1 i .£.^' 1/ d r ) \ .^' C-^r- Don G'' 9\ \eifz KJ UC-NRLF ^B 2Mfl fll2 ^ ^ THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESENTED BY PROF. CHARLES A. KOFOID AND MRS. PRUDENCE W. KOFOID D ISCOVERIES IN EVERY-DAY • EUROPE • • • VAGRANT NOTES OF A RAPID JOURNEY BY DON C. SEITZ ILLUSTRATED BY MAURICE KETTEN NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS « MCMVII Copyright, 1907, by Harper & Brothers. All rights reserved. Published September, 1907. ^63 TO W. H. AND H. F. G. DISCOVERIES IN EVERY-DAY EUROPE Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2007 with funding from IVIicrosoft Corporation http://www.archive.org/details/discoveriesineveOOseitrich DISCOVERIES IN EVERY-DAY EUROPE JOST people think that the Rock of Gibraltar, >as one of the Pillars of Hercules, guards the i straits which bear its name. It does not, but lies well with- in, invisible from the Atlantic, across the bay from the little Spanish town of Algeciras. Cape Spartel, on the African side of the straits, is a true pillar. When Hercules used his club he left a flat place opposite Spartel, on ivl310128 the Spanish coast, with just enough room to accommodate Tarifa, the lit- tle town where the McKinley bill came from. Tangier is on the Atlantic, and Ceuta, the Spanish prison town, is on the Mediterranean shore. Gibraltar is nothing but picturesque. The six thousand British soldiers are runty-looking little things beside the Moors who drop over from Tangier. Tall, magnificent beings in turban and white burnous, they stand about like statues, staring at the Giaours, un- changed and unchangeable in a thou- sand years. When night comes on they crouch low in the sterns of their feluccas, and, hoisting the lateen-sails, slip out across the sea like great birds flitting amid the foam. Early strawberries come to Gibraltar from Spain, packed in attractive bas- kets and rosy as the dawn. Travellers who have been on sea for ten days buy 2 them eagerly, only to find a single layer of berries closely fitted over a basket of cabbage leaves. The man who plays a bass-drum in^^ the British drum corps is always very \^^ tall and long of arm. He beats the-\ drum on alternate sides, cross-armed, so continuously as never to lose the rhythm. He wears a snow -leopard skin over his shoulders and is an im- posing personage. Cape carts rule in Gibraltar. Six people ride in one behind a little Moor- ish horse, and go fast at that uphill. The dining-cars that run north from Basle into Germany use leaden-colored china. Each guest gets a stack of plates, piled one on top of the other, in number equal to the total of the courses. Six plates indicate six courses. 3 So the dinner comes and goes in layers. The same knife and fork do the work for all. The German parcels-post carries its burdens in freight -cars and does a whopping business. At every good- sized German station a string of these cars can be seen discharging parcels of all sorts and sizes. Everything goes, and goes for a few pfennigs. Only dukes or drummers ride first class in the German trains. The first- class carriages are lined with red plush, and, as both dukes and drum- mers are scarce, usually run empty. The second-class cars are roomy and sociable. The policemen grow less majestic as you journey north. The finest be- ing in the world is a Naples police- man. His hat and clothes would stop all traffic in New York. The Roman policeman is of the same breed but 4 W-> less stylish. In Milan he is rather common -looking. In Lucerne he be- comes inferior, and in Germany com- monplace, despite his nickel - plated helmet with a spike on it. The Paris policeman in his cap and dinky little cloak is a sad affair, while the London bobby is the least of all in looks or uniform. Paris does not put fig leaves on its statuary, but it makes the Seine barges fold up their masts at night so as not to mar the scenery. The popular wine in Rome is called Frascati. It is thin, straw-colored stuff with a powerful smell, that comes, per- haps, from the feet of the peasants who tread out the grapes. So much of it is sold that you can detect the wine-shops with your nose. 5 W5^ The German regard for the pig is emphasized in many ways. The pork- shops are fitted up as gorgeously as saloons are in New York. Plate-glass windows, marble coimters and shelv- ing, hard-wood fittings with much pol- ished brass prevail. The pig himself is dealt with deco- ratively. The plump and tender hams are so trimmed that the layers of fat and lean show to the best advantage. Loins and chops are grouped in por- cine bouquets, while the ornamental effects of the sausages are never lost. The robber castles on the Rhine cannot compare with the Rockefeller place at Tarry town. Rhine scenery is rather dreary, anyway, and most of the Rhine towns look like Piermont- on-the-Hudson, where the sun goes down every afternoon at 12.30. The hill -sides seemed covered with shale, out of which grow the grape-vines. 6 The Rhine is not a very big river, but | ) it is a busy one. If the water ever ran out, the hills produce almost wine enough to fill it once a year. The serpentine drive in Florence is called the Viale Machiavelli, possibly because it is so crooked. Beer mugs in Germany have a sort of PlimsoU mark cut in the side, so you can tell when one is legally loaded. When you get your half -litre for two cents the foam must be all above the government line. Here's where the Kaiser is ahead of T. R. Ice is regarded with superstitious reverence in Italy, France, and Eng- land. Common waiters are not allowed to touch the precious product. Instead, the head waiter hands it out in infini- tesimal fragments with a pair of sugar- 7 tongs. Recently the London newspa- pers have been clamoring for the advent of some enterprising American with an ice plant. Most of the London editors are Americans or have been in iVmerica, and their palates yearn for long, cold things with straws in them in prefer- ence to the yeasty British beer. Of the eleven Egyptian obelisks in Rome ten are topped with ornate bronze crosses, which give them a bi- zarre effect hardly thought of by Pha- raoh's designers. Two cents is the standard price for an ordinary trolley fare in Italy, France, and Germany, and four cents is the London standard. The dis- tances on the Continent are not so great, but the average ride is no shorter than that taken on the New York trolleys. The cars are not so large, but they are clean, and people are not allowed to stand up in the aisles or 8 between seats. Each car has a huge vestibule for any overflow of passen- gers, and the standee must stand there or get off the car. Milan has the best line, and it is operated by the Societa EUettrica Edison, which sounds like