, until somebody else takes
+a bath on a physician's prescription.
+
+Even in the sanctity of a Paris hotel a bath is more or less a public
+function unless you lock your door. All sorts of domestic servitors
+drift in, filled with a morbid curiosity to see how a foreigner deports
+himself when engaged in this strange, barbaric rite. On the occasion of
+my first bath on French soil, after several of the hired help had
+thus called on me informally, causing me to cower low in my porcelain
+retreat, I took advantage of a moment of comparative quiet to rise
+drippingly and draw the latch. I judged the proprietor would be along
+next, and I was not dressed for him. The Lady Susanna of whom mention
+has previously been made must have stopped at a French hotel at some
+time of her life. This helps us to understand why she remained so calm
+when the elders happened in.
+
+Even as now practiced, bathing still remains a comparative novelty
+in the best French circles, I imagine. I base this presumption on
+observations made during a visit to Versailles. I went to Versailles;
+I trod with reverent step those historic precincts adorned with art
+treasures uncountable, with curios magnificent, with relics invaluable.
+I visited the little palace and the big; I ventured deep into that
+splendid forest where, in the company of ladies regarding whom there has
+been a good deal of talk subsequently, France's Grandest and Merriest
+Monarch disported himself. And I found out what made the Merriest
+Monarch merry--so far as I could see, there was not a bathroom on the
+place. He was a true Frenchman--was Louis the Fourteenth.
+
+In Berlin, at the Imperial Palace, our experience was somewhat similar.
+Led by a guide we walked through acres of state drawing rooms and state
+dining rooms and state reception rooms and state picture rooms; and
+we were told that most of them--or, at least, many of them--were the
+handiwork of the late Andreas Schluter. The deceased Schluter was an
+architect, a painter, a sculptor, a woodcarver, a decorator, all rolled
+into one. He was the George M. Cohan of his time; and I think he also
+played the clarinet, being a German.
+
+We traversed miles of these Schluter masterpieces. Eventually we heard
+sounds of martial music without, and we went to a window overlooking a
+paved courtyard; and from that point we presently beheld a fine sight.
+For the moment the courtyard was empty, except that in the center stood
+a great mass of bronze--by Schluter, I think--a heroic equestrian statue
+of Saint George in the act of destroying the first adulterated German
+sausage. But in a minute the garrison turned out; and then in through
+an arched gateway filed the relief guard headed by a splendid band,
+with bell-hung standards jingling at the head of the column and young
+officers stalking along as stiff as ramrods, and soldiers marching with
+the goosestep.
+
+In the German army the private who raises his knee the highest and
+sticks his shank out ahead of him the straightest, and slams his foot
+down the hardest and jars his brain the painfulest, is promoted to be
+a corporal and given a much heavier pair of shoes, so that he may make
+more noise and in time utterly destroy his reason. The goosestep would
+be a great thing for destroying grasshoppers or cutworms in a plague
+year in a Kansas wheatfield.
+
+At the Kaiser's palace we witnessed all these sights, but we did not run
+across any bathrooms or any bathtubs. However, we were in the public end
+of the establishment and I regard it as probable that in the other wing,
+where the Kaiser lives when at home, there are plenty of bathrooms. I
+did not investigate personally. The Kaiser was out at Potsdam and I did
+not care to call in his absence.
+
+Bathrooms are plentiful at the hotel where we stopped at Berlin. I had
+rather hoped to find the bedroom equipped with an old-fashioned German
+feather bed. I had heard that one scaled the side of a German bed on
+a stepladder and then fell headlong into its smothering folds like
+a gallant fireman invading a burning rag warehouse; but this hotel
+happened to be the best hotel that I ever saw outside the United States.
+It had been built and it was managed on American lines, plus German
+domestic service--which made an incomparable combination--and it was
+furnished with modern beds and provided with modern bathrooms.
+
+Probably as a delicate compliment to the Kaiser, the bathtowels were
+starched until the fringes at the ends bristled up stiffly a-curl,
+like the ends of His Imperial Majesty's equally imperial mustache. Just
+once--and once only--I made the mistake of rubbing myself with one
+of those towels just as it was. I should have softened it first by a
+hackling process, as we used to hackle the hemp in Kentucky; but I did
+not. For two days I felt like an etching. I looked something like one
+too.
+
+In Vienna we could not get a bedroom with a bathroom attached--they did
+not seem to have any--but we were told there was a bathroom just across
+the hall which we might use with the utmost freedom. This bathroom was
+a large, long, loftly, marble-walled vault. It was as cold as a tomb
+and as gloomy as one, and very smelly. Indeed it greatly resembled the
+pictures I have seen of the sepulcher of an Egyptian king--only I would
+have said that this particular king had been skimpily embalmed by the
+royal undertakers in the first place, and then imperfectly packed. The
+bathtub was long and marked with scars, and it looked exactly like
+a rifled mummy case with the lid missing, which added greatly to the
+prevalent illusion.
+
+We used this bathroom ad lib.: but when I went to pay the bill I found
+an official had been keeping tabs on us, and that all baths taken had
+been charged up at the rate of sixty cents apiece. I had provided my own
+soap too! For that matter the traveler provides his own soap everywhere
+in Europe, outside of England. In some parts soap is regarded as an
+edible and in some as a vice common to foreigners; but everywhere except
+in the northern countries it is a curio.
+
+So in Vienna they made us furnish our own soap and then charged us more
+for a bath than they did for a meal. Still, by their standards, I dare
+say they were right. A meal is a necessity, but a bath is an exotic
+luxury; and, since they have no extensive tariff laws in Austria, it is
+but fair that the foreigner should pay the tax. I know I paid mine, one
+way or another.
+
+Speaking of bathing reminds me of washing; and speaking of washing
+reminds me of an adventure I had in Vienna in connection with a white
+waistcoat--or, as we would call it down where I was raised, a dress
+vest. This vest had become soiled through travel and wear across
+Europe. At Vienna I intrusted it to the laundry along with certain other
+garments. When the bundle came back my vest was among the missing.
+
+The maid did not seem to be able to comprehend the brand of German I use
+in casual conversation; so, through an interpreter, I explained to her
+that I was shy one white vest. For two days she brought all sorts of
+vests and submitted them to me on approval--thin ones and thick ones;
+old ones and new ones; slick ones and woolly ones; fringed ones and
+frayed ones. I think the woman had a private vest mine somewhere, and
+went and tapped a fresh vein on my account every few minutes; but it
+never was the right vest she brought me.
+
+Finally I told her in my best German, meantime accompanying myself with
+appropriate yet graceful gestures, that she need not concern herself
+further with the affair; she could just let the matter drop and I would
+interview the manager and put in a claim for the value of the lost
+garment. She looked at me dazedly a moment while I repeated the
+injunction more painstakingly than before; and, at that, understanding
+seemed to break down the barriers of her reason and she said, "Ja! Ja!"
+Then she nodded emphatically several times, smiled and hurried away and
+in twenty minutes was back, bringing with her a begging friar of some
+monastic order or other.
+
+I would take it as a personal favor if some student of the various
+Teutonic tongues and jargons would inform me whether there is any word
+in Viennese for white vest that sounds like Catholic priest! However, we
+prayed together--that brown brother and I. I do not know what he prayed
+for, but I prayed for my vest.
+
+I never got it though. I doubt whether my prayer ever reached heaven--it
+had such a long way to go. It is farther from Vienna to heaven than from
+any other place in the world, I guess--unless it is Paris. That vest is
+still wandering about the damp-filled corridors of that hotel, mooing in
+a plaintive manner for its mate--which is myself. It will never find
+a suitable adopted parent. It was especially coopered to my form by an
+expert clothing contractor, and it will not fit anyone else. No; it will
+wander on and on, the starchy bulge of its bosom dimly phosphorescent in
+the gloaming, its white pearl buttons glimmering spectrally; and after a
+while the hotel will get the reputation of being haunted by the ghost
+of a flour barrel, and will have a bad name and lose custom. I hope so
+anyway. It looks to be my one chance of getting even with the owner for
+penalizing me in the matter of baths.
+
+From Vienna we went southward into the Tyrolese Alps. It was a wonderful
+ride--that ride through the Semmering and on down to Northern Italy. Our
+absurdly short little locomotive, drawing our absurdly long train, went
+boring in and out of a wrinkly shoulder-seam of the Tyrols like a stubby
+needle going through a tuck. I think in thirty miles we threaded thirty
+tunnels; after that I was practically asphyxiated and lost count.
+
+If I ever take that journey again I shall wear a smoke helmet and be
+comfortable. But always between tunnels there were views to be seen
+that would have revived one of the Seven Sleepers. Now, on the
+great-granddaddy-longlegs of all the spidery trestles that ever were
+built, we would go roaring across a mighty gorge, its sides clothed
+with perpendicular gardens and vineyards, and with little gray towns
+clustering under the ledges on its sheer walls like mud-daubers' nests
+beneath an eave. Now, perched on a ridgy outcrop of rock like a single
+tooth in a snaggled reptilian jaw, would be a deserted tower, making a
+fellow think of the good old feudal days when the robber barons robbed
+the traveler instead of as at present, when the job is so completely
+attended to by the pirates who weigh and register baggage in these
+parts.
+
+Then--whish, roar, eclipse, darkness and sulphureted hydrogen!--we
+would dive into another tunnel and out again--gasping--on a breathtaking
+panorama of mountains. Some of them would be standing up against the sky
+like the jagged top of a half-finished cutout puzzle, and some would
+be buried so deeply in clouds that only their peaked blue noses showed
+sharp above the featherbed mattresses of mist in which they were
+snuggled, as befitted mountains of Teutonic extraction. And nearly every
+eminence was crowned with a ruined castle or a hotel. It was easy to
+tell a hotel from a ruin--it had a sign over the door.
+
+At one of those hotels I met up with a homesick American. He was
+marooned there in the rain, waiting for the skies to clear, so he could
+do some mountain climbing; and he was beginning to get moldy from
+the prevalent damp. By now the study of bathing habits had become an
+obsession with me; I asked him whether he had encountered any bathtubs
+about the place. He said a bathtub in those altitudes was as rare as a
+chamois, and the chamois was entirely extinct; so I might make my own
+calculations. But he said he could show me something that was even a
+greater curiosity than a bathtub, and he led me to where a moonfaced
+barometer hung alongside the front entrance of the hotel.
+
+He said he had been there a week now and had about lost hope; but every
+time he threatened to move on, the proprietor would take him out there
+and prove that they were bound to have clearing weather within a few
+hours, because the barometer registered fair. At that moment streams of
+chilly rain-water were coursing down across the dial of the barometer,
+but it registered fair even then. He said--the American did--that it
+was the most stationary barometer he had ever seen, and the most
+reliable--not vacillating and given to moods, like most barometers, but
+fixed and unchangeable in its habits.
+
+I matched it, though, with a thermometer I saw in the early spring of
+1913 at a coast resort in southern California. An Eastern tourist would
+venture out on the windswept and drippy veranda, of a morning after
+breakfast. He would think he was cold. He would have many of the outward
+indications of being cold. His teeth would be chattering like a Morse
+sounder, and inside his white-duck pants his knees would be knocking
+together with a low, muffled sound. He would be so prickled with
+gooseflesh that he felt like Saint Sebastian; but he would take a look
+at the thermometer--sixty-one in the shade! And such was the power of
+mercury and mind combined over matter that he would immediately chirk up
+and feel warm.
+
+Not a hundred yards away, at a drug store, was one of those
+fickle-minded, variable thermometers, showing a temperature that ranged
+from fifty-five on downward to forty; but the hotel thermometer stood
+firm at sixty-one, no matter what happened. In a season of trying
+climatic conditions it was a great comfort--a boon really--not only to
+its owner but to his guests. Speaking personally, however, I have no
+need to consult the barometer's face to see what the weather is going to
+do, or the thermometer's tube to see what it has done. No person needs
+to do so who is favored naturally as I am. I have one of the most
+dependable soft corns in the business.
+
+Rome is full of baths--vast ruined ones erected by various emperors and
+still bearing their names--such as Caracalla's Baths and Titus' Baths,
+and so on. Evidently the ancient Romans were very fond of taking baths.
+
+Other striking dissimilarities between the ancient Romans and the modern
+Romans are perceptible at a glance.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter V
+
+
+
+When the Seven A.M. Tut-tut leaves for Anywhere
+
+Being desirous of tendering sundry hints and observations to such of my
+fellow countrymen as may contemplate trips abroad I shall, with their
+kindly permission, devote this chapter to setting forth briefly the
+following principles, which apply generally to railroad travel in the
+Old World.
+
+First--On the Continent all trains leave at or about seven A.M. and
+reach their destination at or about eleven P.M. You may be going a long
+distance or a short one--it makes no difference; you leave at seven
+and you arrive at eleven. The few exceptions to this rule are of no
+consequence and do not count.
+
+Second--A trunk is the most costly luxury known to European travel. If I
+could sell my small, shrinking and flat-chested steamer trunk--original
+value in New York eighteen dollars and seventy-five cents--for what it
+cost me over on the other side in registration fees, excess charges,
+mental wear and tear, freightage, forwarding and warehousing bills,
+tips, bribes, indulgences, and acts of barratry and piracy, I should
+be able to laugh in the income tax's face. In this connection I would
+suggest to the tourist who is traveling with a trunk that he begin his
+land itinerary in Southern Italy and work northward; thereby, through
+the gradual shrinkage in weight, he will save much money on his trunk,
+owing to the pleasing custom among the Italian trainhands of prying it
+open and making a judicious selection from its contents for personal use
+and for gifts to friends and relatives.
+
+Third--For the sake of the experience, travel second class once; after
+that travel first class--and try to forget the experience. With the
+exception of two or three special-fare, so-called de-luxe trains, first
+class over there is about what the service was on an accommodation,
+mixed-freight-and-passenger train in Arkansas immediately following the
+close of the Civil War.
+
+Fourth--When buying a ticket for anywhere you will receive a cunning
+little booklet full of detachable leaves, the whole constituting a
+volume about the size and thickness of one of those portfolios of
+views that came into popularity with us at the time of the Philadelphia
+Centennial. Surrender a sheet out of your book on demand of the
+uniformed official who will come through the train at from five to seven
+minute intervals. However, he will collect only a sheet every other
+trip; on the alternate trips he will merely examine your ticket with the
+air of never having seen it before, and will fold it over, and perforate
+it with his punching machine and return it to you. By the time you reach
+your destination nothing will be left but the cover; but do not cast
+this carelessly aside; retain it until you are filing out of the
+terminal, when it will be taken up by a haughty voluptuary with
+whiskers. If you have not got it you cannot escape. You will have to
+go back and live on the train, which is, indeed, a frightful fate to
+contemplate.
+
+Fifth--Reach the station half an hour before the train starts and claim
+your seat; then tip the guard liberally to keep other passengers out of
+your compartment. He has no intention of doing so, but it is customary
+for Americans to go through this pleasing formality--and it is expected
+of them.
+
+Sixth--Tip everybody on the train who wears a uniform. Be not afraid of
+hurting some one's feelings by offering a tip to the wrong person.
+There will not be any wrong person. A tip is the one form of insult that
+anybody in Europe will take.
+
+Seventh--Before entering the train inhale deeply several times. This
+will be your last chance of getting any fresh air until you reach your
+destination. For self-defense against the germ life prevailing in the
+atmosphere of the unventilated compartments, smoke a German cigar. A
+German cigar keeps off any disease except the cholera; it gives you the
+cholera.
+
+Eighth--Do not linger on the platform, waiting for the locomotive
+whistle to blow, or the bell to ring, or somebody to yell "All aboard!"
+If you do this you will probably keep on lingering until the following
+morning at seven. As a starting signal the presiding functionary renders
+a brief solo on a tiny tin trumpet. One puny warning blast from this
+instrument sets the whole train in motion. It makes you think of Gabriel
+bringing on the Day of Judgment by tootling on a penny whistle.
+Another interesting point: The engine does not say Choo-choo as in our
+country--it says Tut-tut.
+
+Ninth--In England, for convenience in claiming your baggage, change your
+name to Xenophon or Zymology--there are always about the baggage
+such crowds of persons who have the commoner initials, such as T for
+Thompson, J for Jones, and S for Smith. When next I go to England my
+name will be Zoroaster--Quintus P. Zoroaster.
+
+Tenth--If possible avoid patronizing the so-called refreshment wagons
+or dining cars, which are expensive and uniformly bad. Live off the
+country. Remember, the country is living off you.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VI
+
+
+
+La Belle France Being the First Stop
+
+Except eighty or ninety other things the British Channel was the most
+disappointing thing we encountered in our travels. All my reading on
+this subject had led me to expect that the Channel would be very choppy
+and that we should all be very seasick. Nothing of the sort befell. The
+channel may have been suetty but it was not choppy. The steamer that
+ferried us over ran as steadily as a clock and everybody felt as fine as
+a fiddle.
+
+A friend of mine whom I met six weeks later in Florence had better luck.
+He crossed on an occasion when a test was being made of a device for
+preventing seasickness. A Frenchman was the inventor and also the
+experimenter. This Frenchman had spent valuable years of his life
+perfecting his invention. It resembled a hammock swung between uprights.
+The supports were to be bolted to the deck of the ship, and when the
+Channel began to misbehave the squeamish passenger would climb into the
+hammock and fasten himself in; and then, by a system of reciprocating
+oscillations, the hammock would counteract the motion of the ship
+and the occupant would rest in perfect comfort no matter how high she
+pitched or how deep she rolled. At least such was the theory of the
+inventor; and to prove it he offered himself as the subject for the
+first actual demonstration.
+
+The result was unexpected. The sea was only moderately rough; but that
+patent hammock bucked like a kicking bronco. The poor Frenchman was the
+only seasick person aboard--but he was sick enough for the whole crowd.
+He was seasick with a Gallic abandon; he was seasick both ways from the
+jack, and other ways too. He was strapped down so he could not get out,
+which added no little to the pleasure of the occasion for everybody
+except himself. When the steamer landed the captain of the boat told
+the distressed owner that, in his opinion, the device was not suited for
+steamer use. He advised him to rent it to a riding academy.
+
+In crossing from Dover to Calais we had thought we should be going
+merely from one country to another; we found we had gone from one world
+to another. That narrow strip of uneasy water does not separate two
+countries--it separates two planets.
+
+Gone were the incredible stiffness and the incurable honesty of the
+race that belonged over yonder on those white chalk cliffs dimly visible
+along the horizon. Gone were the phlegm and stolidity of those people
+who manifest emotion only on the occasions when they stand up to sing
+their national anthem:
+
+                        God save the King!
+                     The Queen is doing well!
+
+Gone were the green fields of Sussex, which looked as though they had
+been taken in every night and brushed and dry-cleaned and then put down
+again in the morning. Gone were the trees that Maxfield Parrish might
+have painted, so vivid were they in their burnished green-and-yellow
+coloring, so spectacular in their grouping. Gone was the five-franc note
+which I had intrusted to a sandwich vender on the railroad platform
+in the vain hope that he would come back with the change. After that
+clincher there was no doubt about it--we were in La Belle France all
+right, all right!
+
+Everything testified to the change. From the pier where we landed, a
+small boy, in a long black tunic belted in at his waist, was fishing;
+he hooked a little fingerling. At the first tentative tug on his line he
+set up a shrill clamor. At that there came running a fat, kindly looking
+old priest in a long gown and a shovel hat; and a market woman came,
+who had arms like a wrestler and skirts that stuck out like a ballet
+dancer's; and a soldier in baggy red pants came; and thirty or forty
+others of all ages and sizes came--and they gathered about that small
+boy and gave him advice at the top of their voices. And when he yanked
+out the shining little silver fish there could not have been more
+animation and enthusiasm and excitement if he had landed a full-grown
+Presbyterian.
+
+They were still congratulating him when we pulled out and went tearing
+along on our way to Paris, scooting through quaint, stone-walled cities,
+each one dominated by its crumbly old cathedral; sliding through open
+country where the fields were all diked and ditched with small canals
+and bordered with poplars trimmed so that each tree looked like a set of
+undertaker's whiskers pointing the wrong way.
+
+And in these fields were peasants in sabots at work, looking as
+though they had just stepped out of one of Millet's pictures. Even the
+haystacks and the scarecrows were different. In England the haystacks
+had been geometrically correct in their dimensions--so square and firm
+and exact that sections might be sliced off them like cheese, and doors
+and windows might be carved in them; but these French haystacks were
+devil-may-care haystacks wearing tufts on their polls like headdresses.
+The windmills had a rakish air; and the scarecrows in the truck gardens
+were debonair and cocky, tilting themselves back on their pins the
+better to enjoy the view and fluttering their ragged vestments in a most
+jaunty fashion. The land though looked poor--it had a driven, overworked
+look to it.
+
+Presently, above the clacking voice of our train, we heard a whining
+roar without; and peering forth we beheld almost over our heads a big
+monoplane racing with us. It seemed a mighty, winged Thunder Lizard that
+had come back to link the Age of Stone with the Age of Air. On second
+thought I am inclined to believe the Thunder Lizard did not flourish in
+the Stone Age; but if you like the simile as much as I like it we will
+just let it stand.
+
+Three times on that trip we saw from the windows of our train aviators
+out enjoying the cool of the evening in their airships; and each time
+the natives among the passengers jammed into the passageway that flanked
+the compartments and speculated regarding the identity of the aviators
+and the make of their machines, and argued and shrugged their shoulders
+and quarreled and gesticulated. The whole thing was as Frenchy as tripe
+in a casserole.
+
+I was wrong, though, a minute ago when I said there remained nothing to
+remind us of the right little, tight little island we had just quit; for
+we had two Englishmen in our compartment--fit and proper representatives
+of a certain breed of Englishman. They were tall and lean, and had the
+languid eyes and the long, weary faces and the yellow buck teeth of
+weary cart-horses, and they each wore a fixed expression of intense
+gloom. You felt sure it was a fixed expression because any person with
+such an expression would change it if he could do so by anything short
+of a surgical operation. And it was quite evident they had come mentally
+prepared to disapprove of all things and all people in a foreign clime.
+
+Silently, but none the less forcibly, they resented the circumstance
+that others should be sharing the same compartment with them--or sharing
+the same train, either, for that matter. The compartment was full, too,
+which made the situation all the more intolerable: an elderly English
+lady with a placid face under a mid-Victorian bonnet; a young, pretty
+woman who was either English or American; the two members of my party,
+and these two Englishmen.
+
+And when, just as the train was drawing out of Calais, they discovered
+that the best two seats, which they had promptly preempted, belonged
+to others, and that the seats for which they held reservations
+faced rearward, so that they must ride with their backs to the
+locomotive--why, that irked them sore and more. I imagine they wrote a
+letter to the London Times about it afterward.
+
+As is the pleasing habit of traveling Englishmen, they had brought with
+them everything portable they owned. Each one had four or five large
+handbags, and a carryall, and a hat box, and his tea-caddy, and his
+plaid blanket done up in a shawlstrap, and his framed picture of the
+Death of Nelson--and all the rest of it; and they piled those things in
+the luggage racks until both the racks were chock-full; so the rest of
+us had to hold our baggage in our laps or sit on it. One of them was
+facing me not more than five or six feet distant. He never saw me
+though. He just gazed steadily through me, studying the pattern of the
+upholstery on the seat behind me; and I could tell by his look that he
+did not care for the upholstering--as very naturally he would not, it
+being French.
+
+We had traveled together thus for some hours when one of them began to
+cloud up for a sneeze. He tried to sidetrack it, but it would not be
+sidetracked. The rest of us, looking on, seemed to hear that sneeze
+coming from a long way off. It reminded me of a musical-sketch team
+giving an imitation of a brass band marching down Main Street playing
+the Turkish Patrol--dim and faint at first, you know, and then growing
+louder and stronger, and gathering volume until it bursts right in your
+face.
+
+Fascinated, we watched his struggles. Would he master it or would it
+master him? But he lost, and it was probably a good thing he did. If he
+had swallowed that sneeze it would have drowned him. His nose jibed and
+went about; his head tilted back farther and farther; his countenance
+expressed deep agony, and then the log jam at the bend in his nose went
+out with a roar and he let loose the moistest, loudest kerswoosh! that
+ever was, I reckon.
+
+He sneezed eight times. The first sneeze unbuttoned his waistcoat, the
+second unparted his hair, and the third one almost pulled his shoes off;
+and after that they grew really violent, until the last sneeze shifted
+his cargo and left him with a list to port and his lee scuppers awash.
+It made a ruin of him--the Prophet Isaiah could not have remained
+dignified wrestling with a sneezing bee of those dimensions--but oh, how
+it did gladden the rest of us to behold him at the mercy of the elements
+and to note what a sodden, waterlogged wreck they made of him!
+
+It was not long after that before we had another streak of luck.
+The train jolted over something and a hat fell down from the topmost
+pinnacle of the mountain of luggage above and hit his friend on the
+nose. We should have felt better satisfied if it had been a coal
+scuttle; but it was a reasonably hard and heavy hat and it hit him brim
+first on the tenderest part of his nose and made his eyes water, and we
+were grateful enough for small blessings. One should not expect too much
+of an already overworked Providence.
+
+The rest of us were still warm and happy in our souls when, without any
+whistle-tooting or bell-clanging or station-calling, we slid silently,
+almost surreptitiously, into the Gare du Nord, at Paris. Neither in
+England nor on the mainland does anyone feel called on to notify you
+that you have reached your destination.
+
+It is like the old formula for determining the sex of a pigeon--you give
+the suspected bird some corn, and if he eats it he is a he; but if she
+eats it she is a she. In Europe if it is your destination you get off,
+and if it is not your destination you stay on. On this occasion we
+stayed on, feeling rather forlorn and helpless, until we saw that
+everyone else had piled off. We gathered up our belongings and piled off
+too.
+
+By that time all the available porters had been engaged; so we took up
+our luggage and walked. We walked the length of the trainshed--and then
+we stepped right into the recreation hall of the State Hospital for the
+Criminal Insane, at Matteawan, New York. I knew the place instantly,
+though the decorations had been changed since I was there last. It was
+a joy to come on a home institution so far from home--joysome, but a
+trifle disconcerting too, because all the keepers had died or gone on
+strike or something; and the lunatics, some of them being in uniform
+and some in civilian dress, were leaping from crag to crag, uttering
+maniacal shrieks.
+
+Divers lunatics, who had been away and were just getting back, and
+sundry lunatics who were fixing to go away and apparently did not expect
+ever to get back, were dashing headlong into the arms of still other
+lunatics, kissing and hugging them, and exchanging farewells and
+sacre-bleuing with them in the maddest fashion imaginable. From time to
+time I laid violent hands on a flying, flitting maniac and detained him
+against his will, and asked him for some directions; but the persons to
+whom I spoke could not understand me, and when they answered I could not
+understand them; so we did not make much headway by that. I could not
+get out of that asylum until I had surrendered the covers of our ticket
+books and claimed our baggage and put it through the customs office. I
+knew that; the trouble was I could not find the place for attending to
+these details. On a chance I tried a door, but it was distinctly the
+wrong place; and an elderly female on duty there got me out by employing
+the universal language known of all peoples. She shook her skirts at me
+and said Shoo! So I got out, still toting five or six bags and bundles
+of assorted sizes and shapes, and tried all the other doors in sight.
+
+Finally, by a process of elimination and deduction, I arrived at the
+right one. To make it harder for me they had put it around a corner
+in an elbow-shaped wing of the building and had taken the sign off the
+door. This place was full of porters and loud cries. To be on the safe
+side I tendered retaining fees to three of the porters; and thus by
+the time I had satisfied the customs officials that I had no imported
+spirits or playing cards or tobacco or soap, or other contraband goods,
+and had cleared our baggage and started for the cabstand, we amounted
+to quite a stately procession and attracted no little attention as we
+passed along. But the tips I had to hand out before the taxi started
+would stagger the human imagination if I told you the sum total.
+
+There are few finer things than to go into Paris for the first time on a
+warm, bright Saturday night. At this moment I can think of but one finer
+thing--and that is when, wearied of being short-changed and bilked and
+double-charged, and held up for tips or tribute at every step, you are
+leaving Paris on a Saturday night--or, in fact, any night.
+
+Those first impressions of the life on the boulevards are going to stay
+in my memory a long, long time--the people, paired off at the tables
+of the sidewalk cafes, drinking drinks of all colors; a little shopgirl
+wearing her new, cheap, fetching hat in such a way as to center public
+attention on her head and divert it from her feet, which were shabby;
+two small errand boys in white aprons, standing right in the middle of
+the whirling, swirling traffic, in imminent peril of their lives, while
+one lighted his cigarette butt from the cigarette butt of his friend; a
+handful of roistering soldiers, singing as they swept six abreast
+along the wide, rutty sidewalk; the kiosks for advertising, all thickly
+plastered over with posters, half of which should have been in an art
+gallery and the other half in a garbage barrel; a well-dressed pair,
+kissing in the full glare of a street light; an imitation art student,
+got up to look like an Apache, and--no doubt--plenty of real Apaches
+got up to look like human beings; a silk-hatted gentleman, stopping
+with perfect courtesy to help a bloused workman lift a baby-laden
+baby carriage over an awkward spot in the curbing, and the workingman
+returning thanks with the same perfect courtesy; our own driver,
+careening along in a manner suggestive of what certain East Side friends
+of mine would call the Chariot Race from Ben Hirsch; and a stout lady of
+the middle class sitting under a cafe awning caressing her pet mole.
+
+To the Belgian belongs the credit of domesticating the formerly
+ferocious Belgian hare, and the East Indian fakir makes a friend and
+companion of the king cobra; but it remained for those ingenious people,
+the Parisians, to tame the mole, which other races have always regarded
+as unbeautiful and unornamental, and make a cunning little companion of
+it and spend hours stroking its fleece. This particular mole belonging
+to the stout middle-aged lady in question was one of the largest moles
+and one of the curliest I ever saw. It was on the side of her nose.
+
+You see a good deal of mole culture going on here. Later, with the
+reader's permission, we shall return to Paris and look its inhabitants
+over at more length; but for the time being I think it well for us to be
+on our travels. In passing I would merely state that on leaving a Paris
+hotel you will tip everybody on the premises.
+
+Oh, yes--but you will!
+
+Let us move southward. Let us go to Sunny Italy, which is called Sunny
+Italy for the same reason that the laughing hyena is called the laughing
+hyena--not because he laughs so frequently, but because he laughs so
+seldom. Let us go to Rome, the Eternal City, sitting on her Seven Hills,
+remembering as we go along that the currency has changed and we no
+longer compute sums of money in the franc but in the lira. I regret the
+latter word is not pronounced as spelled--it would give me a chance to
+say that the common coin of Italy is a lira, and that nearly everybody
+in Rome is one also.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VII
+
+
+
+Thence On and On to Verbotenland
+
+Ah, Rome--the Roma of the Ancients--the Mistress of the Olden World--the
+Sacred City! Ah, Rome, if only your stones could speak! It is customary
+for the tourist, taking his cue from the guidebooks, to carry on like
+this, forgetting in his enthusiasm that, even if they did speak, they
+would doubtless speak Italian, which would leave him practically where
+he was before. And so, having said it myself according to formula, I
+shall proceed to state the actual facts:
+
+If, coming forth from a huge and dirty terminal, you emerge on a
+splendid plaza, miserably paved, and see a priest, a soldier and a
+beggar; a beautiful child wearing nothing at all to speak of, and a
+hideous old woman with the eyes of a Madonna looking out of a tragic
+mask of a face; a magnificent fountain, and nobody using the water, and
+a great, overpowering smell--yes, you can see a Roman smell; a cart
+mule with ten dollars' worth of trappings on him, and a driver with ten
+cents' worth on him; a palace like a dream of stone, entirely surrounded
+by nightmare hovels; a new, shiny, modern apartment house, and
+shouldering up against it a cankered rubbish heap that was once the
+playhouse of a Caesar, its walls bearded like a pard's face with tufted
+laurel and splotched like a brandy drunkard's with red stains; a church
+that is a dismal ruin without and a glittering Aladdin's Cave of gold
+and gems and porphyry and onyx within; a wide and handsome avenue
+starting from one festering stew of slums and ending in another
+festering stew of slums; a grimed and broken archway opening on a lovely
+hidden courtyard where trees are green and flowers bloom, and in the
+center there stands a statue which is worth its weight in minted silver
+and which carries more than its weight in dirt--if in addition everybody
+in sight is smiling and good-natured and happy, and is trying to sell
+you something or wheedle you out of something, or pick your pocket of
+something--you need not, for confirmatory evidence, seek the vast dome
+of St. Peter's rising yonder in the distance, or the green tops of the
+cedars and the dusky clumps of olive groves on the hillsides beyond--you
+know you are in Rome.
+
+To get the correct likeness of Naples we merely reduce the priests by
+one-half and increase the beggars by two-thirds; we richen the color
+masses, thicken the dirt, raise the smells to the Nth degree, and set
+half the populace to singing. We establish in every second doorway a
+mother with her offspring tucked between her knees and forcibly held
+there while the mother searches the child's head for a flea; anyhow, it
+is more charitable to say it is a flea; and we add a special touch of
+gorgeousness to the street pictures.
+
+For here a cart is a glory of red tires and blue shafts, and green hubs
+and pink body and purple tailgate, with a canopy on it that would have
+suited Sheba's Queen; and the mule that draws the cart is caparisoned in
+brass and plumage like a circus pony; and the driver wears a broad red
+sash, part of a shirt, and half of a pair of pants--usually the front
+half. With an outfit such as that, you feel he should be peddling aurora
+borealises, or, at the very least, rainbows. It is a distinct shock to
+find he has only chianti or cheeses or garbage in stock.
+
+In Naples, also, there is, even in the most prosaic thing, a sight to
+gladden your eye if you but hold your nose while you look on it. On the
+stalls of the truckvenders the cauliflowers and the cabbages are racked
+up with an artistic effect we could scarcely equal if we had roses and
+orchids to work with; the fishmonger's cart is a study in still life,
+and the tripe is what artists call a harmonious interior.
+
+Nearly all the hotels in Italy are converted palaces. They may have
+been successes as palaces, but, with their marble floors and their
+high ceilings, and their dank, dark corridors, they distinctly fail to
+qualify as hotels. I should have preferred them remaining unsaved and
+sinful. I likewise observed a peculiarity common to hotelkeepers in
+Italy--they all look like cats. The proprietor of the converted palace
+where we stopped in Naples was the very image of a tomcat we used to
+own, named Plutarch's Lives, which was half Maltese and half Mormon.
+He was a cat that had a fine carrying voice--though better adapted for
+concert work than parlor singing--and a sweetheart in every port. This
+hotelkeeper might have been the cat's own brother with clothes on--he
+had Plute's roving eye and his bristling whiskers and his sharp white
+teeth, and Plute's silent, stealthy tread, and his way of purring softly
+until he had won your confidence and then sticking his claw into you.
+The only difference was, he stuck you with a bill instead of a claw.
+
+Another interesting idiosyncrasy of the Italian hotelkeeper is that he
+invariably swears to you his town is the only honest town in Italy, but
+begs you to beware of the next town which, he assures you with his hand
+on the place where his heart would be if he had a heart, is full of
+thieves and liars and counterfeit money and pickpockets. Half of what he
+tells you is true--the latter half.
+
+The tourist agencies issue pamphlets telling how you may send money or
+jewelry by registered mail in Italy, and then append a footnote warning
+you against sending money or jewelry by registered mail in Italy.
+Likewise you are constantly being advised against carrying articles
+of value in your trunk, unless it is most carefully locked, bolted and
+strapped. It is good advice too.
+
+An American I met on the boat coming home told me he failed to take such
+precautions while traveling in Italy; and he said that when he reached
+the Swiss border his trunk was so light he had to sit on it to keep it
+from blowing off the bus on the way from the station to the hotel, and
+so empty that when he opened it at both ends the draft whistling through
+it gave him a bad cold. However, he may have exaggerated slightly.
+
+If you can forget that you are paying first-class prices for fourth-rate
+accommodations--forget the dirt in the carriages and the smells in the
+compartments--a railroad journey through the Italian Peninsula is a
+wonderful experience. I know it was a wonderful experience for me.
+
+I shall not forget the old walled towns of stone perched precariously on
+the sloping withers of razorbacked mountains--towns that were old when
+the Saviour was born; or the ancient Roman aqueducts, all pocked and
+pecked with age, looping their arches across the land for miles on
+miles; or the fields, scored and scarified by three thousand years of
+unremitting, relentless, everlasting agriculture; or the wide-horned
+Italian cattle that browsed in those fields; or yet the woman who darted
+to the door of every signal-house we passed and came to attention, with
+a long cudgel held flat against her shoulder like a sentry's musket.
+
+I do not know why a woman should exhibit an overgrown broomstick when
+an Italian train passes a flag station, any more than I know why, when a
+squad of Paris firemen march out of the engine house for exercise, they
+should carry carbines and knapsacks. I only know that these things are
+done.
+
+In Tuscany the vineyards make a fine show, for the vines are trained
+to grow up from the ground and then are bound into streamers and draped
+from one fruit tree or one shade tree to another, until a whole hillside
+becomes one long, confusing vista of leafy festoons. The thrifty owner
+gets the benefit of his grapes and of his trees, and of the earth below,
+too, for there he raises vegetables and grains, and the like. Like
+everything else in this land, the system is an old one. I judge it was
+old enough to be hackneyed when Horace wrote of it:
+
+            Now each man, basking on his slopes,
+             Weds to his widowed tree the vine;
+             Then, as he gayly quaffs his wine,
+             Salutes thee god of all his hopes.
+
+Classical quotations interspersed here and there are wonderful helps to
+a guide book, don't you think?
+
+In rural Italy there are two other scenic details that strike the
+American as being most curious--one is the amazing prevalence of family
+washing, and the other is the amazing scarcity of birdlife. To himself
+the traveler says:
+
+"What becomes of all this intimate and personal display of family
+apparel I see fluttering from the front windows of every house in this
+country? Everybody is forever washing clothes but nobody ever wears it
+after it is washed. And what has become of all the birds?"
+
+For the first puzzle there is no key, but the traveler gets the answer
+to the other when he passes a meat-dealer's shop in the town and sees
+spread on the stalls heaps of pitiably small starlings and sparrows and
+finches exposed for sale. An Italian will cook and eat anything he can
+kill that has wings on it, from a cassowary to a katydid.
+
+Thinking this barbarity over, I started to get indignant; but just
+in time I remembered what we ourselves have done to decimate the
+canvas-back duck and the wild pigeon and the ricebird and the
+red-worsted pulse-warmer, and other pleasing wild creatures of the
+earlier days in America, now practically or wholly extinct. And I felt
+that before I could attend to the tomtits in my Italian brother's eye I
+must needs pluck a few buffaloes out of my own; so I decided, in view of
+those things, to collect myself and endeavor to remain perfectly calm.
+
+We came into Venice at the customary hour--to wit, eleven P.M.--and had
+a real treat as our train left the mainland and went gliding far out,
+seemingly right through the placid Adriatic, to where the beaded
+lights of Venice showed like a necklace about the withered throat of a
+long-abandoned bride, waiting in the rags of her moldered wedding finery
+for a bridegroom who comes not.
+
+Better even than this was the journey by gondola from the terminal
+through narrow canals and under stone bridges where the water lapped
+with little mouthing tongues at the walls, and the tall, gloomy
+buildings almost met overhead, so that only a tiny strip of
+star-buttoned sky showed between. And from dark windows high up came the
+tinkle of guitars and the sound of song pouring from throats of silver.
+And so we came to our hotel, which was another converted palace; but
+baptism is not regarded as essential to salvation in these parts.
+
+On the whole, Venice did not impress me as it has impressed certain
+other travelers. You see, I was born and raised in one of those Ohio
+Valley towns where the river gets emotional and temperamental every year
+or two. In my youth I had passed through several of these visitations,
+when the family would take the family plate and the family cow, and
+other treasures, and retire to the attic floor to wait for the spring
+rise to abate; and when really the most annoying phase of the situation
+for a housekeeper, sitting on the top landing of his staircase watching
+the yellow wavelets lap inch by inch over the keys of the piano, and
+inch by inch climb up the new dining-room wallpaper, was to hear a
+knocking at a front window upstairs and go to answer it and find that
+Moscoe Burnett had come in a john-boat to collect the water tax.
+
+The Grand Canal did not stir me as it has stirred some--so far back as
+'84 I could remember when Jefferson Street at home looked almost exactly
+like that.
+
+Going through the Austrian Tyrol, between Vienna and Venice, I met two
+old and dear friends in their native haunts--the plush hat and the hot
+dog. When such a thing as this happens away over on the other side of
+the globe it helps us to realize how small a place this world is after
+all, and how closely all peoples are knitted together in common bonds of
+love and affection. The hot dog, as found here, is just as we know
+him throughout the length and breadth of our own land--a dropsical
+Wienerwurst entombed in the depths of a rye-bread sandwich, with a dab
+of horse-radish above him to mark his grave; price, creation over, five
+cents the copy.
+
+The woolly plush hat shows no change either, except that if anything
+it is slightly woollier in the Alps than among us. As transplanted,
+the dinky little bow at the back is an affectation purely--but in these
+parts it is logical and serves a practical and a utilitarian purpose,
+because the mountain byways twist and turn and double, and the local
+beverages are potent brews; and the weary mountaineer, homeward-bound
+afoot at the close of a market day, may by the simple expedient of
+reaching up and fingering his bow tell instantly whether he is going or
+coming.
+
+This is also a great country for churches. Every group of chalets that
+calls itself a village has at least one long-spired gray church in its
+midst, and frequently more than one. In one sweep of hillside view from
+our car window I counted seven church steeples. I do not think it was a
+particularly good day for churches either; I wished I might have passed
+through on a Sunday, when they would naturally be thicker.
+
+Along this stretch of railroad the mountaineers come to the stations
+wearing the distinctive costume of their own craggy and slabsided
+hills--the curling pheasant feather in the hatbrim; the tight-fitting
+knee-breeches; the gaudy stockings; and the broad-suspendered belt with
+rows of huge brass buttons spangling it up and down and crosswise. Such
+is your pleasure at finding these quaint habiliments still in use
+amid settings so picturesque that you buy freely of the fancy-dressed
+individual's wares--for he always has something to sell.
+
+And then as your train pulls out, if by main force and awkwardness you
+jam a window open, as I did, and cast your eyes rearward for a farewell
+peek, as I did, you will behold him, as I did, pulling off his parade
+clothes and climbing into the blue overalls and the jean jumpers of
+prosaic civilization, to wait until the next carload lot of foreign
+tourists rolls in. The European peasant is indeed a simple, guileless
+creature--if you are careless about how you talk.
+
+In this district and on beyond, the sight of women doing the bulk of
+the hard and dirty farmwork becomes common. You see women plowing; women
+hoeing; women carrying incredibly huge bundles of fagots and fodder
+on their heads; women hauling heavy carts, sometimes with a straining,
+panting dog for a teammate, sometimes unaccompanied except by a stalwart
+father or husband, or brother or son, who, puffing a china-bowled pipe,
+walks alongside to see that the poor human draft-animals do not shirk or
+balk, or shy over the traces.
+
+To one coming from a land where no decent man raises his hand against
+a woman--except, of course, in self-defense--this is indeed a startling
+sight to see; but worse is in store for him when he reaches Bohemia,
+on the upper edge of the Austrian Empire. In Bohemia, if there is a
+particularly nasty and laborious job to be done, such as spading up
+manure in the rain or grubbing sugar-beets out of the half-frozen earth,
+they wish it on the dear old grandmother. She always seemed to me to be
+a grandmother--or old enough for one anyway. Perhaps, though, it is the
+life they lead, and not the years, that bends the backs of these women
+and thickens their waists and mats their hair and turns their feet into
+clods and their hands into swollen, red monstrosities.
+
+Surely the Walrus, in Alice in Wonderland, had Germany in mind when he
+said the time had come to speak of cabbages and kings--because Germany
+certainly does lead the known world in those two commodities. Everywhere
+in Germany you see them--the cabbages by the millions and the billions,
+growing rank and purple in the fields and giving promise of the time
+when they will change from vegetable to vine and become the fragrant and
+luscious trailing sauerkraut; but the kings, in stone or bronze, stand
+up in the marketplace or the public square, or on the bridge abutment,
+or just back of the brewery, in every German city and town along the
+route.
+
+By these surface indications alone the most inexperienced traveler would
+know he had reached Germany, even without the halt at the custom house
+on the border; or the crossing watchman in trim uniform jumping to
+attention at every road-crossing; or the beautifully upholstered,
+handswept state forests; or the hedges of willow trees along the
+brooks, sticking up their stubby, twiggy heads like so many disreputable
+hearth-brooms; or the young grain stretching in straight rows
+crosswise of the weedless fields and looking, at a distance, like
+fair green-printed lines evenly spaced on a wide brown page. Also, one
+observes everywhere surviving traces that are unmistakable of the
+reign of that most ingenious and wideawake of all the earlier rulers of
+Germany, King Verboten the Great.
+
+In connection with the life and works of this distinguished ruler is
+told an interesting legend well worthy of being repeated here. It would
+seem that King Verboten was the first crowned head of Europe to learn
+the value of keeping his name constantly before the reading public.
+Rameses the Third of Egypt--that enterprising old constant advertiser
+who swiped the pyramids of all his predecessors and had his own name
+engraved thereon--had been dead for many centuries and was forgotten
+when Verboten mounted the throne, and our own Teddy Roosevelt would not
+be born for many centuries yet to come; so the idea must have occurred
+to King Verboten spontaneously, as it were. Therefore he took counsel
+with himself, saying:
+
+"I shall now erect statues to myself. Dynasties change and wars rage,
+and folks grow fickle and tear down statues. None of that for your Uncle
+Dudley K. Verboten! No; this is what I shall do: On every available site
+in the length and breadth of this my realm I shall stick up my name;
+and, wherever possible, near to it I shall engrave or paint the names
+of my two favorite sons, Ausgang and Eingang--to the end that, come what
+may, we shall never be forgotten in the land of our birth."
+
+And then he went and did it; and it was a thorough job--so thorough a
+job that, to this good year of our Lord you may still see the name of
+that wise king everywhere displayed in Germany--on railroad stations and
+in railroad trains; on castle walls and dead walls and brewery walls,
+and the back fence of the Young Ladies' High School. And nearly always,
+too, you will find hard by, over doors and passageways, the names of
+his two sons, each accompanied or underscored by the heraldic emblem of
+their house--a barbed and feathered arrow pointing horizontally.
+
+And so it was that King Verboten lived happily ever after and in the
+fullness of time died peacefully in his bed, surrounded by his wives,
+his children and his courtiers; and all of them sorrowed greatly and
+wept, but the royal signpainter sorrowed most of all.
+
+I know that certain persons will contest the authenticity of this
+passage of history; they will claim Verboten means in our tongue
+Forbidden, and that Ausgang means Outgoing, and Eingang means
+Incoming--or, in other words, Exit and Entrance; but surely this could
+not be so. If so many things were forbidden, a man in Germany would be
+privileged only to die--and probably not that, unless he died according
+to a given formula; and certainly no human being with the possible
+exception of the comedian who used to work the revolving-door trick
+in Hanlon's Fantasma, could go out of and come into a place so often
+without getting dizzy in the head. No--the legend stands as stated.
+
+Even as it is, there are rules enough in Germany, rules to regulate all
+things and all persons. At first, to the stranger, this seems an
+irksome arrangement--this posting of rules and orders and directions and
+warnings everywhere--but he finds that everyone, be he high or low, must
+obey or go to jail; there are no exceptions and no evasions; so that
+what is a duty on all is a burden on none.
+
+Take the trains, for example. Pretty much all over the Continent the
+railroads are state-owned and state-run, but only in Germany are they
+properly run. True, there are so many uniformed officials aboard
+a German train that frequently there is barely room for the paying
+travelers to squeeze in; but the cars are sanitary and the schedule
+is accurately maintained, and the attendants are honest and polite and
+cleanly of person--wherein lies another point of dissimilarity between
+them and those scurvy, musty, fusty brigands who are found managing and
+operating trains in certain nearby countries.
+
+I remember a cup of coffee I had while going from Paris to Berlin. It
+was made expressly for me by an invalided commander-in-chief of the
+artillery corps of the imperial army--so I judged him to be by his
+costume, air and general deportment--who was in charge of our carriage
+and also of the small kitchen at the far end of it.
+
+He came into our compartment and bowed and clicked his heels together
+and saluted, and wanted to know whether I would take coffee. Recklessly
+I said I would. He filled in several blanks of a printed form, and went
+and cooked the coffee and brought it back, pausing at intervals as he
+came along to fill in other blanks. Would I take cream in my coffee? I
+would; so he filled in a couple of blanks. Would I take sugar? I said I
+would take two lumps. He put in two lumps and filled in another blank.
+
+I really prefer my coffee with three lumps in it; but I noticed that
+his printed form was now completely filled in, and I hated to call for
+a third lump and put him to the trouble of starting his literary labors
+all over again. Besides, by that time the coffee would be cold. So I
+took it as it was--with two lumps only--and it was pretty fair coffee
+for European coffee. It tasted slightly of the red tape and the chicory,
+but it was neatly prepared and promptly served.
+
+And so, over historic streams no larger than creeks would be in America,
+and by castles and cabbages and kings and cows, we came to Berlin;
+and after some of the other Continental cities Berlin seemed a mighty
+restful spot to be in, and a good one to tarry in awhile. It has few
+historical associations, has Berlin, but we were loaded to the gills
+with historical associations by now. It does not excel greatly in
+Old Masters, but we had already gazed with a languid eye upon several
+million Old Masters of all ages, including many very young ones. It has
+no ancient monuments and tombs either, which is a blessing. Most of the
+statuary in Berlin is new and shiny and provided with all the modern
+conveniences--the present kaiser attended competently to that detail.
+Wherever, in his capital, there was space for a statue he has stuck up
+one in memory of a member of his own dynasty, beginning with a statue
+apiece for such earlier rulers as Otho the Oboe-Player, and Joachim,
+surnamed the Half-a-Ton--let some one correct me if I have the names
+wrong--and finishing up with forty or fifty for himself. That is, there
+were forty or fifty of him when I was there. There are probably more
+now.
+
+In its essentials Berlin suggests a progressive American city, with
+Teutonic trimmings. Conceive a bit of New York, a good deal of Chicago,
+a scrap of Denver, a slice of Hoboken, and a whole lot of Milwaukee;
+conceive this combination as being scoured every day until it shines;
+conceive it as beautifully though somewhat profusely governed, and
+laid out with magnificent drives, and dotted with big, handsome public
+buildings, and full of reasonably honest and more than reasonably kindly
+people--and you have Berlin.
+
+It was in Berlin that I picked up the most unique art treasure I found
+anywhere on my travels--a picture of the composer Verdi that looked
+exactly like Uncle Joe Cannon, without the cigar; whereas Uncle Joe
+Cannon does not look a thing in the world like Verdi, and probably
+wouldn't if he could.
+
+I have always regretted that our route through the German Empire took
+us across the land of the Hessians after dark, for I wanted to see those
+people. You will recollect that when George the Third, of England, first
+put into actual use the doctrine of Hands Across the Sea he used the
+Hessians.
+
+They were hired hands.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter VIII
+
+
+
+A Tale of a String-bean
+
+It was at a small dinner party in a home out in Passy--which is to Paris
+what Flatbush is to Brooklyn--that the event hereinafter set forth
+came to pass. Our host was an American who had lived abroad a good many
+years; and his wife, our hostess, was a French woman as charming as she
+was pretty and as pretty as she could be.
+
+The dinner was going along famously. We had hors-d'oeuvres, the soup
+and the hare--all very tasty to look on and very soothing to the palate.
+Then came the fowl, roasted, of course--the roast fowl is the national
+bird of France--and along with the fowl something exceedingly appetizing
+in the way of hearts of lettuce garnished with breasts of hothouse
+tomatoes cut on the bias.
+
+When we were through with this the servants removed the debris and
+brought us hot plates. Then, with the air of one conferring a real treat
+on us, the butler bore around a tureen arrangement full of smoking-hot
+string-beans. When it came my turn I helped myself--copiously--and
+waited for what was to go with the beans. A pause ensued--to my
+imagination an embarrassed pause. Seeking a cue I glanced down the
+table and back again. There did not appear to be anything to go with the
+beans. The butler was standing at ease behind his master's chair--ease
+for a butler, I mean--and the other guests, it seemed to me, were
+waiting and watching. To myself I said:
+
+"Well, sir, that butler certainly has made a J. Henry Fox Pass of
+himself this trip! Here, just when this dinner was getting to be one of
+the notable successes of the present century, he has to go and derange
+the whole running schedule by serving the salad when he should have
+served the beans, and the beans when he should have served the salad.
+It's a sickening situation; but if I can save it I'll do it. I'll be
+well bred if it takes a leg!"
+
+So, wearing the manner of one who has been accustomed all his life
+to finishing off his dinner with a mess of string-beans, I used my
+putting-iron; and from the edge of the fair green I holed out in three.
+My last stroke was a dandy, if I do say it myself. The others were
+game too--I could see that. They were eating beans as though beans were
+particularly what they had come for. Out of the tail of my eye I glanced
+at our hostess, sitting next to me on the left. She was placid, calm,
+perfectly easy. Again addressing myself mentally I said:
+
+"There's a thoroughbred for you! You take a woman who got prosperous
+suddenly and is still acutely suffering from nervous culture, and if
+such a shipwreck had occurred at her dinner table she'd be utterly
+prostrated by now--she'd be down and out--and we'd all be standing back
+to give her air; but when they're born in the purple it shows in
+these big emergencies. Look at this woman now--not a ripple on the
+surface--balmy as a summer evening! But in about one hour from now,
+Central European time, I can see her accepting that fool butler's
+resignation before he's had time to offer it!"
+
+After the beans had been cleared off the right-of-way we had the dessert
+and the cheese and the coffee and the rest of it. And, as we used to say
+in the society column down home when the wife of the largest advertiser
+was entertaining, "at a suitable hour those present dispersed to their
+homes, one and all voting the affair to have been one of the most
+enjoyable occasions among like events of the season." We all knew our
+manners--we had proved that.
+
+Personally I was very proud of myself for having carried the thing off
+so well but after I had survived a few tables d'hote in France and a
+few more in Austria and a great many in Italy, where they do not have
+anything at the hotels except tables d'hote, I did not feel quite
+so proud. For at this writing in those parts the slender, sylphlike
+string-bean is not playing a minor part, as with us. He has the best
+spot on the evening bill--he is a headliner. So is the cauliflower; so
+is the Brussels sprout; so is any vegetable whose function among our own
+people is largely scenic.
+
+Therefore I treasured the memory of this incident and brought it back
+with me; and I tell it here at some length of detail because I know how
+grateful my countrywomen will be to get hold of it--I know how grateful
+they always are when they learn about a new gastronomical wrinkle. Mind
+you, I am not saying that the notion is an absolute novelty here. For
+all I know to the contrary, prominent hostesses along the Gold Coast
+of the United States--Bar Harbor to Palm Beach inclusive--may have been
+serving one lone vegetable as a separate course for years and years; but
+I feel sure that throughout the interior the disclosure will come as a
+pleasant surprise.
+
+The directions for executing this coup are simple and all the deadlier
+because they are so simple. The main thing is to invite your chief
+opponent as a smart entertainer; you know the one I mean--the woman who
+scored such a distinct social triumph in the season of 1912-13 by being
+the first woman in town to serve tomato bisque with whipped cream on it.
+Have her there by all means. Go ahead with your dinner as though naught
+sensational and revolutionary were about to happen. Give them in proper
+turn the oysters, the fish, the entree, the bird, the salad. And then,
+all by itself, alone and unafraid, bring on a dab of string-beans.
+
+Wait until you see the whites of their eyes, and aim and fire at
+will. Settle back then, until the first hushed shock has somewhat
+abated--until your dazed and suffering rival is glaring about in a
+well-bred but flustered manner, looking for something to go with the
+beans. Hold her eye while you smile a smile that is compounded of equal
+parts--superior wisdom, and gentle contempt for her ignorance--and then
+slowly, deliberately, dip a fork into the beans on your plate and go to
+it.
+
+Believe me, it cannot lose. Before breakfast time the next morning every
+woman who was at that dinner will either be sending out invitations for
+a dinner of her own and ordering beans, or she will be calling up her
+nearest and best friend on the telephone to spread the tidings. I figure
+that the intense social excitement occasioned in this country a few
+years ago by the introduction of Russian salad dressing will be as
+nothing in comparison.
+
+This stunt of serving the vegetable as a separate course was one of the
+things I learned about food during our flittings across Europe, but it
+was not the only thing I learned--by a long shot it was not. For example
+I learned this--and I do not care what anybody else may say to the
+contrary either--that here in America we have better food and more
+different kinds of food, and food better cooked and better served than
+the effete monarchies of the Old World ever dreamed of. And, quality
+and variety considered, it costs less here, bite for bite, than it costs
+there.
+
+Food in Germany is cheaper than anywhere else almost, I reckon; and,
+selected with care and discrimination, a German dinner is an excellently
+good dinner. Certain dishes in England--and they are very certain, for
+you get them at every meal--are good, too, and not overly expensive.
+There are some distinctive Austrian dishes that are not without their
+attractions either. Speaking by and large, however, I venture the
+assertion that, taking any first-rate restaurant in any of the larger
+American cities and balancing it off against any establishment of like
+standing in Europe, the American restaurant wins on cuisine, service,
+price, flavor and attractiveness.
+
+Centuries of careful and constant press-agenting have given French
+cookery much of its present fame. The same crafty processes of
+publicity, continued through a period of eight or nine hundred
+years, have endowed the European scenic effects with a glamour and an
+impressiveness that really are not there, if you can but forget the
+advertising and consider the proposition on its merits.
+
+Take their rivers now--their historic rivers, if you please. You are
+traveling--heaven help you--on a Continental train. Between spells of
+having your ticket punched or torn apart, or otherwise mutilated; and
+getting out at the border to see your trunks ceremoniously and solemnly
+unloaded and unlocked, and then as ceremoniously relocked and reloaded
+after you have conferred largess on everybody connected with the
+train, the customs regulations being mainly devised for the purpose of
+collecting not tariff but tips--between these periods, which constitute
+so important a feature of Continental travel--you come, let us say, to a
+stream.
+
+It is a puny stream, as we are accustomed to measure streams, boxed
+in by stone walls and regulated by stone dams, and frequently it is
+mud-colored and, more frequently still, runs between muddy banks. In the
+West it would probably not even be dignified with a regular name, and in
+the East it would be of so little importance that the local congressman
+would not ask an annual appropriation of more than half a million
+dollars for the purposes of dredging, deepening and diking it. But even
+as you cross it you learn that it is the Tiber or the Arno, the Elbe or
+the Po; and, such is the force of precept and example, you immediately
+get all excited and worked up over it.
+
+English rivers are beautiful enough in a restrained, well-managed,
+landscape-gardened sort of way; but Americans do not enthuse over an
+English river because of what it is in itself, but because it happens
+to be the Thames or the Avon--because of the distinguished characters in
+history whose names are associated with it.
+
+Hades gets much of its reputation the same way.
+
+I think of one experience I had while touring through what we had
+learned to call the Dachshund District. Our route led us alongside a
+most inconsequential-looking little river. Its contents seemed a trifle
+too liquid for mud and a trifle too solid for water. On the nearer bank
+was a small village populated by short people and long dogs. Out in
+midstream, making poor headway against the semi-gelid current, was
+a little flutter-tailed steamboat panting and puffing violently and
+kicking up a lather of lacy spray with its wheelbuckets in a manner to
+remind you of a very warm small lady fanning herself with a very large
+gauze fan, and only getting hotter at the job.
+
+In America that stream would have been known as Mink Creek or Cassidy's
+Run, or by some equally poetic title; but when I found out it was
+the Danube--no less--I had a distinct thrill. On closer examination I
+discovered it to be a counterfeit thrill; but nevertheless, I had it.
+
+What applies in the main to the scenery applies in the main to the food.
+France has the reputation of breeding the best cooks in the world--and
+maybe she does; but when you are calling in France you find most of them
+out. They have emigrated to America, where a French chef gets more money
+in one year for exercising his art--and gets it easier--than he could
+get in ten years at home--and is given better ingredients to cook with
+than he ever had at home.
+
+The hotel in Paris at which we stopped served good enough meals, all of
+them centering, of course, round the inevitable poulet roti; but it took
+the staff an everlastingly long time to bring the food to you. If you
+grew reckless and ordered anything that was not on the bill it upset the
+entire establishment; and before they calmed down and relayed it in to
+you it was time for the next meal. Still, I must say we did not mind
+the waiting; near at hand a fascinating spectacle was invariably on
+exhibition.
+
+At the next table sat an Italian countess. Anyhow they told me she was
+an Italian countess, and she wore jewelry enough for a dozen countesses.
+Every time I beheld her, with a big emerald earring gleaming at either
+side of her head, I thought of a Lenox Avenue local in the New York
+Subway. However, it was not so much her jewelry that proved such
+a fascinating sight as it was her pleasing habit of fetching out a
+gold-mounted toothpick and exploring the most remote and intricate
+dental recesses of herself in full view of the entire dining room,
+meanwhile making a noise like somebody sicking a dog on.
+
+The Europeans have developed public toothpicking beyond anything we
+know. They make an outdoor pastime and function of it, whereas we pursue
+this sport more or less privately. Over there, a toothpick is a family
+heirloom and is handed down from one generation to another, and is
+operated in company ostentatiously. In its use some Europeans
+are absolutely gifted. But then we beat the world at open-air
+gum-chewing--so I reckon the honors are about even.
+
+This particular hotel, in common with all other first-class hotels in
+Paris, was forgetful about setting forth on its menu the prices of
+its best dishes and its special dishes. I take it this arrangement was
+devised for the benefit of currency-quilted Americans. A Frenchman asks
+the waiter the price of an unpriced dish and then orders something
+else; but the American, as a rule, is either too proud or too foolish to
+inquire into these details. At home he is beset by a hideous fear that
+some waiter will think he is of a mercenary nature; and when he is
+abroad this trait in him is accentuated. So, in his carefree American
+way, he orders a portion of a dish of an unspecified value; whereupon
+the head waiter slips out to the office and ascertains by private
+inquiry how large a letter of credit the American is carrying with him,
+and comes back and charges him all the traffic will bear.
+
+As for the keeper of a fashionable cafe on a boulevard or in the Rue de
+la Paix--well, alongside of him the most rapacious restaurant proprietor
+on Broadway is a kindly, Christian soul who is in business for his
+health--and not feeling very healthy at that. When you dine at one of
+the swagger boulevard places the head waiter always comes, just before
+you have finished, and places a display of fresh fruit before you, with
+a winning smile and a bow and a gesture, which, taken together, would
+seem to indicate that he is extending the compliments of the season and
+that the fruit will be on the house; but never did one of the intriguing
+scoundrels deceive me. Somewhere, years before, I had read statistics on
+the cost of fresh fruit in a Paris restaurant, and so I had a care. The
+sight of a bunch of hothouse grapes alone was sufficient to throw me
+into a cold perspiration right there at the table; and as for South
+African peaches, I carefully walked around them, getting farther away
+all the time. A peach was just the same as a pesthouse to me, in Paris.
+
+Alas though! no one had warned me about French oysters, and once--just
+once--I ate some, which made two mistakes on my part, one financial and
+the other gustatory. They were not particularly flavorous oysters as we
+know oysters on this side of the ocean. The French oyster is a small,
+copper-tinted proposition, and he tastes something like an indisposed
+mussel and something like a touch of biliousness; but he is sufficiently
+costly for all purposes. The cafe proprietor cherishes him so highly
+that he refuses to vulgarize him by printing the asking price on the
+same menu. A person in France desirous of making a really ostentatious
+display of his affluence, on finding a pearl in an oyster, would swallow
+the pearl and wear the oyster on his shirtfront. That would stamp him as
+a person of wealth.
+
+However, I am not claiming that all French cookery is ultra-exorbitant
+in price or of excessively low grade. We had one of the surprises of our
+lives when, by direction of a friend who knew Paris, we went to a
+little obscure cafe that was off the tourist route and therefore--as
+yet--unspoiled and uncommercialized. This place was up a back street
+near one of the markets; a small and smellsome place it was, decorated
+most atrociously. In the front window, in close juxtaposition, were a
+platter of French snails and a platter of sticky confections full
+of dark spots. There was no mistaking the snails for anything except
+snails; but the other articles were either currant buns or plain buns
+that had been made in an unscreened kitchen.
+
+Within were marble-topped tables of the Louie-Quince period and stuffy
+wall-seats of faded, dusty red velvet; and a waiter in his shirtsleeves
+was wandering about with a sheaf of those long French loaves tucked
+under his arm like golf sticks, distributing his loaves among the
+diners. But somewhere in its mysterious and odorous depths that little
+bourgeois cafe harbored an honest-to-goodness cook. He knew a few things
+about grilling a pig's knuckle--that worthy person. He could make the
+knuckle of a pig taste like the wing of an angel; and what he could do
+with a skillet, a pinch of herbs and a calf's sweetbread passed human
+understanding.
+
+Certain animals in Europe do have the most delicious diseases
+anyway--notably the calf and the goose, particularly the goose of
+Strasburg, where the pate de foie gras comes from. The engorged liver
+of a Strasburg goose must be a source of joy to all--except its original
+owner!
+
+Several times we went back to the little restaurant round the corner
+from the market, and each time we had something good. The food we ate
+there helped to compensate for the terrific disillusionment awaiting
+us when we drove out of Paris to a typical roadside inn, to get some of
+that wonderful provincial cookery that through all our reading days we
+had been hearing about. You will doubtless recall the description, as
+so frequently and graphically dished up by the inspired writers of
+travelogue stuff--the picturesque, tumbledown place, where on a cloth of
+coarse linen--white like snow--old Marie, her wrinkled face abeam with
+hospitality and kindness, places the delicious omelet she has just
+made, and brings also the marvelous salad and the perfect fowl, and the
+steaming hot coffee fragrant as breezes from Araby the Blest, and the
+vin ordinaire that is even as honey and gold to the thirsty throat. You
+must know that passage?
+
+We went to see for ourselves. At a distance of half a day's automobile
+run from Paris we found an establishment answering to the plans and
+specifications. It was shoved jam-up against the road, as is the French
+custom; and it was surrounded by a high, broken wall, on which all
+manner of excrescences in the shape of tiny dormers and misshapen little
+towers hung, like Texas ticks on the ears of a quarantined steer. Within
+the wall the numerous ruins that made up the inn were thrown together
+any fashion, some facing one way, some facing the other way, and some
+facing all ways at once; so that, for the housefly, so numerously
+encountered on these premises, it was but a short trip and a merry one
+from the stable to the dining room and back again.
+
+Sure enough, old Marie was on the job. Not desiring to be unkind or
+unduly critical I shall merely state that as a cook old Marie was what
+we who have been in France and speak the language fluently would call la
+limite! The omelet she turned out for us was a thing that was very firm
+and durable, containing, I think, leather findings, with a sprinkling
+of chopped henbane on the top. The coffee was as feeble a counterfeit
+as chicory usually is when it is masquerading as coffee, and the vin
+ordinaire had less of the vin to it and more of the ordinaire than any
+we sampled elsewhere.
+
+Right here let me say this for the much-vaunted vin ordinaire of Europe:
+In the end it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder--not like
+the ordinary Egyptian adder, but like a patent adder in the office of
+a loan shark, which is the worst stinger of the whole adder family. If
+consumed with any degree of freedom it puts a downy coat on your tongue
+next morning that causes you to think you inadvertently swallowed the
+pillow in your sleep. Good domestic wine costs as much in Europe as good
+domestic wine costs in America--possibly more than as much.
+
+The souffle potatoes of old Marie were not bad to look on, but I did not
+test them otherwise. Even in my own country I do not care to partake of
+souffle potatoes unless I know personally the person who blew them
+up. So at the conclusion of the repast we nibbled tentatively at
+the dessert, which was a pancake with jelly, done in the image of a
+medicated bandage but not so tasty as one. And then I paid the check,
+which was of august proportions, and we came sadly away, realizing
+that another happy dream of youth had been shattered to bits. Only
+the tablecloth had been as advertised. It was coarse, but white like
+snow--like snow three days old in Pittsburgh.
+
+Yet I was given to understand that was a typical rural French inn
+and fully up to the standards of such places; but if the manager of a
+roadhouse within half a day's ride of New York or Boston or Philadelphia
+served such food to his patrons, at such prices, the sheriff would have
+him inside of two months; and everybody would be glad of it too--except
+the sheriff. Also, no humane man in this country would ask a
+self-respecting cow to camp overnight in such outbuildings as abutted on
+the kitchen of this particular inn.
+
+I am not denying that we have in America some pretty bad country hotels,
+where good food is most barbarously mistreated and good beds are rare
+to find, but we admit our shortcomings in this regard and we deplore
+them--we do not shellac them over with a glamour of bogus romance, with
+intent to deceive the foreign visitor to our shores. We warn him in
+advance of what he may expect and urge him to carry his rations with
+him.
+
+It is almost unnecessary to add that old Marie gave us veal and poulet
+roti. According to the French version of the story of the Flood only
+two animals emerged from the Ark when the waters receded--one was an
+immature hen and the other was an adolescent calf. At every meal except
+breakfast--when they do not give you anything at all--the French give
+you veal and poulet roti. If at lunch you had the poulet roti first and
+afterward the veal, why, then at dinner they provide a pleasing variety
+by bringing on the veal first and the poulet roti afterward.
+
+The veal is invariably stringy and coated over with weird sauces, and
+the poulet never appears at the table in her recognizable members--such
+as wings and drumsticks--but is chopped up with a cleaver into cross
+sections, and strange-looking chunks of the wreckage are sent to you.
+Moreover they cook the chicken in such a way as to destroy its original
+taste, and the veal in such a way as to preserve its original taste,
+both being inexcusable errors.
+
+Nowhere in the larger Italian cities, except by the exercise of a most
+tremendous determination, can you get any real Italian cooking or
+any real Italian dishes. At the hotels they feed you on a pale, sad
+table-d'hote imitation of French cooking, invariably buttressed with the
+everlasting veal and the eternal poulet roti. At the finish of a meal
+the waiter brings you, on one plate, two small withered apples and a
+bunch of fly-specked sour grapes; and, on another plate, the mortal
+remains of some excessively deceased cheese wearing a tinfoil shroud and
+appropriately laid out in a small, white, coffin-shaped box.
+
+After this had happened to me several times I told the waiter with
+gentle irony that he might as well screw the lid back on the casket and
+proceed with the obsequies. I told him I was not one of those morbid
+people who love to look on the faces of the strange dead. The funeral
+could not get under way too soon to suit me. It seemed to me that this
+funeral was already several days overdue. That was what I told him.
+
+In my travels the best place I ever found to get Italian dishes was
+a basement restaurant under an old brownstone house on Forty-seventh
+Street, in New York. There you might find the typical dishes of Italy--I
+defy you to find them in Italy without a search-warrant. However, while
+in Italy the tourist may derive much entertainment and instruction from
+a careful study of table manners.
+
+In our own land we produce some reasonably boisterous trenchermen, and
+some tolerably careless ones too. Several among us have yet to learn
+how to eat corn on the ear and at the same time avoid corn in the ear.
+A dish of asparagus has been known to develop fine acoustic properties,
+and in certain quarters there is a crying need for a sound-proof soup;
+but even so, and admitting these things as facts, we are but mere
+beginners in this line when compared with our European brethren.
+
+In the caskets of memory I shall ever cherish the picture of a
+particularly hairy gentleman, apparently of Russian extraction, who
+patronized our hotel in Venice one evening. He was what you might call
+a human hazard--a golf-player would probably have thought of him in that
+connection. He was eating flour dumplings, using his knife for a niblick
+all the way round; and he lost every other shot in a concealed bunker
+on the edge of the rough; and he could make more noise sucking his teeth
+than some people could make playing on a fife.
+
+There is a popular belief to the effect that the Neapolitan eats his
+spaghetti by a deft process of wrapping thirty or forty inches round the
+tines of his fork and then lifting it inboard, an ell at a time. This is
+not correct. The true Neapolitan does not eat his spaghetti at all--he
+inhales it. He gathers up a loose strand and starts it down his throat.
+He then respires from the diaphragm, and like a troupe of trained
+angleworms that entire mass of spaghetti uncoils itself, gets up off the
+plate and disappears inside him--en masse, as it were--and making him
+look like a man who is chinning himself over a set of bead portieres.
+I fear we in America will never learn to siphon our spaghetti into us
+thus. It takes a nation that has practiced deep breathing for centuries.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter IX
+
+
+
+The Deadly Poulet Routine
+
+Under the head of European disillusionments I would rate, along with
+the vin ordinaire of the French vineyard and inkworks, the barmaid of
+Britain. From what you have heard on this subject you confidently expect
+the British barmaid to be buxom, blond, blooming, billowy, buoyant--but
+especially blond. On the contrary she is generally brunette, frequently
+middle-aged, in appearance often fair-to-middling homely, and in manner
+nearly always abounding with a stiffness and hauteur that would do
+credit to a belted earl, if the belting had just taken place and the
+earl was still groggy from the effects of it. Also, she has the notion
+of personal adornment that is common in more than one social stratum of
+women in England. If she has a large, firm, solid mound of false hair
+overhanging her brow like an impending landslide, and at least three
+jingly bracelets on each wrist, she considers herself well dressed, no
+matter what else she may or may not be wearing.
+
+Often this lady is found presiding over an American bar, which is an
+institution now commonly met with in all parts of London. The American
+bar of London differs from the ordinary English bar of London in two
+respects, namely--there is an American flag draped over the mirror, and
+it is a place where they sell all the English drinks and are just out of
+all the American ones. If you ask for a Bronx the barmaid tells you
+they do not carry seafood in stock and advises you to apply at the
+fishmongers'--second turning to the right, sir, and then over the way,
+sir--just before you come to the bottom of the road, sir. If you ask for
+a Mamie Taylor she gets it confused in her mind with a Sally Lunn and
+sends out for yeastcake and a cookbook; and while you are waiting she
+will give you a genuine Yankee drink, such as a brandy and soda--or she
+will suggest that you smoke something and take a look at the evening
+paper.
+
+If you do smoke something, beware--oh, beware!--of the native English
+cigar. When rolled between the fingers it gives off a dry, rustling
+sound similar to a shuck mattress. For smoking purposes it is also open
+to the same criticisms that a shuck mattress is. The flames smolder in
+the walls and then burst through in unexpected places, and the smoke
+sucks up the airshaft and mushrooms on your top floor; then the deadly
+back draft comes and the fatal firedamp, and when the firemen arrive you
+are a ruined tenement. Except the German, the French, the Belgian, the
+Austrian and the Italian cigar, the English cigar is the worst cigar I
+ever saw. I did not go to Spain; they tell me, though, the Spanish cigar
+has the high qualifications of badness. Spanish cigars are not really
+cigars at all, I hear; they fall into the classification of defective
+flues.
+
+Likewise beware of the alleged American cocktail occasionally dispensed,
+with an air of pride and accomplished triumph, by the British barmaid
+of an American bar. If for purposes of experiment and research you feel
+that you must take one, order with it, instead of the customary olive or
+cherry, a nice boiled vegetable marrow. The advantage to be derived from
+this is that the vegetable marrow takes away the taste of anything else
+and does not have any taste of its own.
+
+In the eating line the Englishman depends on the staples. He sticks to
+the old standbys. What was good enough for his fathers is good enough
+for him--in some cases almost too good. Monotony of victuals does
+not distress him. He likes his food to be humdrum; the humdrummer the
+better.
+
+Speaking with regard to the whole country, I am sure we have better
+beef uniformly in America than in England; but there is at least one
+restaurant on the Strand where the roast beef is just a little
+bit superior to any other roast beef on earth. English mutton is
+incomparable, too, and English breakfast bacon is a joy forever. But it
+never seems to occur to an Englishman to vary his diet. I submit samples
+of the daily menu:
+
+                 LUNCHEON            DINNER
+                 Roast Beef          Boiled Mutton
+                 Boiled Mutton       Roast Beef
+                 Potatoes, Boiled    Cabbage, Boiled
+                 Cabbage, Boiled     Potatoes, Boiled
+                 Jam Tart            Custard
+                 Custard             Jam Tart
+                 Cheese              Coffee
+                 Coffee              Cheese
+                             TEA!
+
+I know now why an Englishman dresses for dinner--it enables him to
+distinguish dinner from lunch.
+
+His regular desserts are worthy of a line. The jam tart is a death-mask
+that went wrong and in consequence became morose and heavy of spirit,
+and the custard is a soft-boiled egg which started out in life to be a
+soft-boiled egg and at the last moment--when it was too late--changed
+its mind and tried to be something else.
+
+In the City, where lunching places abound, the steamer works overtime
+and the stewpan never rests. There is one place, well advertised
+to American visitors, where they make a specialty of their
+beefsteak-and-kidney pudding. This is a gummy concoction containing
+steak, kidney, mushroom, oyster, lark--and sometimes W and Y. Doctor
+Johnson is said to have been very fond of it; this, if true, accounts
+for the doctor's disposition. A helping of it weighs two pounds before
+you eat it and ten pounds afterward. The kidney is its predominating
+influence. The favorite flower of the English is not the primrose. It
+is the kidney. Wherever you go, among the restaurants, there is always
+somebody operating on a steamed flour dumpling for kidney trouble.
+
+The lower orders are much addicted to a dish known--if I remember the
+name aright--by the euphonious title of Toad in the Hole. Toad in the
+Hole consists of a full-grown and fragrant sheep's kidney entombed in an
+excavated retreat at the heart of a large and powerful onion, and then
+cooked in a slow and painful manner, so that the onion and the kidney
+may swap perfumes and flavors. These people do not use this combination
+for a weapon or for a disinfectant, or for anything else for which it
+is naturally purposed; they actually go so far as to eat it. You pass
+a cabmen's lunchroom and get a whiff of a freshly opened Toad in the
+Hole--and you imagine it is the German invasion starting and wonder why
+they are not removing the women and children to a place of safety. All
+England smells like something boiling, just as all France smells like
+something that needs boiling.
+
+Seemingly the only Londoners who enjoy any extensive variety in their
+provender are the slum-dwellers. Out Whitechapel-way the establishment
+of a tripe dresser and draper is a sight wondrous to behold, and will
+almost instantly eradicate the strongest appetite; but it is not to be
+compared with an East End meatshop, where there are skinned sheep faces
+on slabs, and various vital organs of various animals disposed about in
+clumps and clusters. I was reminded of one of those Fourteenth Street
+museums of anatomy--tickets ten cents each; boys under fourteen not
+admitted. The East End butcher is not only a thrifty but an inquiring
+soul. Until I viewed his shop I had no idea that a sheep could be so
+untidy inside; and as for a cow--he finds things in a cow she didn't
+know she had.
+
+Breakfast is the meal at which the Englishman rather excels; in fact
+England is the only country in Europe where the natives have the
+faintest conception of what a regular breakfast is, or should be.
+Moreover, it is now possible in certain London hotels for an American to
+get hot bread and ice-water at breakfast, though the English round about
+look on with undisguised horror as he consumes them, and the manager
+only hopes that he will have the good taste not to die on the premises.
+
+It is true that, in lieu of the fresh fruit an American prefers, the
+waiter brings at least three kinds of particularly sticky marmalade and,
+in accordance with a custom that dates back to the time of the Druids,
+spangles the breakfast cloth over with a large number of empty saucers
+and plates, which fulfill no earthly purpose except to keep getting in
+the way. The English breakfast bacon, however, is a most worthy article,
+and the broiled kipper is juicy and plump, and does not resemble a dried
+autumn leaf, as our kipper often does. And the fried sole, on which the
+Englishman banks his breakfast hopes, invariably repays one for one's
+undivided attention. The English boast of their fish; but, excusing
+the kipper, they have but three of note--the turbot, the plaice and
+the sole. And the turbot tastes like turbot, and the plaice tastes like
+fish; but the sole, when fried, is most appetizing.
+
+I have been present when the English gooseberry and the English
+strawberry were very highly spoken of, too, but with me this is merely
+hearsay evidence; we reached England too late for berries. Happily,
+though, we came in good season for the green filbert, which is gathered
+in the fall of the year, being known then as the Kentish cobnut. The
+Kentish cob beats any nut we have except the paper-shell pecan. The
+English postage stamp is also much tastier than ours. The space for
+licking is no larger, if as large--but the flavor lasts.
+
+As I said before, the Englishman has no great variety of things to
+eat, but he is always eating them; and when he is not eating them he is
+swigging tea. Yet in these regards the German excels him. The Englishman
+gains a lap at breakfast; but after that first hour the German leaves
+him, hopelessly distanced, far in the rear. It is due to his talents in
+this respect that the average Berliner has a double chin running all the
+way round, and four rolls of fat on the back of his neck, all closely
+clipped and shaved, so as to bring out their full beauty and symmetry,
+and a figure that makes him look as though an earthquake had shaken
+loose everything on the top floor and it all fell through into his
+dining room.
+
+Your true Berliner eats his regular daily meals--four in number and all
+large ones; and in between times he now and then gathers a bite. For
+instance, about ten o'clock in the morning he knocks off for an hour and
+has a few cups of hard-boiled coffee and some sweet, sticky pastry with
+whipped cream on it. Then about four in the afternoon he browses a
+bit, just to keep up his appetite for dinner. This, though, is but a
+snack--say, a school of Bismarck herring and a kraut pie, some more
+coffee and more cake, and one thing and another--merely a preliminary
+to the real food, which will be coming along a little later on. Between
+acts at the theater he excuses himself and goes out and prepares his
+stomach for supper, which will follow at eleven, by drinking two or
+three steins of thick Munich beer, and nibbling on such small tidbits
+as a rosary of German sausage or the upper half of a raw Westphalia ham.
+There are forty-seven distinct and separate varieties of German sausage
+and three of them are edible; but the Westphalia ham, in my judgment, is
+greatly overrated. It is pronounced Westfailure with the accent on the
+last part, where it belongs.
+
+In Germany, however, there is a pheasant agreeably smothered in young
+cabbage which is delicious and in season plentiful. The only drawback
+to complete enjoyment of this dish is that the grasping and avaricious
+German restaurant keeper has the confounded nerve to charge you, in our
+money, forty cents for a whole pheasant and half a peck of cabbage--say,
+enough to furnish a full meal for two tolerably hungry adults and a
+growing child.
+
+The Germans like to eat and they love a hearty eater. There should
+never be any trouble about getting a suitable person to serve us at the
+Kaiser's court if the Administration at Washington will but harken to
+the voice of experience. To the Germans the late Doctor Tanner would
+have been a distinct disappointment in an ambassadorial capacity; but
+there was a man who used to live in my congressional district who could
+qualify in a holy minute if he were still alive. He was one of Nature's
+noblemen, untutored but naturally gifted, and his name was John Wesley
+Bass. He was the champion eater of the world, specializing particularly
+in eggs on the shell, and cove oysters out of the can, with pepper sauce
+on them, and soda crackers on the side.
+
+I regret to be compelled to state, however, that John Wesley is no
+more. At one of our McCracken County annual fairs, a few years back, he
+succumbed to overambition coupled with a mistake in judgment. After he
+had established a new world's record by eating at one sitting five dozen
+raw eggs he rashly rode on the steam merry-go-round. At the end of the
+first quarter of an hour he fainted and fell off a spotted wooden horse
+and never spoke again, but passed away soon after being removed to his
+home in an unconscious condition. I have forgotten what the verdict of
+the coroner's jury was--the attending physician gave it some fancy Latin
+name--but among laymen the general judgment was that our fellow townsman
+had just naturally been scrambled to death. It was a pity, too--the
+German people would have cared for John Wesley as an ambassador. He
+would have eaten his way right into their affections.
+
+We have the word of history for it that Vienna was originally settled by
+the Celts, but you would hardly notice it now. On first impressions
+you would say that about Vienna there was a noticeable suggestion--a
+perceptible trace--of the Teutonic; and this applies to the Austrian
+food in the main. I remember a kind of Wiener-schnitzel, breaded, that I
+had in Vienna; in fact for the moment I do not seem to recall much else
+about Vienna. Life there was just one Wiener-schnitzel after another.
+
+In order to spread sweetness and light, and to the end, furthermore,
+that the ignorant people across the salted seas might know something
+of a land of real food and much food, and plenty of it and plenty of
+variety to it, I would that I might bring an expedition of Europeans to
+America and personally conduct it up and down our continent and back and
+forth crosswise of it.
+
+And if I had the money of a Carnegie or a Rockefeller I would do it,
+too, for it would be a greater act of charity than building public
+libraries or endowing public baths. I would include in my party a few
+delegates from England, where every day is All Soles' Day; and a few
+sausage-surfeited Teutons; and some Gauls, wearied and worn by
+the deadly poulet routine of their daily life, and a scattering
+representation from all the other countries over there.
+
+In especial I would direct the Englishman's attention to the broiled
+pompano of New Orleans; the kingfish filet of New York; the sanddab
+of Los Angeles; the Boston scrod of the Massachusetts coast; and that
+noblest of all pan fish--the fried crappie of Southern Indiana. To these
+and to many another delectable fishling, would I introduce the poor
+fellow; and to him and his fellows I fain would offer a dozen apiece of
+Smith Island oysters on the half shell.
+
+And I would take all of them to New England for baked beans and brown
+bread and codfish balls; but on the way we would visit the shores of
+Long Island for a kind of soft clam which first is steamed and then is
+esteemed. At Portsmouth, New Hampshire, they should each have a broiled
+lobster measuring thirty inches from tip to tip, fresh caught out of the
+Piscataqua River.
+
+Vermont should come to them in hospitality and in pity, offering
+buckwheat cakes and maple sirup. But Rhode Island would bring a genuine
+Yankee blueberry pie and directions for the proper consumption of it,
+namely--discarding knife and fork, to raise a crusty, dripping wedge
+of blueberry pie in your hand to your mouth, and to take a first
+bite, which instantly changes the ground-floor plan of that pie from a
+triangle to a crescent; and then to take a second bite, and then to lick
+your fingers--and then there isn't any more pie.
+
+Down in Kentucky I should engage Mandy Berry, colored, to fry for them
+some spring chickens and make for them a few pones of real cornbread. In
+Creole Louisiana they should sample crawfish gumbo; and in Georgia
+they should have 'possum baked with sweet potatoes; and in Tidewater
+Maryland, terrapin and canvasback; and in Illinois, young gray squirrels
+on toast; and in South Carolina, boiled rice with black-eyed peas;
+and in Colorado, cantaloupes; and in Kansas, young sweet corn; and in
+Virginia, country hams, not cured with chemicals but with hickory smoke
+and loving hands; and in Tennessee, jowl and greens.
+
+And elsewhere they should have their whacking fill of prairie hen and
+suckling pig and barbecued shote, and sure-enough beefsteak, and
+goobers hot from the parching box; and scrapple, and yams roasted in hot
+wood-ashes; and hotbiscuit and waffles and Parker house rolls--and
+the thousand and one other good things that may be found in this our
+country, and which are distinctively and uniquely of this country.
+
+Finally I would bring them back by way of Richmond, and there I would
+give them each an eggnog compounded with fresh cream and made according
+to a recipe older than the Revolution. If I had my way about it no
+living creature should be denied the right to bury his face in a
+brimming tumbler of that eggnog--except a man with a drooping red
+mustache.
+
+By the time those gorged and converted pilgrims touched the Eastern
+seaboard again any one of them, if he caught fire, would burn for about
+four days with a clear blue flame, and many valuable packing-house
+by-products could be gleaned from his ruins. It would bind us all,
+foreigner and native alike, in closer ties of love and confidence,
+and it would turn the tide of travel westward from Europe, instead of
+eastward from America.
+
+Let's do it sometime--and appoint me conductor of the expedition!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter X
+
+
+
+Modes of the Moment; a Fashion Article
+
+Among the furbearing races the adult male of the French species easily
+excels. Some fine peltries are to be seen in Italy, and there is a type
+of farming Englishman who wears a stiff set of burnishers projecting
+out round his face in a circular effect suggestive of a halo that has
+slipped down. In connection with whiskers I have heard the Russians
+highly commended. They tell me that, from a distance, it is very hard
+to distinguish a muzhik from a bosky dell, whereas a grand duke nearly
+always reminds one of something tasty and luxuriant in the line of
+ornamental arborwork. The German military man specializes in mustaches,
+preference being given to the Texas longhorn mustache, and the walrus
+and kitty-cat styles. A dehorned German officer is rarely found and a
+muley one is practically unknown. But the French lead all the world in
+whiskers--both the wildwood variety and the domesticated kind trained
+on a trellis. I mention this here at the outset because no Frenchman
+is properly dressed unless he is whiskered also; such details properly
+appertain to a chapter on European dress.
+
+Probably every freeborn American citizen has at some time in his life
+cherished the dream of going to England and buying himself an outfit of
+English clothes--just as every woman has had hopes of visiting Paris and
+stocking up with Parisian gowns on the spot where they were created, and
+where--so she assumes--they will naturally be cheaper than elsewhere.
+Those among us who no longer harbor these fancies are the men and women
+who have tried these experiments.
+
+After she has paid the tariff on them a woman is pained to note that her
+Paris gowns have cost her as much as they would cost her in the United
+States--so I have been told by women who have invested extensively in
+that direction. And though a man, by the passion of the moment, may
+be carried away to the extent of buying English clothes, he usually
+discovers on returning to his native land that they are not adapted to
+withstand the trying climatic conditions and the critical comments of
+press and public in this country. What was contemplated as a triumphal
+reentrance becomes a footrace to the nearest ready-made clothing store.
+
+English clothes are not meant for Americans, but for Englishmen to wear:
+that is a great cardinal truth which Americans would do well to ponder.
+Possibly you have heard that an Englishman's clothes fit him with an
+air. They do so; they fit him with a lot of air around the collar and a
+great deal of air adjacent to the waistband and through the slack of the
+trousers; frequently they fit him with such an air that he is entirely
+surrounded by space, as in the case of a vacuum bottle. Once there was
+a Briton whose overcoat collar hugged the back of his neck; so they knew
+by that he was no true Briton, but an impostor--and they put him out
+of the union. In brief, the kind of English clothes best suited for an
+American to wear is the kind Americans make.
+
+I knew these things in advance--or, anyway, I should have known them;
+nevertheless I felt our trip abroad would not be complete unless I
+brought back some London clothes. I took a look at the shop-windows and
+decided to pass up the ready-made things. The coat shirt; the shaped
+sock; the collar that will fit the neckband of a shirt, and other common
+American commodities, seemed to be practically unknown in London.
+
+The English dress shirt has such a dinky little bosom on it that by
+rights you cannot refer to it as a bosom at all; it comes nearer to
+being what women used to call a guimpe. Every show-window where I
+halted was jammed to the gunwales with thick, fuzzy, woolen articles
+and inflammatory plaid waistcoats, and articles in crash for tropical
+wear--even through the glass you could note each individual crash
+with distinctness. The London shopkeeper adheres steadfastly to this
+arrangement. Into his window he puts everything he has in his shop
+except the customer. The customer is in the rear, with all avenues of
+escape expertly fenced off from him by the proprietor and the clerks;
+but the stock itself is in the show-window.
+
+There are just two department stores in London where, according to the
+American viewpoint, the windows are attractively dressed. One of these
+stores is owned by an American, and the other, I believe, is managed
+by an American. In Paris there are many shops that are veritable
+jewel-boxes for beauty and taste; but these are the small specialty
+shops, very expensive and highly perfumed.
+
+The Paris department stores are worse jumbles even than the English
+department stores. When there is a special sale under way the bargain
+counters are rigged up on the sidewalks. There, in the open air, buyer
+and seller will chaffer and bicker, and wrangle and quarrel, and kiss
+and make up again--for all the world to see. One of the free sights
+of Paris is a frugal Frenchman, with his face extensively haired over,
+pawing like a Skye terrier through a heap of marked-down lingerie;
+picking out things for the female members of his household to wear--now
+testing some material with his tongue; now holding a most personal
+article up in the sunlight to examine the fabric--while the wife stands
+humbly, dumbly by, waiting for him to complete his selections. So far
+as London was concerned, I decided to deny myself any extensive orgy in
+haberdashery. From similar motives I did not invest in the lounge suit
+to which an Englishman is addicted. I doubted whether it would fit the
+lounge we have at home--though, with stretching, it might, at that. My
+choice finally fell on an English raincoat and a pair of those baggy
+knee breeches such as an Englishman wears when he goes to Scotland for
+the moor shooting, or to the National Gallery, or any other damp, misty,
+rheumatic place.
+
+I got the raincoat first. It was built to my measure; at least that was
+the understanding; but you give an English tailor an inch and he takes
+an ell. This particular tailor seemed to labor under the impression that
+I was going to use my raincoat for holding large public assemblies or
+social gatherings in--nothing that I could say convinced him that I
+desired it for individual use; so he modeled it on a generous spreading
+design, big at the bottom and sloping up toward the top like a pagoda.
+Equipped with guy ropes and a centerpole it would make a first-rate
+marquee for a garden party--in case of bad weather the refreshments
+could be served under it; but as a raincoat I did not particularly fancy
+it. When I put it on I sort of reminded myself of a covered wagon.
