Part of the way we skirted the hobs of the great witches' caldron of Vesuvius. On this day the resident demons must have been stirring their brew with special enthusiasm, for the smoky smudge which always wreathes its lips had increased to a great billowy plume that lay along the naked flanges of the devil mountain for miles and miles. Now we would go puffing and panting through some small outlying environ of the city. Always the principal products of such a village seemed to be young babies and macaroni drying in the sun. I am still reasonably fond of babies, but I date my loss of appetite for imported macaroni from that hour. Now we would emerge on a rocky headland and below us would be the sea, eternally young and dimpling like a maiden's cheek; but the crags above were eternally old and all gashed with wrinkles and seamed with folds, like the jowls of an ancient squaw. Then for a distance we would run right along the face of the cliff. Directly beneath us we could see little stone huts of fishermen clinging to the rocks just above high-water mark, like so many gray limpets; and then, looking up, we would catch a glimpse of the vineyards, tucked into man-made terraces along the upper cliffs, like bundled herbs on the pantry shelves of a thrifty housewife; and still higher up there would be orange groves and lemon groves and dusty-gray olive groves. Each succeeding picture was Byzantine in its coloring. Always the sea was molten blue enamel, and the far-away villages seemed crafty inlays of mosaic work; and the sun was a disk of hammered Grecian gold.

A man from San Francisco was sharing the car with us, and he came right out and said that if he were sure heaven would be as beautiful as the Bay of Naples, he would change all his plans and arrange to go there. He said he might decide to go there anyhow, because heaven was a place he had always heard very highly spoken of. And I agreed with him.

The sun was slipping down the western sky and was laced with red like a bloodshot eye, with a Jacob's Ladder of rainbow shafts streaming down from it to the water, when we turned inland; and after several small minor stops, while the automobile caught its breath and had the heaves and the asthma, we came to Pompeii over a road built of volcanic rock. I have always been glad that we went there on a day when visitors were few. The very solitude of the place aided the mind in the task of repeopling the empty streets of that dead city by the sea with the life that was hers nearly two thousand years ago. Herculaneum will always be buried, so the scientists say, for Herculaneum was snuggled close up under Vesuvius, and the hissing-hot lava came down in waves; and first it slugged the doomed town to death and then slagged it over with impenetrable, flint-hard deposits. Pompeii, though, lay farther away, and was entombed in dust and ashes only; so that it has been comparatively easy to unearth it and make it whole again. Even so, after one hundred and sixty-odd years of more or less desultory explorations, nearly a third of its supposed area is yet to be excavated.

It was in the year 1592 that an architect named Fontana, in cutting an aqueduct which was to convey the waters of the Sarno to Torre dell' Annunziata, discovered the foundations of the Temple of Isis, which stood near the walls on the inner or land side of the ancient city. It was at first supposed that he had dug into an isolated villa of some rich Roman; and it was not until 1748 that prying archaeologists hit on the truth and induced the Government to send a chain gang of convicts to dig away the accumulations of earth and tufa. But if it had been a modern Italian city that was buried, no such mistake in preliminary diagnosis could have occurred. Anybody would have known it instantly by the smell. I do not vouch for the dates—I copied them out of the guidebook; but my experience with Italian cities qualifies me to speak with authority regarding the other matter.

Afoot we entered Pompeii by the restored Marine Gate. Our first step within the walls was at the Museum, a comparatively modern building, but containing a fairly complete assortment of the relics that from time to time have been disinterred in various quarters of the city. Here are wall cabinets filled with tools, ornaments, utensils, jewelry, furniture—all the small things that fulfilled everyday functions in the first century of the Christian era. Here is a kit of surgical implements, and some of the implements might well belong to a modern hospital. There are foodstuffs —grains and fruits; wines and oil; loaves of bread baked in 79 A. D. and left in the abandoned ovens; and a cheese that is still in a fair state of preservation. It had been buried seventeen hundred years when they found it; and if only it had been permitted to remain buried a few years longer it would have been sufficiently ripe to satisfy a Bavarian, I think.

Grimmer exhibits are displayed in cases stretched along the center of the main hall—models of dead bodies discovered in the ruins and perfectly restored by pouring a bronze composition into the molds that were left in the hardened pumice after the flesh of these victims had turned to dust and their bones had crumbled to powder. Huddled together are the forms of a mother and a babe; and you see how, with her last conscious thought, the mother tried to cover her baby's face from the killing rain of dust and blistering ashes. And there is the shape of a man who wrapped his face in a veil to keep out the fumes, and died so. The veil is there, reproduced with a fidelity no sculptor could duplicate, and through its folds you may behold the agony that made his jaw to sag and his eyes to pop from their sockets.

Nearby is a dog, which in its last spasms of pain and fright curled up worm fashion, and buried its nose in its forepaws and kicked out with its crooked hind legs. Plainly dogs do not change their emotional natures with the passage of years. A dog died in Pompeii in 79 A. D. after exactly the same fashion that a dog might die to-day in the pound at Pittsburgh.

From here we went on into the city proper; and it was a whole city, set off by itself and not surrounded by those jarring modern incongruities that spoil the ruins of Rome for the person who wishes to give his fancy a slack rein. It is all here, looking much as it must have looked when Nero and Caligula reigned, and much as it will still look hundreds of years hence, for the Government owns it now and guards it and protects it from the hammer of the vandal and the greed of the casual collector. Here it is—all of it; the tragic theater and the comic theater; the basilica; the greater forum and the lesser one; the market place; the amphitheater for the games; the training school for the gladiators; the temples; the baths; the villas of the rich; the huts of the poor; the cubicles of the slaves; shops; offices; workrooms; brothels.

The roofs are gone, except in a few instances where they have been restored; but the walls stand and many of the detached pillars stand too; and the pavements have endured well, so that the streets remain almost exactly as they were when this was a city of live beings instead of a tomb of dead memories, with deep groovings of chariot wheels in the flaggings, and at each crossing there are stepping stones, dotting the roadbed like punctuation marks. At the public fountain the well curbs are worn away where the women rested their water jugs while they swapped the gossip of the town; and at nearly every corner is a groggery, which in its appointments and fixtures is so amazingly like unto a family liquor store as we know it that, venturing into one, I caught myself looking about for the Business Men's Lunch, with a collection of greasy forks in a glass receptacle, a crock of pretzels on the counter, and a sign over the bar reading: No Checks Cashed—This Means You!

In the floors the mosaics are as fresh as though newly applied; and the ribald and libelous Latin, which disappointed litigants carved on the stones at the back of the law court, looks as though it might have been scored there last week—certainly not further back than the week before that. A great many of the wall paintings in the interiors of rich men's homes have been preserved and some of them are fairly spicy as to subject and text. It would seem that in these matters the ancient Pompeiians were pretty nearly as broad-minded and liberal as the modern Parisians are. The mural decorations I saw in certain villas were almost suggestive enough to be acceptable matter for publication in a French comic paper; almost, but not quite. Mr. Anthony Comstock would be an unhappy man were he turned loose in Pompeii—unhappy for a spell, but after that exceedingly busy.

