Man and his Master.
There is one thing that the Anglo-Saxon does better than the "French, or
Turk, or Rooshian," to which add the German or the Belgian. When the
Anglo-Saxon appoints an official, he appoints a servant: when the others
put a man in uniform, they add to their long list of masters. If among
your acquaintances you can discover an American, or Englishman,
unfamiliar with the continental official, it is worth your while to
accompany him, the first time he goes out to post a letter, say. He
advances towards the post-office a breezy, self-confident gentleman,
borne up by pride of race. While mounting the steps he talks airily of
"just getting this letter off his mind, and then picking up Jobson and
going on to Durand's for lunch."
He talks as if he had the whole day before him. At the top of the steps
he attempts to push open the door. It will not move. He looks about
him, and discovers that is the door of egress, not of ingress. It does
not seem to him worth while redescending the twenty steps and climbing
another twenty. So far as he is concerned he is willing to pull the
door, instead of pushing it. But a stern official bars his way, and
haughtily indicates the proper entrance. "Oh, bother," he says, and down
he trots again, and up the other flight.
"I shall not be a minute," he remarks over his shoulder. "You can wait
for me outside."
But if you know your way about, you follow him in. There are seats
within, and you have a newspaper in your pocket: the time will pass more
pleasantly. Inside he looks round, bewildered. The German post-office,
generally speaking, is about the size of the Bank of England. Some
twenty different windows confront your troubled friend, each one bearing
its own particular legend. Starting with number one, he sets to work to
spell them out. It appears to him that the posting of letters is not a
thing that the German post-office desires to encourage. Would he not
like a dog licence instead? is what one window suggests to him. "Oh,
never mind that letter of yours; come and talk about bicycles," pleads
another. At last he thinks he has found the right hole: the word
"Registration" he distinctly recognizes. He taps at the glass.
Nobody takes any notice of him. The foreign official is a man whose life
is saddened by a public always wanting something. You read it in his
face wherever you go. The man who sells you tickets for the theatre! He
is eating sandwiches when you knock at his window. He turns to his
companion:
"Good Lord!" you can see him say, "here's another of 'em. If there has
been one man worrying me this morning there have been a hundred. Always
the same story: all of 'em want to come and see the play. You listen
now; bet you anything he's going to bother me for tickets. Really, it
gets on my nerves sometimes."
At the railway station it is just the same.
"Another man who wants to go to Antwerp! Don't seem to care for rest,
these people: flying here, flying there, what's the sense of it?" It is
this absurd craze on the part of the public for letter-writing that is
spoiling the temper of the continental post-office official. He does his
best to discourage it.
"Look at them," he says to his assistant--the thoughtful German
Government is careful to provide every official with another official for
company, lest by sheer force of _ennui_ he might be reduced to taking
interest in his work--"twenty of 'em, all in a row! Some of 'em been
there for the last quarter of an hour."
"Let 'em wait another quarter of an hour," advises the assistant;
"perhaps they'll go away."
"My dear fellow," he answers, "do you think I haven't tried that? There's
simply no getting rid of 'em. And it's always the same cry: 'Stamps!
stamps! stamps!' 'Pon my word, I think they live on stamps, some of
'em."
"Well let 'em have their stamps?" suggests the assistant, with a burst of
inspiration; "perhaps it will get rid of 'em."
Why the Man in Uniform has, generally, sad Eyes.
"What's the use?" wearily replies the older man. "There will only come a
fresh crowd when those are gone."
"Oh, well," argues the other, "that will be a change, anyhow. I'm tired
of looking at this lot."
I put it to a German post-office clerk once--a man I had been boring for
months. I said:
"You think I write these letters--these short stories, these three-act
plays--on purpose to annoy you. Do let me try to get the idea out of
your head. Personally, I hate work--hate it as much as you do. This is
a pleasant little town of yours: given a free choice, I could spend the
whole day mooning round it, never putting pen to paper. But what am I to
do? I have a wife and children. You know what it is yourself: they
clamour for food, boots--all sorts of things. I have to prepare these
little packets for sale and bring them to you to send off. You see, you
are here. If you were not here--if there were no post-office in this
town, maybe I'd have to train pigeons, or cork the thing up in a bottle,
fling it into the river, and trust to luck and the Gulf Stream. But, you
being here, and calling yourself a post-office--well, it's a temptation
to a fellow."
I think it did good. Anyhow, after that he used to grin when I opened
the door, instead of greeting me as formerly with a face the picture of
despair. But to return to our inexperienced friend.
At last the wicket is suddenly opened. A peremptory official demands of
him "name and address." Not expecting the question, he is a little
doubtful of his address, and has to correct himself once or twice. The
official eyes him suspiciously.
"Name of mother?" continues the official.
"Name of what?"
"Mother!" repeats the official. "Had a mother of some sort, I suppose."
He is a man who loved his mother sincerely while she lived, but she has
been dead these twenty years, and, for the life of him he cannot
recollect her name. He thinks it was Margaret Henrietta, but is not at
all sure. Besides, what on earth has his mother got to do with this
registered letter that he wants to send to his partner in New York?
