Venice in a gondola, and defiantly waving in the air was an American
flag which I carried as proudly and as exuberantly as a ten-year-old
boy would at a picnic in Kansas. We met several Americans at the
station, and they waved and cheered “Old Glory.” We met all kinds
of Italians, who looked as amused and curious as a lot of Americans
would at an Italian carrying a green, white and red banner down the
streets of Hutchinson. I flaunted the stars and stripes in the faces
of the Italian policemen, and they seemed to enjoy it. Several people
tried to find out from me what it all meant, and in spite of the fact
that I told them in good English that this was the Fourth of July,
the anniversary of independence, they shook their heads and did not
“comprehendo.” The weather was very hot and very dry, the train was
dusty, and the conditions as near ideal for a successful Fourth of July
celebration as could be imagined. The American flag that day floated
in the Italian breeze from Venice to Milan and then to Lake Como. The
inability to make the Dagoes understand what I meant was embarrassing
at times, and I longed vainly for a pack of firecrackers or a few
good torpedoes. The conductor on the train was greatly interested. We
talked in sign language and all the Italian I knew and all the English
he knew, but to no effect. Finally I said the word “liberty,” and as
the Italian word is about the same, he caught on and I could tell he
was approving. “Vive l’America!” I cried, and he took off his hat and
said it after me and smiled agreement to the remarks I was making on
what the old flag meant. I gave him a big tip, 10 cents,—5 cents for
hurrahing for America and 5 cents for listening to my speech.
To-night we are out of the heat of the fertile plains of Lombardy and
are in a delightful cool place on the shore of Lake Como, the prettiest
and pleasantest place I have seen since we left Killarney. The last
part of the day the flag waved over Como, Bellagio, Cernobio, Nesso,
Colomo, Bellano, and all the other “o’s” that make the list of Italian
towns look like the roster of an Irish Fenian society, only the o is at
the wrong end of the names.
[Illustration]
Speaking of “tipping” the conductor reminds me of the tipping system in
Italy, which is a subject of the greatest importance to the traveler. I
think I have seen only one man in Italy who did not hold out his hand,
and that was an armless beggar at the Milan station who had a tin cup
in which you were expected to deposit. The tipping custom is general
in Europe, but it reaches its greatest development in Italy. Everybody
you meet is so courteous and polite, willing to show you or tell you or
take you, but always expecting something. You tip the conductor, the
porter, the hotel manager, the chambermaid, the “man chambermaid,” the
elevator boy, the waiter, the head waiter, the clerk, the interpreter,
the attendants, the driver, the man who opens the door, the church
janitor, the policeman, and everybody you ask a question or who is
there to answer if you do ask, and then you tip a few more just because
they expect it. This looks like an alarming expenditure of money.
But as a matter of fact the total amount of tips is not more than is
expected at a big hotel in New York. And when you tip the waiter at the
restaurant he does not keep it, but all tips go into a common fund that
is divided and is the wages the waiters receive in most cases.
Here is a schedule of “tips,” which, after considerable study and
comparison with that of others, I have figured as about right:
Baggageman, 2 cents.
Elevator boy, 2 cents.
Chambermaid, 3 cents.
Man chambermaid, 3 cents.
Waiter, per day, 5 cents.
Head waiter, 10 cents.
Manager of hotel, 20 cents.
Miscellaneous men and boys, each 1 cent.
Railroad conductor, 5 cents.
Policeman, 2 cents.
Driver, 2 cents.
Italian nobleman, 3 cents.
Italian merchant, 2 cents.
Clerk in store, 1 cent.
Ordinary civility, 1 cent.
I haven’t met the king or queen, but I estimate that if I did and asked
a favor they would look like about 30 cents.
