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.
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