+
+Nothing daunted by this I looked up the address of a sporting tailor
+in a side street off Regent Street, whose genius was reputed to find an
+artistic outlet in knee breeches. Before visiting his shop I disclosed
+my purpose to my traveling companion, an individual in whose judgment
+and good taste I have ordinarily every confidence, and who has a way of
+coming directly to the meat of a subject.
+
+"What do you want with a pair of knee breeches?" inquired this person
+crisply.
+
+"Why--er--for general sporting occasions," I replied.
+
+"For instance, what occasions?"
+
+"For golfing," I said, "and for riding, you know. And if I should go
+West next year they would come in very handy for the shooting."
+
+"To begin with," said my companion, "you do not golf. The only extensive
+riding I have ever heard of your doing was on railway trains. And if
+these knee breeches you contemplate buying are anything like the knee
+breeches I have seen here in London, and if you should wear them out
+West among the impulsive Western people, there would undoubtedly be
+a good deal of shooting; but I doubt whether you would enjoy it--they
+might hit you!"
+
+"Look here!" I said. "Every man in America who wears duck pants doesn't
+run a poultry farm. And the presence of a sailor hat in the summertime
+does not necessarily imply that the man under it owns a yacht. I
+cannot go back home to New York and face other and older members of the
+When-I-Was-in-London Club without some sartorial credentials to show
+for my trip. I am firmly committed to this undertaking. Do not seek to
+dissuade me, I beg of you. My mind is set on knee breeches and I shan't
+be happy until I get them."
+
+So saying I betook myself to the establishment of this sporting
+tailor in the side street off Regent Street; and there, without much
+difficulty, I formed the acquaintance of a salesman of suave and urbane
+manners. With his assistance I picked out a distinctive, not to say
+striking, pattern in an effect of plaids. The goods, he said, were made
+of the wool of a Scotch sheep in the natural colors. They must have some
+pretty fancy-looking sheep in Scotland!
+
+This done, the salesman turned me over to a cutter, who took me to a
+small room where incompleted garments were hanging all about like the
+quartered carcasses of animals in a butcher shop. The cutter was a
+person who dropped his H's and then, catching himself, gathered them
+all up again and put them back in his speech--in the wrong places. He
+surveyed me extensively with a square and a measuring line, meantime
+taking many notes, and told me to come back on the next day but one.
+
+On the day named and at the hour appointed I was back. He had the
+garments ready for me. As, with an air of pride, he elevated them for my
+inspection, they seemed commodious--indeed, voluminous. I had told him,
+when making them, to take all the latitude he needed; but it looked
+now as though he had got it confused in his mind with longitude. Those
+breeches appeared to be constructed for cargo rather than speed.
+
+With some internal misgivings I lowered my person into them while he
+held them in position, and when I had descended as far as I could go
+without entirely immuring myself, he buttoned the dewdabs at the knees;
+then he went round behind me and cinched them in abruptly, so that of
+a sudden they became quite snug at the waistline; the only trouble was
+that the waistline had moved close up under my armpits, practically
+eliminating about a foot and a half of me that I had always theretofore
+regarded as indispensable to the general effect. Right in the middle of
+my back, up between my shoulder blades there was a stiff, hard clump of
+something that bored into my spine uncomfortably. I could feel it quite
+plainly--lumpy and rough.
+
+"Ow's that, sir?" he cheerily asked me, over my shoulder; but it seemed
+to me there was a strained, nervous note in his voice. "A bit of all
+right--eh, sir?"
+
+"Well," I said, standing on tiptoe in an effort to see over the top,
+"you've certainly behaved very generously toward me--I'll say that much.
+Midships there appears to be about four or five yards of material I do
+not actually need in my business, being, as it happens, neither a harem
+favorite nor a professional sackracer. And they come up so high I'm
+afraid people will think the gallant coast-guards have got me in a
+lifebuoy and are bringing me ashore through the surf."
+
+"You'll be wanting them a bit loose, sir, you know," he interjected,
+still snuggling close behind me. "All our gentlemen like them loose."
+
+"Oh, very well," I said; "perhaps these things are mere details.
+However, I would be under deep obligations to you if you'd change 'em
+from barkentine to schooner rig, and lower away this gaff-topsail which
+now sticks up under my chin, so that I can luff and come up in the
+wind without capsizing. And say, what is that hard lump between my
+shoulders?"
+
+"Nothing at all, sir," he said hastily; and now I knew he was flurried.
+"I can fix that, sir--in a jiffy, sir."
+
+"Anyhow, please come round here in front where I can converse more
+freely with you on the subject," I said. I was becoming suspicious that
+all was not well with me back there where he was lingering. He came
+reluctantly, still half-embracing me with one arm.
+
+Petulantly I wrestled my form free, and instantly those breeches seemed
+to leap outward in all directions away from me. I grabbed for them, and
+barely in time I got a grip on the yawning top hem. Peering down the
+cavelike orifice that now confronted me I beheld two spectral white
+columns, and recognized them as my own legs. In the same instant, also,
+I realized what that hard clump against my spine was, because when he
+took his hand away the clump was gone. He had been standing back there
+with some eight or nine inches of superfluous waistband bunched up in
+his fist.
+
+The situation was embarrassing, and it would have been still more
+embarrassing had I elected to go forth wearing my breeches in their
+then state, because, to avoid talk, he would have had to go along too,
+walking immediately behind me and holding up the slack. And such a
+spectacle, with me filling the tonneau and he back behind on the rumble,
+would have caused comment undoubtedly.
+
+That pantsmaker was up a stump! He looked reproachfully at me, chidingly
+at the breeches and sternly at the tapemeasure--which he wore draped
+round his neck like a pet snake--as though he felt convinced one of us
+was at fault, but could not be sure which one.
+
+"I'm afraid, sir," he said, "that your figure is changing."
+
+"I guess you're right," I replied with a soft sigh. "As well as I can
+judge I'm not as tall as I was day before yesterday by at least eighteen
+inches. And I've mislaid my diaphragm somewhere, haven't I?"
+
+"'Ave them off, please, sir," he said resignedly. "I'll 'ave to alter
+them to conform, sir. Come back to-morrow."
+
+I had them off and he altered them to conform, and I went back on the
+morrow; in fact I went back so often that after a while I became really
+quite attached to the place. I felt almost like a member of the firm.
+Between calls from me the cutter worked on those breeches. He cut them
+up and he cut them down; he sheared the back away and shingled the
+front, and shifted the buttons to and fro.
+
+Still, even after all this, they were not what I should term an
+unqualified success. When I sat down in them they seemed to climb up on
+me so high, fore and aft, that I felt as short-waisted as a crush hat
+in a state of repose. And the only way I could get my hands into the
+hip pockets of those breeches was to take the breeches off first. As ear
+muffs they were fair but as hip pockets they were failures. Finally
+I told him to send my breeches, just as they were, to my hotel
+address--and I paid the bill.
+
+I brought them home with me. On the day after my arrival I took them to
+my regular tailor and laid the case before him. I tried them on for him
+and asked him to tell me, as man to man, whether anything could be done
+to make those garments habitable. He called his cutter into consultation
+and they went over me carefully, meantime uttering those commiserating
+clucking sounds one tailor always utters when examining another tailor's
+handiwork. After this my tailor took a lump of chalk and charted out a
+kind of Queen Rosamond's maze of crossmarks on my breeches and said I
+might leave them, and that if surgery could save them he would operate.
+At any rate he guaranteed to cut them away sufficiently to admit of my
+breast bone coming out into the open once more.
+
+In a week--about--he called me on the telephone and broke the sad news
+to me. My English riding pants would never ride me again. In using the
+shears he had made a fatal slip and had irreparably damaged them in an
+essential location. However, he said I need not worry, because it
+might have been worse; from what he had already cut out of them he had
+garnered enough material to make me a neat outing coat, and by scrimping
+he thought he might get a waistcoat to match.
+
+I have my English raincoat; it is still in a virgin state so far as
+wearing it is concerned. I may yet wear it and I may not. If I wear
+it and you meet me on the street--and we are strangers--you should
+experience no great difficulty in recognizing me. Just start in at
+almost any spot on the outer orbit and walk round and round as though
+you were circling a sideshow tent looking for a chance to crawl under
+the canvas and see the curiosities for nothing; and after a while, if
+you keep on walking as directed, you will come to a person with a plain
+but substantial face, and that will be me in my new English raincoat.
+Then again I may wear it to a fancy-dress ball sometime. In that case
+I shall stencil Pike's Peak or Bust! on the sidebreadth and go as a
+prairie schooner. If I can succeed in training a Missouri hound-dog to
+trail along immediately behind me the illusion will be perfect.
+
+After these two experiences with the English tailor I gave up. Instead
+of trying to wear the apparel of the foreigner I set myself to the
+study of it. I would avoid falling into the habit of making comparisons
+between European institutions and American institutions that are forever
+favorable to the American side of the argument. To my way of thinking
+there is only one class of tourist-Americans to be encountered abroad
+worse than the class who go into hysterical rapture over everything they
+see merely because it is European, and that is the class who condemn
+offhand everything they see and find fault with everything merely
+because it is not American. But I must say that in the matter of outer
+habiliments the American man wins the decision on points nearly every
+whack.
+
+In his evening garb, which generally fits him, but which generally is
+not pressed as to trouserlegs and coatsleeves, the Englishman makes
+an exceedingly good appearance. The swallow-tailed coat was created for
+the Englishman and he for it; but on all other occasions the well-dressed
+American leads him--leads the world, for that matter. When a Frenchman
+attires himself in his fanciest regalia he merely succeeds in looking
+effeminate; whereas a German, under similar circumstances, bears a
+wadded-in, bulged-out, stuffed-up appearance. I never saw a German
+in Germany whose hat was not too small for him--just as I never saw a
+Japanese in Occidental garb whose hat was not too large for him--if it
+was a derby hat. If a German has on a pair of trousers that flare out
+at the bottom and a coat with angel sleeves--I think that is the correct
+technical term--and if the front of his coat is spangled over with
+the largest-sized horn buttons obtainable he regards himself as being
+dressed to the minute.
+
+As for the women, I believe even the super-critical mantuamakers of
+Paris have begun to concede that, as a nation, the American women
+are the best-dressed women on earth. The French women have a way of
+arranging their hair and of wearing their hats and of draping their furs
+about their throats that is artistic beyond comparison. There may be a
+word in some folks' dictionaries fitly to describe it--there is no such
+word in mine; but when you have said that much you have said all there
+is to say. A French woman's feet are not shod well. French shoes, like
+all European shoes, are clumsy and awkward looking.
+
+English children are well dressed because they are simply dressed;
+and the children themselves, in contrast to the overdressed, overly
+aggressive youngsters so frequently encountered in America, are mannerly
+and self-effacing, and have sane, simple, childish tastes. Young English
+girls are fresh and natural, but frequently frumpy; and the English
+married woman is generally dressed in poor taste and appears to have
+a most limited wardrobe. Apparently the husband buys all he wants, and
+then, if there is any money left over, the wife gets it to spend on
+herself.
+
+Venturing one morning into a London chapel I saw a dowdy little woman of
+this type kneeling in a pew, chanting the responses to the service. Her
+blouse gaped open all the way down her back and she was saying with much
+fervor, "We have left undone those things which we ought to have done."
+She had too, but she didn't know it, as she knelt there unconsciously
+supplying a personal illustration for the spoken line.
+
+The typical highborn English woman has pale blue eyes, a fine complexion
+and a clear-cut, rather expressionless face with a profile suggestive
+of the portraits seen on English postage stamps of the early Victorian
+period; but in the arranging of her hair any French shopgirl could give
+her lessons, and any smart American woman could teach her a lot about
+the knack of wearing clothes with distinction.
+
+In England, that land of caste which is rigid enough to be cast iron,
+all men, with the exception of petty tradespeople, dress to match the
+vocations they follow. In America no man stays put--he either goes
+forward to a circle above the one into which he was born or he slips
+back into a lower one; and so he dresses to suit himself or his wife or
+his tailor. But in England the professional man advertises his calling
+by his clothes. Extreme stage types are ordinary types in London.
+No Southern silver-tongued orator of the old-time, string-tied,
+slouch-hatted, long-haired variety ever clung more closely to his
+official makeup than the English barrister clings to his spats, his
+shad-bellied coat and his eye-glass dangling on a cord. At a glance one
+knows the medical man or the journalist, the military man in undress or
+the gentleman farmer; also, by the same easy method, one may know the
+workingman and the penny postman. The workingman has a cap on his
+head and a neckerchief about his throat, and the legs of his corduroy
+trousers are tied up below the knees with strings--else he is no
+workingman.
+
+When we were in London the postmen were threatening to go on strike.
+From the papers I gathered that the points in dispute had to do with
+better hours and better pay; but if they had been striking against
+having to wear the kind of cap the British Government makes a postman
+wear, their cause would have had the cordial support and intense
+sympathy of every American in town.
+
+It remains for the English clerk to be the only Englishman who seeks, by
+the clothes he wears in his hours of ease, to appear as something more
+than what he really is. Off duty he fair1y dotes on the high hat of
+commerce. Frequently he sports it in connection with an exceedingly
+short and bobby sackcoat, and trousers that are four or five inches
+too short in the legs for him. The Parisian shopman harbors similar
+ambitions--only he expresses them with more attention to detail. The
+noon hour arriving, the French shophand doffs his apron and his air of
+deference. He puts on a high hat and a frock coat that have been on a
+peg behind the door all the morning, gathers up his cane and his gloves;
+and, becoming on the instant a swagger and a swaggering boulevardier, he
+saunters to his favorite sidewalk cafe for a cordial glassful of a pink
+or green or purple drink. When his little hour of glory is over and done
+with he returns to his counter, sheds his grandeur and is once more your
+humble and ingratiating servitor.
+
+In residential London on a Sunday afternoon one beholds some weird
+and wonderful costumes. On a Sunday afternoon in a sub-suburb of a
+Kensington suburb I saw, passing through a drab, sad side street, a
+little Cockney man with the sketchy nose and unfinished features of
+his breed. He was presumably going to church, for he carried a large
+Testament under his arm. He wore, among other things, a pair of white
+spats, a long-tailed coat and a high hat. It was not a regular high hat,
+either, but one of those trick-performing hats which, on signal, will
+lie doggo or else sit up and beg. And he was riding a bicycle of an
+ancient vintage!
+
+The most impressively got-up civilians in England--or in the world,
+either, for that matter--are the assistant managers and the deputy
+cashiers of the big London hotels. Compared with them the lilies of the
+field are as lilies in the bulb. Their collars are higher, their ties
+are more resplendent, their frock coats more floppy as to the tail and
+more flappy as to the lapel, than it is possible to imagine until
+you have seen it all with your own wondering eyes. They are haughty
+creatures, too, austere and full of a starchy dignity; but when you come
+to pay your bill you find at least one of them lined up with the valet
+and the waiter, the manservant and the maidservant, the ox and the ass,
+hand out and palm open to get his tip. Having tipped him you depart
+feeling ennobled and uplifted--as though you had conferred a purse of
+gold on a marquis.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XI
+
+
+
+Dressed to Kill
+
+With us it is the dress of the women that gives life and color to
+the shifting show of street life. In Europe it is the soldier, and in
+England the private soldier particularly. The German private soldier is
+too stiff, and the French private soldier is too limber, and the Italian
+private soldier has been away from the dry-cleanser's too long; but the
+British Tommy Atkins is a perfect piece of work--what with his dinky cap
+tilted over one eye, and his red tunic that fits him without blemish
+or wrinkle, and his snappy little swagger stick flirting the air. As a
+picture of a first-class fighting man I know of but one to match him,
+and that is a khaki-clad, service-hatted Yankee regular--long may he
+wave!
+
+There may be something finer in the way of a military spectacle than
+the change of horse-guards at Whitehall or the march of the foot-guards
+across the green in St. James' Park on a fine, bright morning--but I
+do not know what it is. One day, passing Buckingham Palace, I came on
+a footguard on duty in one of the little sentry boxes just outside the
+walls. He did not look as though he were alive. He looked as though he
+had been stuffed and mounted by a most expert taxidermist. From under
+his bearskin shako and from over his brazen chin-strap his face stared
+out unwinking and solemn and barren of thought.
+
+I said to myself: "It is taking a long chance, but I shall ascertain
+whether this party has any human emotions." So I halted directly in
+front of him and began staring fixedly at his midriff as though I saw a
+button unfastened there or a buckle disarranged. For a space of minutes
+I kept my gaze on him without cessation.
+
+Finally the situation grew painful; but it was not that British
+grenadier who grew embarrassed and fidgety--it was the other party to
+the transaction. His gaze never shifted, his eyes never wavered--but I
+came away feeling all wriggly.
+
+In no outward regard whatsoever do the soldiers on the Continent compare
+with the soldiers of the British archipelago. When he is not on actual
+duty the German private is always going somewhere in a great hurry with
+something belonging to his superior officer--usually a riding horse or
+a specially heavy valise. On duty and off he wears that woodenness of
+expression--or, rather, that wooden lack of expression--which is found
+nowhere in such flower of perfection as on the faces of German soldiers
+and German toys.
+
+The Germans prove they have a sense of humor by requiring their soldiers
+to march on parade with the goose step; and the French prove they have
+none at all by incasing the defenseless legs of their soldiers in those
+foolish red-flannel pants that are manufactured in such profusion up at
+the Pantheon.
+
+In the event of another war between the two nations I anticipate a
+frightful mortality among pants--especially if the French forces should
+be retreating. The German soldier is not a particularly good marksman as
+marksmen go, but he would have to be the worst shot in the world to miss
+a pair of French pants that were going away from him at the time.
+
+Still, when all is said and done, there is something essentially
+Frenchy about those red pants. There is something in their length that
+instinctively suggests Toulon, something in their breadth that makes you
+think of Toulouse. I realize that this joke, as it stands, is weak and
+imperfect. If there were only another French seaport called Toubagge I
+could round it out and improve it structurally.
+
+If the English private soldier is the trimmest, the Austrian officer is
+the most beautiful to look on. An Austrian officer is gaudier than the
+door-opener of a London cafe or the porter of a Paris hotel. He achieves
+effects in gaudiness which even time Italian officer cannot equal.
+
+The Italian officer is addicted to cock feathers and horsetails on his
+helmet, to bits of yellow and blue let into his clothes, to tufts of red
+and green hung on him in unexpected and unaccountable spots. Either the
+design of bottled Italian chianti is modeled after the Italian officer
+or the Italian officer is modeled after the bottle of chianti--which,
+though, I am not prepared to say without further study of the subject.
+
+But the Austrian officer is the walking sunset effect of creation. For
+color schemes I know of nothing in Nature to equal him except the Grand
+Canyon of the Colorado. Circus parades are unknown in Austria--they are
+not missed either; after an Austrian officer a street parade would seem
+a colorless and commonplace thing. In his uniform he runs to striking
+contrasts--canary yellow, with light blue facings; silvers and grays;
+bright greens with scarlet slashings--and so on.
+
+His collar is the very highest of all high collars and the heaviest with
+embroidery; his cloak is the longest and the widest; his boots the most
+varnished; his sword-belt the broadest and the shiniest; and the medals
+on his bosom are the most numerous and the most glittering. Alf Ringling
+and John Philip Sousa would take one look at him--and then, mutually
+filled with an envious despair, they would go apart and hold a grand
+lodge of sorrow together. Also, he constantly wears his spurs and his
+sword; he wears them even when he is in a cafe in the evening listening
+to the orchestra, drinking beer and allowing an admiring civilian to pay
+the check--and that apparently is every evening.
+
+There was one Austrian colonel who came one night into a cafe in Vienna
+where we were and sat down at the table next to us; and he put our eyes
+right out and made all the lights dim and flickery. His epaulets were
+two hairbrushes of augmented size, gold-mounted; his Plimsoll marks were
+outlined in bullion, and along his garboard strake ran lines of gold
+braid; but strangest of all to observe was the locality where he wore
+what appeared to be his service stripes. Instead of being on his sleeves
+they were at the extreme southern exposure of his coattails; I presume
+an Austrian officer acquires merit by sitting down.
+
+This particular officer's saber kept jingling, and so did his spurs,
+and so did his bracelet. I almost forgot the bracelet. It was an ornate
+affair of gold links fastened on his left wrist with a big gold locket,
+and it kept slipping down over his hand and rattling against his
+cuff. The chain bracelet locked on the left wrist is very common among
+Austrian officers; it adds just the final needed touch. I did not see
+any of them carrying lorgnettes or shower bouquets, but I think, in
+summer they wear veils.
+
+One opportunity is afforded the European who is neither a soldier nor
+a hotel cashier to dress himself up in comic-opera clothes--and that is
+when he a-hunting goes. An American going hunting puts on his oldest
+and most serviceable clothes--a European his giddiest, gayest, gladdest
+regalia. We were so favored by gracious circumstances as to behold
+several Englishmen suitably attired for the chase, and we noted that the
+conventional morning costume of an English gentleman expecting to call
+informally on a pheasant or something during the course of the forenoon
+consisted, in the main, of a perfect dear of a Norfolk jacket, all over
+plaits and pockets, with large leather buttons like oak-galls adhering
+thickly to it, with a belt high up under the arms and a saucy tail
+sticking out behind; knee-breeches; a high stock collar; shin-high
+leggings of buff or white, and a special hat--a truly adorable
+confection by the world's leading he-milliner.
+
+If you dared to wear such an outfit afield in America the very
+dickeybirds would fall into fits as you passed--the chipmunks would lean
+out of the trees and just naturally laugh you to death! But in a land
+where the woodlands are well-kept groves, and the undergrowth, instead
+of being weedy and briery, is sweet-scented fern and gorse and bracken,
+I suppose it is all eminently correct.
+
+Thus appareled the Englishman goes to Scotland to shoot the grouse, the
+gillie, the heather cock, the niblick, the haggis and other Scotch game.
+Thus appareled he ranges the preserves of his own fat, fair shires in
+ardent pursuit of the English rabbit, which pretty nearly corresponds to
+the guinea pig, but is not so ferocious; and the English hare, which
+is first cousin to our molly cottontail; and the English pheasant--but
+particularly the pheasant.
+
+There was great excitement while we were in England concerning the
+pheasants. Either the pheasants were preying on the mangel-wurzels or
+the mangel-wurzels were preying on the pheasants. At any rate it had
+something to do with the Land Bill--practically everything that happens
+in England has something to do with the Land Bill--and Lloyd George was
+in a free state of perspiration over it; and the papers were full of it
+and altogether there was a great pother over it.
+
+We saw pheasants by the score. We saw them first from the windows of
+our railroad carriage--big, beautiful birds nearly as large as barnyard
+fowls and as tame, feeding in the bare cabbage patches, regardless of
+the train chugging by not thirty yards away; and later we saw them again
+at still closer range as we strolled along the haw-and-holly-lined roads
+of the wonderful southern counties. They would scuttle on ahead of us,
+weaving in and out of the hedgerows; and finally, when we insisted on it
+and flung pebbles at them to emphasize our desires, they would get up,
+with a great drumming of wings and a fine comet-like display of flowing
+tailfeathers on the part of the cock birds, and go booming away to what
+passes in Sussex and Kent for dense cover--meaning by that thickets such
+as you may find in the upper end of Central Park.
+
+They say King George is one of the best pheasant-shots in England.
+He also collects postage stamps when not engaged in his regular regal
+duties, such as laying cornerstones for new workhouses and receiving
+presentation addresses from charity children. I have never shot
+pheasants; but, having seen them in their free state as above described,
+and having in my youth collected postage stamps intermittently, I should
+say, speaking offhand, that of the two pursuits postage-stamp collecting
+is infinitely the more exciting and dangerous.
+
+Through the closed season the keepers mind the pheasants, protecting
+them from poachers and feeding them on selected grain; but a day comes
+in October when the hunters go forth and take their stands at spaced
+intervals along a cleared aisle flanking the woods; then the beaters
+dive into the woods from the opposite side, and when the tame and
+trusting creatures come clustering about their feet expecting provender
+the beaters scare them up, by waving their umbrellas at them, I think,
+and the pheasants go rocketing into the air--rocketing is the correct
+sporting term--go rocketing into the air like a flock of Sunday
+supplements; and the gallant gunner downs them in great multitudes,
+always taking due care to avoid mussing his clothes. For after all the
+main question is not "What did he kill?" but "How does he look?"
+
+At that, I hold no brief for the pheasant--except when served with
+breadcrumb dressing and currant jelly he is no friend of mine. It ill
+becomes Americans, with our own record behind us, to chide other
+people for the senseless murder of wild things; and besides, speaking
+personally, I have a reasonably open mind on the subject of wild-game
+shooting. Myself, I shot a wild duck once. He was not flying at the
+time. He was, as the stockword goes, setting. I had no self-reproaches
+afterward however. As between that duck and myself I regarded it as an
+even break--as fair for one as for the other--because at the moment I
+myself was, as we say, setting too. But if, in the interests of true
+sportsmanship, they must have those annual massacres I certainly should
+admire to see what execution a picked half dozen of American quail
+hunters, used to snap-shooting in the cane jungles and brier patches of
+Georgia and Arkansas, could accomplish among English pheasants, until
+such time as their consciences mastered them and they desisted from
+slaughter!
+
+Be that as it may, pheasant shooting is the last word in the English
+sporting calendar. It is a sport strictly for the gentry. Except in the
+capacity of innocent bystanders the lower orders do not share in it. It
+is much too good for them; besides, they could not maintain the correct
+wardrobe for it. The classes derive one substantial benefit from the
+institution however. The sporting instinct of the landed Englishman has
+led to the enactment of laws under which an ordinary person goes smack
+to jail if he is caught sequestrating a clandestine pheasant bird; but
+it does not militate against the landowner's peddling off his game after
+he has destroyed it. British thrift comes in here. And so in carload
+lots it is sold to the marketmen. The result is that in the fall of the
+year pheasants are cheaper than chickens; and any person who can afford
+poultry on his dinner table can afford pheasants.
+
+The Continental hunter makes an even more spectacular appearance than
+his British brother. No self-respecting German or French sportsman would
+think of faring forth after the incarnate brown hare or the ferocious
+wood pigeon unless he had on a green hat with a feather in it; and a
+green suit to match the hat; and swung about his neck with a cord a
+natty fur muff to keep his hands in between shots; and a swivel chair to
+sit in while waiting for the wild boar to come along and be bowled over.
+
+Being hunted with a swivel chair is what makes the German wild boar
+wild. On occasion, also, the hunter wears, suspended from his belt, a
+cute little hanger like a sawed-off saber, with which to cut the throats
+of his spoil. Then, when it has spoiled some more, they will serve it at
+a French restaurant.
+
+It was our fortune to be in France on the famous and ever-memorable
+occasion when the official stag of the French Republic met a tragic and
+untimely end, under circumstances acutely distressing to all who believe
+in the divinity bestowed prerogatives of the nobility. The Paris edition
+of the Herald printed the lamentable tale on its front page and I
+clipped the account. I offer it here in exact reproduction, including
+the headline:
+
+        HUNTING INCIDENT SAID TO BE DUE TO CONSPIRACY
+
+Further details are given in this morning's Figaro of the incident
+between Prince Murat and M. Dauchis, the mayor of Saint-Felix, near
+Clermont, which was briefly reported in yesterday's Herald.
+
+A regular conspiracy was organized by M. Dauchis, it is alleged, in
+order to secure the stag Prince Murat and Comte de Valon were hunting in
+the forest of La Neuville-en-Hetz. Already, at the outset of the hunt,
+M. Dauchis, according to Le Figaro, charged at a huntsman with a little
+automobile in which he was driving and threatened to fire. Then when the
+stag ran into the wood, near the Trye River, one of his keepers shot it.
+In great haste the animal was loaded on another automobile; and before
+either the prince or Comte de Valon could interfere it was driven away.
+
+While Comte de Valon spurred his horse in pursuit Prince Murat disarmed
+the man who had shot the stag, for he was leveling his gun at another
+huntsman; but before the gun was wrenched from his hands he had struck
+Prince d'Essling, Prince Murat's uncle, across the face with the butt.
+
+Meantime Comte de Valon had overtaken the automobile and, though
+threatened with revolvers by its occupants, would have recaptured the
+stag if the men in charge of it had not taken it into the house of M.
+Dauchis' father.
+
+The only course left for Prince Murat and Comte de Valon was to lodge a
+complaint with the police for assault and for killing the stag, which M.
+Dauchis refused to give back.
+
+From this you may see how very much more exciting stag hunting is in
+France than in America. Comparing the two systems we find but one point
+of resemblance--namely, the attempted shooting of a huntsman. In the
+North Woods we do a good deal of that sort of thing: however with us
+it is not yet customary to charge the prospective victim in a little
+automobile--that may come in time. Our best bags are made by the
+stalking or still-hunting method. Our city-raised sportsman slips up on
+his guide and pots him from a rest.
+
+But consider the rest of the description so graphically set forth by
+Le Figaro--the intriguing of the mayor; the opposing groups rampaging
+round, some on horseback and some in automobile runabouts; the intense
+disappointment of the highborn Prince Murat and his uncle, the Prince
+d'Essling, and his friend, the Comte de Valon; the implied grief of the
+stag at being stricken down by other than noble hands; the action of the
+base-born commoner, who shot the stag, in striking the Prince d'Essling
+across his pained and aristocratic face with the butt--exact type of
+butt and name of owner not being given. Only in its failure to clear
+up this important point, and in omitting to give descriptions of the
+costumes worn by the two princes and the comte, is Le Figaro's story
+lacking. They must have been wearing the very latest creations too.
+
+This last brings us back again to the subject of clothes and serves
+to remind me that, contrary to a belief prevalent on this side of the
+water, good clothes cost as much abroad as they cost here. In England a
+man may buy gloves and certain substantial articles of haberdashery in
+silk and linen and wool at a much lower figure than in America; and in
+Italy he will find crocheted handbags and bead necklaces are to be had
+cheaper than at home--provided, of course, he cares for such things as
+crocheted handbags and bead necklaces. Handmade laces and embroideries
+and sundry other feminine fripperies, so women tell me, are moderately
+priced on the Continent, if so be the tourist-purchaser steers clear of
+the more fashionable shops and chases the elusive bargain down a back
+street; but, quality considered, other things cost as much in Europe
+as they cost here--and frequently they cost more. If you buy at the
+shopkeeper's first price he has a secret contempt for you; if you haggle
+him down to a reasonably fair valuation--say about twice the amount a
+native would pay for the same thing--he has a half-concealed contempt
+for you; if you refuse to trade at any price he has an open contempt for
+you; and in any event he dislikes you because you are an American. So
+there you are. No matter how the transaction turns out you have his
+contempt; it is the only thing he parts with at cost.
+
+It is true that you may buy a suit of clothes for ten dollars in London;
+so also may you buy a suit of clothes for ten dollars in any American
+city, but the reasonably affluent American doesn't buy ten-dollar suits
+at home. He saves himself up to indulge in that form of idiocy abroad.
+In Paris or Rome you may get a five-course dinner with wine for forty
+cents; so you may in certain quarters of New York; but in either place
+the man who can afford to pay more for his dinner will find it to his
+ultimate well-being to do so. Simply because a boarding house in France
+or Italy is known as a pension doesn't keep it from being a boarding
+house--and a pretty average bad one, as I have been informed by
+misguided Americans who tried living at a pension, and afterwards put in
+a good deal of their spare time regretting it.
+
+Altogether, looking back on my own experiences, I can at this time of
+writing think of but two common commodities which, when grade is taken
+into the equation, are found to be radically cheaper in Europe than
+in America--these two things being taxicabs and counts. For their
+cleanliness and smartness of aspect, and their reasonableness of
+meter-fare, taxicabs all over Europe are a constant joy to the traveling
+American. And, though in the United States counts are so costly that
+only the marriageable daughters of the very wealthy may afford to buy
+them--and even then, as the count calendars attest, have the utmost
+difficulty in keeping them after they are bought--in Continental Europe
+anywhere one may for a moderate price hire a true-born count to do
+almost any small job, from guiding one through an art gallery to waiting
+on one at the table. Counts make indifferent guides, but are middling
+fair waiters.
+
+Outside of the counts and the taxicabs, and the food in Germany, I
+found in all Europe just one real overpowering bargain--and that was in
+Naples, where, as a general thing, bargains are not what they seem.
+For the exceedingly moderate outlay of one lira--Italian--or twenty
+cents--American--I secured this combination, to wit, as follows:
+
+In the background old Vesuvius, like a wicked, fallen angel, wearing his
+plumy, fumy halo of sulphurous hell-smoke; in the middle distance
+the Bay of Naples, each larcenous wave-crest in it triple-plated with
+silvern glory pilfered from a splendid moon; on the left the riding
+lights of a visiting squadron of American warships; on the right the
+myriad slanted sails of the coral-fishers' boats, beating out toward
+Capri, with the curlew-calls of the fishermen floating back in shrill
+snatches to meet a jangle of bell and bugle from the fleet; in the
+immediate foreground a competent and accomplished family troupe of six
+Neapolitan troubadours--men, women and children--some of them playing
+guitars and all six of them, with fine mellow voices and tremendous
+dramatic effect, singing--the words being Italian but the air good
+American--John Brown's Body Lies a-Moldering in the Grave!
+
+I defy you to get more than that for twenty cents anywhere in the world!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XII
+
+
+
+Night Life--with the Life Part Missing
+
+In our consideration of this topic we come first to the night life of
+the English. They have none.
+
+Passing along to the next subject under the same heading, which is
+the night life of Paris, we find here so much night life, of such
+a delightfully transparent and counterfeit character; so much
+made-to-measure deviltry; so many members of the Madcaps' Union engaged
+on piece-work; so much delicious, hoydenish derring-do, all carefully
+stage-managed and expertly timed for the benefit of North and South
+American spenders, to the end that the deliriousness shall abate
+automatically in exact proportion as the spenders quit spending--in
+short, so much of what is typically Parisian that, really Paris, on its
+merits, is entitled to a couple of chapters of its own.
+
+All of which naturally brings us to the two remaining great cities of
+Mid-Europe--Berlin and Vienna--and leads us to the inevitable conclusion
+that the Europeans, in common with all other peoples on the earth, only
+succeed--when they try to be desperately wicked--in being desperately
+dull; whereas when they seek their pleasures in a natural manner they
+present racial slants and angles that are very interesting to observe
+and very pleasant to have a hand in.
+
+Take the Germans now: No less astute a world traveler than Samuel
+G. Blythe is sponsor for the assertion that the Berliners follow the
+night-life route because the Kaiser found his capital did not attract
+the tourist types to the extent he had hoped, and so decreed that
+his faithful and devoted subjects, leaving their cozy hearths and
+inglenooks, should go forth at the hour when graveyards yawn--and who
+could blame them?--to spend the dragging time until dawn in being merry
+and bright. So saying His Majesty went to bed, leaving them to work
+while he slept.
+
+After viewing the situation at first hand the present writer is of the
+opinion that Mr. Blythe was quite right in his statements. Certainly
+nothing is more soothing to the eye of the onlooker, nothing more
+restful to his soul, than to behold a group of Germans enjoying
+themselves in a normal manner. And absolutely nothing is quite so
+ghastly sad as the sight of those same well-flushed, well-fleshed
+Germans cavorting about between the hours of two and four-thirty A.M.,
+trying, with all the pachydermic ponderosity of Barnum's Elephant
+Quadrille, to be professionally gay and cutuppish. The Prussians must
+love their Kaiser dearly. We sit up with our friends when they are dead;
+they stay up for him until they are ready to die themselves.
+
+As is well known Berlin abounds in pleasure palaces, so called. Enormous
+places these are, where under one widespreading roof are three or four
+separate restaurants of augmented size, not to mention winecellars and
+beer-caves below-stairs, and a dancehall or so and a Turkish bath, and
+a bar, and a skating rink, and a concert hall--and any number of private
+dining rooms. The German mind invariably associates size with enjoyment.
+
+To these establishments, after his regular dinner, the Berliner repairs
+with his family, his friend or his guest. There is one especially
+popular resort, a combination of restaurant and vaudeville theater,
+at which one eats an excellent dinner excellently served, and between
+courses witnesses the turns of a first-rate variety bill, always with
+the inevitable team of American coon shouters, either in fast colors or
+of the burnt-cork variety, sandwiched into the program somewhere.
+
+In the Friedrichstrasse there is another place, called the
+Admiralspalast, which is even more attractive. Here, inclosing a big,
+oval-shaped ice arena, balcony after balcony rises circling to the roof.
+On one of these balconies you sit, and while you dine and after you have
+dined you look down on a most marvelous series of skating stunts. In
+rapid and bewildering succession there are ballets on skates, solo
+skating numbers, skating carnivals and skating races. Finally scenery
+is slid in on runners and the whole company, in costumes grotesque and
+beautiful, go through a burlesque that keeps you laughing when you
+are not applauding, and admiring when you are doing neither; while
+alternating lightwaves from overhead electric devices flood the picture
+with shifting, shimmering tides of color. It is like seeing a Christmas
+pantomime under an aurora borealis. In America we could not do these
+things--at least we never have done them. Either the performance would
+be poor or the provender would be highly expensive, or both. But here
+the show is wonderful, and the victuals are good and not extravagantly
+priced, and everybody has a bully time.
+
+At eleven-thirty or thereabout the show at the ice palace is
+over--concluding with a push-ball match between teams of husky maidens
+who were apparently born on skates and raised on skates, and would not
+feel natural unless they were curveting about on skates. Their skates
+seem as much a part of them as tails to mermaids. It is bedtime now for
+sane folks, but at this moment a certain madness which does not at all
+fit in with the true German temperament descends on the crowd. Some go
+upstairs to another part of the building, where there is a dancehall
+called the Admiralskasino; but, to the truly swagger, one should hasten
+to the Palais du Danse on the second floor of the big Metropolpalast
+in the Behrenstrasse. This place opens promptly at midnight and closes
+promptly at two o'clock in the morning.
+
+Inasmuch as the Palais du Danse is an institution borrowed outright
+from the French they have adopted a typically French custom here. As
+the visitor enters--if he be a stranger--a flunky in gorgeous livery
+intercepts him and demands an entrance fee amounting to about a dollar
+and a quarter in our money, as I recall. This tariff the American or
+Englishman pays, but the practiced Berliner merely suggests to the
+doorkeeper the expediency of his taking a long running start and jumping
+off into space, and stalks defiantly in without forking over a single
+pfennig to any person whatsoever.
+
+The Palais du Danse is incomparably the most beautiful ballroom in
+the world--so people who have been all over the world agree--and it is
+spotlessly clean and free from brackish smells, which is more than can
+be said of any French establishment of similar character I have seen. At
+the Palais du Danse the patron sits at a table--a table with something
+on it besides a cloth being an essential adjunct to complete enjoyment
+of an evening of German revelry; and as he sits and drinks he listens to
+the playing of a splendid band and looks on at the dancing. Nothing
+is drunk except wine--and by wine I mainly mean champagne of the most
+sweetish and sickish brand obtainable. Elsewhere, for one-twentieth the
+cost, the German could have the best and purest beer that is made; but
+he is out now for the big night. Accordingly he saturates his tissues
+with the sugary bubble-water of France. He does not join in the dancing
+himself. The men dancers are nearly all paid dancers, I think, and the
+beautifully clad women who dance are either professionals, too, or else
+belong to a profession that is older even than dancing is. They all
+dance with a profound German gravity and precision. Here is music to set
+a wooden leg a-jigging; but these couples circle and glide and dip with
+an incomprehensible decorum and slowness.
+
+When we were there, they were dancing the tango or one of its manifold
+variations. All Europe, like all America, was, for the moment, tango
+mad. While we were in Paris, M. Jean Richepin lectured before the Forty
+Immortals of the Five Academies assembled in solemn conclave at the
+Institute of France. They are called the Forty Immortals because nobody
+can remember the names of more than five of them. He took for his
+subject the tango--his motto, in short, being one borrowed from the
+conductors in the New York subway--"Mind your step!"
+
+While he spoke, which was for an hour or more, the bebadged and
+beribboned bosoms of his illustrious compatriots heaved with emotion;
+their faces--or such parts of their faces as were visible above the
+whiskerline--flushed with enthusiasm, and most vociferously they
+applauded his masterly phrasing and his tracing-out of the evolution of
+the tango, all the way from its Genesis, as it were, to its Revelation.
+I judge the revelation particularly appealed to them--that part of it
+appeals to so many.
+
+After that the tango seemed literally to trail us. We could not escape
+it. While we were in Berlin the emperor saw fit officially to forbid
+the dancing of the tango by officers of his navy and army. We reached
+England just after the vogue for tango teas started.
+
+Naturally we went to one of these affairs. It took place at a theater.
+Such is the English way of interpreting the poetry of motion--to hire
+some one else to do it for you, and--in order to get the worth of your
+money--sit and swizzle tea while the paid performer is doing it. At the
+tango tea we patronized the tea was up to standard, but the dancing of
+the box-ankled professionals was a disappointment. Beforehand I had been
+told that the scene on the stage would be a veritable picture. And so it
+was--Rosa Bonheur's Horse Fair.
+
+As a matter of fact the best dancer I saw in Europe was a performing
+trick pony in a winter circus in Berlin. I also remember with
+distinctness of detail a chorusman who took part in a new Lehar opera,
+there in Berlin. I do not remember him for his dancing, because he was
+no clumsier of foot than his compatriots in the chorus rank and file; or
+for his singing, since I could not pick his voice out from the combined
+voices of the others. I remember him because he wore spectacles--not a
+monocle nor yet a pair of nose-glasses, but heavy-rimmed, double-lensed
+German spectacles with gold bows extending up behind his ears like the
+roots of an old-fashioned wisdom tooth.
+
+Come to think about it, I know of no reason why a chorusman should not
+wear spectacles if he needs them in his business or if he thinks they
+will add to his native beauty; but the spectacle of that bolster-built
+youth, dressed now as a Spanish cavalier and now as a Venetian
+gondolier, prancing about, with his spectacles goggling owlishly out
+at the audience, and once in a while, when a gleam from the footlights
+caught on them, turning to two red-hot disks set in the middle of his
+face, was a thing that is going to linger in my memory when a lot of
+more important matters are entirely forgotten.
+
+Not even in Paris did the tango experts compare with the tango
+experts one sees in America. At this juncture I pause a moment, giving
+opportunity for some carping critic to rise and call my attention to
+the fact that perhaps the most distinguished of the early school of
+turkey-trotters bears a French name and came to us from Paris. To
+which I reply that so he does and so he did; but I add then the
+counter-argument that he came to us by way of Paris, at the conclusion
+of a round trip that started in the old Fourth Ward of the Borough of
+Manhattan, city of Greater New York; for he was born and bred on the
+East Side--and, moreover, was born bearing the name of a race of kings
+famous in the south of Ireland and along the Bowery. And he learned
+his art--not only the rudiments of it but the final finished polish of
+it--in the dancehalls of Third Avenue, where the best slow-time dancers
+on earth come from. It was after he had acquired a French accent and
+had Gallicized his name, thereby causing a general turning-over of old
+settlers in the graveyards of the County Clare, that he returned to us,
+a conspicuous figure in the world of art and fashion, and was able to
+get twenty-five dollars an hour for teaching the sons and daughters of
+our richest families to trip the light fantastic go. At the same time,
+be it understood, I am not here to muckrake the past of one so prominent
+and affluent in the most honored and lucrative of modern professions;
+but facts are facts, and these particular facts are quoted here to bind
+and buttress my claim that the best dancers are the American dancers.
+
+After this digression let us hurry right back to that loyal Berliner
+whom we left seated in the Palais du Danse on the Behrenstrasse, waiting
+for the hour of two in the morning to come. The hour of two in the
+morning does come; the lights die down; the dancers pick up their heavy
+feet--it takes an effort to pick up those Continental feet--and quit the
+waxen floor; the Oberkellner comes round with his gold chain of office
+dangling on his breast and collects for the wine, and our German friend,
+politely inhaling his yawns, gets up and goes elsewhere to finish his
+good time. And, goldarn it, how he does dread it! Yet he goes, faithful
+soul that he is.
+
+He goes, let us say, to the Pavilion Mascotte--no dancing, but plenty
+of drinking and music and food--which opens at two and stays open until
+four, when it shuts up shop in order that another place in the nature of
+a cabaret may open. And so, between five and six o'clock in the morning
+of the new day, when the lady garbagemen and the gentlemen chambermaids
+of the German capital are abroad on their several duties, he journeys
+homeward, and so, as Mr. Pepys says, to bed, with nothing disagreeable
+to look forward to except repeating the same dose all over again
+the coming night. This sort of thing would kill anybody except a
+Prussian--for, mark you, between intervals of drinking he has been
+eating all night; but then a Prussian has no digestion. He merely has
+gross tonnage in the place where his digestive apparatus ought to be.
+
+The time to see a German enjoying himself is when he is following his
+own bent and not obeying the imperial edict of his gracious sovereign.
+I had a most excellent opportunity of observing him while engaged in
+his own private pursuits of pleasure when by chance one evening, in the
+course of a solitary prowl, I bumped into a sort of Berlinesque version
+of Coney Island, with the island part missing. It was not out in the
+suburbs where one would naturally expect to find such a resort. It was
+in the very middle of the city, just round the corner from the cafe
+district, not more than half a mile, as the Blutwurst flies, from Unter
+den Linden. Even at this distance and after a considerable lapse of time
+I can still appreciate that place, though I cannot pronounce it; for it
+had a name consisting of one of those long German compound words that
+run all the way round a fellow's face and lap over at the back, like
+a clergyman's collar, and it had also a subname that no living person
+could hope to utter unless he had a thorough German education and throat
+trouble. You meet such nouns frequently in Germany. They are not meant
+to be spoken; you gargle them. To speak the full name of this park would
+require two able-bodied persons--one to start it off and carry it along
+until his larynx gave out, and the other to take it up at that point and
+finish it.
+
+But for all the nine-jointed impressiveness of its title this park was
+a live, brisk little park full of sideshow tents sheltering mildly
+amusing, faked-up attractions, with painted banners flapping in the air
+and barkers spieling before the entrances and all the ballyhoos going
+at full blast--altogether a creditable imitation of a street fair as
+witnessed in any American town that has a good live Elks' Lodge in it.
+
+Plainly the place was popular. Germans of all conditions and all ages
+and all sizes--but mainly the broader lasts--were winding about in thick
+streams in the narrow, crooked alleys formed by the various tents. They
+packed themselves in front of each booth where a free exhibition was
+going on, and when the free part was over and the regular performance
+began they struggled good-naturedly to pay the admission fee and enter
+in at the door.