home with a few trimmings. The donkey is man's best friend in Italy. He is a little cuss, but carries loads incomprehensibly too big for him. Out of compliment the comic paper of Rome, with its sixty thousand circulation, calls itself UAsino: E il Populo, Utile, Paziente e Bastonato; meaning: ''The Ass: He's the People, Useful, Patient, and Beaten" (with a stick). The English parliamentary methods have merit. The hall is a parallelo- gram, in the centre of which towards the inner end is a table, on the left of 9 '' ^^t^r '^ which sit the Liberal Cabinet members, ^^^^ ^(^^^ and on the right the Conservative gen- /> *^ tlemen who would be in their places if ^^ they were not out. Thus yoimg Win- ston Churchill — who looks like a cross between William Travers Jerome and Elbert Hubbard with his hair cut — Professor James Bryce, Augustine Bir- rell, John Morley, and Premier Camp- bell-Bannerman sit opposite Arthur James Balfour, Joseph Chamberlain, et al., and have it out. Bannerman resembles Charley Knapp, of the St. Louis Republic. Occasionally a mem- ber rises and says a few things, but the members mostly yell ** Here! here!" and vote. The Speaker wears a wig and has no power beyond preserving order and stating motions. He also has a per- manent job, and becomes a peer when he feels like retiring. William Court Gully, the last one to quit, looked 10 lonely in his seat among the scanty Liberals in the House of Lords. The day this observer was present Nicholas Longworth gazed with deep interest from the gallery while Mr. Balfour characterized as *' brutal' ' Mr. Banner- man's announcement that he would choke off the debate on the Educa- tional bill in nineteen days on the ground that when he was Premier he never stopped the talk inside of thirty. The Conservative newspapers called Mr. Bannerman names the next day and said his manner was harsh. It seemed mild and deprecatory. They never saw Tom Reed make a ruling. But this produces a government out in the open where every hand must be shown. It is better than a closet con- ference between Sereno E. Payne, Gen. Grosvenor, Joe Cannon, and a bottle of whiskey by which the purposes of the ^^<^^ people can be side-tracked or subdued, fe *" S ^^< Admission to the galleries of Parlia- ment must be through the courtesy of a member. Americans find the Irish members particularly amiable, espe- cially Mr. Abraham, who comes from Limerick and has a beautiful brogue. The Earl of Chesterfield is the long- est and thinnest British peer. He in- herits the family manners. M^ Cider is spelled with a "y'' — thusly, "cyder'' — in Britain. Taking a bath is ceasing to be an important function in Italy. The mod- ern Roman hotels are as much up- to-date as those of New York. The water in the bath-tubs is a beautiful blue. Soap-making is an important in- dustry in Genoa, where much machin- ery is employed in its manufacture. Foreigners get the impression that there is no soap in Italy. Silk is the great industry of north- ern Italy, and the plains of the quadri- lateral are dark with mulberry -trees. The mulberry - tree is the hardest- worked piece of timber in the world. First its leaves are skinned off for the worms to feed on; then the little branches are clipped for the worms to nest in; then the large limbs are cropped for charcoal, and the trunk has not only to produce a new crop of leaves and limbs for next year, but must act as trellis for a grape-vine. Eggs can be had for breakfast in Italy by making arrangements for their production the night before, and chicken is on every table d'hdte. Yet in six hundred miles of Italy this pil- grim never saw a hen. Experience has shown, however, that hens and house- flies are the same the w^orld over. 13 The milkman is mistrusted in Naples, and must bring his flocks and herds with him when he calls. So cows are common in the streets, each with a calf, while long-haired goats swarm everywhere. When not being milked they loaf peacefully on the slopes of the terraced streets, eating anything that can be detached from the walls or pavements. The Mediterranean sunset is one of the glories of the world. The sea is a velvet blue. When evening comes the clouds forsake the sky and the sun takes on the color of molten gold, gild- ing the purple waters as the great glow- ing disk approaches the level line of the horizon ; wide waves of crimson in- tervene across the azure heavens, and sea and sky leap together in a vivid 14 embrace of color. The sun vanishes, the sea turns from gold to silver, and the sky grows crystal clear. Then night falls slowly down. Florence supports a good vaudeville theatre, half enclosed and half under canvas. You can buy drinks and smoke. It seemed a little odd to see two New York knockabout artists doing a hobo turn in Tuscany. They won little applause, but excited some astonishment by their make-up. There are no tramps in Italy, and the point was lost. Taddeo Gaddi set the fashion for bridges over the Arno. The Arno is a nice little river, with some pale-green water in it and lovely stone terraces along the shores. Florentine washer- women tidy up their clothes in the stream. The sewage goes somewhere else. Europeans know how to treat rivers decently. They all have to IS work, but they are kept sweet and clean. A European river forty feet wide handles as much freight as an ordinary American railroad, while the Rhine carries more business to a block than half the Hudson River. Splendid tug-boats, fine barges, and handsome steamers do the work, with anchored chain-boats to pull the big loads up the rapids. Italian cigars look like Pittsburg stogies, with bits of straw sticking out of them. Somehow Vesuvius suggests a huge and vicious boil on the neck of Naples. The last eruption covered the whole country with ashes and tinted it green- ish gray. The buried villages are cov- ered with lava, which looks like slag and smells like the devil. Here and there crystal chunks of i6 CJ 3 sulphur show in the mud-like mass, v'^';^; Economical Italian women were cook- ing beans in an oven improvised amid the smoking debris from the moun- tain. Those who were not cooking begged. Switzerland is an ideal republic and a republic with ideals. The citizen of Switzerland who becomes natural- ized in another republic — say, France or the United States — does not lose his citizenship, but can return and ex- ercise its privileges at any time. The theory is that republicans are brothers, and so long as they subscribe to the same ideas of political liberty they re- main in an unchanged relationship. Museums in Italy are closed on holidays, but open on Sunday, unless the Sunday happens to hold a holiday. The Aquarium at Naples has a cage full of devil-fish of the Standard Oil variety, huge, ugly, and fascinating. 