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Title: The Innocents Abroad

Author: Mark Twain

Release date: June 22, 2004 [eBook #3176]
Most recently updated: September 14, 2025

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3176

Credits: Produced by David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
INNOCENTS ABROAD ***

[Cover and Spine from the 1884 Edition]

THE INNOCENTS ABROAD

by Mark Twain

[From an 1869—1st Edition]

CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

CHAPTER I.
Popular Talk of the Excursion—Programme of the Trip—Duly Ticketed
for the Excursion—Defection of the Celebrities

CHAPTER II.
Grand Preparations—An Imposing Dignitary—The European Exodus—
Mr. Blucher’s Opinion—Stateroom No. 10—The Assembling of the Clans
— At Sea at Last

CHAPTER III.
“Averaging” the Passengers—Far, far at Sea.—Tribulation among the
Patriarchs—Seeking Amusement under Difficulties—Five Captains in the
Ship

CHAPTER IV.
The Pilgrims Becoming Domesticated—Pilgrim Life at Sea—“Horse-
Billiards”—The “Synagogue”—The Writing School—Jack’s “Journal”—
The “Q. C. Club”—The Magic Lantern—State Ball on Deck—Mock Trials
— Charades—Pilgrim Solemnity—Slow Music—The Executive Officer
Delivers an Opinion

CHAPTER V.
Summer in Mid-Atlantic—An Eccentric Moon—Mr. Blucher Loses
Confidence—The Mystery of “Ship Time”—The Denizens of the Deep

—“Land Hoh”— The First Landing on a Foreign Shore—Sensation among
the Natives— Something about the Azores Islands—Blucher’s Disastrous
Dinner— The Happy Result

CHAPTER VI.
Solid Information—A Fossil Community—Curious Ways and Customs—
Jesuit Humbuggery—Fantastic Pilgrimizing—Origin of the Russ Pavement
— Squaring Accounts with the Fossils—At Sea Again

CHAPTER VII.
A Tempest at Night—Spain and Africa on Exhibition—Greeting a
Majestic Stranger—The Pillars of Hercules—The Rock of Gibraltar—
Tiresome Repetition—“The Queen’s Chair”—Serenity Conquered—
Curiosities of the Secret Caverns—Personnel of Gibraltar—Some Odd
Characters—A Private Frolic in Africa—Bearding a Moorish Garrison
(without loss of life)—Vanity Rebuked—Disembarking in the Empire of
Morocco

CHAPTER VIII.
The Ancient City of Tangier, Morocco—Strange Sights—A Cradle of
Antiquity—We become Wealthy—How they Rob the Mail in Africa—The
Danger of being Opulent in Morocco

CHAPTER IX.
A Pilgrim—in Deadly Peril—How they Mended the Clock—Moorish
Punishments for Crime—Marriage Customs—Looking Several ways for
Sunday—Shrewd, Practice of Mohammedan Pilgrims—Reverence for Cats
—Bliss of being a Consul-General

CHAPTER X.
Fourth of July at Sea—Mediterranean Sunset—The “Oracle” is
Delivered of an Opinion—Celebration Ceremonies—The Captain’s Speech
—France in Sight—The Ignorant Native—In Marseilles—Another Blunder
—Lost in the Great City—Found Again—A Frenchy Scene

CHAPTER XI.
Getting used to it—No Soap—Bill of Fare, Table d’hote—“An American
Sir”—A Curious Discovery—The “Pilgrim” Bird—Strange Companionship
—A Grave of the Living—A Long Captivity—Some of Dumas’ Heroes—
Dungeon of the Famous “Iron Mask.”

CHAPTER XII.
A Holiday Flight through France—Summer Garb of the Landscape—
Abroad on the Great Plains—Peculiarities of French Cars—French
Politeness American Railway Officials—“Twenty Minutes to Dinner!”—
Why there are no Accidents—The “Old Travellers”—Still on the Wing—
Paris at Last——French Order and Quiet—Place of the Bastile—Seeing the
Sights—A Barbarous Atrocity—Absurd Billiards

CHAPTER XIII.
More Trouble—Monsieur Billfinger—Re-Christening the Frenchman—
In the Clutches of a Paris Guide—The International Exposition—Fine
Military Review—Glimpse of the Emperor Napoleon and the Sultan of
Turkey

CHAPTER XIV.
The Venerable Cathedral of Notre-Dame—Jean Sanspeur’s Addition—
Treasures and Sacred Relics—The Legend of the Cross—The Morgue—
The Outrageious ‘Can-Can’—Blondin Aflame—The Louvre Palace—The
Great Park—Showy Pageantry—Preservation of Noted Things

CHAPTER XV.
French National Burying—Ground—Among the Great Dead—The
Shrine of Disappointed Love—The Story of Abelard and Heloise
—“English Spoken Here”—“American Drinks Compounded Here”—
Imperial Honors to an American—The Over-estimated Grisette—Departure
from Paris—A Deliberate Opinion Concerning the Comeliness of American
Women

CHAPTER XVI.

Versailles—Paradise Regained—A Wonderful Park—Paradise Lost—
Napoleonic Strategy

CHAPTER XVII.
War—The American Forces Victorious—“Home Again”—Italy in Sight
The “City of Palaces”—Beauty of the Genoese Women—The “Stub-
Hunters”—Among the Palaces—Gifted Guide—Church Magnificence
—“Women not Admitted”—How the Genoese Live—Massive Architecture
—A Scrap of Ancient History—Graves for 60,000

CHAPTER XVIII.
Flying Through Italy—Marengo—First Glimpse of the Famous
Cathedral—Description of some of its Wonders—A Horror Carved in Stone
——An Unpleasant Adventure—A Good Man—A Sermon from the Tomb
—Tons of Gold and Silver—Some More Holy Relics—Solomon’s Temple

CHAPTER XIX
“Do You Wiz zo Haut can be?”—La Scala—Petrarch and Laura—
Lucrezia Borgia—Ingenious Frescoes—Ancient Roman Amphitheatre—A
Clever Delusion—Distressing Billiards—The Chief Charm of European
Life—An Italian Bath—Wanted: Soap—Crippled French—Mutilated
English—The Most Celebrated Painting in the World—Amateur Raptures
—Uninspired Critics—Anecdote—A Wonderful Echo—A Kiss for a Franc

CHAPTER XX.
Rural Italy by Rail—Fumigated, According to Law—The Sorrowing
Englishman—Night by the Lake of Como—The Famous Lake—Its Scenery
—Como compared with Tahoe—Meeting a Shipmate

CHAPTER XXI.
The Pretty Lago di Lecco--A Carriage Drive in the Country--Astonishing
Sociability in a Coachman--Sleepy Land--Bloody Shrines--The Heart and
Home of Priestcraft--A Thrilling Mediaeval Romance--The Birthplace of
Harlequin--Approaching Venice

CHAPTER XXII.
Night in Venice--The “Gay Gondolier"--The Grand Fete by Moonlight--
The Notable Sights of Venice--The Mother of the Republics Desolate

CHAPTER XXIII.
The Famous Gondola--The Gondola in an Unromantic Aspect--The Great
Square of St. Mark and the Winged Lion--Snobs, at Home and Abroad--
Sepulchres of the Great Dead--A Tilt at the “Old Masters"--A Contraband
Guide--The Conspiracy--Moving Again

CHAPTER XXIV.
Down Through Italy by Rail--Idling in Florence--Dante and Galileo--An
Ungrateful City--Dazzling Generosity--Wonderful Mosaics--The Historical
Arno--Lost Again--Found Again, but no Fatted Calf Ready--The Leaning
Tower of Pisa--The Ancient Duomo--The Old Original First Pendulum that
Ever Swung--An Enchanting Echo--A New Holy Sepulchre--A Relic of
Antiquity--A Fallen Republic--At Leghorn--At Home Again, and Satisfied,
on Board the Ship--Our Vessel an Object of Grave Suspicion--Garibaldi
Visited--Threats of Quarantine

CHAPTER XXV.
The Works of Bankruptcy--Railway Grandeur--How to Fill an Empty
Treasury--The Sumptuousness of Mother Church--Ecclesiastical Splendor--
Magnificence and Misery--General Execration--More Magnificence A
Good Word for the Priests--Civita Vecchia the Dismal--Off for Rome

CHAPTER XXVI.
The Modern Roman on His Travels--The Grandeur of St. Peter’s--Holy
Relics--Grand View from the Dome--The Holy Inquisition--Interesting Old
Monkish Frauds--The Ruined Coliseum--The Coliseum in the Days of its
Prime--Ancient Playbill of a Coliseum Performance--A Roman Newspaper
Criticism 1700 Years Old

CHAPTER XXVII.

“Butchered to Make a Roman Holiday"--The Man who Never
Complained--An Exasperating Subject--Asinine Guides--The Roman
Catacombs The Saint Whose Fervor Burst his Ribs--The Miracle of the
Bleeding Heart--The Legend of Ara Coeli

CHAPTER XXVIII.
Picturesque Horrors--The Legend of Brother Thomas--Sorrow
Scientifically Analyzed--A Festive Company of the Dead--The Great
Vatican Museum Artist Sins of Omission--The Rape of the Sabines--Papal
Protection of Art--High Price of “Old Masters"--Improved Scripture--Scale
of Rank of the Holy Personages in Rome--Scale of Honors Accorded Them-
-Fossilizing--Away for Naples

CHAPTER XXIX.
Naples--In Quarantine at Last--Annunciation--Ascent of Mount
Vesuvius--A Two Cent Community--The Black Side of Neapolitan
Character--Monkish Miracles--Ascent of Mount Vesuvius Continued--The
Stranger and the Hackman--Night View of Naples from the Mountain-side--
-Ascent of Mount Vesuvius Continued

CHAPTER XXX.
Ascent of Mount Vesuvius Continued--Beautiful View at Dawn--Less
Beautiful in the Back Streets--Ascent of Vesuvius Continued--Dwellings a
Hundred Feet High--A Motley Procession--Bill of Fare for a Peddler’s
Breakfast--Princely Salaries--Ascent of Vesuvius Continued--An Average of
Prices--The wonderful “Blue Grotto"--Visit to Celebrated Localities in the
Bay of Naples--The Poisoned “Grotto of the Dog"--A Petrified Sea of Lava-
-Ascent of Mount Vesuvius Continued--The Summit Reached--Description
of the Crater--Descent of Vesuvius

CHAPTER XXXI.
The Buried City of Pompeii—How Dwellings Appear that have been
Unoccupied for Eighteen hundred years—The Judgment Seat—Desolation
—The Footprints of the Departed—“No Women Admitted”—Theatres,
Bakeshops, Schools—Skeletons preserved by the Ashes and Cinders—The
Brave Martyr to Duty—Rip Van Winkle—The Perishable Nature of Fame

CHAPTER XXXII.
At Sea Once More—The Pilgrims all Well—Superb Stromboli—Sicily
by Moonlight—Scylla and Charybdis—The “Oracle” at Fault—Skirting the
Isles of Greece Ancient Athens—Blockaded by Quarantine and Refused
Permission to Enter—Running the Blockade—A Bloodless Midnight
Adventure—Turning Robbers from Necessity—Attempt to Carry the
Acropolis by Storm—We Fail—Among the Glories of the Past—A World
of Ruined Sculpture—A Fairy Vision—Famous Localities—Retreating in
Good Order—Captured by the Guards—Travelling in Military State—Safe
on Board Again

CHAPTER XXXIII.
Modern Greece—Fallen Greatness—Sailing Through the Archipelago
and the Dardanelles—Footprints of History—The First Shoddy Contractor
of whom History gives any Account—Anchored Before Constantinople—
Fantastic Fashions—The Ingenious Goose-Rancher—Marvelous Cripples
—The Great Mosque—The Thousand and One Columns—The Grand
Bazaar of Stamboul

CHAPTER XXXIV.
Scarcity of Morals and Whiskey—Slave-Girl Market Report—
Commercial Morality at a Discount—The Slandered Dogs of
Constantinople—Questionable Delights of Newspaperdom in Turkey—
Ingenious Italian Journalism—No More Turkish Lunches Desired—The
Turkish Bath Fraud—The Narghileh Fraud—Jackplaned by a Native—The
Turkish Coffee Fraud

CHAPTER XXXV.
Sailing Through the Bosporus and the Black Sea—“Far-Away Moses”—
Melancholy Sebastopol—Hospitably Received in Russia—Pleasant English
People—Desperate Fighting—Relic Hunting—How Travellers Form
“Cabinets”

CHAPTER XXXVI.

Nine Thousand Miles East—Imitation American Town in Russia—
Gratitude that Came Too Late—To Visit the Autocrat of All the Russias

CHAPTER XXXVII.
Summer Home of Royalty—Practising for the Dread Ordeal—
Committee on Imperial Address—Reception by the Emperor and Family—
Dresses of the Imperial Party—Concentrated Power—Counting the Spoons
—At the Grand Duke’s—A Charming Villa—A Knightly Figure—The
Grand Duchess—A Grand Ducal Breakfast—Baker’s Boy, the Famine-
Breeder—Theatrical Monarchs a Fraud—Saved as by Fire—The Governor
—General’s Visit to the Ship—Official “Style”—Aristocratic Visitors
—“Munchausenizing” with Them—Closing Ceremonies

CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Return to Constantinople—We Sail for Asia—The Sailors Burlesque the
Imperial Visitors—Ancient Smyrna—The “Oriental Splendor” Fraud—The
“Biblical Crown of Life”—Pilgrim Prophecy-Savans—Sociable Armenian
Girls—A Sweet Reminiscence—“The Camels are Coming, Ha-ha!”

CHAPTER XXXIX.
Smyrna’s Lions—The Martyr Polycarp—The “Seven Churches”—
Remains of the Six Smyrnas—Mysterious Oyster Mine Oysters—Seeking
Scenery—A Millerite Tradition—A Railroad Out of its Sphere

CHAPTER XL.
Journeying Toward Ancient Ephesus—Ancient Ayassalook—The
Villanous Donkey—A Fantastic Procession—Bygone Magnificence—
Fragments of History—The Legend of the Seven Sleepers

CHAPTER XLI.
Vandalism Prohibited—Angry Pilgrims—Approaching Holy Land!—The
“Shrill Note of Preparation”—Distress About Dragomans and
Transportation—The “Long Route” Adopted—In Syria—Something about
Beirout—A Choice Specimen of a Greek “Ferguson”—Outfits—Hideous
Horseflesh—Pilgrim “Style”—What of Aladdin’s Lamp?

CHAPTER XLII.
“Jacksonville,” in the Mountains of Lebanon—Breakfasting above a
Grand Panorama—The Vanished City—The Peculiar Steed, “Jericho”—
The Pilgrims Progress—Bible Scenes—Mount Hermon, Joshua’s Battle
Fields, etc.—The Tomb of Noah—A Most Unfortunate People

CHAPTER XLIII.
Patriarchal Customs—Magnificent Baalbec—Description of the Ruins—
Scribbling Smiths and Joneses—Pilgrim Fidelity to the Letter of the Law—
The Revered Fountain of Baalam’s Ass

CHAPTER XLIV.
Extracts from Note-Book—Mahomet’s Paradise and the Bible’s—
Beautiful Damascus the Oldest City on Earth—Oriental Scenes within the
Curious Old City—Damascus Street Car—The Story of St. Paul—The
“Street called Straight”—Mahomet’s Tomb and St. George’s—The
Christian Massacre—Mohammedan Dread of Pollution—The House of
Naaman—The Horrors of Leprosy

CHAPTER XLV.
The Cholera by way of Variety—Hot—Another Outlandish Procession—
Pen and-Ink Photograph of “Jonesborough,” Syria—Tomb of Nimrod, the
Mighty Hunter—The Stateliest Ruin of All—Stepping over the Borders of
Holy-Land—Bathing in the Sources of Jordan—More “Specimen” Hunting
—Ruins of Cesarea—Philippi—“On This Rock Will I Build my Church”—
The People the Disciples Knew—The Noble Steed “Baalbec”—Sentimental
Horse Idolatry of the Arabs

CHAPTER XLVI.
Dan—Bashan—Genessaret—A Notable Panorama—Smallness of
Palestine—Scraps of History—Character of the Country—Bedouin
Shepherds—Glimpses of the Hoary Past—Mr. Grimes’s Bedouins—A
Battle—Ground of Joshua—That Soldier’s Manner of Fighting—Barak’s
Battle—The Necessity of Unlearning Some Things—Desolation

CHAPTER XLVII.
“Jack’s Adventure”—Joseph’s Pit—The Story of Joseph—Joseph’s
Magnanimity and Esau’s—The Sacred Lake of Genessaret—Enthusiasm of
the Pilgrims—Why We did not Sail on Galilee—About Capernaum—
Concerning the Saviour’s Brothers and Sisters—Journeying toward
Magdela

CHAPTER XLVIII.
Curious Specimens of Art and Architecture—Public Reception of the
Pilgrims—Mary Magdalen’s House—Tiberias and its Queer Inhabitants—
The Sacred Sea of Galilee—Galilee by Night