We lingered on, looking and marveling, and betweenwhiles wondering whether our automobile's hacking cough had got any better by resting, until the sun went down and the twilight came. Following the guidebook's advice we had seen the Colosseum in Rome by moonlight. There was a full moon on the night we went there. It came heaving up grandly, a great, round-faced, full-cream, curdy moon, rich with rennet and yellow with butter fats; but by the time we had worked our way south to Naples a greedy fortnight had bitten it quite away, until it was reduced to a mere cheese rind of a moon, set up on end against the delft-blue platter of a perfect sky. We waited until it showed its thin rim in the heavens, and then, in the softened half-glow, with the purplish shadows deepening between the brown-gray walls of the dead city, I just naturally turned my imagination loose and let her soar.

Standing there, with the stage set and the light effects just right, in fancy I repopulated Pompeii. I beheld it just as it was on a fair, autumnal morning in 79 A. D. With my eyes half closed, I can see the vision now. At first the crowds are massed and mingled in confusion, but soon figures detach themselves from the rest and reveal themselves as prominent personages. Some of them I know at a glance. Yon tall, imposing man, with the genuine imitation sealskin collar on his toga, who strides along so majestically, whisking his cane against his leg, can be no other than Gum Tragacanth, leading man of the Bon Ton Stock Company, fresh from his metropolitan triumphs in Rome and at this moment the reigning matinee idol of the South. This week he is playing Claude Melnotte in The Lady of Lyons; next week he will be seen in his celebrated characterization of Matthias in The Bells, with special scenery; and for the regular Wednesday and Saturday bargain matinees Lady Audley's Secret will be given.

Observe him closely. It is evident that he values his art. Yet about him there is no false ostentation. With what gracious condescension does he acknowledge the half-timid, half-daring smiles of all the little caramel-chewing Floras and Faunas who have made it a point to be on Main Street at this hour! With what careless grace does he doff his laurel wreath, which is of the latest and most modish fall block, with the bow at the back, in response to the waved greeting of Mrs. Belladonna Capsicum, the acknowledged leader of the artistic and Bohemian set, as she sweeps by in her chariot bound for Blumberg Brothers' to do a little shopping. She is not going to buy anything—she is merely out shopping.

Than this fair patrician dame, none is more prominent in the gay life of Pompeii. It was she who last season smoked a cigarette in public, and there is a report now that she is seriously considering wearing an ankle bracelet; withal she is a perfect lady and belongs to one of the old Southern families. Her husband has been through the bankruptcy courts twice and is thinking of going through again. At present he is engaged in promoting and writing a little life insurance on the side.

Now her equipage is lost in the throng and the great actor continues on his way, making a mental note of the fact that he has promised to attend her next Sunday afternoon studio tea. Near his own stage door he bumps into Commodious Rotunda, the stout comedian of the comic theater, and they pause to swap the latest Lambs' Club repartee. This done, Commodius hauls out a press clipping and would read it, but the other remembers providentially that he has a rehearshal on and hurriedly departs. If there are any press clippings to be read he has a few of his own that will bear inspection.

Superior Maxillary, managing editor of the Pompeiian "Daily News-Courier," is also abroad, collecting items of interest and subscriptions for his paper, with preference given to the latter. He enters the Last Chance Saloon down at the foot of the street and in a minute or two is out again, wiping his mustache on the back of his hand. We may safely opine that he has been taking a small ad. out in trade.

At the door of the county courthouse, where he may intercept the taxpayers as they come and go, is stationed our old friend, Colonel Pro Bono Publico. The Colonel has been running for something or other ever since Heck was a pup. To-day he is wearing his official campaign smile, for he is a candidate for county judge, subject to the action of the Republican party at the October primaries. He is wearing all his lodge buttons and likewise his G. A. R. pin, for this year he figures on carrying the old-soldier vote.

See who comes now! It is Rigor Mortis, the worthy coroner. At sight of him the Colonel uplifts his voice in hoarsely jovial salutation:

"Rigsy, my boy," he booms, "how are you? And how is Mrs. M. this morning?"

"Well, Colonel," answers his friend, "my wife ain't no better. She's mighty puny and complaining. Sometimes I get to wishing the old lady would get well—or something!"

The Colonel laughs, but not loudly. That wheeze was old in 79. In front of the drug-store on the corner a score of young bloods, dressed in snappy togas for Varsity men, are skylarking. They are especially brilliant in their flashing interchanges of wit and humor, because the Mastodon Minstrels were here only last week, with a new line of first-part jokes. Along the opposite side of the street passes Nux Vomica, M.D., with a small black case in his hand, gravely intent on his professional duties. Being a young physician, he wears a beard and large-rimmed eyeglasses. Young Ossius Dome sees him and hails him.

"Oh, Doc!" he calls out. "Come over here a minute. I've got some brand-new limerickii for you. Tertiary Tonsillitis got 'em from a traveling man he met day before yesterday when he was up in the city laying in his stock of fall and winter armor."

The healer of ills crosses over; and as the group push themselves in toward a common center I hear the voice of the speaker:

"Say, they're all bully; but this is the bullissimus one of the lot. It goes like this:

"'There was a young maid of Sorrento, Who said to her—'"

I have regretted ever since that at this juncture I came to and so failed to get the rest of it. I'll bet that was a peach of a limerick. It started off so promisingly.



Chapter XXIII



Muckraking in Old Pompeii

It now devolves on me as a painful yet necessary duty to topple from its pedestal one of the most popular idols of legendary lore. I refer, I regret to say, to the widely famous Roman sentry of old Pompeii.

Personally I think there has been entirely too much of this sort of thing going on lately. Muckrakers, prying into the storied past, have destroyed one after another many of the pet characters in history. Thanks to their meddlesome activities we know that Paul Revere did not take any midnight ride. On the night in question he was laid up in bed with inflammatory rheumatism. What happened was that he told the news to Mrs. Revere as a secret, and she in strict confidence imparted it to the lady living next door; and from that point on the word traveled with the rapidity of wildfire.

Horatius never held the bridge; he just let the blamed thing go. The boy did not stand on the burning deck, whence all but him had fled; he was among the first in the lifeboats. That other boy —the Spartan youth—did not have his vitals gnawed by a fox; the Spartan youth had been eating wild grapes and washing them down with spring water. Hence that gnawing sensation of which so much mention has been made. Nobody hit Billy Patterson. He acquired his black eye in the same way in which all married men acquire a black eye—by running against a doorjamb while trying to find the ice-water pitcher in the dark. He said so himself the next day.

Even Barbara Frietchie is an exploded myth. She did not nail her country's flag to the window casement. Being a female, she could not nail a flag or anything else to a window. In the first place, she would have used a wad of chewing gum and a couple of hairpins. In the second place, had she recklessly undertaken to nail up a flag with hammer and nails, she would never have been on hand at the psychological moment to invite Stonewall Jackson to shoot her old gray head. When General Jackson passed the house she would have been in the bathroom bathing her left thumb in witch-hazel.