17 Beside these are gardens of sea-growths more brilliant and delicate in color than any flower-bed that ever bloomed, and jelly - fish so fragile and transparent that they must be kept in glass cylin- ders away from the water-flow that refreshes the compartments. Birds are scarce in southern Italy because they are hunted pitilessly. Along the highways hunters are always lurking to kill off the few reckless swallows who now and then flit from the crags above the sea. The Comedie Frangais enjoys one htmdred and twenty-five years of pleas- ant history. The building is plain and without modern improvements, but it houses real actors. There is no music, and the considerable time between the f acts is spent in visiting about in the boxes or in the foyer, while the privi- leged ones can go behind the scenes, where the ladies and gentlemen of the cast hold court graciously. The green- room is an art gallery and the dressing- rooms are parlors. Here you see the best that French painting and French sculpture can do to preserve the memory of Racine, Moliere, Corneille, Dumas, Hugo, and their interpreters, to say nothing of many names not often repeated abroad. Houdin's splendid statue in marble of Voltaire stands at the head of the foyer, and is probably the only work in marble that is poised on wheels. After the fire some years ago the solid pedestal was replaced by a model shell on casters, so that it can be speedily rolled out in an emergency. The French are supposed to be fathers of the modern dramatic climax, but in a recent success in the Comedie, 19 "Paraitre/' in which M. Grand and Mile. Cerny made their debut in lead- ing parts, M. Donnay, the author, does a curious thing. The play is very * * modern . ' ' The designing mother suc- ceeds in wedding her sweet and simple daughter to a young millionaire in the sugar line. He announces that it is but an experiment. "It is marriage, not liaison, and so is easily adjusted if all does not go well." All does not go well. There is a sister-in-law who needs money (Mile. Cerny), and she soon entangles the young husband (M. Grand). The gentle wife knows. She tells her brother. She begs him to forgive. He says nothing. The care- less husband comes from the garden, his arms laden with flowers, humming a gay little air. He enters from the parterre, the wronged husband steps forward and empties his pistol. The husband falls dead with his face buried in the blossoms. This would seem to be a good place to stop, but the cur- tain rises and the queer thing occurs. All the relatives, the prefect, and the murderer sit around for ten minutes cheerfully discussing the consequences and calling the man's attention to the misery, desolation, and scandal he has /^^ /r^f^ created by his reckless conduct. How C^ -^'ftH much better he might have behaved and harmed no one! Now he has done it! The big hotels in Paris now serve a "chantant'' with the coffee and cigars. It keeps the Americans off the Bou- levard. -^ The steamboats on the Grand Canal at Venice have not exterminated the gondolas, and never will. They are mighty convenient, though, and very swift. The ease with which they make 21 landings excites wonderment. All the landing-places are at anchored floats, and these are found every quarter mile. The boats are much like the swift lit- tle steamers on the Seine, where for two cents one can go almost anywhere, and for four take a fine excursion. The gondola is a black snaky craft. The gondoliers can sing, but there is no pleasure in listening to them. It costs eighteen cents an hour to be bumped about the canals. Moonlight on the Grand Canal is all that any poet ever said it was, and Venice is all that any artist ever painted. Verona had the noblest site of any Italian city not on the sea. It lies up in a far corner of Italy, backed by the Austrian dolomites, hemmed in by great fortifications, beyond which the plains stretch away to Solferino on the one hand, and the lovely Lake Garda with its blue waters and mountain background on the other. Two gen- tlemen of Verona who boarded the train and got into the first-class com- partment by mistake were not pre- possessing. There are three htmdred and seventy five churches in Rome built of stone from the heathen ruins. Nobody at- tends them. In Paris the ladies lift up their skirts at crossings with no consideration oth- er than to insure keeping them off the pavement. Paris now has a Dumas Square. It is but a few weeks old. Here the Gen- eral stands in bronze, looking at the creator of the Musketeers as he rests guarded by the immortal Three, while in magnificent marble the grandson of the Camelias faces both. It should be- come a new shrine for the traveller. Pope Pius X. is cutting down the splendors that once surrounded the Vatican. The Swiss Guards have dwindled to twenty-five, but these in their parti - colored uniforms, with musket and halberd, lounge about the entrance to the grand staircase much as the musketeers loafed at the stair- way in the palace of M. de Treville. The Italian policemen duplicate all their posts, however, and they remain nothing but the fragment of a show. People who are received by the Pope must appear in full evening dress, al- though the hour is usually at eleven o'clock in the morning. The outer office looks like that of a good New York lawyer. A pleasant yotmg secre- tary in secular garb meets the visitors. All is very simple, not in the least awe- inspiring. Visitors must kneel and kiss the Pope's hand. His toe is no longer in use. ^^' 24 Some of the shrines in the Roman chtirches have statues where the toe is still kissed. In many cases stone feet have worn out and have been replaced with metal. The students at the several colleges in Rome wear ecclesiastical garb, but each is different in cut and color. The Germans are the most conspicuous in long, single-breasted, close - buttoned coats of brilliant scarlet. S^ There are two bridges of boats on the Rhine, one at Coblentz and the other at Cologne. The Coblentz bridge is of wooden craft, pointed and picturesque, while that at Cologne is made of iron floats stable and scientifically con- structed. The draw is supplied with steam power, and floats itself in and out to let the traffic by. 25 4 The mountain climber is a German y product. In short jacket, with green ^^ Tyrolean hat bearing a rakish feather, alpen-stock and heavy hobnailed shoes, he is found everywhere in the moun- tain coimtry. The climbers hunt the strenuous life. Many student parties ramble through the Alps studying ge- ology at first hand and mapping the **>strata with true German thorough- ness. The Swiss cattle have a deer-like lightness and grace and the color of the fawn. They are precious posses- sions. When the calves travel on the steamers of Como and Lugano they are curled up in big, round, flat-bot- tomed baskets, where American wom- en travellers pet them and try to feed them caramels. Military service in Switzerland is limited to seven weeks in the year dur- ing the period of active enrolment, but every man in the nation, young or old, is supplied with the best rifle money can buy at the expense of the state. He must belong to a shooting club, and in a yearly competition must fire fifty roimds. If his percentage of hits is not up to the required standard, he must serve seven weeks with the army. The Switzers know how to shoot. The nation is the army. Whoever tackles Helvetia will get hurt. The passes are guarded by the best type of modern forts and guns, and the railway tunnels are mined for instant obstruc- tion. When the King rides in Rome he sal- lies out just before dusk. A squadron of cuirassiers precedes his open carriage, in which he often sits alone. On either side, close to the hubs, wheels a bi- cycle policeman. Two or three car- 27 riage-loads of high officials follow. The whole entourage moves at a very fast trot. The glittering breastplates and long, flowing plumes of the horsemen show in odd contrast with the make-up of the bicycle cops, which is much like that of our own. The book-stalls of Paris are on the coping of the Seine embankment, be- ginning at the Quai d'Orsay and con- tinuing to the He de la Cite, where the antiques and coins fall in line. Here is the place for odd volumes. Books in vellura covers dating back to Guten- berg's time abound, etchings of the Revolution and an olla podrida of the amazing literature of France. It seemed odd to find a volume of Dr. Theodore L. Cuyler's essays in the bunch. There are no bell-punches or indi- cators in European street-cars. In- stead the conductor gives each pas- senger a little paper receipt for his fare. He gets so many receipts block- ed into a pad each day, and must turn in the imused balance and account for the rest with cash. The receipts are not taken up. Rhine wine is really made along the Rhine, and champagne at Rheims and Epernay. Big mastiffs help haul the street carts in Cologne. The man pulls be- tween the shafts and the dog tugs at an auxiliary whiffle-tree. When the cart is not moving the dog watches the stock in trade. When Italian drivers wish to start their horses they ejaculate ''Ahf ex- plosively. When they wish to stop they cry **E-e-e!" soothingly. When they warn foot passengers in the nar- row ways they repeat, "A-y-a-a-a!" endlessly. Ruts are not permitted on Italian — <^777k__ roads. Piles of crushed limestone are always at hand for mending. <^ The books in the hotel and boarding- house libraries of Florence and Venice are the books of the first sixty years of the last century. Bulwer, Dickens, Thackeray, George Eliot, and G. P. R. James rule the shelves — all in early editions. Longfellow is plentiful in Florence. The British banquet differs from the American only in that the chairman presides, but does not keep order or announce the toasts. That is attend- ed to by a professional toast-master, who is a large person with a volcanic voice. While the guests are assem- bling he stands at the doorway and annoimces the names of the arrivals, who are then greeted by the chairman 30 and passed into the push. When the guests are seated he takes up his sta- tion behind the chair of the presiding officer, and commands order in these terms: ''My lords and gentlemen, I pray you silence. We will now listen to the toast to His Imperial Majesty the German Emperor, responded to by His Excellency the Lord Chancellor." For the rest the speeches drawl and drag, as in New York, with now and then a sparkle of wit or a flash of mental energy, usually from some un- expected quarter. The turtle soup is no better than ours. The toast-master gets ten dollars for a night's work. London newsdealers scorn to pro- duce their wares before 8 a.m. The motor- 'bus is the newest noise in London. It is really a jouncing, bouncing, skidding thing of horror. Narrow and high, with crowded roof seats, it is a wonder the thing does not tip over every time it makes a turn. Half an hour's ride in one should loosen ordinary teeth, such is the vi- bration. All London rides in them, though, while the ''tubes" languish. The Briton loves to be hup w'ere 'e can smoke 'is poipe. Laborers in Germany go to work at six o'clock in the morning and work imtil six at night. This strikes the ob- server as having something to do with German prosperity when contrasted with the slow, idling Englishmen, with their limitations on output and lack of German mechanical skill. It may have more to do with beating Britain in the world's markets than the tariff. There are no walking-beam engines on European river or lake steamers. Most of them use a horizontal engine \ made in Ztirich, and all of them are low, rakish craft, much faster than American boats, in addition to being safer if less comfortable. Most of the world's chocolate is made in Switzerland, though Germany is a good second. The man whose goods fill the slot machines in New York has his factory in Cologne. There are acres of it, and his mansion is one of the palaces of the town. The store windows in Wiesbaden glitter with amethyst jewelry. Much of it is very beautiful. The Rialto in Venice, where Antonio girded Shylock many a time and oft, has stores on either side full of cheap wares, and suggests the sidewalk on Vesey Street near Washington Market. One can tmderstand why the artists go to Italy, but not why they should ever come away. There are at least six places in New 33 York where macaroni is better cooked than at the best hotels in Venice, Naples, Rome, or Milan. The best oranges in Italy are at Capri. All are small. Trees are small in Europe outside of England, and in England they are smaller than here. In Italy the poplar is most grown, while beech is a German favorite. The beeches grow tall and slender, not short and chimky as in our New England forests. The olive-trees, which grow large in Spain, are small in Italy. When a tree reaches cord-wood size it is usually cut down for use, but a new sapling always takes its place. The Italian fields around Vesuvius are irrigated from ancient wells. Don- keys or oxen work a bucket pump that pulls up a large and continuous stream, 34 which is dispersed through the little plots of grain and vegetables. In Naples the laborers work on Sun- day and take Monday off. Neapolitan cab-horses are all stal- lions of a diminutive breed. They are driven without a bit. The bridle carries a device for closing the nos- trils, operated by the reins. There is no tugging necessary. A slight press- ure shuts off the horse's wind. They are very obedient and docile. The scarlet poppy is a weed in Italy and shines iil every field. Along the road-side terraces it grows amid the ripening rye-stalks, forming a beauti- ful frieze of scarlet and gold. The lemon orchards give out a rank and unpleasant smell. Coupled with other unpleasant Italian smells, it forms an odor as distinctive and as disagreeable as the cigarette-flavored atmosphere of Havana. 35 The shoemaker is the most numer- ous of Italian craftsmen. He abounds everywhere. After him come the bar- ber and the tailor. A barber -shop is called a saloon. Newspapers are beginning to flour- ish in Italy. The first in circulation and enterprise is the Evening Courier of Milan, with 120,000 circulation and an equipment of American Hoe presses. The Tribuna of Rome is next in cir- culation and influence, with an output of 100,000 copies daily. The Mattino of Naples follows, with 80,000, and the radical Messager of Rome, with 60,000. The Italians use all their vowels. The French skip them. The Pope maintains a mosaic fac- tory in the Vatican. Here the patient artists work in a gallery lined with 36 e^^ <^^ 29,ooo lockers, in which repose sticks of siUca of all the myriad varying shades required to reproduce the tints from canvas. A solid, wooden-backed panel is smoothly filled with plaster to the depth of an inch. On this the mosaic-worker copies the painting to be reproduced. Then day by day he cuts out little chimks and fills up the gap with inch-long bits of silica. Thus the picture grows roughly in stone. In three or four years a work two and a half by three and a half feet can be turned out. It is then grotmd down to imiform smoothness with water and sand under flat iron disks. Then the painting stands revealed. There is a little gallery full of the work for sale. A piece eighteen inches square can be had for $i,ooo. French soles are better cooked in Lucerne than in Paris. The Swiss are the best hotel-keepers 37 ^r ■^"■'v^; of Europe. Various Swiss syndicates are running civilized hotels in all the places where the multitude go. Trav- ellers should bless them. It is forbidden to give tips to the servants in the Schweitzerhof at Lu- cerne. Speaking of forbidding is a reminder that it is a familiar word abroad. In Italy it is "vietato/' in Germany *'verboten/' or, more politely, "unter- sagt,*' and in France "defendu/* The French, Italian, and German rail- roads make liberal use of briquettes for fuel. The result is a considerable econ- omy in coal and a vast one in smoke and cinders. The briquette looks like a round-cornered chunk of asphalt. It is made of coal-dust, crude oil, and tar compressed together. It is easy to handle, burns with a clean, brown smoke, and leaves very little ash. There is a crack in the Lion of Lu- cerne. People in Naples eat all sorts of odd shell-fish. Minute clams, periwinkles, and several varieties of mussels are devoured. The favorite early fruit in Italy is called the Japanese fruit. It looks like a plum, but has the texture of a pear. It is yellow in color, contains several beanlike seeds, with a thin brown cover, and it is slightly as- tringent. Baedeker says a dozen can be eaten without harm. It is the only thing Baedeker indorses in Italy. Bologna, where the sausages found their name, is called ''Balonia.'' The United States government imposes no tariff tax on either bolognas or frank- furters. 39 The Norman watch-towefs on the southern Italian hills, from which the guards once kept ward on the Sara- cens, are now used as points for setting pigeoii-nets when birds make their annual flight from Africa, whence the Saracens also came. It costs eighteen cents a mile for a barouche and three horses to haul four persons from Pompeii around to Sorrento, via Cava and Amalfi. The ride of seventy -five miles is made in two shifts, and the little horses never cease trotting. The bust of Socrates in the Capito- iine Museum at Rome looks like the late Henry George. On continental railways and the Rhine steamers there is no miscellane- ous scrambling for meals. Instead, a 40 steward goes through the train or boat and lists the people who want to eat. Each gets a number, and this insures a seat without crowding or delay. It is an idea that might be adopted on this side of the sea. In a thousand miles of Europe this observer saw but one rubbish-heap — some old metal cans at Carlsruhe. Everywhere else there was a complete absence of all waste or carelessness, and, above all, of defacement and road- side uncleanliness. The foul, vacant lots and dirty dumps that abound in and about American towns are not to be found anywhere. The soldiers in south Germany are not so impressive as those of the north. But one thing is apparent : despite the drain of money and the loss from with- drawing so many men from industry, the enforced military service has a valuable side. It takes the stoop- shoiildered, hollow-chested, flat-faced, stupid-looking peasant from the fields and kicks him until he looks like a man. He ceases to be a dumb, dull brother of the ox, and knows what the world is like. In a word, it is uni- versity training, the barrack grind of Germany. The Herr Lieutenants in Darmstadt, where our Revolutionary Hessians came from, are nice young fellows. For strut and insolence one must go to Prussia. When the steamers reach Naples they are surrounded by boat-loads of beggars — plain beggars, singing beg- gars, diving beggars, and flower-sellers. The bouquets are fixed to the end of a long rod and pushed up to the customer on shipboard. Then the vender essays to catch the price in a net. The agony t)of one who missed a quarter was pitia- ble to behold. In vain he howled de- 42 mands for the return of his flowers. The purchaser was a man from Chicago. The windows in the Chapel of the Invalides in Paris, where the great Napoleon lies buried, are of a singular translucent amber glass. When the sun shines full upon them the rays are transmuted into gold and they fall like a ladder of light upon the sarcopha- gus of the conqueror, until he seems glorified from the skies. It is difficult to understand why the republic permits the presence of an ugly, garish altar in the room. No intercession could save Napoleon under any creed or ortho- doxy, and the harmonies are disturbed. Better drums and guns and banners over such a tomb! The American with a small star-(,— ^^ spangled banner in his button-hole is*=^ r only modestly numerous on the Con- tinent. The tall Englishwomen in black, with a perturbed maid and a ton of hand luggage, is much more numerous and pestiferous. She is a nagging nuisance, the bane of porters, cabmen, and all the army of obliging servitors who abound in Europe. Germany is a country of intellect; Italy one of expression. Iron ties are extensively used on the German railroads. They look success- ful. The road-bed is certainly excel- lent. They are hollow and the edges set well into the soil and ballast. Everything is fast in Paris except the hotel elevators. The landscapes in northern France suggest Ohio and Indiana. If you want to telephone m Paris, don't. Take a cab. It is quicker and about as cheap. The Swiss hotels serve the table 44 d'hote with miUtary precision. When a course once passes, it is gone forever. Ice-cream is plentiful in Italy. Padua, where Portia played the lawyer, lies flat on the plain . that stretches down to the Adriatic and the marshy islets whereon Venice defies the sea. It would still be mediaeval but for a cluster of very ugly and modern smoke-stacks. Sign-board and poster advertising litter up both France and Italy, while the London 'buses are hideous with American advertising cards plastered on in eye-shocking colors. French strawberries are two inches through and are sold from heaped-up barrows built like the East Side push- carts. Almost at the portal of the Vatican is an extensive jeweller's establishment. Here, crosses, scapulars, rosaries, and medals are to be had, as well as finer 45 •"r;;c:.'- things. The daily purchases of visit- ors are put into a nest of trays, and at four o'clock each afternoon they are taken to the Pope and blessed en bloc. The next morning people who have bought the articles receive them at their hotels by special messenger. The pet way of catching cold in Rome is to visit the catacombs, going in out of the hot sunshine. The Baths of Apollo are chill, indeed! Two apes, of the gorilla pattern, cut from black basalt by some Egyptian chisel, crouch side by side in the hall of the Capitoline, and these have smaller replicas in the Louvre. Such masterful workmanship and ex- pression in the few grim lines are not to be found elsewhere in the great galleries. Somehow the artist has worked in the look of a Pharaoh on the countenance of a monkey, and has made the simians majestically real. Much of Pompeii remains to be excavated. The Italian government digs it out a little piece at a time. The colleges at Oxford are built around squares of greensward, and the i« buildings are flush with the street. There are no college grounds. The students come out through sally-ports and do not differ in aspect or behavior from the yoimg gentlemen at Harvard or Yale. The college widow is also in evidence, while the railway station is much like that of the Baltimore & Ohio at Tiffin, Ohio, which is con- ceded to be the worst one in America. Tan shoes are plentiful. The newspaper men in London can talk English. The rest of the popu- lace use a queer jargon of misplaced aspirates and vowels interspersed with drawls and growls in mournful mutila- ^ tion of their native tongue. f-- ^^^ The Dutch galliot is a frequent ^,^^; V visitor in the Thames. The natural wood of these tub -shaped sloops is polished and varnished until the hulls wear an amber shine. Below London Bridge canals thread through the commercial city, into which the barges bear the burdens of the ships that lie in The Stream. In Europe they do not waste their rivers by sticking docks out into their midst. Shipping must go alongside the em- bankment or quay. The famed castles of the Rhine are puny stone -heaps beside the gigantic ancient strongholds of southern Italy. The little farms that cling to the faces of the mountains that guard Amalfi are largely hand -made. The soil is scooped into baskets out of hollows in the limestone hills wherever found, and piled behind terrace-walls. The cemeteries are built in the same way. 48 British men-o'-war are painted lead- color, and lack expression when their port-holes are closed. There is one place in the world where the Third Napoleon is rernem- bered with kindness, and that is Milan. Here a great triumphal arch in stone and bronze gratefully records the fact that he and Victor Emmanuel drove the Austrians out of northern Italy. There is a bust of Nero in the Capitoline that is an exact likeness of Alexander, King of vServia, who was murdered with Queen Draga by some of his interesting constituents. The re- semblance reinforces belief in phrenol- ogy, the Criminal Ear and Degenerate Chin. , Starting a train in the Latin cotm- tries is an impressive ceremony. First the station-master rings a bell. This annotmces that he is through. Then the platform man blows a horn. His 49 troubles are over. Then the engineer toots his readiness, and the cars start. Most of the Italian trains sport flat wheels. London suggests ten Bostons pieced together at the edges. In the collection of armor in the Tower of London is a helmet sent to Henry VIII. by the King of Portu- gal. It is a mask of Satan, with gleaming red eyes and the usual horns of Mephistopheles. The Portuguese potentate evidently possessed a sense of humor. The koh-i-noor is no longer in the Tower, Queen Alexandra having an- nexed it; but the Orleans diamond glows like a crystal sim in the Louvre, alongside of a remarkable carved ruby of extraordinary size, that was once a breastpin belonging to Miss Jane 50 Fish, better known as Mme. de Pom- padour. It seems odd in Paris to find a tower covered with ecclesiastical symbols sheltering a statue of Blaise Pascal, he of the Thoughts. The poverty of southern Italy does not reveal itself in rags or leanness, but in the multitude of little things the people do — gathering twigs, scrap- ing fertilizers from the roads, cutting handfiils of grass ; in short, the intense economy of utilization, which seems odd and painful to the traveller from wasteful America. Much of the Italian spaghetti is made at Torre Anmmziata, near Ve- suvius. The factories are great stone buildings, the recesses of which look like caverns, while the product lines the roadside, hung in festoons on racks to dry and acquire a flavor from the flies and lava dust. 5' t^^'h- The Colonna Restaurant in Rome was the only place in Italy to serve green pease straight. Elsewhere they v^^'^came mixed with carrots. They were ^^ plenty in the markets, but scant on the bills-of-fare. Making postal -cards carrying in- sulting allusions to the German Em- peror is a pleasing Parisian in- dustry. The partisan political postal- card is quite common. Perhaps it will invade America. ^^^ There are no lions in Pompeii, but the lizards keep the courts where the Romans gloried and drank deep. They are present in every crevice and bask on sunny cornices, or whisk amid ruts made by the chariot wheels. They af- ford the only real signs of life visible, tmless