CHAPTER XLIX.
The Ancient Baths—Ye Apparition—A Distinguished Panorama—The
Last Battle of the Crusades—The Story of the Lord of Kerak—Mount
Tabor—What one Sees from its Top—Memory of a Wonderful Garden—
The House of Deborah the Prophetess

CHAPTER L.
Toward Nazareth—Bitten By a Camel—Grotto of the Annunciation,
Nazareth—Noted Grottoes in General—Joseph’s Workshop—A Sacred
Bowlder—The Fountain of the Virgin—Questionable Female Beauty—
Literary Curiosities

CHAPTER LI.
Boyhood of the Saviour—Unseemly Antics of Sober Pilgrims—Home of
the Witch of Endor—Nain—Profanation—A Popular Oriental Picture—
Biblical Metaphors Becoming steadily More Intelligible—The Shuuem
Miracle—The “Free Son of The Desert”—Ancient Jezrael—Jehu’s
Achievements—Samaria and its Famous Siege

CHAPTER LII.
Curious Remnant of the Past—Shechem—The Oldest “First Family” on
Earth—The Oldest Manuscript Extant—The Genuine Tomb of Joseph—
Jacob’s Well—Shiloh—Camping with the Arabs—Jacob’s Ladder—More

Desolation—Ramah, Beroth, the Tomb of Samuel, The Fountain of Beira—
Impatience—Approaching Jerusalem—The Holy City in Sight—Noting Its
Prominent Features—Domiciled Within the Sacred Walls

CHAPTER LIII.
“The Joy of the Whole Earth”—Description of Jerusalem—Church of the
Holy Sepulchre—The Stone of Unction—The Grave of Jesus—Graves of
Nicodemus and Joseph of Armattea—Places of the Apparition—The
Finding of the There Crosses——The Legend—Monkish Impostures—The
Pillar of Flagellation—The Place of a Relic—Godfrey’s Sword—“The
Bonds of Christ”—“The Center of the Earth”—Place whence the Dust was
taken of which Adam was Made—Grave of Adam—The Martyred Soldier
—The Copper Plate that was on the Cross—The Good St. Helena—Place of
the Division of the Garments—St. Dimas, the Penitent Thief—The Late
Emperor Maximilian’s Contribution—Grotto wherein the Crosses were
Found, and the Nails, and the Crown of Thorns—Chapel of the Mocking—
Tomb of Melchizedek—Graves of Two Renowned Crusaders—The Place
of the Crucifixion

CHAPTER LIV.
The “Sorrowful Way”—The Legend of St. Veronica’s Handkerchief—An
Illustrious Stone—House of the Wandering Jew—The Tradition of the
Wanderer—Solomon’s Temple—Mosque of Omar—Moslem Traditions
—“Women not Admitted”—The Fate of a Gossip—Turkish Sacred Relics
—Judgment Seat of David and Saul—Genuine Precious Remains of
Solomon’s Temple—Surfeited with Sights—The Pool of Siloam—The
Garden of Gethsemane and Other Sacred Localities

CHAPTER LV.
Rebellion in the Camp—Charms of Nomadic Life—Dismal Rumors—En
Route for Jericho and The Dead Sea—Pilgrim Strategy—Bethany and the
Dwelling of Lazarus—“Bedouins!”—Ancient Jericho—Misery—The Night
March—The Dead Sea—An Idea of What a “Wilderness” in Palestine is—
The Holy hermits of Mars Saba—Good St. Saba—Women not Admitted—
Buried from the World for all Time—Unselfish Catholic Benevolence—
Gazelles—The Plain of the Shepherds—Birthplace of the Saviour,

Bethlehem—Church of the Nativity—Its Hundred Holy Places—The
Famous “Milk” Grotto—Tradition—Return to Jerusalem—Exhausted

CHAPTER LVI.
Departure from Jerusalem—Samson—The Plain of Sharon—Arrival at
Joppa—Horse of Simon the Tanner—The Long Pilgrimage Ended—
Character of Palestine Scenery—The Curse

CHAPTER LVII.
The Happiness of being at Sea once more—“Home” as it is in a Pleasure
Ship—“Shaking Hands” with the Vessel—Jack in Costume—His Father’s
Parting Advice—Approaching Egypt—Ashore in Alexandria—A Deserved
Compliment for the Donkeys—Invasion of the Lost Tribes of America—
End of the Celebrated “Jaffa Colony”—Scenes in Grand Cairo—
Shepheard’s Hotel Contrasted with a Certain American Hotel—Preparing
for the Pyramids

CHAPTER LVIII.
“Recherche” Donkeys—A Wild Ride—Specimens of Egyptian Modesty
—Moses in the Bulrushes—Place where the Holy Family Sojourned—
Distant view of the Pyramids—A Nearer View—The Ascent—Superb View
from the top of the Pyramid—“Backsheesh! Backsheesh!”—An Arab
Exploit—In the Bowels of the Pyramid—Strategy—Reminiscence of
“Holiday’s Hill”—Boyish Exploit—The Majestic Sphynx—Things the
Author will not Tell—Grand Old Egypt

CHAPTER LIX.
Going Home—A Demoralized Note-Book—A Boy’s Diary—Mere
Mention of Old Spain—Departure from Cadiz—A Deserved Rebuke—The
Beautiful Madeiras—Tabooed—In the Delightful Bermudas—An English
Welcome—Good-by to “Our Friends the Bermudians”—Packing Trunks for
Home—Our First Accident—The Long Cruise Drawing to a Close—At
Home—Amen

CHAPTER LX.

Thankless Devotion—A Newspaper Valedictory—Conclusion

CHAPTER LXI.

CONCLUSION.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. THE QUAKER CITY IN A STORM—FRONTPIECE
2. ILLUMINATED TITLE-PAGE-THE PILGRIM’S VISION
3. “I ‘LL PAY YOU IN PARIS"
4. THE START
5. “GOOD MORNING, SIR"
6. THE OLD PIRATE
7. DANCING UNDER DIFFICULTIES
8. THE MOCK TRIAL
9. “LAND, HO!”
10. THE CAPOTE
11. RUIN AND DESOLATION
12. PORT OF HORTA, FAYAL
13. “SEKKI-YAH"
14. BEAUTIFUL STRANGER
15. ROCK OF GIBRALTAR
16. “QUEEN’S CHAIR"
17. THE ORACLE
18. THE INTERROGATION POINT
19. GARRISON AT MALABAT
20. ENTERTAINING AN ANGEL
21. VIEW OF A STREET IN TANGIER
22. CHANGE FOR A NAPOLEON
23. THE CONSUL’S FAMILY
24. “POET LARIAT"
25. FIRST SUPPER IN FRANCE
26. PAINTING
27. RINGING FOR SOAP
28. “WINE, SIR!”
29. THE PILGRIM
30. THE PRISONER
31. HOMELESS FRANCE
32. RAILROAD OFFICIAL IN FRANCE

33. “FIVE MINUTES FOR REFRESHMENTS”—AMERICA
34. “THIRTY MINUTES FOR DINNER”—FRANCE
35. THE OLD TRAVELLER
36. A DECIDED SHAVE
37. A GAS-TLY SUBSTITUTE
38. THE THREE GUIDES
39. “ZE SILK MAGAZIN"
40. RETURN IN WAR PAINT
41. NAPOLEON III
42. ABDUL AZIZ
43. THE MORGUE
44. WE TOOK A WALK
45. THE CAN-CAN
46. GRAVES OF ABELARD AND HELOISE
47. A PAIR OF CANONS OF 13TH CENTURY
48. THE PRIVATE MARRIAGE
49. AMERICAN DRINKS
50. ROYAL HONORS TO A YANKEE
51. THE GRISETTE
52. FOUNTAIN AT VERSAILLES
53. WOMEN OF GENOA
54. PETRIFIED LACKEY
55. PRIEST AND FRIAR
56. STATUE OF COLUMBUS
57. GRAVES OF SIXTY THOUSAND
58. ROOF AND SPIRES OF CATHEDRAL AT MILAN
59. CENTRAL DOOR OF CATHEDRAL AT MILAN
60. INTERIOR OF CATHEDRAL AT MILAN
61. BOYHOOD EXPERIENCE
62. TREASURES OF THE CATHEDRAL
63. CATHEDRAL AT MILAN
64. LA SCALA THEATRE
65. COPYING FROM OLD MASTERS
66. FACIAL EXPRESSION
67. TILE ECHO
68. NOTE BOOK
69. A KISS FOR A FRANC

70. THE FUMIGATION
71. LAKE COMO
72. GARDEN, LAKE COMO
73 SOCIAL DRIVER
74 WAYSIDE SHRINE
75 PEACE AND HAPPINESS
76 CASTLE OF COUNT LUIGI
77 THE WICKED BROTHER
78 DISGUSTED GONDOLIER
79 CATHEDRAL OF ST. MARK
80 THE PEG
81 “GOOD-BY"
82 M’SIEUR GOR-R-DONG
83 MONUMENT TO THE DOOR
84 ST. MARK, MATHEW, JEROME BY THE OLD MASTERS
87 ST. SEBASTIAN, AND ST. UNKNOWN BY THE OLD MASTERS
89 RIALTO BRIDGE AND BRIDGE OF SIGHS
91 FLORENCE
92 THE PENSIONER
93 “I WANT TO GO HOME"
94 THE LEANING TOWER
95 THE CONTRAST
96 ITALIAN PASTIMES
97 INCENDIARY DOCUMENT
98 A ROMAN OF 1869
99 MAMERTINE PRISON
100 OLD ROMAN
101 COLISEUM OF ANCIENT ROME
102 DID NOT COMPLAIN
103 HUMBOLDT HOUSE
104 DAN
105 BRONZE STATUE
106 PENMANSHIP
107 ON A BUST
108 VAULTS OF THE CONVENT
109 DRIED CONVENT FRUITS
110 AT THE STORE

111 AT HOME
112 SOOTHING THE PILGRIMS
113 ASCENT OF MT VESUVIUS
114 BAY OF NAPLES
115 THE MUSTANG
116 ISLAND OF CAPRI
117 BLUE GROTTO
118 VESUVIUS AND BAY of NAPLES
119 THE DESCENT
120 RUINS, POMPEII
121 FORUM OF JUSTICE, POMPEII
122 HOUSE; POMPEII
123 STROMBOLI
124 VIEW OF THE ACROPOLIS, LOOKING WEST
125 “HO"
126 THE ASSAULT
127 THE CARYATIDES
128 THE PARTHENON
129 WE SIDLED, NOT RAN
130 ANCIENT ACROPOLIS
131 RUINS
132 QUEEN OF GREECE
133 PALACE AT ATHENS
134 STREET SCENE IN CONSTANTINOPLE
135 GOOSE RANCHER
136 MOSQUE of ST. SOPHIA
137 TURKISH MAUSOLEUM
138 SLANDERED DOGS
139 THE CENSOR ON DUTY
140 TURKISH BATH
141 FAR-AWAY-MOSES
142 A FRAGMENT
143 A MEMENTO
144 YALTA FROM THE EMPERORS PALACE
145 EMPEROR OF RUSSIA
146 TINSEL KING
147 SHIP EMPEROR

148 THE RECEPTION
149 STREET SCENE IN SMYRNA
150 SMYRNA
151 AN APPARENT SUCCESS
152 DRIFTING TO STARBOARD
153 A SPOILED NAP
154 ANCIENT AMPHITHEATER AT EPHESUS
155 MODERN AMPHITHEATRE AT EPHESUS
156 RUINS OF EPHESUS
157 THE JOURNEY
158 GRAVES OF THE SEVEN SLEEPERS
159 THE SELECTION
160 CAMPING OUT
161 ARABS’ TENTS
162 A GOOD FEEDER
163 INTERESTING FETE
164 SUNDAY SCHOOL GRAPES
165 AN OLD FOGY
166 RACE WITH A CAMEL
167 TEMPLE OF TILE SUN
168 RUINS OF BAALBEC
169 HEWN STONES IN QUARRY
170 MERCY
171 PATRON SAINT
172 WATER CAPRIER
173 VIEW OF DAMASCUS
174 STREET CARS OF DAMASCUS
175 FULL DRESSED TOURIST
176 IMPROMPTU HOSPITAL
177 THE HORSE “BAALBEC"
178 OAR OF BASLIAN
179 DANGEROUS ARAB
180 GRIMES ON THE WAR-PATH
181 BEDOUIN CAMP
182 HOME OF ANCIENT POMP
183 JACK
184 A DISAPPOINTED AUDIENCE

185 FIG-TREE
186 “FARE TOO HIGH"
187 SYRIAN HOUSE
188 TIBERIAS AND SEA OF GALILEE
189 THE GUARD
190 MOUNT TABOR
191 GATHERING FUEL
192 FOUNTAIN OF THE VIRGIN
193 “MADONNA-LIKE BEAUTY"
194 PUTNAM OUTDONE
195 THE BASTINADO
196 “I WEPT"
197 WANT OF DIGNITY
198 AN ORIENTAL WELL
199 ARABS SALUTING
200 FREE SONS OF THE DESERT
201 SHECHEM
202 GATE OF JERUSALEM
203 BEGGARS IN JERUSALEM
204 CHURCH OF THE HOLY SEPULCHER
205 GRAVE OF ADAM
206 VIEW OF JERUSALEM
207 THE WANDERING JEW
208 MOSQUE OF OMAR
209 AN EPIDEMIC
210 CHARGE OF BEDOUINS
211 DEAD SEA
212 GROTTO OF THE NATIVITY
213 JAFFA
214 REAR ELEVATION OF JACK
215 STREET IN ALEXANDRIA
216 VICEROY OF EGYPT
217 EASTERN MONARCH
218 MOSES S. BEACH
219 ROOM No. 15
220 THE NILOMETER
221 ASCENT OF THE PYRAMIDS

222 HIGH HOPES FRUSTRATED
223 KINGS CHAMBER IN THE PYRAMID
224 A POWERFUL ARGUMENT
225 PYRAMIDS AND SPHINX
226 THE RELIC HUNTER
227 THE MAMELUKE’S LEAP
228 WOULD NOT BE COMFORTED
229 THE TRAVELER
230 HOMEWARD BOUND
231 BAD COFFEE
232 OUR FRIENDS THE BERMUDIANS
233 CAPTAIN DUNCAN
234 FINIS

PREFACE

This book is a record of a pleasure trip. If it were a record of a solemn
scientific expedition, it would have about it that gravity, that profundity, and
that impressive incomprehensibility which are so proper to works of that
kind, and withal so attractive. Yet notwithstanding it is only a record of a
pic-nic, it has a purpose, which is to suggest to the reader how he would be
likely to see Europe and the East if he looked at them with his own eyes
instead of the eyes of those who traveled in those countries before him. I
make small pretense of showing anyone how he ought to look at objects of
interest beyond the sea—other books do that, and therefore, even if I were
competent to do it, there is no need.
I offer no apologies for any departures from the usual style of travel-
writing that may be charged against me—for I think I have seen with
impartial eyes, and I am sure I have written at least honestly, whether
wisely or not.
In this volume I have used portions of letters which I wrote for the Daily
Alta California, of San Francisco, the proprietors of that journal having
waived their rights and given me the necessary permission. I have also
inserted portions of several letters written for the New York Tribune and the
New York Herald.
THE AUTHOR. SAN FRANCISCO.

CHAPTER I.
For months the great pleasure excursion to Europe and the Holy Land
was chatted about in the newspapers everywhere in America and discussed
at countless firesides. It was a novelty in the way of excursions—its like
had not been thought of before, and it compelled that interest which
attractive novelties always command. It was to be a picnic on a gigantic
scale. The participants in it, instead of freighting an ungainly steam ferry—
boat with youth and beauty and pies and doughnuts, and paddling up some
obscure creek to disembark upon a grassy lawn and wear themselves out
with a long summer day’s laborious frolicking under the impression that it
was fun, were to sail away in a great steamship with flags flying and cannon
pealing, and take a royal holiday beyond the broad ocean in many a strange
clime and in many a land renowned in history! They were to sail for months
over the breezy Atlantic and the sunny Mediterranean; they were to scamper
about the decks by day, filling the ship with shouts and laughter—or read
novels and poetry in the shade of the smokestacks, or watch for the jelly-
fish and the nautilus over the side, and the shark, the whale, and other
strange monsters of the deep; and at night they were to dance in the open
air, on the upper deck, in the midst of a ballroom that stretched from
horizon to horizon, and was domed by the bending heavens and lighted by
no meaner lamps than the stars and the magnificent moon—dance, and
promenade, and smoke, and sing, and make love, and search the skies for
constellations that never associate with the “Big Dipper” they were so tired
of; and they were to see the ships of twenty navies—the customs and
costumes of twenty curious peoples—the great cities of half a world—they
were to hob-nob with nobility and hold friendly converse with kings and
princes, grand moguls, and the anointed lords of mighty empires! It was a
brave conception; it was the offspring of a most ingenious brain. It was well
advertised, but it hardly needed it: the bold originality, the extraordinary
character, the seductive nature, and the vastness of the enterprise provoked
comment everywhere and advertised it in every household in the land. Who
could read the program of the excursion without longing to make one of the
party? I will insert it here. It is almost as good as a map. As a text for this

book, nothing could be better:

EXCURSION TO THE HOLY LAND, EGYPT,
THE CRIMEA, GREECE, AND INTERMEDIATE POINTS
OF INTEREST.
BROOKLYN, February 1st, 1867

The undersigned will make an excursion as above during
the coming season, and begs to submit to you the following
programme:

A first-class steamer, to be under his own command, and
capable of accommodating at least one hundred and fifty
cabin passengers, will be selected, in which will be taken a
select company, numbering not more than three-fourths of
the ship’s capacity. There is good reason to believe that this
company can be easily made up in this immediate vicinity, of
mutual friends and acquaintances.

The steamer will be provided with every necessary comfort,
including library and musical instruments.

An experienced physician will be on board.

Leaving New York about June 1st, a middle and pleasant
route will be taken across the Atlantic, and passing through
the group of Azores, St. Michael will be reached in about ten
days. A day or two will be spent here, enjoying the fruit and
wild scenery of these islands, and the voyage continued, and
Gibraltar reached in three or four days.

A day or two will be spent here in looking over the
wonderful subterraneous fortifications, permission to visit
these galleries being readily obtained.

From Gibraltar, running along the coasts of Spain and
France, Marseilles will be reached in three days. Here
ample time will be given not only to look over the city, which
was founded six hundred years before the Christian era, and
its artificial port, the finest of the kind in the Mediterranean,
but to visit Paris during the Great Exhibition; and the
beautiful city of Lyons, lying intermediate, from the heights
of which, on a clear day, Mont Blanc and the Alps can be
distinctly seen. Passengers who may wish to extend the time
at Paris can do so, and, passing down through Switzerland,
rejoin the steamer at Genoa.

From Marseilles to Genoa is a run of one night. The
excursionists will have an opportunity to look over this, the
“magnificent city of palaces,” and visit the birthplace of
Columbus, twelve miles off, over a beautiful road built by
Napoleon I. From this point, excursions may be made to
Milan, Lakes Como and Maggiore, or to Milan, Verona
(famous for its extraordinary fortifications), Padua, and
Venice. Or, if passengers desire to visit Parma (famous for
Correggio’s frescoes) and Bologna, they can by rail go on to
Florence, and rejoin the steamer at Leghorn, thus spending
about three weeks amid the cities most famous for art in
Italy.

From Genoa the run to Leghorn will be made along the
coast in one night, and time appropriated to this point in
which to visit Florence, its palaces and galleries; Pisa, its
cathedral and “Leaning Tower,” and Lucca and its baths,
and Roman amphitheater; Florence, the most remote, being
distant by rail about sixty miles.

From Leghorn to Naples (calling at Civita Vecchia to land
any who may prefer to go to Rome from that point), the
distance will be made in about thirty-six hours; the route
will lay along the coast of Italy, close by Caprera, Elba, and
Corsica. Arrangements have been made to take on board at

Leghorn a pilot for Caprera, and, if practicable, a call will
be made there to visit the home of Garibaldi.

Rome [by rail], Herculaneum, Pompeii, Vesuvius, Vergil’s
tomb, and possibly the ruins of Paestum can be visited, as
well as the beautiful surroundings of Naples and its
charming bay.

The next point of interest will be Palermo, the most beautiful
city of Sicily, which will be reached in one night from
Naples. A day will be spent here, and leaving in the evening,
the course will be taken towards Athens.

Skirting along the north coast of Sicily, passing through the
group of Aeolian Isles, in sight of Stromboli and Vulcania,
both active volcanoes, through the Straits of Messina, with
“Scylla” on the one hand and “Charybdis” on the other,
along the east coast of Sicily, and in sight of Mount Etna,
along the south coast of Italy, the west and south coast of
Greece, in sight of ancient Crete, up Athens Gulf, and into
the Piraeus, Athens will be reached in two and a half or
three days. After tarrying here awhile, the Bay of Salamis
will be crossed, and a day given to Corinth, whence the
voyage will be continued to Constantinople, passing on the
way through the Grecian Archipelago, the Dardanelles, the
Sea of Marmora, and the mouth of the Golden Horn, and
arriving in about forty-eight hours from Athens.

After leaving Constantinople, the way will be taken out
through the beautiful Bosphorus, across the Black Sea to
Sebastopol and Balaklava, a run of about twenty-four hours.
Here it is proposed to remain two days, visiting the harbors,
fortifications, and battlefields of the Crimea; thence back
through the Bosphorus, touching at Constantinople to take
in any who may have preferred to remain there; down
through the Sea of Marmora and the Dardanelles, along the
coasts of ancient Troy and Lydia in Asia, to Smyrna, which

will be reached in two or two and a half days from
Constantinople. A sufficient stay will be made here to give
opportunity of visiting Ephesus, fifty miles distant by rail.

From Smyrna towards the Holy Land the course will lay
through the Grecian Archipelago, close by the Isle of
Patmos, along the coast of Asia, ancient Pamphylia, and the
Isle of Cyprus. Beirut will be reached in three days. At
Beirut time will be given to visit Damascus; after which the
steamer will proceed to Joppa.

From Joppa, Jerusalem, the River Jordan, the Sea of
Tiberias, Nazareth, Bethany, Bethlehem, and other points of
interest in the Holy Land can be visited, and here those who
may have preferred to make the journey from Beirut through
the country, passing through Damascus, Galilee,
Capernaum, Samaria, and by the River Jordan and Sea of
Tiberias, can rejoin the steamer.

Leaving Joppa, the next point of interest to visit will be
Alexandria, which will be reached in twenty-four hours. The
ruins of Caesar’s Palace, Pompey’s Pillar, Cleopatra’s
Needle, the Catacombs, and ruins of ancient Alexandria will
be found worth the visit. The journey to Cairo, one hundred
and thirty miles by rail, can be made in a few hours, and
from which can be visited the site of ancient Memphis,
Joseph’s Granaries, and the Pyramids.

From Alexandria the route will be taken homeward, calling
at Malta, Cagliari (in Sardinia), and Palma (in Majorca), all
magnificent harbors, with charming scenery, and abounding
in fruits.

A day or two will be spent at each place, and leaving Parma
in the evening, Valencia in Spain will be reached the next
morning. A few days will be spent in this, the finest city of
Spain.

From Valencia, the homeward course will be continued,
skirting along the coast of Spain. Alicant, Carthagena,
Palos, and Malaga will be passed but a mile or two distant,
and Gibraltar reached in about twenty-four hours.

A stay of one day will be made here, and the voyage
continued to Madeira, which will be reached in about three
days. Captain Marryatt writes: “I do not know a spot on the
globe which so much astonishes and delights upon first
arrival as Madeira.” A stay of one or two days will be made
here, which, if time permits, may be extended, and passing
on through the islands, and probably in sight of the Peak of
Teneriffe, a southern track will be taken, and the Atlantic
crossed within the latitudes of the northeast trade winds,
where mild and pleasant weather, and a smooth sea, can
always be expected.

A call will be made at Bermuda, which lies directly in this
route homeward, and will be reached in about ten days from
Madeira, and after spending a short time with our friends
the Bermudians, the final departure will be made for home,
which will be reached in about three days.

Already, applications have been received from parties in
Europe wishing to join the Excursion there.

The ship will at all times be a home, where the excursionists,
if sick, will be surrounded by kind friends, and have all
possible comfort and sympathy.

Should contagious sickness exist in any of the ports named
in the program, such ports will be passed, and others of
interest substituted.

The price of passage is fixed at $1,250, currency, for each
adult passenger. Choice of rooms and of seats at the tables

apportioned in the order in which passages are engaged;
and no passage considered engaged until ten percent of the
passage money is deposited with the treasurer.

Passengers can remain on board of the steamer, at all ports,
if they desire, without additional expense, and all boating at
the expense of the ship.

All passages must be paid for when taken, in order that the
most perfect arrangements be made for starting at the
appointed time.

Applications for passage must be approved by the committee
before tickets are issued, and can be made to the
undersigned.

Articles of interest or curiosity, procured by the passengers
during the voyage, may be brought home in the steamer free
of charge.

Five dollars per day, in gold, it is believed, will be a fair
calculation to make for all traveling expenses onshore and
at the various points where passengers may wish to leave the
steamer for days at a time.

The trip can be extended, and the route changed, by
unanimous vote of the passengers.

CHAS. C. DUNCAN, 117 WALL STREET, NEW YORK

R. R. G******, Treasurer

Committee on Applications

J. T. H*****, ESQ. R. R. G*****, ESQ. C. C. Duncan

Committee on Selecting Steamer

CAPT. W. W. S* * * *, Surveyor for Board of Underwriters

C. W. C******, Consulting Engineer for U.S. and Canada

J. T. H*****, Esq.

C. C. DUNCAN

P.S.—The very beautiful and substantial side-wheel
steamship “Quaker City” has been chartered for the
occasion, and will leave New York June 8th. Letters have
been issued by the government commending the party to
courtesies abroad.

What was there lacking about that program to make it perfectly
irresistible? Nothing that any finite mind could discover. Paris, England,
Scotland, Switzerland, Italy—Garibaldi! The Grecian Archipelago!
Vesuvius! Constantinople! Smyrna! The Holy Land! Egypt and “our friends
the Bermudians”! People in Europe desiring to join the excursion—
contagious sickness to be avoided—boating at the expense of the ship—
physician on board—the circuit of the globe to be made if the passengers
unanimously desired it—the company to be rigidly selected by a pitiless
“Committee on Applications”—the vessel to be as rigidly selected by as
pitiless a “Committee on Selecting Steamer.” Human nature could not
withstand these bewildering temptations. I hurried to the treasurer’s office
and deposited my ten percent. I rejoiced to know that a few vacant

staterooms were still left. I did avoid a critical personal examination into
my character by that bowelless committee, but I referred to all the people of
high standing I could think of in the community who would be least likely
to know anything about me.
Shortly a supplementary program was issued which set forth that the
Plymouth Collection of Hymns would be used on board the ship. I then paid
the balance of my passage money.
I was provided with a receipt and duly and officially accepted as an
excursionist. There was happiness in that but it was tame compared to the
novelty of being “select.”
This supplementary program also instructed the excursionists to provide
themselves with light musical instruments for amusement in the ship, with
saddles for Syrian travel, green spectacles and umbrellas, veils for Egypt,
and substantial clothing to use in rough pilgrimizing in the Holy Land.
Furthermore, it was suggested that although the ship’s library would afford
a fair amount of reading matter, it would still be well if each passenger
would provide himself with a few guidebooks, a Bible, and some standard
works of travel. A list was appended, which consisted chiefly of books
relating to the Holy Land, since the Holy Land was part of the excursion
and seemed to be its main feature.
Reverend Henry Ward Beecher was to have accompanied the expedition,
but urgent duties obliged him to give up the idea. There were other
passengers who could have been spared better and would have been spared
more willingly. Lieutenant General Sherman was to have been of the party
also, but the Indian war compelled his presence on the plains. A popular
actress had entered her name on the ship’s books, but something interfered
and she couldn’t go. The “Drummer Boy of the Potomac” deserted, and lo,
we had never a celebrity left!
However, we were to have a “battery of guns” from the Navy Department
(as per advertisement) to be used in answering royal salutes; and the
document furnished by the Secretary of the Navy, which was to make
“General Sherman and party” welcome guests in the courts and camps of
the old world, was still left to us, though both document and battery, I think,
were shorn of somewhat of their original august proportions. However, had
not we the seductive program still, with its Paris, its Constantinople,
Smyrna, Jerusalem, Jericho, and “our friends the Bermudians?” What did

we care?

CHAPTER II.
Occasionally, during the following month, I dropped in at 117 Wall Street
to inquire how the repairing and refurnishing of the vessel was coming on,
how additions to the passenger list were averaging, how many people the
committee were decreeing not “select” every day and banishing in sorrow
and tribulation. I was glad to know that we were to have a little printing
press on board and issue a daily newspaper of our own. I was glad to learn
that our piano, our parlor organ, and our melodeon were to be the best
instruments of the kind that could be had in the market. I was proud to
observe that among our excursionists were three ministers of the gospel,
eight doctors, sixteen or eighteen ladies, several military and naval
chieftains with sounding titles, an ample crop of “Professors” of various
kinds, and a gentleman who had “COMMISSIONER OF THE UNITED
STATES OF AMERICA TO EUROPE, ASIA, AND AFRICA” thundering
after his name in one awful blast! I had carefully prepared myself to take
rather a back seat in that ship because of the uncommonly select material
that would alone be permitted to pass through the camel’s eye of that
committee on credentials; I had schooled myself to expect an imposing
array of military and naval heroes and to have to set that back seat still
further back in consequence of it maybe; but I state frankly that I was all
unprepared for this crusher.
I fell under that titular avalanche a torn and blighted thing. I said that if
that potentate must go over in our ship, why, I supposed he must—but that
to my thinking, when the United States considered it necessary to send a
dignitary of that tonnage across the ocean, it would be in better taste, and
safer, to take him apart and cart him over in sections in several ships.
Ah, if I had only known then that he was only a common mortal, and that
his mission had nothing more overpowering about it than the collecting of
seeds and uncommon yams and extraordinary cabbages and peculiar
bullfrogs for that poor, useless, innocent, mildewed old fossil the
Smithsonian Institute, I would have felt so much relieved.
During that memorable month I basked in the happiness of being for
once in my life drifting with the tide of a great popular movement.

Everybody was going to Europe—I, too, was going to Europe. Everybody
was going to the famous Paris Exposition—I, too, was going to the Paris
Exposition. The steamship lines were carrying Americans out of the various
ports of the country at the rate of four or five thousand a week in the
aggregate. If I met a dozen individuals during that month who were not
going to Europe shortly, I have no distinct remembrance of it now. I walked
about the city a good deal with a young Mr. Blucher, who was booked for
the excursion. He was confiding, good-natured, unsophisticated,
companionable; but he was not a man to set the river on fire. He had the
most extraordinary notions about this European exodus and came at last to
consider the whole nation as packing up for emigration to France. We
stepped into a store on Broadway one day, where he bought a handkerchief,
and when the man could not make change, Mr. B. said:

“Never mind, I’ll hand it to you in Paris.”
“But I am not going to Paris.”

“How is—what did I understand you to say?”
“I said I am not going to Paris.”
“Not going to Paris! Not g—— well, then, where in the nation are you
going to?”
“Nowhere at all.”
“Not anywhere whatsoever?—not any place on earth but this?”
“Not any place at all but just this—stay here all summer.”
My comrade took his purchase and walked out of the store without a
word—walked out with an injured look upon his countenance. Up the street
apiece he broke silence and said impressively: “It was a lie—that is my
opinion of it!”
In the fullness of time the ship was ready to receive her passengers. I was
introduced to the young gentleman who was to be my roommate, and found
him to be intelligent, cheerful of spirit, unselfish, full of generous impulses,
patient, considerate, and wonderfully good-natured. Not any passenger that
sailed in the Quaker City will withhold his endorsement of what I have just
said. We selected a stateroom forward of the wheel, on the starboard side,
“below decks.” It had two berths in it, a dismal dead-light, a sink with a
washbowl in it, and a long, sumptuously cushioned locker, which was to do
service as a sofa—partly—and partly as a hiding place for our things.
Notwithstanding all this furniture, there was still room to turn around in, but
not to swing a cat in, at least with entire security to the cat. However, the
room was large, for a ship’s stateroom, and was in every way satisfactory.
The vessel was appointed to sail on a certain Saturday early in June.
A little after noon on that distinguished Saturday I reached the ship and
went on board. All was bustle and confusion. [I have seen that remark
before somewhere.] The pier was crowded with carriages and men;
passengers were arriving and hurrying on board; the vessel’s decks were
encumbered with trunks and valises; groups of excursionists, arrayed in
unattractive traveling costumes, were moping about in a drizzling rain and
looking as droopy and woebegone as so many molting chickens. The gallant
flag was up, but it was under the spell, too, and hung limp and disheartened
by the mast. Altogether, it was the bluest, bluest spectacle! It was a pleasure
excursion—there was no gainsaying that, because the program said so—it
was so nominated in the bond—but it surely hadn’t the general aspect of

one.

Finally, above the banging, and rumbling, and shouting, and hissing of
steam rang the order to “cast off!”—a sudden rush to the gangways—a
scampering ashore of visitors—a revolution of the wheels, and we were off
—the pic-nic was begun! Two very mild cheers went up from the dripping
crowd on the pier; we answered them gently from the slippery decks; the
flag made an effort to wave, and failed; the “battery of guns” spake not—
the ammunition was out.
We steamed down to the foot of the harbor and came to anchor. It was
still raining. And not only raining, but storming. “Outside” we could see,
ourselves, that there was a tremendous sea on. We must lie still, in the calm
harbor, till the storm should abate. Our passengers hailed from fifteen
states; only a few of them had ever been to sea before; manifestly it would
not do to pit them against a full-blown tempest until they had got their sea-
legs on. Toward evening the two steam tugs that had accompanied us with a
rollicking champagne-party of young New Yorkers on board who wished to
bid farewell to one of our number in due and ancient form departed, and we
were alone on the deep. On deep five fathoms, and anchored fast to the
bottom. And out in the solemn rain, at that. This was pleasuring with a
vengeance.

It was an appropriate relief when the gong sounded for prayer meeting.
The first Saturday night of any other pleasure excursion might have been
devoted to whist and dancing; but I submit it to the unprejudiced mind if it
would have been in good taste for us to engage in such frivolities,
considering what we had gone through and the frame of mind we were in.
We would have shone at a wake, but not at anything more festive.
However, there is always a cheering influence about the sea; and in my
berth that night, rocked by the measured swell of the waves and lulled by
the murmur of the distant surf, I soon passed tranquilly out of all
consciousness of the dreary experiences of the day and damaging
premonitions of the future.

CHAPTER III.
All day Sunday at anchor. The storm had gone down a great deal, but the
sea had not. It was still piling its frothy hills high in air “outside,” as we
could plainly see with the glasses. We could not properly begin a pleasure
excursion on Sunday; we could not offer untried stomachs to so pitiless a
sea as that. We must lie still till Monday. And we did. But we had
repetitions of church and prayer-meetings; and so, of course, we were just
as eligibly situated as we could have been any where.
I was up early that Sabbath morning and was early to breakfast. I felt a
perfectly natural desire to have a good, long, unprejudiced look at the
passengers at a time when they should be free from self-consciousness—
which is at breakfast, when such a moment occurs in the lives of human
beings at all.
I was greatly surprised to see so many elderly people—I might almost
say, so many venerable people. A glance at the long lines of heads was apt
to make one think it was all gray. But it was not. There was a tolerably fair
sprinkling of young folks, and another fair sprinkling of gentlemen and
ladies who were non-committal as to age, being neither actually old or
absolutely young.
The next morning we weighed anchor and went to sea. It was a great
happiness to get away after this dragging, dispiriting delay. I thought there
never was such gladness in the air before, such brightness in the sun, such
beauty in the sea. I was satisfied with the picnic then and with all its
belongings. All my malicious instincts were dead within me; and as
America faded out of sight, I think a spirit of charity rose up in their place
that was as boundless, for the time being, as the broad ocean that was
heaving its billows about us. I wished to express my feelings—I wished to
lift up my voice and sing; but I did not know anything to sing, and so I was
obliged to give up the idea. It was no loss to the ship, though, perhaps.
It was breezy and pleasant, but the sea was still very rough. One could
not promenade without risking his neck; at one moment the bowsprit was
taking a deadly aim at the sun in midheaven, and at the next it was trying to

harpoon a shark in the bottom of the ocean. What a weird sensation it is to
feel the stern of a ship sinking swiftly from under you and see the bow
climbing high away among the clouds! One’s safest course that day was to
clasp a railing and hang on; walking was too precarious a pastime.
By some happy fortune I was not seasick.—That was a thing to be proud
of. I had not always escaped before. If there is one thing in the world that
will make a man peculiarly and insufferably self-conceited, it is to have his
stomach behave itself, the first day at sea, when nearly all his comrades are
seasick. Soon a venerable fossil, shawled to the chin and bandaged like a
mummy, appeared at the door of the after deck-house, and the next lurch of
the ship shot him into my arms. I said:

“Good-morning, Sir. It is a fine day.”
He put his hand on his stomach and said, “Oh, my!” and then staggered
away and fell over the coop of a skylight.
Presently another old gentleman was projected from the same door with
great violence. I said:
“Calm yourself, Sir—There is no hurry. It is a fine day, Sir.”

He, also, put his hand on his stomach and said “Oh, my!” and reeled
away.
In a little while another veteran was discharged abruptly from the same
door, clawing at the air for a saving support. I said:
“Good morning, Sir. It is a fine day for pleasuring. You were about to say
—”
“Oh, my!”
I thought so. I anticipated him, anyhow. I stayed there and was
bombarded with old gentlemen for an hour, perhaps; and all I got out of any
of them was “Oh, my!”
I went away then in a thoughtful mood. I said, this is a good pleasure
excursion. I like it. The passengers are not garrulous, but still they are
sociable. I like those old people, but somehow they all seem to have the
“Oh, my” rather bad.
I knew what was the matter with them. They were seasick. And I was
glad of it. We all like to see people seasick when we are not, ourselves.
Playing whist by the cabin lamps when it is storming outside is pleasant;
walking the quarterdeck in the moonlight is pleasant; smoking in the breezy
foretop is pleasant when one is not afraid to go up there; but these are all
feeble and commonplace compared with the joy of seeing people suffering
the miseries of seasickness.
I picked up a good deal of information during the afternoon. At one time
I was climbing up the quarterdeck when the vessel’s stem was in the sky; I
was smoking a cigar and feeling passably comfortable. Somebody
ejaculated:
“Come, now, that won’t answer. Read the sign up there—NO SMOKING
ABAFT THE WHEEL!”
It was Captain Duncan, chief of the expedition. I went forward, of
course. I saw a long spyglass lying on a desk in one of the upper-deck state-
rooms back of the pilot-house and reached after it—there was a ship in the
distance.
“Ah, ah—hands off! Come out of that!”
I came out of that. I said to a deck-sweep—but in a low voice:

“Who is that overgrown pirate with the whiskers and the discordant
voice?"

“It’s Captain Bursley—executive officer—sailing master.”
I loitered about awhile, and then, for want of something better to do, fell
to carving a railing with my knife. Somebody said, in an insinuating,
admonitory voice:
“Now, say—my friend—don’t you know any better than to be whittling
the ship all to pieces that way? You ought to know better than that.”
I went back and found the deck sweep.
“Who is that smooth-faced, animated outrage yonder in the fine clothes?”
“That’s Captain L****, the owner of the ship—he’s one of the main
bosses.”
In the course of time I brought up on the starboard side of the pilot-house
and found a sextant lying on a bench. Now, I said, they “take the sun”
through this thing; I should think I might see that vessel through it. I had
hardly got it to my eye when someone touched me on the shoulder and said
deprecatingly:

“I’ll have to get you to give that to me, Sir. If there’s anything you’d like
to know about taking the sun, I’d as soon tell you as not—but I don’t like to
trust anybody with that instrument. If you want any figuring done—Aye,
aye, sir!”
He was gone to answer a call from the other side. I sought the deck-
sweep.
“Who is that spider-legged gorilla yonder with the sanctimonious
countenance?”
“It’s Captain Jones, sir—the chief mate.”
“Well. This goes clear away ahead of anything I ever heard of before. Do
you—now I ask you as a man and a brother—do you think I could venture
to throw a rock here in any given direction without hitting a captain of this
ship?”
“Well, sir, I don’t know—I think likely you’d fetch the captain of the
watch may be, because he’s a-standing right yonder in the way.”
I went below—meditating and a little downhearted. I thought, if five
cooks can spoil a broth, what may not five captains do with a pleasure
excursion.

CHAPTER IV.
We plowed along bravely for a week or more, and without any conflict of
jurisdiction among the captains worth mentioning. The passengers soon
learned to accommodate themselves to their new circumstances, and life in
the ship became nearly as systematically monotonous as the routine of a
barrack. I do not mean that it was dull, for it was not entirely so by any
means—but there was a good deal of sameness about it. As is always the
fashion at sea, the passengers shortly began to pick up sailor terms—a sign
that they were beginning to feel at home. Half-past six was no longer half-
past six to these pilgrims from New England, the South, and the Mississippi
Valley, it was “seven bells”; eight, twelve, and four o’clock were “eight
bells”; the captain did not take the longitude at nine o’clock, but at “two
bells.” They spoke glibly of the “after cabin,” the “for’rard cabin,” “port
and starboard” and the “fo’castle.”
At seven bells the first gong rang; at eight there was breakfast, for such
as were not too seasick to eat it. After that all the well people walked arm-
in-arm up and down the long promenade deck, enjoying the fine summer
mornings, and the seasick ones crawled out and propped themselves up in
the lee of the paddle-boxes and ate their dismal tea and toast, and looked
wretched. From eleven o’clock until luncheon, and from luncheon until
dinner at six in the evening, the employments and amusements were
various. Some reading was done, and much smoking and sewing, though
not by the same parties; there were the monsters of the deep to be looked
after and wondered at; strange ships had to be scrutinized through opera-
glasses, and sage decisions arrived at concerning them; and more than that,
everybody took a personal interest in seeing that the flag was run up and
politely dipped three times in response to the salutes of those strangers; in
the smoking room there were always parties of gentlemen playing euchre,
draughts and dominoes, especially dominoes, that delightfully harmless
game; and down on the main deck, “for’rard”—for’rard of the chicken-
coops and the cattle—we had what was called “horse billiards.” Horse
billiards is a fine game. It affords good, active exercise, hilarity, and
consuming excitement. It is a mixture of “hop-scotch” and shuffleboard

played with a crutch. A large hop-scotch diagram is marked out on the deck
with chalk, and each compartment numbered. You stand off three or four
steps, with some broad wooden disks before you on the deck, and these you
send forward with a vigorous thrust of a long crutch. If a disk stops on a
chalk line, it does not count anything. If it stops in division No. 7, it counts
7; in 5, it counts 5, and so on. The game is 100, and four can play at a time.
That game would be very simple played on a stationary floor, but with us,
to play it well required science. We had to allow for the reeling of the ship
to the right or the left. Very often one made calculations for a heel to the
right and the ship did not go that way. The consequence was that that disk
missed the whole hopscotch plan a yard or two, and then there was
humiliation on one side and laughter on the other.
When it rained the passengers had to stay in the house, of course—or at
least the cabins—and amuse themselves with games, reading, looking out
of the windows at the very familiar billows, and talking gossip.
By 7 o’clock in the evening, dinner was about over; an hour’s promenade
on the upper deck followed; then the gong sounded and a large majority of
the party repaired to the after cabin (upper), a handsome saloon fifty or
sixty feet long, for prayers. The unregenerated called this saloon the
“Synagogue.” The devotions consisted only of two hymns from the
Plymouth Collection and a short prayer, and seldom occupied more than
fifteen minutes. The hymns were accompanied by parlor-organ music when
the sea was smooth enough to allow a performer to sit at the instrument
without being lashed to his chair.
After prayers the Synagogue shortly took the semblance of a writing
school. The like of that picture was never seen in a ship before. Behind the
long dining tables on either side of the saloon, and scattered from one end
to the other of the latter, some twenty or thirty gentlemen and ladies sat
them down under the swaying lamps and for two or three hours wrote
diligently in their journals. Alas! that journals so voluminously begun
should come to so lame and impotent a conclusion as most of them did! I
doubt if there is a single pilgrim of all that host but can show a hundred fair
pages of journal concerning the first twenty days’ voyaging in the Quaker
City, and I am morally certain that not ten of the party can show twenty
pages of journal for the succeeding twenty thousand miles of voyaging! At
certain periods it becomes the dearest ambition of a man to keep a faithful

record of his performances in a book; and he dashes at this work with an
enthusiasm that imposes on him the notion that keeping a journal is the
veriest pastime in the world, and the pleasantest. But if he only lives
twenty-one days, he will find out that only those rare natures that are made
up of pluck, endurance, devotion to duty for duty’s sake, and invincible
determination may hope to venture upon so tremendous an enterprise as the
keeping of a journal and not sustain a shameful defeat.
One of our favorite youths, Jack, a splendid young fellow with a head full
of good sense, and a pair of legs that were a wonder to look upon in the way
of length and straightness and slimness, used to report progress every
morning in the most glowing and spirited way, and say:
“Oh, I’m coming along bully!” (he was a little given to slang in his
happier moods.) “I wrote ten pages in my journal last night—and you know
I wrote nine the night before and twelve the night before that. Why, it’s only
fun!”
“What do you find to put in it, Jack?”
“Oh, everything. Latitude and longitude, noon every day; and how many
miles we made last twenty-four hours; and all the domino games I beat and
horse billiards; and whales and sharks and porpoises; and the text of the
sermon Sundays (because that’ll tell at home, you know); and the ships we
saluted and what nation they were; and which way the wind was, and
whether there was a heavy sea, and what sail we carried, though we don’t
ever carry any, principally, going against a head wind always—wonder
what is the reason of that?—and how many lies Moult has told—Oh, every
thing! I’ve got everything down. My father told me to keep that journal.
Father wouldn’t take a thousand dollars for it when I get it done.”
“No, Jack; it will be worth more than a thousand dollars—when you get
it done.”
“Do you?—no, but do you think it will, though?
“Yes, it will be worth at least as much as a thousand dollars—when you
get it done. May be more.”
“Well, I about half think so, myself. It ain’t no slouch of a journal.”
But it shortly became a most lamentable “slouch of a journal.” One night
in Paris, after a hard day’s toil in sightseeing, I said:

“Now I’ll go and stroll around the cafes awhile, Jack, and give you a
chance to write up your journal, old fellow.”
His countenance lost its fire. He said:
“Well, no, you needn’t mind. I think I won’t run that journal anymore. It
is awful tedious. Do you know—I reckon I’m as much as four thousand
pages behind hand. I haven’t got any France in it at all. First I thought I’d
leave France out and start fresh. But that wouldn’t do, would it? The
governor would say, ‘Hello, here—didn’t see anything in France? That cat
wouldn’t fight, you know. First I thought I’d copy France out of the guide-
book, like old Badger in the for’rard cabin, who’s writing a book, but
there’s more than three hundred pages of it. Oh, I don’t think a journal’s any
use—do you? They’re only a bother, ain’t they?”
“Yes, a journal that is incomplete isn’t of much use, but a journal
properly kept is worth a thousand dollars—when you’ve got it done.”
“A thousand!—well, I should think so. I wouldn’t finish it for a million.”
His experience was only the experience of the majority of that
industrious night school in the cabin. If you wish to inflict a heartless and
malignant punishment upon a young person, pledge him to keep a journal a
year.
A good many expedients were resorted to to keep the excursionists
amused and satisfied. A club was formed, of all the passengers, which met
in the writing school after prayers and read aloud about the countries we
were approaching and discussed the information so obtained.
Several times the photographer of the expedition brought out his
transparent pictures and gave us a handsome magic-lantern exhibition. His
views were nearly all of foreign scenes, but there were one or two home
pictures among them. He advertised that he would “open his performance in
the after cabin at ‘two bells’ (nine P.M.) and show the passengers where
they shall eventually arrive”—which was all very well, but by a funny
accident the first picture that flamed out upon the canvas was a view of
Greenwood Cemetery!
On several starlight nights we danced on the upper deck, under the
awnings, and made something of a ball-room display of brilliancy by
hanging a number of ship’s lanterns to the stanchions. Our music consisted
of the well-mixed strains of a melodeon which was a little asthmatic and apt

to catch its breath where it ought to come out strong, a clarinet which was a
little unreliable on the high keys and rather melancholy on the low ones,
and a disreputable accordion that had a leak somewhere and breathed louder
than it squawked—a more elegant term does not occur to me just now.
However, the dancing was infinitely worse than the music. When the ship
rolled to starboard the whole platoon of dancers came charging down to
starboard with it, and brought up in mass at the rail; and when it rolled to
port they went floundering down to port with the same unanimity of
sentiment. Waltzers spun around precariously for a matter of fifteen seconds
and then went scurrying down to the rail as if they meant to go overboard.
The Virginia reel, as performed on board the Quaker City, had more
genuine reel about it than any reel I ever saw before, and was as full of
interest to the spectator as it was full of desperate chances and hairbreadth
escapes to the participant. We gave up dancing, finally.

We celebrated a lady’s birthday anniversary with toasts, speeches, a
poem, and so forth. We also had a mock trial. No ship ever went to sea that
hadn’t a mock trial on board. The purser was accused of stealing an
overcoat from stateroom No. 10. A judge was appointed; also clerks, a crier
of the court, constables, sheriffs; counsel for the State and for the defendant;

witnesses were subpoenaed, and a jury empaneled after much challenging.
The witnesses were stupid and unreliable and contradictory, as witnesses
always are. The counsel were eloquent, argumentative, and vindictively
abusive of each other, as was characteristic and proper. The case was at last
submitted and duly finished by the judge with an absurd decision and a
ridiculous sentence.

The acting of charades was tried on several evenings by the young
gentlemen and ladies, in the cabins, and proved the most distinguished
success of all the amusement experiments.
An attempt was made to organize a debating club, but it was a failure.
There was no oratorical talent in the ship.
We all enjoyed ourselves—I think I can safely say that, but it was in a
rather quiet way. We very, very seldom played the piano; we played the
flute and the clarinet together, and made good music, too, what there was of
it, but we always played the same old tune; it was a very pretty tune—how
well I remember it—I wonder when I shall ever get rid of it. We never
played either the melodeon or the organ except at devotions—but I am too
fast: young Albert did know part of a tune something about “O Something-
Or-Other How Sweet It Is to Know That He’s His What’s-his-Name” (I do
not remember the exact title of it, but it was very plaintive and full of

sentiment); Albert played that pretty much all the time until we contracted
with him to restrain himself. But nobody ever sang by moonlight on the
upper deck, and the congregational singing at church and prayers was not of
a superior order of architecture. I put up with it as long as I could and then
joined in and tried to improve it, but this encouraged young George to join
in too, and that made a failure of it; because George’s voice was just
“turning,” and when he was singing a dismal sort of bass it was apt to fly
off the handle and startle everybody with a most discordant cackle on the
upper notes. George didn’t know the tunes, either, which was also a
drawback to his performances. I said:
“Come, now, George, don’t improvise. It looks too egotistical. It will
provoke remark. Just stick to ‘Coronation,’ like the others. It is a good tune
—you can’t improve it any, just off-hand, in this way.”
“Why, I’m not trying to improve it—and I am singing like the others—
just as it is in the notes.”
And he honestly thought he was, too; and so he had no one to blame but
himself when his voice caught on the center occasionally and gave him the
lockjaw.
There were those among the unregenerated who attributed the unceasing
head-winds to our distressing choir-music. There were those who said
openly that it was taking chances enough to have such ghastly music going
on, even when it was at its best; and that to exaggerate the crime by letting
George help was simply flying in the face of Providence. These said that the
choir would keep up their lacerating attempts at melody until they would
bring down a storm some day that would sink the ship.
There were even grumblers at the prayers. The executive officer said the
pilgrims had no charity:
“There they are, down there every night at eight bells, praying for fair
winds—when they know as well as I do that this is the only ship going east
this time of the year, but there’s a thousand coming west—what’s a fair
wind for us is a head wind to them—the Almighty’s blowing a fair wind for
a thousand vessels, and this tribe wants him to turn it clear around so as to
accommodate one—and she a steamship at that! It ain’t good sense, it ain’t
good reason, it ain’t good Christianity, it ain’t common human charity.
Avast with such nonsense!”

CHAPTER V.
Taking it “by and large,” as the sailors say, we had a pleasant ten days’
run from New York to the Azores islands—not a fast run, for the distance is
only twenty-four hundred miles, but a right pleasant one in the main. True,
we had head winds all the time, and several stormy experiences which sent
fifty percent of the passengers to bed sick and made the ship look dismal
and deserted—stormy experiences that all will remember who weathered
them on the tumbling deck and caught the vast sheets of spray that every
now and then sprang high in air from the weather bow and swept the ship
like a thunder-shower; but for the most part we had balmy summer weather
and nights that were even finer than the days. We had the phenomenon of a
full moon located just in the same spot in the heavens at the same hour
every night. The reason of this singular conduct on the part of the moon did
not occur to us at first, but it did afterward when we reflected that we were
gaining about twenty minutes every day because we were going east so fast
—we gained just about enough every day to keep along with the moon. It
was becoming an old moon to the friends we had left behind us, but to us
Joshuas it stood still in the same place and remained always the same.
Young Mr. Blucher, who is from the Far West and is on his first voyage,
was a good deal worried by the constantly changing “ship time.” He was
proud of his new watch at first and used to drag it out promptly when eight
bells struck at noon, but he came to look after a while as if he were losing
confidence in it. Seven days out from New York he came on deck and said
with great decision:
“This thing’s a swindle!”
“What’s a swindle?”
“Why, this watch. I bought her out in Illinois—gave $150 for her—and I
thought she was good. And, by George, she is good onshore, but somehow
she don’t keep up her lick here on the water—gets seasick may be. She
skips; she runs along regular enough till half-past eleven, and then, all of a
sudden, she lets down. I’ve set that old regulator up faster and faster, till
I’ve shoved it clear around, but it don’t do any good; she just distances

every watch in the ship, and clatters along in a way that’s astonishing till it
is noon, but them eight bells always gets in about ten minutes ahead of her
anyway. I don’t know what to do with her now. She’s doing all she can—
she’s going her best gait, but it won’t save her. Now, don’t you know, there
ain’t a watch in the ship that’s making better time than she is, but what does
it signify? When you hear them eight bells you’ll find her just about ten
minutes short of her score sure.”
The ship was gaining a full hour every three days, and this fellow was
trying to make his watch go fast enough to keep up to her. But, as he had
said, he had pushed the regulator up as far as it would go, and the watch
was “on its best gait,” and so nothing was left him but to fold his hands and
see the ship beat the race. We sent him to the captain, and he explained to
him the mystery of “ship time” and set his troubled mind at rest. This young
man asked a great many questions about seasickness before we left, and
wanted to know what its characteristics were and how he was to tell when
he had it. He found out.
We saw the usual sharks, blackfish, porpoises, etc., of course, and by and
by large schools of Portuguese men-of-war were added to the regular list of
sea wonders. Some of them were white and some of a brilliant carmine
color. The nautilus is nothing but a transparent web of jelly that spreads
itself to catch the wind, and has fleshy-looking strings a foot or two long
dangling from it to keep it steady in the water. It is an accomplished sailor
and has good sailor judgment. It reefs its sail when a storm threatens or the
wind blows pretty hard, and furls it entirely and goes down when a gale
blows. Ordinarily it keeps its sail wet and in good sailing order by turning
over and dipping it in the water for a moment. Seamen say the nautilus is
only found in these waters between the 35th and 45th parallels of latitude.

At three o’clock on the morning of the twenty-first of June, we were
awakened and notified that the Azores islands were in sight. I said I did not
take any interest in islands at three o’clock in the morning. But another
persecutor came, and then another and another, and finally believing that
the general enthusiasm would permit no one to slumber in peace, I got up
and went sleepily on deck. It was five and a half o’clock now, and a raw,
blustering morning. The passengers were huddled about the smoke-stacks
and fortified behind ventilators, and all were wrapped in wintry costumes
and looking sleepy and unhappy in the pitiless gale and the drenching spray.
The island in sight was Flores. It seemed only a mountain of mud
standing up out of the dull mists of the sea. But as we bore down upon it the
sun came out and made it a beautiful picture—a mass of green farms and
meadows that swelled up to a height of fifteen hundred feet and mingled its
upper outlines with the clouds. It was ribbed with sharp, steep ridges and
cloven with narrow canyons, and here and there on the heights, rocky
upheavals shaped themselves into mimic battlements and castles; and out of
rifted clouds came broad shafts of sunlight, that painted summit, and slope
and glen, with bands of fire, and left belts of somber shade between. It was
the aurora borealis of the frozen pole exiled to a summer land!
We skirted around two-thirds of the island, four miles from shore, and all
the opera glasses in the ship were called into requisition to settle disputes as
to whether mossy spots on the uplands were groves of trees or groves of
weeds, or whether the white villages down by the sea were really villages or

only the clustering tombstones of cemeteries. Finally we stood to sea and
bore away for San Miguel, and Flores shortly became a dome of mud again
and sank down among the mists, and disappeared. But to many a seasick
passenger it was good to see the green hills again, and all were more
cheerful after this episode than anybody could have expected them to be,
considering how sinfully early they had gotten up.
But we had to change our purpose about San Miguel, for a storm came up
about noon that so tossed and pitched the vessel that common sense dictated
a run for shelter. Therefore we steered for the nearest island of the group—
Fayal (the people there pronounce it Fy-all, and put the accent on the first
syllable). We anchored in the open roadstead of Horta, half a mile from the
shore. The town has eight thousand to ten thousand inhabitants. Its snow-
white houses nestle cosily in a sea of fresh green vegetation, and no village
could look prettier or more attractive. It sits in the lap of an amphitheater of
hills which are three hundred to seven hundred feet high, and carefully
cultivated clear to their summits—not a foot of soil left idle. Every farm
and every acre is cut up into little square inclosures by stone walls, whose
duty it is to protect the growing products from the destructive gales that
blow there. These hundreds of green squares, marked by their black lava
walls, make the hills look like vast checkerboards.
The islands belong to Portugal, and everything in Fayal has Portuguese
characteristics about it. But more of that anon. A swarm of swarthy, noisy,
lying, shoulder-shrugging, gesticulating Portuguese boatmen, with brass
rings in their ears and fraud in their hearts, climbed the ship’s sides, and
various parties of us contracted with them to take us ashore at so much a
head, silver coin of any country. We landed under the walls of a little fort,
armed with batteries of twelve-and-thirty-two-pounders, which Horta
considered a most formidable institution, but if we were ever to get after it
with one of our turreted monitors, they would have to move it out in the
country if they wanted it where they could go and find it again when they
needed it. The group on the pier was a rusty one—men and women, and
boys and girls, all ragged and barefoot, uncombed and unclean, and by
instinct, education, and profession beggars. They trooped after us, and never
more while we tarried in Fayal did we get rid of them. We walked up the
middle of the principal street, and these vermin surrounded us on all sides
and glared upon us; and every moment excited couples shot ahead of the
procession to get a good look back, just as village boys do when they

accompany the elephant on his advertising trip from street to street. It was
very flattering to me to be part of the material for such a sensation. Here
and there in the doorways we saw women with fashionable Portuguese
hoods on. This hood is of thick blue cloth, attached to a cloak of the same
stuff, and is a marvel of ugliness. It stands up high and spreads far abroad,
and is unfathomably deep. It fits like a circus tent, and a woman’s head is
hidden away in it like the man’s who prompts the singers from his tin shed
in the stage of an opera. There is no particle of trimming about this
monstrous capote, as they call it—it is just a plain, ugly dead-blue mass of
sail, and a woman can’t go within eight points of the wind with one of them
on; she has to go before the wind or not at all. The general style of the
capote is the same in all the islands, and will remain so for the next ten
thousand years, but each island shapes its capotes just enough differently
from the others to enable an observer to tell at a glance what particular
island a lady hails from.

The Portuguese pennies, or reis (pronounced rays), are prodigious. It
takes one thousand reis to make a dollar, and all financial estimates are
made in reis. We did not know this until after we had found it out through
Blucher. Blucher said he was so happy and so grateful to be on solid land
once more that he wanted to give a feast—said he had heard it was a cheap
land, and he was bound to have a grand banquet. He invited nine of us, and
we ate an excellent dinner at the principal hotel. In the midst of the jollity
produced by good cigars, good wine, and passable anecdotes, the landlord
presented his bill. Blucher glanced at it and his countenance fell. He took
another look to assure himself that his senses had not deceived him and then

read the items aloud, in a faltering voice, while the roses in his cheeks
turned to ashes:
“‘Ten dinners, at 600 reis, 6,000 reis!’ Ruin and desolation!
“‘Twenty-five cigars, at 100 reis, 2,500 reis!’ Oh, my sainted mother!
“‘Eleven bottles of wine, at 1,200 reis, 13,200 reis!’ Be with us all!
“‘TOTAL, TWENTY-ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED REIS!’
The suffering Moses! There ain’t money enough in the ship to pay that bill!
Go—leave me to my misery, boys, I am a ruined community."

I think it was the blankest-looking party I ever saw. Nobody could say a
word. It was as if every soul had been stricken dumb. Wine glasses
descended slowly to the table, their contents untasted. Cigars dropped
unnoticed from nerveless fingers. Each man sought his neighbor’s eye, but
found in it no ray of hope, no encouragement. At last the fearful silence was
broken. The shadow of a desperate resolve settled upon Blucher’s
countenance like a cloud, and he rose up and said:
“Landlord, this is a low, mean swindle, and I’ll never, never stand it.
Here’s a hundred and fifty dollars, Sir, and it’s all you’ll get—I’ll swim in

blood before I’ll pay a cent more.”
Our spirits rose and the landlord’s fell—at least we thought so; he was
confused, at any rate, notwithstanding he had not understood a word that
had been said. He glanced from the little pile of gold pieces to Blucher
several times and then went out. He must have visited an American, for
when he returned, he brought back his bill translated into a language that a
Christian could understand—thus:
10 dinners, 6,000 reis, or $6.00
25 cigars, 2,500 reis, or 2.50
11 bottles wine, 13,200 reis, or 13.20
Total 21,700 reis, or $21.70
Happiness reigned once more in Blucher’s dinner party. More
refreshments were ordered.

CHAPTER VI.

I think the Azores must be very little known in America. Out of our
whole ship’s company there was not a solitary individual who knew
anything whatever about them. Some of the party, well read concerning
most other lands, had no other information about the Azores than that they
were a group of nine or ten small islands far out in the Atlantic, something
more than halfway between New York and Gibraltar. That was all. These
considerations move me to put in a paragraph of dry facts just here.
The community is eminently Portuguese—that is to say, it is slow, poor,
shiftless, sleepy, and lazy. There is a civil governor, appointed by the King
of Portugal, and also a military governor, who can assume supreme control
and suspend the civil government at his pleasure. The islands contain a
population of about 200,000, almost entirely Portuguese. Everything is staid
and settled, for the country was one hundred years old when Columbus
discovered America. The principal crop is corn, and they raise it and grind it
just as their great-great-great-grandfathers did. They plow with a board
slightly shod with iron; their trifling little harrows are drawn by men and
women; small windmills grind the corn, ten bushels a day, and there is one
assistant superintendent to feed the mill and a general superintendent to
stand by and keep him from going to sleep. When the wind changes they

hitch on some donkeys and actually turn the whole upper half of the mill
around until the sails are in proper position, instead of fixing the concern so
that the sails could be moved instead of the mill. Oxen tread the wheat from
the ear, after the fashion prevalent in the time of Methuselah. There is not a
wheelbarrow in the land—they carry everything on their heads, or on
donkeys, or in a wicker-bodied cart, whose wheels are solid blocks of wood
and whose axles turn with the wheel. There is not a modern plow in the
islands or a threshing machine. All attempts to introduce them have failed.
The good Catholic Portuguese crossed himself and prayed God to shield
him from all blasphemous desire to know more than his father did before
him. The climate is mild; they never have snow or ice, and I saw no
chimneys in the town. The donkeys and the men, women, and children of a
family all eat and sleep in the same room, and are unclean, are ravaged by
vermin, and are truly happy. The people lie, and cheat the stranger, and are
desperately ignorant, and have hardly any reverence for their dead. The
latter trait shows how little better they are than the donkeys they eat and
sleep with. The only well-dressed Portuguese in the camp are the half a
dozen well-to-do families, the Jesuit priests, and the soldiers of the little
garrison. The wages of a laborer are twenty to twenty-four cents a day, and
those of a good mechanic about twice as much. They count it in reis at a
thousand to the dollar, and this makes them rich and contented. Fine grapes
used to grow in the islands, and an excellent wine was made and exported.
But a disease killed all the vines fifteen years ago, and since that time no
wine has been made. The islands being wholly of volcanic origin, the soil is
necessarily very rich. Nearly every foot of ground is under cultivation, and
two or three crops a year of each article are produced, but nothing is
exported save a few oranges—chiefly to England. Nobody comes here, and
nobody goes away. News is a thing unknown in Fayal. A thirst for it is a
passion equally unknown. A Portuguese of average intelligence inquired if
our civil war was over. Because, he said, somebody had told him it was—or
at least it ran in his mind that somebody had told him something like that!
And when a passenger gave an officer of the garrison copies of the Tribune,
the Herald, and Times, he was surprised to find later news in them from
Lisbon than he had just received by the little monthly steamer. He was told
that it came by cable. He said he knew they had tried to lay a cable ten
years ago, but it had been in his mind somehow that they hadn’t succeeded!

It is in communities like this that Jesuit humbuggery flourishes. We
visited a Jesuit cathedral nearly two hundred years old and found in it a
piece of the veritable cross upon which our Saviour was crucified. It was
polished and hard, and in as excellent a state of preservation as if the dread
tragedy on Calvary had occurred yesterday instead of eighteen centuries
ago. But these confiding people believe in that piece of wood
unhesitatingly.
In a chapel of the cathedral is an altar with facings of solid silver—at
least they call it so, and I think myself it would go a couple of hundred to
the ton (to speak after the fashion of the silver miners)—and before it is
kept forever burning a small lamp. A devout lady who died, left money and
contracted for unlimited masses for the repose of her soul, and also
stipulated that this lamp should be kept lighted always, day and night. She
did all this before she died, you understand. It is a very small lamp and a
very dim one, and it could not work her much damage, I think, if it went out
altogether.
The great altar of the cathedral and also three or four minor ones are a
perfect mass of gilt gimcracks and gingerbread. And they have a swarm of
rusty, dusty, battered apostles standing around the filagree work, some on
one leg and some with one eye out but a gamey look in the other, and some
with two or three fingers gone, and some with not enough nose left to blow
—all of them crippled and discouraged, and fitter subjects for the hospital
than the cathedral.
The walls of the chancel are of porcelain, all pictured over with figures of
almost life size, very elegantly wrought and dressed in the fanciful
costumes of two centuries ago. The design was a history of something or
somebody, but none of us were learned enough to read the story. The old
father, reposing under a stone close by, dated 1686, might have told us if he
could have risen. But he didn’t.
As we came down through the town we encountered a squad of little
donkeys ready saddled for use. The saddles were peculiar, to say the least.
They consisted of a sort of saw-buck with a small mattress on it, and this
furniture covered about half the donkey. There were no stirrups, but really
such supports were not needed—to use such a saddle was the next thing to
riding a dinner table—there was ample support clear out to one’s knee
joints. A pack of ragged Portuguese muleteers crowded around us, offering

their beasts at half a dollar an hour—more rascality to the stranger, for the
market price is sixteen cents. Half a dozen of us mounted the ungainly
affairs and submitted to the indignity of making a ridiculous spectacle of
ourselves through the principal streets of a town of 10,000 inhabitants.
We started. It was not a trot, a gallop, or a canter, but a stampede, and
made up of all possible or conceivable gaits. No spurs were necessary.
There was a muleteer to every donkey and a dozen volunteers beside, and
they banged the donkeys with their goad sticks, and pricked them with their
spikes, and shouted something that sounded like “Sekki-yah!” and kept up a
din and a racket that was worse than Bedlam itself. These rascals were all
on foot, but no matter, they were always up to time—they can outrun and
outlast a donkey. Altogether, ours was a lively and a picturesque procession,
and drew crowded audiences to the balconies wherever we went.