+
+And, for a price, there were freaks to be seen who properly belonged on
+our side of the water, it seemed to me. I had always supposed them to be
+exclusively domestic articles until I encountered them here. There was a
+regular Bosco--a genuine Herr He Alive Them Eats--sitting in his canvas
+den entirely surrounded by a choice and tasty selection of eating
+snakes. The orthodox tattooed man was there, too, first standing up to
+display the text and accompanying illustrations on his front cover, and
+then turning round so the crowd might read what he said on the other
+side. And there was many another familiar freak introduced to our
+fathers by Old Dan Rice and to us, their children, through the good
+offices of Daniel's long and noble line of successors.
+
+A seasonable Sunday is a fine time; and the big Zoological Garden, which
+is a favorite place for studying the Berlin populace at the diversions
+they prefer when left to their own devices. At one table will be a
+cluster of students, with their queer little pill-box caps of all
+colors, their close-cropped heads and well-shaved necks, and their
+saber-scarred faces. At the next table half a dozen spectacled,
+long-coated men, who look as though they might be university professors,
+are confabbing earnestly. And at the next table and the next and the
+next--and so on, until the aggregate runs into big figures--are family
+groups--grandsires, fathers, mothers, aunts, uncles and children, on
+down to the babies in arms. By the uncountable thousands they spend the
+afternoon here, munching sausages and sipping lager, and enjoying the
+excellent music that is invariably provided. At each plate there is a
+beer mug, for everybody is forever drinking and nobody is ever drunk.
+You see a lot of this sort of thing, not only in the parks and gardens
+so numerous in and near any German city but anywhere on the Continent.
+Seeing it helps an American to understand a main difference between the
+American Sabbath and the European Sunday. We keep it and they spend it.
+
+I am given to understand that Vienna night life is the most alluring,
+the most abandoned, the most wicked and the wildest of all night life.
+Probably this is so--certainly it is the most cloistered and the most
+inaccessible. The Viennese does not deliberately exploit his night life
+to prove to all the world that he is a gay dog and will not go home
+until morning though it kill him--as the German does. Neither does he
+maintain it for the sake of the coin to be extracted from the pockets of
+the tourist, as do the Parisians. With him his night life is a thing he
+has created and which he supports for his own enjoyment.
+
+And so it goes on--not out in the open; not press-agented; not
+advertised; but behind closed doors. He does not care for the stranger's
+presence, nor does he suffer it either--unless the stranger is properly
+vouched for. The best theaters in Vienna are small, exclusive affairs,
+privately supported, and with seating capacity for a few chosen patrons.
+Once he has quit the public cafe with its fine music and its bad waiters
+the uninitiated traveler has a pretty lonesome time of it in Vienna.
+Until all hours he may roam the principal streets seeking that fillip of
+wickedness which will give zest to life and provide him with something
+to brag about when he gets back among the home folks again. He does not
+find it. Charades would provide a much more exciting means of spending
+the evening; and, in comparison with the sights he witnesses, anagrams
+and acrostics are positively thrilling.
+
+He is tantalized by the knowledge that all about him there are big
+doings, but, so far as he is concerned, he might just as well be
+attending a Sunday-school cantata. Unless he be suitably introduced he
+will have never a chance to shake a foot with anybody or buy a drink for
+somebody in the inner circles of Viennese night life. He is emphatically
+on the outside, denied even the poor satisfaction of looking in. At that
+I have a suspicion, born of casual observation among other races, that
+the Viennese really has a better time when he is not trying than when he
+is trying.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIII
+
+
+
+Our Friend, the Assassin
+
+No taste of the night life of Paris is regarded as complete without
+a visit to an Apache resort at the fag-end of it. For orderly and
+law-abiding people the disorderly and lawbreaking people always have an
+immense fascination anyhow. The average person, though inclined to blink
+at whatever prevalence of the criminal classes may exist in his own
+community, desires above all things to know at firsthand about the
+criminals of other communities. In these matters charity begins at home.
+
+Every New Yorker who journeys to the West wants to see a few roadagents;
+conversely the Westerner sojourning in New York pesters his New
+York friends to lead him to the haunts of the gangsters. It makes no
+difference that in a Western town the prize hold-up man is more apt
+than not to be a real-estate dealer; that in New York the average run
+of citizens know no more of the gangs than they know of the Metropolitan
+Museum of Art--which is to say, nothing at all. Human nature comes to
+the surface just the same.
+
+In Paris they order this thing differently; they exhibit the same spirit
+of enterprise that in a lesser degree characterized certain promoters of
+rubberneck tours who some years ago fitted up make-believe opium dens in
+New York's Chinatown for the awed delectation of out-of-town spectators.
+Knowing from experience that every other American who lands in Paris
+will crave to observe the Apache while the Apache is in the act of
+Apaching round, the canny Parisians have provided a line of up-to-date
+Apache dens within easy walking distance of Montmartre; and thither
+the guides lead the round-eyed tourist and there introduce him to
+well-drilled, carefully made-up Apaches and Apachesses engaged in their
+customary sports and pastimes for as long as he is willing to pay out
+money for the privilege.
+
+Being forewarned of this I naturally desired to see the genuine article.
+I took steps to achieve that end. Suitably chaperoned by a trio of
+transplanted Americans who knew a good bit about the Paris underworld I
+rode over miles of bumpy cobblestones until, along about four o'clock in
+the morning, our taxicab turned into a dim back street opening off one
+of the big public markets and drew up in front of a grimy establishment
+rejoicing in the happy and well-chosen name of the Cave of the
+Innocents.
+
+Alighting we passed through a small boozing ken, where a frowzy woman
+presided over a bar, serving drinks to smocked marketmen, and at the
+rear descended a steep flight of stone steps. At the foot of the stairs
+we came on two gendarmes who sat side by side on a wooden bench, having
+apparently nothing else to do except to caress their goatees and finger
+their swords. Whether the gendarmes were stationed here to keep the
+Apaches from preying on the marketmen or the marketmen from preying on
+the Apaches I know not; but having subsequently purchased some fresh
+fruit in that selfsame market I should say now that if anybody about the
+premises needed police protection it was the Apaches. My money would be
+on the marketmen every time.
+
+Beyond the couchant gendarmes we traversed a low, winding passage cut
+out of stone and so came at length to what seemingly had originally
+been a winevault, hollowed out far down beneath the foundations of the
+building. The ceiling was so low that a tall man must stoop to avoid
+knocking his head off. The place was full of smells that had crawled in
+a couple of hundred years before and had died without benefit of clergy,
+and had remained there ever since. For its chief item of furniture
+the cavern had a wicked old piano, with its lid missing, so that its
+yellowed teeth showed in a perpetual snarl. I judged some of its most
+important vital organs were missing too--after I heard it played. On
+the walls were inscribed such words as naughty little boys write on
+schoolhouse fences in this country, and more examples of this pleasing
+brand of literature were carved on the whittled oak benches and the
+rickety wooden stools. So much for the physical furbishings.
+
+By rights--by all the hallowed rules and precedents of the American
+vaudeville stage!--the denizens of this cozy retreat in the bowels of
+the earth should have been wearing high-waisted baggy velvet trousers
+and drinking absinthe out of large flagons, and stabbing one another
+between the shoulder blades, and ever and anon, in the mystic mazes
+of the dance, playing crack-the-whip with the necks and heels of their
+adoring lady friends; but such was not found to be the case. In all
+these essential and traditional regards the assembled Innocents were as
+poignantly disappointing as the costers of London had proved themselves.
+
+According to all the printed information on the subject the London
+coster wears clothes covered up with pearl buttons and spends his time
+swapping ready repartee with his Donah or his Dinah. The costers I saw
+were barren of pearl buttons and silent of speech; and almost invariably
+they had left their Donahs at home. Similarly these gentlemen habitues
+of the Cave of the Innocents wore few or no velvet pants, and guzzled
+little or none of the absinthe. Their favorite tipple appeared to be
+beer; and their female companions snuggled closely beside them.
+
+We stayed among them fully twenty minutes, but not a single person
+was stabbed while we were there. It must have been an off-night for
+stabbings.
+
+Still, I judged them to have been genuine exhibits because here, for
+the first, last and only time in Paris, I found a shop where a
+stranger ready to spend a little money was not welcomed with vociferous
+enthusiasm. The paired-off cave-dwellers merely scowled on us as we
+scrouged past them to a vacant bench in a far corner. The waiter,
+though, bowed before us--a shockheaded personage in the ruins of a dress
+suit--at the same time saying words which I took to be complimentary
+until one of my friends explained that he had called us something
+that might be freely translated as a certain kind of female lobster.
+Circumscribed by our own inflexible and unyielding language we in
+America must content ourselves with calling a man a plain lobster; but
+the limber-tongued Gaul goes further than that--he calls you a female
+lobster, which seems somehow or other to make it more binding.
+
+However, I do not really think the waiter meant to be deliberately
+offensive; for presently, having first served us with beer which for
+obvious reasons we did not drink, he stationed himself alongside the
+infirm piano and rendered a little ballad to the effect that all men
+were spiders and all women were snakes, and all the World was a green
+poison; so, right off, I knew what his trouble was, for I had seen many
+persons just as morbidly affected as himself down in the malaria belt
+of the United States, where everybody has liver for breakfast every
+morning. The waiter was bilious--that was what ailed him.
+
+For the sake of the conventions I tried to feel apprehensive of
+grave peril. It was no use. I felt safe--not exactly comfortable, but
+perfectly safe. I could not even muster up a spasm of the spine when a
+member of our party leaned over and whispered in my ear that any one
+of these gentry roundabout us would cheerfully cut a man's throat for
+twenty-five cents. I was surprised, though, at the moderation of the
+cost; this was the only cheap thing I had struck in Paris. It was
+cheaper even than the same job is supposed to be in the district round
+Chatham Square, on the East Side of New York, where the credulous
+stranger so frequently is told that he can have a plain murder done
+for five dollars--or a fancy murder, with trimmings, for ten; rate card
+covering other jobs on application. In America, however, it has been my
+misfortune that I did not have the right amount handy; and here in Paris
+I was handicapped by my inability to make change correctly. By now I
+would not have trusted anyone in Paris to make change for me--not even
+an Apache. I was sorry for this, for at a quarter a head I should
+have been very glad to engage a troupe of Apaches to kill me about two
+dollars' worth of cabdrivers and waiters. For one of the waiters at our
+hotel I would have been willing to pay as much as fifty cents, provided
+they killed him very slowly. Because of the reasons named, however, I
+had to come away without making any deal, and I have always regretted
+it.
+
+At the outset of the chapter immediately preceding this one I said
+the English had no night life. This was a slight but a pardonable
+misstatement of the actual facts. The Englishman has not so much night
+life as the Parisian, the Berliner, the Viennese or the Budapest; but he
+has more night life in his town of London than the Roman has in his town
+of Rome. In Rome night life for the foreigner consists of going indoors
+at eventide and until bedtime figuring up how much money he has been
+skinned out of during the course of the day just done--and for the
+native in going indoors and counting up how much money he has skinned
+the foreigner out of during the day aforesaid. London has its night
+life, but it ends early--in the very shank of the evening, so to speak.
+
+This is due in a measure to the operation of the early-closing law,
+which, however, does not apply if you are a bona-fide traveler stopping
+at your own inn. There the ancient tavern law protects you. You may sit
+at ease and, if so minded, may drink and eat until daylight doth appear
+or doth not appear, as is generally the case in the foggy season. There
+is another law, of newer origin, to prohibit the taking of children
+under a certain age into a public house. On the passage of this act
+there at once sprang up a congenial and lucrative employment for those
+horrible old-women drunkards who are so distressingly numerous in the
+poorer quarters of the town. Regardless of the weather one of these
+bedrabbled creatures stations herself just outside the door of a
+pub. Along comes a mother with a thirst and a child. Surrendering her
+offspring to the temporary care of the hag the mother goes within and
+has her refreshment at the bar. When, wiping her mouth on the back of
+her hand, she comes forth to reclaim the youngster she gives the
+other woman a ha'penny for her trouble, and eventually the other woman
+harvests enough ha'penny bits to buy a dram of gin for herself. On a
+rainy day I have seen a draggled, Sairey-Gamp-looking female caring for
+as many as four damp infants under the drippy portico of an East End
+groggery.
+
+It is to the cafes that the early-closing law chiefly applies. The cafes
+are due to close for business within half an hour after midnight.
+When the time for shutting up draws nigh the managers do not put their
+lingering patrons out physically. The individual's body is a sacred
+thing, personal liberty being most dear to an Englishman. It will be
+made most dear to you too--in the law courts--if you infringe on it by
+violence or otherwise. No; they have a gentler system than that, one
+that is free from noise, excitement and all mussy work. Along toward
+twelve-thirty o'clock the waiters begin going about, turning out the
+lights. The average London restaurant is none too brightly illuminated
+to start with, being a dim and dingy ill-kept place compared with the
+glary, shiny lobster palace that we know; so instantly you are made
+aware of a thickening of the prevalent gloom. The waiters start in at
+the far end of the room and turn out a few lights. Drawing nearer
+and nearer to you they turn out more lights; and finally, by way of
+strengthening the hint, they turn out the lights immediately above your
+head, which leaves you in the stilly dark with no means of seeing your
+food even; unless you have taken the precaution to spread phosphorus
+on your sandwich instead of mustard--which, however, is seldom done.
+A better method is to order a portion of one of the more luminous
+varieties of imported cheese.
+
+The best thing of all, however, is to take your hat and stick and go
+away from there. And then, unless you belong to a regular club or carry
+a card of admission to one of the chartered all-night clubs that have
+sprung up so abundantly in London, and which are uniformly stuffy,
+stupid places where the members take their roistering seriously--or as
+a last resort, unless you care to sit for a tiresome hour or two in the
+grill of your hotel--you might as well be toddling away to bed; that is
+to say, you might as well go to bed unless you find the scenes in the
+street as worth while as I found them.
+
+At this hour London's droning voice has abated to a deep, hoarse snore;
+London has become a great, broody giant taking rest that is troubled by
+snatches of wakefulness; London's grimy, lined face shows new wrinkles
+of shadow; and new and unexpected clumping of colors in monotone and
+halftone appear. From the massed-up bulk of things small detached bits
+stand vividly out: a flower girl whose flowers and whose girlhood are
+alike in the sere and yellow leaf; a soldier swaggering by, his red coat
+lighting up the grayish mass about him like a livecoal in an ashheap;
+a policeman escorting a drunk to quarters for the night--not, mind you,
+escorting him in a clanging, rushing patrol wagon, which would serve to
+attract public attention to the distressing state of the overcome one,
+but conveying him quietly, unostentatiously, surreptitiously almost,
+in a small-wheeled vehicle partaking somewhat of the nature of a baby
+carriage and somewhat of the nature of a pushcart.
+
+The policeman shoves this along the road jailward and the drunk lies
+at rest in it, stretched out full length, with a neat rubber bedspread
+drawn up over his prostrate form to screen him from drafts and save
+his face from the gaze of the vulgar. Drunkards are treated with the
+tenderest consideration in London; for, as you know, Britons never will
+be slaves--though some of them in the presence of a title give such
+imitations of being slaves as might fool even so experienced a judge
+as the late Simon Legree; and--as perchance you may also have heard--an
+Englishman's souse is his castle. So in due state they ride him and his
+turreted souse to the station house in a perambulator.
+
+From midnight to daylight the taxicabs by the countless swarm will be
+charging about in every direction--charging, moreover, at the rate of
+eight pence a mile. Think that over, ye taxitaxed wretches of New York,
+and rend your garments, with lamentations loud! There is this also to
+be said of the London taxi service--and to an American it is one of the
+abiding marvels of the place--that, no matter where you go, no matter
+how late the hour or how outlying and obscure the district, there
+is always a trim taxicab just round the next corner waiting to come
+instantly at your whistle, and with it a beggar with a bleak, hopeless
+face, to open the cab door for you and stand, hat in hand, for the penny
+you toss him.
+
+In the main centers, such as Oxford Circus and Piccadilly Circus and
+Charing Cross, and along the Embankment, the Strand and Pall Mall, they
+are as thick as fleas on the Missouri houn' dawg famous in song and
+story--the taxis, I mean, though the beggars are reasonably thick
+also--and they hop like fleas, bearing you swiftly and surely and
+cheaply on your way. The meters are honest, openfaced meters; and the
+drivers ask no more than their legal fares and are satisfied with tips
+within reason. Here in America we have the kindred arts of taxidermy and
+taxicabbery; one of these is the art of skinning animals and the other
+is the art of skinning people. The ruthless taxirobber of New York would
+not last half an hour in London; for him the jail doors would yawn.
+
+Oldtime Londoners deplored the coming of the taxicab and the motorbus,
+for their coming meant the entire extinction of the driver of the
+horse-drawn bus, who was an institution, and the practical extinction of
+the hansom cabby, who was a type and very frequently a humorist too.
+But an American finds no fault with the present arrangement; he is amply
+satisfied with it.
+
+Personally I can think of no more exciting phase of the night life of
+the two greatest cities of Europe than the stunt of dodging taxicabs. In
+London the peril that lurks for you at every turning is not the result
+of carelessness on the part of the drivers; it is due to the rules of
+the road. Afoot, an Englishman meeting you on the sidewalk turns, as
+we do, to the right hand; but mounted he turns to the left. The foot
+passenger's prerogative of turning to the right was one of the priceless
+heritages wrested from King John by the barons at Runnymede; but
+when William the Conqueror rode into the Battle of Hastings he rode a
+left-handed horse--and so, very naturally and very properly, everything
+on hoof or wheel in England has consistently turned to the left ever
+since. I took some pains to look up the original precedents for these
+facts and to establish them historically.
+
+The system suits the English mind, but it is highly confusing to an
+American who gets into the swirl of traffic at a crossing--and every
+London crossing is a swirl of traffic most of the time--and looks left
+when he should look right, and looks right when he should be looking
+left until the very best he can expect, if he survive at all, is
+cross-eyes and nervous prostration.
+
+I lost count of the number of close calls from utter and mussy
+destruction I had while in London. Sometimes a policeman took pity on me
+and saved me, and again, by quick and frenzied leaping, I saved myself;
+but then the London cabmen were poor marksmen at best. In front of the
+Savoy one night the same cabman in rapid succession had two beautiful
+shots at me and each time missed the bull's-eye by a disqualifying
+margin of inches. A New York chauffeur who had failed to splatter me all
+over the vicinage at the first chance would have been ashamed to go home
+afterward and look his innocent little ones in the face.
+
+Even now I cannot decide in my own mind which is the more fearsome and
+perilous thing--to be afoot in Paris at the mercy of all the maniacs who
+drive French motor cars or to be in one of the motor cars at the mercy
+of one of the maniacs. Motoring in Paris is the most dangerous sport
+known--just as dueling is the safest. There are some arguments to
+be advanced in favor of dueling. It provides copy for the papers and
+harmless excitement for the participants--and it certainly gives them a
+chance to get a little fresh air occasionally, but with motoring it is
+different. In Paris there are no rules of the road except just these
+two--the pedestrian who gets run over is liable to prosecution, and all
+motor cars must travel at top speed.
+
+If I live to be a million I shall never get over shuddering as I think
+back to a taxicab ride I had in the rush hour one afternoon over a route
+that extended from away down near the site of the Bastille to a hotel
+away up near the Place Vendome. The driver was a congenital madman, the
+same as all Parisian taxicab drivers are; and in addition he was on
+this occasion acquiring special merit by being quite drunk. This last,
+however, was a detail that did not dawn on my perceptions until too late
+to cancel the contract. Once he had got me safely fastened inside his
+rickety, creaky devil-wagon he pulled all the stops all the way out and
+went tearing up the crowded boulevard like a comet with a can tied to
+its tail.
+
+I hammered on the glass and begged him to slow down--that is, I
+hammered on the glass and tried to beg him to slow down. For just
+such emergencies I had previously stocked up with two French
+words--"Doucement!" and "Vite!" I knew that one of those words meant
+speed and the other meant less speed, but in the turmoil of the moment
+I may have confused them slightly. Anyhow, to be on the safe side,
+I yelled "Vite!" a while and then "Doucement" a while; and then
+"Doucement" and "Vite!" alternately, and mixed in a few short, simple
+Anglo-Saxon cusswords and prayers for dressing. But nothing I said
+seemed to have the least effect on that demoniac scoundrel. Without
+turning his head he merely shouted back something unintelligible and
+threw on more juice.
+
+On and on we tore, slicing against the sidewalk, curving and jibbing,
+clattering and careening--now going on two wheels and now on four--while
+the lunatic shrieked curses of disappointment at the pedestrians who
+scuttled away to safety from our charging onslaughts; and I held both
+hands over my mouth to keep my heart from jumping out into my lap.
+
+I saw, with instantaneous but photographic distinctness, a lady, with a
+dog tucked under her arm, who hesitated a moment in our very path. She
+was one of the largest ladies I ever saw and the dog under her arm
+was certainly the smallest dog I ever saw. You might say the lady was
+practically out of dog. I thought we had her and probably her dog too;
+but she fell back and was saved by a matter of half an inch or so. I
+think, though, we got some of the buttons off her shirtwaist and the
+back trimming of her hat.
+
+Then there was a rending, tearing crash as we took a fender off a
+machine just emerging from a cross street, but my lunatic never checked
+up at all. He just flung a curling ribbon of profanity over his shoulder
+at the other driver and bounded onward like a bat out of the Bad Place.
+That was the hour when my hair began to turn perceptibly grayer.
+And yet, when by a succession of miracles we had landed intact at my
+destination, the fiend seemed to think he had done a praiseworthy and
+creditable thing. I only wish he had been able to understand the things
+I called him--that is all I wish!
+
+It is by a succession of miracles that the members of his maniacal craft
+usually do dodge death and destruction. The providence that watches
+over the mentally deficient has them in its care, I guess; and the same
+beneficent influence frequently avails to save those who ride behind
+them and, to a lesser extent, those who walk ahead. Once in a while a
+Paris cabman does have a lucky stroke and garner in a foot traveler.
+In an instant a vast and surging crowd convenes. In another instant
+the road is impassably blocked. Up rushes a gendarme and worms his way
+through the press to the center. He has a notebook in his hand. In this
+book he enters the gloating cabman's name, his age, his address, and his
+wife's maiden name, if any; and gets his views on the Dreyfus case; and
+finds out what he thinks about the separation of church and state; and
+tells him that if he keeps on the way he is headed he will be getting
+the cross of the Legion of Honor pretty soon. They shake hands and
+embrace, and the cabman cuts another notch in his mudguard, and gets
+back on the seat and drives on. Then if, by any chance, the victim of
+the accident still breathes, the gendarme arrests him for interfering
+with the traffic. It is a lovely system and sweetly typical.
+
+Under the general classification of thrilling moments in the night life
+of Europe I should like to list a carriage trip through the outskirts of
+Naples after dark. In the first place the carriage driver is an Italian
+driver--which is a shorter way of saying he is the worst driver living.
+His idea of getting service out of a horse is, first to snatch him to a
+standstill by yanking on the bit and then to force the poor brute into
+a gallop by lashing at him with a whip having a particularly loud and
+vixenish cracker on it; and at every occasion to whoop at the top of his
+voice. In the second place the street is as narrow as a narrow alley,
+feebly lighted, and has no sidewalks. And the rutty paving stones which
+stretch from housefront to housefront are crawling with people and goats
+and dogs and children. Finally, to add zest to the affair, there are lots
+of loose cows mooning about--for at this hour the cowherd brings his
+stock to the doors of his patrons. In an Italian city the people get
+their milk from a cow, instead of from a milkman as with us. The milk is
+delivered on the hoof, so to speak.
+
+The grown-ups refuse to make way for you to pass and the swarming young
+ones repay you for not killing them by pelting pebbles and less pleasant
+things into your face. Beggars in all degrees of filth and deformity
+and repulsiveness run alongside the carriage in imminent danger from the
+wheels, begging for alms. If you give them something they curse you for
+not giving them more, and if you give them nothing they spit at you for
+a base dog of a heretic.
+
+But then, what could you naturally expect from a population that thinks
+a fried cuttlefish is edible and a beefsteak is not?
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIV
+
+
+
+That Gay Paresis
+
+As you walk along the Rue de la Paix [Footnote: The X being one of the
+few silent things in France.] and pay and pay, and keep on paying, your
+eye is constantly engaged by two inscriptions that occur and recur with
+the utmost frequency. One of these appears in nearly every shopwindow
+and over nearly every shopdoor. It says:
+
+                       English Spoken Here.
+
+This, I may tell you, is one of the few absolutely truthful and
+dependable statements encountered by the tourist in the French capital.
+Invariably English is spoken here. It is spoken here during all the
+hours of the day and until far into the dusk of the evening; spoken
+loudly, clearly, distinctly, hopefully, hopelessly, stridently,
+hoarsely, despondently, despairingly and finally profanely by Americans
+who are trying to make somebody round the place understand what they are
+driving at.
+
+The other inscription is carved, painted or printed on all public
+buildings, on most monuments, and on many private establishments as
+well. It is the motto of the French Republic, reading as follows:
+
+                  Liberality! Economy! Frugality!
+                   [Footnote: Free translation.]
+
+The first word of this--the Liberality part--is applicable to the
+foreigner and is aimed directly at him as a prayer, an injunction and
+a command; while the rest of it--the Economy and the Frugality--is
+competently attended to by the Parisians themselves. The foreigner
+has only to be sufficiently liberal and he is assured of a flattering
+reception wheresoever his straying footsteps may carry him, whether in
+Paris or in the provinces; but wheresoever those feet of his do carry
+him he will find a people distinguished by a frugality and inspired by
+an economy of the frugalest and most economical character conceivable.
+In the streets of the metropolis he is expected, when going anywhere,
+to hail the fast-flitting taxicab [Footnote: Stops on signal only--and
+sometimes not then.], though the residents patronize the public bus.
+Indeed, the distinction is made clear to his understanding from the
+moment he passes the first outlying fortress at the national frontier
+[Footnote: Flag station.]--since, for the looks of things if for
+no better reason, he must travel first-class on the de-luxe trains
+[Footnote: Diner taken off when you are about half through eating.],
+whereas the Frenchmen pack themselves tightly but frugally into the
+second-class and the third-class compartments.
+
+Before I went to France I knew Saint Denis was the patron saint of the
+French; but I did not know why until I heard the legend connected with
+his death. When the executioner on the hill at Montmartre cut off his
+head the good saint picked it up and strolled across the fields with it
+tucked under his arm--so runs the tale. His head, in that shape, was no
+longer of any particular value to him, but your true Parisian is of a
+saving disposition. And so the Paris population have worshiped Saint
+Denis ever since. Both as a saint and as a citizen he filled the bill.
+He would not throw anything away, whether he needed it or not.
+
+Paris--not the Paris of the art lover, nor the Paris of the lover of
+history, nor yet again the Paris of the worth-while Parisians--but the
+Paris which the casual male visitor samples, is the most overrated thing
+on earth, I reckon--except alligator-pear salad--and the most costly.
+Its system of conduct is predicated, based, organized and manipulated on
+the principle that a foreigner with plenty of money and no soul will be
+along pretty soon. Hence by day and by night the deadfall is rigged
+and the trap is set and baited--baited with a spurious gayety and an
+imitation joyousness; but the joyousness is as thin as one coat of
+sizing, and the brass shines through the plating; and behind the
+painted, parted lips of laughter the sharp teeth of greed show in
+a glittering double row. Yet gallus Mr. Fly, from the U.S.A., walks
+debonairly in, and out comes Monsieur Spider, ably seconded by Madame
+Spiderette; and between them they despoil him with the utmost dispatch.
+When he is not being mulcted for large sums he is being nicked for small
+ones. It is tip, brother, tip, and keep right on tipping.
+
+I heard a story of an American who spent a month in Paris, taking in the
+sights and being taken in by them, and another month motoring through
+the country. At length he reached the port whence he was to sail for
+home. He went aboard the steamer and saw to it that his belongings were
+properly stored; and in the privacy of his stateroom he sat down to take
+an inventory of his letter of credit, now reduced to a wan and wasted
+specter of its once plethoric self. In the midst of casting-up he
+heard the signal for departure; and so he went topside of the ship and,
+stationing himself on the promenade deck alongside the gang-plank,
+he raised his voice and addressed the assembled multitude on the pier
+substantially as follows:
+
+"If"--these were his words--"if there is a single, solitary individual
+in this fair land who has not touched me for something of value--if
+there be in all France a man, woman or child who has not been tipped
+by me--let him, her or it speak now or forever after hold their peace;
+because, know ye all men by these presents, I am about to go away from
+here and if I stay in my right mind I'm not coming back!"
+
+And several persons were badly hurt in the crush; but they were believed
+afterward to have been repeaters.
+
+I thought this story was overdrawn, but, after traveling over somewhat
+the same route which this fellow countryman had taken, I came to
+the conclusion that it was no exaggeration, but a true bill in all
+particulars. On the night of our second day in Paris we went to a
+theater to see one of the topical revues, in which Paris is supposed to
+excel; and for sheer dreariness and blatant vulgarity Paris revues do,
+indeed, excel anything of a similar nature as done in either England or
+in America, which is saying quite a mouthful.
+
+In the French revue the members of the chorus reach their artistic limit
+in costuming when they dance forth from the wings wearing short and
+shabby undergarments over soiled pink fleshings and any time the
+dramatic interest begins to run low and gurgle in the pipes a male
+comedian pumps it up again by striking or kicking a woman. But to kick
+her is regarded as much the more whimsical conceit. This invariably sets
+the audience rocking with uncontrollable merriment. Howsomever, I am not
+writing a critique of the merits of the performance. If I were I should
+say that to begin with the title of the piece was wrong. It should have
+been called Lapsus Lingerie--signifying as the Latins would say, "A
+Mere Slip." At this moment I am concerned with what happened upon our
+entrance.
+
+At the door a middle-aged female, who was raising a natty mustache,
+handed us programs. I paid her for the programs and tipped her. She
+turned us over to a stout brunette lady who was cultivating a neat and
+flossy pair of muttonchops. This person escorted us down the aisle to
+where our seats were; so I tipped her. Alongside our seats stood a third
+member of the sisterhood, chiefly distinguished from her confreres by
+the fact that she was turning out something very fetching in the way of
+a brown vandyke; and after we were seated she continued to stand there,
+holding forth her hand toward me, palm up and fingers extended in
+the national gesture, and saying something in her native tongue very
+rapidly. Incidentally she was blocking the path of a number of people
+who had come down the aisle immediately behind us.
+
+I thought possibly she desired to see our coupons, so I hauled them out
+and exhibited them. She shook her head at that and gabbled faster than
+ever. It next occurred to me that perhaps she wanted to furnish us with
+programs and was asking in advance for the money with which to pay for
+them. I explained to her that I already secured programs from her
+friend with the mustache. I did this mainly in English, but partly in
+French--at least I employed the correct French word for program, which
+is programme. To prove my case I pulled the two programs from my pocket
+and showed them to her. She continued to shake her head with great
+emphasis, babbling on at an increased speed. The situation was beginning
+to verge on the embarrassing when a light dawned on me. She wanted a
+tip, that was it! She had not done anything to earn a tip that I could
+see; and unless one had been reared in the barbering business she
+was not particularly attractive to look on, and even then only in
+a professional aspect; but I tipped her and bade her begone, and
+straightway she bewent, satisfied and smiling. From that moment on I
+knew my book. When in doubt I tipped one person--the person nearest to
+me. When in deep doubt I tipped two or more persons. And all was well.
+
+On the next evening but one I had another lesson, which gave me further
+insight into the habits and customs of these gay and gladsome Parisians.
+We were completing a round of the all-night cafes and cabarets. There
+were four of us. Briefly, we had seen the Dead Rat, the Abbey, the Bal
+Tabarin the Red Mill, Maxim's, and the rest of the lot to the total
+number of perhaps ten or twelve. We had listened to bad singing, looked
+on bad dancing, sipped gingerly at bad drinks, and nibbled daintily at
+bad food; and the taste of it all was as grit and ashes in our mouths.
+We had learned for ourselves that the much-vaunted gay life of Paris was
+just as sad and sordid and sloppy and unsavory as the so-called gay life
+of any other city with a lesser reputation for gay life and gay livers.
+A scrap of the gristle end of the New York Tenderloin; a suggestion of
+a certain part of New Orleans; a short cross section of the Levee,
+in Chicago; a dab of the Barbary Coast of San Francisco in its old,
+unexpurgated days; a touch of Piccadilly Circus in London, after
+midnight, with a top dressing of Gehenna the Unblest--it had seemed to
+us a compound of these ingredients, with a distinctive savor of what was
+essentially Gallic permeating through it like garlic through a stew.
+We had had enough. Even though we had attended only as onlookers and
+seekers after local color, we felt that we had a-plenty of onlooking
+and entirely too much of local color; we felt that we should all go into
+retreat for a season of self-purification to rid our persons of the
+one and take a bath in formaldehyde to rinse our memories clean of the
+other. But the ruling spirit of the expedition pointed out that the
+evening would not be complete without a stop at a cafe that had--so he
+said--an international reputation for its supposed sauciness and its
+real Bohemian atmosphere, whatever that might be. Overcome by his
+argument we piled into a cab and departed thither.
+
+This particular cafe was found, in its physical aspects, to be
+typical of the breed and district. It was small, crowded, overheated,
+underlighted, and stuffy to suffocation with the mingled aromas of stale
+drink and cheap perfume. As we entered a wrangle was going on among a
+group of young Frenchmen picturesquely attired as art students--almost a
+sure sign that they were not art students. An undersized girl dressed in
+a shabby black-and-yellow frock was doing a Spanish dance on a cleared
+space in the middle of the floor. We knew her instantly for a Spanish
+dancer, because she had a fan in one hand and a pair of castanets in the
+other. Another girl, dressed as a pierrot, was waiting to do her turn
+when the Spanish dancer finished. Weariness showed through the lacquer
+of thick cosmetic on her peaked little face. An orchestra of three
+pieces sawed wood steadily; and at intervals, to prove that these were
+gay and blithesome revels, somebody connected with the establishment
+threw small, party-colored balls of celluloid about. But what
+particularly caught our attention was the presence in a far corner of
+two little darkies in miniature dress suits, both very wally of eye,
+very brown of skin, and very shaved as to head, huddled together there
+as though for the poor comfort of physical contact. As soon as they saw
+us they left their place and sidled up, tickled beyond measure to behold
+American faces and hear American voices.
+
+They belonged, it seemed, to a troupe of jubilee singers who had been
+imported from the States for the delectation of French audiences. At
+night, after their work at a vaudeville theater was done, the members of
+their company were paired off and sent about to the cafes to earn their
+keep by singing ragtime songs and dancing buck dances. These two were
+desperately, pathetically homesick. One of them blinked back the tears
+when he told us, with the plaintive African quaver in his voice, how
+long they had been away from their own country and how happy they would
+be to get back to it again.
+
+"We suttin'ly is glad to heah somebody talkin' de reg'lar New 'Nited
+States talk, same as we does," he said. "We gits mighty tired of all dis
+yere French jabberin'!"
+
+"Yas, suh," put in his partner; "dey meks a mighty fuss over cullud
+folks over yere; but 'tain't noways lak home. I comes from Bummin'ham,
+Alabama, myse'f. Does you gen'lemen know anybody in Bummin'ham?"
+
+They were the first really wholesome creatures who had crossed our paths
+that night. They crowded up close to us and there they stayed until we
+left, as grateful as a pair of friendly puppies for a word or a look.
+Presently, though, something happened that made us forget these small
+dark compatriots of ours. We had had sandwiches all round and a bottle
+of wine. When the waiter brought the check it fell haply into the hands
+of the one person in our party who knew French and--what was an even
+more valuable accomplishment under the present circumstances--knew the
+intricate French system of computing a bill. He ran a pencil down the
+figures. Then he consulted the price list on the menu and examined the
+label on the neck of the wine bottle, and then he gave a long whistle.
+"What's the trouble?" asked one of us.
+
+"Oh, not much!" he said. "We had a bottle of wine priced at eighteen
+francs and they have merely charged us twenty-four francs for it--six
+francs overcharge on that one item alone. The total for the sandwiches
+should have been six francs, and it is put down at ten francs. And here,
+away down at the bottom, I find a mysterious entry of four francs, which
+seems to have no bearing on the case at all--unless it be that they just
+simply need the money. I expected to be skinned somewhat, but I object
+to being peeled. I'm afraid, at the risk of appearing mercenary, that
+we'll have to ask our friend for a recount."
+
+He beckoned the waiter to him and fired a volley of rapid French in the
+waiter's face. The waiter batted his eyes and shrugged his shoulders;
+then reversing the operation he shrugged his eyelids and batted his
+shoulderblades, meantime endeavoring volubly to explain. Our friend
+shoved the check into his hands and waved him away. He was back again
+in a minute with the account corrected. That is, it was corrected to the
+extent that the wine item had been reduced to twenty-one francs and the
+sandwiches to eight francs.
+
+By now our paymaster was as hot as a hornet. His gorge rose--his
+freeborn, independent American gorge. It rose clear to the ceiling and
+threw off sparks and red clinkers. He sent for the manager. The manager
+came, all bows and graciousness and rumply shirtfront; and when he
+heard what was to be said he became all apologies and indignation. He
+regretted more than words could tell that the American gentlemen who
+deigned to patronize his restaurant had been put to annoyance. The
+garcon--here he turned and burned up that individual with a fiery
+sideglance--was a debased idiot and the misbegotten son of a yet greater
+and still more debased idiot. The cashier was a green hand and an
+imbecile besides. It was incredible, impossible, that the overcharging
+had been done deliberately; that was inconceivable. But the honor of
+his establishment was at stake. They should both, garcon and cashier, be
+discharged on the spot. First, however, he would rectify all mistakes.
+Would monsieur intrust the miserable addition to him for a moment, for
+one short moment? Monsieur would and did.
+
+This time the amount was made right and our friend handed over in
+payment a fifty-franc note. With his own hands the manager brought back
+the change. Counting it over, the payee found it five francs short.
+Attention being directed to this error the manager became more
+apologetic and more explanatory than ever, and supplied the deficiency
+with a shiny new five-franc piece from his own pocket. And then, when
+we had gone away from there and had traveled a homeward mile or two,
+our friend found that the new shiny five-franc piece was counterfeit--as
+false a thing as that manager's false smile. We had bucked the
+unbeatable system, and we had lost.
+
+Earlier that same evening we spent a gloom-laden quarter of an hour in
+another cafe--one which owes its fame and most of its American customs
+to the happy circumstance that in a certain famous comic opera produced
+a few years ago a certain popular leading man sang a song extolling its
+fascinations. The man who wrote the song must have had a full-flowered
+and glamorous imagination, for he could see beauty where beauty was not.
+To us there seemed nothing particularly fanciful about the place except
+the prices they charged for refreshments. However, something unusual did
+happen there once. It was not premeditated though; the proprietor had
+nothing to do with it. Had he known what was about to occur undoubtedly
+he would have advertised it in advance and sold tickets for it.
+
+By reason of circumstances over which he had no control, but which
+had mainly to do with a locked-up wardrobe, an American of convivial
+mentality was in his room at his hotel one evening, fairly consumed with
+loneliness. Above all things he desired to be abroad amid the life and
+gayety of the French capital; but unfortunately he had no clothes except
+boudoir clothes, and no way of getting any, either, Which made the
+situation worse. He had already tried the telephone in a vain effort
+to communicate with a ready-made clothing establishment in the Rue St.
+Honore. Naturally he had failed, as he knew he would before he tried.
+Among Europeans the telephone is not the popular and handy adjunct of
+every-day life it is among us. The English have small use for it
+because it is, to start with, a wretched Yankee invention; besides, an
+Englishman in a hurry takes a cab, as his father before him did--takes
+the same cab his father took, if possible--and the Latin races dislike
+telephone conversations because the gestures all go to absolute waste.
+The French telephone resembles a dingus for curling the hair. You wrap
+it round your head, with one end near your mouth and the other end near
+your ear, and you yell in it a while and curse in it a while; and then
+you slam it down and go and send a messenger. The hero of the present
+tale, however, could not send a messenger--the hotel people had their
+orders to the contrary from one who was not to be disobeyed.
+
+Finally in stark desperation, maddened by the sounds of sidewalk revelry
+that filtered up to him intermittently, he incased his feet in bed-room
+slippers, slid a dressing gown over his pajamas, and negotiated a
+successful escape from the hotel by means of a rear way. Once in the
+open he climbed into a handy cab and was driven to the cafe of his
+choice, it being the same cafe mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago.
+
+Through a side entrance he made a hasty and unhindered entrance into
+this place--not that he would have been barred under any circumstances,
+inasmuch as he had brought a roll with him. A person with a cluster of
+currency on hand is always suitably dressed in Paris, no matter if he
+has nothing else on; and this man had brought much ready cash with
+him. He could have gone in fig-leaved like Eve, or fig-leafless like
+September Morn, it being remembered that as between these two, as
+popularly depicted, Morn wears even less than Eve. So he whisked in
+handily, and when he had hidden the lower part of himself under a table
+he felt quite at home and proceeded to have a large and full evening.
+
+Soon there entered another American, and by that mental telepathy which
+inevitably attracts like-spirit to like-spirit he was drawn to the spot
+where the first American sat. He introduced himself as one feeling the
+need of congenial companionship, and they shook hands and exchanged
+names, and the first man asked the second man to be seated; so they sat
+together and had something together, and then something more together;
+and as the winged moments flew they grew momentarily more intimate.
+Finally the newcomer said:
+
+"This seems a pretty lachrymose shop. Suppose we go elsewhere and look
+for some real doings."
+
+"Your proposition interests me strangely," said the first man; "but
+there are two reasons--both good ones--why I may not fare forth with
+you. Look under the table and you'll see 'em."
+
+The second man looked and comprehended, for he was a married man
+himself; and he grasped the other's hand in warm and comforting
+sympathy.
+
+"Old Man," he said--for they had already reached the Old Man
+stage--"don't let that worry you. Why, I've got more pants than any man
+with only one set of legs has any right to have. I've got pants that've
+never been worn. You stay right here and don't move until I come back.
+My hotel is just round the corner from here."
+
+No sooner said than done. He went and in a surprisingly short time was
+back, bearing spare trousers with him. Beneath the shielding protection
+of the table draperies the succored one slipped them on, and they were
+a perfect fit. Now he was ready to go where adventure might await them.
+They tarried, though, to finish the last bottle.
+
+Over the rim of his glass the second man ventured an opinion on a topic
+of the day. Instantly the first man challenged him. It seemed to him
+inconceivable that a person with intelligence enough to have amassed so
+many pairs of trousers should harbor such a delusion. He begged of his
+new-found friend to withdraw the statement, or at least to abate it. The
+other man was sorry, but he simply could not do it. He stood ready
+to concede almost anything else, but on this particular point he was
+adamant; in fact, adamant was in comparison with him as pliable
+as chewing taffy. Much as he regretted it, he could not modify his
+assertion by so much as one brief jot or one small tittle without
+violating the consistent principles of a consistent life. He felt that
+way about it. All his family felt that way about it.
+
+"Then, sir," said the first man with a rare dignity, "I regret to wound
+your feelings; but my sensibilities are such that I cannot accept, even
+temporarily, the use of a pair of trousers from the loan collection of
+a person who entertains such false and erroneous conceptions. I have the
+pleasure, sir, of wishing you good night."
+
+With these words he shucked off the borrowed habiliments and slammed
+them into the abashed bosom of the obstinate stranger and went back to
+his captivity--pantless, 'tis true, but with his honor unimpaired.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XV
+
+
+
+Symptoms of the Disease
+
+The majority of these all-night places in Paris are singularly and
+monotonously alike. In the early hours of the evening the musicians
+rest from their labors; the regular habitues lay aside their air of
+professional abandon; with true French frugality the lights burn dim and
+low. But anon sounds the signal from the front of the house. Strike
+up the band; here comes a sucker! Somebody resembling ready money
+has arrived. The lights flash on, the can-canners take the floor, the
+garcons flit hither and yon, and all is excitement.
+
+Enter the opulent American gentleman. Half a dozen functionaries greet
+him rapturously, bowing before his triumphant progress. Others relieve
+him of his hat and his coat, so that he cannot escape prematurely. A
+whole reception committee escorts him to a place of honor facing
+the dancing arena. The natives of the quarter stand in rows in the
+background, drinking beer or nothing at all; but the distinguished
+stranger sits at a front table and is served with champagne, and
+champagne only. It is inferior champagne; but because it is labeled
+American Brut--what ever that may denote--and because there is a poster
+on the bottle showing the American flag in the correct colors, he pays
+several times its proper value for it. From far corners and remote
+recesses coryphees and court jesters swarm forth to fawn on him, bask
+in his presence, glory in his smile--and sell him something. The whole
+thing is as mercenary as passing the hat. Cigarette girls, flower girls
+and bonbon girls, postcard venders and confetti dispensers surround him
+impenetrably, taking him front, rear, by the right flank and the left;
+and they shove their wares in his face and will not take No for an
+answer; but they will take anything else.
+
+Two years ago at a hunting camp in North Carolina, I thought I had met
+the creature with the most acute sense of hearing of any living thing. I
+refer to Pearl, the mare. Pearl was an elderly mare, white in color
+and therefore known as Pearl. She was most gentle and kind. She was
+a reliable family animal too--had a colt every year--but in her
+affiliations she was a pronounced reactionary. She went through life
+listening for somebody to say Whoa! Her ears were permanently slanted
+backward on that very account. She belonged to the Whoa Lodge, which has
+a large membership among humans.
+
+Riding behind Pearl you uttered the talismanic word in the thinnest
+thread of a whisper and instantly she stopped. You could spell Whoa! on
+your fingers, and she would stop. You could take a pencil and a piece of
+paper out of your pocket and write down Whoa!--and she would stop; but,
+compared with a sample assortment of these cabaret satellites, Pearl
+would have seemed deaf as a post. Clear across a hundred-foot dance-hall
+they catch the sound of a restless dollar turning over in the fob pocket
+of an American tourist.
+
+And they come a-running and get it. Under the circumstances it requires
+self-hypnotism of a high order, and plenty of it, to make an American
+think he is enjoying himself. Still, he frequently attains to that
+happy comsummation. To begin with, is he not in Gay Paree?--as it is
+familiarly called in Rome Center and all points West? He is! Has he not
+kicked over the traces and cut loose with intent to be oh, so naughty
+for one naughty night of his life? Such are the facts. Finally, and
+herein lies the proof conclusive, he is spending a good deal of money
+and is getting very little in return for it. Well, then, what better
+evidence is required? Any time he is paying four or five prices for
+what he buys and does not particularly need it--or want it after it is
+bought--the average American can delude himself into the belief that
+he is having a brilliant evening. This is a racial trait worthy of
+the scientific consideration of Professor Hugo Munsterberg and other
+students of our national psychology. So far the Munsterberg school has
+overlooked it--but the canny Parisians have not. They long ago studied
+out every quirk and wriggle of it, and capitalized it to their own
+purpose. Liberality! Economy! Frugality!--there they are, everywhere
+blazoned forth--Liberality for you, Economy and Frugality for them.