the government guards can be 52 counted. Usually the latter are too sleepy to take tips. Most of the wicked frescos in Pom- peii have been removed to Naples and installed in the private rooms of the National Museum. Enough remain to attract visitors. These are brutal and inartistic. The ^'Liberte, EgaUte, Fraternite/' which the French republic has carved over the lintels of the Royalist palaces in Paris, has a sonorous sound. It means much or little, according as you look at it. There is some liberty, much equality, and a very little fra- ternity in France — as elsewhere! The best investment in foreign travel is a two-franc tip to the head hotel porter. Under his commanding eye, cabmen, guides, gondoliers, and laundresses become meek, and over- charges vanish with apologies. He i can talk English, and comes close to ^5»^ understanding it, whatever his own nationaHty, and he uses his powers with dignity and decision. In Italy good meals are the rule, not the exception. After all, America is the habitat of bad hotels. The hor- rors of cookery in the average small town hotel here cannot be duplicated abroad. Northern and southern Italy are as far apart racially and socially as north and south usually are. The tall, fair young fellow from Milan stood at the rail of the ship looking at the peaks of Calabria. He was not thinking of the mountains, but of the people. **They are wild beasts down there," he said, sententiously. Perhaps they are. Anyway, here dwell people with dark looks and fierce eyes, whose chief passion is vengeance, and to whom a chance glance is a signal for a quarrel. The ships slip close to Sardinia as 54 Q they glide by in the night towards Naples. The shore lights give out a friendly glow, and the sweet scent of the forest tempers the savor of the sea. *' These foreigners speak English/* said the Colonel, ''but they do not understand it.'' Which is about it. The Appian Way is about as wide as Nassau Street. The Roman venders of lemonade do not put sugar in the fluid. In Florence the confectioners shred fresh cocoanut meat and mix it with water. The pulp is drained away, and the result is a beverage, sweetened and flavored, which would be popular if made known to the rest of the world. Germany is no longer a country of content. Hence her progress. Keen 55 A discontent prevails. The workmen are restless, and the politics full of excite- ment. The Socialist is the largest po- litical factor, and would be larger but for a sort of gerrymander that keeps down the representation of large cities in the Reichstag. But the country is progressing in all directions, business and political alike. The banishment of content has brought progress. The Swiss railroads are better man- aged and better equipped than any Continental roads. They have fallen into government control without dam- age. But Switzerland is an anomaly among republics. She preserves her ideals and her honesty. Perhaps a reason for the liking of European life by the pushing American who has made his pile is found in the intellectual simplicity of the people everywhere outside of Germany. The restfulness that comes of a freedom 56 from being always compelled to match r-^^^^ mind against mind, as one must to \c maintain himself in America, is re- freshing, and soon makes itself felt. The naivete and childlikeness found in France, Spain, Italy, and even in Lon- . don, cannot be met with in the United |%\ States. ^" At Capri they show you the ruins of the Villa of Tiberius, on a crag a thou- sand feet above the level of the sea, from the walls of which the Emperor was in the habit of throwing guests who had become tiresome — proba- bly the origin of the saying, '' Being dropped from one's setl" ^^ Women are badly dressed in Ger- many. Their clothes have no ''set'* or style about them. This does not refer to the peasants, but to the middle 57 and well-to-do classes. Besides, the German women, in most instances, lack shape. In Italy, from peasant to great lady, there is a touch of fashion equalled only in France, where dress, style, and shape reign supreme. Mid- dle-class female clothes in England are about on a par with Germany. The ladies of Milan are the best clad of all Italy. The Po and the Adige are swift, dark- green rivers. The latter lights, carries, and drives Milan. These rivers are making northern Italy rich with the development of the electric power. The rocky walls of the Azores are streaked with silver foam from the lit- tle streams that seem to fall from the very mountain-tops into the sea. Contrary to common report, much/" >^ water is drunk in Italy. Wine is ani article of commerce, and is made to ^^^ sell. It does not stand about in car- ^^^y 58 afes at the hotels and restaurants, but has to be ordered and paid for. It is cheap, and sometimes good, especially a light claret that abounds in the Appenines. Coral is the jewelry of Naples. Not all of the material is found in the Mediterranean. Much of it comes from the Far East to the clever Neapolitan lapidaries. Naples is the great emigrant port for New York, while Genoa is the point of departure for South America, where another little Italy is growing in Argentina. Each ship must carry a civilian and military doctor, who can never go twice on the same ship. Thus the internes of the two cities are becoming much-travelled young gen- tlemen. The Motmtains of Atlas in Africa, where the golden apples grew, are green almost to the tops with forest, 59 shrub, and grass, but the Spanish sierras across the straits are barren and brown. They look like the walls of a desert, even though they hedge in the loveliest valleys in Spain. The ship drops a hundred tons of odd freight at Gibraltar destined for Spain. Flour in sacks and lard in tubs, topped off with five hundred cases of American Florida water, which has be- come a favorite perfume in Grenada and Seville. When a road is built in Italy the dynamiters do not spill the debris all over the scenery. All traces of the operation are removed, and the high- way is so masked with walls and graced with arches as to become an improvement and not a blemish to the landscape. The Italian army is the smartest in outward show of all the European armed array. It is truly tailor-made. The officers are handsomely dressed in tmiforms that fit like gloves and are splendidly mounted. The rank and file are picturesquely accoutred, and the men are supple, well made, well trained and well armed. They have grace of limb and sprightliness of demeanor, quite lacking among the barrel-legged German and barely vis- ible in the shabby red-trousered little Frenchmen, while the narrow-chested, weak-eyed, imdersized British troops are altogether out of the comparison of looks. But