breaths. That plump girl is getting pale. Well, why shouldn't she? I
suppose I'm about the best pianist she has ever heard--or ever _will_
hear. What people can see in that Hambourg fellow I never could imagine.
In Chopin, Schumann, Grieg, you might fairly say he's pretty good. But
it takes an _artist_ to play Beethoven. (_He rattles on to the end of
the_ scherzo _and there is more applause. Then he dashes into the_
finale.)
THE DEAN OF THE CRITICS
Too loud! Too loud! It sounds like an ash-cart going down an alley. But
what can you expect? Piano-playing is a lost art. Paderewski ruined it.
THE GREAT PIANIST
I ought to clear 200,000 marks by this tournee. If it weren't for those
thieving agents and hotelkeepers, I'd make 300,000. Just think of
it--twenty-four marks a day for a room! That's the way these Americans
treat a visiting artist! The country is worse than Bulgaria. I was
treated better at Bucharest. Well, it won't last forever. As soon as I
get enough of their money they'll see me no more. Vienna is the place to
settle down. A nice studio at fifty marks a month--and the life of a
gentleman. What was the name of that little red-cheeked girl at the café
in the Franzjosefstrasse--that girl with the gold tooth and the silk
stockings? I'll have to look her up.
THE VIRGIN
What an artist! What a master! What a----
THE MARRIED WOMAN
Has he really suffered, or is it just intuition?
THE GREAT PIANIST
No, marriage is a waste of money. Let the other fellow marry her. (_He
approaches the closing measures of the finale._) And now for a breathing
spell and a swallow of beer. American beer! Bah! But it's better than
nothing. The Americans drink water. Cattle! Animals! _Ach, München, wie
bist du so schön!_
(_As he concludes there is a whirlwind of applause and he is forced to
bow again and again. Finally, he is permitted to retire, and the
audience prepares to spend the short intermission in whispering,
grunting, wriggling, scraping its feet, rustling its programs and gaping
at hats. The_ SIX MUSICAL CRITICS _and_ SIX OTHER MEN, _their lips
parched and their eyes staring, gallop for the door. As_ THE GREAT
PIANIST _comes from the stage_, THE JANITOR _meets him with a large
seidel of beer. He seizes it eagerly and downs it at a gulp._)
THE JANITOR
My, but them professors can put the stuff away!
_VI.--SEEING THE WORLD_
_VI.--Seeing The World_
_The scene is the brow of the Hungerberg at Innsbruck. It is the half
hour before sunset, and the whole lovely valley of the Inn_--still wie
die Nacht, tief wie das Meer--_begins to glow with mauves and apple
greens, apricots and silvery blues. Along the peaks of the great snowy
mountains which shut it in, as if from the folly and misery of the
world, there are touches of piercing primary colours--red, yellow,
violet. Far below, hugging the winding river, lies little Innsbruck,
with its checkerboard parks and Christmas garden villas. A battalion of
Austrian soldiers, drilling in the Exerzierplatz, appears as an army of
grey ants, now barely visible. Somewhere to the left, beyond the broad
flank of the Hungerberg, the night train for Venice labours toward the
town.
It is a superbly beautiful scene, perhaps the most beautiful in all
Europe. It has colour, dignity, repose. The Alps here come down a bit
and so increase their spell. They are not the harsh precipices of
Switzerland, nor the too charming stage mountains of the Trentino, but
rotting billows of clouds and snow, the high flung waves of some titanic
but stricken ocean. Now and then comes a faint clank of metal from the
funicular railway, but the tracks themselves are hidden among the trees
of the lower slopes. The tinkle of an angelus bell (or maybe it is only
a sheep bell) is heard from afar. A great bird, an eagle or a falcon,
sweeps across the crystal spaces.
Here where we are is a shelf on the mountainside, and the hand of man
has converted it into a terrace. To the rear, clinging to the mountain,
is an Alpine_ gasthaus--_a bit overdone, perhaps, with its red-framed
windows and elaborate fretwork, but still genuinely of the Alps. Along
the front of the terrace, protecting sightseers from the sheer drop of a
thousand feet, is a stout wooden rail.
A man in an American sack suit, with a bowler hat on his head, lounges
against this rail. His elbows rest upon it, his legs are crossed in the
fashion of a figure four, and his face is buried in the red book of Herr
Baedeker. It is the volume on Southern Germany, and he is reading the
list of Munich hotels. Now and then he stops to mark one with a pencil,
which he wets at his lips each time. While he is thus engaged, another
man comes ambling along the terrace, apparently from the direction of
the funicular railway station. He, too, carries a red book. It is
Baedeker on Austria-Hungary. After gaping around him a bit, this second
man approaches the rail near the other and leans his elbows upon it.
Presently he takes a package of chewing gum from his coat pocket,
selects two pieces, puts them into his mouth and begins to chew. Then he
spits idly into space, idly but homerically, a truly stupendous
expectoration, a staggering discharge from the Alps to the first shelf
of the Lombard plain! The first man, startled by the report, glances up.
Their eyes meet and there is a vague glimmer of recognition._
THE FIRST MAN
American?
THE SECOND MAN
Yes; St. Louis.
THE FIRST MAN
Been over long?
THE SECOND MAN
A couple of months.
THE FIRST MAN
What ship'd you come over in?
THE SECOND MAN
The _Kronprinz Friedrich_.
THE FIRST MAN
Aha, the German line! I guess you found the grub all right.
THE SECOND MAN
Oh, in the main. I have eaten better, but then again, I have eaten
worse.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, they charge you enough for it, whether you get it or not. A man
could live at the Plaza cheaper.
THE SECOND MAN
I should _say_ he could. What boat did _you_ come over in?
THE FIRST MAN
The _Maurentic_.
THE SECOND MAN
How is she?
THE FIRST MAN
Oh, so-so.
THE SECOND MAN
I hear the meals on those English ships are nothing to what they used to
be.
THE FIRST MAN
That's what everybody tells me. But, as for me, I can't say I found them
so bad. I had to send back the potatoes twice and the breakfast bacon
once, but they had very good lima beans.
THE SECOND MAN
Isn't that English bacon awful stuff to get down?
THE FIRST MAN
It certainly is: all meat and gristle. I wonder what an Englishman would
say if you put him next to a plate of genuine, crisp, _American_ bacon.
THE SECOND MAN
I guess he would yell for the police--or choke to death.
THE FIRST MAN
Did you like the German cooking on the _Kronprinz_?
THE SECOND MAN
Well, I did and I didn't. The chicken à la Maryland was very good, but
they had it only once. I could eat it every day.
THE FIRST MAN
Why didn't you order it?
THE SECOND MAN
It wasn't on the bill.
THE FIRST MAN
Oh, bill be damned! You might have ordered it anyhow. Make a fuss and
you'll get what you want. These foreigners have to be bossed around.
They're used to it.
THE SECOND MAN
I guess you're right. There was a fellow near me who set up a holler
about his room the minute he saw it--said it was dark and musty and not
fit to pen a hog in--and they gave him one twice as large, and the chief
steward bowed and scraped to him, and the room stewards danced around
him as if he was a duke. And yet I heard later that he was nothing but a
Bismarck herring importer from Hoboken.
THE FIRST MAN
Yes, that's the way to get what you want. Did you have any nobility on
board?
THE SECOND MAN
Yes, there was a Hungarian baron in the automobile business, and two
English sirs. The baron was quite a decent fellow: I had a talk with him
in the smoking room one night. He didn't put on any airs at all. You
would have thought he was an ordinary man. But the sirs kept to
themselves. All they did the whole voyage was to write letters, wear
their dress suits and curse the stewards.
THE FIRST MAN
They tell me over here that the best eating is on the French lines.
THE SECOND MAN
Yes, so I hear. But some say, too, that the Scandinavian lines are best,
and then again I have heard people boosting the Italian lines.
THE FIRST MAN
I guess each one has its points. They say that you get wine free with
meals on the French boats.
THE SECOND MAN
But I hear it's fourth-rate wine.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, you don't have to drink it.
THE SECOND MAN
That's so. But, as for me, I can't stand a Frenchman. I'd rather do
without the wine and travel with the Dutch. Paris is dead compared with
Berlin.
THE FIRST MAN
So it is. But those Germans are awful sharks. The way they charge in
Berlin is enough to make you sick.
THE SECOND MAN
Don't tell _me_. I have been there. No longer ago than last Tuesday--or
was it last Monday?--I went into one of those big restaurants on the
Unter den Linden and ordered a small steak, French fried potatoes, a
piece of pie and a cup of coffee--and what do you think those thieves
charged me for it? Three marks fifty. That's eighty-seven and a half
cents. Why, a man could have got the same meal at home for a dollar.
These Germans are running wild. American money has gone to their heads.
They think every American they get hold of is a millionaire.
THE FIRST MAN
The French are worse. I went into a hotel in Paris and paid ten francs a
day for a room for myself and wife, and when we left they charged me one
franc forty a day extra for sweeping it out and making the bed!
THE SECOND MAN
That's nothing. Here in Innsbruck they charge you half a krone a day
_taxes_.
THE FIRST MAN
What! You don't say!
THE SECOND MAN
Sure thing. And if you don't eat breakfast in the hotel they charge you
a krone for it anyhow.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, well, what next? But, after all, you can't blame them. We
Americans come over here and hand them our pocket-books, and we ought to
be glad if we get anything back at all. The way a man has to tip is
something fearful.
THE SECOND MAN
Isn't it, though! I stayed in Dresden a week, and when I left there were
six grafters lined up with their claws out. First came the port_eer_.
Then came----
THE FIRST MAN
How much did you give the port_eer_?
THE SECOND MAN
Five marks.
THE FIRST MAN
You gave him too much. You ought to have given him about three marks,
or, say, two marks fifty. How much was your hotel bill?
THE SECOND MAN
Including everything?
THE FIRST MAN
No, just your bill for your room.
THE SECOND MAN
I paid six marks a day.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, that made forty-two marks for the week. Now the way to figure out
how much the port_eer_ ought to get is easy: a fellow I met in
Baden-Baden showed me how to do it. First, you multiply your hotel bill
by two, then you divide it by twenty-seven, and then you knock off half
a mark. Twice forty-two is eighty-four. Twenty-seven into eighty-four
goes about three times, and half from three leaves two and a half. See
how easy it is?
THE SECOND MAN
It _looks_ easy, anyhow. But you haven't got much time to do all that
figuring.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, let the port_eer_ wait. The longer he has to wait the more he
appreciates you.
THE SECOND MAN
But how about the others?
THE FIRST MAN
It's just as simple. Your chambermaid gets a quarter of a mark for every
day you have been in the hotel. But if you stay less than four days she
gets a whole mark anyhow. If there are two in the party she gets half a
mark a day, but no more than three marks in any one week.
THE SECOND MAN
But suppose there are two chambermaids? In Dresden there was one on day
duty and one on night duty. I left at six o'clock in the evening, and so
they were both on the job.
THE FIRST MAN
Don't worry. They'd have been on the job anyhow, no matter when you
left. But it's just as easy to figure out the tip for two as for one.
All you have to do is to add fifty per cent. and then divide it into two
halves, and give one to each girl. Or, better still, give it all to one
girl and tell her to give half to her pal. If there are three
chambermaids, as you sometimes find in the swell hotels, you add another
fifty per cent. and then divide by three. And so on.
THE SECOND MAN
I see. But how about the hall porter and the floor waiter?
