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.
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