can they fight? The last time they tried an Abyssinian ne- gro general wiped out an army corps ! The French are very careful to call their conscripted standing army a militia. "We do not have hired soldiers as you do in America," said 6i one; **ours are all citizen soldiers." The first impression one gets of a French regiment is that its red trousers need washing. "The thin red line'' of the foot- guards in London is not very im- pressive. The bearskin caps elevate them above the common level, but put beside a column of American regulars of recent breed they compare badly in physique and get-up. The single- breasted, long-tailed red coat is an im- happy garment for fighting men. The London Coimty Council's steam- boats, which cost the luckless Britons two htmdred and fifty thousand dollars last year, are unclean little smoky tubs of ancient side -wheel pattern, where you sit on an open deck and swallow soft -coal smoke, or else dive into a coffin -shaped cabin below water-line, where ginger -pop is purveyed by a cockney maiden at twopence a sip. 62 The swift boats on the Seine earn money, and are so constructed as to make a trip enjoyable. The Seine is a nice, clean, artistic river, while the Thames is muddy and commercialized. The mark of America lies wide and deep across Europe. In Italy the returned Italian speaks with pride of his sojourn in the United States, whether as rock-breaker or sculptor, and the common folks nod a smiling welcome to the American. The Ital- ians like us, and they know where the tide of gold is coming from that is restoring comfort and ease in many a southern town. From Naples to the tip end of Calabria come the emi- grants, and many return, better and richer men, having done their share of the rough work of the New World with their strong and willing hands. The first landfall of Europe by the ^y^ southern route is at Cape Trafalgar, ■^^^ where Nelson became immortal. The great yellow headland that guards the ' bay seems like a cloud when it first ranges into view, but soon looms up in majestic desolation. To the north show the white walls of ancient Cadiz — pronounced Kad-diz, by the way. The great gray castle of the Lord Warden by the Cinque -Ports com- mands the cliffs above the landing- place at Dover. It is a cluster of square-built towers, unrelieved by any art or trees. The cliffs are barren but for the scanty grass. When the fog is in, and the fog is always in at Dover, there is no bell-ringing or horn-blow- ing, but a minute-gim barks a sharp warning into the mist. The ruins of the efforts to establish the American quick-lunch system in London are still visible in spots. The 64 enterprise failed, not because of the British prejudice, but because it was not the real thing. Shabby fittings and half-way equipment did the busi- ness. The Englishman wants the real thing when he wants anything, and if he could have had plate-glass windows, marble walls, and real food, instead of signs and pretence, all would have been well. Prices at the famous co-operative stores in London are about one-third higher than in the great shops of New York. The London idea of summer clothing is flannel, but the straw hat, a recent American invader, is in universal fash- ion. So, too, in France and Italy. Men's clothes seem to have become the same the world over. 19^ f C^ Continental sleeping-car charges are double those in America. The berths are in state - rooms. Four of these shelves are arranged so close together that passengers must go to bed one at a time. But the beds are good and the berths long enough to lie in at full length, which is more than can be said of Mr. Pullman's somnolencies. The absence of any reliable checking system compels travellers to look out for their own baggage, a good thing in many ways. It also compels them to get to the station half an hour before train-time in order to seize a compart- ment and stow the stuff. The of- ficials who sell tickets and inspect baggage will not be hurried, and the last-minute-train-catching in vogue in America would not be tolerated abroad. In short, the traveller must serve the convenience of the road, or the road will have none of him. The formalities 66 once understood and complied with, travelling becomes easy and pleasant. Begging is well stamped out in Rome, prevails on the edges of Naples, and is not visible in Milan, while in Venice the absence of streets leaves mendicants little room for trade. The pigeons of St. Mark's share fame with the bronze horses. Thousands of them flutter about the plaza or strut upon the pavement, while venders sell bags of grain with which the throng feeds the birds. To scatter the wheat over your girl and then snapshot her as the flock alight to pick the grains from her garments, is a favorite di- version. The delight of the people in these pigeons is never-ending, and they and their forebears have fluttered about the palace of the Doges for a thousand years! It is easy to travel rapidly in Europe and see much if picture-galleries be 67 avoided. Nothing will breed head- aches and exhaustion like two or three miles of old masters. The cardinals in Rome maintain the dignities of great princes, but the Pope tries to live a simple democratic life. The city would prefer more papal magnificence. An American chorus girl can make more stir in London than a Duchess. Outwardly the diflference between monarchical and republican institu- tions is not strikingly observed. In- deed, individual rights, outside of some things more or less intangible politically, are much better protect- ed than in the United States. The public is better cared for. But, on the other hand, there is nothing to show the slightest reason why a Victor Emmanuel should be needed to rule Italy, or where it would make five W^^J cents difference if Germany had no William or England no Edward. The people are the mighty in the kingdoms of the earth of to-day! Whiskey is kept in Italy as a luxury f^ for foreigners. It is not served irom^^ the generous black bottle of the Amer- ican bar, but comes in a corrugated casket adorned with metal chains, much resembling the pepper -sauce cruet used in New York and elsewhere to contain the coarse compound with which it was once the custom to brutalize raw oysters. Each corruga- tion stands for a drink, and each drink costs a lire. It takes four corrugations to make a decent high-ball, or about eighty cents per. Few Americans can sing more than one verse of *'My Country, 'tis of Thee,'' while all Britishers can warble ^^, two of '' God Save the King," and some of them three. The tune is the same. THE END GENERAL LIBRARV RETURN xT" "' ^-— " BBKKK..V S. H ""^'^ ^^^^ ^«^^« BORROWED ^°!i-iS5^;if 54(1887816) 476 ^ YB 734-4'5 M310128