The Italian money is like the French money, based on a unit which is
equivalent to 20 cents. So when you give a man 10 cents you give him
a half-lire or half-franc. The lire is divided into 100 centimes, and
when you give a man 2 cents you hand him a great big copper coin with
“ten centimes” on it. This small unit of measurement causes an American
a peculiar sensation. For example, I had to buy a shirt in Venice and
it was marked 5.50. That looked like a big price for a shirt, but
reduced to American currency it was only $1.10. I bought some of the
long Italian cigars which look like stogies and have straws down the
center so they will draw. They were 30 centimes each—only 6 cents
American. For a carriage and driver to go anywhere in Rome, carrying
Mrs. Morgan and myself and a lot of baggage, it was 1.00, twenty
American cents. When two Americans can ride a couple of miles in a
comfortable victoria for 20 cents they don’t walk much, and they feel
as if they were beating somebody and are perfectly willing to “tip” the
driver an extra 2 cents. So when you are “doing” Italy and get used to
the custom, you do not mind carrying a pound or so of copper coins and
distributing them whenever you speak to a native.
The effect of this custom on the people must be very pernicious. And
it takes away the charm of recognizing courtesy and hospitality as a
national trait when you remember that you pay for it and it is cheap.
[Illustration]
I wrote from Paris that the government of France has the monopoly of
the tobacco business. In Italy the government has the monopoly of
tobacco and salt, the two great necessities. It looks funny to go
along the street and see the little government shops with the sign in
Italian, “Tobacco and Salt.” The Italian government doesn’t sell good
tobacco or good salt. The best cigars are from the island of Luzon,
manufactured into alleged cigars in the government factories in Italy.
The salt is heavy and coarse, something like old-style yellow-brown
sugar. If you don’t like the tobacco or the salt you can go without,
for the government allows no competitor who might do better.
[Illustration]
I have learned a little Italian, not so much but I can forget it when I
cross the line. And that leads me to tell of a little experience with
a moral. I had been so annoyed by the numerous beggars and vendors
of trinkets that I asked a hotel porter who knew some English what I
should say in Italian to tell them to go away. He told me something
that sounded like “Muffa tora.” Accordingly I went around for a couple
of days saying “Muffa tora” to all that bothered me. Then a friend who
knew a little more Italian happened to hear me and suggested that my
language was too strong. The words were about what in America is meant
by “Go-to-hell.” And there I had been going around St. Peter’s, St.
Paul, and all the churches and art galleries in Rome, saying to half
the people who approached me, “Go-to-hell,” “Go-to-hell.” A little
knowledge is a dangerous thing.
[Illustration]
Of course Americans stop at the best hotels, and they are about the
same everywhere, being based on the French model. They are from
one-third to one-half cheaper than the best hotels in American cities.
We are supposed to get three meals a day: First, rolls and coffee;
second, about 12 o’clock, what is really a late breakfast but is called
“dejeuner” and has three to five courses: eggs (always—generally
omelet), macaroni, a cutlet or chop with potatoes, a roast meat,
cheese, and fruit. No coffee or tea or anything to drink except water,
which they say is bad and unhealthful. Dinner at 7 o’clock and a good
meal: Soup, fish, cutlet or chop with macaroni, roast, vegetables,
roast chicken and salad, cheese, small cakes, and fruit. No coffee
or tea. If you want coffee after dinner you have it served in the
lounging-room or out-of-doors, and it is extra. Nobody but Americans
drink water, and they do not use enough to hurt. When you enter the
hotel you are received by the “hall porter,” really the manager, who
bows and takes you or sends you to a room. After a while he sends up
for your name and nationality, but that is for the police. There is
no hotel register. When you pay your bill and are leaving the porter
rings a bell and everybody from proprietor to chambermaid appears to
say “good-by,” speed the parting guest and receive the parting tips. At
first your royal reception and leave-taking makes quite an impression
and you feel “set up,” but after a while it gets to be a bore and you
try to escape it but can’t. The cooking and service are first-class,
better than in America. There is one kind of dishes I steer clear of,
those labeled on the bill of fare, “a la Americaine.” They are like
those served in Hutchinson, “a la Italia,” or “a la Français,” which
means that they are probably spoiled by the cook trying to do something
he does not understand.
Of course in the small Italian hotels the cooking is different, but
they tell me it is good. The restaurants where the poorer people eat
are full of garlicky smells which can be heard for a block. The staple
articles of food for Italians are soup, macaroni and vegetables, all
flavored with garlic. The ordinary Italian does not eat meat. There are
probably several reasons why, but the first one is that he has not the
price, and that is enough. When a man is working for 30 cents a day he
is a stranger to roast beef, for meat is as high as it is in America.
[Illustration]
I haven’t seen a real clothing store in Italy. There are two classes
of Italians only: The rich, who have a tailor, and the poor, who put
the goods together themselves. Again I want to repeat what I have
said before: The things that are cheap in Europe are those in which
labor is the principal factor. When it comes to hiring a man to do
work, you name your price. That is why carriage-driving, servants,
clothes-making, the building trades and labor of every kind from
lace-makers to railroad engineers, are so low.
[Illustration]
The Italian shopkeepers have a well-deserved reputation as bargainers.
Go into a shop, ask a price, and very likely the proprietor or clerk
will say “So much: what will you give?” Americans have a reputation of
being “easy,” and so they usually start us with a price of “6 francs,”
when they will come down to one or two rather than lose a sale. When
you get through you never know just how much you have been beaten—you
only know you have been. Some stores advertise “fixed prices,” but they
are unfixed if necessary. The process of “shopping” thus has another
and delicious feature for the American “shopper.”
[Illustration]
I have found the Italians honest. We hardly ever lock our room. I am
always leaving the umbrella, but somebody always finds it and brings
it to me, and I can’t say that much for Americans. The hackmen do not
overcharge, or at least not near as much as in Chicago or New York. I
think a stranger is better treated in Rome than in Kansas City. But
then comes the suspicious thought—we pay for it.
[Illustration]
Previous to this trip I had often heard people talk about the fleas in
Italy, and had thought it was very funny. It is no joke. At first I was
much amused when I would see a well-dressed lady stop suddenly on the
street, elevate her skirt and go hunting. I now consider it a perfectly
justifiable and proper action. If there is a game law in Italy with a
closed season on fleas it is not at this time of the year. I have seen
the anxious, heart-stricken look on the faces of the martyrs and saints
as painted by the old masters, and I know now where they got their
models, for I have seen the man and the woman conscious of the march
of the flea along the small of the back or in some other unreachable
place, and have seen the haunted, hunted look on the face as conjecture
what the flea would do next changed into realization. The Italian flea
works a good deal like the American mosquito, only he makes no music
and you can only tell where he is by sad experience. He can dodge
better than some politicians and he can get in his work early and
often. I am growing accustomed to the sensation myself, but I do not
think I shall ever enjoy it. The Bible says the wicked flee when no man
pursueth, but in Italy the wicked flea is improving each minute whether
anyone pursueth or not. Mingled with art and old masters, lagoons, and
gondolas, cathedrals and Cæsars, blue sky and green fields, will always
be my recollection of the flea that never takes a siesta and to whom
the poets have never done justice.
SWITZERLAND.
ACROSS THE ALPS.
BRIEG, SWITZERLAND, July 7, 1905.
“Beyond the Alps lies Italy” with all of its art and history and fleas.
After a day on Lake Lugano and Lake Maggiore, where the two countries
of Italy and Switzerland meet, and where the customs officers examined
our baggage three times in the course of a trip around the water,
we crossed the Alps, among which we had been for two days, and are
now in the oldest republic on earth, Switzerland. We came over the
Simplon Pass in a stage-coach and not through a tunnel, as we could
have done. The Simplon Pass is historic and picturesque. As soon as
the tunnel is completed, which has been seven years in building, the
railroad train will rush through the mountains and the stage-coach will
be an old fogy luxury. But the way to go over the Alps for pleasure
and observation is not to take a tunnel train, but ride over on the
outside of a coach with five horses and see the panorama as you pass
by. After a fortnight spent among the great works of man, cathedrals,
coliseums and galleries, one day was enough in the Simplon to prove
that Nature is still ahead. The great amphitheatres of the mountains,
the magnificent stage-settings of forest and peak, left the coliseum
and the forum far behind. The changing hues of the slopes, now gradual
and now precipitate, sometimes bare and sometimes covered with pasture
and vineyard or forest, were in colors which even the old masters could
not equal. It was an all-day drive over a fine road, through narrow
gulches, alongside rushing rivers, under waterfalls of melted snow,
finally through the snow itself, and then down, almost sliding, with
the coach-wheels locked so they were like runners, into the quaint
little town of Brieg.
