Europe Revised — 48 - Ch. XXIV: Mine Own People, pt. 1

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!