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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: