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A BATH IN AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
A BATH IN 
 
 AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 By CHARLES BATTELL LOOMIS 
 
 Author of " Minerva's Manoeuvres/' 
 '' Cheerful Americans," etc 
 
 Illustrated by Robert A. Grmef 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 A. S. BARNES & COMPANY 
 
 1907 
 
A FEW REMARKS 
 
 There is nothing in this book that is 
 calculated to anger people. During my 
 visit to England I was seldom angered. 
 I had a good time there and people went 
 out of their way to make me happy, 
 partly because I was an American but 
 largely because I was my own sweet- 
 tempered self. There is no asset so 
 valuable to a traveler as a sweet temper 
 and when I am abroad and have tem- 
 porarily cast aside home burdens (such 
 as furnaces and lawns) I am as gentle as 
 Jane in the ballad. 
 
 The English like us very much — 
 
 much more than we like them. / 
 
 vii 
 
A FEW REMARKS 
 
 To be sure they unknowingly con- 
 descend to us but it is perfectly easy for 
 us to condescend in our turn. 
 
 One of them once said to me, '' Haven't 
 you any great painters ?'' 
 
 '^Why there's Sargent; we think a 
 good deal of him.'' 
 
 '' But I thought he was an Englishman. 
 He's at the head of our painters. I think 
 he's an Englishman." 
 
 *' Your thoughts, my dear boy, cannot 
 alter his nationality." 
 
 At another time one said, ""Why 
 haven't you any great singers ?" 
 
 ''Isn't Patti great enough.^ She was 
 a child in New York streets when she 
 first began to sing. And are Eames and 
 Nordica to be sneezed at ^ It is not 
 respectful to sneeze at a lady." 
 
 Again the Englishman supposed that 
 all these voices were to be credited to 
 Europe. 
 
 Vlll 
 
A FEW REMARKS 
 
 I took innocent pleasure in telling 
 them that over a hundred years ago 
 our Benjamin West was president of their 
 Royal Academy, and that we took up 
 Richard Wagner some time before the 
 English did. 
 
 I also recommended them to read 
 James Russell Lowell's essay ''On a 
 Certain Condescension in Foreigners." 
 
 Still, I think that all nations will con- 
 descend to all other nations until Gabriel 
 begin his prefatory notes, so travelers 
 may as well discount that little foible of 
 human nature before starting out. 
 
 The articles that go to make up this 
 book came out orginally in the New 
 York Sun and I enjoyed reading them 
 exceedingly. 
 
 But 
 
 I only read one at a time. 
 
 Verbum sap. 
 
 If through reading these desultory 
 
 comments on men and things in England 
 
 ix 
 
A FEW REMARKS 
 
 you are tempted to go there and you 
 yield to temptation, I can only hope that 
 you may have as good a time as I did. 
 
 (There's more of my sweet temper; 
 and the beauty of it is that it's perfectly 
 genuine.) 
 
 Charles Battell Loomis. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 A Bath in an English Tub 
 Of Kings and Sightseers . 
 The National Gallery and 
 
 Americans; Also Tea . 
 
 On Bluffing 
 
 On Slumming 
 
 Sequel to a Famous Ballad 
 "An English Crowd Under De 
 
 feat" 
 
 Our Way and the British 
 Too Much Shakespeariana 
 ''Croky'' vs. Motoring . 
 When England Heats Up 
 
 I 
 13 
 
 25 
 
 38 
 51 
 
 63 
 
 74 
 
 87 
 
 99 
 117 
 
 131 
 
A BATH IN AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 ^^1h4- 
 
 But, 
 
 HAVE had a bath 
 in an EngHsh tub 
 and Fm going to 
 tell you all about it. 
 
 first let me make a confession. 
 
 1 
 
 dJ? 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 I was born in Brooklyn. 
 
 You don't often hear a man who is 
 living elsewhere voluntarily confess that 
 he was born in Brooklyn. Those who 
 still live there are case-hardened and 
 make no bones of speaking of childhood's 
 pleasant and exciting hours in Carroll 
 Park; but those who have managed to 
 escape generally try to create the impres- 
 sion that they were born in Manhattan. 
 
 Yes, I was born in Brooklyn, and I be- 
 longed to that stratum of society that put 
 cleanliness next to godliness and insisted 
 on the Saturday bath. No matter who 
 was visiting us, we children had to bathe 
 every Saturday. We looked down on 
 fortnightly bathers as persons of insuffi- 
 cient culture. 
 
 Time went on and someone introduced 
 the custom of daily baths. This to my 
 childish mind seemed to make the need 
 of bathing at all quite superfluous. If 
 
 one bathed every day one was clean all 
 
 2 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 the time, and if one was clean all the time 
 why bathe at all ? — a logic that did not 
 convince those in authority over me. 
 
 But in time I came to like my daily 
 plunge in ice-cold Ridgewood water and 
 felt it to be a luxurious necessity or a 
 necessary luxury. 
 
 When I came to England I was invited 
 to spend a week-end in the country in a 
 house three or four hundred years old. 
 And they say that three or four hundred 
 years ago stationary tubs were unknown 
 and "running water'' referred to brooks, 
 and was a poetical and not a plumber's 
 term. 
 
 At any rate, there was no bathroom 
 and I wondered what I would do for my 
 daily plunge. 
 
 Just before retiring I noticed in a cor- 
 ner of my room a large but shallow pan 
 some three feet in diameter and quite 
 round in shape. I wondered what it was 
 for, and finally came to the conclusion 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 that It had been left in my room on its 
 way to the attic and was probably the 
 dish on which they brought in the 
 roast in the time of Henry VIII. or 
 his grandfather, James I. of sacred 
 memory. 
 
 By the way, let me take a side path 
 here to enjoin upon my readers the neces- 
 sity of an easy familiarity with historical 
 personages. Most people know very 
 little about history and care less; there- 
 fore if you speak of bloody Edward VI., 
 who stabbed Charles I. to the heart at the 
 battle of Agincourt, or say that you have 
 been wandering over the battlefield 
 where Henry V. knighted Sir Walter 
 Raleigh for the discovery of Virginia, you 
 at once leap into favor as a writer whose 
 history is a part of himself. 
 
 But to get into the tub again. 
 
 Next morning I was roused from a re- 
 freshing slumber by a knock at my door. 
 I supposed it was the getting-up knock 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 and sleepily responded ^'All right/' but 
 a woman's voice murmured something. 
 
 ''What is it?" said I in some alarm. 
 Perhaps the house was on fire. 
 
 "Shall I come in?'' 
 
 With an upward inflection. 
 
 I could think of no reason why any one 
 should come in so early in the morning, 
 before the breakfast bell had rung, but I 
 have little moral courage, and feeling 
 quite sure that I was encountering 
 an English custom, I pulled the drapery 
 of my couch about me and said: 
 
 "Why— er— yes." 
 
 Then she came in — a ruddy-faced, 
 buxom lass whom I recognized as the one 
 who had brought me a siphon of vichy at 
 bedtime the night before. 
 
 "Do you wish a barth?" said she 
 pleasantly. 
 
 Without thinking I said I did, although 
 
 I knew there was no "barthroom." 
 
 "Shall I fix it for you?" 
 
 5 
 
N ENGLISH TUB 
 
 I must have murmured yes in a dazed 
 sort of way, for she immediately came 
 farther into the room and, going to my 
 towel rack, she picked therefrom a crash 
 towel fully as large as a silence cloth for a 
 large dinner table. 
 
 This she spread on the floor while I lay 
 there blushing and watched her. 
 
 Then she went to the corner of the 
 room and picked up the big tin pan, and 
 I at once realized that it was an English 
 bathtub. Stupid me! Had I not seen 
 pictures of them in English novels ? The 
 maid now stepped out of the room and I 
 began to breathe freely. 
 
 But, just as I was preparing to leap 
 from my bed and pour out water in my 
 independent American fashion, she re- 
 appeared and I bounded backward into 
 bed and almost ''came a narsty fair* 
 out the other side. 
 
 This time she brought a tin ewer full 
 
 of water, which she poured into the tub 
 
 6 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 until the water was fully an inch deep. 
 
 *'I guess ril be able to manage alone 
 now/' said I, in a muffled tone from 
 beneath the spread, but she was not yet 
 through, and I began to shake. She 
 was strong enough to have lifted me 
 bodily into the bath, and Japanese 
 influences are at work all over the world 
 these days. 
 
 However, all she wanted to do was to 
 get me soap and a couple of towels, and 
 then she left me with the inevitable 
 "'Thank you" that well-trained English 
 servants must say when they have done 
 you a service under penalty of losing 
 their self-respect. 
 
 And when she went away I felt I was 
 free to disport in the tub. Oh, how I rev- 
 elled in that inch of water after the maid 
 had gone and I had locked the door. 
 
 I dived to the bottom of it, I rolled 
 over and over in it until it was all on me 
 
 and there was nothing left in the tub. 
 
 7 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 And then I waited until the water had 
 collected again in the tub and again I 
 dived and came up blowing and sported 
 like a stranded dolphin. 
 
 And then I dried myself with a small 
 washcloth, because it seemed wasteful 
 to use a whole towel for such a purpose, 
 and I had achieved my first English 
 "baith/' 
 
 I have referred to the English "Thank 
 you.'' It is the most overworked phrase 
 in use. In the first place they don't 
 say ''Thank you" as we do in America, 
 with a falling inflection. They throw it up 
 in the air at you with a jerk. "Thang 
 kew" expresses it phonetically, but no 
 letters can express the little jerk of an 
 inflection that they give to the "you.*' 
 There is not a spark of gratitude in it 
 as it is used by servants and trades- 
 people. 
 
 8 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 A maid brings you a cup of tea, and 
 as she hands it to you she says ''Thang 
 kew'\ You meet one in the hall and you 
 say "Good morning. It's a pleasant 
 day/' and she says ''Thang kew.'' 
 
 I went into a shop on the Strand one 
 day in order to be fleeced. Ameri- 
 cans are fair game and, although I talk 
 in a very low tone of voice (on purpose) 
 and avoid saying '^caow'' and "guess'' 
 they spot me for an American at once 
 and proceed to do me. 
 
 Massenger says it's because I go 
 without a waistcoat. When it's hot 
 weather in New York I go without a 
 waistcoat (or vest, as I was brought up 
 to call it), and why shouldn't I do it 
 here when it's hot ? But I suppose it 
 does betray my nationality almost as 
 much as the wearing of the Stars and 
 Stripes would. 
 
 I went into this haberdasher's to buy 
 an outing shirt. The shirt bought, the 
 man said: 
 
 9 . 
 
a 
 
 AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 I have some Windsor ties that would 
 
 interest you. 
 
 "I have all I need/' 
 
 *'Thang kew. Carn't I show you 
 some 'angkerchiefs ?'' 
 
 '^Not any handkerchiefs to-day." 
 
 "Thang kew." 
 
 No more emotion in his thanks than 
 a professional ingrate would display. 
 I verily believe that if I had given way 
 to irritation at his reiterated phrase 
 and had said, ^^Fll push your face 
 in," he would have said, ''Thang 
 kew," as he proceeded to show me 
 something else I did not want to 
 buy. 
 
 But I want to tell you how easily 
 shocked the good and aged Mrs. Grundy 
 is when a person acts according to his 
 inclinations instead of according to 
 English precedent. 
 
 I am a warm-blooded person, and 
 
 when I tennis or wheel a jacket is a 
 
 10 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 superfluity. In Connecticut I fling hat 
 and jacket away as soon as I reach the 
 hill country, and no one says a word 
 unless it is a farmer who fears I will get 
 a sunstroke. 
 
 But over here, when I clad myself in 
 a becoming outing shirt and started to 
 get my wheel, I met in the hallway the 
 same maid who had prepared my bath, 
 and it was at once her turn to blush. 
 She about-faced and retreated to the 
 servants^ hall, and I later learned that 
 she supposed that I did not expect or 
 wish to be seen ^^so very incompletely 
 dressed," as they say in "Pirates of 
 Penzance." 
 
 I was unconscious of any wrongdoing, 
 and I went on my way rejoicing and 
 joined the wheeling party at the barn — 
 a party made up entirely of Englishmen. 
 
 One of them knows me very well and 
 
 he said, "Go back and get dressed." 
 
 I turned it off^ with a laugh and we 
 11 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 all mounted our wheels, but I noticed 
 that all the men looked shocked — much 
 as they would have looked if they had 
 met their wives in evening dress on the sea- 
 shore or in bathing costume at a dinner. 
 
 But we would laugh at an English- 
 man who did not dare go his own gait in 
 America, particularly when this gait did 
 not restrict the liberty of action of another, 
 and so I went riding under the July sun. 
 
 Very shortly my companions began 
 to complain of the heat and to perspire 
 like bread-earners, while I was cool and 
 comfortable. But whoever we met, 
 were they farm laborers, or motor 
 cyclists or tramps, looked shocked 
 when they saw me riding free and easy 
 in a six-shilling figured linen outing 
 shirt, and by the time I reached the 
 end of the run I felt that I was a pariah. 
 
 I would rather be a pariah and cool 
 
 withal than to dwell in the jackets of 
 
 hotness. Selah. 
 
 12 
 
OF KINGS AND SIGHTSEERS 
 
 ^<^r 
 
 W \ *1 r CAN understand why 
 
 /' » we should venerate 
 
 rjr old masters, but why 
 
 we should venerate 
 old mistresses passes me. And yet time 
 does sanctify even naughtiness here in 
 good old England. 
 
 There have been ladies beloved of 
 Kings of England and hated by the 
 
 13 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 wives of said Kings, ladies whom, to 
 say the least, you would not think of 
 electing members of the Y. P. S. C. E. 
 or the W. C. T. U. and whom Mrs. 
 Grundy would frown lipon if she met 
 them in a drawing-room to-day, ladies 
 of the Nell Gwyn type, to take a mild 
 example. 
 
 But Nell Gwyn with her typic sisters 
 lived many years ago. ''Ye'rs and 
 ye'rs ago," as an Englishman would 
 say, and time has mellowed her memory 
 so that she has become a mildly titil- 
 lating historic personage, and as such 
 attracts the curious traveler from other 
 lands. 
 
 To me there is something almost 
 humorous in the thought of a deacon 
 and a vestryman from America going 
 on a wheeling pilgrimage to the man- 
 sion among the woods where rollicking 
 Charles 11. housed the royal favorite 
 
 and queen of the stage. 
 
 14 
 
SIGHTSEERS 
 
 Your host says: ''Now we might take 
 either one of two rides to-day, both of 
 them of historic interest. We can go 
 to see the seven -hundred -year -old 
 church at Aldworth, with its recumbent 
 statues of the knights and ladies of the 
 De la Beche family and its thousand- 
 year-old yew tree, or we can take a 
 somewhat longer ride to the house of 
 Nell Gwyn of sainted memory/' 
 
 The vestryman says, ''Seems to me 
 we've seen recumbent statues in West- 
 minster " 
 
 "Yes," chips in the deacon, "and 
 the longer the ride the better the exer- 
 cise. Tve always been interested in 
 poor Charles II. Seemed kind of hard 
 he should lose his head." 
 
 "Oh, it wasn't Charles II. that lost 
 his head — that is, he only lost it figura- 
 tively," says the vestryman, "but I think 
 that it would make an interesting ride." 
 
 "Look here," says the host, "Fd 
 15 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 rather show you the old church. There's 
 only a house where Nell Gwyn lived, 
 and I believe it's occupied *' 
 
 *' Suppose we flip a coin/' says the 
 vestryman. 
 
 The coin is flipped, with heads for 
 Nell and tails for the knights and ladies, 
 and to the delight of the Americans the 
 choice falls on the house that Charles II. 
 graced with his presence and wherein 
 Nell Gv^n smiled on him. 
 
 Time has whitewashed Nell and her 
 sisters. Give Time time enough, or » 
 if that is not suflScient give us the right 
 kind of music, and any crime in the 
 Decalogue is rendered interesting, until 
 we find matinee girls at home and 
 abroad revelling in the excesses of dear 
 old demigods. 
 
 I heard the other day that an Amer- 
 ican rented a house for the summer sim- 
 ply because the agent told him that it 
 
 had been the scene of a murder of a 
 
 16 
 
SIGHTSEERS 
 
 celebrated king s celebrated mistress. 
 The American thought it would be a 
 good place to which to bring the children. 
 The air was good, it was near the 
 Thames and there is no way of learning 
 history like being on the historic spot. 
 
 His children were afraid to go up the 
 back stairs on which the murder had 
 been committed three hundred years 
 before. 
 
 Now, the house was palpably not fifty 
 years old, but the agent knew his busi- 
 ness. No one undeceived the American, 
 and he and his family felt that they 
 were in a way a part of the reign of 
 Henry VHL, or whatever king it was 
 who flourished in those times. 
 
 By the way, some of the most hal- 
 lowed associations that cluster around 
 the venerable church at Ewelme in 
 Oxfordshire arise from the fact that dear 
 old Henry VIII. courted Anne Boleyn 
 
 hard by, and they attended service 
 
 17 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 together, both of them going in for 
 Sunday observances to a large extent. 
 
 How pretty the scene. Can we not 
 all imagine it ? 
 
 Henry breaking away from his retinue 
 on a Sunday morning while the bells 
 of Ewelme are answering those of Wall- 
 ingford down by the river. A poppy 
 in his buttonhole, he strides across the 
 fields of manglewurzel to the sheltered 
 village and makes his way through 
 winding and narrow lanes, alongside 
 which a fettered brook is babbling, to 
 the seven-gabled house where Anne is 
 boarding for the summer. 
 
 Henry rings the bell in the door of 
 the brick wall, half smothered in 
 Virginia creeper, and sweet Anne her- 
 self comes to the window. 
 
 Henry doffs that historic cap of his 
 and says: 
 
 ^^What say to a little touch of divine 
 
 service this lovely morning, Anne ? By 
 
 18 
 
SIGHTSEERS 
 
 the way, Anne, do you pronounce your 
 last name Bullen or Bolinn ?"' 
 
 And Anne, all a-flutter at being so 
 addressed by royalty, says: 
 
 ^'Say It as you will, my liege, and if 
 you'll wait until my maid has strung 
 my dimity bodice I'll be right glad to 
 join you in your devotions. What do 
 you think of the weather outlook ? Is 
 the glass falling ? Shall I need an 
 umbrella ?" 
 
 ^'The glass is rising, Anne. It's won- 
 derful weather for England. But I 
 anticipate storms before long." 
 
 How prophetic the words ! 
 
 Then Henry walks back and forth 
 through the attractive village, all un- 
 witting that eventually he is going to 
 kill the pretty woman who is getting 
 ready to go to church with him, and 
 after half an hour or so Anne comes 
 down and joins old Bluebeard, and 
 
 hand in hand they walk through the 
 
 19 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 colorful cornfields and are soon at the 
 church porch. 
 
 They pass the quintet of bell-ringers 
 who jangle the bells at sight of royalty, 
 and then they sit in the front pew and 
 await the processional. And Henry 
 finds the lesson for the day in his own 
 copy of the King James version of the 
 Bible, and they sing ^^ Onward, Christian 
 Soldiers" and "Lead, Kindly Light '^ 
 together, and as a bit of a joke the king 
 puts a royal button into the collection 
 pouch when it is passed to him and 
 when service is over and the choir boys 
 have left the chancel the congregation 
 rises until Henry and Anne have passed 
 reverently out. 
 
 And they saunter through the fields 
 
 and admire theClumps where the Romans 
 
 used to have an encampment, and then 
 
 Anne invites him in to Sunday dinner — 
 
 roast beef and Yorkshire puddingy 
 
 vegetable marrow and lemon squash. 
 
 20 
 
SIGHTSEERS 
 
 It's an idyllic picture and makes me 
 wish Vd gone in for writing history. I 
 don't wonder that Americans — the bet- 
 ter part of whom were English then — 
 like to go to the little church where 
 that king who was most insistent on 
 marriage of any king attended service 
 in the long ago. 
 
 There have been kings who have not 
 confined themselves to the love of any 
 one woman — Charles II. was a little 
 inclined that way — but they have not 
 been of the marrying kind. Good old 
 Henry insisted on the ceremony. 
 
 As he said to Cardinal Wolsey on one 
 occasion: ''I may not make the best of 
 husbands, Wolsey. There is a certain 
 risk attending my loving of a woman, 
 but no historian can ever arise who can 
 truthfully say that I have not always 
 insisted upon a full ceremony with both 
 Mendelssohn's and the other fellow " 
 
 "You mean Wagner, sire." 
 21 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 *^Yes, both the wedding marches. 
 Why, man, is it incumbent on a king to 
 keep up a good custom — and placate 
 Mrs. Grundy. If I had neglected to 
 marry these Annes and Katharines, 
 marriages might fall into disuse in this 
 tight little island. No, while I live, 
 Wolsey, ril keep you clergy busy earn- 
 ing your fees.'' 
 
 Tm not standing up for Henry. He 
 did have his faults. He killed off far 
 more wives than a self-respecting mon- 
 arch should, but he upheld marriage 
 to the end. 
 
 But, as I said before, time is a very 
 darky for whitewashing. If in New 
 York crowds thronged to see the house 
 where a man or woman was murdered 
 (pictures of the same having appeared 
 in the yellow press with a cross marking 
 the spot), the respectable papers would 
 all say editorially that only morbid or 
 common persons ever care for such 
 
 22 
 
SIGHTSEERS 
 
 things. They would also say that to 
 read about such things shows a vulgar 
 mind that needs to be fed on sensa- 
 tions. And in the news columns they 
 would have a full account of the murder 
 without the pictures. 
 
 But shove the murder back a few cen- 
 turies, make the murdered man a priest, 
 and the crowd, moved by the holiest 
 of historical feelings — the respectable 
 editor among it — goes to see the place 
 w^here he fe 1. And there is a cross to 
 mark the spot, too. And children are 
 encouraged to read the history of the 
 event instead of reading novels. 
 
 Yes, half the charm of sightseeing 
 in dear old England lies in the fact that 
 there are so many unworthies buried 
 here and there, unworthies of both 
 sexes, such slathers of murderers and 
 mistresses hallowed in their tombs by 
 kindly time. 
 
 How thankful we ought to be, my 
 23 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 dear brethren, that we live in a time when 
 none of the commandments is ever 
 broken. Time won't need to hallow 
 us of the twentieth century. We are 
 hallowed already. 
 
 24 
 
THE NATIONAL GALLERY AND 
 AMERICANS ; ALSO TEA. 
 
 RELIGIOUS observance much 
 indulged in by good Ameri- 
 cans in London is a visit to 
 the National Gallery. If you 
 want to renew shipboard acquaintance- 
 ships go to the National Gallery and 
 
 25 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 wait. Just as in New York all people 
 sooner or later pass the Flatiron build- 
 ing, so sooner or later all Americans 
 who have (or have not) a love for art 
 come to the gallery to oflFer up their 
 admiration before the works of the 
 great masters of all countries (except 
 America). 
 
 I met one friend who told me with 
 awe in his voice ''There's the Raphael 
 that cost ;^25,ooo/' At the risk of 
 offending him I hurried away from it 
 without more than glancing at it, as the 
 mention of the price seemed to cheapen 
 it. 
 
 I know a painting by Hogarth that I 
 wouldn't swap for the ^25,000 Raphael, 
 and I'm no blind admirer of the carica- 
 turist either. It's his delicious '' Shrimp 
 Girl," that is painted with a freedom 
 and a joyousness that Raphael would 
 have envied him the possession of. 
 
 Because oftentimes when Raphael 
 26 
 
NATIONAL GALLERY 
 
 was painting for the smart set of his 
 time he painted because he had to, and 
 not because he wanted to, while Hogarth 
 did that ^'Shrimp Girl'' because he 
 couldn't help it. It is so much better 
 than the much bepraised ^'Rake's Pro- 
 gress" series, which was painted with a 
 purpose. 
 
 Please excuse me for foisting my 
 views on you in this scandalous way. 
 What I started to say was that the visiting 
 of the National Gallery is a part (and 
 oftimes the only part left) of the religious 
 observance of traveling Americans. 
 
 It's a harmless foible, but it is laugh- 
 able none the less, because ninety out 
 of a hundred of those who patter glibly 
 about the merits of the landscapes of 
 Constable and "old Crome," and Gains- 
 borough, and who take the noble and 
 sincere art of these men so seriously, 
 would be surprised to learn that when 
 they left the shores of their native 
 
 27 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 America they were leaving behind them 
 a native landscape art just as noble 
 and sincere and quite as worthy to be 
 taken seriously. 
 
 It's a huge joke on the traveling 
 American if he can point out to you 
 (with the aid of the useful Baedeker) 
 the merits that lie in a Constable and 
 is unconscious that George Inness ever 
 existed, or if he raves over the quality 
 of a Crome and never heard of Wyant 
 or gazes, guide-book in hand, at a Wil- 
 son and is ignorant of the fact that 
 Homer Martin was an American painter 
 of such superlative parts that he is 
 worthy to hang alongside of Constable 
 and Rousseau and Corot and — and any 
 landscapist who ever handled a brush. 
 
 Spreadeagleism is a horrid thing, but 
 recognition of the good things at home 
 should come before adulation abroad. 
 
 Am I not right ? 
 
 Before you go abroad again on a shoe- 
 
 28 
 
NATIONAL GALLERY 
 
 wearing haunting of English and Con- 
 tinental galleries, look up your Winslow 
 Homers and your Keiths, and learn 
 to your lasting astonishment that Amer- 
 ican art is recognized in Europe (in 
 Paris, for instance), and then take off 
 your shoes (and stockings) and go 
 wading in superlatives before the shrine 
 of one of the great and admirable 
 English masters if you wish to. 
 
 Remember that we have had, and 
 still have, masters in America, and that 
 It is only a question of time when they 
 will become old masters. 
 
 Think of me talking right out in meet- 
 ing and saying all this. Of course lots 
 of you knew it already, but more of you 
 didn't. 
 
 It's not very many months ago that I 
 
 had the pleasure of introducing the 
 
 editor of an artistic New York monthly 
 
 magazine to American art. Didn't know 
 
 there was such a thing. 
 
 29 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 Doubtless he'd taken off his shoes and 
 walked softly before the examples of the 
 Barbizon school to be found in so many 
 American galleries, but that there were 
 living and dead Americans who had 
 looked with love and their own eyes on 
 Nature and had painted her with as- 
 surance and authority and dignity and 
 sincerity — that was a revelation to him. 
 
 The beautiful American woods are 
 full of men like him. 
 
 I suppose every writer who has come 
 to England has had his say about the 
 custom of tea drinking, but, after all, 
 there are only a certain number of cus- 
 toms in a country, and with people 
 saying things about them all the time 
 one must either cover old ground or 
 else invent new customs to write about. 
 One readily falls into the tea-drinking 
 habit and I wish that it could be intro- 
 duced into America. Of course swagger 
 
 30 
 
NATIONAL GALLERY 
 
 people drink tea now, but I was think- 
 ing more especially of real Americans — 
 and they don't do it. 
 
 But here it fills in so many gaps. 
 
 The other day I was spending a week- 
 end along with Massenger at the country 
 home a of well-known literary man. 
 
 We had a hearty lunch (practically a 
 dinner) at i o'clock and then went out to 
 play tennis on a full stomach. Whether 
 this is a widespread English custom or 
 not I don't know, but it's a fact that one 
 generally has a full stomach, if you will 
 pardon my saying so, because the Eng- 
 lish air gives one a tremendous appetite 
 and English hospitality plies you with 
 food, so to speak. 
 
 We were all tennis enthusiasts and we 
 
 played strenuously for some time, flying 
 
 around the court quite as if we didn't 
 
 remember when Lincoln was shot and 
 
 had no recollection of the Reconstruction 
 
 period. EngHsh air makes one feel young. 
 
 31 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 While we were preparing to change 
 sides the thought occurred to me that a 
 glass of lemonade, or even ice-water> 
 would be refreshing. As if in answer 
 to my thought a bell rang from some- 
 where in the house, and mine host said 
 with gusto : 
 
 ''Ah, it's tea time." 
 
 Down went the rackets, on went the 
 jackets, and we all went into the dining- 
 room we had left so short a time before 
 and sat down to tea and bread and 
 butter, and I accounted for my liking 
 it from the fact that 260 years ago my 
 ancestors were English. 
 
 Tea over we went back to our game 
 much refreshed and did not eat a hearty 
 meal again until 7, and then — how hun- 
 gry we were and how much there was to 
 eat! But that is a digression. 
 
 Another day I ran up to Oxford, or 
 else I ran down — this question of up and 
 down is very perplexing; you see a man 
 
 32 
 
NATIONAL GALLERY 
 
 riding down hill on a motorcycle and you 
 learn that he is running up to London. 
 
 Anyway I went to Oxford with Mas- 
 senger, and, under the guidance of a don 
 whom Massenger had once met in Con- 
 necticut, we saw the beauties of the place 
 (see Baedeker). A first folio Shakes- 
 peare, formerly owned by one David 
 Garrick, was rather impressive, and I 
 think that's not in Baedeker. It is so 
 refreshing to come across something 
 that the omniscient Baedeker has missed. 
 
 Another old thing that impressed me 
 was the grass on the lawns. I under- 
 stand that some of the blades date back 
 to the time of Alfred the Great, and I 
 can well believe it. They look old and 
 sere. 
 
 Massenger says they haven't had rain 
 for a month, and that is why the grass 
 looks antique. 
 
 But to go back to tea. 
 
 After we had made an end of sight- 
 33 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 seeing we started for the station, intend- 
 ing to take the 4:30. 
 
 "We'll have time for tea on the way 
 down there/' said the don. 
 
 Massenger snorted, but it seems that 
 dons don't understand the meaning of a 
 snort, and we soon found ourselves in a 
 quaint and dark little pocket of a parlor 
 in which were bound volumes of Fun. 
 (English fun, which is sometimes a rather 
 superior article. Make up your mind 
 for yourself about it and don't rely on 
 Smith's say so.) 
 
 "'Are you sure we'll have time ?" said 
 Massenger after the don had ordered tea 
 and buttered bread. 
 
 ''We'll have ample time, and anyway 
 it's time for tea," said the don. 
 
 That settled it. The train might 
 
 come and go, but it was time for tea, and 
 
 the laws of the Medes and Persians had 
 
 a habit of altering not, like the leopard's 
 
 spots. 
 
 34 
 
NATIONAL GALLERY 
 
 Speaking of spots, this certainly was a 
 most inviting one, and when the tea and 
 the daintily-buttered bread came they 
 were very tempting, and so the don and I 
 drank our tea. I regret to say that at 
 the last moment Massenger had balked 
 and had ordered a lemon squash instead. 
 
 I believe he thought it would be a cross 
 between a lemon pie and a squash pie, 
 but it was merely the English for lemon- 
 ade. Massenger has a good deal to 
 learn. 
 
 We lingered so long over our tea that 
 when the don looked at his watch he 
 said: 
 
 ''Lord bless me, we'll have to take a 
 cab." 
 
 Not five blocks away from the station 
 and we'd have to take a cab! And Eng- 
 land is a nation of walkers! 
 
 However, it was not for me to say any- 
 thing; so we took a cab for two shillings 
 — in New York I have ridden fourteen 
 
 35 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 miles on the elevated for five cents — and 
 in a very short time we had missed our 
 train and had settled with the cabman 
 and had got somewhat heated sprinting 
 from one ticket wicket to another to get 
 tickets for our wheels, which we had left 
 in the luggage room thinking we wouldn't 
 need them in the colleges. 
 
 "My word, that's too bad,'' said the 
 don. "When does the next train 
 go ?" 
 
 He asked this of a guard and learned 
 that we had half an hour to wait. 
 
 "Oh, that's very nice. We'll have 
 another cup of tea and cool off." 
 
 And, do you know, I was glad we'd 
 missed the train, for just then a boy came 
 along trundling a tea barrow, (to give it a 
 name,) and we sat there on the platform 
 and had more tea and thin slices of but- 
 tered bread, and forgot that we had been 
 worried at missing the train, although 
 
 every true American does hate to miss a 
 
 36 
 
NATIONAL GALLERY 
 
 train, even when they are running on a 
 two-minute headway. 
 
 Now, if they would only have little tea 
 booths on Wall Street or State Street, 
 and, say at a quarter to 3, when stock 
 brokers are most excited, they all ad- 
 journed for tea and filled the street with 
 friendly little groups of perspiring and 
 gray-templed men, they would go back 
 to the closing exercises much relieved 
 in body and mind, and there would be 
 fewer breakdowns. 
 
 But be sure to cut your slices thin and 
 use plenty of butter. 
 
 Why, even a shorn lamb would go up- 
 town easier in his mind if the wolf who 
 sheared him blew him off to tea. 
 
 And the spectacle of a bull and a bear 
 drinking tea amicably together would be 
 a godsend to the Seeing New Yorkers. 
 
 37 
 
ON BLUFFING 
 
 x^^^ 
 
 
 (^^^tCfi^r^^ 
 
 RAN down a bit of 
 unconscious humor 
 in the London Tri- 
 bune the other day. 
 Their book-reviewer had come across 
 *'an American book'' and had evidently 
 read it, and was moved to show his 
 
 knowledge of American geography. 
 
 38 
 
ON BLUFFING 
 
 In the first place he headed his review 
 ''A New Jersey Romance." Naturally, 
 the American in London supposed that 
 the book would treat of life in Rahway 
 or Metuchen or some other town in New 
 Jersey, and he began to read the review 
 with interest. 
 
 "'In her new novel Miss Margery 
 Williams takes us back once more to 
 the people of New Jersey. The scene 
 is laid in a small New England port and 
 the reader is never far from the sound of 
 the sea." 
 
 Think of New Jersey being a part of 
 New England ! 
 
 "Miss Williams knows New Jersey 
 well." 
 
 Not so the reviewer. If there is an 
 Eastern State that isn't a bit like New 
 England it is New Jersey. 
 
 He goes on to say that " Miss Will- 
 iams excels in the quality of ^atmos- 
 phere,' and the descriptions of the New 
 
 39 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 Jersey lanes and fields are among the 
 best she has yet given us.'' 
 
 What is this New England port that 
 has strayed away like so many New 
 Englanders and settled in New Jersey ? 
 The reviewer calls it ''Port Gabriel," 
 but that doesn't help one much. 
 
 I spoke of this error to an English 
 friend, and he said: 
 
 ''Oh, you know over here New Eng- 
 land means all the East." 
 
 That was worse yet, because your 
 NewEnglander and your descendant of 
 New Englanders is rather proud of the 
 fact that New England contains but six 
 rather small States. Ask a New Eng- 
 lander in New Jersey if he is a "Jersey- 
 man" and he will hasten to tell you that 
 he was born in Massachusetts or what- 
 ever one of the proud half-dozen he did 
 come from. On the other hand, if you 
 ask a Jerseyman in New England if he 
 
 is a native New Englander he will be in 
 
 40 
 
ON BLUFFING 
 
 no haste to correct your mistake. 
 
 Still the London reviewer knew as 
 much about American geographical divi- 
 sions as most of us know of English ones. 
 The average New York reviewer is per- 
 fectly capable of saying of an English 
 book : 
 
 "This idyllic little story has to do 
 with Yorkshire folk and their lives amid 
 the wild scenery of their Devon downs 
 and Derbyshire glades, and the quaint 
 descriptions of the Cornwall coast 
 washed by the North Sea remind one 
 of similar descriptions of the same coast 
 by that master hand Charles Dickens. 
 The curious Lancashire dialect is well 
 handled and the story of the lives of 
 these Yorkshire miners, lineal descend- 
 ants, it may be, of Ham and Peggoty 
 and Little Em'ly, holds one in willing 
 thrall and makes one long to wander at 
 will over the fair Essex meadows and the 
 Berks seacoast.'^ 
 
 41 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 We're always astounded and amused 
 that the other man doesn't know the 
 thing we know, but we are apt to think 
 it of Httle moment that we don't know 
 the thing the other man knows. 
 
 Not to know a thing and yet to make a 
 bluff of exact knowledge — sometimes 
 leads to success and sometimes to 
 laughter. 
 
 Last winter when I was covering some 
 of the 15,000 miles that Jerome K. 
 Jerome and I travelled in America — 
 where I re-learned geography every day, 
 by the way — ^we were one day passing 
 over a desert on a Southern Pacific train, 
 and some one said that one could see a 
 mirage from the train windows when the 
 atmospheric conditions were favorable. 
 Jerome was a little sceptical about this, 
 so I turned to a colored porter and 
 said: 
 
 ''Did you ever see a mirage .^" 
 
 *'0h, yes, sah," came the answer as 
 
 42 
 
ON BLUFFING 
 
 quick as utterance could make it. 
 
 "What's it like?" 
 
 "LakaliTwolf, sah/' 
 
 There was absolute ignorance palming 
 itself ofF as knowledge. Napoleon 
 would have promoted that porter and 
 made an engineer of him at once, and he 
 would in all probability have run our 
 train on alien roads with a calm assump- 
 tion that he must be right that would 
 have given rise to no end of adventures. 
 
 Up in South Dakota there was another 
 man who always had an answer ready. 
 
 He was a clerk in the hotel at which 
 we were forced to stop (because the 
 other one was worse yet), and just be- 
 fore we went to the theatre to "deliver 
 the goods'' I said to him: 
 
 "Are the accoustics in the theatre 
 good?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, considering the size of the 
 
 town." 
 
 I've often wondered just what he 
 
 43 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 meant. A few minutes later I changed 
 the form of my question and said: ''Is 
 it easy to make oneself heard in the 
 theatre?" 
 
 "Very easy, indeed/' said he, not 
 knowing that he had already given one 
 answer to my question. 
 
 No, the English reviewer was quite 
 right. He made a bluff at accurate 
 knowledge of American geographical 
 boundaries and no doubt impressed 
 many untraveled Englishmen with the 
 extent and variety of his attainments in a 
 difficult field. 
 
 Look at the American elevated guard. 
 No one pretends to believe that he 
 knows what he is saying. He says 
 "Frank'n sh Ch'm'n'x" or "Fr^pl's 
 C'n'x'' and people look out for the signs 
 and get out as nearly right as they can. 
 
 Over here it is quite different. 
 
 You are going, let us say, from Pad- 
 dington station to Wallingford. By 
 
 44 
 
ON BLUFFING 
 
 great good luck you strike the right 
 platform to begin with. All arounr* you 
 shrill whistles are shrieking until you 
 long for the deep-toned chord whistles 
 of American locomotives. 
 
 You approach a guard and say, 
 *^ Where do you change for Wallingford ?^ 
 
 ^Xh'inge at Didcot." 
 
 This upsets you, because the friend 
 in whom you trusted told you a name 
 that sounded so like Chelsea that you 
 immediately thought of Thomas Car- 
 
 lyie. .... 
 
 You wait until the guard isn't looking 
 and then you go to an older and more 
 important-looking guard and ask him 
 the same question. 
 
 "Ch'ingeatCholsey." 
 
 Ah, Cholsey — that's the word that 
 sounded like Chelsea. 
 
 Still the first one said ^'Ch'inge at 
 
 Didcot.'' You are tortured by doubts 
 
 and you go to a porter who is trying to 
 
 45 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 trundle a barrow-load of trunks up the 
 platform without cutting any one's foot 
 off — ^with bare and fright-producing suc- 
 cess — and you plop out at him the same 
 question. He stops so suddenly that a 
 trunk falls off his load and smashes a 
 valise. 
 
 '^I think you ch'inge at Didcot, sir.'' 
 
 There you have it. Those men have 
 Didcot on the brain. 
 
 You can't appeal to a dignified con- 
 ductor when he comes through the train 
 to take your ticket, because in the first 
 place he can't come through the train, 
 the carriages being of the old compart- 
 ment type, and in the second place there 
 is no conductor, and anyway you have 
 to hold on to your ticket until you are 
 in the station, right or wrong, at which 
 you elect to alight. 
 
 The train backs in, you take your 
 
 seat, the guard, a diflFerent one, slams 
 
 the door and you ask him through the 
 
 46 
 
ON BLUFFING 
 
 open sash the same old question and get 
 for answer, ''Ch'inge at Cholslee/' a 
 variation in pronunciation that further 
 puzzles you. 
 
 You appeal to your fellow-passengers, 
 but those that aren't Americans are Lon- 
 doners out for a bank holiday, and what 
 your Londoner doesn't know of "the 
 provinces'' it would take a Macaulay 
 to teach him. 
 
 You watch out for the names of the 
 stations. One seems to be Cadbury and 
 another somebody's pills and another 
 Peter's Choc 
 
 Oh, it's only advertisements. 
 
 You seem so shut in that you know 
 
 you'll never know when you get to your 
 
 destination. At last you come to a stop, 
 
 and then the engine shrieks and then 
 
 shrieks again, this time further off, and 
 
 at last you see it with your train behind 
 
 It rushing around a curve in the distance. 
 
 And you are left in the station in the 
 
 47 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 coach to which you blindly rushed. 
 
 Is it Didcot ? No; it's Beecham's . 
 
 No, it's Tilehurst. 
 
 Here's a pretty how-de-do! And you 
 were to be met at Wallingford by your 
 host's dogcart. 
 
 The Americans in the carriage swarm 
 out and try to obtain information, but 
 the Englishmen sit quietly with a patient 
 faith in the system that is noble, and in 
 a half hour or so another train backs in 
 to the station and picks you up and you 
 wonder at the carelessness of railroad 
 officials in letting you lie on an exposed 
 track in that way with expresses passing 
 every few minutes. 
 
 Still you're not much better off now 
 that you're moving, for you don't know 
 yet where you are to change and you've let 
 one train slip by without effort to stop it. 
 
 Ah, you are approaching a station and 
 your quick eye notes the name of Didcot 
 
 among the advertisements. 
 
 48 
 
ON BLUFFING 
 
 You have now approached a crisis in 
 the ailment. On obtaining right an- 
 swers to your questions depends the 
 successful issue out of all your troubles. 
 
 A new guard comes by. 
 
 ""Do I change here for Wallingford ?'' 
 
 ''No, ch'inge at Cholsey.'' 
 
 As your friend in whom you trusted 
 said in the first place. 
 
 What a pity you didn^t take the right 
 car and go on to Cholsey with the rest 
 of your train. 
 
 At Cholsey you take good care to 
 change, and there is a dear little train 
 puffing and squealing in its anxiety to 
 take you to Wallingford. 
 
 You prepare to excuse yourself for 
 having let the train in which you left 
 London get away without you, and you 
 deplore the stupidity on your part that 
 has kept your friend waiting over a train 
 for you. 
 
 Five minutes or so and you are in 
 
 49 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 quaint old Wallingford, with its thatched 
 cottages and red-tiled roofs, and there 
 is your friend just driving his dogcart 
 into the station yard. 
 
 A minute later and it^s: 
 
 ^'Ah, glad to see you, old chap. 
 Afraid you might make a mistake, bank 
 holiday time. It's a bit confusing. But 
 you made it like an old hand." 
 
 And then you learn that you were on 
 what is called a slip car and that it was 
 all right to be dropped at Cadbury — I 
 I should say Bovril, oh, Tilehurst, I 
 mean, and that you came through quite 
 as it was intended by the English system 
 that you should. And no one has been 
 insolent to you. 
 
 That counts in the long run. And it 
 seemed a very long run to Wallingford, 
 owing to your uncertainty and the 
 proximity of the advertisements to the 
 station names. 
 
 50 
 
ON SLUMMING 
 
 CA9(0t^^ 
 
 |NE hot day last week I felt 
 that I had been cheerful 
 long enough in the pleasant 
 English sunshine and the peaceful 
 orderliness of English country life. 
 
 I wanted a change. I wanted to be 
 treated to a horrid sensation. I wanted 
 to see one of the saddest, most vice- 
 haunted, sodden, foul, pestilential, dark, 
 
 dismal, dreadful human hives in Chris- 
 
 51 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 tendom; a place which, famous already, 
 had been made more famous by the 
 exploits of one Jack the Ripper; a place 
 where laughter is unknown and where 
 no gleam of sunlight ever penetrates. 
 In a word I wanted to see Whitechapel 
 — the East End. 
 
 And so I left the hedge-bounded, 
 poppy-bedecked fields and sheep-be- 
 sprinkled meadows of the English coun- 
 tryside and went up to London. 
 
 My guides were two English writers 
 whose names, etc., etc. 
 
 One was of the sad-faced type, the 
 other was rubicund and jolly. 
 
 At the last moment we decided not to 
 incite the fury of the mob by wearing silk 
 hats and frock coats. Instead we wore 
 clothing of innocuous and unfashionable 
 cut, and taking our lives in our hands 
 we set forth from the neighborhood of 
 the Hotel Cecil in the Strand in a bus. 
 
 As the afternoon was to be a long one, 
 
 52 
 
ON SLUMMING 
 
 one of my friends suggested that we 
 should not confine ourselves to any one 
 neighborhood, but take a walk through 
 London streets wherever his fancy — 
 and he is a man of delicate fancy — 
 might lead him to go. We consented, 
 and after riding for half an hour or so 
 we dismounted and found ourselves in 
 a quarter where the respectable poor 
 live. 
 
 I noticed that the respectable poor 
 looked much like thousands of New 
 Yorkers whom I have seen; in fact, I 
 could hardly believe that I was not in 
 New York. But the streets were much 
 cleaner than similar quarters would be 
 in New York, and there was compara- 
 tively little odor of an unpleasant 
 nature. 
 
 We walked through narrow alleys 
 and encountered David Warfield after 
 David Warfield — long-bearded, sallow- 
 faced American citizens with the am- 
 
 53 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 bition and the determination to become 
 rich. I asked my friends if these were 
 really Londoners and they assured me 
 that they were — of the lineage of David, 
 an earlier David than Warfield. 
 
 Little children played in the gutters 
 and were happy. The summer sun, 
 the genial London sun, illuminated the 
 narrow streets and housewife said to 
 housewife in the pleasant New York 
 or Yiddish tongue that it was a long 
 time between rains. 
 
 I felt that it would be a good thing if 
 the people who live in that vile White- 
 chapel could come to this place to live; 
 all seemed so quiet and respectable. 
 
 One of my companions asked me if I 
 
 would like to see how they made London 
 
 citizens out of Jewish children, and 
 
 upon my saying I would, he took us to 
 
 a school nearby in which we heard 
 
 the cheerful hum of many youthful 
 
 voices. 
 
 54 
 
ON SLUMMING 
 
 A pleasant-faced, rosy-cheeked gen- 
 tile, the principal of the school, who 
 looked as if he spent his days in the open 
 fields, greeted us cordially and on our 
 asking to see the newest arrivals he took 
 us into one of the primary departments. 
 
 Here were assembled some fifty He- 
 brew boys from seven to ten years old. 
 Nearly every one had keen, alert, bright 
 eyes and some were cherubic enough 
 to have sat as models for angels. 
 
 ''All boys who were not born in Eng- 
 land will come forward,'' said the prin- 
 cipal. 
 
 Eight or ten little chaps rose and 
 came forward quite fearlessly. It looked 
 to me as if there wete no terrorism in 
 that school. I did wish they might 
 have such institutions for the poor little 
 East End children. 
 
 ''Where were you born V asked the 
 principal of one boy. 
 
 "In Russia." 
 
 65 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 ''How long have you been in Eng- 
 land?" 
 
 ''One year." 
 
 "How old are you ?" 
 
 "Ten/^ 
 
 "Can you read and write ?'* 
 
 "Yes, sir." 
 
 Several of them had been born in 
 Africa, and yet to my American eyes 
 they showed no evidence of negro blood. 
 And then I realized that Africa is a 
 large place, and it turned out that these 
 were the sons of English Jews who had 
 settled in South Africa but who had left 
 it on account of the Boer War. 
 
 Most of these children were almost as 
 happy-looking as the average Christian 
 child, and yet the advantages of Chris- 
 tianity are denied them as they are Or- 
 thodox Jews. 
 
 In another room we met a little 
 
 Hebrew thirteen years of age who wrote 
 
 a most legible hand and expressed him- 
 
 56 
 
ON SLUMMING 
 
 self (in compositions on ''How I Spent 
 My Vacation'') in good, clear English 
 with here and there a foreign idiom. 
 He looked like a poet in embryo, this 
 Hebrew lad, with dreamy eyes and seri- 
 ously-happy face, and he had spent his 
 vacation by taking walks through West- 
 minster Abbey — where he must have 
 come across the statue of a brilliant 
 Israelite named Disraeli — and by visits 
 to the National Gallery, and he showed 
 an interested acquaintance with the 
 works of dead and gone British authors. 
 And he had been out of Russia only 
 eleven months ! 
 
 I thought it was a rather better fate 
 than being butchered to make a Russian 
 holiday. 
 
 I winked at sundry Hebrew lads and 
 they winked back quite as if the joy of 
 life were in them. Oh! thought I, if 
 they could only introduce something 
 like this to the poor, submerged millions 
 
 67 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 of the East End! We also visited the 
 Church of St. Columbia, in which is a 
 mortuary for the use of those who, liv- 
 ing in cramped quarters, have no place 
 in which to lay their dead until the time 
 of interment. And they told me that 
 the poor could hardly ever be induced 
 to give up their loved ones. 
 
 But I was beginning to get tired of 
 this respectable slumming. One can 
 get worse than this in New York. I re- 
 solved to suggest the East End as soon 
 as I could do it, although my guides 
 seemed to be enjoying themselves in 
 showing me the houses of the lower 
 middle classes. 
 
 At last we came to a dreadfully com- 
 monplace street, the sort of place where 
 you'd feel you could safely leave 
 your little son, aged five, for an hour 
 or two. 
 
 "Oh, say,'' said I, '^please don't give 
 me any more of these Sunday-school 
 
 58 
 
ON SLUMMING 
 
 streets. I want to see carnage and mur- 
 der and rapine. I've got to write a let- 
 ter to America depicting the horror of 
 Whitechapel. I'll willingly risk my life 
 in going through some of the murderous 
 streets, but another half-hour of this 
 Philadelphia neatness and quiet will 
 affect my nerves." 
 
 And then I learned that things are 
 seldom what they seem. 
 
 ''This is considered the toughest 
 street in London," said one of my friends, 
 whose books on cockney life have made 
 him an authority on the subject. "When 
 Barrie took Maarten Maartens through 
 this street some years ago they had a 
 detective in advance and a detective 
 behind them who told them to be as 
 cautious as a Scotchman and a Dutch- 
 man could." 
 
 "Well, but aren't there just as dan- 
 gerous streets as this in the awful East 
 
 End, in Whitechapel V' asked I. 
 
 59 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 They both looked at me in astonish- 
 
 ment 
 
 What's the use of trying to entertain 
 you?" said one, ''we've been in the 
 East End ever since we alighted. We've 
 been in Whitechapel, in the East End, all 
 this warm afternoon and here you are 
 asking for something worse. Your 
 palate is out of order." 
 
 ''But," said I, "the streets are cleaner 
 than those on the East Side in New 
 York." 
 
 "That's the lookout of the New York 
 Street Cleaning Department. It doesn't 
 concern London," said one. 
 
 " But the children look happy." 
 
 "That's owing to the mercy of God," 
 said my other friend. 
 
 "And it looks as if they were being 
 cared for," I continued. 
 
 "You think that because you're an 
 irrepressible optimist. We've taken you 
 through the saddest part of the British 
 
 60 
 
ON SLUMMING 
 
 Kingdom and you say that it is better 
 tlian similar places in New York. 
 Where's your patriotism, man ?" 
 
 ^'But we've not been in danger of 
 assault/' said I, ignoring his slur. 'Tve 
 not seen a black look or heard an angry 
 word, or even an oath, this afternoon." 
 
 ^^ Because we've minded our own busi- 
 ness. You go through here in evening 
 clothes and pull your overcoat about 
 you every time you pass a man and you 
 may be ripe for the mortuary at St. 
 Columba's in a few hours." 
 
 "Well, but Jack London came over 
 here and saw it, and he pictured it as a 
 hell on earth." 
 
 ''Jack London would be able to find 
 
 a 'Hell's Kitchen' in heaven because 
 
 he has a trained scent for that sort of 
 
 thing, but you must remember that he 
 
 dug up every dreadful story he could 
 
 sniff out and dumped them all in one 
 
 locality. The most dreadful place on 
 
 61 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 the face of the earth is in Jack London's 
 book. Probably if you wrote a book 
 about the East End there'd be a rush 
 of emigrants to it from all parts of the 
 earth. Something between your optim- 
 ism and his pessimism would be the 
 right thing." 
 
 I couldn't help feeling disappointed 
 (the sensational part of me) that I had 
 witnessed no murders, not even a wife- 
 beating or eye-blacking, and if I had not 
 afterward substantiated the fact that I 
 had really been in Whitechapel I would 
 have had a suspicion that my friends, 
 being humorists, had been stringing me. 
 
 It begins to look as if sightseers were 
 going to have all the festering sores of 
 civilization removed, and we'll have to 
 look to our imaginative literary men for 
 our Whitechapels of the future. 
 
 Perhaps it is better for the East Ender 
 
 and the East Sider, but it is going to 
 
 make it very tame for slummers. 
 
 62 
 
SEQUEL TO A FAMOUS BALLAD 
 
 
 1 
 
 ^^^ ^TT^ ^^ other day I was talk- 
 
 ing with a member of 
 one of those Browning 
 societies that will per- 
 sist in reading meanings into his poetry 
 that he never intended to put there. 
 
 In the course of our amicable con- 
 versation I said that Browning had no 
 
 more business than Byron had to write 
 
 63 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 doggerel, and that he ought to have taken 
 too keen a pride in his craft to ruin what 
 might have been a fine handling of the 
 ''Pied Piper of HameHn" subject. 
 
 Of course he gasped and of course he 
 asked me to admire the clever rhymes, 
 and naturally I told him that the rhymes 
 were the ruination of it, that a clever 
 writer of burlesque verse like W. S. Gil- 
 bert with his irreproachable ear could 
 have given him valuable points. I asked 
 him what excuse there was for a man 
 with any ear making ''Mile hence'' 
 rhyme with "silence" or "sun shone" 
 with "luncheon." 
 
 Then he said it was only a child's 
 story. 
 
 "So much the worse. One should be 
 most careful of his rhymes when writing 
 for innocent children, who may have been 
 brought up on Whittier, that good but 
 earless poet." 
 
 Many people take the "Pied Piper" 
 
 64 
 
A FAMOUS BALLAD 
 
 to be the entrance to Browning and they 
 turn around in the porch and depart from 
 his work forever — depart from the man 
 who wrote "Cahban on Setebos/' 
 "Childe Harold to the Dark Tower 
 Came/' and ''Andrea del Sarto/' to say 
 nothing of the spirited and quite inimit- 
 able ballad of "Herve Riel." 
 
 Even we who are not Browning stud- 
 ents remember ''Herve Riel" that used 
 to be recited at commencements by the 
 boy who had not chosen ''Henry of 
 Navarre" or "Lady Clare." 
 
 On the sea and at the Hogue, sixteen hundred 
 
 ninety-two, 
 Did the English fight the French — woe to 
 
 France! 
 And the thirty-first of May, helter skelter through 
 
 the blue. 
 Like a crowd of frightened porpoises a shoal of 
 
 sharks pursue, 
 Came crowding ship on ship to Saint-Malo 
 
 on the Ranee, 
 With the English fleet in view. 
 
 Well begun, it so continues to the end, 
 
 65 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 one of the finest ballads in the English 
 language. 
 
 It tells how the French fleet under 
 Damfreville, pursued by the English, 
 comes to a place like our own Hell Gate 
 and is like to be caught in a trap and 
 blown up by the enemy's guns. 
 
 The local pilots come aboard and 
 quickly decide that it is quite impossible 
 to guide such unwieldy vessels through 
 the rocky, treacherous channel. 
 
 ''In a strait" in every sense of the 
 word, Damfreville decides that it is 
 better to run the ships ashore and blow 
 them up than allow them to become the 
 prizes of the hated English. 
 
 He is about to give the word when : 
 
 * * * up stood * * * out stepped * * * in 
 
 struck 
 
 * * * a simple Breton sailor pressed by Tour- 
 
 ville for the fleet, 
 A poor coasting pilot, he — Herv§ Riel, the 
 Croisickese. 
 
 Herve Riel offers in his simple 
 
 66 
 
A FAMOUS BALLAD 
 
 French (rendered into nobly simple 
 English by Browning, who must have 
 enjoyed his morning's work while he 
 wrote at white heat) : 
 
 "Only let me lead the line, 
 
 Have the biggest ship to steer, 
 Get this Formidable clear, 
 
 Make the others follow mine. 
 And I lead them, most and least, by a passage 
 
 I know well, 
 Right to Solidor past Greve, 
 
 And there lay them safe and sound: 
 And if one ship misbehave — 
 
 Keel so much as grate the ground — 
 Why, I've nothing but my life, here's my head!" 
 
 cries Herve Riel. 
 
 What he has promised he well per- 
 forms : 
 
 Not a ship that misbehaves, not a keel that 
 
 grates the ground. 
 Not a spar that comes to grief! 
 The peril, see, is past. 
 All are harbored to the last. 
 And just as Herve Riel hollas "Anchor!" — 
 
 sure as fate. 
 Up the English come — too late! 
 
 Now is Herve Kiel's golden hour. He 
 
 is the hero of the day, and what he asks 
 
 67 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 for that can he have from his grateful 
 
 compatriots. 
 
 What a shout, and all one word, 
 
 •'Herve Kiel!'* 
 
 As he stepped in front once more 
 
 Not a symptom of surprise 
 
 In the frank blue Breton eyes, 
 
 Just the same man as before. 
 
 Then Damfreville, emotional French- 
 man that he is, says finely: 
 
 '*You have saved the King his ships, 
 You must name your own reward. 
 Faith, our sun was near eclipse! 
 Demand whate'er you will, 
 France remains your debtor still. 
 Ask to hearths content and have! Or my name*s 
 not Damfreville.*' 
 
 And what does the simple-hearted 
 Breton sailor do ? He bursts out laugh- 
 ing through his rough beard. He wants 
 no reward for doing what (later) England 
 expected every man to do — according to 
 Nelson ; 
 
 •* Since 'tis ask and have I may; 
 
 Since the others go ashore — 
 
 Come! A good whole holiday! 
 
 Leave to go and see my wife, whom I call the 
 
 Belle Aurore!'* 
 That he asked and that he got — nothing more. 
 
 68 
 
A FAMOUS BALLAD 
 
 It's a splendid poem and well wipes 
 out the memory of ^'The Pied Piper of 
 Hamelin/' with its bastard rhymes, but 
 almost every one has wondered that Dam- 
 freville was so literal. Why did he take 
 the innocent pilot at his word ? Why 
 did he not throw in a purse ? Browning 
 himself received a hundred guineas for 
 the poem and he sent every penny of it 
 to the relief of starving Frenchmen 
 ('twas just after the siege of Paris). 
 
 But Damfreville gave the pilot '' a day 
 off." 
 
 And who knows what happened when 
 the light-hearted, brave fellow came to 
 the door that gave entrance to the one 
 whom he called ''the Belle Aurore" ^ 
 
 Lofty-minded men do not always have 
 lofty-minded wives. We all remember 
 Socrates and his wife, who, even as Lot's 
 wife has stood for all time as one of the 
 salts of the earth, stands for eternity as 
 
 one of the scolds of the earth. 
 
 eg 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 At first the Belle Aurore was desper- 
 ately glad to see Herve. She allowed 
 him to fold her in his arms and then she 
 escaped, that she might be enfolded 
 again, and she kissed him, French 
 fashion, first on one cheek and then on 
 the other (how Biblical French customs 
 are!) though FU wager that he, being a 
 sailor, kissed her square on the mouth. 
 
 But soon she began to question him. 
 
 I wish I might put her questions in as 
 spirited verse as that of Browning, but it 
 would take more time — and one or two 
 other factors — than I have this morning, 
 and, besides, people would be sure to be 
 prejudiced in his favor as against me. 
 
 First she questioned him for news from 
 the seat of war. Then she asked him 
 how it was that battle business was so 
 slack that he could come all the way 
 down to see her. 
 
 Glowing with innocent pride, now that 
 he was telling of it, although hitherto it 
 
 70 
 
A FAMOUS BALLAD 
 
 had seemed the only thing for anyone to 
 do who had his knowledge of shoals and 
 eddies and tides, Herve Riel tells his 
 wife. that he has saved the French fleet. 
 His eyes shine — ^they moisten a bit; these 
 French are an emotional lot — and word 
 for word he tells her what the great 
 Damfreville said. Actually the Admiral 
 of the whole fleet said to him, plain 
 Herve Riel, coast pilot: 
 
 "You have saved the King his ships. 
 You must name your own reward/' 
 
 The Belle Aurore begins to breathe 
 hard at this. She glances around the 
 miserable cottage and thinks of the 
 handsome villa of my lady 'Ma com- 
 tesse." She can compass all those fine 
 airs herself, give her time. And some 
 money shall go to the poor. And a 
 candle seven feet tall will she give to Our 
 Lady. Ah, what a brave, lucky hus- 
 band! How she will queen it over those 
 
 Videaus, who give themselves such airs 
 
 7i 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 because their father found buried treas- 
 ure in the new world. 
 
 ''Quick, what did you choose, my 
 dear Herve, title and money or only the 
 money?'' 
 
 He hesitates and she divines that he 
 did not choose a title. 
 
 " Perhaps it is better so,'' says she, her 
 soft arms around his neck. ''We are 
 simple folk. But show me the purse. 
 And where are we to live ?" 
 
 Poor Herve's jaw drops. He had not 
 foreseen this. Why did he not wait to 
 ask her if she wanted anything besides 
 glory ? 
 
 He stammers. He attempts to laugh. 
 He fetches a huge sigh and begins to 
 stroke her head. 
 
 She receives an inkling of the truth 
 from all this. 
 
 Her arms drop from his neck and she 
 stands up to him, her eyes flashing. 
 
 "Do you mean to say, you Herve Riel, 
 
 72 
 
A FAMOUS BALLAD 
 
 you poor good-for-nothing, ne'er-do-well 
 of a pilot, that you have asked for neither 
 title nor purse ?'" 
 
 He shrugs his shoulders and throws 
 out his hands. 
 
 ''What could I think of Better than the 
 sight of you, my dear, my Belle Aurore ? 
 As I live, all that I wished for was leave 
 for a good, whole holiday with you/' 
 
 And then the storm burst! 
 
 73 
 
AN ENGLISH CROWD UNDER 
 DEFEAT." 
 
 
 DETERMINED to go to 
 see the Cambridge-Har- 
 vard boat race on the 
 Thames for two reasons— it would bring 
 m.e into contact with some of my fel- 
 low-countrymen, and it would give me 
 a chance to see how Englishmen bore 
 themselves under defeat. 
 
 It was one of the hundred days of 
 loveliness that England has had be- 
 stowed upon her this summer by the 
 
 74 
 
AN ENGLISH CROWD 
 
 clerk of the weather, and as I took my 
 way down to ugly Hammersmith Bridge 
 I could not help thinking how lucky the 
 Americans were in having such a day in 
 which to polish off their redoubtable 
 adversaries. 
 
 Friendly eyes looked on me and on all 
 Americans present, even the noisy ones. 
 England was perfectly willing to have us 
 win. All she asked for was a close 
 race. 
 
 The course lay from Putney Bridge to 
 Mortlake, a distance of four miles, and 
 two hours before the race a large and 
 cheerful crowd made up of English and 
 Americans was walking along the tow- 
 path in search of points of vantage from 
 which to view the struggle. 
 
 Cockney venders were selling their 
 
 idea of crimson. In justice to them I 
 
 must say that they are all colorblind, for 
 
 from brown to pink every hue could be 
 
 seen with never a touch of crimson. 
 
 75 
 
a 9 
 
 5> 
 
 AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 Ere's yer ^ Award colors! Pick 'em 
 out/ 
 
 But no American could do so. Luck- 
 ily I had got my bit of crimson elsewhere. 
 
 From just above Hammersmith Bridge 
 for a mile the embankment was lined 
 with vociferous men who dealt in 
 strangely named drinks and edibles. 
 
 There was a beverage that went by the 
 name of sarsaparilla wine. It was yel- 
 low and was sweetened by the addition 
 of sugar if desired. Your Englishman 
 has a contempt for sweets that is being 
 gradually overborne. Some years ago 
 he would have taken his sarsaparilla 
 wine dry. 
 
 "Maizypop" had a strangely famil- 
 iarly unfamiliar sound, and I bought a 
 package to see what it was like. Popped 
 maize or popcorn it proved to be. As 
 corn is the generic name for all grain in 
 England, popcorn would not be under- 
 stood of the masses, so the beautiful 
 
 76 
 
AN ENGLISH CROWD . 
 
 word ^'maizypop^' is coined and the 
 article sells. 
 
 Booth after booth was filled with 
 racks containing cocoanuts in place of 
 *' coons'^' heads. If you hit the "coker- 
 nut^' with a ball provided for the purpose 
 it became your property. 
 
 I longed to try my luck, but I did not 
 know what I should do with half a dozen 
 cocoanuts, so I refrained. 
 
 There were those who had paid good 
 prices in advance for seats from which 
 to view the race, but I was there to view 
 the crowd as well, and as long as I was 
 near at hand when the Harvard crew 
 won I did not much care where I was. 
 
 But I fell in with two pleasant fellow- 
 countrymen, strangers, and we listened 
 to the blandishments of a witty coster- 
 monger whose little donkey cart was 
 part of a procession of carts and wagons 
 drawn up at the top of the embankment, 
 and for a shilling and sixpence we ob- 
 
 77 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 tained elevated seats that commanded 
 a view of a mile of the river. A better 
 place we could not have asked for or 
 obtained at ten times the price. 
 
 I made up my mind to sink all feelings 
 of pride in my rowing compatriots when 
 they should come, and simply give my- 
 self up to a calm contemplation of the 
 Englishmen about me. 
 
 It was a good-natured crowd, as good- 
 natured as a New York one out for a 
 holiday and not trying to get to Brooklyn 
 by way of the Bridge. 
 
 My neighbor in the next cart, an 
 Englishman, told me that he hoped it 
 would be a close race, and I echoed his 
 hope. I really did not want to see 
 Cambridge trailing along a half-mile 
 after our boys. There is no excitement 
 in such a race. And I told him that next 
 to seeing Harvard win Td be best 
 pleased to see Cambridge win. 
 
 "But there are only two crews, you 
 
 78 
 
AN ENGLISH CROWD 
 
 know/' said he, and my little joke lay in 
 the bottom of the cart, demolished. 
 
 A party of Harvard men, in a barouche 
 went by and spotted my two companions 
 and me for Americans, and gave us a 
 cheer that caused the quiet English 
 people to look amazed. But they smiled 
 indulgently. It was only a little pre- 
 enthusiasm. 
 
 My unknown friends were from the 
 West, and they, like myself, had come 
 to see how an English crowd would bear 
 itself in defeat. 
 
 We were all sure that the English 
 would bear themselves like true sports 
 and we all established very friendly rela- 
 tions with the Britons about us in the 
 hour and a half that elapsed before the 
 dropping of a flag on Barnes Bridge told 
 us that the race had begun. 
 
 Now was my chance to watch the 
 English and see whether they were the 
 phlegmatic people they are reputed to be. 
 
 79 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 Could they bear to be wiped off of the 
 river by a little university only 270 
 years old that day ? Wouldn't they 
 make a scene ? For myself I was going 
 to be the calm, stlf-possessed, disin- 
 terested spectator of an international 
 event. 
 
 The course, ably policed by the 
 Thames Conservancy, had been cleared 
 some time before, and but six or seven 
 launches were to be allowed to follow the 
 rowers. 
 
 We stood up in the donkey cart, the 
 crowds in the street craned their necks, 
 people in an unfinished building leaned 
 from the windows and the mob on the 
 river bank risked being pushed into the 
 historic but damp stream — and the race 
 was on. 
 
 I fixed my eyes on the bend of the 
 river, where the shells would shortly 
 appear, until I remembered that I was 
 not there to look at the boats, but to note 
 
 80 
 
AN ENGLISH CROWD 
 
 the behavior of an English crowd under 
 defeat. 
 
 Thus reminded of them I turned my 
 head and watched them until my eyes 
 happened to fall on the river again and 
 refused to budge from that bend beyond 
 which two world-watched crews were 
 putting their six wrecks of training into 
 the work of rowing a great race. The 
 thought came that at that very moment 
 people in America, in India, in Aus- 
 tralia, in Canada, in South Africa were 
 anxiously awaiting news of the event that 
 was now unfolding itself on the river 
 before me. 
 
 But it did not seem a bit real. I 
 seemed to be in a theatre with my eyes 
 riveted on the first public view of the 
 biograph or kinetoscope. The crowd 
 around me was not a real crowd but only 
 the wonderful moving picture of a crowd. 
 I myself was real, but the shining water, 
 the waving flags, the silent people were 
 
 81 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 all parts of a picture of a scene, not the 
 scene itself. 
 
 And then I heard a queer noise like 
 the sound of the wind in distant trees 
 before the storm breaks. It came from 
 beyond that fascinating bend in the river. 
 What was it ? 
 
 It was the sound of cheering. My 
 compatriots were cheering American 
 cheers. It must be that. 
 
 One of the Westerners had a field 
 glass and suddenly he said, ^^Here they 
 come!'* 
 
 And then I saw two moving shuttles 
 in the water far away and the cheering 
 came nearer and nearer and increased in 
 volume and proportion. One of the 
 shuttles was ahead, and I knew it was 
 Harvard and fell to cheering myself. I 
 forgot for the moment all about the 
 English around me. My one desire 
 was do the best American cheering that 
 
 my lungs and throat could compass. 
 
 82 
 
AN ENGLISH CROWD 
 
 I was subconscious that everybody 
 around me was cheering and my heart 
 warmed to the English under defeat. 
 
 Suddenly, like a blow between the 
 eyes, I heard one of the Westerners say, 
 "'Cambridge leads/' 
 
 I borrowed his glass and looking 
 through it I noticed, just as one notices 
 a bad symptom in the disease of a loved 
 one, that the blades of the oars in the lead 
 were a light blue and my heart sank. 
 Had our boys come 3,000 miles for 
 nothing ? No, they had come 3,000 
 miles to make a good fight with redoubt- 
 able antagonists and they were mak- 
 ing it. 
 
 But still it did not seem like a real 
 thing, the cheers or the sight of the tiny 
 shells in that water so far away. And the 
 speed they were making, both crews, was 
 out of all proportion to the size of the 
 river. Why the tugs and steamers that 
 followed were going at a tremendous 
 
 83 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 and noisy pace and yet they did not gain 
 on those two quiet crews. It all seemed 
 like a dream. 
 
 The shouting and the tumult died 
 not. It increased in power and the 
 Cambridge men swept inevitably past 
 with the Harvard men, doomed from 
 the first stroke to defeat, rowing tre- 
 mendously two lengths behind — only 
 two lengths in a fast four-mile race — 
 and my throat gave me notice that it 
 was being overworked and that anyway 
 cheering w^ould do no good now. 
 
 And then the rival crews grew smaller, 
 and smaller, and smaller and finally dis- 
 appeared around another bend in the 
 river, and a few minutes later pande- 
 monium reigned among the phlegmatic 
 English. And on the flagstaff in the 
 middle of Barnes Bridge two flags were 
 flying, the lower one being a familiar 
 white '^H" on a crimson field, but the 
 flag at the top, being light blue, in token 
 
 84 
 
AN ENGLISH CROWD 
 
 that English Cambridge had defeated 
 American Cambridge. 
 
 And now the Englishman next to me 
 turned and grasped my hand in a good, 
 warm, hearty handclasp and said: 
 
 *^ Never mind, my boy. It was a good 
 race. Better luck next time." 
 
 And I thanked him, hardly knowing 
 what I said, and bade good-bye to my 
 new-found friends and jumped from the 
 cart, actually as sorry as if I had been a 
 Harvard man or especially interested in 
 athletics — or had money on the race. 
 
 I continued to wear the Harvard 
 colors — in memory of the defeated — 
 and more than once an Englishman 
 stepped up to me and said w^ords of 
 right good sport. One said: ^' Never 
 mind, bring 'em over next year and let's 
 'ave another try," quite as if I could 
 bring it about. 
 
 And, as part of the good-natured 
 English crowd, I made my slow way 
 
 85 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 back along the towpath to Hammer- 
 smith Bridge, listening to the remarks 
 that were made, I decided that I quite 
 knew how the English would have acted 
 had Harvard won the race. 
 
 And I felt that the bonds between 
 England and America had been strength- 
 ened by the four-mile struggle on the 
 silver waters of the Thames, 
 
 86 
 
OUR WAY AND THE BRITISH 
 
 S NEAR as I can make out, 
 we think the EngHsh very in- 
 sular and opinionated because 
 they will not admit that our 
 ways are vastly preferable to their own 
 and our nation a tremendous advance 
 on England. 
 
 87 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 Most of us who live in or near New 
 York are perfectly willing to admit that 
 New York represents the quintessence 
 of civilization; that if a man has the 
 good fortune to be born in New York 
 there is no need for him to travel because 
 he never will find anything to compare 
 with Manhattan — not Brooklyn or The 
 Bronx or Richmond, mind you, but just 
 Manhattan — that the West has been 
 hopelessly distanced and is still inhab- 
 ited by a woolly race, and every morning 
 he looks down with new contempt on 
 all foreigners and provincials and thanks 
 the Lord that he is not as insular and 
 opinionated as the Englishman always is. 
 
 But he has only to travel to find out 
 that in the West they travel more com- 
 fortably than we do in the East; that 
 they get more for their money in their 
 train travel than do we, and that, as they 
 travel more, their ideas are broader and 
 less provincial than ours. 
 
 88 
 
OUR WAY 
 
 Any open-minded man is bound to 
 admit, once he has traveled in England, 
 that he can do so more comfortably for 
 less money than he can do it anywhere 
 in the States — as they still persist in 
 calling our country. 
 
 Let me show by two examples and 
 thus settle the question forever: 
 
 We will suppose there are two young 
 men of moderate means, the one a New 
 Yorker who cannot afford Pullman cars, 
 the other a Londoner who always travels 
 third class. 
 
 The New Yorker wishes to take a little 
 trip of a hundred miles out into the 
 country. What happens ? 
 
 The night before his contemplated de- 
 parture he hunts up an expressman, who 
 perhaps has an office a mile or two away 
 from the young man's house. I want to 
 be perfectly fair in this statement. He 
 tells the expressman to call next morning 
 for his trunk and to carry it to the Grand 
 
 89 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 Central Station. This the expressman 
 agrees to do for fifty cents. 
 
 Next morning the expressman is very 
 late in coming, and the young man frets 
 and fumes for fear he has been forgotten. 
 However, he reflects on how much better 
 the express system of New York is than 
 any English system could be, and it is a 
 great comfort to him. At last the ex- 
 pressman comes and the trunk is borne 
 away, and the young man follows on a 
 surface-car, because a cab is out of the 
 question on account of the expense. 
 
 What is the inevitable result ? There 
 is a blockade on the road, and the young 
 man again frets and fumes until he 
 realizes how much worse it must be in 
 England — and then he gets out and 
 runs, arriving at the station hot and 
 breathless. 
 
 After buying a ticket that costs him 
 two and a half cents a mile he rushes to 
 the baggage-room, a long two blocks 
 
 90 
 
OUR WAY 
 
 away in the great building, that he may 
 check his trunk and thus relieve his 
 mind of all thought of it. Has it come ? 
 Oh, no, it has not come. Will it come 
 soon ? The baggageman knows as lit- 
 tle as he cares. 
 
 He frets and fumes until it happens to 
 come into his mind that he has read that 
 in England they have no checking system, 
 and pity for the benighted Englishman 
 chokes every other emotion and he is en- 
 abled to wait calmly until five minutes 
 before train time, when the trunk comes, 
 is almost demolished before his eyes by 
 the careless expressman and upon his 
 giving the baggage man a quarter tip 
 he is assured that the bit of baggage will 
 go out by his train and arrive with him. 
 
 He puts the check into his pocket and 
 sprinting to the train gets the only seat 
 left beside a garlicky Italian who has 
 been drinking instead of bathing. 
 
 Just in front of him is a screaming and 
 91 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 dirty baby who in the intervals between 
 her paroxysms calls him papa, and 
 behind him is a small boy who is ques- 
 tioning his mother incessantly on sub- 
 jects in which our traveler is not inter- 
 ested. 
 
 Arrived at last at his destination, hot 
 and dusty and cross and cindery, where 
 is the trunk that was checked through ? 
 ^Way down in the Grand Central Sta- 
 tion, far, far away. 
 
 They took the tip and gave the check, 
 but they didn't run the trunk out. "'It 
 will do on the next train'* is what they 
 think down there. 
 
 Our friend is visiting people who are a 
 little up in the world, just a little up in the 
 world, and they have come for him and 
 his trunk that contains his dress suit, 
 but it will be the next morning before 
 he gets it, and he will need his dress suit 
 just as soon as it is time to dress for 
 dinner. 
 
 92 
 
OUR WAY 
 
 There let us leave him. We are not 
 concerned with his further troubles. 
 
 Let us now follow the experience of 
 our young Londoner who is going away 
 for a week-end. 
 
 Does he spend the evening before his 
 departure hunting up an expressman ? 
 No, because they don't have expressmen 
 in London. 
 
 You can go to the *^ luggage in ad- 
 vance '' man and have your trunk for- 
 warded, but It will never occur to our 
 English friend to do that. He goes to 
 the theatre and whiles away his evening 
 and next morning he chips his egg 
 calmly and eats his bacon with zest and 
 swallows his coffee leisurely at 8 o'clock, 
 having made up his mind to take the St. 
 Pancras train at 9 o'clock to a place a 
 hundred miles out. 
 
 Breakfast over, he goes to the front 
 door of his lodging house and hails one 
 of the boys who are always passing 
 
 93 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 houses in London. Him he sends to the 
 nearest standing to get a hansom cab. 
 
 The tip to the boy is a penny, and he 
 executes his commission with prompt- 
 ness, and soon from the railings of the 
 little park departs a London cabby and 
 rattles up to the house of the young man 
 in no time, his horse clicking off the dis- 
 tance at a rate of speed he is prepared 
 to keep up by the hour if necessary. 
 
 ''Is it a trunk, sir ^^ 
 
 ''Yes, please get me box and drive me 
 to St. Pancras." 
 
 "Very good, sir.*' 
 
 The trunk is placed on the top of the 
 hansom in two shakes of a very young 
 lamb's tail, and the Londoner enters 
 the hansom and is driven rapidly and by 
 short cuts known only to drivers to St. 
 Pancras. 
 
 There a porter will buy the young 
 man's ticket, for which he pays two 
 cents a mile, will place his trunk in the 
 
 94 
 
OUR WAY 
 
 luggage van, having marked it for its 
 destination, and will possibly find the 
 young man a smoking compartment to 
 himself in the fine, new corridor (aisled) 
 train. And his tip for all this will be 
 ^^thruppence,^' or at most sixpence. 
 His journey to the station in the hansom 
 costs but a matter of sixty cents, includ- 
 ing the trunk. 
 
 He has perhaps tipped the driver six- 
 pence for carrying his trunk downstairs, 
 and he has been absolutely at his ease all 
 the time. 
 
 He is now in a third-class smoking car- 
 riage with a comfortable seat in which he 
 can loll back and look out of the window. 
 There will be no squawling baby near 
 him, for babies are not allowed in 
 smoking carriages, or perhaps, I should 
 say, that if they come, they do so at their 
 own risk. 
 
 It may be that a woman will come in, 
 one who loves to see men smoking, but 
 
 95 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 the chances are that if travel is light he 
 will have the compartment to himself 
 and can sleep or smoke or look at the 
 scenery to his heart's content. Every 
 few minutes the guard will request the 
 pleasure of gazing once more at his 
 ticket, but that is a favor that is soon 
 granted, and who would grudge a guard 
 one of his few pleasures ? 
 
 Up in the luggage van, just ahead, or 
 perhaps just behind, the young man's 
 trunk is safely traveling, and when he 
 arrives at the station and finds his 
 friends there to meet him a porter will 
 convey the trunk to the carriage for a 
 tuppence tip. 
 
 No worry, no delay, no Italian, no 
 baby, no checking system. 
 
 Suppose I were in Buffalo and wished 
 to go to Boston for a visit, eventually 
 taking the steamer at New York for 
 London. We will say that I have a 
 large trunk that I wish to send to 
 
 96 
 
OUR WAY 
 
 the steamer's hold from Buffalo. 
 
 I can send it by express without me at 
 something under $2^ or if it is more, all 
 the better. I am willing to admit it will 
 probably go through all right. 
 
 But if I am in London and wish to go 
 to Edinburgh on my way to Glasgow, 
 whence I expect to sail to New York, and 
 I wish to send my trunk to the steamer's 
 hold, what do I do ? 
 
 I paste a label on it, show my ticket to 
 Edinburgh, and they send my trunk to 
 Glasgow for sixpence, with a penny tip 
 to the porter, and give me a receipt for it. 
 
 In Chicago I leave four trunks in the 
 station for two nights while I make a 
 little detour with my suit case. On my 
 taking them up again I have to pay 
 twenty-five cents apiece per night for each 
 trunk, or $2. 
 
 In London I do the same thing, and it 
 costs me just eightpence. As swindlers 
 the English have much to learn. 
 
 97 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 Mind you, I am no Anglomaniac. I 
 see many ways in which the Englishman 
 could be brought nearer to our high 
 standard of kindliness and courtesy and 
 political purity, but in the matter of 
 making travel easy we are not in it, as I 
 have shown so conclusively that it will 
 be useless for any one to attempt to con. 
 trovert me. 
 
 I am an open-minded, unprejudiced 
 American, and what I say goes. 
 
 98 
 
TOO MUCH SHAKESPEARIANA 
 
 SWANT to make a confession. 
 I hate sightseeing, rm 
 never in the mood for it. 
 Sightseeing is the thing 
 above all things that Fd like to do if I 
 really cared for it. It is so stimulating 
 to the imagination to stand before the 
 
 tomb of a departed w^orthy of whom you 
 
 99 
 
 L OF Cn 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 heard for the first time the day before 
 yesterday and reflect that five hundred 
 years ago he stood on that very spot and 
 w^alked about, using his legs just the 
 same as you, of v^hom no one ever heard, 
 use yours. At any rate it seems as if it 
 ought to be stimulating to visit these 
 haunts and resting places of departed 
 great ones, but as a matter of fact it 
 is not. 
 
 Just when you are feeling absolutely 
 ravenous and see a most enticing inn 
 covered with green ivy and yellow 
 thatch, you learn that you must forego 
 luncheon and push on just because the 
 tomb of the wicked Duke of Portchester 
 is five miles up hill with the north wind 
 in your face and something the matter 
 with your bicycle and you no mechanic. 
 
 It is good to be alive in foreign lands, 
 it is good to be alive anywhere, for the 
 matter of that, but sightseeing as sight- 
 seeing, is the last thing a sightseer ought 
 
 100 
 
TOO MUCH 
 
 to attempt. Let the sights come unex- 
 pected like. 
 
 Admire the ruin, through a loophole 
 of which you see the young moon, and 
 next day when you learn that the name 
 of the ruin is Levin Castle on Loch Levin 
 from which Mary Queen of Scots 
 escaped weeks and weeks and weeks 
 ago you are bound to get a belated thrill, 
 but go to see that ruin awheel, pushing 
 your wheel up unclimable hills, and 
 you'll wish that Mary had never at- 
 tempted to leave the gloomy old hole 
 when you finally reach it — ^with no moon 
 in sight. 
 
 Last week I ran across Massenger 
 and we decided to do Stratford-on-Avon, 
 where the man who wrote the plays that 
 Bacon couldn't have written if you'd 
 bribed him to do it, and wouldn't have 
 written if he'd possessed the ability 
 (despising players as he did), lived and 
 died — and was born. 
 
 101 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 Of course I refer to Shakespeare in 
 spite of the convolutions of my English. 
 
 It was a matter of fifty-five miles by 
 wheel to Stratford from Wallingford, and 
 we set out with light hearts, because I 
 had read somewhere that that is the 
 proper way to begin a journey. Now, as 
 a matter of fact, Wallingford itself is full 
 of the hallowedest kind of memories. 
 
 Why, they don't ring the curfew until 
 9 o'clock instead of 8, because when 
 William the Conqueror landed there the 
 first man he saw in the little crowd 
 drawn up to welcome the genial Norman 
 was an old school-fellow of his. 
 
 "'What time do they ring the curfew, 
 me old college chum ?" said William in 
 his debonaire way. 
 
 ^'At 8, your Destroyership," said the 
 man, who happened to be the Mayor of 
 Wallingford. 
 
 ''Hereafter let it be 9 until clocks do 
 
 no more run." 
 
 102 
 
TOO MUCH 
 
 And as clocks are still running the 
 Wallingfordizens may play out in the 
 street until all honest persons are sup- 
 posed to have gone home. 
 
 But, although I had made Wallingford 
 my headquarters for some time, I had 
 purposely refrained from going to the 
 spot where all these footfalls fell because 
 it is so much pleasanter to play tennis in 
 this century than to dwell on the acts of 
 the mighty in times that are pretty well 
 gone forever as near as I can make out. 
 
 But here we were going to visit the 
 tomb of the real William the Conqueror, 
 whose "Winter's Tale,'' with Ellen 
 Terry as Hermioney was filling Beerbohm 
 Tree's theatre every night, and causing 
 honest Englishmen to laugh as hard as if 
 they had never heard from their Amer- 
 ican cousins that there is no such thing as 
 English humor and that Englishmen 
 can't see a joke. 
 
 Where was I ^, 
 
 103 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 Oh, about seventeen miles on our way 
 to Stratford, with the north wind in our 
 faces, but our hearts still light. You see 
 the countryside in Oxfordshire is so beau- 
 tiful that a fellow can't help feeling light- 
 hearted, even going to visit a tomb. 
 
 We passed quickly through Oxford, 
 and so escaped seeing any of the show 
 colleges. I've seen so many imitations of 
 Oxford in American college towns that 
 the real thing — ^well, we scorched through 
 Oxford. 
 
 (I feel that I will be set down as a Philis- 
 tine if I don't stop long enough to say that 
 some weeks before we had done Samuel 
 Johnson's room and desk and the win- 
 dow out of which he threw the shoes; 
 also. Sir Joshua Reynolds's sepia win- 
 dow (that was painted by some one else) 
 and the Magdalen cloisters, and Wor- 
 cester Gardens where, by the way, we 
 saw a don who was fishing in the winding 
 stream pull out a tench that weighed a 
 
 104 
 
TOO MUCH 
 
 full two pounds and which he said at the 
 time weighed a good three. I dare say 
 his fellow-dons heard it was four and a 
 half.) 
 
 It will be realized that having seen 
 Oxford with all the proper emotions we 
 weren^t going to see it again just for fun. 
 So we pressed on and the north wind con- 
 tinued to blow in a way to make even 
 free wheeling something of an effort. 
 When night fell we had done forty-eight 
 miles and were tired out and Stratford 
 ten miles away. 
 
 ''What if we should die in the night," 
 said Massenger, ''without having seen 
 Shakespeare's tomb V^ 
 
 It was a depressing possibility, for 
 now that I couldn't lay my hands on it 
 I wanted to see it. 
 
 But, having in mind what the poet had 
 said about tired nature's sweet restorer, 
 we resolved to try its virtue and put up in 
 a hostelry that had been bedding and 
 
 105 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 mealing people for five or six hundred 
 years. 
 
 Forty-eight miles in a north wind gives 
 a fellov^ a light stomach, even if his 
 heart has become somev^hat heavy, 
 and we did justice to our simple but 
 toothsome repast served by a pleasing 
 maid and retired to sleep the sleep of 
 absolutely good men. Oh, if men would 
 only try absolute goodness as a cure for 
 insomnia. 
 
 Next morning we rose betimes — 
 betimes is just the word to use in speak- 
 ing of such a relic of bygone times as 
 was our inn — and once more facing the 
 north wind we continued our journey 
 to the place that once ''echoed to the 
 footsteps'' of "The Bard of Avon,'' to 
 quote from twp writers whose names I 
 forget. 
 
 Ere that the sun in russet mantle clad 
 had paced one twenty-fourth part of his 
 appointed round we had covered the last 
 
 106 
 
TOO MUCH 
 
 ten miles of our pilgrimage and were 
 come to Stratford. 
 
 I will own that when I suddenly came 
 on the bridge that had supported the 
 growing weight of Shakespeare, boy, 
 youth and man, I did feel as if I were in 
 a sacred place, for both Massenger and 
 myself are real fond of Shakespeare, and 
 if they proved he never existed weM feel 
 very sorry, because he has wormed his 
 way into our hearts with his plays and 
 poems. 
 
 As we looked over the parapets of the 
 bridge we saw beyond the waters of the 
 Avon the church wherein his bones have 
 been disturbed (in spite of the curse) at 
 least once, and we fell to thinking on 
 Marie Corelli, who lives in Stratford just 
 as much as Shakespeare ever did. 
 
 We didn't take things in the right 
 
 order at all. We first visited his tomb 
 
 and read the curse that some illiterate 
 
 friend of his wrote for its embellishment. 
 
 107 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 I wonder if the Baconians claim that 
 quatrain for Bacon. 
 
 The beautiful old church has some of 
 the most painfully ugly stained glass 
 windows that it ever befell my American 
 eyes, used to Tiffany and La Farge's 
 work, to look upon. Why not smash the 
 glass and give old John an order? If 
 they were there in Shakespeare's time 
 they must have hurt his sense of color. 
 
 They haven't the merit of being funny, 
 either, as are the carvings on the miser- 
 reres in the choir. Massenger said these 
 last were hardly what would have been 
 considered proper in the Second Congre- 
 gational Church in his town, but they 
 were certainly humorous, and many a 
 choir boy must have whiled away his 
 time through a droning service by in- 
 specting them surreptitiously. 
 
 One of them represented a man with a 
 large sausage in his mouth. Alongside 
 of him was a hungry face whose eye 
 
 108 
 
TOO MUCH 
 
 looked longingly at the Coney Island 
 food, while a third head bore a lolling 
 tongue that was fairly watering to get 
 at the sausage. 
 
 American admirers of Shakespeare 
 have put up a memorial window, the 
 work of contemporary Englishmen and 
 quite the best window in the church. 
 They had two opportunities, however, 
 which they carefully missed; they might 
 have given their order to an American 
 firm, seeing it was to be a window, a 
 form of art in which we excel, and they 
 might have had the figures on it repre- 
 sent Pistol and Bottom and Sir John Fal- 
 staff and lago and Richard III. In- 
 stead of that they put upon it our first 
 Bishop, Seabury of Connecticut, and the 
 Pilgrim Fathers and various other people 
 that Shakespeare never heard of. 
 
 I wonder, though, if some of those Pil- 
 grim Fathers — before they were fathers 
 —didn't run oflF to the theatre some 
 
 109 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 nights and see Shakespeare's plays at the 
 old Globe, with perhaps Shakespeare 
 playing the Ghost, I like to think that 
 the Pilgrims were linked with William 
 in some such way. Afterward they put 
 his plays out of their heads, but from 
 time to time on the rockbound coast 
 lines would come into their heads, and 
 their hard old mouths would smile at the 
 humor of the master craftsman. 
 
 There is no doubt that Shakespeare 
 has been longer in the church since his 
 death than he ever was in life, but if he 
 ever did go there in the flesh he must 
 have enjoyed the humor of the various 
 rude carvings and shuddered at the 
 colors in the windows. 
 
 We saw a good deal of Shakespeare in 
 the Memorial Building, and a surpris- 
 ingly large number of bad paintings, 
 including one by an American portrait 
 painter who shall be nameless — but he 
 
 ought not to have shown his canvas to 
 
 110 
 
TOO MUCH 
 
 his janitor, let alone sending it to Strat- 
 ford. They tell me he is successful 
 among the disgustingly rich, and I can 
 well believe it. Such a plentiful lack of 
 imagination and such a generous use of 
 expensive paint must make it's appeal 
 among the nouveaux. 
 
 We did not meet Marie Corelli. The 
 loss was — no, Fm willing to say the loss 
 was ours. 
 
 She has already supplanted Shakes- 
 peare in the affections of a large class of 
 readers, and she deserves her success. 
 Personally, I like Shakespeare better, 
 and so does Massenger, but it's all a 
 matter of taste. 
 
 But much as we like Shakespeare we 
 
 did get awfully sick of him in such large 
 
 doses of Shakespeariana that he never 
 
 heard of and that had nothing to do with 
 
 him personally. How sick to death of 
 
 the very name of Shakespeare must be 
 
 the permanent dwellers in Stratford. 
 
 Ill 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 They cannot go outside their doors with- 
 out being asked to direct some American 
 to the place where Shakespeare Hved 
 or died or was married, or where 
 he poached or crept unwillingly to 
 school to absorb little Latin and less 
 Greek. 
 
 For our parts when we thought we had 
 seen all there was to see of the haunts of 
 Shakespeare, and had grown sick and 
 tired and hungry, and were looking up a 
 place in which to have cakes and ale; 
 Massenger slapped his leg and said: 
 "'We haven't seen his blamed old birth- 
 place/* 
 
 I felt like kicking Massenger, but it 
 was a fact and it would not speak well 
 for our love of literature if we returned 
 to America without having seen the 
 house that was the first great link 
 between England and America. So we 
 mounted our wheels and asked a resident 
 the way, and he told us tiredly and re- 
 
 112 
 
TOO MUCH 
 
 sentfully, and soon we came to the place 
 in which William first saw light — and a 
 dark place it is. 
 
 There we found more portraits of him 
 as dissimilar to each other as his signa- 
 tures are. And we heard more facts 
 concerning him and felt that we ought 
 to have proper emotions concerning 
 him. But we just couldn't. I didn't 
 care a rap what Ben Jonson said about 
 his ''native woodnotes wild.'' I was 
 hungry. 
 
 We looked at the first folio, which 
 looked exactly like every other first folio 
 I ever saw, and I first began to see them 
 out in Minneapolis and I've seen 'em in 
 Oxford and in pretty nearly every place 
 that boasts a library. What an edition 
 they must have printed and how folks 
 must have taken care of them. 
 
 But now I looked crossly at the folio 
 and wished that Bacon had written the 
 
 113 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 play. For no one would ever have gone 
 crazy over Bacon's birthplace, he not 
 being the sort of man to inspire the per- 
 sonal affection that Shakespeare inspires 
 until you have the huge dose of him 
 they give you in Stratford. 
 
 We refused to even look in at the room 
 where they weaned him, and with one 
 hasty glance at the garden made up of all 
 the flowers the great nature lover men- 
 tions in his plays (and a most pretty 
 idea it is), we hastened to an inn where 
 we felt like eating every edible the great 
 lover of eating mentions in his plays, but 
 didn't. We did eat abundantly, how- 
 ever, and over our cigars we thought of 
 the days when we had loved Shakes- 
 peare unhampered by any visions of the 
 town of his birth. And then we de- 
 parted! 
 
 We had gone five miles toward beau- 
 tiful and picturesque Warwick when 
 
 114 
 
TOO MUCH 
 
 Massenger slapped his leg again and 
 said, ''We've forgotten something." 
 
 I thought of my overcoat; but no, it 
 was on the handle-bar. 
 
 ''WeVe forgotten to see Anne Hath- 
 away's cottage and Nev^ Place, v^here he 
 lived w^hen he had retired.'' 
 
 I flung my cap in the air. Hurrah! 
 I could still imagine v^hat Nev^ Place v^as 
 like, and v^ould not have to be disap- 
 pointed by a niggardly reality. As for 
 Anne Hathaway's cottage, I never liked 
 the w^ay she treated Shakespeare, and I 
 would not pay her the compliment of 
 looking at a cottage that may not have 
 been hers after all. 
 
 Fill your minds with pictures of 
 Stratford and read the amiable fellow's 
 plays, but don't go to see his haunts 
 and homes unless you are insatiable 
 sightseers. 
 
 How he must laugh at the spectacle of 
 leg-weary Americans who never read a 
 
 115 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 play of his and who think ^^RicheHeu*' 
 the best play of his they ever saw acted 
 (ignoring poor Bulwer's claims com- 
 pletely), poring over his memorabilia 
 and going into raptures over the hideous 
 windows and reading Marie Corelli 
 harder than ever when they return to 
 America! It is to laugh pleasantly! 
 
 116 
 
"CROKY" VERSUS MOTORING 
 
 j^:^/4 
 
 ^<m2^y^. 
 
 F the two sports I prefer motor- 
 ing to croquet. One day in 
 England, the weather being 
 very chilly, I wished to do something 
 athletic in order to keep myself warm. 
 My wheel had a puncture that baffled 
 me — oh, those English flints! — and the 
 tennis court of my host was being used 
 by four brilliant players whose storage 
 
 117 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 batteries of enthusiasm were warranted 
 to last till dark. 
 
 In my extremity I turned to croquet, 
 and asked a young man who knew the 
 game whether he would try a round with 
 me just to warm my blood. 
 
 Now, in the days of Reconstruction 
 in the South, when Germany was whip- 
 ping France, I used to play croquet — 
 with the accent on the ''kay^' — up in 
 New England and we used to run 
 through nine wickets or arches and back 
 again, hitting two stakes and sometimes 
 adding to the excitement of the game 
 by making a cage of the middle wicket 
 by topping it with another wicket set at 
 right angles to it. 
 
 It was a game calculated to bring out 
 all that was irritable in a human being, 
 and I fancy that it must have been as 
 easy as pie to play it, for people of all ages 
 from seven to seventy accused each other 
 of cheating and Roquet-croqueted from 
 
 118 
 
"CROKY" VS. MOTORING 
 
 dawn till dark on village greens, park 
 lawns and city back yards. 
 
 But croquet as she was played in the 
 '70s and croquet as she is played in Eng- 
 land to-day — croquet with the accent 
 on the ''cro'' — are two different things, 
 and as a stimulator of the circulation of 
 the blood I am afraid that I cannot say 
 much for the English game. 
 
 I took my mallet, a short-handled, 
 wide-headed one of greater weight than 
 the old kind, and I took my ball, stained 
 blue all over, and my opponent took his 
 red ball and his mallet and we made our 
 way to the carpet of velvet, or, to speak 
 strictly, the lawn, where I found six 
 wickets, called hoops, with the accent 
 on the '^hoo,'* and two stakes which were 
 called sticks. Anything to be different. 
 Whydidn'ttheycallthe mallets hammers ? 
 
 The hoops were so ridiculously narrow 
 that I fancied it would need strength to 
 force a ball through. 
 
 119 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 The day was raw and I was chilly and 
 anxious to begin, but my opponent cour- 
 teously took first play in order to give me 
 a chance to play on him, and with a skill 
 worthy of all admiration he sent his ball 
 through the first hoop and got into good 
 position to play the second next turn. 
 
 That was my first inkling that it was a 
 slow game. It was three by my watch 
 and the wind was blowing raw. 
 
 It being my turn to play I placed my 
 ball in the proper position and let drive 
 and missed the wicket — hoop, I mean, 
 with an inaccuracy heaven-born. 
 
 My turn had ended and my opponent 
 now hit me, and after deliberating with 
 knitted eyebrows as to what to do with me 
 he sent me to the uttermost parts of the 
 lawn, and shivering I went after my ball 
 and then watched him make the second 
 arch. 
 
 I now came back — by his advice — and 
 
 got into pretty good position for going 
 
 120 
 
"CROKY" VS. MOTORING 
 
 through my arch. He told me that I 
 ought to go through easily if he did not 
 put me out of commission. 
 
 He now put on a pair of gloves, as his 
 hands were cold, and after mentally 
 going through all the possible strokes he 
 could make he decided to tear me away 
 from my present comfortable position 
 in front of the first arch, and as I stood 
 there shivering under the bleak Septem- 
 ber sky he hit my ball and knocked it the 
 length of the lawn and then went through 
 hoop number three and got into position 
 for number four. 
 
 With a feeling that I would never give 
 up trying to win, no matter what hap- 
 pened, I sent my ball back across the 
 lawn and by good luck I got into such 
 position that a tap would win me the 
 passage of the arch. 
 
 But my opponent was also playing to 
 
 win and he knocked me out of position 
 
 and then sent me to the limit in a new 
 
 121 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 direction. He then made two hoops, 
 planning each stroke with a deliberation 
 that sent chills up my already cool spine. 
 
 I would have jumped and shouted but 
 that would have been too cowboyish and 
 undignified for my friend, who was extra 
 English, so I refrained. The rooks were 
 cawing coldly and blackish clouds swept 
 across the gray sky and the wind in the 
 yew trees made a Novemberish sound. 
 
 I glanced at the four men who were 
 having a battle royal of tennis. How 
 warm and happy they looked! They 
 were doing something, while I had not 
 even begun to get ready to commence to 
 do anything. 
 
 I looked at my watch. I had been 
 half an hour trying for a chance to enter 
 the game. I shivered and my opponent 
 told me that he must make the six arches 
 — hoops — twice before the game was at 
 an end. 
 
 Once more I tried for position and this 
 
 122 
 
"CROKY" VS. MOTORING 
 
 time did not get it, but that very fact left 
 me untouched by my opponent, who gave 
 ten minutes' chess thought to the prob- 
 lems on the lawn and then missed a hoop. 
 
 This encouraged me. Now I would 
 go through. I took careful aim and hit 
 the ball softly and did no more than 
 get into position to go through next 
 time. 
 
 But there was never to be a next time 
 for me. I hadn't begun to play and I 
 didn't begin to play at all. 
 
 We were on that chilly lawn for two 
 solid hours and in that time my oppo- 
 nent made every hoop and rested from 
 his labors when he had hit the stick, and 
 the last stroke I made I just missed that 
 first hoop by six inches. I think that 
 with practice I could have made it. 
 
 Chilled to the marrow, I reverently 
 laid my mallet away in its box forever, 
 while my friend assured me that I would 
 make a good player because I was not 
 
 123 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 too cock-sure, as so many beginners 
 were. He said like so many beginners 
 were, because that's considered good 
 English — in England. 
 
 But "croky" is not for me. I took a 
 brisk walk to avert a chill, and when my 
 blood was once more circulating the 
 cawing of the rooks sounded friendly and 
 the dull skies gave promise of merry 
 sunshine on the morrow. 
 
 And I then and there resolved that 
 nothing should ever tempt me to stand 
 outside a hoop knocking in vain for an 
 entrance. 
 
 To take up a more cheerful topic. 
 
 Why is it that when we are in Rome 
 we do as the Romans do ^ Why will I 
 play tennis on Sunday in England when 
 I refuse to do it in New Jersey for fear 
 of what my neighbors will say ? Why 
 is it that when I return from England 
 I do not acknowledge that I did play 
 tennis on Sunday in England ? 
 
 124 
 
"CROKY" VS. MOTORING 
 
 Take also the matter of motor- 
 speeding. 
 
 At home I have always been one of the 
 mouth-frothers at the unconscionable 
 speeding of our motors. Every time one 
 has passed my house at the rate of 
 thirty miles an hour or more I have asked 
 whoever happened to be near me: 
 
 "What are we coming to .^ Do we 
 own the roads or do a privileged few 
 own them } Shall we offer up our 
 children to these juggernauts, meekly 
 submitting to express train service on 
 suburban streets, or shall we appeal to 
 our legislators to put an end to any speed 
 above ten miles an hour" ? 
 
 And my neighbors have always an- 
 swered me in like spirit; also frothing, 
 and have assured me that no children 
 of theirs should willingly be offered 
 up to this Moloch of the twentieth 
 century. 
 
 And then we have retired to our lawn- 
 125 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 mowing or our leaf raking and the froth 
 has dried on our lips. 
 
