SOME LITTLE ADVENTURES BY THE WAY.
_December 21, 1902._
[Sidenote: Conditions Unfavorable to Letter-writing Abroad.]
The margin of leisure left to a traveller in Europe for the writing of
letters is, after all, a very narrow one, as those of my readers who
have been abroad will readily remember. One generally moves from place
to place in such rapid succession that the feeling of being settled,
which is essential to the most satisfactory writing, is almost unknown.
Then, when one does stop for a few days in a historic city, each day
is so full of interest, and the golden opportunity to see its sights
seems so fleeting, that one hesitates to take any part of such time for
writing, to say nothing of the weariness and drowsiness of an evening
that follows a day of sightseeing.
Add to this the amount of time required of one who acts as general
director of the tour, and has to take account of all manner of business
details, and the number of questions to be answered when there are
three or four young people in the party who have read just enough
general history to make their minds bristle with interrogations at
every interesting place, and who have to be read to daily _en masse_
on the spot in order to improve the psychological moment of excited
curiosity; add also the physician's injunction to take abundance of
exercise in the open air, in order to the full recovery of health and
the laying up of strength for future work, and his earnest counsel not
to linger much at a writing desk or a study table--and it will be seen
that if the continuity of this series of letters suffers an occasional
break, it is but the natural result of the conditions of tourist life.
[Sidenote: An American Baby in Europe.]
It may interest some of my younger readers to know that the member
of our party who receives the most attention is a little blue-eyed
girl, just two years old to-day, who is the most extraordinary
traveller of her age that I ever saw or ever heard of, accepting all
the irregularities, inconveniences and discomforts of this migratory
mode of life with the serene indifference of a veteran. We naturally
supposed that, being so young, she would give us more or less trouble
on so long a journey, and this proved to be true on the cold and rough
sea voyage, but, from the day that we landed on this side of the ocean,
she has been a delight to our whole party, a maker of friends wherever
we have gone, and an immensely interesting object to the populace of
the cities through which we have passed. At Leyden, in Holland, as we
passed along the streets, we were followed all over town by an admiring
throng of Dutch children, just out of school, to whom our baby's bright
red coat and cap were no less interesting than their wooden shoes were
to us; and so we found out how the elephants and monkeys and musicians
and other people who make up the street parade of a circus may be
supposed to feel when they pass through a town followed by the motley
gang of school boys, ragamuffins, and general miscellanies of humanity.
[Sidenote: Something New in Venice.]
At Wiesbaden, in Germany, we bought one of those odd little German
baby carts with two wheels and two handles, like plow handles, between
which the person who pushes it walks, the baby really riding backwards,
instead of forwards, as in our American baby carriages. You will see
from this description that German baby carriages are like the German
language--all turned the wrong way, though it must be said for this
arrangement that the baby is not so likely to be lonesome as when
riding face forward, since she always has some one to look at. Well,
at Venice, which is almost a dead town now, so far as business is
concerned, and which has perhaps as large a leisure class--that is,
street loafers--as any city of equal size on this terraqueous planet,
a lady of our party essayed to take the baby out for an airing in her
German cart. It would appear that it was the first time since the
foundation of that pile-driven city in the sea that a pair of wheels
was ever seen on her streets. At any rate, from the moment that the
lady and the baby and the cart emerged from the hotel door they were
attended by an ever-increasing throng of unwashed Venetians, whose
interest could not have been keener had Santos Dumont's air-ship or a
Japanese jinriksha suddenly appeared in their gondola-ridden town, and
who commented in shrill Italian on this wheeled apparition. The lady is
not easily beaten when she decides to do anything, but, after standing
that for half a block or so, she made a hasty retreat to the hotel, and
wheels disappeared, probably forever, from the streets of Venice.
[Sidenote: Gondolas and Gondoliers.]
Although Venice, with its population of one hundred and sixty-three
thousand, is seven miles in circumference, and is divided by one
hundred and forty-six canals into one hundred and seventeen islands,
yet these are so joined together by means of four hundred bridges that
it is possible to walk all over the city. But the bridges are built in
steps, and cannot be used by wheeled vehicles. There are no horses or
carriages of any kind. The funereal-looking gondola, always painted
black, is the only conveyance upon these streets of water, and does
duty for cab, omnibus, wagon, cart, wheelbarrow and hearse. It is used
for pleasure riding, shopping, church-going, theatre-going, visiting,
carrying prisoners to jail, carrying the dead to the cemetery--in
short, for everything.
In propelling this black but graceful and easy-going boat, the
gondolier does not sit. He stands, on a sort of deck platform towards
the stern, and to balance his weight there is affixed to the prow a
heavy piece of shining steel, which rears itself at the front almost
like a figure-head, only this is always of the same pattern, simply
a broad, upright blade of steel, notched deeply on the front edge.
The gondolier does not pull the oar, he pushes it--there is only one
oar--and he does not change it from side to side, as in paddling a
canoe, but makes all the strokes on one side, a thing that looks very
easy, but is in fact extremely difficult. The dexterity of these men
with their long single oar is wonderful. They glide in and out among
scores of gondolas on the crowded canals without collision or jerking,
and they turn a corner within an inch.
[Sidenote: Baggage Smashing in Europe.]
These remarks upon the skill of the gondoliers, and the ease and safety
of the gondolas, remind me, by contrast, of the destructive bungling
of a porter in Cologne, who undertook to cart a load of trunks and
handbags and shawl-straps down from our hotel to the Rhine steamer, and
who, in turning a corner on a down grade, made the turn too short, and
hurled the whole lot of our belongings into the muddy street with such
violence that many of them were defaced, some permanently damaged, and
one valise broken to pieces and utterly ruined.
That German baby carriage had an exciting adventure also on the night
of our arrival in Rome. As usual, it was made the apex of the pyramid
of trunks and grip-sacks which constitute our sign manual, so to
speak, on the top of every omnibus that takes us from the station to
the hotel; but in this instance it was carelessly left untied, so
that as we went steeply down one of the seven hills of Rome, the cart
tumbled from its high perch to the stone-paved street, snapping off one
of the handles, and suffering sundry other shattering experiences. A
few days after we had the pleasure of paying a fraudulent cabinetmaker
more for repairing it than it cost in the first instance. The Italian
workmen and shopkeepers uniformly charge you more than their work and
goods are worth. I think I have had more counterfeit money passed on me
in the short time I have been in Italy than I have had in all the rest
of my life before, and the very first swindle of this kind to which I
was subjected was in a church, when the sacristan gave me a counterfeit
two-franc piece in change as I paid the admission fees to see certain
paintings and sculptures behind the high altar.
However, I am wandering from my subject; I may conclude my eulogy
on the baby above mentioned by saying that, young as she is, she
sits through the seventy or eighty minutes of the customary tedious
European dinner almost as circumspectly as a graven image might, but
reminding us of one of Raphael's cherubs in her blue-eyed combination
of sweetness, archness and dignity.
Next time we will resume our account of matters of more general
interest.