+Could anything on earth be fairer than that?
+
+Even so, the rapturous reception accorded to a North American pales to
+a dim and flickery puniness alongside the perfect riot and whirlwind
+of enthusiasm which marks the entry into an all-night place of a
+South American. Time was when, to the French understanding, exuberant
+prodigality and the United States were terms synonymous; that time has
+passed. Of recent years our young kinsmen from the sister republics
+nearer the Equator and the Horn have invaded Paris in numbers, bringing
+their impulsive temperaments and their bankrolls with them. Thanks to
+these young cattle kings, these callow silver princes from Argentina and
+Brazil, from Peru and from Ecuador, a new and more gorgeous standard for
+money wasting has been established. You had thought, perchance, there
+was no rite and ceremonial quite so impressive as a head waiter in a
+Fifth Avenue restaurant squeezing the blood out of a semi-raw canvasback
+in a silver duck press for a free spender from Butte or Pittsburgh. I,
+too, had thought that; but wait, just wait, until you have seen a maitre
+d'hotel on the Avenue de l'Opera, with the smile of the canary-fed cat
+on his face, standing just behind a hide-and-tallow baron or a guano
+duke from somewhere in Far Spiggottyland, watching this person as he
+wades into the fresh fruit--checking off on his fingers each blushing
+South African peach at two francs the bite, and each purple cluster of
+hothouse grapes at one franc the grape. That spectacle, believe me, is
+worth the money every time.
+
+There is just one being whom the dwellers of the all-night quarter love
+and revere more deeply than they love a downy, squabbling scion of some
+rich South American family, and that is a large, broad negro pugilist
+with a mouthful of gold teeth and a shirtfront full of yellow diamonds.
+To an American--and especially to an American who was reared below Mason
+and Dixon's justly popular Line--it is indeed edifying to behold a black
+heavyweight fourthrater from South Clark Street, Chicago, taking his
+ease in a smart cafe, entirely surrounded by worshipful boulevardiers,
+both male and female.
+
+Now, as I remarked at an earlier stage of these observations, there is
+another Paris besides this--a Paris of history, of art, of architecture,
+of literature, of refinement; a Paris inhabited by a people with a pride
+in their past, a pluck in their present, and a faith in their future; a
+Paris of kindly aristocrats, of thrifty, pious plain people; a Paris
+of students and savants and scientists, of great actors and great
+scientists and great dramatists. There is one Paris that might well be
+burned to its unclean roots, and another Paris that will be glorified in
+the minds of mankind forever. And it would be as unfair to say that the
+Paris which comes flaunting its tinsel of vice and pinchbeck villainy
+in the casual tourist's face is the real Paris, as it would be for a
+man from the interior of the United States to visit New York and, after
+interviewing one Bowery bouncer, one Tenderloin cabman, and one Broadway
+ticket speculator, go back home and say he had met fit representatives
+of the predominant classes of New York society and had found them unfit.
+Yes, it would be even more unfair. For the alleged gay life of New York
+touches at some point of contact or other the lives of most New Yorkers,
+whereas in Paris there are numbers of sane and decent folks who seem
+to know nothing except by hearsay of what goes on after dark in the
+Montmartre district. Besides, no man in the course of a short and
+crowded stay may hope to get under the skin of any community, great or
+small. He merely skims its surface cuticle; he sees no deeper than
+the pores and the hair-roots. The arteries, the frame, the real
+tissue-structure remain hidden to him. Therefore the pity seems all
+the greater that, to the world at large, the bad Paris should mean
+all Paris. It is that other and more wholesome Paris which one sees--a
+light-hearted, good-natured, polite and courteous Paris--when one,
+biding his time and choosing the proper hour and proper place, goes
+abroad to seek it out.
+
+For the stranger who does at least a part of his sight-seeing after a
+rational and orderly fashion, there are pictures that will live in the
+memory always: the Madeleine, with the flower market just alongside;
+the green and gold woods of the Bois de Boulogne; the grandstand of the
+racecourse at Longchamp on a fair afternoon in the autumn; the Opera
+at night; the promenade of the Champs-Elysees on a Sunday morning after
+church; the Gardens of the Tuileries; the wonderful circling plaza of
+the Place Vendome, where one may spend a happy hour if the maniacal
+taxi-drivers deign to spare one's life for so unaccountably long a
+period; the arcades of the Rue de Rivoli, with their exquisite shops,
+where every other shop is a jeweler's shop and every jeweler's shop is
+just like every other jeweler's shop--which fact ceases to cause wonder
+when one learns that, with a few notable exceptions, all these
+shops carry their wares on commission from the stocks of the same
+manufacturing jewelers; the old Ile de la Cite, with the second-hand
+bookstalls stretching along the quay, and the Seine placidly meandering
+between its man-made, man-ruled banks. Days spent here seem short days;
+but that may be due in some part to the difference between our time and
+theirs. In Paris, you know, the day ends five or six hours earlier than
+it does in America.
+
+The two Palaces of Fine Arts are fine enough; and finer still, on beyond
+them, is the great Pont Alexandre III; but, to my untutored instincts,
+all three of these, with their clumpings of flag standards and their
+grouping of marble allegories, which are so aching-white to the eye in
+the sunlight, seemed overly suggestive of a World's Fair as we know such
+things in America. Seeing them I knew where the architects who designed
+the main approaches and the courts of honor for all our big expositions
+got their notions for color schemes and statuary effects. I liked better
+those two ancient triumphal arches of St.-Martin and St.-Denis on the
+Boulevard St.-Denis, and much better even than these the tremendous
+sweep of the Place de la Concorde, which is one of the finest squares in
+the world, and the one with the grimmest, bloodiest history, I reckon.
+
+The Paris to which these things properly appertain is at its very best
+and brightest on a sunny Sunday afternoon in the parks where well-to-do
+people drive or ride, and their children play among the trees under the
+eyes of nursemaids in the quaint costumes of Normandy, though, for all I
+know, it may be Picardy. Elsewhere in these parks the not-so-well-to-do
+gather in great numbers; some drinking harmless sirupy drinks at the gay
+little refreshment kiosks; some packing themselves about the man who
+has tamed the tree sparrows until they come at his call and hive in
+chattering, fluttering swarms on his head and his arms and shoulders;
+some applauding a favorite game of the middle classes that is being
+played in every wide and open space. I do not know its name--could not
+find anybody who seemed to know its name--but this game is a kind of
+glorified battledore and shuttlecock played with a small, hard ball
+capable of being driven high and far by smartly administered strokes
+of a hide-headed, rimmed device shaped like a tambourine. It would seem
+also to be requisite to its proper playing that each player shall have
+a red coat and a full spade beard, and a tremendous amount of speed and
+skill. If the ball gets lost in anybody's whiskers I think it counts ten
+for the opposing side; but I do not know the other rules.
+
+A certain indefinable, unmistakably Gallic flavor or piquancy savors the
+life of the people; it disappears only when they cease to be their own
+natural selves. A woman novelist, American by birth, but a resident
+of several years in Paris, told me a story illustrative of this. The
+incident she narrated was so typical that it could never have happened
+except in Paris, I thought. She said she was one of a party who went
+one night to dine at a little cafe much frequented by artists and art
+students. The host was himself an artist of reputation. As they dined
+there entered a tall, gloomy figure of a man with a long, ugly face
+full of flexible wrinkles; such a figure and such a face as instantly
+commanded their attention. This man slid into a seat at a table near
+their table and had a frugal meal. He had reached the stage of demitasse
+and cigarette when he laid down cup and cigarette and, fetching a bit of
+cardboard and a crayon out of his pocket, began putting down lines and
+shadings; between strokes he covertly studied the profile of the man who
+was giving the dinner party. Not to be outdone the artist hauled out his
+drawing pad and pencil and made a quick sketch of the long-faced man.
+Both finished their jobs practically at the same moment; and, rising
+together with low bows, they exchanged pictures--each had done a
+rattling good caricature of the other--and then, without a word having
+been spoken or a move made toward striking up an acquaintance, each man
+sat him down again and finished his dinner.
+
+The lone diner departed first. When the party at the other table had had
+their coffee they went round the corner to a little circus--one of the
+common type of French circuses, which are housed in permanent wooden
+buildings instead of under tents. Just as they entered, the premier
+clown, in spangles and peak cap, bounded into the ring. Through the
+coating of powder on it they recognized his wrinkly, mobile face: it was
+the sketch-making stranger whose handiwork they had admired not half an
+hour before.
+
+Hearing the tale we went to the same circus and saw the same clown. His
+ears were painted bright red--the red ear is the inevitable badge of the
+French clown--and he had as a foil for his funning a comic countryman
+known on the program as Auguste, which is the customary name of all
+comic countrymen in France; and, though I knew only at second hand of
+his sketch-making abilities, I am willing to concede that he was the
+drollest master of pantomime I ever saw. On leaving the circus, very
+naturally we went to the cafe--where the first part of the little dinner
+comedy had been enacted. We encountered both artists, professional or
+amateur, of blacklead and bristol board, but we met a waiter there who
+was an artist--in his line. I ordered a cigar of him, specifying that
+the cigar should be of a brand made in Havana and popular in the States.
+He brought one cigar on a tray. In size and shape and general aspect
+it seemed to answer the required specifications. The little belly band
+about its dark-brown abdomen was certainly orthodox and regular; but no
+sooner had I lit it and taken a couple of puffs than I was seized with
+the conviction that something had crawled up that cigar and died. So I
+examined it more closely and I saw then that it was a bad French cigar,
+artfully adorned about its middle with a second-hand band, which the
+waiter had picked up after somebody else had plucked it off one of the
+genuine articles and had treasured it, no doubt, against the coming of
+some unsophisticated patron such as I. And I doubt whether that could
+have happened anywhere except in Paris either. That is just it, you
+see. Try as hard as you please to see the real Paris, the Paris of petty
+larceny and small, mean graft intrudes on you and takes a peck at your
+purse.
+
+Go where you will, you cannot escape it. You journey, let us assume,
+to the Tomb of Napoleon, under the great dome that rises behind the
+wide-armed Hotel des Invalides. From a splendid rotunda you look down
+to where, craftily touched by the softened lights streaming in from high
+above, that great sarcophagus stands housing the bones of Bonaparte; and
+above the entrance to the crypt you read the words from the last will
+and testament of him who sleeps here: "I desire that my ashes may
+repose on the banks of the Seine, among the French people I have so well
+loved." And you reflect that he so well loved them that, to glut his
+lusting after power and yet more power, he led sundry hundreds of
+thousands of them to massacre and mutilation and starvation; but that is
+the way of world--conquerors the world over--and has absolutely nothing
+to do with this tale. The point I am trying to get at is, if you can
+gaze unmoved at this sepulcher you are a clod. And if you can get away
+from its vicinity without being held up and gouged by small grafters you
+are a wonder.
+
+Not tombs nor temples nor sanctuaries are safe from the profane and
+polluting feet of the buzzing plague of them. You journey miles away
+from this spot to the great cemetery of Pere Lachaise. You trudge
+past seemingly unending, constantly unfolding miles of monuments and
+mausoleums; you view the storied urns and animated busts that mark the
+final resting-places of France's illustrious dead. And as you marvel
+that France should have had so many illustrious dead, and that so many
+of them at this writing should be so dead, out from behind De Musset's
+vault or Marshal Ney's comes a snoopy, smirky wretch to pester you to
+the desperation that is red-eyed and homicidal with his picture post
+cards and his execrable wooden carvings.
+
+You fight the persistent vermin off and flee for refuge to that shrine
+of every American who knows his Mark Twain--the joint grave [Footnote:
+Being French, and therefore economical, those two are, as it were,
+splitting one tomb between them.] of Hell Loisy and Abie Lard [Footnote:
+Popular tourist pronunciation.] and lo, in the very shadow of it there
+lurks a blood brother to the first pest! I defy you to get out of that
+cemetery without buying something of no value from one or the other, or
+both of them. The Communists made their last stand in Pere Lachaise.
+So did I. They went down fighting. Same here. They were licked to a
+frazzle. Ditto, ditto.
+
+Next, we will say, Notre Dame draws you. Within, you walk the clattering
+flags of its dim, long aisles; without, you peer aloft to view its
+gargoyled waterspouts, leering down like nightmares caught in the
+very act of leering and congealed into stone. The spirit of the place
+possesses you; you conjure up a vision of the little maid Esmeralda and
+the squat hunchback who dwelt in the tower above; and at the precise
+moment a foul vagabond pounces on you and, with a wink that is in itself
+an insult and a smile that should earn for him a kick for every inch
+of its breadth, he draws from beneath his coat a set of nasty
+photographs--things which no decent man could look at without gagging
+and would not carry about with him on his person for a million dollars
+in cash. By threats and hard words you drive him off; but seeing others
+of his kind drawing nigh you run away, with no particular destination in
+mind except to discover some spot, however obscure and remote, where
+the wicked cease from troubling and the weary may be at rest for a
+few minutes. You cross a bridge to the farther bank of the river and
+presently you find yourself--at least I found myself there--in one of
+the very few remaining quarters of old Paris, as yet untouched by
+the scheme of improvement that is wiping out whatever is medieval and
+therefore unsanitary, and making it all over, modern and slick and
+shiny.
+
+Losing yourself--and with yourself your sense of the reality of
+things--you wander into a maze of tall, beetle-browed old houses with
+tiny windows that lower at you from under their dormered lids like
+hostile eyes. Above, on the attic ledges, are boxes of flowers and
+coops where caged larks and linnets pipe cheery snatches of song; and
+on beyond, between the eaves, which bend toward one another like gossips
+who would swap whispered confidences, is a strip of sky. Below are
+smells of age and dampness. And there is a rich, nutritious garlicky
+smell too; and against a jog in the wall a frowsy but picturesque
+rag-picker is asleep on a pile of sacks, with a big sleek cat asleep on
+his breast. I do not guarantee the rag-picker. He and his cat may have
+moved since I was there and saw them, although they had the look about
+them both of being permanent fixtures.
+
+You pass a little church, lolling and lopped with the weight of the
+years; and through its doors you catch a vista of old pillars and soft
+half-lights, and twinkling candles set upon the high altar. Not even the
+jimcrackery with which the Latin races dress up their holy places and
+the graves of their dead can entirely dispel its abiding, brooding air
+of peace and majesty. You linger a moment outside just such a tavern as
+a certain ragged poet of parts might have frequented the while he
+penned his versified inquiry which after all these centuries is not yet
+satisfactorily answered, touching on the approximate whereabouts of the
+snows that fell yesteryear and the roses that bloomed yesterweek.
+
+Midway of a winding alley you come to an ancient wall and an ancient
+gate crowned with the half-effaced quarterings of an ancient house, and
+you halt, almost expecting that the rusted hinges will creak a warning
+and the wooden halves begrudgingly divide, and that from under the
+slewed arch will issue a most gallant swashbuckler with his buckles all
+buckled and his swash swashing; hence the name.
+
+At this juncture you feel a touch on your shoulder. You spin on your
+heel, feeling at your hip for an imaginary sword. But 'tis not Master
+Francois Villon, in tattered doublet, with a sonnet. Nor yet is it a
+jaunty blade, in silken cloak, with a challenge. It is your friend of
+the obscene photograph collection. He has followed you all the way from
+1914 clear back into the Middle Ages, biding his time and hoping you
+will change your mind about investing in his nasty wares.
+
+With your wife or your sister you visit the Louvre. You look on the
+Winged Victory and admire her classic but somewhat bulky proportions,
+meantime saying to yourself that it certainly must have been a mighty
+hard battle the lady won, because she lost her head and both arms in
+doing it. You tire of interminable portraits of the Grand Monarch,
+showing him grouped with his wife, the Old-fashioned Square Upright;
+and his son, the Baby Grand; and his prime minister, the Lyre; and his
+brother, the Yellow Clarinet, and the rest of the orchestra. You
+examine the space on the wall where Mona Lisa is or is not smiling her
+inscrutable smile, depending on whether the open season for Mona Lisas
+has come or has passed. Wandering your weary way past acres of the works
+of Rubens, and miles of Titians, and townships of Corots, and ranges of
+Michelangelos, and quarter sections of Raphaels, and government reserves
+of Leonardo da Vincis, you stray off finally into a side passage to see
+something else, leaving your wife or your sister behind in one of the
+main galleries. You are gone only a minute or two, but returning you
+find her furiously, helplessly angry and embarrassed; and on inquiry
+you learn she has been enduring the ordeal of being ogled by a small,
+wormy-looking creature who has gone without shaving for two or three
+years in a desperate endeavor to resemble a real man.
+
+Some day somebody will take a squirt-gun and a pint of insect powder and
+destroy these little, hairy caterpillars who infest all parts of Paris
+and make it impossible for a respectable woman to venture on the streets
+unaccompanied.
+
+Let us, for the further adornment and final elaboration of the
+illustration, say that you are sitting at one of the small round tables
+which make mushroom beds under the awnings along the boulevards. All
+about you are French people, enjoying themselves in an easy and a
+rational and an inexpensive manner. As for yourself, all you desire is a
+quiet half hour in which to read your paper, sip your coffee, and watch
+the shifting panorama of street life. That emphatically is all you ask;
+merely that and a little privacy. Are you permitted to have it? You are
+not.
+
+Beggars beseech you to look on their afflictions. Sidewalk venders
+cluster about you. And if you are smoking the spark of your cigar
+inevitably draws a full delegation of those moldy old whiskerados who
+follow the profession of collecting butts and quids. They hover about
+you, watchful as chicken hawks; and their bleary eyes envy you for each
+puff you take, until you grow uneasy and self-reproachful under their
+glare, and your smoke is spoiled for you. Very few men smoke well before
+an audience, even an audience of their own selection; so before your
+cigar is half finished you toss it away, and while it is yet in the air
+the watchers leap forward and squabble under your feet for the prize.
+Then the winner emerges from the scramble and departs along the sidewalk
+to seek his next victim, with the still-smoking trophy impaled on his
+steel-pointed tool of trade.
+
+In desperation you rise up from there and flee away to your hotel and
+hide in your room, and lock and double-lock the doors, and begin to
+study timetables with a view to quitting Paris on the first train
+leaving for anywhere, the only drawback to a speedy consummation of this
+happy prospect being that no living creature can fathom the meaning of
+French timetables.
+
+It is not so much the aggregate amount of which they have despoiled
+you--it is the knowledge that every other person in Paris is seeking and
+planning to nick you for some sum, great or small; it is the realization
+that, by reason of your ignorance of the language and the customs of the
+land, you are at their mercy, and they have no mercy--that, as Walter
+Pater so succinctly phrases it, that is what gets your goat--and gets it
+good!
+
+So you shake the dust from your feet--your own dust, not Paris'
+dust--and you depart per hired hack for the station and per train from
+the station. And as the train draws away from the trainshed you
+behold behind you two legends or inscriptions, repeated and reiterated
+everywhere on the walls of the French capital.
+
+One of them says: English Spoken Here!
+
+And the other says: Liberality! Economy! Frugality!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVI
+
+
+
+As Done in London
+
+London is essentially a he-town, just as Paris is indubitably a
+she-town. That untranslatable, unmistakable something which is not to
+be defined in the plain terms of speech, yet which sets its mark on
+any long-settled community, has branded them both--the one as being
+masculine, the other as being feminine. For Paris the lily stands, the
+conventionalized, feminized lily; but London is a lion, a shag-headed,
+heavy-pawed British lion.
+
+One thinks of Paris as a woman, rather pretty, somewhat regardless of
+morals and decidedly slovenly of person; craving admiration, but too
+indolent to earn it by keeping herself presentable; covering up the dirt
+on a piquant face with rice powder; wearing paste jewels in her
+earlobes in an effort to distract criticism from the fact that the
+ears themselves stand in need of soap and water. London, viewed in
+retrospect, seems a great, clumsy, slow-moving giant, with hair on his
+chest and soil under his nails; competent in the larger affairs and
+careless about the smaller ones; amply satisfied with himself and
+disdainful of the opinions of outsiders; having all of a man's vices and
+a good share of his virtues; loving sport for sport's sake and power for
+its own sake and despising art for art's sake.
+
+You do not have to spend a week or a month or a year in either Paris or
+London to note these things. The distinction is wide enough to be seen
+in a day; yes, or in an hour. It shows in all the outer aspects. An
+overtowering majority of the smart shops in Paris cater to women; a
+large majority of the smart shops in London cater to men. It shows in
+their voices; for cities have voices just as individuals have voices.
+New York is not yet old enough to have found its own sex. It belongs
+still to the neuter gender. New York is not even a noun--it's a verb
+transitive; but its voice is a female voice, just as Paris' voice is.
+New York, like Paris, is full of strident, shrieking sounds, shrill
+outcries, hysterical babblings--a women's bridge-whist club at the hour
+of casting up the score; but London now is different. London at all
+hours speaks with a sustained, sullen, steady, grinding tone, never
+entirely sinking into quietude, never rising to acute discords. The
+sound of London rolls on like a river--a river that ebbs sometimes, but
+rarely floods above its normal banks; it impresses one as the necessary
+breathing of a grunting and burdened monster who has a mighty job on his
+hands and is taking his own good time about doing it.
+
+In London, mind you, the newsboys do not shout their extras. They bear
+in their hands placards with black-typed announcements of the big news
+story of the day; and even these headings seem designed to soothe rather
+than to excite--saying, for example, such things as Special From Liner,
+in referring to a disaster at sea, and Meeting in Ulster, when meaning
+that the northern part of Ireland has gone on record as favoring civil
+war before home rule.
+
+The street venders do not bray on noisy trumpets or ring with bells or
+utter loud cries to advertise their wares. The policeman does not shout
+his orders out; he holds aloft the stripe-sleeved arm of authority
+and all London obeys. I think the reason why the Londoners turned
+so viciously on the suffragettes was not because of the things the
+suffragettes clamored for, but because they clamored for them so loudly.
+They jarred the public peace--that must have been it.
+
+I can understand why an adult American might go to Paris and stay
+in Paris and be satisfied with Paris, if he were a lover of art and
+millinery in all their branches; or why he might go to Berlin if he were
+studying music and municipal control; or to Amsterdam if he cared for
+cleanliness and new cheese; or to Vienna if he were concerned with
+surgery, light opera, and the effect on the human lungs of doing without
+fresh air for long periods of time; or to Rome if he were an antiquarian
+and interested in ancient life; or to Naples if he were an entomologist
+and interested in insect life; or to Venice if he liked ruins with water
+round them; or to Padua if he liked ruins with no water anywhere near
+them. No: I'm blessed if I can think of a single good reason why a sane
+man should go to Padua if he could go anywhere else.
+
+But I think I know, good and well, why a man might spend his whole
+vacation in London and enjoy every minute of it. For this old fogy, old
+foggy town of London is a man-sized town, and a man-run town; and it has
+a fascination of its own that is as much a part of it as London's grime
+is; or London's vastness and London's pettiness; or London's wealth and
+its stark poverty; or its atrocious suburbs; or its dirty, trade-fretted
+river; or its dismal back streets; or its still more dismal slums--or
+anything that is London's.
+
+To a man hailing from a land where everything is so new that quite a
+good deal of it has not even happened yet, it is a joyful thing to turn
+off a main-traveled road into one of the crooked byways in which the
+older parts of London abound, and suddenly to come, full face, on a
+house or a court or a pump which figured in epochal history or epochal
+literature of the English-speaking race. It is a still greater joy to
+find it--house or court or pump or what not--looking now pretty much as
+it must have looked when good Queen Bess, or little Dick Whittington, or
+Chaucer the scribe, or Shakspere the player, came this way. It is fine
+to be riding through the country and pass a peaceful green meadow and
+inquire its name of your driver and be told, most offhandedly, that it
+is a place called Runnymede. Each time this happened to me I felt the
+thrill of a discoverer; as though I had been the first traveler to find
+these spots.
+
+I remember that through an open door I was marveling at the domestic
+economies of an English barber shop. I use the word economies in this
+connection advisedly; for, compared with the average high-polished,
+sterilized and antiseptic barber shop of an American city, this shop
+seemed a torture cave. In London, pubs are like that, and some dentists'
+establishments and law offices--musty, fusty dens very unlike their
+Yankee counterparts. In this particular shop now the chairs were hard,
+wooden chairs; the looking-glass--you could not rightly call it a
+mirror--was cracked and bleary; and an apprentice boy went from one
+patron to another, lathering each face; and then the master followed
+after him, razor in hand, and shaved the waiting countenances in turn.
+Flies that looked as though they properly belonged in a livery stable
+were buzzing about; and there was a prevalent odor which made me think
+that all the sick pomade in the world had come hither to spend its last
+declining hours. I said to myself that this place would bear further
+study; that some day, when I felt particularly hardy and daring, I would
+come here and be shaved, and afterward would write a piece about it
+and sell it for money. So, the better to fix its location in my mind,
+I glanced up at the street sign and, behold! I was hard by Drury Lane,
+where Sweet Nelly once on a time held her court.
+
+Another time I stopped in front of a fruiterer's, my eye having been
+caught by the presence in his window of half a dozen draggled-looking,
+wilted roasting ears decorated with a placard reading as follows:
+
+                 AMERICAN MAIZE OR INDIAN CORN
+               A VEGETABLE--TO BE BOILED AND THEN
+                            EATEN
+
+I was remarking to myself that these Britishers were surely a strange
+race of beings--that if England produced so delectable a thing as green
+corn we in America would import it by the shipload and serve it on every
+table; whereas here it was so rare that they needs must label it as
+belonging to the vegetable kingdom, lest people should think it might be
+an animal--when I chanced to look more closely at the building occupied
+by the fruiterer and saw that it was an ancient house, half-timbered
+above the first floor, with a queer low-browed roof. Inquiring afterward
+I learned that this house dated straight back to Elizabethan days and
+still on beyond for so many years that no man knew exactly how many;
+and I began to understand in a dim sort of way how and why it was these
+people held so fast to the things they had and cared so little for the
+things they had not.
+
+Better than by all the reading you have ever done you absorb a sense and
+realization of the splendor of England's past when you go to Westminster
+Abbey and stand--figuratively--with one foot on Jonson and another
+on Dryden; and if, overcome by the presence of so much dead-and-gone
+greatness, you fall in a fit you commit a trespass on the last
+resting-place of Macaulay or Clive, or somebody of equal consequence.
+More imposing even than Westminster is St. Paul's. I am not thinking
+so much of the memorials or the tombs or the statues there, but of the
+tattered battleflags bearing the names of battles fought by the English
+in every crack and cranny of the world, from Quebec to Ladysmith, and
+from Lucknow to Khartum. Beholding them there, draped above the tombs,
+some faded but still intact, some mere clotted wisps of ragged silk
+clinging to blackened standards, gives one an uplifting conception of
+the spirit that has sent the British soldier forth to girth the globe,
+never faltering, never slackening pace, never giving back a step to-day
+but that he took two steps forward to-morrow; never stopping--except for
+tea.
+
+The fool hath said in his heart that he would go to England and come
+away and write something about his impressions, but never write a
+single, solitary word about the Englishman's tea-drinking habit, or the
+Englishman's cricket-playing habit, or the Englishman's lack of a sense
+of humor. I was that fool. But it cannot be done. Lacking these things
+England would not be England. It would be Hamlet without Hamlet or the
+Ghost or the wicked Queen or mad Ophelia or her tiresome old pa; for
+most English life and the bulk of English conversation center about
+sporting topics, with the topic of cricket predominating. And at a given
+hour of the day the wheels of the empire stop, and everybody in the
+empire--from the king in the counting house counting up his money, to
+the maid in the garden hanging out the clothes--drops what he or she may
+be doing and imbibes tea until further orders. And what oceans of tea
+they do imbibe!
+
+There was an old lady who sat near us in a teashop one afternoon. As
+well as might be judged by one who saw her in a sitting posture only,
+she was no deeper than any other old lady of average dimensions; but
+in rapid succession she tilted five large cups of piping hot tea into
+herself and was starting on the sixth when we withdrew, stunned by the
+spectacle. She must have been fearfully long-waisted. I had a mental
+vision of her interior decorations--all fumed-oak wainscotings and
+buff-leather hangings. Still, I doubt whether their four-o'clock-tea
+habit is any worse than our five-o'clock cocktail habit. It all depends,
+I suppose, on whether one prefers being tanned inside to being pickled.
+But we are getting bravely over our cocktail habit, as attested by
+figures and the visual evidences, while their tea habit is growing on
+them--so the statisticians say.
+
+As for the Englishman's sense of humor, or his lack of it, I judge that
+we Americans are partly wrong in our diagnosis of that phase of British
+character and partly right. Because he is slow to laugh at a joke, we
+think he cannot see the point of it without a diagram and a chart.
+What we do not take into consideration is that, through centuries of
+self-repression, the Englishman has so drilled himself into refraining
+from laughing in public--for fear, you see, of making himself
+conspicuous--it has become a part of his nature. Indeed, in certain
+quarters a prejudice against laughing under any circumstances appears to
+have sprung up.
+
+I was looking one day through the pages of one of the critical English
+weeklies. Nearly all British weeklies are heavy, and this is the
+heaviest of the lot. Its editorial column alone weighs from twelve to
+eighteen pounds, and if you strike a man with a clubbed copy of it the
+crime is assault with a dull blunt instrument, with intent to kill. At
+the end of a ponderous review of the East Indian question I came on a
+letter written to the editor by a gentleman signing himself with his own
+name, and reading in part as follows:
+
+SIR: Laughter is always vulgar and offensive. For instance, whatever
+there may be of pleasure in a theater--and there is not much--the place
+is made impossible by laughter ... No; it is very seldom that happiness
+is refined or pleasant to see--merriment that is produced by wine is
+false merriment, and there is no true merriment without it ... Laughter
+is profane, in fact, where it is not ridiculous.
+
+On the other hand the English in bulk will laugh at a thing which
+among us would bring tears to the most hardened cheek and incite our
+rebellious souls to mayhem and manslaughter. On a certain night we
+attended a musical show at one of the biggest London theaters. There was
+some really clever funning by a straight comedian, but his best efforts
+died a-borning; they drew but the merest ripple of laughter from the
+audience. Later there was a scene between a sad person made up as a
+Scotchman and another equally sad person of color from the States. These
+times no English musical show is complete unless the cast includes a
+North American negro with his lips painted to resemble a wide slice of
+ripe watermelon, singing ragtime ditties touching on his chicken and
+his Baby Doll. This pair took the stage, all others considerately
+withdrawing; and presently, after a period of heartrending comicalities,
+the Scotchman, speaking as though he had a mouthful of hot oatmeal,
+proceeded to narrate an account of a fictitious encounter with a bear.
+Substantially this dialogue ensued:
+
+THE SCOTCHMAN--He was a vurra fierce grizzly bear, ye ken; and he rushed
+at me from behind a jugged rock.
+
+THE NEGRO--Mistah, you means a jagged rock, don't you?
+
+THE SCOTCHMAN--Nay, nay, laddie--a jugged rock.
+
+THE NEGRO--Whut's dat you say? Whut--whut is a jugged rock?
+
+THE SCOTCHMAN (forgetting his accent)--Why, a rock with a jug on it,
+old chap. (A stage wait to let that soak into them in all its full
+strength.) A rock with a jug on it would be a jugged rock, wouldn't
+it--eh?
+
+The pause had been sufficient--they had it now. And from all parts of
+the house a whoop of unrestrained joy went up.
+
+Witnessing such spectacles as this, the American observer naturally
+begins to think that the English in mass cannot see a joke that is
+the least bit subtle. Nevertheless, however, and to the contrary
+notwithstanding--as Colonel Bill Sterritt, of Texas, used to
+say--England has produced the greatest natural humorists in the world
+and some of the greatest comedians, and for a great many years has
+supported the greatest comic paper printed in the English language,
+and that is Punch. Also, at an informal Saturday-night dinner in a
+well-known London club I heard as much spontaneous repartee from the
+company at large, and as much quiet humor from the chairman, as I ever
+heard in one evening anywhere; but if you went into that club on a
+weekday you might suppose somebody was dead and laid out there, and
+that everybody about the premises had gone into deep mourning for the
+deceased. If any member of that club had dared then to crack a joke
+they would have expelled him--as soon as they got over the shock of
+the bounder's confounded cheek. Saturday night? Yes. Monday afternoon?
+Never! And there you are!
+
+Speaking of Punch reminds me that we were in London when Punch, after
+giving the matter due consideration for a period of years, came out with
+a colored jacket on him. If the Prime Minister had done a Highland fling
+in costume at high noon in Oxford Circus it could not have created more
+excitement than Punch created by coming out with a colored cover. Yet,
+to an American's understanding, the change was not so revolutionary and
+radical as all that. Punch's well-known lineaments remained the same.
+There was merely a dab of palish yellow here and there on the sheet; at
+first glance you might have supposed somebody else had been reading
+your copy of Punch at breakfast and had been careless in spooning up his
+soft-boiled egg.
+
+They are our cousins, the English are; our cousins once removed, 'tis
+true--see standard histories of the American Revolution for further
+details of the removing--but they are kinsmen of ours beyond a doubt.
+Even if there were no other evidences, the kinship between us would
+still be proved by the fact that the English are the only people except
+the Americans who look on red meat--beef, mutton, ham--as a food to be
+eaten for the taste of the meat itself; whereas the other nations of the
+earth regard it as a vehicle for carrying various sauces, dressings and
+stuffings southward to the stomach. But, to the notice of the American
+who is paying them his first visit, they certainly do offer some amazing
+contradictions.
+
+In the large matters of business the English have been accused of
+trickiness, which, however, may be but the voice of envious competition
+speaking; but in the small things they surely are most marvelously
+honest. Consider their railroad trains now: To a greenhorn from this
+side the blue water, a railroad journey out of London to almost any
+point in rural England is a succession of surprises, and all pleasant
+ones. To begin with, apparently there is nobody at the station whose
+business it is to show you to your train or to examine your ticket
+before you have found your train for yourself. There is no mad scurrying
+about at the moment of departure, no bleating of directions through
+megaphones. Unchaperoned you move along a long platform under a grimy
+shed, where trains are standing with their carriage doors hospitably
+ajar, and unassisted you find your own train and your own carriage, and
+enter therein.
+
+Sharp on the minute an unseen hand--at least I never saw it--slams the
+doors and coyly--you might almost say secretively--the train moves
+out of the terminal. It moves smoothly and practically without jarring
+sounds. There is no shrieking of steel against steel. It is as though
+the rails were made of rubber and the wheel-flanges were faced with
+noise-proof felt. No conductor comes to punch your ticket, no brakeman
+to bellow the stops, no train butcher bleating the gabbled invoice of
+his gumdrops, bananas and other best-sellers.
+
+Glory be! It is all so peaceful and soothing; as peaceful and as
+soothing as the land through which you are gliding when once you have
+left behind smoky London and its interminable environs; for now you are
+in a land that was finished and plenished five hundred years ago and
+since then has not been altered in any material aspect whatsoever. Every
+blade of grass is in its right place; every wayside shrub seemingly has
+been restrained and trained to grow in exactly the right and the proper
+way. Streaming by your car window goes a tastefully arranged succession
+of the thatched cottages, the huddled little towns, the meandering
+brooks, the ancient inns, the fine old country places, the high-hedged
+estates of the landed gentry, with rose-covered lodges at the gates and
+robust children in the doorways--just as you have always seen them in
+the picture books. There are fields that are velvet lawns, and lawns
+that are carpets of green cut-plush. England is the only country I know
+of that lives up--exactly and precisely--to its storybook descriptions
+and its storybook illustrations.
+
+Eventually you come to your stopping point; at least you have reason to
+believe it may be your stopping point. As well as you may judge by
+the signs that plaster the front, the sides, and even the top of the
+station, the place is either a beef extract or a washing compound. Nor
+may you count on any travelers who may be sharing your compartment with
+you to set you right by a timely word or two. Your fellow passengers
+may pity you for your ignorance and your perplexity, but they would
+not speak; they could not, not having been introduced. A German or a
+Frenchman would be giving you gladly what aid he might; but a well-born
+Englishman who had not been introduced would ride for nine years with
+you and not speak. I found the best way of solving the puzzle was to
+consult the timecard. If the timecard said our train would reach a given
+point at a given hour, and this was the given hour, then we might be
+pretty sure this was the given point. Timetables in England are written
+by realists, not by gifted fiction writers of the impressionistic
+school, as is frequently the case in America.
+
+So, if this timecard says it is time for you to get off you get off,
+with your ticket still in your possession; and if it be a small station
+you go yourself and look up the station master, who is tucked away in
+a secluded cubbyhole somewhere absorbing tea, or else is in the luggage
+room fussing with baby carriages and patent-churns. Having ferreted him
+out in his hiding-place you hand over your ticket to him and he touches
+his cap brim and says "Kew" very politely, which concludes the ceremony
+so far as you are concerned.
+
+Then, if you have brought any heavy baggage with you in the baggage
+car--pardon, I meant the luggage van--you go back to the platform and
+pick it out from the heap of luggage that has been dumped there by the
+train hands. With ordinary luck and forethought you could easily pick
+out and claim and carry off some other person's trunk, provided you
+fancied it more than your own trunk, only you do not. You do not do this
+any more than, having purchased a second-class ticket, or a third-class,
+you ride first-class; though, so far as I could tell, there is no check
+to prevent a person from so doing. At least an Englishman never does. It
+never seems to occur to him to do so. The English have no imagination.
+
+I have a suspicion that if one of our railroads tried to operate its
+train service on such a basis of confidence in the general public there
+would be a most deceitful hiatus in the receipts from passenger traffic
+to be reported to a distressed group of stockholders at the end of the
+fiscal year. This, however, is merely a supposition on my part. I may be
+wrong.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVII
+
+
+
+Britain in Twenty Minutes
+
+To a greater degree, I take it, than any other race the English have
+mastered the difficult art of minding their own affairs. The average
+Englishman is tremendously knowledgable about his own concerns and
+monumentally ignorant about all other things. If an Englishman's
+business requires that he shall learn the habits and customs of the
+Patagonians or the Chicagoans or any other race which, because it is not
+British, he naturally regards as barbaric, he goes and learns them--and
+learns them well. Otherwise your Britisher does not bother himself with
+what the outlander may or may not do.
+
+An Englishman cannot understand an American's instinctive desire to
+know about things; we do not understand his lack of curiosity in
+that direction. Both of us forget what I think must be the underlying
+reasons--that we are a race which, until comparatively recently, lived
+wide distances apart in sparsely settled lands, and were dependent on
+the passing stranger for news of the rest of the world, where he belongs
+to a people who all these centuries have been packed together in their
+little island like oats in a bin. London itself is so crowded that the
+noses of most of the lower classes turn up--there is not room for them
+to point straight ahead without causing a great and bitter confusion of
+noses; but whether it points upward or outward or downward the owner
+of the nose pretty generally refrains from ramming it into other folks'
+business. If he and all his fellows did not do this; if they had not
+learned to keep their voices down and to muffle unnecessary noises;
+if they had not built tight covers of reserve about themselves, as
+the oyster builds a shell to protect his tender tissues from
+irritation--they would long ago have become a race of nervous wrecks
+instead of being what they are, the most stolid beings alive.
+
+In London even royalty is mercifully vouchsafed a reasonable amount
+of privacy from the intrusion of the gimlet eye and the chisel nose.
+Royalty may ride in Rotten Row of a morning, promenade on the Mall at
+noon, and shop in the Regent Street shops in the afternoon, and at all
+times go unguarded and unbothered--I had almost said unnoticed. It may
+be that long and constant familiarity with the institution of royalty
+has bred indifference in the London mind to the physical presence of
+dukes and princes and things; but I am inclined to think a good share
+of it should be attributed to the inborn and ingrown British faculty for
+letting other folks be.
+
+One morning as I was walking at random through the aristocratic
+district, of which St. James is the solar plexus and Park Lane the
+spinal cord, I came to a big mansion where foot-guards stood sentry at
+the wall gates. This house was further distinguished from its neighbors
+by the presence of a policeman pacing alongside it, and a newspaper
+photographer setting up his tripod and camera in the road, and a small
+knot of passers-by lingering on the opposite side of the way, as though
+waiting for somebody to come along or something to happen. I waited too.
+In a minute a handsome old man and a well-set-up young man turned the
+corner afoot. The younger man was leading a beautiful stag hound. The
+photographer touched his hat and said something, and the younger man
+smiling a good-natured smile, obligingly posed in the street for a
+picture. At this precise moment a dirigible balloon came careening over
+the chimneypots on a cross-London air jaunt; and at the sight of it the
+little crowd left the young man and the photographer and set off at a
+run to follow, as far as they might, the course of the balloon. Now in
+America this could not have occurred, for the balloon man would not have
+been aloft at such an hour. He would have been on the earth; moreover he
+would have been outside the walls of that mansion house, along with half
+a million, more or less, of his patriotic fellow countrymen, tearing
+his own clothes off and their clothes off, trampling the weak and sickly
+underfoot, bucking the doubled and tripled police lines in a mad, vain
+effort to see the flagpole on the roof or a corner of the rear garden
+wall. For that house was Clarence House, and the young man who posed so
+accommodatingly for the photographer was none other than Prince Arthur
+of Connaught, who was getting himself married the very next day.
+
+The next day I beheld from a short distance the passing of the bridal
+procession. Though there were crowds all along the route followed by
+the wedding party, there was no scrouging, no shoving, no fighting, no
+disorderly scramble, no unseemly congestion about the chapel where the
+ceremony took place. It reminded me vividly of that which inevitably
+happens when a millionaire's daughter is being married to a duke in a
+fashionable Fifth Avenue church--it reminded me of that because it was
+so different.
+
+Fortunately for us we were so placed that we saw quite distinctly the
+entrance of the wedding party into the chapel inclosure. Personally I
+was most concerned with the members of the royal house. As I recollect,
+they passed in the following order:
+
+His Majesty, King George the Fifth. Her Majesty, Queen Mary, the Other
+Four Fifths. Small fractional royalties to the number of a dozen or
+more.
+
+I got a clear view of the side face of the queen. As one looked on her
+profile, which was what you might call firm, and saw the mild-looking
+little king, who seemed quite eclipsed by her presence, one
+understood--or anyway one thought one understood--why an English
+assemblage, when standing to chant the national anthem these times,
+always puts such fervor and meaning into the first line of it.
+
+Only one untoward incident occurred: The inevitable militant lady broke
+through the lines as the imperial carriage passed and threw a Votes for
+Women handbill into His Majesty's lap. She was removed thence by the
+police with the skill and dexterity of long practice. The police were
+competently on the job. They always are--which brings me round to the
+subject of the London bobby and leads me to venture the assertion
+that individually and collectively, personally and officially, he is
+a splendid piece of work. The finest thing in London is the London
+policeman and the worst thing is the shamefully small and shabby pay he
+gets. He is majestic because he represents the majesty of the English
+law; he is humble and obliging because, as a servant, he serves the
+people who make the law. And always he knows his business.
+
+In Charing Cross, where all roads meet and snarl up in the bewildering
+semblance of many fishing worms in a can, I ventured out into the
+roadway to ask a policeman the best route for reaching a place in a
+somewhat obscure quarter. He threw up his arm, semaphore fashion,
+first to this point of the compass and then to that, and traffic halted
+instantly. As far as the eye might reach it halted; and it stayed
+halted, too, while he searched his mind and gave me carefully and
+painstakingly the directions for which I sought. In that packed mass
+of cabs and taxis and buses and carriages there were probably dukes
+and archbishops--dukes and archbishops are always fussing about in
+London--but they waited until he was through directing me. It flattered
+me so that I went back to the hotel and put on a larger hat. I sincerely
+hope there was at least one archbishop.
+
+Another time we went to Paddington to take a train for somewhere.
+Following the custom of the country we took along our trunks and traps
+on top of the taxicab. At the moment of our arrival there were no
+porters handy, so a policeman on post outside the station jumped forward
+on the instant and helped our chauffeur to wrestle the luggage down on
+the bricks. When I, rallying somewhat from the shock of this, thanked
+him and slipped a coin into his palm, he said in effect that, though
+he was obliged for the shilling, I must not feel that I had to give him
+anything--that it was part of his duty to aid the public in these small
+matters. I shut my eyes and tried to imagine a New York policeman doing
+as much for an unknown alien; but the effort gave me a severe headache.
+It gave me darting pains across the top of the skull--at about the spot
+where he would probably have belted me with his club had I even dared to
+ask him to bear a hand with my baggage.
+
+I had a peep into the workings of the system of which the London bobby
+is a spoke when I went to what is the very hub of the wheel of the
+common law--a police court. I understood then what gave the policeman in
+the street his authority and his dignity--and his humility--when I saw
+how carefully the magistrate on the bench weighed each trifling cause
+and each petty case; how surely he winnowed out the small grain of truth
+from the gross and tare of surmise and fiction; how particular he was to
+give of the abundant store of his patience to any whining ragpicker
+or street beggar who faced him, whether as defendant at the bar, or
+accuser, or witness.
+
+It was the very body of the law, though, we saw a few days after this
+when by invitation we witnessed the procession at the opening of the
+high courts. Considered from the stand-points of picturesqueness and
+impressiveness it made one's pulses tingle when those thirty or forty
+men of the wig and ermine marched in single and double file down the
+loftily vaulted hall, with the Lord Chancellor in wig and robes of state
+leading, and Sir Rufus Isaacs, knee-breeched and sword-belted, a pace or
+two behind him; and then, in turn, the justices; and, going on ahead of
+them and following on behind them, knight escorts and ushers and clerks
+and all the other human cogs of the great machine. What struck into me
+deepest, however, was the look of nearly every one of the judges. Had
+they been dressed as longshoremen, one would still have known them for
+possessors of the judicial temperament--men born to hold the balances
+and fitted and trained to winnow out the wheat from the chaff. So many
+eagle-beaked noses, so many hawk-keen eyes, so many smooth-chopped,
+long-jowled faces, seen here together, made me think of what we are
+prone to regard as the highwater period of American statesmanship--the
+Clay-Calhoun-Benton-Webster period.
+
+Just watching these men pass helped me to know better than any reading I
+had ever done why the English have faith and confidence in their courts.
+I said to myself that if I wanted justice--exact justice, heaping high
+in time scales--I should come to this shop and give my trade to the
+old-established firm; but if I were looking for a little mercy I should
+take my custom elsewhere.