[Illustration]
The road over the Simplon was built by Napoleon. All over the map of
Europe you will see such monuments to the name of the great emperor.
I do not give Napoleon much credit for the job, as it was a military
necessity to him. He had to keep an army in Italy and always be on the
lookout for his enemies there, so he ordered the Simplon Pass, up to
the time only a trail, to be provided with a macadamized road, and it
was done. I have seen so many of such roads in Europe that I would be
willing to support Napoleon for road overseer or street commissioner
any time. The road was completed in 1807, and the tunnel under the Pass
will be finished in 1906. It is sixteen miles long, large enough for a
double track, and has been constructed from both ends at the same time.
To my mind it is a great engineering feat to start two small holes in
a mountain, sixteen miles apart, and figure so accurately that those
holes will meet some place in the center over a mile from the daylight
on top. I suppose it looks easy to the engineer who knows how, but it
is miraculous to me. A good many lives have been lost and a lot of
money spent on this tunnel, but those are the sacrifices the world
demands before it will move on.
The road over the Pass is forty-five miles long. Soon after starting,
all agriculture disappeared, except vineyards and pasture. The
vineyards continued almost up to the snow. Wherever there was enough
ground there were vines, and in many places the mountain-side was
terraced and in the made land the vines were growing profusely.
Literally speaking, there are mountains of vineyards in northern Italy
and in Switzerland.
[Illustration]
Cattle-raising in the Alps is done in small herds and is mostly on the
Swiss side. The stock looks smooth and fine. Along with a drove of cows
are always a few goats. In the early summer the herdsmen drive the
animals up the paths and trails to the little patches of rich pasture,
where they feed until fall, neither man nor beast coming down until
driven by the cold. I saw cattle pasturing on the mountain-side where
it was so steep it seemed they must have feet like flies or they would
tumble down. Of course the animals inherit the mountain knowledge, and
I suppose they don’t know there is such a thing as a level meadow.
Here and there men and women would be cutting grass with a scythe,
spreading the hay out to dry, and then actually rolling it down the
mountain-side. Like all people who live in mountainous countries, the
Swiss herdsmen along the Simplon looked intelligent, cheerful and poor.
[Illustration]
And that brings me to another broken idol. I had always heard of a
Swiss “chalet,” and had supposed it was an artistic, smart-looking
house perched up on a peak for everybody to see. A real Swiss chalet
is a half dugout in a valley, built of stone and whitewashed once, in
which the family lives upstairs and the cattle spend the winter in the
basement, never going out until the springtime comes. Now I can see
the economy, the advantages and the necessity of a Swiss “chalet,”
but I can’t see anything beautiful or poetic, for such qualities are
not present. I had the same experience with an Italian “villa,” which
I found by observation was usually a plain-appearing stone house
built around a court, inhabited by Italians, goats and chickens, and
principally remembered by the noisome odor.
[Illustration]
I have done some touring in the Rocky Mountains, and I was curious
to see what difference there would be between the Rockies and the
Alps,—both having peaks of about the same height, and each forming the
backbone of a continent. The Alps have more snow than the Rockies. All
of the peaks are snow-covered and the gulches of snow run far down the
mountain-side here in July. Only an occasional peak in Colorado has
snow, and then only a little, not enough to call it “snow-covered.” To
my mind the Rockies are more grandly picturesque. The sides of the Alps
are cultivated and covered with vines, dotted with pasture and cattle
nearly up to the timber-line. The Rockies are still as nature left
them, more stern and desolate, awe-inspiring and effective. The Alps do
not look like the Rockies, except in height and steepness. The foliage
of the trees is not the same, and the Alps have a tamer appearance than
the American range. A town in the Rockies is out of harmony with the
scenery. A village in the Alps adds to the beauty. Perhaps I do not
make myself clear, but there is a great difference, and I think the
Rockies are far ahead from a mountain standpoint.