Furthermore, she did not have any old gray head. At the time of the Confederate invasion of Maryland she was only seventeen years old—some authorities say only seven—and a pronounced blonde. Also, she did not live in Frederick; and even if she did live there, on the occasion when the troops went through she was in Baltimore visiting a school friend. Finally, Frederick does not stand where it stood in the sixties. The cyclone of 1884 moved it three miles back into the country and twisted the streets round in such a manner as to confuse even lifelong residents. These facts have repeatedly been proved by volunteer investigators and are not to be gainsaid.

I repeat that there has been too much of this. If the craze for smashing all our romantic fixtures persists, after a while we shall have no glorious traditions left with which to fire the youthful heart at high-school commencements. But in the interests of truth, and also because I made the discovery myself, I feel it to be my solemn duty to expose the Roman sentry, stationed at the gate of Pompeii looking toward the sea, who died because he would not quit his post without orders and had no orders to quit.

Until now this party has stood the acid test of centuries. Everybody who ever wrote about the fall of Pompeii, from Plutarch and Pliny the Younger clear down to Bulwer Lytton and Burton Holmes, had something to say about him. The lines on this subject by the Greek poet Laryngitis are familiar to all lovers of that great master of classic verse, and I shall not undertake to quote from them here.

Suffice it to say that the Roman sentry, perishing at his post, has ever been a favorite subject for historic and romantic writers. I myself often read of him—how on that dread day when the devil's stew came to a boil and spewed over the sides of Vesuvius, and death and destruction poured down to blight the land, he, typifying fortitude and discipline and unfaltering devotion, stood firm and stayed fast while all about him chaos reigned and fathers forgot their children and husbands forgot their wives, and vice versa, though probably not to the same extent; and how finally the drifting ashes and the choking dust fell thicker upon him and mounted higher about him, until he died and in time turned to ashes himself, leaving only a void in the solidified slag. I had always admired that soldier—not his judgment, which was faulty, but his heroism, which was immense. To myself I used to say:

"That unknown common soldier, nameless though he was, deserves to live forever in the memory of mankind. He lacked imagination, it is true, but he was game. It was a glorious death to die—painful, yet splendid. Those four poor wretches whose shells were found in the prison under the gladiators' school, with their ankles fast in the iron stocks—I know why they stayed. Their feet were too large for their own good. But no bonds except his dauntless will bound him at the portals of the doomed city. Duty was the only chain that held him.

"And to think that centuries and centuries afterward they should find his monument—a vacant, empty mold in the piled-up pumice! Had I been in his place I should have created my vacancy much sooner—say, about thirty seconds after the first alarm went in. But he was one who chose rather that men should say, 'How natural he looks!' than 'Yonder he goes!' And he has my sincere admiration. When I go to Pompeii—if ever I do go there—I shall seek out the spot where he made the supremest sacrifice to authority that ever any man could make, and I shall tarry a while in those hallowed precincts!"

That was what I said I would do and that was what I did do that afternoon at Pompeii. I found the gate looking toward the sea and I found all the other gates, or the sites of them; but I did not find the Roman sentry nor any trace of him, nor any authentic record of him. I questioned the guides and, through an interpreter, the curator of the Museum, and from them I learned the lamentably disillusioning facts in this case. There is no trace of him because he neglected to leave any trace.

Doubtless there was a sentry on guard at the gate when the volcano belched forth, and the skin of the earth flinched and shivered and split asunder; but he did not remain for the finish. He said to himself that this was no place for a minister's son; and so he girded up his loins and he went away from there.

He went away hurriedly—even as you and I.



Chapter XXIV



Mine Own People

Wherever we went I was constantly on the outlook for a kind of tourist who had been described to me frequently and at great length by more seasoned travelers—the kind who wore his country's flag as a buttonhole emblem, or as a shirtfront decoration; and regarded every gathering and every halting place as providing suitable opportunity to state for the benefit of all who might be concerned, how immensely and overpoweringly superior in all particulars was the land from which he hailed as compared with all other lands under the sun. I desired most earnestly to overhaul a typical example of this species, my intention then being to decoy him off to some quiet and secluded spot and there destroy him in the hope of cutting down the breed.

At length, along toward the fag end of our zigzagging course, I caught up with him; but stayed my hand and slew not. For some countries, you understand, are so finicky in the matter of protecting their citizens that they would protect even such a one as this. I was fearful lest, by exterminating the object of my homicidal desires, I should bring on international complications with a friendly Power, no matter however public-spirited and high-minded my intentions might be.

It was in Vienna, in a cafe, and the hour was late. We were just leaving, after having listened for some hours to a Hungarian band playing waltz tunes and an assemblage of natives drinking beer, when the sounds of a dispute at the booth where wraps were checked turned our faces in that direction. In a thick and plushy voice a short square person of a highly vulgar aspect was arguing with the young woman who had charge of the check room. Judging by his tones, you would have said that the nap of his tongue was at least a quarter of an inch long; and he punctuated his remarks with hiccoughs. It seemed that his excitement had to do with the disappearance of a neck-muffler. From argument he progressed rapidly to threats and the pounding of a fist upon the counter.

Drawing nigh, I observed that he wore a very high hat and a very short sack coat; that his waistcoat was of a combustible plaid pattern with gaiters to match; that he had taken his fingers many times to the jeweler, but not once to the manicure; that he was beautifully jingled and alcoholically boastful of his native land and that—a crowning touch—he wore flaring from an upper pocket of his coat a silk handkerchief woven in the design and colors of his country's flag. But, praises be, it was not our flag that he wore thus. It was the Union Jack. As we passed out into the damp Viennese midnight he was loudly proclaiming that he "Was'h Bri'sh subjesch," and that unless something was done mighty quick, would complain to "Is Majeshy's rep(hic)shenativ' ver' firsch thing 'n morn'."

So though I was sorry he was a cousin, I was selfishly and unfeignedly glad that he was not a brother. Since in the mysterious and unfathomable scheme of creation it seemed necessary that he should be born somewhere, still he had not been born in America, and that thought was very pleasing to me.

There was another variety of the tourist breed whose trail I most earnestly desired to cross. I refer to the creature who must be closely watched to prevent him, or her, from carrying off valuable relics as souvenirs, and defacing monuments and statues and disfiguring holy places with an inconsequential signature. In the flesh—and such a person must be all flesh and no soul—I never caught up with him, but more than once I came upon his fresh spoor.

In Venice our guide took us to see the nether prisons of the Palace of the Doges. From the level of the Bridge of Sighs we tramped down flights of stone stairs, one flight after another, until we had passed the hole through which the bodies of state prisoners, secretly killed at night, were shoved out into waiting gondolas and had passed also the room where pincers and thumbscrew once did their hideous work, until we came to a cellar of innermost, deepermost cells, fashioned out of the solid rock and stretching along a corridor that was almost as dark as the cells themselves. Here, so we were told, countless wretched beings, awaiting the tardy pleasure of the torturer or the headsman, had moldered in damp and filth and pitchy blackness, knowing day from night only by the fact that once in twenty-four hours food would be slipped through a hole in the wall by unseen hands; lying here until oftentimes death or the cruel mercy of madness came upon them before the overworked executioner found time to rack their limbs or lop off their heads.