+
+I cannot tell why I associate it in my mind with this grouped spectacle
+of the lords of the law, but somehow the scene to be witnessed in Hyde
+Park just inside the Marble Arch of a Sunday evening seems bound up
+somehow with the other institution. They call this place London's safety
+valve. It's all of that. Long ago the ruling powers discovered that
+if the rabidly discontented were permitted to preach dynamite and
+destruction unlimited they would not be so apt to practice their
+cheerful doctrines. So, without let or hindrance, any apostle of any
+creed, cult or propaganda, however lurid and revolutionary, may come
+here of a Sunday to meet with his disciples and spout forth the faith
+that is in him until he has geysered himself into peace, or, what comes
+to the same thing, into speechlessness.
+
+When I went to Hyde Park on a certain Sunday rain was falling and the
+crowds were not so large as usual, a bored policeman on duty in this
+outdoor forum told me; still, at that, there must have been two or three
+thousand listeners in sight and not less than twelve speakers. These
+latter balanced themselves on small portable platforms placed in rows,
+with such short spaces between them that their voices intermingled
+confusingly. In front of each orator stood his audience; sometimes they
+applauded what he said in a sluggish British way, and sometimes they
+asked him questions designed to baffle or perplex him--heckling, I
+believe this is called--but there was never any suggestion of disorder
+and never any violent demonstration for or against a statement made by
+him.
+
+At the end of the line nearest the Arch, under a flary light, stood an
+old bearded man having the look on his face of a kindly but somewhat
+irritated moo-cow. At the moment I drew near he was having a long and
+involved argument with another controversialist touching on the sense of
+the word tabernacle as employed Scripturally, one holding it to mean the
+fleshly tenement of the soul and the other an actual place of worship.
+The old man had two favorite words--behoove and emit--but behoove was
+evidently his choice. As an emitter he was only fair, but he was the
+best behoover I ever saw anywhere.
+
+The orator next to him was speaking in a soft, sentimental tone, with
+gestures gently appropriate. I moved along to him, being minded to learn
+what particular brand of brotherly love he might be expounding. In
+the same tone a good friend might employ in telling you what to do
+for chapped lips or a fever blister he was saying that clergymen and
+armaments were useless and expensive burdens on the commonwealth;
+and, as a remedy, he was advocating that all the priests and all the
+preachers in the kingdom should be loaded on all the dreadnoughts,
+and then the dreadnoughts should be steamed to the deepest part of the
+Atlantic Ocean and there cozily scuttled, with all aboard.
+
+There was scattering applause and a voice: "Ow, don't do that! Listen,
+'ere! Hi've got a better plan." But the next speaker was blaring away at
+the top of his voice, making threatening faces and waving his clenched
+fists aloft and pounding with them on the top of his rostrum.
+
+"Now this," I said to myself, "is going to be something worth while.
+Surely this person would not be content merely with drowning all the
+parsons and sinking all the warships in the hole at the bottom of the
+sea. Undoubtedly he will advocate something really radical. I will
+invest five minutes with him."
+
+I did; but I was sold. He was favoring the immediate adoption of a
+universal tongue for all the peoples of the earth--that was all. I did
+not catch the name of his universal language, but I judged the one at
+which he would excel would be a language with few if any h's in it.
+After this disappointment I lost heart and came away.
+
+Another phase, though a very different one, of the British spirit of
+fair play and tolerance, was shown to me at the National Sporting Club,
+which is the British shrine of boxing, where I saw a fight for one of
+the championship belts that Lord Lonsdale is forever bestowing on this
+or that worshipful fisticuffer. Instead of being inside the ring prying
+the fighters apart by main force as he would have been doing in America,
+the referee, dressed in evening clothes, was outside the ropes. At a
+snapped word from him the fighters broke apart from clinches on
+the instant. The audience--a very mixed one, ranging in garb from
+broadcloths to shoddies--was as quick to approve a telling blow by the
+less popular fighter as to hiss any suggestion of trickiness or fouling
+on the part of the favorite. When a contestant in one of the preliminary
+goes, having been adjudged a loser on points, objected to the decision
+and insisted on being heard in his own behalf, the crowd, though plainly
+not in sympathy with his contention, listened to what he had to say.
+Nobody jeered him down.
+
+Had he been a foreigner and especially had he been an American I am
+inclined to think the situation might have been different. I seem to
+recall what happened once when a certain middleweight from this side
+went over there and broke the British heart by licking the British
+champion; and again what happened when a Yankee boy won the Marathon
+at the Olympic games in London a few years ago. But as this man was
+a Briton himself these other Britons harkened to his sputterings,
+for England, you know, grants the right of free speech to all
+Englishmen--and denies it to all Englishwomen.
+
+The settled Englishman declines always to be jostled out of his
+hereditary state of intense calm. They tell of a man who dashed into the
+reading room of the Savage Club with the announcement that a lion was
+loose on the Strand--a lion that had escaped from a traveling caravan
+and was rushing madly to and fro, scaring horses and frightening
+pedestrians.
+
+"Great excitement! Most terrific, old dears--on my word!" he added,
+addressing the company.
+
+Over the top of the Pink Un an elderly gentleman of a full habit of life
+regarded him sourly.
+
+"Is that any reason," he inquired, "why a person should rush into a
+gentleman's club and kick up such a deuced hullabaloo?"
+
+The first man--he must have been a Colonial--gazed at the other man in
+amazement.
+
+"Well," he asked, "what would you do if you met a savage lion loose on
+the Strand?"
+
+"Sir, I should take a cab!"
+
+And after meeting an Englishman or two of this type I am quite prepared
+to say the story might have been a true one. If he met a lion on the
+Strand to-day he would take a cab; but if to-morrow, walking in the
+same place, he met two lions, he would write a letter to the
+Times complaining of the growing prevalence of lions in the public
+thoroughfares and placing the blame on the Suffragettes or Lloyd George
+or the Nonconformists or the increasing discontent of the working
+classes--that is what he would do.
+
+On the other hand, if he met a squirrel on a street in America it would
+be a most extraordinary thing. Extraordinary would undoubtedly be the
+word he would use to describe it. Lions on the Strand would be merely
+annoying, but chipmunks on Broadway would constitute a striking
+manifestation of the unsettled conditions existing in a wild and
+misgoverned land; for, you see, to every right-minded Englishman of
+the insular variety--and that is the commonest variety there is in
+England--whatever happens at home is but part of an orderly and an
+ordered scheme of things, whereas whatever happens beyond the
+British domains must necessarily be highly unusual and exceedingly
+disorganizing. If so be it happens on English soil he can excuse it.
+He always has an explanation or an extenuation handy. But if it happens
+elsewhere--well, there you are, you see! What was it somebody once
+called England--Perfidious Alibi-in', wasn't it? Anyhow that was what he
+meant. The party's intentions were good but his spelling was faulty.
+
+An Englishman's newspapers help him to attain this frame of mind; for
+an English newspaper does not print sensational stories about Englishmen
+residing in England; it prints them about people resident in other
+lands. There is a good reason for this and the reason is based on
+prudence. In the first place the private life of a private individual is
+a most holy thing, with which the papers dare not meddle; besides, the
+paper that printed a faked-up tale about a private citizen in England
+would speedily be exposed and also extensively sued. As for public men,
+they are protected by exceedingly stringent libel laws. As nearly as I
+might judge, anything true you printed about an English politician would
+be libelous, and anything libelous you printed about him would be true.
+
+It befalls, therefore, as I was told on most excellent authority, that
+when the editor of a live London daily finds the local grist to be
+dull and uninteresting reading he straightway cables to his American
+correspondent or his Paris correspondent--these two being his main
+standbys for sensations--asking, if his choice falls on the man in
+America, for a snappy dispatch, say, about an American train smash-up,
+or a Nature freak, or a scandal in high society with a rich man mixed up
+in it. He wires for it, and in reply he gets it. I have been in my time
+a country correspondent for city papers, and I know that what Mr. Editor
+wants Mr. Editor gets.
+
+As a result America, to the provincial Englishman's understanding, is
+a land where a hunter is always being nibbled to death by sheep; or a
+prospective mother is being so badly frightened by a chameleon that her
+child is born with a complexion changeable at will and an ungovernable
+appetite for flies; or a billionaire is giving a monkey dinner or
+poisoning his wife, or something. Also, he gets the idea that a through
+train in this country is so called because it invariably runs through
+the train ahead of it; and that when a man in Connecticut is expecting a
+friend on the fast express from Boston, and wants something to remember
+him by, he goes down to the station at train time with a bucket. Under
+the headlining system of the English newspapers the derailment of a
+work-train in Arizona, wherein several Mexican tracklayers get mussed
+up, becomes Another Frightful American Railway Disaster! But a head-on
+collision, attended by fatalities, in the suburbs of Liverpool or
+Manchester is a Distressing Suburban Incident. Yet the official Blue
+Book, issued by the British Board of Trade, showed that in the three
+months ending March 31, 1913, 284 persons were killed and 2,457 were
+injured on railway lines in the United Kingdom.
+
+Just as an English gentleman is the most modest person imaginable,
+and the most backward about offering lip-service in praise of his own
+achievements or his country's achievements, so, in the same superlative
+degree, some of his newspapers are the most blatant of boasters. About
+the time we were leaving England the job of remodeling and beautifying
+the front elevation of Buckingham Palace reached its conclusion, and a
+dinner was given to the workingmen who for some months had been engaged
+on the contract. It had been expected that the occasion would be graced
+by the presence of Their Majesties; but the king, as I recall, was
+pasting stamps in the new album the Czar of Russia sent him on his
+birthday, and the queen was looking through the files of Godey's Lady's
+Book for the year 1874, picking out suitable costumes for the ladies of
+her court to wear. At any rate they could not attend. Otherwise, though,
+the dinner must have been a success. Reading the account of it as
+published next morning in a London paper, I learned that some of the
+guests, "with rare British pluck," wore their caps and corduroys; that
+others, "with true British independence," smoked their pipes after
+dinner; that there was "real British beef" and "genuine British plum
+pudding" on the menu; and that repeatedly those present uttered "hearty
+British cheers." From top to bottom the column was studded thick with
+British thises and British thats.
+
+Yet the editorial writers of that very paper are given to frequent and
+sneering attacks on the alleged yellowness and the boasting proclivities
+of the jingo Yankee sheets; also, they are prone to spasmodic attacks
+on the laxity of our marriage laws. Perhaps what they say of us is true;
+but for unadulterated nastiness I never saw anything in print to equal
+the front page of a so-called sporting weekly that circulates freely in
+London, and I know of nothing to compare with the brazen exhibition of a
+certain form of vice that is to be witnessed nightly in the balconies of
+two of London's largest music halls. It was upon the program of another
+London theater that I came across the advertisement of a lady styling
+herself "London's Woman Detective" and stating, in so many words, that
+her specialties were "Divorce Shadowings" and "Secret Inquiries." Maybe
+it is a fact that in certain of our states marriage is not so much a
+contract as a ninety-day option, but the lady detective who does divorce
+shadowing and advertises her qualifications publicly has not opened up
+her shop among us.
+
+In the campaign to give the stay-at-home Englishman a strange conception
+of his American kinsman the press is ably assisted by the stage.
+In London I went to see a comedy written by a deservedly successful
+dramatist, and staged, I think, under his personal direction. The
+English characters in the play were whimsical and, as nearly as I might
+judge, true to the classes they purported to represent. There was an
+American character in this piece too--a multimillionaire, of course, and
+a collector of pictures--presumably a dramatically fair and realistic
+drawing of a wealthy, successful, art-loving American. I have forgotten
+now whether he was supposed to be one of our meaty Chicago millionaires,
+or one of our oily Cleveland millionaires, or one of our steely
+Pittsburgh millionaires, or just a plain millionaire from the country
+at large; and I doubt whether the man who wrote the lines had any
+conception when he did write them of the fashion in which they were
+afterward read. Be that as it may, the actor who essayed to play the
+American used an inflection, or an accent, or a dialect, or a jargon--or
+whatever you might choose to call it--which was partly of the oldtime
+drawly Wild Western school of expression and partly of the oldtime
+nasal Down East school. I had thought--and had hoped--that both these
+actor-created lingoes were happily obsolete; but in their full flower of
+perfection I now heard them here in London. Also, the actor who played
+the part interpreted the physical angles of the character in a manner to
+suggest a pleasing combination of Uncle Joshua Whitcomb, Mike the Bite,
+Jefferson Brick and Coal-Oil Johnny, with a suggestion of Jesse James
+interspersed here and there. True, he spat not on the carpet loudly, and
+he refrained from saying I vum! and Great Snakes!--quaint conceits that,
+I am told, every English actor who respected his art formally employed
+when wishful to type a stage American for an English audience; but he
+bragged loudly and emphatically of his money and of how he got it and of
+what he would do with it. I do not perceive why it is the English, who
+themselves so dearly love the dollar after it is translated into terms
+of pounds, shillings and pence, should insist on regarding us as a
+nation of dollar-grabbers, when they only see us in the act of freely
+dispensing the aforesaid dollar.
+
+They do so regard us, though; and, with true British setness, I suppose
+they always will. Even so I think that, though they may dislike us as a
+nation, they like us as individuals; and it is certainly true that they
+seem to value us more highly than they value Colonials, as they call
+them--particularly Canadian Colonials. It would appear that your true
+Briton can never excuse another British subject for the shockingly poor
+taste he displayed in being born away from home. And, though in time he
+may forgive us for refusing to be licked by him, he can never forgive
+the Colonials for saving him from being licked in South Africa.
+
+When I started in to write this chapter, I meant to conclude it with an
+apology for my audacity in undertaking--in any wise--to sum up the local
+characteristics of a country where I had tarried for so short a time,
+but I have changed my mind about that. I have merely borrowed a page
+from the book of rules of the British essayists and novelists who come
+over here to write us up. Why, bless your soul, I gave nearly eight
+weeks of time to the task of seeing Europe thoroughly, and, of those
+eight weeks, I spent upward of three weeks in and about London--indeed,
+a most unreasonably long time when measured by the standards of the
+Englishman of letters who does a book about us.
+
+He has his itinerary all mapped out in advance. He will squander a whole
+week on us. We are scarcely worth it, but, such as we are, we shall have
+a week of his company! Landing on Monday morning, he will spend Monday
+in New York, Tuesday in San Francisco, and Wednesday in New Orleans.
+Thursday he will divide between Boston and Chicago, devoting the
+forenoon to one and the afternoon to the other. Friday morning he will
+range through the Rocky Mountains, and after luncheon, if he is not too
+fatigued, he will take a carriage and pop in on Yosemite Valley for an
+hour or so.
+
+But Saturday--all of it--will be given over to the Far Southland. He
+is going 'way down South--to sunny South Dakota, in fact, to see the
+genuine native American darkies, the real Yankee blackamoors.
+Most interesting beings, the blackamoors! They live exclusively on
+poultry--fowls, you know--and all their women folk are named Honey Gal.
+
+He will observe them in their hours of leisure, when, attired in their
+national costume, consisting of white duck breeches, banjos, and striped
+shirts with high collars, they gather beneath the rays of the silvery
+Southern moon to sing their tribal melodies on the melon-lined shores
+of the old Oswego; and by day he will study them at their customary
+employment as they climb from limb to limb of the cottonwood trees,
+picking cotton. On Sunday he will arrange and revise his notes, and on
+Monday morning he will sail for home.
+
+Such is the program of Solomon Grundy, Esquire, the distinguished
+writing Englishman; but on his arrival he finds the country to be
+somewhat larger than he expected--larger actually than the Midlands. So
+he compromises by spending five days at a private hotel in New York, run
+by a very worthy and deserving Englishwoman of the middle classes, where
+one may get Yorkshire puddings every day; and two days more at a wealthy
+tufthunter's million-dollar cottage at Newport, studying the habits and
+idiosyncrasies of the common people. And then he rushes back to England
+and hurriedly embalms his impressions of us in a large volume, stating
+it to be his deliberate opinion that, though we mean well enough, we
+won't do--really. He necessarily has to hurry, because, you see, he has
+a contract to write a novel or a play--or both a novel and a play--with
+Lord Northcliffe as the central figure. In these days practically all
+English novels and most English comedies play up Lord Northcliffe as the
+central figure. Almost invariably the young English writer chooses him
+for the axis about which his plot shall revolve. English journalists
+who have been discharged from one of Northcliffe's publications make him
+their villian, and English journalists who hope to secure jobs on one
+of his publications make him their hero. The literature of a land is
+in perilous case when it depends on the personality of one man. One
+shudders to think what the future of English fiction would be should
+anything happen to his Lordship!
+
+Business of shuddering!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XVIII
+
+
+
+Guyed or Guided?
+
+During our scientific explorations in the Eastern Hemisphere, we met two
+guides who had served the late Samuel L. Clemens, one who had served
+the late J. Pierpont Morgan, and one who had acted as courier to
+ex-President Theodore Roosevelt. After inquiry among persons who were
+also lately abroad, I have come to the conclusion that my experience
+in this regard was remarkable, not because I met so many as four of the
+guides who had attended these distinguished Americans, but because I met
+so few as four of them. One man with whom I discussed the matter told of
+having encountered, in the course of a brief scurry across Europe, five
+members in good standing of the International Association of Former
+Guides to Mark Twain. All of them had union cards to prove it too.
+Others said that in practically every city of any size visited by them
+there was a guide who told of his deep attachment to the memory of Mr.
+Morgan, and described how Mr. Morgan had hired him without inquiring
+in advance what his rate for professional services a day would be; and
+how--lingering with wistful emphasis on the words along here and looking
+meaningly the while at the present patron--how very, very generous Mr.
+Morgan had been in bestowing gratuities on parting.
+
+Our first experience with guides was at Westminster Abbey. As it
+happened, this guide was one of the Mark Twain survivors. I think,
+though, he was genuine; he had documents of apparent authenticity in
+his possession to help him in proving up his title. Anyhow, he knew his
+trade. He led us up and down those parts of the Abbey which are free to
+the general public and brought us finally to a wicket gate, opening on
+the royal chapels, which was as far as he could go. There he turned us
+over to a severe-looking dignitary in robes--an archbishop, I judged,
+or possibly only a canon--who, on payment by us of a shilling a head,
+escorted our party through the remaining inclosures, showing us the
+tombs of England's queens and kings, or a good many of them anyway; and
+the Black Prince's helmet and breastplate; and the exquisite chapel of
+Henry the Seventh, and the ancient chair on which all the kings sat for
+their coronations, with the famous Scotch Stone of Scone under it.
+
+The chair itself was not particularly impressive. It was not nearly so
+rickety and decrepit as the chairs one sees in almost any London barber
+shop. Nor was my emotion particularly excited by the stone. I would
+engage to get a better-looking one out of the handiest rock quarry
+inside of twenty minutes. This stone should not be confused with the
+ordinary scones, which also come from Scotland and which are by some
+regarded as edible.
+
+What did seem to us rather a queer thing was that the authorities of
+Westminster should make capital of the dead rulers of the realm and,
+except on certain days of the week, should charge an admission fee to
+their sepulchers. Later, on the Continent, we sustained an even more
+severe shock when we saw royal palaces--palaces that on occasion
+are used by the royal proprietors--with the quarters of the monarchs
+upstairs and downstairs novelty shops and tourist agencies and
+restaurants, and the like of that. I jotted down a few crisp notes
+concerning these matters, my intention being to comment on them as
+evidence of an incomprehensible thrift on the part of our European
+kins-people; but on second thought I decided to refrain from so doing.
+I recalled the fact that we ourselves are not entirely free from certain
+petty national economies. Abroad we house our embassies up back streets,
+next door to bird and animal stores; and at home there is many a public
+institution where the doormat says WELCOME! in large letters, but the
+soap is chained and the roller towel is padlocked to its little roller.
+
+Guides are not particularly numerous in England. Even in the places
+most frequented by the sightseer they do not abound in any profusion. At
+Madame Tussaud's, for example, we found only one guide. We encountered
+him just after we had spent a mournful five minutes in contemplation of
+ex-President Taft. Friends and acquaintances of Mr. Taft will be shocked
+to note the great change in him when they see him here in wax. He does
+not weigh so much as he used to weigh by at least one hundred and fifty
+pounds; he has lost considerable height too; his hair has turned another
+color and his eyes also; his mustache is not a close fit any more,
+either; and he is wearing a suit of English-made clothes.
+
+On leaving the sadly altered form of our former Chief Executive we
+descended a flight of stone steps leading to the Chamber of Horrors.
+This department was quite crowded with parents escorting their children
+about. Like America, England appears to be well stocked with parents who
+make a custom of taking their young and susceptible offspring to places
+where the young ones stand a good chance of being scared into connipshun
+fits. The official guide was in the Chamber of Horrors. He was piloting
+a large group of visitors about, but as soon as he saw our smaller party
+he left them and came directly to us; for they were Scotch and we were
+Americans, citizens of the happy land where tips come from. Undoubtedly
+that guide knew best.
+
+With pride and pleasure he showed us a representative assortment of
+England's most popular and prominent murderers. The English dearly love
+a murderer. Perhaps that is because they have fewer murderers than we
+have, and have less luck than we do in keeping them alive and in good
+spirits to a ripe old age. Almost any American community of fair
+size can afford at least two murderers--one in jail, under sentence,
+receiving gifts of flowers and angel cake from kind ladies, and waiting
+for the court above to reverse the verdict in his case because the
+indictment was shy a comma; and the other out on bail, awaiting his
+time for going through the same procedure. But with the English it is
+different.
+
+We rarely hang anybody who is anybody, and only occasionally make an
+issue of stretching the neck of the veriest nobody. They will hang
+almost anybody Haman-high, or even higher than that. They do not exactly
+hang their murderer before they catch him, but the two events occur in
+such close succession that one can readily understand why a confusion
+should have arisen in the public mind on these points. First of all,
+though, they catch him; and then some morning between ten and twelve
+they try him. This is a brief and businesslike formality. While the
+judge is looking in a drawer of his desk to see whether the black cap is
+handy the bailiffs shoo twelve tradesmen into the jury box. A tradesman
+is generally chosen for jury service because he is naturally anxious to
+get the thing over and hurry back to his shop before his helper goes to
+lunch. The judge tells the jurors to look on the prisoner, because he is
+going away shortly and is not expected back; so they take full advantage
+of the opportunity, realizing it to be their last chance. Then, in
+order to comply with the forms, the judge asks the accused whether he
+is guilty or not guilty, and the jurors promptly say he is. His Worship,
+concurring heartily, fixes the date of execution for the first Friday
+morning when the hangman has no other engagements. It is never necessary
+to postpone this event through failure of the condemned to be present.
+He is always there; there is no record of his having disappointed
+an audience. So, on the date named, rain or shine, he is hanged very
+thoroughly; but after the hanging is over they write songs and books
+about him and revere his memory forevermore.
+
+Our guide was pleased to introduce us to the late Mr. Charles Pease,
+as done in paraffin, with creped hair and bright, shiny glass eyes. Mr.
+Pease was undoubtedly England's most fashionable murderer of the
+past century and his name is imperishably enshrined in the British
+affections. The guide spoke of his life and works with deep and sincere
+feeling. He also appeared to derive unfeigned pleasure from describing
+the accomplishments of another murderer, only slightly less famous than
+the late Mr. Pease. It seemed that this murderer, after slaying his
+victim, set to dismembering the body and boiling it. They boil nearly
+everything in England. But the police broke in on him and interrupted
+the job.
+
+Our attention was directed to a large chart showing the form of the
+victim, the boiled portions being outlined in red and the unboiled
+portions in black. Considered as a murderer solely this particular
+murderer may have been deserving of his fame; but when it came to
+boiling, that was another matter. He showed poor judgment there. It all
+goes to show that a man should stick to his own trade and not try to
+follow two or more widely dissimilar callings at the same time. Sooner
+or later he is bound to slip up.
+
+We found Stratford-upon-Avon to be the one town in England where guides
+are really abundant. There are as many guides in Stratford as there are
+historic spots. I started to say that there is at least one guide
+in Stratford for every American who goes there; but that would be
+stretching real facts, because nearly every American who goes to England
+manages to spend at least a day in Stratford, it being a spot very dear
+to his heart. The very name of it is associated with two of the most
+conspicuous figures in our literature. I refer first to Andrew Carnegie;
+second to William Shakspere. Shakspere, who wrote the books, was born
+here; but Carnegie, who built the libraries in which to keep the books,
+and who has done some writing himself, provided money for preserving and
+perpetuating the relics.
+
+We met a guide in the ancient schoolhouse where the Bard--I am speaking
+now of William, not of Andrew--acquired the rudiments of his education;
+and on duty at the old village church was another guide, who for a price
+showed us the identical gravestone bearing the identical inscription
+which, reproduced in a design of burnt wood, is to-day to be found on
+the walls of every American household, however humble, whose members are
+wishful of imparting an artistic and literary atmosphere to their home.
+A third guide greeted us warmly when we drove to the cottage, a mile
+or two from the town, where the Hathaway family lived. Here we saw the
+high-backed settle on which Shakspere sat, night after night, wooing
+Anne Hathaway. I myself sat on it to test it. I should say that the
+wooing could not have been particularly good there, especially for a
+thin man. That settle had a very hard seat and history does not record
+that there was a cushion. Shakspere's affections for the lady must
+indeed have been steadfast. Or perhaps he was of stouter build than his
+pictures show him to have been.
+
+Guides were scattered all over the birthplace house in Stratford in the
+ratio of one or more to each room. Downstairs a woman guide presided
+over a battery of glass cases containing personal belongings of
+Shakspere's and documents written by him and signed by him. It is
+conceded that he could write, but he certainly was a mighty poor
+speller. This has been a failing of many well-known writers. Chaucer was
+deficient in this regard; and if it were not for a feeling of personal
+modesty I could apply the illustration nearer home.
+
+Two guides accompanied us as we climbed the stairs to the low-roofed
+room on the second floor where the creator of Shylock and Juliet was
+born--or was not born, if you believe what Ignatius Donnelly had to say
+on the subject. But would it not be interesting and valued information
+if we could only get the evidence on this point of old Mrs. Shakspere,
+who undoubtedly was present on the occasion? A member of our party,
+an American, ventured to remark as much to one of the guides; but the
+latter did not seem to understand him. So the American told him just to
+keep thinking it over at odd moments, and that he would be back again
+in a couple of years, if nothing happened, and possibly by that time the
+guide would have caught the drift of his observation. On second thought,
+later on, he decided to make it three years--he did not want to crowd
+the guide, he said, or put too great a burden on his mentality in a
+limited space of time.
+
+If England harbors few guides the Continent is fairly glutted with them.
+After nightfall the boulevards of Paris are so choked with them that
+in places there is standing room only. In Rome the congestion is even
+greater. In Rome every other person is a guide--and sometimes twins.
+I do not know why, in thinking of Europe, I invariably associate the
+subject of guides with the subject of tips. The guides were no greedier
+for tips than the cabmen or the hotel helpers, or the railroad hands, or
+the populace at large. Nevertheless this is true. In my mind I am
+sure guides and tips will always be coupled, as surely as any of those
+standard team-word combinations of our language that are familiar to
+all; as firmly paired off as, for example, Castor and Pollux, or Damon
+and Pythias, or Fair and Warmer, or Hay and Feed. When I think of one
+I know I shall think of the other. Also I shall think of languages; but
+for that there is a reason.
+
+Tipping--the giving of tips and the occasional avoidance of giving
+them--takes up a good deal of the tourist's time in Europe. At first
+reading the arrangement devised by the guidebooks, of setting aside ten
+per cent of one's bill for tipping purposes, seems a better plan and a
+less costly one than the indiscriminate American system of tipping for
+each small service at the time of its performance. The trouble is that
+this arrangement does not work out so well in actual practice as it
+sounds in theory. On the day of your departure you send for your hotel
+bill. You do not go to the desk and settle up there after the American
+fashion. If you have learned the ropes you order your room waiter to
+fetch your bill to you, and in the privacy of your apartment you
+pore over the formidable document wherein every small charge is fully
+specified, the whole concluding with an impressive array of items
+regarding which you have no prior recollection whatsoever. Considering
+the total, you put aside an additional ten per cent, calculated for
+division on the basis of so much for the waiter, so much for the boots,
+so much for the maid and the porter, and the cashier, and the rest of
+them. It is not necessary that you send for these persons in order to
+confer your farewell remembrances on them; they will be waiting for you
+in the hallways. No matter how early or late the hour of your leaving
+may be, you find them there in a long and serried rank.
+
+You distribute bills and coins until your ten per cent is exhausted, and
+then you are pained to note that several servitors yet remain, lined up
+and all expectant, owners of strange faces that you do not recall
+ever having seen before, but who are now at hand with claims, real or
+imaginary, on your purse. Inasmuch as you have a deadly fear of being
+remembered afterward in this hotel as a piker, you continue to dip
+down and to fork over, and so by the time you reach the tail end of the
+procession your ten per cent has grown to twelve or fifteen per cent, or
+even more.
+
+As regards the tipping of guides for their services, I hit on a fairly
+satisfactory plan, which I gladly reveal here for the benefit of my
+fellow man. I think it is a good idea to give the guide, on parting,
+about twice as much as you think he is entitled to, which will be about
+half as much as he expects. From this starting point you then work
+toward each other, you conceding a little from time to time, he abating
+a trifle here and there, until you have reached a happy compromise on a
+basis of fifty-fifty; and so you part in mutual good will.
+
+The average American, on the eve of going to Europe, thinks of the
+European as speaking each his own language. He conceives of the Poles
+speaking Polar; of the Hollanders talking Hollandaise; of the Swiss
+as employing Schweitzer for ordinary conversations and yodeling when
+addressing friends at a distance; and so on. Such, however, is rarely
+the case. Nearly every person with whom one comes in contact in Europe
+appears to have fluent command of several tongues besides his or her
+own. It is true this does not apply to Italy, where the natives
+mainly stick to Italian; but then, Italian is not a language. It is a
+calisthenic.
+
+Between Rome and Florence, our train stopped at a small way station in
+the mountains. As soon as the little locomotive had panted itself to a
+standstill the train hands, following their habit, piled off the cars
+and engaged in a tremendous confab with the assembled officials on the
+platform. Immediately all the loafers in sight drew cards. A drowsy
+hillsman, muffled to his back hair in a long brown cloak, and with
+buskins on his legs such as a stage bandit wears, was dozing against the
+wall. He looked as though he had stepped right out of a comic opera to
+add picturesqueness to the scene. He roused himself and joined in; so
+did a bearded party who, to judge by his uniform, was either a Knight of
+Pythias or a general in the army; so did all the rest of the crowd. In
+ten seconds they were jammed together in a hard knot, and going it on
+the high speed with the muffler off, fine white teeth shining, arms
+flying, shoulders shrugging, spinal columns writhing, mustaches rising
+and falling, legs wriggling, scalps and ears following suit. Feeding
+hour in the parrot cage at the zoo never produced anything like so noisy
+and animated a scene. In these parts acute hysteria is not a symptom; it
+is merely a state of mind.
+
+A waiter in soiled habiliments hurried up, abandoning chances of trade
+at the prospect of something infinitely more exciting. He wanted to
+stick his oar into the argument. He had a few pregnant thoughts of his
+own craving utterance, you could tell that. But he was handicapped into
+a state of dumbness by the fact that he needed both arms to balance a
+tray of wine and sandwiches on his head. Merely using his voice in that
+company would not have counted. He stood it as long as he could, which
+was not very long, let me tell you. Then he slammed his tray down on the
+platform and, with one quick movement, jerked his coat sleeves back to
+his elbows, and inside thirty seconds he had the floor in both hands, as
+it were. He conversed mainly with the Australian crawl stroke, but once
+in a while switched to the Spencerian free-arm movement and occasionally
+introduced the Chautauqua salute with telling effect.
+
+On the Continent guides, as a class, excel in the gift of
+tongues--guides and hotel concierges. The concierge at our hotel in
+Berlin was a big, upstanding chap, half Russian and half Swiss, and
+therefore qualified by his breeding to speak many languages; for the
+Russians are born with split tongues and can give cards and spades to
+any talking crow that ever lived; while the Swiss lag but little behind
+them in linguistic aptitude. It seemed such a pity that this man was not
+alive when the hands knocked off work on the Tower of Babel; he could
+have put the job through without extending himself. No matter what
+the nationality of a guest might be--and the guests were of many
+nationalities--he could talk with that guest in his own language or in
+any other language the guest might fancy. I myself was sorely tempted to
+try him on Coptic and early Aztec; but I held off. My Coptic is not what
+it once was; and, partly through disuse and partly through carelessness,
+I have allowed my command of early Aztec to fall off pretty badly these
+last few months.
+
+All linguistic freakishness is not confined to the Continent. The
+English, who are popularly supposed to use the same language we
+ourselves use, sometimes speak with a mighty strange tongue. A great
+many of them do not speak English; they speak British, a very different
+thing. An Englishwoman of breeding has a wonderful speaking voice; as
+pure as a Boston woman's and more liquid; as soft as a Southern woman's
+and with more attention paid to the R's. But the Cockney type--Wowie!
+During a carriage ride in Florence with a mixed company of tourists
+I chanced to say something of a complimentary nature about something
+English, and a little London-bred woman spoke up and said: "Thenks!
+It's vurry naice of you to sezzo, 'm sure." Some of them talk like
+that--honestly they do!
+
+Though Americo-English may not be an especially musical speech, it
+certainly does lend itself most admirably to slang purposes. Here again
+the Britishers show their inability to utilize the vehicle to the full
+of its possibilities. England never produced a Billy Baxter or a George
+Ade, and I am afraid she never will. Most of our slang means something;
+you hear a new slang phrase and instantly you realize that the genius
+who coined it has hit on a happy and a graphic and an illuminating
+expression; that at one bound he rose triumphant above the limitations
+of the language and tremendously enriched the working vocabulary of the
+man in the street. Whereas an Englishman's idea of slinging slang is to
+scoop up at random some inoffensive and well-meaning word that never did
+him any harm and apply it in the place of some other word, to which
+the first word is not related, even by marriage. And look how
+they deliberately mispronounce proper names. Everybody knows about
+Cholmondeley and St. John. But take the Scandinavian word fjord. Why, I
+ask you, should the English insist on pronouncing it Ferguson?
+
+At Oxford, the seat of learning, Magdalen is pronounced Maudlin,
+probably in subtle tribute to the condition of the person who first
+pronounced it so. General-admission day is not the day you enter, but
+the day you leave. Full term means three-quarters of a term. An ordinary
+degree is a degree obtained by a special examination. An inspector of
+arts does not mean an inspector of arts, but a student; and from
+this point they go right ahead, getting worse all the time. The droll
+creature who compiled the Oxford glossary was a true Englishman.
+
+When an Englishman undertakes to wrestle with American slang he makes a
+fearful hash of it. In an English magazine I read a short story, written
+by an Englishman who is regarded by a good many persons, competent to
+judge, as being the cleverest writer of English alive today. The story
+was beautifully done from the standpoint of composition; it bristled
+with flashing metaphors and whimsical phrasing. The scene of the yarn
+was supposed to be Chicago and naturally the principal figure in it was
+a millionaire. In one place the author has this person saying, "I reckon
+you'll feel pretty mean," and in another place, "I reckon I'm not a man
+with no pull."
+
+Another character in the story says, "I know you don't cotton to the
+march of science in these matters," and speaks of something that is
+unusual as being "a rum affair." A walled state prison, presumably in
+Illinois, is referred to as a "convict camp"; and its warden is called a
+"governor" and an assistant keeper is called a "warder"; while a Chicago
+daily paper is quoted as saying that "larrikins" directed the attention
+of a policeman to a person who was doing thus and so.
+
+The writer describes a "mysterious mere" known as Pilgrim's Pond, "in
+which they say"--a prison official is supposed to be talking now--"our
+fathers made witches walk until they sank." Descendants of the original
+Puritans who went from Plymouth Rock, in the summer of 1621, and founded
+Chicago, will recall this pond distinctly. Cotton Mather is buried on
+its far bank, and from there it is just ten minutes by trolley to Salem,
+Massachusetts. It is stated also in this story that the prairies begin a
+matter of thirty-odd miles from Chicago, and that to reach them one must
+first traverse a "perfect no man's land." Englewood and South Chicago
+papers please copy.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XIX
+
+
+
+Venice and the Venisons
+
+Getting back again to guides, I am reminded that our acquaintanceship
+with the second member of the Mark Twain brotherhood was staged in
+Paris. This gentleman wished himself on us one afternoon at the Hotel
+des Invalides. We did not engage him; he engaged us, doing the trick
+with such finesse and skill that before we realized it we had been
+retained to accompany him to various points of interest in and round
+Paris. However, we remained under his control one day only. At nightfall
+we wrested ourselves free and fled under cover of darkness to German
+soil, where we were comparatively safe.
+
+I never knew a man who advanced so rapidly in a military way as he did
+during the course of that one day. Our own national guard could not
+hold a candle to him. He started out at ten A.M. by being an officer of
+volunteers in the Franco-Prussian War; but every time he slipped away
+and took a nip out of his private bottle, which was often, he advanced
+in rank automatically. Before the dusk of evening came he was a corps
+commander, who had been ennobled on the field of battle by the hand of
+Napoleon the Third.
+
+He took us to Versailles. We did not particularly care to go to
+Versailles that day, because it was raining; but he insisted and we
+went. In spite of the drizzle we might have enjoyed that wonderful place
+had he not been constantly at our elbows, gabbling away steadily except
+when he excused himself for a moment and stepped behind a tree, to
+emerge a moment later wiping his mouth on his sleeve. Then he would
+return to us, with an added gimpiness in his elderly legs, an increased
+expansion of the chest inside his tight and shiny frock coat, and a
+fresh freight of richness on his breath, to report another deserved
+promotion.
+
+After he had eaten luncheon--all except such portions of it as he
+spilled on himself--the colonel grew confidential and chummy. He tried
+to tell me an off-color story and forgot the point of it, if indeed it
+had any point. He began humming the Marseillaise hymn, but broke off to
+say he expected to live to see the day when a column of French troops,
+singing that air, would march up Unter den Linden to stack their arms in
+the halls of the Kaiser's palace. I did not take issue with him. Every
+man is entitled to his own wishes in those matters. But later on, when
+I had seen something of the Kaiser's standing army, I thought to myself
+that when the French troops did march up Unter den Linden they would
+find it tolerably rough sledding, and if there was any singing done a
+good many of them probably would not be able to join in the last verse.
+
+Immediately following this, our conductor confided to me that he had
+once had the honor of serving Mr. Clemens, whom he referred to as Mick
+Twine. He told me things about Mr. Clemens of which I had never heard.
+I do not think Mr. Clemens ever heard of them either. Then the
+brigadier--it was now after three o'clock, and between three and
+three-thirty he was a brigadier--drew my arm within his.
+
+"I, too, am an author," he stated. "It is not generally known, but I
+have written much. I wrote a book of which you may have heard--'The
+Wandering Jew.'" And he tapped himself on the bosom proudly.
+
+I said I had somehow contracted a notion that a party named Sue--Eugene
+Sue--had something to do with writing the work of that name.
+
+"Ah, but you are right there, my friend," he said. "Sue wrote 'The
+Wandering Jew' the first time--as a novel, merely; but I wrote him much
+better--as a satire on the anti-Semitic movement."
+
+I surrendered without offering to strike another blow and from that time
+on he had his own way with us. The day, as I was pleased to note at the
+time, had begun mercifully to draw to a close; we were driving back to
+Paris, and he, sitting on the front seat, had just attained the highest
+post in the army under the regime of the last Empire, when he said:
+
+"Behold, m'sieur! We are now approaching a wine shop on the left. You
+were most gracious and kind in the matter of luncheon. Kindly permit me
+to do the honors now. It is a very good wine shop--I know it well. Shall
+we stop for a glass together, eh?"
+
+It was the first time since we landed at Calais that a native-born
+person had offered to buy anything, and, being ever desirous to assist
+in the celebration of any truly notable occasion, I accepted and the car
+was stopped. We were at the portal of the wine shop, when he plucked at
+my sleeve, offering another suggestion:
+
+"The chauffeur now--he is a worthy fellow, that chauffeur. Shall we not
+invite the chauffeur to join us?"
+
+I was agreeable to that, too. So he called the chauffeur and the
+chauffeur disentangled his whiskers from the steering gear and came and
+joined us. The chauffeur and I each had a small glass of light wine, but
+the general took brandy. Then ensued a spirited dialogue between him
+and the woman who kept the shop. Assuming that I had no interest in the
+matter, I studied the pictures behind the bar. Presently, having reduced
+the woman to a state of comparative silence, he approached me.
+
+"M'sieur," he said, "I regret that this has happened. Because you are a
+foreigner and because you know not our language, that woman would make
+an overcharge; but she forgot she had me to deal with. I am on guard!
+See her! She is now quelled! I have given her a lesson she will not soon
+forget. M'sieur, the correct amount of the bill is two-francs-ten. Give
+it to her and let us begone!"
+
+I still have that guide's name and address in my possession. At parting
+he pressed his card on me and asked me to keep it; and I did keep it. I
+shall be glad to loan it to any American who may be thinking of going
+to Paris. With the card in his pocket, he will know exactly where this
+guide lives; and then, when he is in need of a guide he can carefully go
+elsewhere and hire a guide.
+
+I almost failed to mention that before we parted he tried to induce us
+to buy something. He took us miles out of our way to a pottery and urged
+us to invest in its wares. This is the main purpose of every guide: to
+see that you buy something and afterward to collect his commission from
+the shopkeeper for having brought you to the shop. If you engage your
+guide through the porter at your hotel you will find that he steers you
+to the shops the hotel people have already recommended to you; but
+if you break the porter's heart by hiring your guide outside,
+independently, the guide steers you to the shops that are on his own
+private list.
+
+Only once I saw a guide temporarily stumped, and that was in Venice. The
+skies were leaky that day and the weather was raw; and one of the ladies
+of the party wore pumps and silk stockings. For the protection of her
+ankles she decided to buy a pair of cloth gaiters; and, stating her
+intention, she started to go into a shop that dealt in those articles.
+The guide hesitated a moment only, then threw himself in her path.
+The shops hereabout were not to be trusted--the proprietors, without
+exception, were rogues and extortioners. If madame would have patience
+for a few brief moments he would guarantee that she got what she wanted
+at an honest price. He seemed so desirous of protecting her that she
+consented to wait.
+
+In a minute, on a pretext, he excused himself and dived into one of
+the crooked ways that thread through all parts of Venice and make it
+possible for one who knows their windings to reach any part of the city
+without using the canals. Two of us secretly followed him. Beyond the
+first turning he dived into a shoe shop. Emerging after a while he
+hurried back and led the lady to that same shop, and stood by, smiling
+softly, while she was fitted with gaiters. Until now evidently gaiters
+had not been on his list, but he had taken steps to remedy this; and,
+though his commission on a pair of sixty-cent gaiters could not have
+been very large yet, as some philosopher has so truly said, every little
+bit added to what you have makes just a modicum more. Indeed, the guide
+never overlooks the smallest bet. His whole mentality is focused on
+getting you inside a shop. Once you are there, he stations himself close
+behind you, reenforcing the combined importunities of the shopkeeper
+and his assembled staff with gentle suggestions. The depths of
+self-abasement to which a shopkeeper in Europe will descend in an
+effort to sell his goods surpasses the power of description. The London
+tradesman goes pretty far in this direction. Often he goes as far as the
+sidewalk, clinging to the hem of your garment and begging you to return
+for one more look. But the Continentals are still worse.
+
+A Parisian shopkeeper would sell you the bones of his revered
+grandmother if you wanted them and he had them in stock; and he would
+have them in stock too, because, as I have stated once before, a true
+Parisian never throws away anything he can save. I heard of just one
+single instance where a customer desirous of having an article and
+willing to pay the price failed to get it; and that, I would say, stands
+without a parallel in the annals of commerce and barter.
+
+An American lady visiting her daughter, an art student in the Latin
+Quartier, was walking alone when she saw in a shop window a lace blouse
+she fancied. She went inside and by signs, since she knew no French,
+indicated that she wished to look at that blouse. The woman in charge
+shook her head, declining even to take the garment out of the window.
+Convinced now, womanlike, that this particular blouse was the blouse she
+desired above all other blouses the American woman opened her purse and
+indicated that she was prepared to buy at the shopwoman's own valuation,
+without the privilege of examination. The shopwoman showed deep pain
+at having to refuse the proposition, but refuse it she did; and the
+would-be buyer went home angry and perplexed and told her daughter what
+had happened.
+
+"It certainly is strange," the daughter said. "I thought everything in
+Paris, except possibly Napoleon's tomb, was for sale. This thing will
+repay investigation. Wait until I pin my hat on. Does my nose need
+powdering?"
+
+Her mother led her back to the shop of the blouse and then the puzzle
+was revealed. For it was the shop of a dry cleanser and the blouse
+belonged to some patron and was being displayed as a sample of the work
+done inside; but undoubtedly such a thing never before happened in Paris
+and probably never will happen again.
+
+In Venice not only the guides and the hotel clerks and porters but even
+the simple gondolier has a secret understanding with all branches of
+the retail trade. You get into a long, snaky, black gondola and fee the
+beggar who pushes you off, and all the other beggars who have assisted
+in the pushing off or have merely contributed to the success of the
+operation by being present, and you tell your gondolier in your best
+Italian or your worst pidgin English where you wish to go. It may be you
+are bound for the Rialto; or for the Bridge of Sighs, which is chiefly
+distinguished from all the other bridges by being the only covered one
+in the lot; or for the house of the lady Desdemona. The lady Desdemona
+never lived there or anywhere else, but the house where she would
+have lived, had she lived, is on exhibition daily from nine to five,
+admission one lira. Or perchance you want to visit one of the ducal
+palaces that are so numerous in Venice. These palaces are still tenanted
+by the descendants of the original proprietors; one family has perhaps
+been living in one palace three or four hundred years. But now the
+family inhabits the top floor, doing light housekeeping up there, and
+the lower floor, where the art treasures, the tapestries and the family
+relics are, is in charge of a caretaker, who collects at the door and
+then leads you through.
+
+Having given the boatman explicit directions you settle back in your
+cushion seat to enjoy the trip. You marvel how he, standing at the
+stern, with his single oar fitted into a shallow notch of his steering
+post, propels the craft so swiftly and guides it so surely by those
+short, twisting strokes of his. Really, you reflect, it is rowing by
+shorthand. You are feasting your eyes on the wonderful color effects and
+the groupings that so enthuse the artist, and which he generally
+manages to botch and boggle when he seeks to commit them to canvas; and
+betweenwhiles you are wondering why all the despondent cats in Venice
+should have picked out the Grand Canal as the most suitable place in
+which to commit suicide, when--bump!--your gondola swings up against
+the landing piles in front of a glass factory and the entire force
+of helpers rush out and seize you by your arms--or by your legs, if
+handier--and try to drag you inside, while the affable and accommodating
+gondolier boosts you from behind. You fight them off, declaring
+passionately that you are not in the market for colored glass at this
+time. The hired hands protest; and the gondolier, cheated out of his
+commission, sorrows greatly, but obeys your command to move on. At least
+he pretends to obey it; but a minute later he brings you up broadside at
+the water-level doors of a shop dealing in antiques, known appropriately
+as antichitas, or at a mosaic shop or a curio shop. If ever you do
+succeed in reaching your destination it is by the exercise of much
+profanity and great firmness of will.