"When did it die?" asks the official.
"When did what die? Mother?"
"No, no, the child."
"What child?" The indignation of the official is almost picturesque.
"All I want to do," explains your friend, "is to register a letter."
"A what?"
"This letter, I want--"
The window is slammed in his face. When, ten minutes later he does reach
the right wicket--the bureau for the registration of letters, and not the
bureau for the registration of infantile deaths--it is pointed out to him
that the letter either is sealed or that it is not sealed.
I have never been able yet to solve this problem. If your letter is
sealed, it then appears that it ought not to have been sealed.
If, on the other hand, you have omitted to seal it, that is your fault.
In any case, the letter cannot go as it is. The continental official
brings up the public on the principle of the nurse who sent the eldest
girl to see what Tommy was doing and tell him he mustn't. Your friend,
having wasted half an hour and mislaid his temper for the day, decides to
leave this thing over and talk to the hotel porter about it. Next to the
Burgomeister, the hotel porter is the most influential man in the
continental town: maybe because he can swear in seven different
languages. But even he is not omnipotent.
The Traveller's one Friend.
Three of us, on the point of starting for a walking tour through the
Tyrol, once sent on our luggage by post from Constance to Innsbruck. Our
idea was that, reaching Innsbruck in the height of the season, after a
week's tramp on two flannel shirts and a change of socks, we should be
glad to get into fresh clothes before showing ourselves in civilized
society. Our bags were waiting for us in the post-office: we could see
them through the grating. But some informality--I have never been able
to understand what it was--had occurred at Constance. The suspicion of
the Swiss postal authorities had been aroused, and special instructions
had been sent that the bags were to be delivered up only to their
rightful owners.
It sounds sensible enough. Nobody wants his bag delivered up to anyone
else. But it had not been explained to the authorities at Innsbruck how
they were to know the proper owners. Three wretched-looking creatures
crawled into the post-office and said they wanted those three bags--"those
bags, there in the corner"--which happened to be nice, clean, respectable-
looking bags, the sort of bags that anyone might want. One of them
produced a bit of paper, it is true, which he said had been given to him
as a receipt by the post-office people at Constance. But in the lonely
passes of the Tyrol one man, set upon by three, might easily be robbed of
his papers, and his body thrown over a precipice. The chief clerk shook
his head. He would like us to return accompanied by someone who could
identify us. The hotel porter occurred to us, as a matter of course.
Keeping to the back streets, we returned to the hotel and fished him out
of his box.
"I am Mr. J.," I said: "this is my friend Mr. B. and this is Mr. S."
The porter bowed and said he was delighted.
"I want you to come with us to the post-office," I explained, "and
identify us."
The hotel porter is always a practical man: his calling robs him of all
sympathy with the hide-bound formality of his compatriots. He put on his
cap and accompanied us back to the office. He did his best: no one could
say he did not. He told them who we were: they asked him how he knew.
For reply he asked them how they thought he knew his mother: he just knew
us: it was second nature with him. He implied that the question was a
silly one, and suggested that, as his time was valuable, they should hand
us over the three bags and have done with their nonsense.
They asked him how long he had known us. He threw up his hands with an
eloquent gesture: memory refused to travel back such distance. It
appeared there was never a time when he had not known us. We had been
boys together.
Did he know anybody else who knew us? The question appeared to him
almost insulting. Everybody in Innsbruck knew us, honoured us, respected
us--everybody, that is, except a few post-office officials, people quite
out of society.
Would he kindly bring along, say; one undoubtedly respectable citizen who
could vouch for our identity? The request caused him to forget us and
our troubles. The argument became a personal quarrel between the porter
and the clerk. If he, the porter, was not a respectable citizen of
Innsbruck, where was such an one to be found?
The disadvantage of being an unknown Person.
Both gentlemen became excited, and the discussion passed beyond my
understanding. But I gathered dimly from what the clerk said, that ill-
natured remarks relative to the porter's grandfather and a missing cow
had never yet been satisfactorily replied to: and, from observations made
by the porter, that stories were in circulation about the clerk's aunt
and a sergeant of artillery that should suggest to a discreet nephew of
the lady the inadvisability of talking about other people's grandfathers.
Our sympathies were naturally with the porter: he was our man, but he did
not seem to be advancing our cause much. We left them quarrelling, and
persuaded the head waiter that evening to turn out the gas at our end of
the _table d'hote_.
The next morning we returned to the post-office by ourselves. The clerk
proved a reasonable man when treated in a friendly spirit. He was a bit
of a climber himself. He admitted the possibility of our being the
rightful owners. His instructions were only not to _deliver up_ the
bags, and he himself suggested a way out of the difficulty. We might
come each day and dress in the post-office, behind the screen. It was an
awkward arrangement, even although the clerk allowed us the use of the
back door. And occasionally, in spite of the utmost care, bits of us
would show outside the screen. But for a couple of days, until the
British Consul returned from Salzburg, the post-office had to be our
dressing room. The continental official, I am inclined to think, errs on
the side of prudence.