We were told that two of these cells had been preserved exactly as they were in the days of the Doges, with no alteration except that lights had been swung from the ceilings. We could well accept this statement as the truth, for when the guide led us through a low doorway and flashed on an electric bulb we saw that the place where we stood was round like a jug and bare as an empty jug, with smooth stone walls and rough stone floor; and that it contained for furniture just two things—a stone bench upon which the captive might lie or sit and, let into the wall, a great iron ring, to which his chains were made fast so that he moved always to their grating accompaniment and the guard listening outside might know by the telltale clanking whether the entombed man still lived.

There was one other decoration in this hole—a thing more incongruous even than the modern lighting fixtures; and this stood out in bold black lettering upon the low-sloped ceiling. A pair of vandals, a man and wife—no doubt with infinite pains—had smuggled in brush and marking pot and somehow or other—I suspect by bribing guides and guards—had found the coveted opportunity of inscribing their names here in the Doges' black dungeon. With their names they had written their address too, which was a small town in the Northwest, and after it the legend: "Send us a postal card."

I imagine that then this couple, having accomplished this feat, regarded their trip to Europe as being rounded out and complete, and went home again, satisfied and rejoicing. Send them a postal card? Somebody should send them a deep-dish poison-pie!

Looking on this desecration my companion and I grew vocal. We agreed that our national lawgivers who were even then framing an immigration law with a view to keeping certain people out of this country, might better be engaged in framing one with a view to keeping certain people in. Our guide harkened with a quiet little smile on his face to what we said.

"It cannot have been here long—that writing on the ceiling," he explained for our benefit." Presently it will be scraped away. But"— and he shrugged his eloquent Italian shoulders and outspread his hands fan-fashion—"but what is the use? Others like them will come and do as they have done. See here and here and here, if you please!"

He aimed a darting forefinger this way and that, and looking where he pointed we saw now how the walls were scarred with the scribbled names of many visitors. I regret exceedingly to have to report that a majority of these names had an American sound to them. Indeed, many of the signatures were coupled with the names of towns and states of the Union. There were quite a few from Canada, too. What, I ask you, is the wisdom of taking steps to discourage the cutworm and abate the gypsy-moth when our government permits these two-legged varmints to go abroad freely and pollute shrines and wonderplaces with their scratchings, and give the nations over there a perverted notion of what the real human beings on this continent are like?

For the tourist who has wearied of picture galleries and battlegrounds and ruins and abbeys, studying other tourists provides a pleasant way of passing many an otherwise tedious hour. Certain of the European countries furnish some interesting types—notably Britain, which producing a male biped of a lachrymose and cheerless exterior, who plods solemnly across the Continent wrapped in the plaid mantle of his own dignity, never speaking an unnecessary word to any person whatsoever. And Germany: From Germany comes a stolid gentleman, who, usually, is shaped like a pickle mounted on legs and is so extensively and convexedly eyeglassed as to give him the appearance of something that is about to be served sous cloche. Caparisoned in strange garments, he stalks through France or Italy with an umbrella under his arm, his nose being buried so deeply in his guidebook that he has no time to waste upon the scenery or the people; while some ten paces in the rear, his wife staggers along in his wake with her skirts dragging in the dust and her arms pulled half out of their sockets by the weight of the heavy bundles and bags she is bearing. This person, when traveling, always takes his wife and much baggage with him. Or, rather, he takes his wife and she takes the baggage which, by Continental standards, is regarded as an equal division of burdens.

However, for variety and individual peculiarity, our own land offers the largest assortment in the tourist line, this perhaps being due to the fact that Americans do more traveling than any other race. I think that in our ramblings we must have encountered pretty nearly all the known species of tourists, ranging from sane and sensible persons who had come to Europe to see and to learn and to study, clear on down through various ramifications to those who had left their homes and firesides to be uncomfortable and unhappy in far lands merely because somebody told them they ought to travel abroad. They were in Europe for the reason that so many people run to a fire: not because they care particularly for a fire but because so many others are running to it. I would that I had the time, and you, kind reader, the patience so that I might enumerate and describe in full detail all the varieties and sub-varieties of our race that we saw—the pert, overfed, overpampered children, the aggressive, self-sufficient, prematurely bored young girls, the money-fattened, boastful vulgarians, scattering coin by the handful, intent only on making a show and not realizing that they themselves were the show; the coltish, pimply youths who thought in order to be high-spirited they must also be impolite and noisy. Youth will be served, but why, I ask you—why must it so often be served raw? For contrasts to such as these, we met plenty of people worth meeting and worth knowing—fine, attractive, well-bred American men and women, having a decent regard for themselves and for other folks, too. Indeed this sort largely predominated. But there isn't space for making a classified list. The one-volume chronicler must content himself with picking out a few particularly striking types.

I remember, with vivid distinctness, two individuals, one an elderly gentleman from somewhere in the Middle West and the other, an old lady who plainly hailed from the South. We met the old gentleman in Paris, and the old lady some weeks later in Naples. Though the weather was moderately warm in Paris that week he wore red woolen wristlets down over his hands; and he wore also celluloid cuffs, which rattled musically, with very large moss agate buttons in them; and for ornamentation his watch chain bore a flat watch key, a secret order badge big enough to serve as a hitching weight and a peach-stone carved to look like a fruit basket. Everything about him suggested health underwear, chewing tobacco and fried mush for breakfast. His whiskers were cut after a pattern I had not seen in years and years. In my mind such whiskers were associated with those happy and long distant days of childhood when we yelled Supe! at a stagehand and cherished Old Cap Collier as a model of what—if we had luck—we would be when we grew up. By rights, he belonged in the second act of a rural Indian play, of a generation or two ago; but here he was, wandering disconsolately through the Louvre. He had come over to spend four months, he told us with a heave of the breath, and he still had two months of it unspent, and he just didn't see how he was going to live through it!

The old lady was in the great National Museum at Naples, fluttering about like a distracted little brown hen. She was looking for the Farnese Bull. It seemed her niece in Knoxville had told her the Farnese Bull was the finest thing in the statuary line to be found in all Italy, and until she had seen that, she wasn't going to see anything else. She had got herself separated from the rest of her party and she was wandering along about alone, seeking information regarding the whereabouts of the Farnese Bull from smiling but uncomprehending custodians and doorkeepers. These persons she would address at the top of her voice. Plainly she suffered from a delusion, which is very common among our people, that if a foreigner does not understand you when addressed in an ordinary tone, he will surely get your meaning if you screech at him. When we had gone some distance farther on and were in another gallery, we could still catch the calliope-like notes of the little old lady, as she besought some one to lead her to the Farnese Bull.

