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.