THE FIRST MAN
Just as easy. The hall porter gets whatever the chambermaid gets, plus
twenty-five per cent.--but no more than two marks in any one week. The
floor waiter gets thirty pfennigs a day straight, but if you stay only
one day he gets half a mark, and if you stay more than a week he gets
two marks flat a week after the first week. In some hotels the hall
porter don't shine shoes. If he don't he gets just as much as if he
does, but then the actual "boots" has to be taken care of. He gets half
a mark every two days. Every time you put out an extra pair of shoes he
gets fifty per cent. more for that day. If you shine your own shoes, or
go without shining them, the "boots" gets half his regular tip, but
never less than a mark a week.
THE SECOND MAN
Certainly it seems simple enough. I never knew there was any such
system.
THE FIRST MAN
I guess you didn't. Very few do. But it's just because Americans don't
know it that these foreign blackmailers shake 'em down. Once you let the
port_eer_ see that you know the ropes, he'll pass the word on to the
others, and you'll be treated like a native.
THE SECOND MAN
I see. But how about the elevator boy? I gave the elevator boy in
Dresden two marks and he almost fell on my neck, so I figured that I
played the sucker.
THE FIRST MAN
So you did. The rule for elevator boys is still somewhat in the air,
because so few of these bum hotels over here have elevators, but you can
sort of reason the thing out if you put your mind on it. When you get on
a street car in Germany, what tip do you give the conductor?
THE SECOND MAN
Five pfennigs.
THE FIRST MAN.
Naturally. That's the tip fixed by custom. You may almost say it's the
unwritten law. If you gave the conductor more, he would hand you change.
Well, how I reason it out is this way: If five pfennigs is enough for a
car conductor, who may carry you three miles, why shouldn't it be enough
for the elevator boy, who may carry you only three stories?
THE SECOND MAN
It seems fair, certainly.
THE FIRST MAN
And it _is_ fair. So all you have to do is to keep account of the number
of times you go up and down in the elevator, and then give the elevator
boy five pfennigs for each trip. Say you come down in the morning, go up
in the evening, and average one other round trip a day. That makes
twenty-eight trips a week. Five times twenty-eight is one mark
forty--and there you are.
THE SECOND MAN
I see. By the way, what hotel are you stopping at?
THE FIRST MAN
The Goldene Esel.
THE SECOND MAN
How is it?
THE FIRST MAN
Oh, so-so. Ask for oatmeal at breakfast and they send to the livery
stable for a peck of oats and ask you please to be so kind as to show
them how to make it.
THE SECOND MAN
My hotel is even worse. Last night I got into such a sweat under the big
German feather bed that I had to throw it off. But when I asked for a
single blanket they didn't have any, so I had to wrap up in bath towels.
THE FIRST MAN
Yes, and you used up every one in town. This morning, when I took a
bath, the only towel the chambermaid could find wasn't bigger than a
wedding invitation. But while she was hunting around I dried off, so no
harm was done.
THE SECOND MAN
Well, that's what a man gets for running around in such one-horse
countries. In Leipzig they sat a nigger down beside me at the table. In
Amsterdam they had cheese for breakfast. In Munich the head waiter had
never heard of buckwheat cakes. In Mannheim they charged me ten pfennigs
extra for a cake of soap.
THE FIRST MAN
What do you think of the railroad trains over here?
THE SECOND MAN
Rotten. That compartment system is all wrong. If nobody comes into your
compartment it's lonesome, and if anybody _does_ come in it's too damn
sociable. And if you try to stretch out and get some sleep, some ruffian
begins singing in the next compartment, or the conductor keeps butting
in and jabbering at you.
THE FIRST MAN
But you can say _one_ thing for the German trains: they get in on time.
THE SECOND MAN
So they do, but no wonder! They run so slow they can't _help_ it. The
way I figure it, a German engineer must have a devil of a time holding
his engine in. The fact is, he usually can't, and so he has to wait
outside every big town until the schedule catches up to him. They say
they never have accidents, but is it any more than you expect? Did you
ever hear of a mud turtle having an accident?