That she came right out and spoke of the Farnese Bull as a bull, instead of referring to him as a gentleman cow, was evidence of the extent to which travel had enlarged her vision, for with half an eye anyone could tell that she belonged to the period of our social development when certain honest and innocent words were supposed to be indelicate—that she had been reared in a society whose ideal of a perfect lady was one who could say limb, without thinking leg. I hope she found her bull, but I imagine she was disappointed when she did find it. I know I was. The sculpturing may be of a very high order—the authorities agree that it is—but I judge the two artists to whom the group is attributed carved the bull last and ran out of material and so skimped him a bit. The unfortunate Dirce, who is about to be bound to his horns by the sons of Antiope, the latter standing by to see that the boys make a good thorough job of it, is larger really than the bull. You can picture the lady carrying off the bull but not the bull carrying off the lady.

Numerously encountered are the tourists who are doing Europe under a time limit as exact as the schedule of a limited train. They go through Europe on the dead run, being intent on seeing it all and therefore seeing none of it. They cover ten countries in a space of time which a sane person gives to one; after which they return home exhausted, but triumphant. I think it must be months before some of them quit panting, and certainly their poor, misused feet can never again be the feet they were.

With them adherence to the time card is everything. If a look at the calendar shows the day to be Monday, they know they are in Munich, and as they lope along they get out their guidebooks and study the chapters devoted to Munich. But if it be Tuesday, then it is Dresden, and they give their attention to literature dealing with the attractions of Dresden; seeing Dresden after the fashion of one sitting before a runaway moving picture film.

Then they pack up and depart, galloping, for Prague with their tongues hanging out. For Wednesday is Prague and Prague is Wednesday —the two words are synonymous and interchangeable. Surely to such as these, the places they have visited must mean as much to them, afterward, as the labels upon their trunks mean to the trunks —just flimsy names pasted on, all confused and overlapping, and certain to be scraped off in time, leaving nothing but faint marks upon an indurated surface.

There is yet again another type, always of the female gender and generally middle-aged and very schoolteacherish in aspect, who, in company with a group of kindred spirits, is viewing Europe under a contract arrangement by which a worn and wearied-looking gentleman, a retired clergyman usually, acts as escort and mentor for a given price. I don't know how much he gets a head for this job; but whatever it is, he earns it ninety-and-nine times over. This lady tourist is much given to missing trains and getting lost and having disputes with natives and wearing rubber overshoes and asking strange questions—but let me illustrate with a story I heard.

The man from Cook's had convoyed his party through the Vatican, until he brought them to the Apollo Belvidere. As they ranged themselves wearily about the statue, he rattled off his regular patter without pause or punctuation:

"Here we have the far-famed Apollo Belvidere found about the middle of the fifteenth century at Frascati purchased by Pope Julius the Second restored by the great Michelangelo taken away by the French in 1797 but returned in 1815 made of Carara marble holding in his hand a portion of the bow with which he slew the Python observe please the beauty of the pose the realistic attitude of the limbs the noble and exalted expression of the face of Apollo Belvidere he being known also as Phoebus the god of oracles the god of music and medicine the son of Leto and Jupiter—"

Here he ran out of breath and stopped. Fora moment no one spoke. Then from a flat-chested little spinster came this query in tired yet interested tones:

"Was he—was he married?"

He who is intent upon studying the effect of foreign climes upon the American temperament should by no means overlook the colonies of resident Americans in the larger European cities, particularly the colonies in such cities as Paris and Rome and Florence. In Berlin, the American colony is largely made up of music students and in Vienna of physicians; but in the other places many folks of many minds and many callings constitute the groups. Some few have left their country for their country's good and some have expatriated themselves because, as they explain in bursts of confidence, living is cheaper in France than it is in America. I suppose it is, too, if one can only become reconciled to doing without most of the comforts which make life worth while in America or anywhere else. Included among this class are many rather unhappy old ladies who somehow impress you as having been shunted off to foreign parts because there were no places for them in the homes of their children and their grandchildren. So now they are spending their last years among strangers, trying with a desperate eagerness to be interested in people and things for which they really care not a fig, with no home except a cheerless pension.

Also there are certain folk—products, in the main, of the Eastern seaboard—who, from having originally lived in America and spent most of their time abroad, have now progressed to the point where they now live mostly abroad and visit America fleetingly once in a blue moon. As a rule these persons know a good deal about Europe and very little about the country that gave them birth. The stock-talk of European literature is at their tongue's tip. They speak of Ibsen in the tone of one mourning the passing of a near, dear, personal friend, and as for Zola—ah, how they miss the influence of his compelling personality! But for the moment they cannot recall whether Richard K. Fox ran the Police Gazette or wrote the "Trail of the Lonesome Pine."

They are up on the history of the Old World. From memory they trace the Bourbon dynasty from the first copper-distilled Charles to the last sourmashed Louis. But as regards our own Revolution, they aren't quite sure whether it was started by the Boston Tea Party or Mrs. O'Leary's Cow. Languidly they inquire whether that quaint Iowa character, Uncle Champ Root, is still Speaker of the House? And so the present Vice-President is named Elihu Underwood? Or isn't he? Anyway, American politics is such a bore. But they stand ready, at a minute's notice, to furnish you with the names, dates and details of all the marriages that have taken place during the last twenty years in the royal house of Denmark.

Some day we shall learn a lesson from Europe. Some fair day we shall begin to exploit our own historical associations. We shall make shrines of the spots where Washington crossed the ice to help end one war and where Eliza did the same thing to help start another. We shall erect stone markers showing where Charley Ross was last seen and Carrie Nation was first sighted. We shall pile up tall monuments to Sitting Bull and Nonpareil Jack Dempsey and the man who invented the spit ball. Perhaps then these truant Americans will come back oftener from Paris and Florence and abide with us longer. Meanwhile though they will continue to stay on the other side. And on second thought, possibly it is just as well for the rest of us that they do.

In Europe I met two persons, born in America, who were openly distressed over that shameful circumstance and could not forgive their parents for being so thoughtless and inconsiderate. One was living in England and the other was living in France; and one was a man and the other was a woman; and both of them were avowedly regretful that they had not been born elsewhere, which, I should say, ought to make the sentiment unanimous. I also heard—at second hand—of a young woman whose father served this country in an ambassadorial capacity at one of the principal Continental courts until the administration at Washington had a lucid interval, and endeared itself to the hearts of practically all Americans residing in that country by throwing a net over him and yanking him back home; this young woman was so fearful lest some one might think she cherished any affection for her native land that once when a legation secretary manifested a desire to learn the score of the deciding game of a World's Series between the Giants and the Athletics, she spoke up in the presence of witnesses and said:

"Ah, baseball! How can any sane person be excited over that American game? Tell me—some one please—how is it played?"

Yet she was born and reared in a town which for a great many years has held a membership in the National League. Let us pass on to a more pleasant topic.

Let us pass on to those well-meaning but temporarily misguided persons who think they are going to be satisfied with staying on indefinitely in Europe. They profess themselves as being amply pleased with the present arrangement. For, no matter how patriotic one may be, one must concede—mustn't one?—that for true culture one must look to Europe? After all, America is a bit crude, isn't it, now? Of course some time, say in two or three years from now, they will run across to the States again, but it will be for a short visit only. After Europe one can never be entirely happy elsewhere for any considerable period of time. And so on and so forth.