+
+The most insistent and pesky shopkeepers of all are those who hive in
+the ground floors of the professedly converted palaces that face on
+three sides of the Square of Saint Mark's. You dare not hesitate for the
+smallest fractional part of a second in front of a shop here. Lurking
+inside the open door is a husky puller-in; and he dashes out and grabs
+hold of you and will not let go, begging you in spaghettified English to
+come in and examine his unapproachable assortment of bargains. You are
+not compelled to buy, he tells you; he only wants you to gaze on
+his beautiful things. Believe him not! Venture inside and decline to
+purchase and he will think up new and subtle Italian forms of insult and
+insolence to visit on you. They will have brass bands out for you if you
+invest and brass knuckles if you do not.
+
+There is but one way to escape from their everlasting persecutions, and
+that is to flee to the center of the square and enjoy the company of the
+pigeons and the photographers. They--the pigeons, I mean--belong to
+the oldest family in Venice; their lineage is of the purest and most
+undefiled. For upward of seven hundred years the authorities of the city
+have been feeding and protecting the pigeons, of which these countless
+blue-and-bronze flocks are the direct descendants. They are true
+aristocrats; and, like true aristocrats, they are content to live on the
+public funds and grow fat and sassy thereon, paying nothing in return.
+
+No; I take that part back--they do pay something in return; a full
+measure. They pay by the beauty of their presence, and they are surely
+very beautiful, with their dainty mincing pink feet and the sheen on the
+proudly arched breast coverts of the cock birds; and they pay by giving
+you their trust and their friendship. To gobble the gifts of dried
+peas, which you buy in little cornucopias from convenient venders
+for distribution among them, they come wheeling in winged battalions,
+creaking and cooing, and alight on your head and shoulders in that
+perfect confidence which so delights humans when wild or half-wild
+creatures bestow it on us, though, at every opportunity, we do our level
+best to destroy it by hunting and harrying them to death.
+
+At night, when the moon is up, is the time to visit this spot. Standing
+here, with the looming pile of the Doge's Palace bulked behind you,
+and the gorgeous but somewhat garish decorations of the great cathedral
+softened and soothed into perfection of outline and coloring by the half
+light, you can for the moment forget the fallen state of Venice, and
+your imagination peoples the splendid plaza for you with the ghosts of
+its dead and vanished greatnesses. You conceive of the place as it must
+have looked in those old, brave, wicked days, filled all with knights,
+with red-robed cardinals and clanking men at arms, with fair ladies and
+grave senators, slinking bravos and hired assassins--and all so gay with
+silk and satin and glittering steel and spangling gems.
+
+By the eye of your mind you see His Illuminated Excellency, the frosted
+Christmas card, as he bows low before His Eminence, the pink Easter egg;
+you see, half hidden behind the shadowed columns of the long portico, an
+illustrated Sunday supplement in six colors bargaining with a stick of
+striped peppermint candy to have his best friend stabbed in the back
+before morning; you see giddy poster designs carrying on flirtations
+with hand-painted valentines; you catch the love-making, overhear the
+intriguing, and scent the plotting; you are an eyewitness to a slice
+out of the life of the most sinister, the most artistic, and the most
+murderous period of Italian history.
+
+But by day imperious Caesar, dead and turn'd to clay, stops a hole to
+keep the wind away; and the wild ass of the ninety-day tour stamps his
+heedless hoofs over the spot where sleeps the dust of departed grandeur.
+By day the chug of the motor boat routs out old sleepy echoes from
+cracked and crannied ruins; the burnished golden frescoes of Saint
+Mark's blare at you as with brazen trumpets; every third medieval
+church has been turned into a moving-picture place; and the shopkeeping
+parasites buzz about you in vermin swarms and bore holes in your
+pocketbook until it is all one large painful welt. The emblem of Venice
+is the winged lion. It should be the tapeworm.
+
+In Rome it appears to be a standing rule that every authenticated guide
+shall be a violent Socialist and therefore rampingly anticlerical in all
+his views. We were in Rome during the season of pilgrimages. From all
+parts of Italy, from Bohemia and Hungary and Spain and Tyrol, and even
+from France, groups of peasants had come to Rome to worship in their
+mother church and be blessed by the supreme pontiff of their faith. At
+all hours of the day they were passing through the streets, bound for
+Saint Peter's or the Vatican, the women with kerchiefs over their heads,
+the men in their Sunday best, and all with badges and tokens on their
+breasts.
+
+At the head of each straggling procession would be a black-frocked
+village priest, at once proud and humble, nervous and exalted. A man
+might be of any religion or of no religion at all, and yet I fail to see
+how he could watch, unmoved, the uplifted faces of these people as they
+clumped over the cobbles of the Holy City, praying as they went. Some of
+them had been saving up all their lives, I imagine, against the
+coming of this great day; but our guide--and we tried three different
+ones--never beheld this sight that he did not sneer at it; and not once
+did he fail to point out that most of the pilgrims were middle-aged or
+old, taking this as proof of his claim that the Church no longer kept
+its hold on the younger people, even among the peasant classes. The
+still more frequent spectacle of a marching line of students of one of
+the holy colleges, with each group wearing the distinctive insignia of
+its own country--purple robes or green sashes, or what not--would excite
+him to the verge of a spasm.
+
+But then he was always verging on a spasm anyway--spasms were his normal
+state.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XX
+
+
+
+The Combustible Captain of Vienna
+
+Our guide in Vienna was the most stupid human being I ever saw. He was
+profoundly ignorant on a tremendously wide range of subjects; he had a
+most complete repertoire of ignorance. He must have spent years of study
+to store up so much interesting misinformation. This guide was much
+addicted to indulgence of a peculiar form of twisted English and at
+odd moments given to the consumption of a delicacy of strictly Germanic
+origin, known in the language of the Teutons as a rollmops. A rollmops
+consists of a large dilled cucumber, with a pickled herring coiled round
+it ready to strike, in the design of the rattlesnake-and-pinetree flag
+of the Revolution, the motto in both instances being in effect: "Don't
+monkey with the buzz saw!" He carried his rollmops in his pocket and
+frequently, in art galleries or elsewhere, would draw it out and nibble
+it, while disseminating inaccuracies touching on pictures and statues
+and things.
+
+Among other places, he took us to the oldest church in Vienna. As I now
+recollect it was six hundred years old. No; on second thought I will say
+it must have been older than that. No church could possibly become so
+moldy and mangy looking as that church in only six hundred years. The
+object in this church that interested me most was contained in an ornate
+glass case placed near the altar and alongside the relics held to be
+sacred. It did not exactly please me to gaze at this article; but the
+thing had a fascination for me; I will not deny that.
+
+It seems that a couple of centuries ago there was an officer in Vienna,
+a captain in rank and a Frenchman by birth, who, in the midst of
+disorders and licentiousness, lived so godly and so sanctified a life
+that his soldiers took it into their heads that he was really a saint,
+or at least had the making of a first-rate saint in him, and, therefore,
+must lead a charmed life. So--thus runs the tale--some of them laid a
+wager with certain Doubting Thomases, also soldiers, that neither
+by fire nor water, neither by rope nor poison, could he take harm to
+himself. Finally they decided on fire for the test. So they waited until
+he slept--those simple, honest, chuckle-headed chaps--and then they
+slipped in with a lighted torch and touched him off.
+
+Well, sir, the joke certainly was on those soldiers. He burned up with
+all the spontaneous enthusiasm of a celluloid comb. For qualities of
+instantaneous combustion he must have been the equal of any small-town
+theater that ever was built--with one exit. He was practically a total
+loss and there was no insurance.
+
+They still have him, or what is left of him, in that glass case. He
+did not exactly suffer martyrdom--though probably he personally did
+not notice any very great difference--and so he has not been canonized;
+nevertheless, they have him there in that church. In all Europe I only
+saw one sight to match him, and that was down in the crypt under the
+Church of the Capuchins, in Rome, where the dissected cadavers of four
+thousand dead--but not gone--monks are worked up into decorations. There
+are altars made of their skulls, and chandeliers made of their thigh
+bones; frescoes of their spines; mosaics of their teeth and dried
+muscles; cozy corners of their femurs and pelves and tibiae. There are
+two classes of travelers I would strongly advise not to visit the crypt
+of the Capuchins' Church--those who are just about to have dinner and
+want to have it, and those who have just had dinner and want to keep on
+having it.
+
+At the royal palace in Vienna we saw the finest, largest, and gaudiest
+collection of crown jewels extant. That guide of ours seemed to think he
+had done his whole duty toward us and could call it a day and knock
+off when he led us up to the jewel collections, where each case was
+surrounded by pop-eyed American tourists taking on flesh at the sight of
+all those sparklers and figuring up the grand total of their valuation
+in dollars, on the basis of so many hundreds of carats at so many
+hundred dollars a carat, until reason tottered on her throne--and did
+not have so very far to totter, either.
+
+The display or all those gems, however, did not especially excite me.
+There were too many of them and they were too large. A blue Kimberley
+in a hotel clerk's shirtfront or a pigeonblood ruby on a faro dealer's
+little finger might hold my attention and win my admiration; but where
+jewels are piled up in heaps like anthracite in a coal bin they thrill
+me no more than the anthracite would. A quart measure of diamonds of the
+average size of a big hailstone does not make me think of diamonds but
+of hailstones. I could remain as calm in their presence as I should in
+the presence of a quart of cracked ice; in fact, calmer than I should
+remain in the presence of a quart of cracked ice in Italy, say, where
+there is not that much ice, cracked or otherwise. In Italy a bucketful
+of ice would be worth traveling miles to see. You could sell tickets for
+it.
+
+In one of the smaller rooms of the palace we came on a casket containing
+a necklace of great smoldering rubies and a pair of bracelets to match.
+They were as big as cranberries and as red as blood--as red as arterial
+blood. And when, on consulting the guidebook, we read the history of
+those rubies the sight of them brought a picture to our minds, for they
+had been a part of the wedding dowry of Marie Antoinette. Once on a time
+this necklace had spanned the slender white throat that was later to
+be sheared by the guillotine, and these bracelets had clasped the same
+white wrists that were roped together with an ell of hangman's hemp on
+the day the desolated queen rode, in her patched and shabby gown, to the
+Place de la Revolution.
+
+I had seen paintings in plenty and read descriptions galore of that
+last ride of the Widow Capet going to her death in the tumbril, with the
+priest at her side and her poor, fettered arms twisted behind her, and
+her white face bared to the jeers of the mob; but the physical presence
+of those precious useless baubles, which had cost so much and yet had
+bought so little for her, made more vivid to me than any picture or
+any story the most sublime tragedy of The Terror--the tragedy of those
+two bound hands.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXI
+
+
+
+Old Masters and Other Ruins
+
+It is naturally a fine thing for one, and gratifying, to acquire a
+thorough art education. Personally I do not in the least regret the time
+I gave and the study I devoted to acquiring mine. I regard those two
+weeks as having been well spent.
+
+I shall not do it soon again, however, for now I know all about art. Let
+others who have not enjoyed my advantages take up this study. Let others
+scour the art galleries of Europe seeking masterpieces. All of them
+contain masterpieces and most of them need scouring. As for me and mine,
+we shall go elsewhere. I love my art, but I am not fanatical on the
+subject. There is another side of my nature to which an appeal may be
+made. I can take my Old Masters or I can leave them be. That is the way
+I am organized--I have self-control.
+
+I shall not deny that the earlier stages of my art education were
+fraught with agreeable little surprises. Not soon shall I forget the
+flush of satisfaction which ran through me on learning that this man
+Dore's name was pronounced like the first two notes in the music scale,
+instead of like a Cape Cod fishing boat. And lingering in my mind as a
+fragrant memory is the day when I first discovered that Spagnoletto was
+neither a musical instrument nor something to be served au gratin and
+eaten with a fork. Such acquirements as these are very precious to me.
+
+But for the time being I have had enough. At this hour of writing I
+feel that I am stocked up with enough of Bouguereau's sorrel ladies and
+Titian's chestnut ones and Rubens' bay ones and Velasquez's pintos to
+last me, at a conservative estimate, for about seventy-five years. I
+am too young as a theatergoer to recall much about Lydia Thompson's
+Blondes, but I have seen sufficient of Botticelli's to do me amply well
+for a spell. I am still willing to walk a good distance to gaze on one
+of Rembrandt's portraits of one of his kinfolks, though I must say he
+certainly did have a lot of mighty homely relatives; and any time there
+is a first-rate Millet or Corot or Meissonier in the neighborhood I wish
+somebody would drop me a line, giving the address. As for pictures by
+Tintoretto, showing Venetian Doges hobnobbing informally with members
+of the Holy Family, and Raphael's angels, and Michelangelo's lost souls,
+and Guidos, and Murillos, I have had enough to do me for months and
+months and months. Nor am I in the market for any of the dead fish of
+the Flemish school. Judging by what I have observed, practically all
+the Flemish painters were devout churchmen and painted their pictures on
+Friday.
+
+There was just one drawback to my complete enjoyment of that part of our
+European travels we devoted to art. We would go to an art gallery, hire
+a guide and start through. Presently I would come to a picture that
+struck me as being distinctly worth while. To my untutored conceptions
+it possessed unlimited beauty. There was, it seemed to me, life in the
+figures, reality in the colors, grace in the grouping. And then, just
+when I was beginning really to enjoy it, the guide would come and snatch
+me away.
+
+He would tell me the picture I thought I admired was of no account
+whatsoever--that the artist who painted it had not yet been dead long
+enough to give his work any permanent value; and he would drag me off to
+look at a cracked and crumbling canvas depicting a collection of saints
+of lacquered complexions and hardwood expressions, with cast-iron trees
+standing up against cotton batting clouds in the background, and a few
+extra halos floating round indiscriminately, like sun dogs on a showery
+day, and, up above, the family entrance into heaven hospitably ajar; and
+he would command me to bask my soul in this magnificent example of real
+art and not waste time on inconsequential and trivial things. Guides
+have the same idea of an artist that a Chinaman entertains for an egg.
+A fresh egg or a fresh artist will not do. It must have the perfume of
+antiquity behind it to make it attractive.
+
+At the Louvre, in Paris, on the first day of the two we spent there, we
+had for our guide a tall, educated Prussian, who had an air about him
+of being an ex-officer of the army. All over the Continent you are
+constantly running into men engaged in all manner of legitimate and
+dubious callings, who somehow impress you as having served in the army
+of some other country than the one in which you find them. After this
+man had been chaperoning us about for some hours and we had stopped to
+rest, he told a good story. It may not have been true--it has been my
+experience that very few good stories are true; but it served aptly to
+illustrate a certain type of American tourist numerously encountered
+abroad.
+
+"There were two of them," he said in his excellent English, "a gentleman
+and his wife; and from what I saw of them I judged them to be very
+wealthy. They were interested in seeing only such things as had been
+recommended by the guidebook. The husband would tell me they desired
+to see such and such a picture or statue. I would escort them to it and
+they would glance at it indifferently, and the gentleman would take out
+his lead pencil and check off that particular object in the book; and
+then he would say: 'All right--we've seen that; now let's find out
+what we want to look at next.' We still serve a good many people like
+that--not so many as formerly, but still a good many.
+
+"Finally I decided to try a little scheme of my own. I wanted to see
+whether I could really win their admiration for something. I picked out
+a medium-size painting of no particular importance and, pointing to
+it, said impressively: 'Here, m'sieur, is a picture worth a million
+dollars--without the frame!'
+
+"'What's that?' he demanded excitedly. Then he called to his wife,
+who had strayed ahead a few steps. 'Henrietta,' he said, 'come back
+here--you're missing something. There's a picture there that's worth a
+million dollars--and without the frame, too, mind you!'
+
+"She came hurrying back and for ten minutes they stood there drinking
+in that picture. Every second they discovered new and subtle beauties
+in it. I could hardly induce them to go on for the rest of the tour, and
+the next day they came back for another soul-feast in front of it."
+
+Later along, that guide confided to me that in his opinion I had a
+keen appreciation of art, much keener than the average lay tourist. The
+compliment went straight to my head. It was seeking the point of least
+resistance, I suppose. I branched out and undertook to discuss art
+matters with him on a more familiar basis. It was a mistake; but before
+I realized that it was a mistake I was out in the undertow sixty yards
+from shore, going down for the third time, with a low gurgling cry. He
+did not put out to save me, either; he left me to sink in the heaving
+and abysmal sea of my own fathomless ignorance. He just stood there and
+let me drown. It was a cruel thing, for which I can never forgive him.
+
+In my own defense let me say, however, that this fatal indiscretion was
+committed before I had completed my art education. It was after we
+had gone from France to Germany, and to Austria, and to Italy, that I
+learned the great lesson about art--which is that whenever and wherever
+you meet a picture that seems to you reasonably lifelike it is nine
+times in ten of no consequence whatsoever; and, unless you are willing
+to be regarded as a mere ignoramus, you should straightway leave it
+and go and find some ancient picture of a group of overdressed clothing
+dummies masquerading as angels or martyrs, and stand before that one and
+carry on regardless.
+
+When in doubt, look up a picture of Saint Sebastian. You never
+experience any difficulty in finding him--he is always represented as
+wearing very few clothes, being shot full of arrows to such an extent
+that clothes would not fit him anyway. Or else seek out Saint Laurence,
+who is invariably featured in connection with a gridiron; or Saint
+Bartholomew, who, you remember, achieved canonization through a process
+of flaying, and is therefore shown with his skin folded neatly and
+carried over his arm like a spring overcoat.
+
+Following this routine you make no mistakes. Everybody is bound to
+accept you as one possessing a deep knowledge of art, and not mere
+surface art either, but the innermost meanings and conceptions of art.
+Only sometimes I did get to wishing that the Old Masters had left a
+little more to the imagination. They never withheld any of the painful
+particulars. It seemed to me they cheapened the glorious end of those
+immortal fathers of the faith by including the details of the martyrdom
+in every picture. Still, I would not have that admission get out and
+obtain general circulation. It might be used against me as an argument
+that my artistic education was grounded on a false foundation.
+
+It was in Rome, while we were doing the Vatican, that our guide
+furnished us with a sight that, considered as a human experience, was
+worth more to me than a year of Old Masters and Young Messers. We had
+pushed our poor blistered feet--a dozen or more of us--past miles
+of paintings and sculptures and relics and art objects, and we were
+tired--oh, so tired! Our eyes ached and our shoes hurt us; and the
+calves of our legs quivered as we trailed along from gallery to
+corridor, and from corridor back to gallery.
+
+We had visited the Sistine Chapel; and, such was our weariness, we had
+even declined to become excited over Michelangelo's great picture of the
+Last Judgment. I was disappointed, too, that he had omitted to include
+in his collection of damned souls a number of persons I had confidently
+and happily expected would be present. I saw no one there even remotely
+resembling my conception of the person who first originated and
+promulgated the doctrine that all small children should be told at the
+earliest possible moment that there is no Santa Claus. That was a very
+severe blow to me, because I had always believed that the descent to
+eternal perdition would be incomplete unless he had a front seat. And
+the man who first hit on the plan of employing child labor on night
+shifts in cotton factories--he was unaccountably absent too. And
+likewise the original inventor of the toy pistol; in fact the absentees
+were entirely too numerous to suit me. There was one thing, though, to
+be said in praise of Michelangelo's Last Judgment; it was too large and
+too complicated to be reproduced successfully on a souvenir postal card;
+and I think we should all be very grateful for that mercy anyway.
+
+As I was saying, we had left the Sistine Chapel a mile or so behind us
+and had dragged our exhausted frames as far as an arched upper portico
+in a wing of the great palace, overlooking a paved courtyard inclosed
+at its farther end by a side wall of Saint Peter's. We saw, in another
+portico similar to the one where we had halted and running parallel to
+it, long rows of peasants, all kneeling and all with their faces turned
+in the same direction.
+
+"Wait here a minute," said our guide. "I think you will see something
+not included in the regular itinerary of the day."
+
+So we waited. In a minute or two the long lines of kneeling peasants
+raised a hymn; the sound of it came to us in quavering snatches. Through
+the aisle formed by their bodies a procession passed the length of the
+long portico and back to the starting point. First came Swiss Guards in
+their gay piebald uniforms, carrying strange-looking pikes and halberds;
+and behind them were churchly dignitaries, all bared of head; and last
+of all came a very old and very feeble man, dressed in white, with a
+wide-brimmed white hat--and he had white hair and a white face, which
+seemed drawn and worn, but very gentle and kindly and beneficent.
+
+He held his right arm aloft, with the first two fingers extended in the
+gesture of the apostolic benediction. He was so far away from us that
+in perspective his profile was reduced to the miniature proportions of
+a head on a postage stamp; but, all the same, the lines of it stood out
+clear and distinct. It was his Holiness, Pope Pius the Tenth, blessing a
+pilgrimage.
+
+All the guides in Rome follow a regular routine with the tourist. First,
+of course, they steer you into certain shops in the hope that you will
+buy something and thereby enable them to earn commissions. Then, in
+turn, they carry you to an art gallery, to a church, and to a palace,
+with stops at other shops interspersed between; and invariably they wind
+up in the vicinity of some of the ruins. Ruins is a Roman guide's middle
+name; ruins are his one best bet. In Rome I saw ruins until I was one
+myself.
+
+We devoted practically an entire day to ruins. That was the day we
+drove out the Appian Way, glorious in legend and tale, but not quite
+so all-fired glorious when you are reeling over its rough and rutted
+pavement in an elderly and indisposed open carriage, behind a pair of
+half-broken Roman-nosed horses which insist on walking on their hind
+legs whenever they tire of going on four. The Appian Way, as at present
+constituted, is a considerable disappointment. For long stretches it
+runs between high stone walls, broken at intervals by gate-ways,
+where votive lamps burn before small shrines, and by the tombs of such
+illustrious dead as Seneca and the Horatii and the Curiatii. At more
+frequent intervals are small wine groggeries. Being built mainly of
+Italian marble, which is the most enduring and the most unyielding
+substance to be found in all Italy--except a linen collar that has been
+starched in an Italian laundry--the tombs are in a pretty fair state of
+preservation; but the inns, without exception, stand most desperately in
+need of immediate repairing.
+
+A cow in Italy is known by the company she keeps; she rambles about, in
+and out of the open parlor of the wayside inn, mingling freely with the
+patrons and the members of the proprietor's household. Along the Appian
+Way a cow never seems to care whom she runs with; and the same is true
+of the domestic fowls and the family donkey. A donkey will spend his day
+in the doorway of a wine shop when he might just as well be enjoying the
+more sanitary and less crowded surroundings of a stable. It only goes to
+show what an ass a donkey is.
+
+Anon, as the fancy writers say, we skirted one of the many wrecked
+aqueducts that go looping across country to the distant hills, like
+great stone straddlebugs. In the vicinity of Rome you are rarely out
+of sight of one of these aqueducts. The ancient Roman rulers, you know,
+curried the favor of the populace by opening baths. A modern ruler could
+win undying popularity by closing up a few.
+
+We slowed up at the Circus of Romulus and found it a very sad circus, as
+such things go--no elevated stage, no hippodrome track, no centerpole,
+no trapeze, and only one ring. P. T. Barnum would have been ashamed
+to own it. A broken wall, following the lines of an irregular oval;
+a cabbage patch where the arena had been; and various tumble-down
+farmsheds built into the shattered masonry--this was the Circus of
+Romulus. However, it was not the circus of the original Romulus, but
+of a degenerate successor of the same name who rose suddenly and fell
+abruptly after the Christian era was well begun. Old John J. Romulus
+would not have stood for that circus a minute.
+
+No ride on the Appian Way is regarded as complete without half an hour's
+stop at the Catacombs of Saint Calixtus; so we stopped. Guided by a
+brown Trappist, and all of us bearing twisted tapers in our hands, we
+descended by stone steps deep under the skin of the earth and wandered
+through dim, dank underground passages, where thousands of early
+Christians had lived and hid, and held clandestine worship before rude
+stone altars, and had died and been buried--died in a highly unpleasant
+fashion, some of them.
+
+The experience was impressive, but malarial. Coming away from there I
+had an argument with a fellow American. He said that if we had these
+Catacombs in America we should undoubtedly enlarge them and put in band
+stands and lunch places, and altogether make them more attractive for
+picnic parties and Sunday excursionists. I contended, on the other hand,
+that if they were in America the authorities would close them up and
+protect the moldered bones of those early Christians from the vulgar
+gaze and prying fingers of every impious relic hunter who might come
+along. The dispute rose higher and grew warmer until I offered to bet
+him fifty dollars that I was right and he was wrong. He took me up
+promptly--he had sporting instincts; I'll say that for him--and we shook
+hands on it then and there to bind the wager. I expect to win that bet.
+
+We had turned off the Appian Way and were crossing a corner of that
+unutterably hideous stretch of tortured and distorted waste known as the
+Campagna, which goes tumbling away to the blue Alban Mountains, when we
+came on the scene of an accident. A two-wheeled mule cart, proceeding
+along a crossroad, with the driver asleep in his canopied seat, had been
+hit by a speeding automobile and knocked galley-west. The automobile had
+sped on--so we were excitedly informed by some other tourists who had
+witnessed the collision--leaving the wreckage bottom side up in the
+ditch. The mule was on her back, all entangled in the twisted ruination
+of her gaudy gear, kicking out in that restrained and genteel fashion
+in which a mule always kicks when she is desirous of protesting against
+existing conditions, but is wishful not to damage herself while so
+doing. The tourists, aided by half a dozen peasants, had dragged the
+driver out from beneath the heavy cart and had carried him to a pile of
+mucky straw beneath the eaves of a stable. He was stretched full length
+on his back, senseless and deathly pale under the smeared grime on his
+face. There was no blood; but inside his torn shirt his chest had a
+caved-in look, as though the ribs had been crushed flat, and he seemed
+not to breathe at all. Only his fingers moved. They kept twitching, as
+though his life was running out of him through his finger ends. One felt
+that if he would but grip his hands he might stay its flight and hold it
+in.
+
+Just as we jumped out of our carriage a young peasant woman, who had
+been bending over the injured man, set up a shrill outcry, which was
+instantly answered from behind us; and looking round we saw, running
+through the bare fields, a great, bulksome old woman, with her arms
+outspread and her face set in a tragic shape, shrieking as she sped
+toward us in her ungainly wallowing course. She was the injured man's
+mother, we judged--or possibly his grandmother.
+
+There was nothing we could do for the human victim. Our guides, having
+questioned the assembled natives, told us there was no hospital to which
+he might be taken and that a neighborhood physician had already been
+sent for. So, having no desire to look on the grief of his mother--if
+she was his mother--a young Austrian and I turned our attention to the
+neglected mule. We felt that we could at least render a little first
+aid there. We had our pocket-knives out and were slashing away at the
+twisted maze of ropes and straps that bound the brute down between the
+shafts, when a particularly shrill chorus of shrieks checked us. We
+stood up and faced about, figuring that the poor devil on the muck heap
+had died and that his people were bemoaning his death. That was not it
+at all. The entire group, including the fat old woman, were screaming at
+us and shaking their clenched fists at us, warning us not to damage that
+harness with our knives. Feeling ran high, and threatened to run higher.
+
+So, having no desire to be mobbed on the spot, we desisted and put up
+our knives; and after a while we got back into our carriage and drove
+on, leaving the capsized mule still belly-up in the debris, lashing out
+carefully with her skinned legs at the trappings that bound her; and the
+driver was still prone on the dunghill, with his fingers twitching more
+feebly now, as though the life had almost entirely fled out of him--a
+grim little tragedy set in the edge of a wide and aching desolation! We
+never found out his name or learned how he fared--whether he lived or
+died, and if he died how long he lived before he died. It is a puzzle
+which will always lie unanswered at the back of my mind, and I know
+that in odd moments it will return to torment me. I will bet one thing,
+though--nobody else tried to cut that mule out of her harness.
+
+In the chill late afternoon of a Roman day the guides brought us back
+to the city and took us down into the Roman Forum, which is in a hollow
+instead of being up on a hill as most folks imagine it to be until they
+go to Rome and see it; and we finished up the day at the Golden House of
+Nero, hard by the vast ruins of the Coliseum. We had already visited the
+Forum once; so this time we did not stay long; just long enough for some
+ambitious pickpocket to get a wallet out of my hip pocket while I was
+pushing forward with a flock of other human sheep for a better look
+at the ruined portico wherein Mark Antony stood when he delivered his
+justly popular funeral oration over the body of the murdered Caesar.
+I never did admire the character of Mark Antony with any degree of
+extravagance, and since this experience I have felt actually bitter
+toward him.
+
+The guidebooks say that no visitor to Rome should miss seeing the Golden
+House of Nero. When a guidebook tries to be humorous it only succeeds in
+being foolish. Practical jokes are out of place in a guidebook anyway.
+Imagine a large, old-fashioned brick smokehouse, which has been struck
+by lightning, burned to the roots and buried in the wreckage, and the
+site used as a pasture land for goats for a great many years; imagine
+the debris as having been dug out subsequently until a few of the
+foundation lines are visible; surround the whole with distressingly
+homely buildings of a modern aspect, and stir in a miscellaneous
+seasoning of beggars and loafers and souvenir venders--and you have the
+Golden House where Nero meant to round out a life already replete with
+incident and abounding in romance, but was deterred from so doing
+by reason of being cut down in the midst of his activities at a
+comparatively early age.
+
+In the presence of the Golden House of Nero I did my level best to
+recreate before my mind's eye the scenes that had been enacted here once
+on a time. I tried to picture this moldy, knee-high wall, as a great
+glittering palace; and yonder broken roadbed as a splendid Roman
+highway; and these American-looking tenements on the surrounding hills
+as the marble dwellings of the emperors; and all the broken pillars and
+shattered porticoes in the distance as arches of triumph and temples of
+the gods. I tried to convert the clustering mendicants into barbarian
+prisoners clanking by, chained at wrist and neck and ankle; I sought to
+imagine the pestersome flower venders as being vestal virgins; the two
+unkempt policemen who loafed nearby, as centurions of the guard;
+the passing populace as grave senators in snowy togas; the flaunting
+underwear on the many clotheslines as silken banners and gilded
+trappings. I could not make it. I tried until I was lame in both legs
+and my back was strained. It was no go.
+
+If I had been a poet or a historian, or a person full of Chianti,
+I presume I might have done it; but I am no poet and I had not been
+drinking. All I could think of was that the guide on my left had eaten
+too much garlic and that the guide on my right had not eaten enough. So
+in self-defense I went away and ate a few strands of garlic myself; for
+I had learned the great lesson of the proverb:
+
+When in Rome be an aroma!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXII
+
+
+
+Still More Ruins, Mostly Italian Ones
+
+When I reached Pompeii the situation was different. I could conjure
+up an illusion there--the biggest, most vivid illusion I have been
+privileged to harbor since I was a small boy. It was worth spending four
+days in Naples for the sake of spending half a day in Pompeii; and if
+you know Naples you will readily understand what a high compliment that
+is for Pompeii.
+
+To reach Pompeii from Naples we followed a somewhat roundabout route;
+and that trip was distinctly worth while too. It provided a most
+pleasing foretaste of what was to come. Once we had cleared the packed
+and festering suburbs, we went flanking across a terminal vertebra of
+the mountain range that sprawls lengthwise of the land of Italy, like
+a great spiny-backed crocodile sunning itself, with its tail in the
+Tyrrhenian Sea and its snout in the Piedmonts; and when we had done this
+we came out on a highway that skirted the bay.
+
+There were gaps in the hills, through which we caught glimpses of the
+city, lying miles away in its natural amphitheater; and at that distance
+we could revel in its picturesqueness and forget its bouquet of weird
+stenches. We could even forget that the automobile we had hired for the
+excursion had one foot in the grave and several of its most important
+vital organs in the repair shop. I reckon that was the first automobile
+built. No; I take that back. It never was a first--it must have been a
+second to start with.
+
+I once owned a half interest in a sick automobile. It was one of those
+old-fashioned, late Victorian automobiles, cut princesse style, with a
+plaquette in the back; and it looked like a cross between a fiat-bed job
+press and a tailor's goose. It broke down so easily and was towed in so
+often by more powerful machines that every time a big car passed it on
+the road it stopped right where it was and nickered. Of a morning
+we would start out in that car filled with high hopes and bright
+anticipations, but eventide would find us returning homeward close
+behind a bigger automobile, in a relationship strongly suggestive of
+the one pictured in the well-known Nature Group entitled: "Mother
+Hippo, With Young." We refused an offer of four hundred dollars for
+that machine. It had more than four hundred dollars' worth of things the
+matter with it.
+
+The car we chartered at Naples for our trip to Pompeii reminded me very
+strongly of that other car of which I was part owner. Between them there
+was a strong family resemblance, not alone in looks but in deportment
+also. For patient endurance of manifold ills, for an inexhaustible
+capacity in developing new and distressing symptoms at critical moments,
+for cheerful willingness to play foal to some other car's dam, they
+might have been colts out of the same litter. Nevertheless, between
+intervals of breaking down and starting up again, and being helped along
+by friendly passer-by automobiles, we enjoyed the ride from Naples. We
+enjoyed every inch of it.
+
+Part of the way we skirted the hobs of the great witches' caldron of
+Vesuvius. On this day the resident demons must have been stirring their
+brew with special enthusiasm, for the smoky smudge which always wreathes
+its lips had increased to a great billowy plume that lay along the
+naked flanges of the devil mountain for miles and miles. Now we would
+go puffing and panting through some small outlying environ of the city.
+Always the principal products of such a village seemed to be young
+babies and macaroni drying in the sun. I am still reasonably fond of
+babies, but I date my loss of appetite for imported macaroni from that
+hour. Now we would emerge on a rocky headland and below us would be the
+sea, eternally young and dimpling like a maiden's cheek; but the crags
+above were eternally old and all gashed with wrinkles and seamed with
+folds, like the jowls of an ancient squaw. Then for a distance we would
+run right along the face of the cliff. Directly beneath us we could
+see little stone huts of fishermen clinging to the rocks just above
+high-water mark, like so many gray limpets; and then, looking up, we
+would catch a glimpse of the vineyards, tucked into man-made terraces
+along the upper cliffs, like bundled herbs on the pantry shelves of a
+thrifty housewife; and still higher up there would be orange groves and
+lemon groves and dusty-gray olive groves. Each succeeding picture was
+Byzantine in its coloring. Always the sea was molten blue enamel, and
+the far-away villages seemed crafty inlays of mosaic work; and the sun
+was a disk of hammered Grecian gold.
+
+A man from San Francisco was sharing the car with us, and he came right
+out and said that if he were sure heaven would be as beautiful as the
+Bay of Naples, he would change all his plans and arrange to go there. He
+said he might decide to go there anyhow, because heaven was a place he
+had always heard very highly spoken of. And I agreed with him.
+
+The sun was slipping down the western sky and was laced with red like
+a bloodshot eye, with a Jacob's Ladder of rainbow shafts streaming down
+from it to the water, when we turned inland; and after several small
+minor stops, while the automobile caught its breath and had the heaves
+and the asthma, we came to Pompeii over a road built of volcanic rock.
+I have always been glad that we went there on a day when visitors
+were few. The very solitude of the place aided the mind in the task of
+repeopling the empty streets of that dead city by the sea with the life
+that was hers nearly two thousand years ago. Herculaneum will always
+be buried, so the scientists say, for Herculaneum was snuggled close up
+under Vesuvius, and the hissing-hot lava came down in waves; and first
+it slugged the doomed town to death and then slagged it over with
+impenetrable, flint-hard deposits. Pompeii, though, lay farther
+away, and was entombed in dust and ashes only; so that it has been
+comparatively easy to unearth it and make it whole again. Even so, after
+one hundred and sixty-odd years of more or less desultory explorations,
+nearly a third of its supposed area is yet to be excavated.
+
+It was in the year 1592 that an architect named Fontana, in cutting
+an aqueduct which was to convey the waters of the Sarno to Torre dell'
+Annunziata, discovered the foundations of the Temple of Isis, which
+stood near the walls on the inner or land side of the ancient city. It
+was at first supposed that he had dug into an isolated villa of some
+rich Roman; and it was not until 1748 that prying archaeologists hit on
+the truth and induced the Government to send a chain gang of convicts
+to dig away the accumulations of earth and tufa. But if it had been
+a modern Italian city that was buried, no such mistake in preliminary
+diagnosis could have occurred. Anybody would have known it instantly
+by the smell. I do not vouch for the dates--I copied them out of the
+guidebook; but my experience with Italian cities qualifies me to speak
+with authority regarding the other matter.
+
+Afoot we entered Pompeii by the restored Marine Gate. Our first step
+within the walls was at the Museum, a comparatively modern building, but
+containing a fairly complete assortment of the relics that from time
+to time have been disinterred in various quarters of the city. Here
+are wall cabinets filled with tools, ornaments, utensils, jewelry,
+furniture--all the small things that fulfilled everyday functions in
+the first century of the Christian era. Here is a kit of surgical
+implements, and some of the implements might well belong to a modern
+hospital. There are foodstuffs--grains and fruits; wines and oil; loaves
+of bread baked in 79 A. D. and left in the abandoned ovens; and a
+cheese that is still in a fair state of preservation. It had been buried
+seventeen hundred years when they found it; and if only it had been
+permitted to remain buried a few years longer it would have been
+sufficiently ripe to satisfy a Bavarian, I think.
+
+Grimmer exhibits are displayed in cases stretched along the center
+of the main hall--models of dead bodies discovered in the ruins and
+perfectly restored by pouring a bronze composition into the molds that
+were left in the hardened pumice after the flesh of these victims had
+turned to dust and their bones had crumbled to powder. Huddled together
+are the forms of a mother and a babe; and you see how, with her last
+conscious thought, the mother tried to cover her baby's face from the
+killing rain of dust and blistering ashes. And there is the shape of a
+man who wrapped his face in a veil to keep out the fumes, and died
+so. The veil is there, reproduced with a fidelity no sculptor could
+duplicate, and through its folds you may behold the agony that made his
+jaw to sag and his eyes to pop from their sockets.
+
+Nearby is a dog, which in its last spasms of pain and fright curled up
+worm fashion, and buried its nose in its forepaws and kicked out with
+its crooked hind legs. Plainly dogs do not change their emotional
+natures with the passage of years. A dog died in Pompeii in 79 A. D.
+after exactly the same fashion that a dog might die to-day in the pound
+at Pittsburgh.
+
+From here we went on into the city proper; and it was a whole city, set
+off by itself and not surrounded by those jarring modern incongruities
+that spoil the ruins of Rome for the person who wishes to give his fancy
+a slack rein. It is all here, looking much as it must have looked when
+Nero and Caligula reigned, and much as it will still look hundreds of
+years hence, for the Government owns it now and guards it and protects
+it from the hammer of the vandal and the greed of the casual collector.
+Here it is--all of it; the tragic theater and the comic theater; the
+basilica; the greater forum and the lesser one; the market place; the
+amphitheater for the games; the training school for the gladiators; the
+temples; the baths; the villas of the rich; the huts of the poor; the
+cubicles of the slaves; shops; offices; workrooms; brothels.
+
+The roofs are gone, except in a few instances where they have been
+restored; but the walls stand and many of the detached pillars stand
+too; and the pavements have endured well, so that the streets remain
+almost exactly as they were when this was a city of live beings instead
+of a tomb of dead memories, with deep groovings of chariot wheels in the
+flaggings, and at each crossing there are stepping stones, dotting the
+roadbed like punctuation marks. At the public fountain the well curbs
+are worn away where the women rested their water jugs while they swapped
+the gossip of the town; and at nearly every corner is a groggery, which
+in its appointments and fixtures is so amazingly like unto a family
+liquor store as we know it that, venturing into one, I caught myself
+looking about for the Business Men's Lunch, with a collection of greasy
+forks in a glass receptacle, a crock of pretzels on the counter, and a
+sign over the bar reading: No Checks Cashed--This Means You!
+
+In the floors the mosaics are as fresh as though newly applied; and the
+ribald and libelous Latin, which disappointed litigants carved on the
+stones at the back of the law court, looks as though it might have been
+scored there last week--certainly not further back than the week before
+that. A great many of the wall paintings in the interiors of rich
+men's homes have been preserved and some of them are fairly spicy as
+to subject and text. It would seem that in these matters the ancient
+Pompeiians were pretty nearly as broad-minded and liberal as the modern
+Parisians are. The mural decorations I saw in certain villas were almost
+suggestive enough to be acceptable matter for publication in a French
+comic paper; almost, but not quite. Mr. Anthony Comstock would be an
+unhappy man were he turned loose in Pompeii--unhappy for a spell, but
+after that exceedingly busy.
+
+We lingered on, looking and marveling, and betweenwhiles wondering
+whether our automobile's hacking cough had got any better by resting,
+until the sun went down and the twilight came. Following the guidebook's
+advice we had seen the Colosseum in Rome by moonlight. There was a full
+moon on the night we went there. It came heaving up grandly, a great,
+round-faced, full-cream, curdy moon, rich with rennet and yellow with
+butter fats; but by the time we had worked our way south to Naples a
+greedy fortnight had bitten it quite away, until it was reduced to a
+mere cheese rind of a moon, set up on end against the delft-blue platter
+of a perfect sky. We waited until it showed its thin rim in the heavens,
+and then, in the softened half-glow, with the purplish shadows deepening
+between the brown-gray walls of the dead city, I just naturally turned
+my imagination loose and let her soar.
+
+Standing there, with the stage set and the light effects just right,
+in fancy I repopulated Pompeii. I beheld it just as it was on a fair,
+autumnal morning in 79 A. D. With my eyes half closed, I can see the
+vision now. At first the crowds are massed and mingled in confusion, but
+soon figures detach themselves from the rest and reveal themselves
+as prominent personages. Some of them I know at a glance. Yon tall,
+imposing man, with the genuine imitation sealskin collar on his toga,
+who strides along so majestically, whisking his cane against his leg,
+can be no other than Gum Tragacanth, leading man of the Bon Ton Stock
+Company, fresh from his metropolitan triumphs in Rome and at this moment
+the reigning matinee idol of the South. This week he is playing
+Claude Melnotte in The Lady of Lyons; next week he will be seen in
+his celebrated characterization of Matthias in The Bells, with special
+scenery; and for the regular Wednesday and Saturday bargain matinees
+Lady Audley's Secret will be given.
+
+Observe him closely. It is evident that he values his art. Yet about him
+there is no false ostentation. With what gracious condescension does
+he acknowledge the half-timid, half-daring smiles of all the little
+caramel-chewing Floras and Faunas who have made it a point to be on Main
+Street at this hour! With what careless grace does he doff his laurel
+wreath, which is of the latest and most modish fall block, with the
+bow at the back, in response to the waved greeting of Mrs. Belladonna
+Capsicum, the acknowledged leader of the artistic and Bohemian set, as
+she sweeps by in her chariot bound for Blumberg Brothers' to do a little
+shopping. She is not going to buy anything--she is merely out shopping.
+
+Than this fair patrician dame, none is more prominent in the gay life
+of Pompeii. It was she who last season smoked a cigarette in public, and
+there is a report now that she is seriously considering wearing an ankle
+bracelet; withal she is a perfect lady and belongs to one of the old
+Southern families. Her husband has been through the bankruptcy courts
+twice and is thinking of going through again. At present he is engaged
+in promoting and writing a little life insurance on the side.
+
+Now her equipage is lost in the throng and the great actor continues on
+his way, making a mental note of the fact that he has promised to attend
+her next Sunday afternoon studio tea. Near his own stage door he bumps
+into Commodious Rotunda, the stout comedian of the comic theater, and
+they pause to swap the latest Lambs' Club repartee. This done, Commodius
+hauls out a press clipping and would read it, but the other remembers
+providentially that he has a rehearshal on and hurriedly departs. If
+there are any press clippings to be read he has a few of his own that
+will bear inspection.
+
+Superior Maxillary, managing editor of the Pompeiian "Daily
+News-Courier," is also abroad, collecting items of interest and
+subscriptions for his paper, with preference given to the latter. He
+enters the Last Chance Saloon down at the foot of the street and in a
+minute or two is out again, wiping his mustache on the back of his hand.
+We may safely opine that he has been taking a small ad. out in trade.
+
+At the door of the county courthouse, where he may intercept the
+taxpayers as they come and go, is stationed our old friend, Colonel Pro
+Bono Publico. The Colonel has been running for something or other ever
+since Heck was a pup. To-day he is wearing his official campaign smile,
+for he is a candidate for county judge, subject to the action of the
+Republican party at the October primaries. He is wearing all his lodge
+buttons and likewise his G. A. R. pin, for this year he figures on
+carrying the old-soldier vote.
+
+See who comes now! It is Rigor Mortis, the worthy coroner. At sight of
+him the Colonel uplifts his voice in hoarsely jovial salutation:
+
+"Rigsy, my boy," he booms, "how are you? And how is Mrs. M. this
+morning?"
+
+"Well, Colonel," answers his friend, "my wife ain't no better. She's
+mighty puny and complaining. Sometimes I get to wishing the old lady
+would get well--or something!"
+
+The Colonel laughs, but not loudly. That wheeze was old in 79. In front
+of the drug-store on the corner a score of young bloods, dressed in
+snappy togas for Varsity men, are skylarking. They are especially
+brilliant in their flashing interchanges of wit and humor, because
+the Mastodon Minstrels were here only last week, with a new line of
+first-part jokes. Along the opposite side of the street passes Nux
+Vomica, M.D., with a small black case in his hand, gravely intent on
+his professional duties. Being a young physician, he wears a beard and
+large-rimmed eyeglasses. Young Ossius Dome sees him and hails him.
+
+"Oh, Doc!" he calls out. "Come over here a minute. I've got some
+brand-new limerickii for you. Tertiary Tonsillitis got 'em from a
+traveling man he met day before yesterday when he was up in the city
+laying in his stock of fall and winter armor."
+
+The healer of ills crosses over; and as the group push themselves in
+toward a common center I hear the voice of the speaker:
+
+"Say, they're all bully; but this is the bullissimus one of the lot. It
+goes like this:
+
+              "'There was a young maid of Sorrento,
+                Who said to her--'"
+
+I have regretted ever since that at this juncture I came to and so
+failed to get the rest of it. I'll bet that was a peach of a limerick.
+It started off so promisingly.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIII
+
+
+
+Muckraking in Old Pompeii
+
+It now devolves on me as a painful yet necessary duty to topple from
+its pedestal one of the most popular idols of legendary lore. I refer, I
+regret to say, to the widely famous Roman sentry of old Pompeii.