Blucher could do nothing at all with his donkey. The beast scampered
zigzag across the road and the others ran into him; he scraped Blucher
against carts and the corners of houses; the road was fenced in with high
stone walls, and the donkey gave him a polishing first on one side and then
on the other, but never once took the middle; he finally came to the house
he was born in and darted into the parlor, scraping Blucher off at the
doorway. After remounting, Blucher said to the muleteer, “Now, that’s
enough, you know; you go slow hereafter.”
But the fellow knew no English and did not understand, so he simply
said, “Sekki-yah!” and the donkey was off again like a shot. He turned a
corner suddenly, and Blucher went over his head. And, to speak truly, every
mule stumbled over the two, and the whole cavalcade was piled up in a
heap. No harm done. A fall from one of those donkeys is of little more
consequence than rolling off a sofa. The donkeys all stood still after the
catastrophe and waited for their dismembered saddles to be patched up and
put on by the noisy muleteers. Blucher was pretty angry and wanted to
swear, but every time he opened his mouth his animal did so also and let off
a series of brays that drowned all other sounds.

It was fun, scurrying around the breezy hills and through the beautiful
canyons. There was that rare thing, novelty, about it; it was a fresh, new,
exhilarating sensation, this donkey riding, and worth a hundred worn and
threadbare home pleasures.
The roads were a wonder, and well they might be. Here was an island
with only a handful of people in it—25,000—and yet such fine roads do not
exist in the United States outside of Central Park. Everywhere you go, in
any direction, you find either a hard, smooth, level thoroughfare, just
sprinkled with black lava sand, and bordered with little gutters neatly paved
with small smooth pebbles, or compactly paved ones like Broadway. They
talk much of the Russ pavement in New York, and call it a new invention—
yet here they have been using it in this remote little isle of the sea for two
hundred years! Every street in Horta is handsomely paved with the heavy
Russ blocks, and the surface is neat and true as a floor—not marred by
holes like Broadway. And every road is fenced in by tall, solid lava walls,
which will last a thousand years in this land where frost is unknown. They
are very thick, and are often plastered and whitewashed and capped with
projecting slabs of cut stone. Trees from gardens above hang their swaying
tendrils down, and contrast their bright green with the whitewash or the
black lava of the walls and make them beautiful. The trees and vines stretch
across these narrow roadways sometimes and so shut out the sun that you
seem to be riding through a tunnel. The pavements, the roads, and the
bridges are all government work.
The bridges are of a single span—a single arch—of cut stone, without a
support, and paved on top with flags of lava and ornamental pebblework.
Everywhere are walls, walls, walls, and all of them tasteful and handsome
—and eternally substantial; and everywhere are those marvelous
pavements, so neat, so smooth, and so indestructible. And if ever roads and
streets and the outsides of houses were perfectly free from any sign or
semblance of dirt, or dust, or mud, or uncleanliness of any kind, it is Horta,
it is Fayal. The lower classes of the people, in their persons and their
domiciles, are not clean—but there it stops—the town and the island are
miracles of cleanliness.
We arrived home again finally, after a ten-mile excursion, and the
irrepressible muleteers scampered at our heels through the main street,

goading the donkeys, shouting the everlasting “Sekki-yah,” and singing
“John Brown’s Body” in ruinous English.
When we were dismounted and it came to settling, the shouting and
jawing and swearing and quarreling among the muleteers and with us was
nearly deafening. One fellow would demand a dollar an hour for the use of
his donkey; another claimed half a dollar for pricking him up, another a
quarter for helping in that service, and about fourteen guides presented bills
for showing us the way through the town and its environs; and every
vagrant of them was more vociferous, and more vehement and more frantic
in gesture than his neighbor. We paid one guide and paid for one muleteer to
each donkey.
The mountains on some of the islands are very high. We sailed along the
shore of the island of Pico, under a stately green pyramid that rose up with
one unbroken sweep from our very feet to an altitude of 7,613 feet, and
thrust its summit above the white clouds like an island adrift in a fog!
We got plenty of fresh oranges, lemons, figs, apricots, etc., in these
Azores, of course. But I will desist. I am not here to write Patent Office
reports.
We are on our way to Gibraltar, and shall reach there five or six days out
from the Azores.

CHAPTER VII.
A week of buffeting a tempestuous and relentless sea; a week of
seasickness and deserted cabins; of lonely quarterdecks drenched with spray
—spray so ambitious that it even coated the smokestacks thick with a white
crust of salt to their very tops; a week of shivering in the shelter of the
lifeboats and deckhouses by day and blowing suffocating “clouds” and
boisterously performing at dominoes in the smoking room at night.
And the last night of the seven was the stormiest of all. There was no
thunder, no noise but the pounding bows of the ship, the keen whistling of
the gale through the cordage, and the rush of the seething waters. But the
vessel climbed aloft as if she would climb to heaven—then paused an
instant that seemed a century and plunged headlong down again, as from a
precipice. The sheeted sprays drenched the decks like rain. The blackness of
darkness was everywhere. At long intervals a flash of lightning clove it with
a quivering line of fire that revealed a heaving world of water where was
nothing before, kindled the dusky cordage to glittering silver, and lit up the
faces of the men with a ghastly luster!
Fear drove many on deck that were used to avoiding the night winds and
the spray. Some thought the vessel could not live through the night, and it
seemed less dreadful to stand out in the midst of the wild tempest and see
the peril that threatened than to be shut up in the sepulchral cabins, under
the dim lamps, and imagine the horrors that were abroad on the ocean. And
once out—once where they could see the ship struggling in the strong grasp
of the storm—once where they could hear the shriek of the winds and face
the driving spray and look out upon the majestic picture the lightnings
disclosed, they were prisoners to a fierce fascination they could not resist,
and so remained. It was a wild night—and a very, very long one.
Everybody was sent scampering to the deck at seven o’clock this lovely
morning of the thirtieth of June with the glad news that land was in sight! It
was a rare thing and a joyful, to see all the ship’s family abroad once more,
albeit the happiness that sat upon every countenance could only partly
conceal the ravages which that long siege of storms had wrought there. But
dull eyes soon sparkled with pleasure, pallid cheeks flushed again, and

frames weakened by sickness gathered new life from the quickening
influences of the bright, fresh morning. Yea, and from a still more potent
influence: the worn castaways were to see the blessed land again!—and to
see it was to bring back that motherland that was in all their thoughts.
Within the hour we were fairly within the Straits of Gibraltar, the tall
yellow-splotched hills of Africa on our right, with their bases veiled in a
blue haze and their summits swathed in clouds—the same being according
to Scripture, which says that “clouds and darkness are over the land.” The
words were spoken of this particular portion of Africa, I believe. On our left
were the granite-ribbed domes of old Spain. The strait is only thirteen miles
wide in its narrowest part.
At short intervals along the Spanish shore were quaint-looking old stone
towers—Moorish, we thought—but learned better afterwards. In former
times the Morocco rascals used to coast along the Spanish Main in their
boats till a safe opportunity seemed to present itself, and then dart in and
capture a Spanish village and carry off all the pretty women they could find.
It was a pleasant business, and was very popular. The Spaniards built these
watchtowers on the hills to enable them to keep a sharper lookout on the
Moroccan speculators.
The picture on the other hand was very beautiful to eyes weary of the
changeless sea, and by and by the ship’s company grew wonderfully
cheerful. But while we stood admiring the cloud-capped peaks and the
lowlands robed in misty gloom a finer picture burst upon us and chained
every eye like a magnet—a stately ship, with canvas piled on canvas till she
was one towering mass of bellying sail! She came speeding over the sea
like a great bird. Africa and Spain were forgotten. All homage was for the
beautiful stranger. While everybody gazed she swept superbly by and flung
the Stars and Stripes to the breeze! Quicker than thought, hats and
handkerchiefs flashed in the air, and a cheer went up! She was beautiful
before—she was radiant now. Many a one on our decks knew then for the
first time how tame a sight his country’s flag is at home compared to what it
is in a foreign land. To see it is to see a vision of home itself and all its
idols, and feel a thrill that would stir a very river of sluggish blood!

We were approaching the famed Pillars of Hercules, and already the
African one, “Ape’s Hill,” a grand old mountain with summit streaked with
granite ledges, was in sight. The other, the great Rock of Gibraltar, was yet
to come. The ancients considered the Pillars of Hercules the head of
navigation and the end of the world. The information the ancients didn’t
have was very voluminous. Even the prophets wrote book after book and
epistle after epistle, yet never once hinted at the existence of a great
continent on our side of the water; yet they must have known it was there, I
should think.
In a few moments a lonely and enormous mass of rock, standing
seemingly in the center of the wide strait and apparently washed on all sides
by the sea, swung magnificently into view, and we needed no tedious

traveled parrot to tell us it was Gibraltar. There could not be two rocks like
that in one kingdom.
The Rock of Gibraltar is about a mile and a half long, I should say, by
1,400 to 1,500 feet high, and a quarter of a mile wide at its base. One side
and one end of it come about as straight up out of the sea as the side of a
house, the other end is irregular and the other side is a steep slant which an
army would find very difficult to climb. At the foot of this slant is the
walled town of Gibraltar—or rather the town occupies part of the slant.
Everywhere—on hillside, in the precipice, by the sea, on the heights—
everywhere you choose to look, Gibraltar is clad with masonry and bristling
with guns. It makes a striking and lively picture from whatsoever point you
contemplate it. It is pushed out into the sea on the end of a flat, narrow strip
of land, and is suggestive of a “gob” of mud on the end of a shingle. A few
hundred yards of this flat ground at its base belongs to the English, and
then, extending across the strip from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, a
distance of a quarter of a mile, comes the “Neutral Ground,” a space two or
three hundred yards wide, which is free to both parties.

“Are you going through Spain to Paris?” That question was bandied
about the ship day and night from Fayal to Gibraltar, and I thought I never
could get so tired of hearing any one combination of words again or more
tired of answering, “I don’t know.” At the last moment six or seven had
sufficient decision of character to make up their minds to go, and did go,
and I felt a sense of relief at once—it was forever too late now and I could

make up my mind at my leisure not to go. I must have a prodigious quantity
of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.
But behold how annoyances repeat themselves. We had no sooner gotten
rid of the Spain distress than the Gibraltar guides started another—a
tiresome repetition of a legend that had nothing very astonishing about it,
even in the first place: “That high hill yonder is called the Queen’s Chair; it
is because one of the queens of Spain placed her chair there when the
French and Spanish troops were besieging Gibraltar, and said she would
never move from the spot till the English flag was lowered from the
fortresses. If the English hadn’t been gallant enough to lower the flag for a
few hours one day, she’d have had to break her oath or die up there.”
We rode on asses and mules up the steep, narrow streets and entered the
subterranean galleries the English have blasted out in the rock. These
galleries are like spacious railway tunnels, and at short intervals in them
great guns frown out upon sea and town through portholes five or six
hundred feet above the ocean. There is a mile or so of this subterranean
work, and it must have cost a vast deal of money and labor. The gallery
guns command the peninsula and the harbors of both oceans, but they might
as well not be there, I should think, for an army could hardly climb the
perpendicular wall of the rock anyhow. Those lofty portholes afford superb
views of the sea, though. At one place, where a jutting crag was hollowed
out into a great chamber whose furniture was huge cannon and whose
windows were portholes, a glimpse was caught of a hill not far away, and a
soldier said:
“That high hill yonder is called the Queen’s Chair; it is because a queen
of Spain placed her chair there once when the French and Spanish troops
were besieging Gibraltar, and said she would never move from the spot till
the English flag was lowered from the fortresses. If the English hadn’t been
gallant enough to lower the flag for a few hours one day, she’d have had to
break her oath or die up there."

On the topmost pinnacle of Gibraltar we halted a good while, and no
doubt the mules were tired. They had a right to be. The military road was
good, but rather steep, and there was a good deal of it. The view from the
narrow ledge was magnificent; from it vessels seeming like the tiniest little
toy boats were turned into noble ships by the telescopes, and other vessels
that were fifty miles away and even sixty, they said, and invisible to the
naked eye, could be clearly distinguished through those same telescopes.
Below, on one side, we looked down upon an endless mass of batteries and
on the other straight down to the sea.
While I was resting ever so comfortably on a rampart, and cooling my
baking head in the delicious breeze, an officious guide belonging to another
party came up and said:
“Senor, that high hill yonder is called the Queen’s Chair—”
“Sir, I am a helpless orphan in a foreign land. Have pity on me. Don’t—
now don’t inflict that most in-FERNAL old legend on me anymore today!”
There—I had used strong language after promising I would never do so
again; but the provocation was more than human nature could bear. If you
had been bored so, when you had the noble panorama of Spain and Africa

and the blue Mediterranean spread abroad at your feet, and wanted to gaze
and enjoy and surfeit yourself in its beauty in silence, you might have even
burst into stronger language than I did.
Gibraltar has stood several protracted sieges, one of them of nearly four
years’ duration (it failed), and the English only captured it by stratagem.
The wonder is that anybody should ever dream of trying so impossible a
project as the taking it by assault—and yet it has been tried more than once.
The Moors held the place twelve hundred years ago, and a staunch old
castle of theirs of that date still frowns from the middle of the town, with
moss-grown battlements and sides well scarred by shots fired in battles and
sieges that are forgotten now. A secret chamber in the rock behind it was
discovered some time ago, which contained a sword of exquisite
workmanship, and some quaint old armor of a fashion that antiquaries are
not acquainted with, though it is supposed to be Roman. Roman armor and
Roman relics of various kinds have been found in a cave in the sea
extremity of Gibraltar; history says Rome held this part of the country about
the Christian era, and these things seem to confirm the statement.
In that cave also are found human bones, crusted with a very thick, stony
coating, and wise men have ventured to say that those men not only lived
before the flood, but as much as ten thousand years before it. It may be true
—it looks reasonable enough—but as long as those parties can’t vote
anymore, the matter can be of no great public interest. In this cave likewise
are found skeletons and fossils of animals that exist in every part of Africa,
yet within memory and tradition have never existed in any portion of Spain
save this lone peak of Gibraltar! So the theory is that the channel between
Gibraltar and Africa was once dry land, and that the low, neutral neck
between Gibraltar and the Spanish hills behind it was once ocean, and of
course that these African animals, being over at Gibraltar (after rock,
perhaps—there is plenty there), got closed out when the great change
occurred. The hills in Africa, across the channel, are full of apes, and there
are now and always have been apes on the rock of Gibraltar—but not
elsewhere in Spain! The subject is an interesting one.
There is an English garrison at Gibraltar of 6,000 or 7,000 men, and so
uniforms of flaming red are plenty; and red and blue, and undress costumes
of snowy white, and also the queer uniform of the bare-kneed Highlander;
and one sees soft-eyed Spanish girls from San Roque, and veiled Moorish

beauties (I suppose they are beauties) from Tarifa, and turbaned, sashed,
and trousered Moorish merchants from Fez, and long-robed, bare-legged,
ragged Muhammadan vagabonds from Tetuan and Tangier, some brown,
some yellow and some as black as virgin ink—and Jews from all around, in
gabardine, skullcap, and slippers, just as they are in pictures and theaters,
and just as they were three thousand years ago, no doubt. You can easily
understand that a tribe (somehow our pilgrims suggest that expression,
because they march in a straggling procession through these foreign places
with such an Indian-like air of complacency and independence about them)
like ours, made up from fifteen or sixteen states of the Union, found enough
to stare at in this shifting panorama of fashion today.
Speaking of our pilgrims reminds me that we have one or two people
among us who are sometimes an annoyance. However, I do not count the
Oracle in that list. I will explain that the Oracle is an innocent old ass who
eats for four and looks wiser than the whole Academy of France would have
any right to look, and never uses a one-syllable word when he can think of a
longer one, and never by any possible chance knows the meaning of any
long word he uses or ever gets it in the right place; yet he will serenely
venture an opinion on the most abstruse subject and back it up
complacently with quotations from authors who never existed, and finally
when cornered will slide to the other side of the question, say he has been
there all the time, and come back at you with your own spoken arguments,
only with the big words all tangled, and play them in your very teeth as
original with himself. He reads a chapter in the guidebooks, mixes the facts
all up, with his bad memory, and then goes off to inflict the whole mess on
somebody as wisdom which has been festering in his brain for years and
which he gathered in college from erudite authors who are dead now and
out of print. This morning at breakfast he pointed out of the window and
said:
“Do you see that there hill out there on that African coast? It’s one of
them Pillows of Herkewls, I should say—and there’s the ultimate one
alongside of it.”
“The ultimate one—that is a good word—but the pillars are not both on
the same side of the strait.” (I saw he had been deceived by a carelessly
written sentence in the guidebook.)