[Illustration]
Switzerland has no language of its own. The Swiss have four distinct
languages, and the people of one part of the country do not understand
the other. In some of the cantons (corresponding to our states) the
language is French, in some German, in some Italian, and in some a
composite speech based on the Latin and called “the Romance language.”
Remember, this is a country of about the same area (15,000 miles) as
the Seventh Congressional district of Kansas, but also remember it
is cut up by the mountains into natural divisions which are hard to
overcome. I am getting used to hearing one language in one town and
another in the next across an imaginary line. But four kinds of talk
within a little country like Switzerland is going to be hard to contend
with.
[Illustration]
Right at the top of the Simplon Pass among the snows that never
entirely melt is a “hospice,” maintained for generations by an order of
monks and devoted to taking care of poor travelers or relieving those
in distress or who lose their way. On every pass between Switzerland
and Italy there is such a hospice. The monks have the great St. Bernard
dogs (named from the St. Bernard Pass, a little distance away), and
when the snows get deep the dogs do much of the work of rescue. I had
heard of these great institutions since boyhood, and wondered if they
would turn out badly when actually seen. But they are all right, and
their good work has not been exaggerated in the thrilling stories in
which they have figured.
[Illustration]
There are many very large and very picturesque waterfalls, many more
than in the Rockies. The constantly melting snow keeps them running,
and it is not uncommon to see the water tumbling or jumping down a
sheer descent of two hundred to five hundred feet. I would like to
take a few waterfalls of that kind back to Kansas and put them up
in the sand-hills. I offered an Italian gentleman on the coach who
spoke some English to trade him 160 acres of western Kansas land for
a good first-class waterfall. Almost fifteen minutes after I made the
proposition he laughed. It doesn’t do any good to be funny with people
who don’t know your language.
GENEVA AND CHILLON.
GENEVA, July 9, 1905.
This little city, now containing nearly 100,000 inhabitants, has been
a storm-center in Europe for 2000 years. Cæsar mentions it, and during
the early centuries when Rome was conquering and governing most of
the known world, Geneva was an important place, both from a strategic
standpoint as a gate to Helvetia and as a prosperous and loyal town.
It was either the capital of the country or a ruling city during all
of the Dark and Medieval ages, and was one of the first where people
learned popular sovereignty and applied it to the detriment of the
reigning king or duke. By playing one side against another in the
struggle for sovereignty the popular leaders fought for freedom of
conscience, and about the year 1500 secured practical independence.
Then the Reformation commenced, and Calvin fled from Paris to Geneva.
The people there were naturally “agin the government,” and they took
up Calvin’s doctrine, and during the years of fighting over religion
Geneva was the center from which Protestantism drew most of its
leadership and inspiration. They fought for freedom of conscience and
worship, and if anybody disagreed with them they killed him promptly
to convince him of his error. Calvin ruled Geneva during his life, and
after his death his cause went marching on. During the last century
Geneva has made a reputation for manufacturing watches, jewelry and
musical instruments. It is only fair to say that the best Geneva
watches are now made in America. The work here is nearly all done by
hand in the home of the workman, and the watchmakers of Geneva have had
a hard time competing with Yankee machinery and ingenuity.
[Illustration]
The surroundings of Geneva are peaceful and beautiful. The big lake of
blue water comes to an end at the Geneva quay and rushes out into the
world as the river Rhone, clear and sparkling. Mont Blanc, a quiet old
stager of a mountain, whose head is always covered with snow, looks
over the city like a stately sentinel at his post. Mountains rise all
around the lake and are covered with vineyards, almost the only product
of the soil, stretching far up the heights connecting the blue of the
lake with the blue of the sky and the snowy peaks and white clouds
which watch over them. Amid such surroundings we had decided to rest a
few days from our travel, and I found it the best place in the world
just to sit in the hotel garden from which the lake, Mont Blanc and the
entire picture are visible, and just loaf and loaf and loaf.
[Illustration]
[Illustration: THE ALPINE HUNTER OF TO-DAY]