"Mr. Siegel," I said, when tea was finished and we had lighted his
cigars, "I thought you were 'German.'"
"You did, hey? Well, I'm German the same way you are English! My
grandfather was a _real_ German, but they ran him out in '48, and he
went over with Schurz and the rest of that band, and if you can find
better Americans than their descendants, I do not know where they
are. The German of to-day is another creature, and I want nothing to
do with him. Those people are the limit; '_verboten_' this and
'_verboten_' that, till a man doesn't dare do anything without asking
the policeman if he may. Women have to stand in the gutter till an
officer goes by. Why, when we were in Berlin one of them would have
run Maria through with his sword if I hadn't told him I was a friend
of the Kaiser."
"Jim," exclaimed Mrs. Siegel, "how you do talk! You know he never
touched me, and you never spoke to the Kaiser!"
"Well, _he_ didn't know it! And moreover, as I am a friend of
Carnegie--now that he has gone out of business--and had on a good
suit of clothes, and so looked as if I could lend money to his boss,
he believed it was true, and so let you live. Oh, I can manage the
army all right, it is the custom-house officer who 'gets my goat.' I
understand how to deal with the American breed, but I am helpless
with those fellows. However, I have got things fixed now, so that if
we ever have to go back there, it will not be as bad as it was at
Frankfort."
"What happened at Frankfort?" I asked.
"Well, I'll tell you. My doctor at home wanted to go to Canada for
the fishing, and fearing a competitor would get his business away
from him, told me to go to Carlsbad and get a good soak. When I had
finished with the prune pure, the veal and the water, I started for
Frankfort to meet Maria, who had been at St. Moritz. She had the
usual twenty-one trunks, and I asked for the keys and began to open
them--getting one key in five right, accusing the French maid of
having lost some of them, and getting the usual French change in
reply.
"Well, sir, if a man is looking for a sweat he has no need to go to
Carlsbad, let him try to open his wife's trunks while a German pig in
uniform looks on! When you tell him you can't find one key, but it
is the one for the soiled-clothes bag, and he says that is the one he
most wants to see, you are 'up against it.'
"I should have had a fit in a few minutes, I believe, if I had not
caught sight of Charlie Wilson at the other end of the shed, trying
to get his wife's trunks open. But he was not showing the same
patience and dignity as I was. His language was something awful. He
first told the maid he had given her the key to the hat-box, and she
said he hadn't. Then he said he had given it to his wife, and _she_
said he hadn't, so I knew he must be badly rattled. When a man
begins to change his lies it's a sure sign he has lost his nerve.
Mrs. Wilson began to cry, and _her_ pig laughed. So just to cheer
them up a bit I called out: 'Hello, Charlie, I thought you were down
at your place on Long Island.' Then I thought _Charlie_ was going to
cry! He wiped the sweat off his face and, coming over to me, said:
"Jim, this is something fierce! I have a perfectly good home where
we can have chowder three times a day, if we want it, and a swim in
the surf every evening, and things to drink that are not made out of
hair-oil, and I left it all and came over here because that ----
doctor told me to go to Homberg!'
"Well, we finally got all the trunks open, and as they found nothing
they could fine me for, we were allowed to drive to the hotel. Mrs.
Wilson was still dabbling her eyes with a bit of lace that one tear
would have made a sop, and Maria said she was worn out, and was going
to bed, and Charlie said he must have a drink, and so I told his wife
I would go with him, and see that he did not take two!
"When this had been done I went to my room, took off my coat and
collar, and sat down to wrestle with the problem of trunks. After a
while it came to me, and I rang for the porter. He came, in his
field-marshal's uniform, and said, 'Bitter?' and I said, 'Very
bitter,' and then asked him if he could speak the English language?
He said he could speak all languages. I guess that was right, but it
would have been better if he had spoken one at a time! However, he
finally got it into his head that I wanted a locksmith, and said he
thought he could get one that evening or the next morning.
"I said: 'My friend, you listen to me: every minute you delay takes
off a mark from what is coming to you when I leave, so you can
calculate how much will be owing me if you don't get a move on.'
"Well, that got under his skin, and before long he returned with a
man in a green apron, who, he said, was a locksmith.
"I explained to the porter that I wanted the locks taken off every
trunk, and twenty-one new locks put on, which one key would fit. It
took him some time to understand that I did not want twenty-one keys
and one lock, but when he did, he translated it into one of his five
branches of languages. The man in the green apron began to run
around in circles and said there were not twenty-one locks alike in
Frankfort. I asked where they could be gotten, and Green Apron said
only at the factory.
"Well, where was that?
"In Munich or near there. If he wrote he might be able to get them
in a week.
"I asked if his health did not permit him to travel.
"When he got that, he was instructed to take the first train to
Munich and get those locks, bring them back and have them on the
trunks by noon the next day. It was Maria's birthday, and I wanted
to give her a surprise.
"Well, sir, it was done, and now life is easy. The only drawback was
that there were no more German custom-houses for us to pass through,
and so no more officers who wanted to see how many pieces we had in
the wash, for we shipped our baggage 'in bond' and when we reached
England the officer said: 'If you will open that one, it will be all
that I shall require,' and when I offered him what would be expected
at home, he declined it! However, I shall have some fun at home when
we get on the dock where the officers loaf while distracted
passengers hunt for keys.
"The porter got his tip, but whether it was not as much as he had
expected, or whether he thought I had not shown proper respect for
the field-marshal's uniform, or for some other reason, he did not
seem grateful and said something about tags. I told him I didn't
need any, as I had had mine printed before we left home.
"Maria says that I did not understand, that the Germans are expecting
a sort of Day of Judgment, and that Tag means Day. Well, if it comes
while I'm still here, I'm willing to take what's coming to me if
sentence can be suspended till I see some of those army and
custom-house officers get theirs. I worked in the rolling-mills,
when I was young, and I guess I can stand it better than some!"
"Jim," said Mrs. Siegel, "you ought to be ashamed of yourself,
talking that way before Mr. Dobson."
"I guess that's right, mother, but Dobson dresses and talks and acts
so like a man that I keep forgetting that he is a preacher."
As we drove away toward Windsor I said to Ruth: "Is he not typical of
hundreds we know, and, in spite of their roughness, what a power they
are in the land!"
But Ruth had not found him so amusing as I did. She said that she
found that continuous exaggeration, which is supposed to be the
essence of American humor, rather tiring, and added:
"I do not deny his good spirit and kindliness, but underneath there
seems to be a kind of hardness in men of his sort that frightens me.
Your neighbor of this afternoon who rebuked you, was unquestionably
lacking in a sense of humor--or at any rate in the kind we are used
to--but he was a finer type than this man, and I cannot help feeling
that the man who has an awful sense of truth is a greater national
asset than the man we have just left."
When Ruth takes that tone I do not dare to answer, but I may say to
you that I do not think she does these men justice. If "Der Tag"
ever comes--and in my opinion it will not come--I think all this talk
is just _fluff_--still, if it should come, I believe these reckless
talkers, but shrewd--well, perhaps also hard--men will give to the
nation all the shrewdness and all the energy which went into the
upbuilding of their business, and yet will keep on laughing at the
world, and at themselves, too, all the time!