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 counterdistinguished 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.
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