THE FIRST MAN
Scarcely. As you say, these countries are far behind the times. I saw a
fire in Cologne; you would have laughed your head off! It was in a feed
store near my hotel, and I got there before the firemen. When they came
at last, in their tinpot hats, they got out half a dozen big squirts and
rushed into the building with them. Then, when it was out, they put the
squirts back into their little express wagon and drove off. Not a line
of hose run out, not an engine puffing, not a gong heard, not a soul
letting out a whoop! It was more like a Sunday-school picnic than a
fire. I guess if these Dutch ever _did_ have a civilised blaze, it would
scare them to death. But they never have any.
THE SECOND MAN
Well, what can you expect? A country where all the charwomen are men and
all the garbage men are women!--
_For the moment the two have talked each other out, and so they lounge
upon the rail in silence and gaze out over the valley. Anon the
gumchewer spits. By now the sun has reached the skyline to the westward
and the tops of the ice mountains are in gorgeous conflagration.
Scarlets war with golden oranges, and vermilions fade into palpitating
pinks. Below, in the valley, the colours begin to fade slowly to a
uniform seashell grey. It is a scene of indescribable loveliness; the
wild reds of hades splashed riotously upon the cold whites and pale
blues of heaven. The night train for Venice, a long line of black
coaches, is entering the town. Somewhere below, apparently in the
barracks, a sunset gun is fired. After a silence of perhaps two or three
minutes, the Americans gather fresh inspiration and resume their
conversation._
THE FIRST MAN
I have seen worse scenery.
THE SECOND MAN
Very pretty.
THE FIRST MAN
Yes, sir; it's well worth the money.
THE SECOND MAN
But the Rockies beat it all hollow.
THE FIRST MAN
Oh, of course. They have nothing over here that we can't beat to a
whisper. Just consider the Rhine, for instance. The Hudson makes it look
like a country creek.
THE SECOND MAN
Yes, you're right. Take away the castles, and not even a German would
give a hoot for it. It's not so much what a thing _is_ over here as what
_reputation_ it's got. The whole thing is a matter of press-agenting.
THE FIRST MAN
I agree with you. There's the "beautiful, blue Danube." To me it looks
like a sewer. If _it's_ blue, then _I'm_ green. A man would hesitate to
drown himself in such a mud puddle.
THE SECOND MAN
But you hear the bands playing that waltz all your life, and so you
spend your good money to come over here to see the river. And when you
get back home you don't want to admit that you've been a sucker, so you
start touting it from hell to breakfast. And then some other fellow
comes over and does the same, and so on and so on.
THE FIRST MAN
Yes, it's all a matter of boosting. Day in and day out you hear about
Westminster Abbey. Every English book mentions it; it's in the
newspapers almost as much as Jane Addams or Caruso. Well, one day you
pack your grip, put on your hat and come over to have a look--and what
do you find? A one-horse church full of statues! And every statue crying
for sapolio! You expect to see something magnificent and enormous,
something to knock your eye out and send you down for the count. What
you do see is a second-rate graveyard under roof. And when you examine
into it, you find that two-thirds of the graves haven't even got dead
men in them! Whenever a prominent Englishman dies, they put up a statue
to him in Westminster Abbey--_no matter where he happens to be buried_!
I call that clever advertising. That's the way to get the crowd.
