They are
bought - in Continental Europe anywhere one may for a moderate price
hire a true-born count to do almost any small job, from guiding
one through an art gallery to waiting on one at the table. Counts
make indifferent guides, but are middling fair waiters.
Outside of the counts and the taxicabs, and the food in Germany,
I found in all Europe just one real overpowering bargain - and that
was in Naples, where, as a general thing, bargains are not what
they seem. For the exceedingly moderate outlay of one lira - Italian
- or twenty cents - American - I secured this combination, to wit, as
follows:
In the background old Vesuvius, like a wicked, fallen angel, wearing
his plumy, fumy halo of sulphurous hell-smoke; in the middle
distance the Bay of Naples, each larcenous wave-crest in it
triple-plated with silvern glory pilfered from a splendid moon;
on the left the riding lights of a visiting squadron of American
warships; on the right the myriad slanted sails of the coral-fishers'
boats, beating out toward Capri, with the curlew-calls of the
fishermen floating back in shrill snatches to meet a jangle of
bell and bugle from the fleet; in the immediate foreground a
competent and accomplished family troupe of six Neapolitan troubadours
- men, women and children - some of them playing guitars and all
six of them, with fine mellow voices and tremendous dramatic effect,
singing - the words being Italian but the air good American - John
Brown's Body Lies a-Moldering in the Grave!
I defy you to get more than that for twenty cents anywhere in the
world!
Chapter XII
Night Life - with the Life Part Missing
In our consideration of this topic we come first to the night life
of the English. They have none.
Passing along to the next subject under the same heading, which
is the night life of Paris, we find here so much night life, of
such a delightfully transparent and counterfeit character; so much
made-to-measure deviltry; so many members of the Madcaps' Union
engaged on piece-work; so much delicious, hoydenish derring-do,
all carefully stage-managed and expertly timed for the benefit of
North and South American spenders, to the end that the deliriousness
shall abate automatically in exact proportion as the spenders quit
spending - in short, so much of what is typically Parisian that,
really Paris, on its merits, is entitled to a couple of chapters
of its own.
All of which naturally brings us to the two remaining great cities
of Mid-Europe - Berlin and Vienna - and leads us to the inevitable
conclusion that the Europeans, in common with all other peoples
on the earth, only succeed - when they try to be desperately wicked
- in being desperately dull; whereas when they seek their pleasures
in a natural manner they present racial slants and angles that are
very interesting to observe and very pleasant to have a hand in.