But as you mention in an offhand way that Cedar Bluff has a modern fire station now, or that Tulsanooga is going to have a Great White Way of its own, there are eyes that light up with a wistful light. And when you state casually, that Polkdale is planning a civic center with the new county jail at one end and the Carnegie Library at the other, lips begin to quiver under a weight of sentimental emotion. And a month or so later when you take the ship which is to bear you home, you find a large delegation of these native sons of Polkdale and Tulsanooga on board, too.

At least we found them on the ship we took. We took her at Naples —a big comfortable German ship with a fine German crew and a double force of talented German cooks working overtime in the galley and pantry—and so came back by the Mediterranean route, which is a most satisfying route, especially if the sea be smooth and the weather good, and the steerage passengers picturesque and light-hearted. Moreover the coast of Northern Africa, lying along the southern horizon as one nears Gibraltar, is one of the few sights of a European trip that are not disappointing. For, in fact, it proves to be the same color that it is in the geographies —pale yellow. It is very unusual to find a country making an earnest effort to correspond to its own map, and I think Northern Africa deserves honorable mention in the dispatches on this account.



Chapter XXV



Be it Ever so Humble

Homeward-bound, a chastened spirit pervades the traveler. He is not quite so much inclined to be gay and blithesome as he was going. The holiday is over; the sightseeing is done; the letter of credit is worn and emaciated. He has been broadened by travel but his pocketbook has been flattened. He wouldn't take anything for this trip, and as he feels at the present moment he wouldn't take it again for anything.

It is a time for casting up and readjusting. Likewise it is a good time for going over, in the calm, reflective light of second judgment, the purchases he has made for personal use and gift-making purposes. These things seemed highly attractive when he bought them, and when displayed against a background of home surroundings will, no doubt, be equally impressive; but just now they appear as rather a sad collection of junk. His English box coat doesn't fit him any better than any other box would.

His French waistcoats develop an unexpected garishness on being displayed away from their native habitat and the writing outfit which he picked up in Vienna turns out to be faulty and treacherous and inkily tearful. How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a fountain pen—that weeps! And why, when a fountain pen makes up its mind to cry a spell, does it crawl clear across a steamer trunk and bury its sobbing countenance in the bosom of a dress shirt?

Likewise the first few days at sea provide opportunity for sorting out the large and variegated crop of impressions a fellow has been acquiring during all these crowded months. The way the homeward-bound one feels now, he would swap any Old Master he ever saw for one peep at a set of sanitary bath fixtures. Sight unseen, he stands ready to trade two cathedrals and a royal palace for a union depot. He will never forget the thrill that shook his soul as he paused beneath the dome of the Pantheon; but he feels that, not only his soul but all the rest of him, could rally and be mighty cheerful in the presence of a dozen deep-sea oysters on the half shell —regular honest-to-goodness North American oysters, so beautifully long, so gracefully pendulous of shape that the short-waisted person who undertakes to swallow one whole does so at his own peril. The picture of the Coliseum bathed in the Italian moonlight will ever abide in his mind; but he would give a good deal for a large double sirloin suffocated Samuel J. Tilden style, with fried onions. Beefsteak! Ah, what sweet images come thronging at the very mention of the word! The sea vanishes magically and before his entranced vision he sees The One Town, full of regular fellows and real people. Somebody is going to have fried ham for supper—five thousand miles away he sniffs the delectable perfume of that fried ham as it seeps through a crack in the kitchen window and wafts out into the street—and the word passes round that there is going to be a social session down at the lodge to-night, followed, mayhap, by a small sociable game of quarter-limit upstairs over Corbett's drug-store. At this point, our traveler rummages his Elks' button out of his trunk and gives it an affectionate polishing with a silk handkerchief. And oh, how he does long for a look at a home newspaper—packed with wrecks and police news and municipal scandals and items about the persons one knows, and chatty mention concerning Congressmen and gunmen and tango teachers and other public characters.

Thinking it all over here in the quiet and privacy of the empty sea, he realizes that his evening paper is the thing he has missed most. To the American understanding foreign papers seem fearfully and wonderfully made. For instance, German newspapers are much addicted to printing their more important news stories in cipher form. The German treatment of a suspected crime for which no arrests have yet been made, reminds one of the jokes which used to appear, a few years ago, in the back part of Harper's Magazine, where a good story was always being related of Bishop X, residing in the town of Y, who, calling one afternoon upon Judge Z, said to Master Egbert, the pet of the household, age four, and so on. A German newspaper will daringly state that Banker ——, president of the Bank of —— at —— who is suspected of sequestering the funds of that institution to his own uses is reported to have departed by stealth for the city of ——, taking with him the wife of Herr ——.

And such is the high personal honor of the average Parisian news gatherer that one Paris morning paper, which specializes in actual news as counterdistinguished from the other Paris papers which rely upon political screeds to fill their columns, locks its doors and disconnects its telephones at 8 o'clock in the evening, so that reporters coming in after that hour must stay in till press time lest some of them—such is the fear—will peddle all the exclusive stories off to less enterprising contemporaries.

English newspapers, though printed in a language resembling American in many rudimentary respects, seem to our conceptions weird propositions, too. It is interesting to find at the tail end of an article a footnote by the editor stating that he has stopped the presses to announce in connection with the foregoing that nothing has occurred in connection with the foregoing which would justify him in stopping the presses to announce it; or words to that effect. The news stories are frequently set forth in a puzzling fashion, and the jokes also. That's the principal fault with an English newspaper joke—it loses so in translation into our own tongue.

Still, when all is said and done, the returning tourist, if he be at all fair-minded, is bound to confess to himself that, no matter where his steps or his round trip ticket have carried him, he has seen in every country institutions and customs his countrymen might copy to their benefit, immediate or ultimate. Having beheld these things with his own eyes, he knows that from the Germans we might learn some much-needed lessons about municipal control and conservation of resources; and from the French and the Austrians about rational observance of days of rest and simple enjoyment of simple outdoor pleasures and respect for great traditions and great memories; and from the Italians, about the blessed facility of keeping in a good humor; and from the English, about minding one's own business and the sane rearing of children and obedience to the law and suppression of unnecessary noises. Whenever I think of this last God-given attribute of the British race, I shall recall a Sunday we spent at Brighton, the favorite seaside resort of middle-class London. Brighton was fairly bulging with excursionists that day.

A good many of them were bucolic visitors from up country, but the majority, it was plain to see, hailed from the city. No steam carousel shrieked, no ballyhoo blared, no steam pianos shrieked, no barker barked. Upon the piers, stretching out into the surf, bands played soothingly softened airs and along the water front, sand-artists and so-called minstrel singers plied their arts. Some of the visitors fished—without catching anything—and some listened to the music and some strolled aimlessly or sat stolidly upon benches enjoying the sea air. To an American, accustomed at such places to din and tumult and rushing crowds and dangerous devices for taking one's breath and sometimes one's life, it was a strange experience, but a mighty restful one.

