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.