THE SECOND MAN
Yes, these foreigners know the game. They have made millions out of it
in Paris. Every time you go to see a musical comedy at home, the second
act is laid in Paris, and you see a whole stageful of girls wriggling
around, and a lot of old sports having the time of their lives. All your
life you hear that Paris is something rich and racy, something that
makes New York look like Roanoke, Virginia. Well, you fall for the
ballyho and come over to have your fling--and then you find that Paris
is largely bunk. I spent a whole week in Paris, trying to find something
really awful. I hired one of those Jew guides at five dollars a day and
told him to go the limit. I said to him: "Don't mind _me_. I am
twenty-one years old. Let me have the genuine goods." But the worst he
could show me wasn't half as bad as what I have seen in Chicago. Every
night I would say to that Jew: "Come on, now Mr. Cohen; let's get away
from these tinhorn shows. Lead me to the real stuff." Well, I believe
the fellow did his darndest, but he always fell down. I almost felt
sorry for him. In the end, when I paid him off, I said to him: "Save up
your money, my boy, and come over to the States. Let me know when you
land. I'll show you the sights for nothing. This Baracca Class
atmosphere is killing you."
THE FIRST MAN
And yet Paris is famous all over the world. No American ever came to
Europe without dropping off there to have a look. I once saw the Bal
Tabarin crowded with Sunday-school superintendents returning from
Jerusalem. And when the sucker gets home he goes around winking and
hinting, and so the fake grows. I often think the government ought to
take a hand. If the beer is inspected and guaranteed in Germany, why
shouldn't the shows be inspected and guaranteed in Paris?
THE SECOND MAN
I guess the trouble is that the Frenchmen themselves never go to their
own shows. They don't know what is going on. They see thousands of
Americans starting out every night from the Place de l'Opéra and coming
back in the morning all boozed up, and so they assume that everything is
up to the mark. You'll find the same thing in Washington. No
Washingtonian has ever been up to the top of the Washington monument.
Once the elevator in the monument was out of commission for two weeks,
and yet Washington knew nothing about it. When the news got into the
papers at last, it came from Macon, Georgia. Some honeymooner from down
there had written home about it, roasting the government.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, me for the good old U. S. A.! These Alps are all right, I
guess--but I can't say I like the coffee.
THE SECOND MAN
And it takes too long to get a letter from Jersey City.
THE FIRST MAN
Yes, that reminds me. Just before I started up here this afternoon my
wife got the _Ladies' Home Journal_ of the month before last. It had
been following us around for six weeks, from London to Paris, to Berlin,
to Munich, to Vienna, to a dozen other places. Now she's fixed for the
night. She won't let up until she's read every word--the advertisements
first. And she'll spend all day to-morrow sending off for things; new
collar hooks, breakfast foods, complexion soaps and all that sort of
junk. Are you married yourself?
THE SECOND MAN
No; not yet.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, then, you don't know how it is. But I guess you play poker.
THE SECOND MAN
Oh, to be sure.
THE FIRST MAN
Well, let's go down into the town and hunt up some quiet barroom and
have a civilised evening. This scenery gives me the creeps.
THE SECOND MAN
I'm with you. But where are we going to get any chips?
THE FIRST MAN
Don't worry. I carry a set with me. I made my wife put it in the bottom
of my trunk, along with a bottle of real whiskey and a couple of porous
plasters. A man can't be too careful when he's away from home----
_They start along the terrace toward the station of the funicular
railway. The sun has now disappeared behind the great barrier of ice and
the colours of the scene are fast softening. All the scarlets and
vermilions are gone; a luminous pink bathes the whole picture in its
fairy light. The night train for Venice, leaving the town, appears as a
long string of blinking lights. A chill breeze comes from the Alpine
vastness to westward. The deep silence of an Alpine night settles down.
The two Americans continue their talk until they are out of hearing. The
breeze interrupts and obfuscates their words, but now and then half a
sentence comes clearly._
THE SECOND MAN
Have you seen any American papers lately?
THE FIRST MAN
Nothing But the Paris _Herald_--if you call _that_ a paper.
THE SECOND MAN
How are the Giants making out?
THE FIRST MAN
... bad as usual ... rotten ... shake up ...
THE SECOND MAN
... John McGraw ...
THE FIRST MAN
... homesick ... give five dollars for ...
THE SECOND MAN
... whole continent without a single ...
THE FIRST MAN