“Well, it ain’t for you to say, nor for me. Some authors states it that way,
and some states it different. Old Gibbons don’t say nothing about it—just
shirks it complete—Gibbons always done that when he got stuck—but there
is Rolampton, what does he say? Why, he says that they was both on the
same side, and Trinculian, and Sobaster, and Syraccus, and Langomarganbl
——”
“Oh, that will do—that’s enough. If you have got your hand in for
inventing authors and testimony, I have nothing more to say—let them be
on the same side.”
We don’t mind the Oracle. We rather like him. We can tolerate the Oracle
very easily, but we have a poet and a good-natured enterprising idiot on
board, and they do distress the company. The one gives copies of his verses
to consuls, commanders, hotel keepers, Arabs, Dutch—to anybody, in fact,
who will submit to a grievous infliction most kindly meant. His poetry is all
very well on shipboard, notwithstanding when he wrote an “Ode to the
Ocean in a Storm” in one half hour, and an “Apostrophe to the Rooster in
the Waist of the Ship” in the next, the transition was considered to be rather
abrupt; but when he sends an invoice of rhymes to the Governor of Fayal
and another to the commander in chief and other dignitaries in Gibraltar
with the compliments of the Laureate of the Ship, it is not popular with the
passengers.

The other personage I have mentioned is young and green, and not
bright, not learned, and not wise. He will be, though, someday if he
recollects the answers to all his questions. He is known about the ship as the
“Interrogation Point,” and this by constant use has become shortened to
“Interrogation.” He has distinguished himself twice already. In Fayal they
pointed out a hill and told him it was 800 feet high and 1,100 feet long. And
they told him there was a tunnel 2,000 feet long and 1,000 feet high running
through the hill, from end to end. He believed it. He repeated it to
everybody, discussed it, and read it from his notes. Finally, he took a useful
hint from this remark, which a thoughtful old pilgrim made:
“Well, yes, it is a little remarkable—singular tunnel altogether—stands
up out of the top of the hill about two hundred feet, and one end of it sticks
out of the hill about nine hundred!”

Here in Gibraltar he corners these educated British officers and badgers
them with braggadocio about America and the wonders she can perform!
He told one of them a couple of our gunboats could come here and knock
Gibraltar into the Mediterranean Sea!
At this present moment half a dozen of us are taking a private pleasure
excursion of our own devising. We form rather more than half the list of
white passengers on board a small steamer bound for the venerable Moorish
town of Tangier, Africa. Nothing could be more absolutely certain than that
we are enjoying ourselves. One can not do otherwise who speeds over these
sparkling waters and breathes the soft atmosphere of this sunny land. Care
cannot assail us here. We are out of its jurisdiction.
We even steamed recklessly by the frowning fortress of Malabat (a
stronghold of the Emperor of Morocco) without a twinge of fear. The whole
garrison turned out under arms and assumed a threatening attitude—yet still
we did not fear. The entire garrison marched and counter-marched within
the rampart, in full view—yet notwithstanding even this, we never flinched.

I suppose we really do not know what fear is. I inquired the name of the
garrison of the fortress of Malabat, and they said it was Mehemet Ali Ben

Sancom. I said it would be a good idea to get some more garrisons to help
him; but they said no, he had nothing to do but hold the place, and he was
competent to do that, had done it two years already. That was evidence
which one could not well refute. There is nothing like reputation.
Every now and then my glove purchase in Gibraltar last night intrudes
itself upon me. Dan and the ship’s surgeon and I had been up to the great
square, listening to the music of the fine military bands and contemplating
English and Spanish female loveliness and fashion, and at nine o’clock
were on our way to the theater, when we met the General, the Judge, the
Commodore, the Colonel, and the Commissioner of the United States of
America to Europe, Asia, and Africa, who had been to the Club House to
register their several titles and impoverish the bill of fare; and they told us
to go over to the little variety store near the Hall of Justice and buy some
kid gloves. They said they were elegant and very moderate in price. It
seemed a stylish thing to go to the theater in kid gloves, and we acted upon
the hint. A very handsome young lady in the store offered me a pair of blue
gloves. I did not want blue, but she said they would look very pretty on a
hand like mine. The remark touched me tenderly. I glanced furtively at my
hand, and somehow it did seem rather a comely member. I tried a glove on
my left and blushed a little. Manifestly the size was too small for me. But I
felt gratified when she said:
“Oh, it is just right!” Yet I knew it was no such thing.
I tugged at it diligently, but it was discouraging work. She said:
“Ah! I see you are accustomed to wearing kid gloves—but some
gentlemen are so awkward about putting them on.”
It was the last compliment I had expected. I only understand putting on
the buckskin article perfectly. I made another effort and tore the glove from
the base of the thumb into the palm of the hand—and tried to hide the rent.
She kept up her compliments, and I kept up my determination to deserve
them or die:
“Ah, you have had experience! [A rip down the back of the hand.] They
are just right for you—your hand is very small—if they tear you need not
pay for them. [A rent across the middle.] I can always tell when a
gentleman understands putting on kid gloves. There is a grace about it that
only comes with long practice.” The whole after-guard of the glove
“fetched away,” as the sailors say, the fabric parted across the knuckles, and

nothing was left but a melancholy ruin.

I was too much flattered to make an exposure and throw the merchandise
on the angel’s hands. I was hot, vexed, confused, but still happy; but I hated
the other boys for taking such an absorbing interest in the proceedings. I
wished they were in Jericho. I felt exquisitely mean when I said cheerfully:
“This one does very well; it fits elegantly. I like a glove that fits. No,
never mind, ma’am, never mind; I’ll put the other on in the street. It is
warm here.”
It was warm. It was the warmest place I ever was in. I paid the bill, and
as I passed out with a fascinating bow I thought I detected a light in the
woman’s eye that was gently ironical; and when I looked back from the
street, and she was laughing all to herself about something or other, I said to
myself with withering sarcasm, “Oh, certainly; you know how to put on kid
gloves, don’t you? A self-complacent ass, ready to be flattered out of your
senses by every petticoat that chooses to take the trouble to do it!”
The silence of the boys annoyed me. Finally Dan said musingly:
“Some gentlemen don’t know how to put on kid gloves at all, but some
do.”

And the doctor said (to the moon, I thought):
“But it is always easy to tell when a gentleman is used to putting on kid
gloves.”
Dan soliloquized after a pause:
“Ah, yes; there is a grace about it that only comes with long, very long
practice.”
“Yes, indeed, I’ve noticed that when a man hauls on a kid glove like he
was dragging a cat out of an ash hole by the tail, he understands putting on
kid gloves; he’s had ex—”
“Boys, enough of a thing’s enough! You think you are very smart, I
suppose, but I don’t. And if you go and tell any of those old gossips in the
ship about this thing, I’ll never forgive you for it; that’s all.”
They let me alone then for the time being. We always let each other alone
in time to prevent ill feeling from spoiling a joke. But they had bought
gloves, too, as I did. We threw all the purchases away together this morning.
They were coarse, unsubstantial, freckled all over with broad yellow
splotches, and could neither stand wear nor public exhibition. We had
entertained an angel unawares, but we did not take her in. She did that for
us.
Tangier! A tribe of stalwart Moors are wading into the sea to carry us
ashore on their backs from the small boats.

CHAPTER VIII.
This is royal! Let those who went up through Spain make the best of it—
these dominions of the Emperor of Morocco suit our little party well
enough. We have had enough of Spain at Gibraltar for the present. Tangier
is the spot we have been longing for all the time. Elsewhere we have found
foreign-looking things and foreign-looking people, but always with things
and people intermixed that we were familiar with before, and so the novelty
of the situation lost a deal of its force. We wanted something thoroughly
and uncompromisingly foreign—foreign from top to bottom—foreign from
center to circumference—foreign inside and outside and all around—
nothing anywhere about it to dilute its foreignness—nothing to remind us of
any other people or any other land under the sun. And lo! In Tangier we
have found it. Here is not the slightest thing that ever we have seen save in
pictures—and we always mistrusted the pictures before. We cannot
anymore. The pictures used to seem exaggerations—they seemed too weird
and fanciful for reality. But behold, they were not wild enough—they were
not fanciful enough—they have not told half the story. Tangier is a foreign
land if ever there was one, and the true spirit of it can never be found in any
book save The Arabian Nights. Here are no white men visible, yet swarms
of humanity are all about us. Here is a packed and jammed city enclosed in
a massive stone wall which is more than a thousand years old. All the
houses nearly are one-and two-story, made of thick walls of stone, plastered
outside, square as a dry-goods box, flat as a floor on top, no cornices,
whitewashed all over—a crowded city of snowy tombs! And the doors are
arched with the peculiar arch we see in Moorish pictures; the floors are laid
in varicolored diamond flags; in tesselated, many-colored porcelain squares
wrought in the furnaces of Fez; in red tiles and broad bricks that time
cannot wear; there is no furniture in the rooms (of Jewish dwellings) save
divans—what there is in Moorish ones no man may know; within their
sacred walls no Christian dog can enter. And the streets are oriental—some
of them three feet wide, some six, but only two that are over a dozen; a man
can blockade the most of them by extending his body across them. Isn’t it
an oriental picture?

There are stalwart Bedouins of the desert here, and stately Moors proud
of a history that goes back to the night of time; and Jews whose fathers fled
hither centuries upon centuries ago; and swarthy Riffians from the
mountains—born cut-throats—and original, genuine Negroes as black as
Moses; and howling dervishes and a hundred breeds of Arabs—all sorts and
descriptions of people that are foreign and curious to look upon.
And their dresses are strange beyond all description. Here is a bronzed
Moor in a prodigious white turban, curiously embroidered jacket, gold and
crimson sash, of many folds, wrapped round and round his waist, trousers
that only come a little below his knee and yet have twenty yards of stuff in
them, ornamented scimitar, bare shins, stockingless feet, yellow slippers,
and gun of preposterous length—a mere soldier!—I thought he was the
Emperor at least. And here are aged Moors with flowing white beards and
long white robes with vast cowls; and Bedouins with long, cowled, striped
cloaks; and Negroes and Riffians with heads clean-shaven except a kinky
scalp lock back of the ear or, rather, upon the after corner of the skull; and
all sorts of barbarians in all sorts of weird costumes, and all more or less
ragged. And here are Moorish women who are enveloped from head to foot
in coarse white robes, and whose sex can only be determined by the fact
that they only leave one eye visible and never look at men of their own

race, or are looked at by them in public. Here are five thousand Jews in blue
gabardines, sashes about their waists, slippers upon their feet, little
skullcaps upon the backs of their heads, hair combed down on the forehead,
and cut straight across the middle of it from side to side—the selfsame
fashion their Tangier ancestors have worn for I don’t know how many
bewildering centuries. Their feet and ankles are bare. Their noses are all
hooked, and hooked alike. They all resemble each other so much that one
could almost believe they were of one family. Their women are plump and
pretty, and do smile upon a Christian in a way which is in the last degree
comforting.
What a funny old town it is! It seems like profanation to laugh and jest
and bandy the frivolous chat of our day amid its hoary relics. Only the
stately phraseology and the measured speech of the sons of the Prophet are
suited to a venerable antiquity like this. Here is a crumbling wall that was
old when Columbus discovered America; was old when Peter the Hermit
roused the knightly men of the Middle Ages to arm for the first Crusade;
was old when Charlemagne and his paladins beleaguered enchanted castles
and battled with giants and genii in the fabled days of the olden time; was
old when Christ and his disciples walked the earth; stood where it stands
today when the lips of Memnon were vocal and men bought and sold in the
streets of ancient Thebes!
The Phoenicians, the Carthagenians, the English, Moors, Romans, all
have battled for Tangier—all have won it and lost it. Here is a ragged,
oriental-looking Negro from some desert place in interior Africa, filling his
goatskin with water from a stained and battered fountain built by the
Romans twelve hundred years ago. Yonder is a ruined arch of a bridge built
by Julius Caesar nineteen hundred years ago. Men who had seen the infant
Saviour in the Virgin’s arms have stood upon it, maybe.
Near it are the ruins of a dockyard where Caesar repaired his ships and
loaded them with grain when he invaded Britain, fifty years before the
Christian era.
Here, under the quiet stars, these old streets seem thronged with the
phantoms of forgotten ages. My eyes are resting upon a spot where stood a
monument which was seen and described by Roman historians less than
two thousand years ago, whereon was inscribed:

“WE ARE THE CANAANITES. WE ARE THEY THAT HAVE BEEN
DRIVEN OUT OF THE LAND OF CANAAN BY THE JEWISH
ROBBER, JOSHUA.”
Joshua drove them out, and they came here. Not many leagues from here
is a tribe of Jews whose ancestors fled thither after an unsuccessful revolt
against King David, and these their descendants are still under a ban and
keep to themselves.
Tangier has been mentioned in history for three thousand years. And it
was a town, though a queer one, when Hercules, clad in his lion skin,
landed here, four thousand years ago. In these streets he met Anitus, the
king of the country, and brained him with his club, which was the fashion
among gentlemen in those days. The people of Tangier (called Tingis then)
lived in the rudest possible huts and dressed in skins and carried clubs, and
were as savage as the wild beasts they were constantly obliged to war with.
But they were a gentlemanly race and did no work. They lived on the
natural products of the land. Their king’s country residence was at the
famous Garden of Hesperides, seventy miles down the coast from here. The
garden, with its golden apples (oranges), is gone now—no vestige of it
remains. Antiquarians concede that such a personage as Hercules did exist
in ancient times and agree that he was an enterprising and energetic man,
but decline to believe him a good, bona-fide god, because that would be
unconstitutional.
Down here at Cape Spartel is the celebrated cave of Hercules, where that
hero took refuge when he was vanquished and driven out of the Tangier
country. It is full of inscriptions in the dead languages, which fact makes me
think Hercules could not have traveled much, else he would not have kept a
journal.
Five days’ journey from here—say two hundred miles—are the ruins of
an ancient city, of whose history there is neither record nor tradition. And
yet its arches, its columns, and its statues proclaim it to have been built by
an enlightened race.
The general size of a store in Tangier is about that of an ordinary shower
bath in a civilized land. The Muhammadan merchant, tinman, shoemaker,
or vendor of trifles sits cross-legged on the floor and reaches after any
article you may want to buy. You can rent a whole block of these
pigeonholes for fifty dollars a month. The market people crowd the

marketplace with their baskets of figs, dates, melons, apricots, etc., and
among them file trains of laden asses, not much larger, if any, than a
Newfoundland dog. The scene is lively, is picturesque, and smells like a
police court. The Jewish money-changers have their dens close at hand, and
all day long are counting bronze coins and transferring them from one
bushel basket to another. They don’t coin much money nowadays, I think. I
saw none but what was dated four or five hundred years back, and was
badly worn and battered. These coins are not very valuable. Jack went out
to get a napoleon changed, so as to have money suited to the general
cheapness of things, and came back and said he had “swamped the bank,
had bought eleven quarts of coin, and the head of the firm had gone on the
street to negotiate for the balance of the change.” I bought nearly half a pint
of their money for a shilling myself. I am not proud on account of having so
much money, though. I care nothing for wealth.

The Moors have some small silver coins and also some silver slugs worth
a dollar each. The latter are exceedingly scarce—so much so that when poor
ragged Arabs see one they beg to be allowed to kiss it.
They have also a small gold coin worth two dollars. And that reminds me
of something. When Morocco is in a state of war, Arab couriers carry letters
through the country and charge a liberal postage. Every now and then they
fall into the hands of marauding bands and get robbed. Therefore, warned
by experience, as soon as they have collected two dollars’ worth of money
they exchange it for one of those little gold pieces, and when robbers come
upon them, swallow it. The stratagem was good while it was unsuspected,
but after that the marauders simply gave the sagacious United States mail
an emetic and sat down to wait.
The Emperor of Morocco is a soulless despot, and the great officers
under him are despots on a smaller scale. There is no regular system of
taxation, but when the Emperor or the Bashaw want money, they levy on
some rich man, and he has to furnish the cash or go to prison. Therefore,
few men in Morocco dare to be rich. It is too dangerous a luxury. Vanity
occasionally leads a man to display wealth, but sooner or later the Emperor
trumps up a charge against him—any sort of one will do—and confiscates
his property. Of course, there are many rich men in the empire, but their
money is buried, and they dress in rags and counterfeit poverty. Every now
and then the Emperor imprisons a man who is suspected of the crime of
being rich, and makes things so uncomfortable for him that he is forced to
discover where he has hidden his money.
Moors and Jews sometimes place themselves under the protection of the
foreign consuls, and then they can flout their riches in the Emperor’s face
with impunity.