 We look on Scotland as a land of rigid 
 morality and potent whiskey. We do 
 not think of it as a law-breaking country. 
 We have allowed ourselves to be lectured 
 by Bobbie Burns and Thomas Carlyle 
 and we look to Scotland for examples of 
 high living. 
 
 But how travel broadens the mind and 
 removes the blinders from the eyes! 
 
 When I reached Scotland I fell a victim 
 to the charms of law-breaking. 
 
 It came about in this way: 
 
 Knowing my host to be a Freekirker 
 and a law-abiding man, when he asked 
 me if I would mote, I beamed. 
 
 I thought that a little ten miles an 
 hour would be good for the liver and 
 would enable me to see more of Scotland 
 than I could see from a hansom or even 
 the top of a double-decker. 
 
 What happened to the simple Jersey- 
 126 
 
"CROKY" VS. MOTORING 
 
 man — not born there, you understand — 
 who was in the habit of frothing at the 
 mouth at sight of speeding motors ? 
 
 Why almost at the moment of stepping 
 into the dark green machine the lust for 
 speed was born in me and I longed to see 
 what my host could do in the little 
 matter of Scotch law^-breaking. 
 
 I was afraid that he didn't have it. 
 
 I mean the lust for speed. 
 
 But he did, thank fortune. Not im- 
 moderately, but stimulatingly. 
 
 Oh, how I frothed at the mouth when 
 I saw the poor fools in villages who 
 would persist in getting in our way! Why 
 didn't they leave the road free to us ? 
 We ran a risk of puncturing our tires 
 on them, for your Scotchman is apt to be 
 sharp-visaged. 
 
 Ten, twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, 
 seventy, eighty, ninety, I dare say a hun- 
 dred miles an hour we went. What mat- 
 tered anything but the eating of space ? 
 
 127 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 I roared with joy. I dared people to 
 come out and be run over. We always 
 did the job so quickly that most of them 
 didn't know what had happened. The 
 wind fanned my cheeks so vibratingly 
 that it played tunes in my hair. 
 
 We passed law-abiding people going 
 along at a foolish fifteen miles an hour — 
 creeping like snails escaping from Phila- 
 delphians — and we jeered at them. 
 What's the use of riding in a motor if 
 you've got to observe laws ? 
 
 Once a man who was going only about 
 forty miles an hour wouldn't get out of 
 our way and we tumbled him over a cliff 
 and went on our way without looking 
 back. 
 
 I, who all my life, had gone out of my 
 way to find laws that I might keep them, 
 was now enticing my host to break every 
 law he could think of. 
 
 The Highlands dashed past us, peak 
 succeeding unto peak, and we had no 
 
 128 
 
"CROKY" VS. MOTORING 
 
 sooner maimed a drove of sheep than we 
 were tossing Highland cattle of the Rosa 
 Bonheur type over stone fences. 
 
 Oh, it was glorious, and when it was 
 all over and we had — so my host told 
 me — covered three hundred or less miles 
 in three hours or less, I felt exultant, I 
 felt like David when he slew his 10,000 — 
 although we had not done anything like 
 that. I had defied the law in Scotland 
 and I didn't care who knew it. 
 
 But now that I am home again am I 
 one of the speeders ^ No. I do not 
 own an autom.obile, and I expect to sit 
 on my piazza and froth at the mouth as 
 of yore when these unconscionable speed 
 fiends pass my house above the limit set 
 down in Jersey law. 
 
 I have had my middle-aged fling and I 
 
 am now a law-abiding citizen once more. 
 
 But I shall not soon forget the way we 
 
 tore around village corners and hurled 
 
 chickens into second-story windows or 
 
 129 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 sent beldams scurrying into picturesque 
 alleys, or whipped wheels off of cheaply- 
 constructed motors. 
 
 It was splendid because it was so law- 
 less, and I was not in my native land. 
 But I don't see how my host dared do it. 
 He lived there. 
 
 130 
 
ENGLAND HEATS UP 
 
 Jl AM one of those abnormally nor- 
 
 I I mal persons who keep their houses 
 
 V y at just the right temperature 
 
 through fall and winter. By just 
 
 the right temperature I mean from 68 
 
 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit. 
 
 Of course, there are occasions when I 
 
 forget the furnace and then the mercury 
 
 131 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 drops to 50 degrees, and sometimes my 
 children stoke it playfully and then it 
 mounts to 80 degrees, but as a general 
 thing my house is so comfortable (to me) 
 that my American friends shiver when 
 they come to see me, and my English 
 friends ask me if I won't please open a 
 window or two. 
 
 Running my house with such sweet 
 reasonableness it will readily be realized 
 that I am in Tophet whenever I call on 
 any of my neighbors, all of whom own 
 blast furnaces run at rush order heat. 
 And when I go to New York City it is 
 like going to . 
 
 I want to stop right here to say that 
 New York offices ought to have tropical 
 plants growing in them just to show the 
 effete equator what plant life can do if it 
 is properly heated. 
 
 On trains and in offices and in the 
 
 homes of my friends and acquaintances 
 
 and enemies here in this country that 
 
 132 
 
ENGLAND HEATS UP 
 
 gave me birth, I wander around with my 
 beak open and my wings extended like a 
 hen in July. My blood rushe citedly 
 through my head like a law-defying 
 motor-car, and I daily wonder that 
 death by heat prostration does not deci- 
 mate the winter dwellers in American 
 buildings. 
 
 If it were not for the look of the thing I 
 would strip to my undershirt like a man 
 in a casting shop. But the proprieties 
 are ever before me and I pant — in 
 coat and vest. No wonder men die 
 of pneumonia each year who never 
 died before. How anyone escapes I 
 don^t know. 
 
 They tell of a business man in a New 
 York fur — I mean office, who had not led 
 the sort of life that leads one to the 
 pearly gates, and when he died he went 
 to the place that used to be spelled with a 
 dash when I was a boy. 
 
 He had been gone scarcely a day when 
 133 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 his wife received a postal from him 
 
 dated: 
 
 Chaudville, Gehenna, 
 
 July the Hotth. 
 Dear Maria: Send me my winter clothes. 
 It's chilly. Billy. 
 
 Things being as they are in New York 
 and the rest of America, that is, the 
 American people being under pledge to 
 the coal barons to burn three times as 
 much coal as they need and pretend that 
 they like the consequent heat, it struck 
 me that when I went to England I would 
 find the temperature of their houses in 
 the early autumn just the thing that 
 would appeal to me. 
 
 "These English are sensible in their 
 ways," said I. "They not only have 
 raised comfortable traveling to the 
 dignity of a science, but they know how 
 to make abnormally normal people com- 
 fortable in the chill days of early Octo- 
 ber. 
 
 "I will spend tne winter in England," 
 
 134 
 
ENGLAND HEATS UP 
 
 said I enthusiastically, ''and not only be 
 comfortable in private houses, but in 
 London offices as well, for the English- 
 man is one of whom coal is not a master, 
 but coals are his servant/' 
 
 So after the unusual heat of last sum- 
 mer in England I stayed on into the fall 
 and visited several persons who made 
 me welcome in the hearty English 
 fashion and bade me do as I pleased, 
 when I pleased, with what I pleased. 
 
 One day in October, having gone up 
 into Warwickshire to spend a little time 
 with congenial ones, the mercury began 
 to fall and the glass, like Jill, came 
 tumbling after. 
 
 In England the glass is always do- 
 ing something. We in America seldom 
 bother with a barometer, and if we have 
 one ten to one we don't know how to 
 read it, but your Englishman is lone- 
 some if he hasn't a glass somewhere near 
 at hand which he can consult, and when 
 
 135 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 you meet him in the morning and he 
 gives you the inevitable and vigorous 
 hand-shake he says : 
 
 *'The glass is rising. We'll be able 
 to play tennis without umbrellas to-day." 
 
 Or ''the glass is falling. I suppose 
 you'll be getting out your galoshes.'' 
 
 Englishmen scorn overshoes. They 
 wear shoes so thick that even an English 
 rain gives up trying to penetrate the 
 soles, so where's the need of rubbers t 
 
 The glass fell and so did the mercury 
 until the sky was full of great windy, cold 
 clouds and the air bit shrewdly. 
 
 "Ah," said I, thinking for the nonce 
 that I was at home, ''I must start the 
 furnace going to-night." 
 
 When I returned from the walk I took 
 each morning I said to my host: 
 
 "Getting cold. Going to light your 
 furnace .^" 
 
 He lowered his head and looked at me 
 sort of horizontally. 
 
 136 
 
ENGLAND HEATS UP 
 
 "In the first place/' said he, "it's too 
 early in the season on October 5 to start 
 a furnace, and in the second place, 
 furnaces don't grow in this part of the 
 country. I doubt if even the Earl of 
 Warwick has one. You're not cold, are 
 you t 
 
 I, fresh from my invigorating walk, 
 was not cold, but I wanted to be before- 
 hand; it's a heaven-born attribute of 
 mine. 
 
 "To-morrow's likely to be very chilly," 
 said L 
 
 And the next day was indeed chilly, 
 damp and chilly, penetratingly damp 
 and chilly, goosefleshly chilly and dankly 
 damp. 
 
 The house is a stone one, of course — 
 and when I woke up the next morning 
 and looked at the glass I saw that it had 
 fallen so low as to be positively disgrace- 
 ful. Gusts of rain spattered on the pane 
 and the mercury registered 40 degrees. 
 
 137 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 The wind blew autumn leaves all over 
 the place as much as to say: '^Aren't the 
 trees foolish ? In the summer when it's 
 hot they're fully clothed, but in winter 
 they're naked." 
 
 It was a thought that had often oc- 
 curred to me in my poetic moments, so I 
 agreed with the wind, and jumping out 
 of bed I went to the bureau to get out my 
 winter underclothes. 
 
 I had left them in New Jersey. 
 
 This was vexing, but I put on three 
 suits of summer ones and a sweater, and 
 then I went down to the morning room 
 to warm my hands at the open fire. 
 
 But the fire hadn't opened yet. 
 
 The front door, however, was wide 
 open and dear old Boreas was playing 
 "The North Wind Doth Blow," with 
 variations, through the hall and the rest 
 of the house. 
 
 I'm warm-blooded, but when it's 
 
 down to forty I want a fire, even if the 
 
 138 
 
ENGLAND HEATS UP 
 
 name of the month happens to be August. 
 And if it's up to 80 in January I give my 
 furnace a holiday and dress Hke the 
 Queen of the May. 
 
 But when my host came in from a 
 stroll in the rain and saw my bulgy ap- 
 pearance, he said: ''You look like a 
 trussed chicken. What's the matter?" 
 
 Just then my teeth began to chatter, 
 and I said as I shook hands with him — 
 if you don't shake hands with your host 
 every morning in England he thinks you 
 don't care for him any more : 
 
 ''Dud-dud-dud-don't you think a 
 hearth fuf-fuf-fire would look well ? 
 Brrhh!" 
 
 He burst into a genial laugh. 
 
 "A hearth fire in October! What's 
 the man thinking of .^" 
 
 *'Just to take the chill off the house, 
 
 I'm used to a furnace at home, you 
 
 know." 
 
 ''Yes, that's just the trouble with you 
 139 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 Americans; you overheat your houses." 
 
 And I am considered a cold-air crank 
 by my neighbors. 
 
 However, being hospitality itself, he 
 ordered the maid to start a fire in the 
 morning-room, and when it was blazing 
 with the fury of a box of safety matches 
 he opened the windows, and all the mem- 
 bers of the family when they came down 
 to shake hands all round said: 
 
 "Oh, dear, how sweltering! What 
 did you start a fire in October for ? Do 
 you want to make us tender, father ?" 
 
 "It's a little American custom Fm 
 imitating," said paterfamilias with a 
 good-tempered smile at me, and I felt 
 like Gulliver among the Bobdigna- 
 gians. 
 
 It wasn't long before it began to get 
 
 damp in spite of the false alarm on the 
 
 hearth and I ventured to shut one 
 
 of the windows, but my host said pater 
 
 nally : 
 
 140 
 
ENGLAND HEATS UP 
 
 "My dear boy, if you're going to spend 
 the winter in England youVe got to get 
 used to sane methods. You overheat 
 your houses in America to such an extent 
 that I wonder your children have any 
 stamina at all." 
 
 "I know," said I, '"that most people 
 do, but Fve always prided myself on 
 being an exception. I never let the 
 temperature rise above 70 degrees if I 
 can help it." 
 
 Frightful!" said he, explosively. 
 Absolutely frightful, man! You lay 
 yourself open to be the prey of every 
 germ that flies, walks or creeps. Sixty 
 degrees is ample if you're sitting still and 
 55 degrees if you're moving." 
 
 I went and looked at the thermometer. 
 It was 54 degrees. So I began to go 
 through the military setting-up exercises. 
 
 He was pleased. 
 
 "That's it. Struggle against your 
 
 effeminate desire for warmth. Why, if 
 
 141 
 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 you're chilly here in October what would 
 you be in December ?" 
 
 '' Kind of morguish, I guess/' said I. 
 
 I went up to my room and found a 
 couple more suits of underclothes and 
 put them on — under. Then I put on my 
 overcoat, and the breakfast bell ringing 
 I went down to breakfast and had a 
 warm meal. 
 
 After breakfast I sat in the morning- 
 room and the fire snapped jeeringly at 
 me, as if to say, "What are our flames 
 among such winds.?" and I said, ''Not 
 much." 
 
 Pretty soon my host went out for his 
 morning walk, rubberless and umbrella- 
 less and the rain drizzling down in a way 
 to kill the gate receipts at a dog fight, and 
 as soon as he had gone out the fire went 
 out. Eye servant! It was actually 
 ashamed to burn in an English house as 
 early as October. 
 
 And the worst of it was that those 
 142 
 
ENGLAND HEATS UP 
 
 English people looked and felt warm. 
 And I've always prided myself on mv 
 good circulation. 
 
 All day long fresh and damp air poured 
 through the house and sang '^ stone walls 
 do not a prison make'' and I wished I 
 had been born in England so that I 
 might have appreciated my benefits- 
 But before nightfall I began to long for 
 the dead, dry heat of a New York busi- 
 ness office. 
 
 Sunday morning everybody overslept 
 except myself. I was wakened by a per- 
 son sneezing and found that it was I. 
 The glass was still falling and the mer- 
 cury was oversleeping to such an extent 
 that it hadn't risen for two days. 
 
 '^ Dear man," said I, when I met my 
 host and shook hands with him, ^'you 
 have been so kind to me that I will never 
 forget it while life lasts. English hospi- 
 tality is the thing that made the invention 
 
 of the word necessary, but I do not wish 
 
 143 
 
AN ENGLISH TUB 
 
 to lie forever in an English churchyard 
 and have the rooks tell me I froze to 
 death. Lead me to a steamer that is 
 going to America that I may live the 
 foolish life to v^hich my ancestry con- 
 demns me. I would fain v^arm myself 
 before I die.'' 
 
 And nov^ I v^ander around in New 
 York offices with my beak open and my 
 wings extended, already forgetting that 
 I was cold in England. 
 
 The End. 
 
 144 
 
THE 
 
 Pagan's Progress 
 
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