- And at Home. - The Ugliest Cathedral in Europe. - Old
Masters and New. - Victual-and-Drink-Scapes. - The German Band. - A
"Beer Garden." - Not the Women to Turn a Man's Head. - Difficulty of
Dining to Music. - Why one should Keep one's Mug Shut.
I think myself it is Saturday. B. says it is only Friday; but I am
positive I have had three cold baths since we left Ober-Ammergau,
which we did on Wednesday morning. If it is only Friday, then I
have had two morning baths in one day. Anyhow, we shall know to-
morrow by the shops being open or shut.
We travelled from Oberau with a tourist agent, and he told us all
his troubles. It seems that a tourist agent is an ordinary human
man, and has feelings just like we have. This had never occurred to
me before. I told him so.
"No," he replied, "it never does occur to you tourists. You treat
us as if we were mere Providence, or even the Government itself. If
all goes well, you say, what is the good of us, contemptuously; and
if things go wrong, you say, what is the good of us, indignantly. I
work sixteen hours a day to fix things comfortably for you, and you
cannot even look satisfied; while if a train is late, or a hotel
proprietor overcharges, you come and bully ME about it. If I see
after you, you mutter that I am officious; and if I leave you alone,
you grumble that I am neglectful. You swoop down in your hundreds
upon a tiny village like Ober-Ammergau without ever letting us know
even that you are coming, and then threaten to write to the Times
because there is not a suite of apartments and a hot dinner waiting
ready for each of you.
"You want the best lodgings in the place, and then, when at a
tremendous cost of trouble, they have been obtained for you, you
object to pay the price asked for them. You all try and palm
yourselves off for dukes and duchesses, travelling in disguise. You
have none of you ever heard of a second-class railway carriage -
didn't know that such things were made. You want a first-class
Pullman car reserved for each two of you. Some of you have seen an
omnibus in the distance, and have wondered what it was used for. To
suggest that you should travel in such a plebeian conveyance, is to
give you a shock that takes you two days to recover from. You
expect a private carriage, with a footman in livery, to take you
through the mountains. You, all of you, must have the most
expensive places in the theatre. The eight-mark and six-mark places
are every bit as good as the ten-mark seats, of which there are only
a very limited number; but you are grossly insulted if it is hinted
that you should sit in anything but the dearest chairs.