+
+Personally I think there has been entirely too much of this sort of
+thing going on lately. Muckrakers, prying into the storied past, have
+destroyed one after another many of the pet characters in history.
+Thanks to their meddlesome activities we know that Paul Revere did not
+take any midnight ride. On the night in question he was laid up in bed
+with inflammatory rheumatism. What happened was that he told the news to
+Mrs. Revere as a secret, and she in strict confidence imparted it to the
+lady living next door; and from that point on the word traveled with the
+rapidity of wildfire.
+
+Horatius never held the bridge; he just let the blamed thing go. The boy
+did not stand on the burning deck, whence all but him had fled; he was
+among the first in the lifeboats. That other boy--the Spartan youth--did
+not have his vitals gnawed by a fox; the Spartan youth had been eating
+wild grapes and washing them down with spring water. Hence that gnawing
+sensation of which so much mention has been made. Nobody hit Billy
+Patterson. He acquired his black eye in the same way in which all
+married men acquire a black eye--by running against a doorjamb while
+trying to find the ice-water pitcher in the dark. He said so himself the
+next day.
+
+Even Barbara Frietchie is an exploded myth. She did not nail her
+country's flag to the window casement. Being a female, she could not
+nail a flag or anything else to a window. In the first place, she would
+have used a wad of chewing gum and a couple of hairpins. In the second
+place, had she recklessly undertaken to nail up a flag with hammer and
+nails, she would never have been on hand at the psychological moment
+to invite Stonewall Jackson to shoot her old gray head. When General
+Jackson passed the house she would have been in the bathroom bathing her
+left thumb in witch-hazel.
+
+Furthermore, she did not have any old gray head. At the time of the
+Confederate invasion of Maryland she was only seventeen years old--some
+authorities say only seven--and a pronounced blonde. Also, she did not
+live in Frederick; and even if she did live there, on the occasion when
+the troops went through she was in Baltimore visiting a school friend.
+Finally, Frederick does not stand where it stood in the sixties. The
+cyclone of 1884 moved it three miles back into the country and
+twisted the streets round in such a manner as to confuse even lifelong
+residents. These facts have repeatedly been proved by volunteer
+investigators and are not to be gainsaid.
+
+I repeat that there has been too much of this. If the craze for smashing
+all our romantic fixtures persists, after a while we shall have no
+glorious traditions left with which to fire the youthful heart at
+high-school commencements. But in the interests of truth, and also
+because I made the discovery myself, I feel it to be my solemn duty to
+expose the Roman sentry, stationed at the gate of Pompeii looking toward
+the sea, who died because he would not quit his post without orders and
+had no orders to quit.
+
+Until now this party has stood the acid test of centuries. Everybody
+who ever wrote about the fall of Pompeii, from Plutarch and Pliny the
+Younger clear down to Bulwer Lytton and Burton Holmes, had something to
+say about him. The lines on this subject by the Greek poet Laryngitis
+are familiar to all lovers of that great master of classic verse, and I
+shall not undertake to quote from them here.
+
+Suffice it to say that the Roman sentry, perishing at his post, has
+ever been a favorite subject for historic and romantic writers. I myself
+often read of him--how on that dread day when the devil's stew came to
+a boil and spewed over the sides of Vesuvius, and death and destruction
+poured down to blight the land, he, typifying fortitude and discipline
+and unfaltering devotion, stood firm and stayed fast while all about
+him chaos reigned and fathers forgot their children and husbands forgot
+their wives, and vice versa, though probably not to the same extent; and
+how finally the drifting ashes and the choking dust fell thicker upon
+him and mounted higher about him, until he died and in time turned to
+ashes himself, leaving only a void in the solidified slag. I had always
+admired that soldier--not his judgment, which was faulty, but his
+heroism, which was immense. To myself I used to say:
+
+"That unknown common soldier, nameless though he was, deserves to live
+forever in the memory of mankind. He lacked imagination, it is true,
+but he was game. It was a glorious death to die--painful, yet splendid.
+Those four poor wretches whose shells were found in the prison under the
+gladiators' school, with their ankles fast in the iron stocks--I know
+why they stayed. Their feet were too large for their own good. But no
+bonds except his dauntless will bound him at the portals of the doomed
+city. Duty was the only chain that held him.
+
+"And to think that centuries and centuries afterward they should find
+his monument--a vacant, empty mold in the piled-up pumice! Had I been
+in his place I should have created my vacancy much sooner--say, about
+thirty seconds after the first alarm went in. But he was one who chose
+rather that men should say, 'How natural he looks!' than 'Yonder he
+goes!' And he has my sincere admiration. When I go to Pompeii--if ever
+I do go there--I shall seek out the spot where he made the supremest
+sacrifice to authority that ever any man could make, and I shall tarry a
+while in those hallowed precincts!"
+
+That was what I said I would do and that was what I did do that
+afternoon at Pompeii. I found the gate looking toward the sea and I
+found all the other gates, or the sites of them; but I did not find the
+Roman sentry nor any trace of him, nor any authentic record of him. I
+questioned the guides and, through an interpreter, the curator of the
+Museum, and from them I learned the lamentably disillusioning facts in
+this case. There is no trace of him because he neglected to leave any
+trace.
+
+Doubtless there was a sentry on guard at the gate when the volcano
+belched forth, and the skin of the earth flinched and shivered and split
+asunder; but he did not remain for the finish. He said to himself that
+this was no place for a minister's son; and so he girded up his loins
+and he went away from there.
+
+He went away hurriedly--even as you and I.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXIV
+
+
+
+Mine Own People
+
+Wherever we went I was constantly on the outlook for a kind of tourist
+who had been described to me frequently and at great length by more
+seasoned travelers--the kind who wore his country's flag as a buttonhole
+emblem, or as a shirtfront decoration; and regarded every gathering and
+every halting place as providing suitable opportunity to state for the
+benefit of all who might be concerned, how immensely and overpoweringly
+superior in all particulars was the land from which he hailed as
+compared with all other lands under the sun. I desired most earnestly to
+overhaul a typical example of this species, my intention then being to
+decoy him off to some quiet and secluded spot and there destroy him in
+the hope of cutting down the breed.
+
+At length, along toward the fag end of our zigzagging course, I caught
+up with him; but stayed my hand and slew not. For some countries, you
+understand, are so finicky in the matter of protecting their citizens
+that they would protect even such a one as this. I was fearful lest,
+by exterminating the object of my homicidal desires, I should bring on
+international complications with a friendly Power, no matter however
+public-spirited and high-minded my intentions might be.
+
+It was in Vienna, in a cafe, and the hour was late. We were just
+leaving, after having listened for some hours to a Hungarian band
+playing waltz tunes and an assemblage of natives drinking beer, when
+the sounds of a dispute at the booth where wraps were checked turned
+our faces in that direction. In a thick and plushy voice a short square
+person of a highly vulgar aspect was arguing with the young woman who
+had charge of the check room. Judging by his tones, you would have said
+that the nap of his tongue was at least a quarter of an inch long; and
+he punctuated his remarks with hiccoughs. It seemed that his excitement
+had to do with the disappearance of a neck-muffler. From argument
+he progressed rapidly to threats and the pounding of a fist upon the
+counter.
+
+Drawing nigh, I observed that he wore a very high hat and a very short
+sack coat; that his waistcoat was of a combustible plaid pattern with
+gaiters to match; that he had taken his fingers many times to the
+jeweler, but not once to the manicure; that he was beautifully jingled
+and alcoholically boastful of his native land and that--a crowning
+touch--he wore flaring from an upper pocket of his coat a silk
+handkerchief woven in the design and colors of his country's flag. But,
+praises be, it was not our flag that he wore thus. It was the Union
+Jack. As we passed out into the damp Viennese midnight he was loudly
+proclaiming that he "Was'h Bri'sh subjesch," and that unless something
+was done mighty quick, would complain to "Is Majeshy's rep(hic)shenativ'
+ver' firsch thing 'n morn'."
+
+So though I was sorry he was a cousin, I was selfishly and unfeignedly
+glad that he was not a brother. Since in the mysterious and unfathomable
+scheme of creation it seemed necessary that he should be born somewhere,
+still he had not been born in America, and that thought was very
+pleasing to me.
+
+There was another variety of the tourist breed whose trail I most
+earnestly desired to cross. I refer to the creature who must be closely
+watched to prevent him, or her, from carrying off valuable relics as
+souvenirs, and defacing monuments and statues and disfiguring holy
+places with an inconsequential signature. In the flesh--and such a
+person must be all flesh and no soul--I never caught up with him, but
+more than once I came upon his fresh spoor.
+
+In Venice our guide took us to see the nether prisons of the Palace of
+the Doges. From the level of the Bridge of Sighs we tramped down flights
+of stone stairs, one flight after another, until we had passed the hole
+through which the bodies of state prisoners, secretly killed at night,
+were shoved out into waiting gondolas and had passed also the room where
+pincers and thumbscrew once did their hideous work, until we came to a
+cellar of innermost, deepermost cells, fashioned out of the solid rock
+and stretching along a corridor that was almost as dark as the cells
+themselves. Here, so we were told, countless wretched beings, awaiting
+the tardy pleasure of the torturer or the headsman, had moldered in damp
+and filth and pitchy blackness, knowing day from night only by the fact
+that once in twenty-four hours food would be slipped through a hole in
+the wall by unseen hands; lying here until oftentimes death or the cruel
+mercy of madness came upon them before the overworked executioner found
+time to rack their limbs or lop off their heads.
+
+We were told that two of these cells had been preserved exactly as they
+were in the days of the Doges, with no alteration except that lights had
+been swung from the ceilings. We could well accept this statement as the
+truth, for when the guide led us through a low doorway and flashed on an
+electric bulb we saw that the place where we stood was round like a jug
+and bare as an empty jug, with smooth stone walls and rough stone floor;
+and that it contained for furniture just two things--a stone bench upon
+which the captive might lie or sit and, let into the wall, a great iron
+ring, to which his chains were made fast so that he moved always to
+their grating accompaniment and the guard listening outside might know
+by the telltale clanking whether the entombed man still lived.
+
+There was one other decoration in this hole--a thing more incongruous
+even than the modern lighting fixtures; and this stood out in bold black
+lettering upon the low-sloped ceiling. A pair of vandals, a man and
+wife--no doubt with infinite pains--had smuggled in brush and marking
+pot and somehow or other--I suspect by bribing guides and guards--had
+found the coveted opportunity of inscribing their names here in the
+Doges' black dungeon. With their names they had written their address
+too, which was a small town in the Northwest, and after it the legend:
+"Send us a postal card."
+
+I imagine that then this couple, having accomplished this feat, regarded
+their trip to Europe as being rounded out and complete, and went home
+again, satisfied and rejoicing. Send them a postal card? Somebody should
+send them a deep-dish poison-pie!
+
+Looking on this desecration my companion and I grew vocal. We agreed
+that our national lawgivers who were even then framing an immigration
+law with a view to keeping certain people out of this country, might
+better be engaged in framing one with a view to keeping certain people
+in. Our guide harkened with a quiet little smile on his face to what we
+said.
+
+"It cannot have been here long--that writing on the ceiling," he
+explained for our benefit. "Presently it will be scraped away. But"--
+and he shrugged his eloquent Italian shoulders and outspread his hands
+fan-fashion--"but what is the use? Others like them will come and do as
+they have done. See here and here and here, if you please!"
+
+He aimed a darting forefinger this way and that, and looking where he
+pointed we saw now how the walls were scarred with the scribbled names
+of many visitors. I regret exceedingly to have to report that a majority
+of these names had an American sound to them. Indeed, many of the
+signatures were coupled with the names of towns and states of the Union.
+There were quite a few from Canada, too. What, I ask you, is the wisdom
+of taking steps to discourage the cutworm and abate the gypsy-moth when
+our government permits these two-legged varmints to go abroad freely and
+pollute shrines and wonderplaces with their scratchings, and give the
+nations over there a perverted notion of what the real human beings on
+this continent are like?
+
+For the tourist who has wearied of picture galleries and battlegrounds
+and ruins and abbeys, studying other tourists provides a pleasant way
+of passing many an otherwise tedious hour. Certain of the European
+countries furnish some interesting types--notably Britain, which
+producing a male biped of a lachrymose and cheerless exterior, who plods
+solemnly across the Continent wrapped in the plaid mantle of his own
+dignity, never speaking an unnecessary word to any person whatsoever.
+And Germany: From Germany comes a stolid gentleman, who, usually,
+is shaped like a pickle mounted on legs and is so extensively and
+convexedly eyeglassed as to give him the appearance of something that
+is about to be served sous cloche. Caparisoned in strange garments, he
+stalks through France or Italy with an umbrella under his arm, his nose
+being buried so deeply in his guidebook that he has no time to waste
+upon the scenery or the people; while some ten paces in the rear, his
+wife staggers along in his wake with her skirts dragging in the dust
+and her arms pulled half out of their sockets by the weight of the heavy
+bundles and bags she is bearing. This person, when traveling, always
+takes his wife and much baggage with him. Or, rather, he takes his wife
+and she takes the baggage which, by Continental standards, is regarded
+as an equal division of burdens.
+
+However, for variety and individual peculiarity, our own land offers the
+largest assortment in the tourist line, this perhaps being due to the
+fact that Americans do more traveling than any other race. I think that
+in our ramblings we must have encountered pretty nearly all the known
+species of tourists, ranging from sane and sensible persons who had
+come to Europe to see and to learn and to study, clear on down through
+various ramifications to those who had left their homes and firesides to
+be uncomfortable and unhappy in far lands merely because somebody told
+them they ought to travel abroad. They were in Europe for the reason
+that so many people run to a fire: not because they care particularly
+for a fire but because so many others are running to it. I would that
+I had the time, and you, kind reader, the patience so that I
+might enumerate and describe in full detail all the varieties and
+sub-varieties of our race that we saw--the pert, overfed, overpampered
+children, the aggressive, self-sufficient, prematurely bored young
+girls, the money-fattened, boastful vulgarians, scattering coin by
+the handful, intent only on making a show and not realizing that they
+themselves were the show; the coltish, pimply youths who thought in
+order to be high-spirited they must also be impolite and noisy. Youth
+will be served, but why, I ask you--why must it so often be served raw?
+For contrasts to such as these, we met plenty of people worth meeting
+and worth knowing--fine, attractive, well-bred American men and women,
+having a decent regard for themselves and for other folks, too. Indeed
+this sort largely predominated. But there isn't space for making a
+classified list. The one-volume chronicler must content himself with
+picking out a few particularly striking types.
+
+I remember, with vivid distinctness, two individuals, one an elderly
+gentleman from somewhere in the Middle West and the other, an old lady
+who plainly hailed from the South. We met the old gentleman in Paris,
+and the old lady some weeks later in Naples. Though the weather was
+moderately warm in Paris that week he wore red woolen wristlets
+down over his hands; and he wore also celluloid cuffs, which rattled
+musically, with very large moss agate buttons in them; and for
+ornamentation his watch chain bore a flat watch key, a secret order
+badge big enough to serve as a hitching weight and a peach-stone carved
+to look like a fruit basket. Everything about him suggested health
+underwear, chewing tobacco and fried mush for breakfast. His whiskers
+were cut after a pattern I had not seen in years and years. In my mind
+such whiskers were associated with those happy and long distant days
+of childhood when we yelled Supe! at a stagehand and cherished Old Cap
+Collier as a model of what--if we had luck--we would be when we grew up.
+By rights, he belonged in the second act of a rural Indian play, of a
+generation or two ago; but here he was, wandering disconsolately through
+the Louvre. He had come over to spend four months, he told us with a
+heave of the breath, and he still had two months of it unspent, and he
+just didn't see how he was going to live through it!
+
+The old lady was in the great National Museum at Naples, fluttering
+about like a distracted little brown hen. She was looking for the
+Farnese Bull. It seemed her niece in Knoxville had told her the Farnese
+Bull was the finest thing in the statuary line to be found in all Italy,
+and until she had seen that, she wasn't going to see anything else.
+She had got herself separated from the rest of her party and she
+was wandering along about alone, seeking information regarding the
+whereabouts of the Farnese Bull from smiling but uncomprehending
+custodians and doorkeepers. These persons she would address at the top
+of her voice. Plainly she suffered from a delusion, which is very common
+among our people, that if a foreigner does not understand you when
+addressed in an ordinary tone, he will surely get your meaning if you
+screech at him. When we had gone some distance farther on and were in
+another gallery, we could still catch the calliope-like notes of the
+little old lady, as she besought some one to lead her to the Farnese
+Bull.
+
+That she came right out and spoke of the Farnese Bull as a bull, instead
+of referring to him as a gentleman cow, was evidence of the extent to
+which travel had enlarged her vision, for with half an eye anyone could
+tell that she belonged to the period of our social development when
+certain honest and innocent words were supposed to be indelicate--that
+she had been reared in a society whose ideal of a perfect lady was one
+who could say limb, without thinking leg. I hope she found her bull, but
+I imagine she was disappointed when she did find it. I know I was. The
+sculpturing may be of a very high order--the authorities agree that it
+is--but I judge the two artists to whom the group is attributed carved
+the bull last and ran out of material and so skimped him a bit. The
+unfortunate Dirce, who is about to be bound to his horns by the sons
+of Antiope, the latter standing by to see that the boys make a good
+thorough job of it, is larger really than the bull. You can picture the
+lady carrying off the bull but not the bull carrying off the lady.
+
+Numerously encountered are the tourists who are doing Europe under a
+time limit as exact as the schedule of a limited train. They go through
+Europe on the dead run, being intent on seeing it all and therefore
+seeing none of it. They cover ten countries in a space of time which a
+sane person gives to one; after which they return home exhausted, but
+triumphant. I think it must be months before some of them quit panting,
+and certainly their poor, misused feet can never again be the feet they
+were.
+
+With them adherence to the time card is everything. If a look at the
+calendar shows the day to be Monday, they know they are in Munich, and
+as they lope along they get out their guidebooks and study the chapters
+devoted to Munich. But if it be Tuesday, then it is Dresden, and they
+give their attention to literature dealing with the attractions of
+Dresden; seeing Dresden after the fashion of one sitting before a
+runaway moving picture film.
+
+Then they pack up and depart, galloping, for Prague with their tongues
+hanging out. For Wednesday is Prague and Prague is Wednesday--the two
+words are synonymous and interchangeable. Surely to such as these, the
+places they have visited must mean as much to them, afterward, as the
+labels upon their trunks mean to the trunks--just flimsy names pasted
+on, all confused and overlapping, and certain to be scraped off in time,
+leaving nothing but faint marks upon an indurated surface.
+
+There is yet again another type, always of the female gender and
+generally middle-aged and very schoolteacherish in aspect, who, in
+company with a group of kindred spirits, is viewing Europe under a
+contract arrangement by which a worn and wearied-looking gentleman, a
+retired clergyman usually, acts as escort and mentor for a given price.
+I don't know how much he gets a head for this job; but whatever it is,
+he earns it ninety-and-nine times over. This lady tourist is much given
+to missing trains and getting lost and having disputes with natives
+and wearing rubber overshoes and asking strange questions--but let me
+illustrate with a story I heard.
+
+The man from Cook's had convoyed his party through the Vatican, until he
+brought them to the Apollo Belvidere. As they ranged themselves wearily
+about the statue, he rattled off his regular patter without pause or
+punctuation:
+
+"Here we have the far-famed Apollo Belvidere found about the middle of
+the fifteenth century at Frascati purchased by Pope Julius the Second
+restored by the great Michelangelo taken away by the French in 1797 but
+returned in 1815 made of Carara marble holding in his hand a portion of
+the bow with which he slew the Python observe please the beauty of
+the pose the realistic attitude of the limbs the noble and exalted
+expression of the face of Apollo Belvidere he being known also as
+Phoebus the god of oracles the god of music and medicine the son of Leto
+and Jupiter--"
+
+Here he ran out of breath and stopped. For a moment no one spoke.
+Then from a flat-chested little spinster came this query in tired yet
+interested tones:
+
+"Was he--was he married?"
+
+He who is intent upon studying the effect of foreign climes upon
+the American temperament should by no means overlook the colonies of
+resident Americans in the larger European cities, particularly the
+colonies in such cities as Paris and Rome and Florence. In Berlin, the
+American colony is largely made up of music students and in Vienna of
+physicians; but in the other places many folks of many minds and many
+callings constitute the groups. Some few have left their country for
+their country's good and some have expatriated themselves because, as
+they explain in bursts of confidence, living is cheaper in France
+than it is in America. I suppose it is, too, if one can only become
+reconciled to doing without most of the comforts which make life worth
+while in America or anywhere else. Included among this class are many
+rather unhappy old ladies who somehow impress you as having been shunted
+off to foreign parts because there were no places for them in the homes
+of their children and their grandchildren. So now they are spending
+their last years among strangers, trying with a desperate eagerness to
+be interested in people and things for which they really care not a fig,
+with no home except a cheerless pension.
+
+Also there are certain folk--products, in the main, of the Eastern
+seaboard--who, from having originally lived in America and spent most of
+their time abroad, have now progressed to the point where they now live
+mostly abroad and visit America fleetingly once in a blue moon. As a
+rule these persons know a good deal about Europe and very little about
+the country that gave them birth. The stock-talk of European literature
+is at their tongue's tip. They speak of Ibsen in the tone of one
+mourning the passing of a near, dear, personal friend, and as for
+Zola--ah, how they miss the influence of his compelling personality! But
+for the moment they cannot recall whether Richard K. Fox ran the Police
+Gazette or wrote the "Trail of the Lonesome Pine."
+
+They are up on the history of the Old World. From memory they trace
+the Bourbon dynasty from the first copper-distilled Charles to the last
+sourmashed Louis. But as regards our own Revolution, they aren't quite
+sure whether it was started by the Boston Tea Party or Mrs. O'Leary's
+Cow. Languidly they inquire whether that quaint Iowa character,
+Uncle Champ Root, is still Speaker of the House? And so the present
+Vice-President is named Elihu Underwood? Or isn't he? Anyway, American
+politics is such a bore. But they stand ready, at a minute's notice, to
+furnish you with the names, dates and details of all the marriages that
+have taken place during the last twenty years in the royal house of
+Denmark.
+
+Some day we shall learn a lesson from Europe. Some fair day we shall
+begin to exploit our own historical associations. We shall make shrines
+of the spots where Washington crossed the ice to help end one war and
+where Eliza did the same thing to help start another. We shall erect
+stone markers showing where Charley Ross was last seen and Carrie Nation
+was first sighted. We shall pile up tall monuments to Sitting Bull and
+Nonpareil Jack Dempsey and the man who invented the spit ball. Perhaps
+then these truant Americans will come back oftener from Paris and
+Florence and abide with us longer. Meanwhile though they will continue
+to stay on the other side. And on second thought, possibly it is just as
+well for the rest of us that they do.
+
+In Europe I met two persons, born in America, who were openly distressed
+over that shameful circumstance and could not forgive their parents for
+being so thoughtless and inconsiderate. One was living in England and
+the other was living in France; and one was a man and the other was a
+woman; and both of them were avowedly regretful that they had not
+been born elsewhere, which, I should say, ought to make the sentiment
+unanimous. I also heard--at second hand--of a young woman whose father
+served this country in an ambassadorial capacity at one of the principal
+Continental courts until the administration at Washington had a lucid
+interval, and endeared itself to the hearts of practically all Americans
+residing in that country by throwing a net over him and yanking him
+back home; this young woman was so fearful lest some one might think she
+cherished any affection for her native land that once when a legation
+secretary manifested a desire to learn the score of the deciding game of
+a World's Series between the Giants and the Athletics, she spoke up in
+the presence of witnesses and said:
+
+"Ah, baseball! How can any sane person be excited over that American
+game? Tell me--some one please--how is it played?"
+
+Yet she was born and reared in a town which for a great many years
+has held a membership in the National League. Let us pass on to a more
+pleasant topic.
+
+Let us pass on to those well-meaning but temporarily misguided persons
+who think they are going to be satisfied with staying on indefinitely in
+Europe. They profess themselves as being amply pleased with the
+present arrangement. For, no matter how patriotic one may be, one must
+concede--mustn't one?--that for true culture one must look to Europe?
+After all, America is a bit crude, isn't it, now? Of course some time,
+say in two or three years from now, they will run across to the States
+again, but it will be for a short visit only. After Europe one can never
+be entirely happy elsewhere for any considerable period of time. And so
+on and so forth.
+
+But as you mention in an offhand way that Cedar Bluff has a modern fire
+station now, or that Tulsanooga is going to have a Great White Way of
+its own, there are eyes that light up with a wistful light. And when you
+state casually, that Polkdale is planning a civic center with the new
+county jail at one end and the Carnegie Library at the other, lips begin
+to quiver under a weight of sentimental emotion. And a month or so
+later when you take the ship which is to bear you home, you find a large
+delegation of these native sons of Polkdale and Tulsanooga on board,
+too.
+
+At least we found them on the ship we took. We took her at Naples--a big
+comfortable German ship with a fine German crew and a double force of
+talented German cooks working overtime in the galley and pantry--and so
+came back by the Mediterranean route, which is a most satisfying route,
+especially if the sea be smooth and the weather good, and the steerage
+passengers picturesque and light-hearted. Moreover the coast of Northern
+Africa, lying along the southern horizon as one nears Gibraltar, is one
+of the few sights of a European trip that are not disappointing. For, in
+fact, it proves to be the same color that it is in the geographies--pale
+yellow. It is very unusual to find a country making an earnest effort
+to correspond to its own map, and I think Northern Africa deserves
+honorable mention in the dispatches on this account.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter XXV
+
+
+
+Be it Ever so Humble
+
+Homeward-bound, a chastened spirit pervades the traveler. He is not
+quite so much inclined to be gay and blithesome as he was going. The
+holiday is over; the sightseeing is done; the letter of credit is worn
+and emaciated. He has been broadened by travel but his pocketbook has
+been flattened. He wouldn't take anything for this trip, and as he feels
+at the present moment he wouldn't take it again for anything.
+
+It is a time for casting up and readjusting. Likewise it is a good time
+for going over, in the calm, reflective light of second judgment, the
+purchases he has made for personal use and gift-making purposes. These
+things seemed highly attractive when he bought them, and when displayed
+against a background of home surroundings will, no doubt, be equally
+impressive; but just now they appear as rather a sad collection of
+junk. His English box coat doesn't fit him any better than any other box
+would.
+
+His French waistcoats develop an unexpected garishness on being
+displayed away from their native habitat and the writing outfit which
+he picked up in Vienna turns out to be faulty and treacherous and inkily
+tearful. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a fountain
+pen--that weeps! And why, when a fountain pen makes up its mind to cry
+a spell, does it crawl clear across a steamer trunk and bury its sobbing
+countenance in the bosom of a dress shirt?
+
+Likewise the first few days at sea provide opportunity for sorting out
+the large and variegated crop of impressions a fellow has been acquiring
+during all these crowded months. The way the homeward-bound one feels
+now, he would swap any Old Master he ever saw for one peep at a set
+of sanitary bath fixtures. Sight unseen, he stands ready to trade two
+cathedrals and a royal palace for a union depot. He will never forget
+the thrill that shook his soul as he paused beneath the dome of the
+Pantheon; but he feels that, not only his soul but all the rest of him,
+could rally and be mighty cheerful in the presence of a dozen deep-sea
+oysters on the half shell--regular honest-to-goodness North American
+oysters, so beautifully long, so gracefully pendulous of shape that the
+short-waisted person who undertakes to swallow one whole does so at his
+own peril. The picture of the Coliseum bathed in the Italian moonlight
+will ever abide in his mind; but he would give a good deal for a large
+double sirloin suffocated Samuel J. Tilden style, with fried onions.
+Beefsteak! Ah, what sweet images come thronging at the very mention of
+the word! The sea vanishes magically and before his entranced vision he
+sees The One Town, full of regular fellows and real people. Somebody is
+going to have fried ham for supper--five thousand miles away he sniffs
+the delectable perfume of that fried ham as it seeps through a crack in
+the kitchen window and wafts out into the street--and the word passes
+round that there is going to be a social session down at the lodge
+to-night, followed, mayhap, by a small sociable game of quarter-limit
+upstairs over Corbett's drug-store. At this point, our traveler rummages
+his Elks' button out of his trunk and gives it an affectionate polishing
+with a silk handkerchief. And oh, how he does long for a look at a home
+newspaper--packed with wrecks and police news and municipal scandals
+and items about the persons one knows, and chatty mention concerning
+Congressmen and gunmen and tango teachers and other public characters.
+
+Thinking it all over here in the quiet and privacy of the empty sea, he
+realizes that his evening paper is the thing he has missed most. To the
+American understanding foreign papers seem fearfully and wonderfully
+made. For instance, German newspapers are much addicted to printing
+their more important news stories in cipher form. The German treatment
+of a suspected crime for which no arrests have yet been made, reminds
+one of the jokes which used to appear, a few years ago, in the back part
+of Harper's Magazine, where a good story was always being related of
+Bishop X, residing in the town of Y, who, calling one afternoon upon
+Judge Z, said to Master Egbert, the pet of the household, age four,
+and so on. A German newspaper will daringly state that Banker ----,
+president of the Bank of ---- at ---- who is suspected of sequestering
+the funds of that institution to his own uses is reported to have
+departed by stealth for the city of ----, taking with him the wife of
+Herr ----.
+
+And such is the high personal honor of the average Parisian news
+gatherer that one Paris morning paper, which specializes in actual news
+as counter-distinguished from the other Paris papers which rely upon
+political screeds to fill their columns, locks its doors and disconnects
+its telephones at 8 o'clock in the evening, so that reporters coming in
+after that hour must stay in till press time lest some of them--such is
+the fear--will peddle all the exclusive stories off to less enterprising
+contemporaries.
+
+English newspapers, though printed in a language resembling American in
+many rudimentary respects, seem to our conceptions weird propositions,
+too. It is interesting to find at the tail end of an article a footnote
+by the editor stating that he has stopped the presses to announce in
+connection with the foregoing that nothing has occurred in connection
+with the foregoing which would justify him in stopping the presses to
+announce it; or words to that effect. The news stories are frequently
+set forth in a puzzling fashion, and the jokes also. That's the
+principal fault with an English newspaper joke--it loses so in
+translation into our own tongue.
+
+Still, when all is said and done, the returning tourist, if he be at all
+fair-minded, is bound to confess to himself that, no matter where his
+steps or his round trip ticket have carried him, he has seen in every
+country institutions and customs his countrymen might copy to their
+benefit, immediate or ultimate. Having beheld these things with his own
+eyes, he knows that from the Germans we might learn some much-needed
+lessons about municipal control and conservation of resources; and from
+the French and the Austrians about rational observance of days of rest
+and simple enjoyment of simple outdoor pleasures and respect for great
+traditions and great memories; and from the Italians, about the blessed
+facility of keeping in a good humor; and from the English, about minding
+one's own business and the sane rearing of children and obedience to the
+law and suppression of unnecessary noises. Whenever I think of this
+last God-given attribute of the British race, I shall recall a Sunday we
+spent at Brighton, the favorite seaside resort of middle-class London.
+Brighton was fairly bulging with excursionists that day.
+
+A good many of them were bucolic visitors from up country, but the
+majority, it was plain to see, hailed from the city. No steam carousel
+shrieked, no ballyhoo blared, no steam pianos shrieked, no barker
+barked. Upon the piers, stretching out into the surf, bands played
+soothingly softened airs and along the water front, sand-artists and
+so-called minstrel singers plied their arts. Some of the visitors
+fished--without catching anything--and some listened to the music and
+some strolled aimlessly or sat stolidly upon benches enjoying the sea
+air. To an American, accustomed at such places to din and tumult
+and rushing crowds and dangerous devices for taking one's breath and
+sometimes one's life, it was a strange experience, but a mighty restful
+one.
+
+On the other hand there are some things wherein we notably
+excel--entirely too many for me to undertake to enumerate them here;
+still, I think I might be pardoned for enumerating a conspicuous few. We
+could teach Europe a lot about creature comforts and open plumbing
+and personal cleanliness and good food and courtesy to women--not the
+flashy, cheap courtesy which impels a Continental to rise and click his
+heels and bend his person forward from the abdomen and bow profoundly
+when a strange woman enters the railway compartment where he is seated,
+while at the same time he leaves his wife or sister to wrestle with
+the heavy luggage; but the deeper, less showy instinct which makes the
+average American believe that every woman is entitled to his protection
+and consideration when she really needs it. In the crowded street-car he
+may keep his seat; in the crowded lifeboat he gives it up.
+
+I almost forgot to mention one other detail in which, so far as I could
+judge, we lead the whole of the Old World--dentistry. Probably you have
+seen frequent mention in English publications about decayed gentlewomen.
+Well, England is full of them. It starts with the teeth.
+
+The leisurely, long, slantwise course across the Atlantic gives one
+time, also, for making the acquaintance of one's fellow passengers and
+for wondering why some of them ever went to Europe anyway. A source
+of constant speculation along these lines was the retired hay-and-feed
+merchant from Michigan who traveled with us. One gathered that he had
+done little else in these latter years of his life except to traipse
+back and forth between the two continents. What particularly endeared
+him to the rest of us was his lovely habit of pronouncing all words of
+all languages according to a fonetic system of his own. "Yes, sir,"
+you would hear him say, addressing a smoking-room audience of less
+experienced travelers, "my idee is that a fellow ought to go over on an
+English ship, if he likes the exclusability, and come back on a German
+ship if he likes the sociableness. Take my case. The last trip I made I
+come over on the Lucy Tanner and went back agin on the Grocer K. First
+and enjoyed it both ways immense!"
+
+Nor would this chronicle be complete without a passing reference to the
+lady from Cincinnati, a widow of independent means, who was traveling
+with her two daughters and was so often mistaken for their sister that
+she could not refrain from mentioning the remarkable circumstance to
+you, providing you did not win her everlasting regard by mentioning it
+first. Likewise I feel that I owe the tribute of a line to the
+elderly Britain who was engaged in a constant and highly successful
+demonstration of the fallacy of the claim set up by medical
+practitioners, to the effect that the human stomach can contain but one
+fluid pint at a time. All day long, with his monocle goggling glassily
+from the midst of his face, like one lone porthole in a tank steamer, he
+disproved this statement by practical methods and promptly at nine every
+evening, when his complexion had acquired a rich magenta tint, he would
+be carried below by two accommodating stewards and put--no, not put,
+decanted--would be decanted gently into bed. If anything had happened to
+the port-light of that ship, we could have stationed him forward in
+the bows with his face looming over the rail and been well within the
+maritime regulations--his face had a brilliancy which even the darkness
+of the night could not dim; and if the other light had gone out of
+commission, we could have impressed the aid of the bilious Armenian lady
+who was sick every minute and very sick for some minutes, for she was
+always of a glassy green color.
+
+We learned to wait regularly for the ceremony of seeing Sir Monocle
+and his load toted off to bed at nine o'clock every night, just as we
+learned to linger in the offing and watch the nimble knife-work when
+the prize invalid of the ship's roster had cornered a fresh victim. The
+prize invalid, it is hardly worth while to state, was of the opposite
+sex. So many things ailed her--by her own confession--that you wondered
+how they all found room on the premises at the same time. Her
+favorite evening employment was to engage another woman in
+conversation--preferably another invalid--and by honeyed words and
+congenial confidences, to lead the unsuspecting prey on and on, until
+she had her trapped, and then to turn on her suddenly and ridicule
+the other woman's puny symptoms and tell her she didn't even know the
+rudiments of being ill and snap her up sharply when she tried to answer
+back. And then she would deliver a final sting and go away without
+waiting to bury her dead. The poison was in the postscript--it nearly
+always is with that type of female. But afterward she would justify
+herself by saying people must excuse her manner--she didn't mean
+anything by it; it was just her way, and they must remember that she
+suffered constantly. Some day when I have time, I shall make that lady
+the topic of a popular song. I have already fabricated the refrain: Her
+heart was in the right place, lads, but she had a floating kidney!
+
+Arrives a day when you develop a growing distaste for the company of
+your kind, or in fact, any kind. 'Tis a day when the sea, grown frisky,
+kicks up its nimble heels and tosses its frothy mane. A cigar tastes
+wrong then and the mere sight of so many meat pies and so many German
+salads at the entrance to the dining salon gives one acute displeasure.
+By these signs you know that you are on the verge of being taken down
+with climate fever, which, as I set forth many pages agone, is a malady
+peculiar to the watery deep, and by green travelers is frequently
+mistaken for seasickness, which indeed it does resemble in certain
+respects. I may say that I had one touch of climate fever going over and
+a succession of touches coming back.
+
+At such a time, the companionship of others palls on one. It is well
+then to retire to the privacy of one's stateroom and recline awhile. I
+did a good deal of reclining, coming back; I was not exactly happy while
+reclining, but I was happier than I would have been doing anything else.
+Besides, as I reclined there on my cosy bed, a medley of voices would
+often float in to me through the half-opened port and I could visualize
+the owners of those voices as they sat ranged in steamer chairs, along
+the deck. I quote:
+
+"You, Raymund! You get down off that rail this minute." ... "My
+dear, you just ought to go to mine! He never hesitates a minute about
+operating, and he has the loveliest manners in the operating room. Wait
+a minute--I'll write his address down for you. Yes, he is expensive, but
+very, very thorough." ... "Stew'd, bring me nozher brand' 'n' sozza."
+... "Well, now Mr.--excuse me, I didn't catch your name?--oh yes, Mr.
+Blosser; well, Mr. Blosser, if that isn't the most curious thing! To
+think of us meeting away out here in the middle of the ocean and both
+of us knowing Maxie Hockstein in Grand Rapids. It only goes to show one
+thing--this certainly is a mighty small world." ... "Raymund, did you
+hear what I said to you!" ... "Do you really think it is becoming? Thank
+you for saying so. That's what my husband always says. He says that
+white hair with a youthful face is so attractive, and that's one reason
+why I've never touched it up. Touched-up hair is so artificial, don't
+you think?" ... "Wasn't the Bay of Naples just perfectly swell--the
+water, you know, and the land and the sky and everything, so beautiful
+and everything?" ... "You Raymund, come away from that lifeboat. Why
+don't you sit down there and behave yourself and have a nice time
+watching for whales?" ... "No, ma'am, if you're askin' me I must say I
+didn't care so much for that art gallery stuff--jest a lot of pictures
+and statues and junk like that, so far as I noticed. In fact the whole
+thing--Yurupp itself--was considerable of a disappointment to me. I
+didn't run acros't a single Knights of Pythias Lodge the whole time
+and I was over there five months straight hard-runnin'." ... "Really,
+I think it must be hereditary; it runs in our family. I had an aunt and
+her hair was snow-white at twenty-one and my grandmother was the same
+way." ... "Oh yes, the suffering is something terrible. You've had
+it yourself in a mild form and of course you know. The last time they
+operated on me, I was on the table an hour and forty minutes--mind you,
+an hour and forty minutes by the clock--and for three days and nights
+they didn't know whether I would live another minute."
+
+A crash of glass.
+
+"Stew'd, I ashidently turn' over m' drink--bring me nozher brand' 'n'
+sozza." ... "Just a minute, Mr. Blosser, I want to tell my husband about
+it--he'll be awful interested. Say, listen, Poppa, this gentleman
+here knows Maxie Hockstein out in Grand Rapids." ... "Do you think so,
+really? A lot of people have said that very same thing to me. They come
+up to me and say 'I know you must be a Southerner because you have such
+a true Southern accent.' I suppose I must come by it naturally, for
+while I was born in New Jersey, my mother was a member of a very old
+Virginia family and we've always been very strong Southern sympathizers
+and I went to a finishing school in Baltimore and I was always being
+mistaken for a Southern girl." ... "Well, I sure had enough of it to
+do me for one spell. I seen the whole shootin' match and I don't regret
+what it cost me, but, believe me, little old Keokuk is goin' to look
+purty good to me when I get back there. Why, them people don't know no
+more about makin' a cocktail than a rabbit." ... "That's her standing
+yonder talking to the captain. Yes, that's what so many people say, but
+as a matter of fact, she's the youngest one of the two. I say, 'These
+are my daughters,' and then people say, 'You mean your sisters.' Still
+I married very young--at seventeen--and possibly that helps to explain
+it." ... "Oh, is that a shark out yonder? Well, anyway, it's a porpoise,
+and a porpoise is a kind of shark, isn't it? When a porpoise grows
+up, it gets to be a shark--I read that somewhere. Ain't nature just
+wonderful?" ... "Raymund Walter Pelham, if I have to speak to you again,
+young man, I'm going to take you to the stateroom and give you something
+you won't forget in a hurry." ... "Stew'd, hellup me gellup."
+
+Thus the lazy hours slip by and the spell of the sea takes hold on you
+and you lose count of the time and can barely muster up the energy to
+perform the regular noonday task of putting your watch back half an
+hour. A passenger remarks that this is Thursday and you wonder dimly
+what happened to Wednesday.
+
+Three days more--just three. The realization comes to you with a joyous
+shock. Somebody sights a sea-gull. With eager eyes you watch its curving
+flight. Until this moment you have not been particularly interested
+in sea-gulls. Heretofore, being a sea-gull seemed to you to have few
+attractions as a regular career, except that it keeps one out in the
+open air; otherwise it has struck you as being rather a monotonous life
+with a sameness as to diet which would grow very tiresome in time. But
+now you envy that sea-gull, for he comes direct from the shores of the
+United States of America and if so minded may turn around and beat
+you to them by a margin of hours and hours and hours. Oh, beauteous
+creature! Oh, favored bird!
+
+Comes the day before the last day. There is a bustle of getting ready
+for the landing. Customs blanks are in steady demand at the purser's
+office. Every other person is seeking help from every other person,
+regarding the job of filling out declarations. The women go about with
+the guilty look of plotters in their worried eyes. If one of them fails
+to slip something in without paying duty on it she will be disappointed
+for life. All women are natural enemies to all excise men. Dirk, the
+Smuggler, was the father of their race.
+
+Comes the last day. Dead ahead lies a misty, thread-like strip of dark
+blue, snuggling down against the horizon, where sea and sky merge.
+
+You think it is a cloud bank, until somebody tells you the glorious
+truth. It is the Western Hemisphere--your Western Hemisphere. It is New
+England. Dear old New England! Charming people--the New Englanders! Ah,
+breathes there the man with soul so dead who never to himself has said,
+this is my own, my native land? Certainly not. A man with a soul so dead
+as that would be taking part in a funeral, not in a sea voyage. Upon
+your lips a word hangs poised. What a precious sound it has, what new
+meanings it has acquired! There are words in our language which are
+singular and yet sound plural, such as politics and whereabouts; there
+are words which are plural and yet sound singular, such as Brigham
+Young, and there are words which convey their exact significance by
+their very sound. They need no word-chandlers, no adjective-smiths to
+dress them up in the fine feathers of fancy phrasing. They stand on
+their own merits. You think of one such word--a short, sweet word of but
+four letters. You speak that word reverently, lovingly, caressingly.
+
+Nearer and nearer draws that blessed dark blue strip. Nantucket light
+is behind us. Long Island shoulders up alongside. Trunks accumulate in
+gangways; so do stewards and other functionaries. You have been figuring
+upon the tips which you will bestow upon them at parting; so have they.
+It will be hours yet before we land. Indeed, if the fog thickens, we may
+not get in before to-morrow, yet people run about exchanging good-byes
+and swapping visiting cards and promising one another they will meet
+again. I think it is reckless for people to trifle with their luck that
+way.
+
+Forward, on the lower deck, the immigrants cluster, chattering a magpie
+chorus in many tongues. The four-and-twenty blackbirds which were baked
+in a pie without impairment to the vocal cords have nothing on them.
+Most of the women were crying when they came aboard at Naples or Palermo
+or Gibraltar. Now they are all smiling. Their dunnage is piled in heaps
+and sailors, busy with ropes and chains and things, stumble over it and
+swear big round German oaths.
+
+Why, gracious! We are actually off Sandy Hook. Dear old Sandy--how one
+loves those homely Scotch names! The Narrows are nigh and Brooklyn, the
+City Beautiful, awaits us around the second turning to the left. The
+pilot boat approaches. Brave little craft! Gallant pilot! Do you suppose
+by any chance he has brought any daily papers with him? He has--hurrah
+for the thoughtful pilot! Did you notice how much he looked like the
+pictures of Santa Claus?
+
+We move on more slowly and twice again we stop briefly. The quarantine
+officers have clambered up the sides and are among us; and to some of us
+they give cunning little thermometers to hold in our mouths and suck on,
+and of others they ask chatty, intimate questions with a view to finding
+out how much insanity there is in the family at present and just what
+percentage of idiocy prevails? Three cheers for the jolly old quarantine
+regulations. Even the advance guard of the customhouse is welcomed by
+one and all--or nearly all.
+
+Between wooded shores which seem to advance to meet her in kindly
+greeting, the good ship shoves ahead. For she is a good ship, and later
+we shall miss her, but at this moment we feel that we can part from
+her without a pang. She rounds a turn in the channel. What is that mass
+which looms on beyond, where cloud-combing office buildings scallop
+the sky and bridges leap in far-flung spans from shore to shore? That's
+her--all right--the high picketed gateway of the nation. That's little
+old New York. Few are the art centers there, and few the ruins; and
+perhaps there is not so much culture lying round loose as there might
+be--just bustle and hustle, and the rush and crush and roar of business
+and a large percentage of men who believe in supporting their own wives
+and one wife at a time. Crass perhaps, crude perchance, in many ways,
+but no matter. All her faults are virtues now. Beloved metropolis, we
+salute thee! And also do we turn to salute Miss Liberty.
+
+This series of adventure tales began with the Statue of Liberty fading
+rearward through the harbor mists. It draws to a close with the same
+old lady looming through those same mists and drawing ever closer and
+closer. She certainly does look well this afternoon, doesn't she? She
+always does look well, somehow.
+
+We slip past her and on past the Battery too; and are nosing up the
+North River. What a picturesque stream it is, to be sure! And how full
+of delightful rubbish! In twenty minutes or less we shall be at the
+dock. Folks we know are there now, waiting to welcome us.
+
+As close as we can pack ourselves, we gather in the gangways. Some one
+raises a voice in song. 'Tis not the Marseillaise hymn that we sing, nor
+Die Wacht am Rhein, nor Ava Maria, nor God Save the King; nor yet is it
+Columbia the Gem of the Ocean. In their proper places these are all good
+songs, but we know one more suitable to the occasion, and so we all join
+in. Hark! Happy voices float across the narrowing strip of rolly water
+between ship and shore:
+
+                  "'Mid pleasures and palaces,
+                       Though we may roam,
+
+(Now then, altogether, mates:)
+
+                      Be it ever so humble,
+                      There's no place like
+                              HOME!"
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Europe Revised, by Irvin S. Cobb
+
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