On the other hand there are some things wherein we notably excel—entirely too many for me to undertake to enumerate them here; still, I think I might be pardoned for enumerating a conspicuous few. We could teach Europe a lot about creature comforts and open plumbing and personal cleanliness and good food and courtesy to women—not the flashy, cheap courtesy which impels a Continental to rise and click his heels and bend his person forward from the abdomen and bow profoundly when a strange woman enters the railway compartment where he is seated, while at the same time he leaves his wife or sister to wrestle with the heavy luggage; but the deeper, less showy instinct which makes the average American believe that every woman is entitled to his protection and consideration when she really needs it. In the crowded street-car he may keep his seat; in the crowded lifeboat he gives it up.

I almost forgot to mention one other detail in which, so far as I could judge, we lead the whole of the Old World—dentistry. Probably you have seen frequent mention in English publications about decayed gentlewomen. Well, England is full of them. It starts with the teeth.

The leisurely, long, slantwise course across the Atlantic gives one time, also, for making the acquaintance of one's fellow passengers and for wondering why some of them ever went to Europe anyway. A source of constant speculation along these lines was the retired hay-and-feed merchant from Michigan who traveled with us. One gathered that he had done little else in these latter years of his life except to traipse back and forth between the two continents. What particularly endeared him to the rest of us was his lovely habit of pronouncing all words of all languages according to a fonetic system of his own. "Yes, sir," you would hear him say, addressing a smoking-room audience of less experienced travelers, "my idee is that a fellow ought to go over on an English ship, if he likes the exclusability, and come back on a German ship if he likes the sociableness. Take my case. The last trip I made I come over on the Lucy Tanner and went back agin on the Grocer K. First and enjoyed it both ways immense!"

Nor would this chronicle be complete without a passing reference to the lady from Cincinnati, a widow of independent means, who was traveling with her two daughters and was so often mistaken for their sister that she could not refrain from mentioning the remarkable circumstance to you, providing you did not win her everlasting regard by mentioning it first. Likewise I feel that I owe the tribute of a line to the elderly Britain who was engaged in a constant and highly successful demonstration of the fallacy of the claim set up by medical practitioners, to the effect that the human stomach can contain but one fluid pint at a time. All day long, with his monocle goggling glassily from the midst of his face, like one lone porthole in a tank steamer, he disproved this statement by practical methods and promptly at nine every evening, when his complexion had acquired a rich magenta tint, he would be carried below by two accommodating stewards and put—no, not put, decanted—would be decanted gently into bed. If anything had happened to the port-light of that ship, we could have stationed him forward in the bows with his face looming over the rail and been well within the maritime regulations—his face had a brilliancy which even the darkness of the night could not dim; and if the other light had gone out of commission, we could have impressed the aid of the bilious Armenian lady who was sick every minute and very sick for some minutes, for she was always of a glassy green color.

We learned to wait regularly for the ceremony of seeing Sir Monocle and his load toted off to bed at nine o'clock every night, just as we learned to linger in the offing and watch the nimble knife-work when the prize invalid of the ship's roster had cornered a fresh victim. The prize invalid, it is hardly worth while to state, was of the opposite sex. So many things ailed her—by her own confession —that you wondered how they all found room on the premises at the same time. Her favorite evening employment was to engage another woman in conversation—preferably another invalid—and by honeyed words and congenial confidences, to lead the unsuspecting prey on and on, until she had her trapped, and then to turn on her suddenly and ridicule the other woman's puny symptoms and tell her she didn't even know the rudiments of being ill and snap her up sharply when she tried to answer back. And then she would deliver a final sting and go away without waiting to bury her dead. The poison was in the postscript—it nearly always is with that type of female. But afterward she would justify herself by saying people must excuse her manner—she didn't mean anything by it; it was just her way, and they must remember that she suffered constantly. Some day when I have time, I shall make that lady the topic of a popular song. I have already fabricated the refrain: Her heart was in the right place, lads, but she had a floating kidney!

Arrives a day when you develop a growing distaste for the company of your kind, or in fact, any kind. 'Tis a day when the sea, grown frisky, kicks up its nimble heels and tosses its frothy mane. A cigar tastes wrong then and the mere sight of so many meat pies and so many German salads at the entrance to the dining salon gives one acute displeasure. By these signs you know that you are on the verge of being taken down with climate fever, which, as I set forth many pages agone, is a malady peculiar to the watery deep, and by green travelers is frequently mistaken for seasickness, which indeed it does resemble in certain respects. I may say that I had one touch of climate fever going over and a succession of touches coming back.

At such a time, the companionship of others palls on one. It is well then to retire to the privacy of one's stateroom and recline awhile. I did a good deal of reclining, coming back; I was not exactly happy while reclining, but I was happier than I would have been doing anything else. Besides, as I reclined there on my cosy bed, a medley of voices would often float in to me through the half-opened port and I could visualize the owners of those voices as they sat ranged in steamer chairs, along the deck. I quote:

"You, Raymund! You get down off that rail this minute." ... "My dear, you just ought to go to mine! He never hesitates a minute about operating, and he has the loveliest manners in the operating room. Wait a minute—I'll write his address down for you. Yes, he is expensive, but very, very thorough." ... "Stew'd, bring me nozher brand' 'n' sozza." ... "Well, now Mr.—excuse me, I didn't catch your name?—oh yes, Mr. Blosser; well, Mr. Blosser, if that isn't the most curious thing! To think of us meeting away out here in the middle of the ocean and both of us knowing Maxie Hockstein in Grand Rapids. It only goes to show one thing—this certainly is a mighty small world." ... "Raymund, did you hear what I said to you!" ... "Do you really think it is becoming? Thank you for saying so. That's what my husband always says. He says that white hair with a youthful face is so attractive, and that's one reason why I've never touched it up. Touched-up hair is so artificial, don't you think?" ... "Wasn't the Bay of Naples just perfectly swell—the water, you know, and the land and the sky and everything, so beautiful and everything?" ... "You Raymund, come away from that lifeboat. Why don't you sit down there and behave yourself and have a nice time watching for whales?" ... "No, ma'am, if you're askin' me I must say I didn't care so much for that art gallery stuff—jest a lot of pictures and statues and junk like that, so far as I noticed. In fact the whole thing—Yurupp itself —was considerable of a disappointment to me. I didn't run acros't a single Knights of Pythias Lodge the whole time and I was over there five months straight hard-runnin'." ... "Really, I think it must be hereditary; it runs in our family. I had an aunt and her hair was snow-white at twenty-one and my grandmother was the same way." ... "Oh yes, the suffering is something terrible. You've had it yourself in a mild form and of course you know. The last time they operated on me, I was on the table an hour and forty minutes—mind you, an hour and forty minutes by the clock—and for three days and nights they didn't know whether I would live another minute."

A crash of glass.

"Stew'd, I ashidently turn' over m' drink—bring me nozher brand' 'n' sozza." ... "Just a minute, Mr. Blosser, I want to tell my husband about it—he'll be awful interested. Say, listen, Poppa, this gentleman here knows Maxie Hockstein out in Grand Rapids." ... "Do you think so, really? A lot of people have said that very same thing to me. They come up to me and say 'I know you must be a Southerner because you have such a true Southern accent.' I suppose I must come by it naturally, for while I was born in New Jersey, my mother was a member of a very old Virginia family and we've always been very strong Southern sympathizers and I went to a finishing school in Baltimore and I was always being mistaken for a Southern girl." ... "Well, I sure had enough of it to do me for one spell. I seen the whole shootin' match and I don't regret what it cost me, but, believe me, little old Keokuk is goin' to look purty good to me when I get back there. Why, them people don't know no more about makin' a cocktail than a rabbit." ... "That's her standing yonder talking to the captain. Yes, that's what so many people say, but as a matter of fact, she's the youngest one of the two. I say, 'These are my daughters,' and then people say, 'You mean your sisters.' Still I married very young—at seventeen—and possibly that helps to explain it." ... "Oh, is that a shark out yonder? Well, anyway, it's a porpoise, and a porpoise is a kind of shark, isn't it? When a porpoise grows up, it gets to be a shark—I read that somewhere. Ain't nature just wonderful?" ... "Raymund Walter Pelham, if I have to speak to you again, young man, I'm going to take you to the stateroom and give you something you won't forget in a hurry." ... "Stew'd, hellup me gellup."

Thus the lazy hours slip by and the spell of the sea takes hold on you and you lose count of the time and can barely muster up the energy to perform the regular noonday task of putting your watch back half an hour. A passenger remarks that this is Thursday and you wonder dimly what happened to Wednesday.

Three days more—just three. The realization comes to you with a joyous shock. Somebody sights a sea-gull. With eager eyes you watch its curving flight. Until this moment you have not been particularly interested in sea-gulls. Heretofore, being a sea-gull seemed to you to have few attractions as a regular career, except that it keeps one out in the open air; otherwise it has struck you as being rather a monotonous life with a sameness as to diet which would grow very tiresome in time. But now you envy that sea-gull, for he comes direct from the shores of the United States of America and if so minded may turn around and beat you to them by a margin of hours and hours and hours. Oh, beauteous creature! Oh, favored bird!

Comes the day before the last day. There is a bustle of getting ready for the landing. Customs blanks are in steady demand at the purser's office. Every other person is seeking help from every other person, regarding the job of filling out declarations. The women go about with the guilty look of plotters in their worried eyes. If one of them fails to slip something in without paying duty on it she will be disappointed for life. All women are natural enemies to all excise men. Dirk, the Smuggler, was the father of their race.

Comes the last day. Dead ahead lies a misty, thread-like strip of dark blue, snuggling down against the horizon, where sea and sky merge.

You think it is a cloud bank, until somebody tells you the glorious truth. It is the Western Hemisphere—your Western Hemisphere. It is New England. Dear old New England! Charming people—the New Englanders! Ah, breathes there the man with soul so dead who never to himself has said, this is my own, my native land? Certainly not. A man with a soul so dead as that would be taking part in a funeral, not in a sea voyage. Upon your lips a word hangs poised. What a precious sound it has, what new meanings it has acquired! There are words in our language which are singular and yet sound plural, such as politics and whereabouts; there are words which are plural and yet sound singular, such as Brigham Young, and there are words which convey their exact significance by their very sound. They need no word-chandlers, no adjective-smiths to dress them up in the fine feathers of fancy phrasing. They stand on their own merits. You think of one such word—a short, sweet word of but four letters. You speak that word reverently, lovingly, caressingly.

Nearer and nearer draws that blessed dark blue strip. Nantucket light is behind us. Long Island shoulders up alongside. Trunks accumulate in gangways; so do stewards and other functionaries. You have been figuring upon the tips which you will bestow upon them at parting; so have they. It will be hours yet before we land. Indeed, if the fog thickens, we may not get in before to-morrow, yet people run about exchanging good-byes and swapping visiting cards and promising one another they will meet again. I think it is reckless for people to trifle with their luck that way.

Forward, on the lower deck, the immigrants cluster, chattering a magpie chorus in many tongues. The four-and-twenty blackbirds which were baked in a pie without impairment to the vocal cords have nothing on them. Most of the women were crying when they came aboard at Naples or Palermo or Gibraltar. Now they are all smiling. Their dunnage is piled in heaps and sailors, busy with ropes and chains and things, stumble over it and swear big round German oaths.

Why, gracious! We are actually off Sandy Hook. Dear old Sandy —how one loves those homely Scotch names! The Narrows are nigh and Brooklyn, the City Beautiful, awaits us around the second turning to the left. The pilot boat approaches. Brave little craft! Gallant pilot! Do you suppose by any chance he has brought any daily papers with him? He has—hurrah for the thoughtful pilot! Did you notice how much he looked like the pictures of Santa Claus?

We move on more slowly and twice again we stop briefly. The quarantine officers have clambered up the sides and are among us; and to some of us they give cunning little thermometers to hold in our mouths and suck on, and of others they ask chatty, intimate questions with a view to finding out how much insanity there is in the family at present and just what percentage of idiocy prevails? Three cheers for the jolly old quarantine regulations. Even the advance guard of the customhouse is welcomed by one and all—or nearly all.

Between wooded shores which seem to advance to meet her in kindly greeting, the good ship shoves ahead. For she is a good ship, and later we shall miss her, but at this moment we feel that we can part from her without a pang. She rounds a turn in the channel. What is that mass which looms on beyond, where cloud-combing office buildings scallop the sky and bridges leap in far-flung spans from shore to shore? That's her—all right—the high picketed gateway of the nation. That's little old New York. Few are the art centers there, and few the ruins; and perhaps there is not so much culture lying round loose as there might be—just bustle and hustle, and the rush and crush and roar of business and a large percentage of men who believe in supporting their own wives and one wife at a time. Crass perhaps, crude perchance, in many ways, but no matter. All her faults are virtues now. Beloved metropolis, we salute thee! And also do we turn to salute Miss Liberty.

This series of adventure tales began with the Statue of Liberty fading rearward through the harbor mists. It draws to a close with the same old lady looming through those same mists and drawing ever closer and closer. She certainly does look well this afternoon, doesn't she? She always does look well, somehow.

We slip past her and on past the Battery too; and are nosing up the North River. What a picturesque stream it is, to be sure! And how full of delightful rubbish! In twenty minutes or less we shall be at the dock. Folks we know are there now, waiting to welcome us.

As close as we can pack ourselves, we gather in the gangways. Some one raises a voice in song. 'Tis not the Marseillaise hymn that we sing, nor Die Wacht am Rhein, nor Ava Maria, nor God Save the King; nor yet is it Columbia the Gem of the Ocean. In their proper places these are all good songs, but we know one more suitable to the occasion, and so we all join in. Hark! Happy voices float across the narrowing strip of rolly water between ship and shore:

"'Mid pleasures and palaces, Though we may roam,

(Now then, altogether, mates:)

Be it ever so humble, There's no place like HOME!"

THE END