CHAPTER IX.
About the first adventure we had yesterday afternoon, after landing here,
came near finishing that heedless Blucher. We had just mounted some
mules and asses and started out under the guardianship of the stately, the
princely, the magnificent Hadji Muhammad Lamarty (may his tribe
increase!) when we came upon a fine Moorish mosque, with tall tower, rich
with checker-work of many-colored porcelain, and every part and portion of
the edifice adorned with the quaint architecture of the Alhambra, and
Blucher started to ride into the open doorway. A startling “Hi-hi!” from our
camp followers and a loud “Halt!” from an English gentleman in the party
checked the adventurer, and then we were informed that so dire a
profanation is it for a Christian dog to set foot upon the sacred threshold of
a Moorish mosque that no amount of purification can ever make it fit for
the faithful to pray in again. Had Blucher succeeded in entering the place,
he would no doubt have been chased through the town and stoned; and the
time has been, and not many years ago, either, when a Christian would have
been most ruthlessly slaughtered if captured in a mosque. We caught a
glimpse of the handsome tessellated pavements within and of the devotees
performing their ablutions at the fountains, but even that we took that
glimpse was a thing not relished by the Moorish bystanders.
Some years ago the clock in the tower of the mosque got out of order.
The Moors of Tangier have so degenerated that it has been long since there
was an artificer among them capable of curing so delicate a patient as a
debilitated clock. The great men of the city met in solemn conclave to
consider how the difficulty was to be met. They discussed the matter
thoroughly but arrived at no solution. Finally, a patriarch arose and said:
“Oh, children of the Prophet, it is known unto you that a Portuguee dog
of a Christian clock mender pollutes the city of Tangier with his presence.
Ye know, also, that when mosques are builded, asses bear the stones and the
cement, and cross the sacred threshold. Now, therefore, send the Christian
dog on all fours, and barefoot, into the holy place to mend the clock, and let
him go as an ass!”

And in that way it was done. Therefore, if Blucher ever sees the inside of
a mosque, he will have to cast aside his humanity and go in his natural
character. We visited the jail and found Moorish prisoners making mats and
baskets. (This thing of utilizing crime savors of civilization.) Murder is
punished with death. A short time ago three murderers were taken beyond
the city walls and shot. Moorish guns are not good, and neither are Moorish
marksmen. In this instance they set up the poor criminals at long range, like
so many targets, and practiced on them—kept them hopping about and
dodging bullets for half an hour before they managed to drive the center.
When a man steals cattle, they cut off his right hand and left leg and nail
them up in the marketplace as a warning to everybody. Their surgery is not
artistic. They slice around the bone a little, then break off the limb.
Sometimes the patient gets well; but, as a general thing, he don’t. However,
the Moorish heart is stout. The Moors were always brave. These criminals
undergo the fearful operation without a wince, without a tremor of any kind,
without a groan! No amount of suffering can bring down the pride of a
Moor or make him shame his dignity with a cry.
Here, marriage is contracted by the parents of the parties to it. There are
no valentines, no stolen interviews, no riding out, no courting in dim
parlors, no lovers’ quarrels and reconciliations—no nothing that is proper to
approaching matrimony. The young man takes the girl his father selects for
him, marries her, and after that she is unveiled, and he sees her for the first
time. If after due acquaintance she suits him, he retains her; but if he
suspects her purity, he bundles her back to her father; if he finds her
diseased, the same; or if, after just and reasonable time is allowed her, she
neglects to bear children, back she goes to the home of her childhood.
Muhammadans here who can afford it keep a good many wives on hand.
They are called wives, though I believe the Koran only allows four genuine
wives—the rest are concubines. The Emperor of Morocco don’t know how
many wives he has, but thinks he has five hundred. However, that is near
enough—a dozen or so, one way or the other, don’t matter.
Even the Jews in the interior have a plurality of wives.
I have caught a glimpse of the faces of several Moorish women (for they
are only human, and will expose their faces for the admiration of a
Christian dog when no male Moor is by), and I am full of veneration for the
wisdom that leads them to cover up such atrocious ugliness.

They carry their children at their backs, in a sack, like other savages the
world over.
Many of the Negroes are held in slavery by the Moors. But the moment a
female slave becomes her master’s concubine her bonds are broken, and as
soon as a male slave can read the first chapter of the Koran (which contains
the creed) he can no longer be held in bondage.
They have three Sundays a week in Tangier. The Muhammadans’ comes
on Friday, the Jews’ on Saturday, and that of the Christian Consuls on
Sunday. The Jews are the most radical. The Moor goes to his mosque about
noon on his Sabbath, as on any other day, removes his shoes at the door,
performs his ablutions, makes his salaams, pressing his forehead to the
pavement time and again, says his prayers, and goes back to his work.
But the Jew shuts up shop; will not touch copper or bronze money at all;
soils his fingers with nothing meaner than silver and gold; attends the
synagogue devoutly; will not cook or have anything to do with fire; and
religiously refrains from embarking in any enterprise.
The Moor who has made a pilgrimage to Mecca is entitled to high
distinction. Men call him Hadji, and he is thenceforward a great personage.
Hundreds of Moors come to Tangier every year and embark for Mecca.
They go part of the way in English steamers, and the ten or twelve dollars
they pay for passage is about all the trip costs. They take with them a
quantity of food, and when the commissary department fails they
“skirmish,” as Jack terms it in his sinful, slangy way. From the time they
leave till they get home again, they never wash, either on land or sea. They
are usually gone from five to seven months, and as they do not change their
clothes during all that time, they are totally unfit for the drawing room
when they get back.
Many of them have to rake and scrape a long time to gather together the
ten dollars their steamer passage costs, and when one of them gets back he
is a bankrupt forever after. Few Moors can ever build up their fortunes
again in one short lifetime after so reckless an outlay. In order to confine the
dignity of Hadji to gentlemen of patrician blood and possessions, the
Emperor decreed that no man should make the pilgrimage save bloated
aristocrats who were worth a hundred dollars in specie. But behold how
iniquity can circumvent the law! For a consideration, the Jewish money-
changer lends the pilgrim one hundred dollars long enough for him to swear

himself through, and then receives it back before the ship sails out of the
harbor!
Spain is the only nation the Moors fear. The reason is that Spain sends
her heaviest ships of war and her loudest guns to astonish these Muslims,
while America and other nations send only a little contemptible tub of a
gunboat occasionally. The Moors, like other savages, learn by what they
see, not what they hear or read. We have great fleets in the Mediterranean,
but they seldom touch at African ports. The Moors have a small opinion of
England, France, and America, and put their representatives to a deal of red-
tape circumlocution before they grant them their common rights, let alone a
favor. But the moment the Spanish minister makes a demand, it is acceded
to at once, whether it be just or not.
Spain chastised the Moors five or six years ago, about a disputed piece of
property opposite Gibraltar, and captured the city of Tetouan. She
compromised on an augmentation of her territory, twenty million dollars’
indemnity in money, and peace. And then she gave up the city. But she
never gave it up until the Spanish soldiers had eaten up all the cats. They
would not compromise as long as the cats held out. Spaniards are very fond
of cats. On the contrary, the Moors reverence cats as something sacred. So
the Spaniards touched them on a tender point that time. Their unfeline
conduct in eating up all the Tetouan cats aroused a hatred toward them in
the breasts of the Moors, to which even the driving them out of Spain was
tame and passionless. Moors and Spaniards are foes forever now. France
had a minister here once who embittered the nation against him in the most
innocent way. He killed a couple of battalions of cats (Tangier is full of
them) and made a parlor carpet out of their hides. He made his carpet in
circles—first a circle of old gray tomcats, with their tails all pointing toward
the center; then a circle of yellow cats; next a circle of black cats and a
circle of white ones; then a circle of all sorts of cats; and, finally, a
centerpiece of assorted kittens. It was very beautiful, but the Moors curse
his memory to this day.
When we went to call on our American Consul General today I noticed
that all possible games for parlor amusement seemed to be represented on
his center tables. I thought that hinted at lonesomeness. The idea was
correct. His is the only American family in Tangier. There are many foreign
consuls in this place, but much visiting is not indulged in. Tangier is clear

out of the world, and what is the use of visiting when people have nothing
on earth to talk about? There is none. So each consul’s family stays at home
chiefly and amuses itself as best it can. Tangier is full of interest for one
day, but after that it is a weary prison. The Consul General has been here
five years, and has got enough of it to do him for a century, and is going
home shortly. His family seize upon their letters and papers when the mail
arrives, read them over and over again for two days or three, talk them over
and over again for two or three more till they wear them out, and after that
for days together they eat and drink and sleep, and ride out over the same
old road, and see the same old tiresome things that even decades of
centuries have scarcely changed, and say never a single word! They have
literally nothing whatever to talk about. The arrival of an American man-of-
war is a godsend to them. “O Solitude, where are the charms which sages
have seen in thy face?” It is the completest exile that I can conceive of. I
would seriously recommend to the government of the United States that
when a man commits a crime so heinous that the law provides no adequate
punishment for it, they make him Consul General to Tangier.

I am glad to have seen Tangier—the second-oldest town in the world. But
I am ready to bid it good-bye, I believe.
We shall go hence to Gibraltar this evening or in the morning, and
doubtless the Quaker City will sail from that port within the next forty-eight

hours.

CHAPTER X.
We passed the Fourth of July on board the Quaker City, in mid-ocean. It
was in all respects a characteristic Mediterranean day—faultlessly beautiful.
A cloudless sky; a refreshing summer wind; a radiant sunshine that glinted
cheerily from dancing wavelets instead of crested mountains of water; a sea
beneath us that was so wonderfully blue, so richly, brilliantly blue, that it
overcame the dullest sensibilities with the spell of its fascination.
They even have fine sunsets on the Mediterranean—a thing that is
certainly rare in most quarters of the globe. The evening we sailed away
from Gibraltar, that hard-featured rock was swimming in a creamy mist so
rich, so soft, so enchantingly vague and dreamy, that even the Oracle, that
serene, that inspired, that overpowering humbug, scorned the dinner gong
and tarried to worship!
He said: “Well, that’s gorgis, ain’t it! They don’t have none of them
things in our parts, do they? I consider that them effects is on account of the
superior refragability, as you may say, of the sun’s diramic combination
with the lymphatic forces of the perihelion of Jubiter. What should you
think?”
“Oh, go to bed!” Dan said that, and went away.
“Oh, yes, it’s all very well to say go to bed when a man makes an
argument which another man can’t answer. Dan don’t never stand any
chance in an argument with me. And he knows it, too. What should you say,
Jack?”
“Now, Doctor, don’t you come bothering around me with that dictionary
bosh. I don’t do you any harm, do I? Then you let me alone.”
“He’s gone, too. Well, them fellows have all tackled the old Oracle, as
they say, but the old man’s most too many for ’em. Maybe the Poet Lariat
ain’t satisfied with them deductions?"

The poet replied with a barbarous rhyme and went below.
“’Pears that he can’t qualify, neither. Well, I didn’t expect nothing out of
him. I never see one of them poets yet that knowed anything. He’ll go down
now and grind out about four reams of the awfullest slush about that old
rock and give it to a consul, or a pilot, or a nigger, or anybody he comes
across first which he can impose on. Pity but somebody’d take that poor old
lunatic and dig all that poetry rubbage out of him. Why can’t a man put his
intellect onto things that’s some value? Gibbons, and Hippocratus, and
Sarcophagus, and all them old ancient philosophers was down on poets—”
“Doctor,” I said, “you are going to invent authorities now and I’ll leave
you, too. I always enjoy your conversation, notwithstanding the luxuriance
of your syllables, when the philosophy you offer rests on your own
responsibility; but when you begin to soar—when you begin to support it
with the evidence of authorities who are the creations of your own fancy—I
lose confidence.”
That was the way to flatter the doctor. He considered it a sort of
acknowledgment on my part of a fear to argue with him. He was always
persecuting the passengers with abstruse propositions framed in language
that no man could understand, and they endured the exquisite torture a
minute or two and then abandoned the field. A triumph like this, over half a

dozen antagonists was sufficient for one day; from that time forward he
would patrol the decks beaming blandly upon all comers, and so tranquilly,
blissfully happy!
But I digress. The thunder of our two brave cannon announced the Fourth
of July, at daylight, to all who were awake. But many of us got our
information at a later hour, from the almanac. All the flags were sent aloft
except half a dozen that were needed to decorate portions of the ship below,
and in a short time the vessel assumed a holiday appearance. During the
morning, meetings were held and all manner of committees set to work on
the celebration ceremonies. In the afternoon the ship’s company assembled
aft, on deck, under the awnings; the flute, the asthmatic melodeon, and the
consumptive clarinet crippled “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the choir
chased it to cover, and George came in with a peculiarly lacerating screech
on the final note and slaughtered it. Nobody mourned.
We carried out the corpse on three cheers (that joke was not intentional
and I do not endorse it), and then the President, throned behind a cable
locker with a national flag spread over it, announced the “Reader,” who
rose up and read that same old Declaration of Independence which we have
all listened to so often without paying any attention to what it said; and after
that the President piped the Orator of the Day to quarters and he made that
same old speech about our national greatness which we so religiously
believe and so fervently applaud. Now came the choir into court again, with
the complaining instruments, and assaulted “Hail Columbia”; and when
victory hung wavering in the scale, George returned with his dreadful wild-
goose stop turned on and the choir won, of course. A minister pronounced
the benediction, and the patriotic little gathering disbanded. The Fourth of
July was safe, as far as the Mediterranean was concerned.
At dinner in the evening, a well-written original poem was recited with
spirit by one of the ship’s captains, and thirteen regular toasts were washed
down with several baskets of champagne. The speeches were bad—
execrable almost without exception. In fact, without any exception but one.
Captain Duncan made a good speech; he made the only good speech of the
evening. He said:
“LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:—May we all live to a green old age and
be prosperous and happy. Steward, bring up another basket of champagne.”
It was regarded as a very able effort.

The festivities, so to speak, closed with another of those miraculous balls
on the promenade deck. We were not used to dancing on an even keel,
though, and it was only a questionable success. But take it all together, it
was a bright, cheerful, pleasant Fourth.
Toward nightfall the next evening, we steamed into the great artificial
harbor of this noble city of Marseilles, and saw the dying sunlight gild its
clustering spires and ramparts, and flood its leagues of environing verdure
with a mellow radiance that touched with an added charm the white villas
that flecked the landscape far and near. [Copyright secured according to
law.]
There were no stages out, and we could not get on the pier from the ship.
It was annoying. We were full of enthusiasm—we wanted to see France!
Just at nightfall our party of three contracted with a waterman for the
privilege of using his boat as a bridge—its stern was at our companion
ladder and its bow touched the pier. We got in and the fellow backed out
into the harbor. I told him in French that all we wanted was to walk over his
thwarts and step ashore, and asked him what he went away out there for. He
said he could not understand me. I repeated. Still he could not understand.
He appeared to be very ignorant of French. The doctor tried him, but he
could not understand the doctor. I asked this boatman to explain his
conduct, which he did; and then I couldn’t understand him. Dan said:
“Oh, go to the pier, you old fool—that’s where we want to go!”
We reasoned calmly with Dan that it was useless to speak to this
foreigner in English—that he had better let us conduct this business in the
French language and not let the stranger see how uncultivated he was.
“Well, go on, go on,” he said, “don’t mind me. I don’t wish to interfere.
Only, if you go on telling him in your kind of French, he never will find out
where we want to go to. That is what I think about it.”
We rebuked him severely for this remark and said we never knew an
ignorant person yet but was prejudiced. The Frenchman spoke again, and
the doctor said:
“There now, Dan, he says he is going to allez to the douain. Means he is
going to the hotel. Oh, certainly—we don’t know the French language.”
This was a crusher, as Jack would say. It silenced further criticism from
the disaffected member. We coasted past the sharp bows of a navy of great

steamships and stopped at last at a government building on a stone pier. It
was easy to remember then that the douain was the customhouse and not the
hotel. We did not mention it, however. With winning French politeness the
officers merely opened and closed our satchels, declined to examine our
passports, and sent us on our way. We stopped at the first cafe we came to
and entered. An old woman seated us at a table and waited for orders.

The doctor said: “Avez-vous du vin?”
The dame looked perplexed. The doctor said again, with elaborate
distinctness of articulation:
“Avez-vous du—vin!”
The dame looked more perplexed than before. I said:
“Doctor, there is a flaw in your pronunciation somewhere. Let me try her.
Madame, avez-vous du vin?—It isn’t any use, Doctor—take the witness.”
“Madame, avez-vous du vin—du fromage—pain—pickled pigs’ feet—
beurre—des oeufs—du boeuf—horseradish, sauerkraut, hog and hominy—
anything, anything in the world that can stay a Christian stomach!”
She said:

“Bless you, why didn’t you speak English before? I don’t know anything
about your plagued French!”
The humiliating taunts of the disaffected member spoiled the supper, and
we dispatched it in angry silence and got away as soon as we could. Here
we were in beautiful France—in a vast stone house of quaint architecture—
surrounded by all manner of curiously worded French signs—stared at by
strangely habited, bearded French people—everything gradually and surely
forcing upon us the coveted consciousness that at last, and beyond all
question, we were in beautiful France and absorbing its nature to the
forgetfulness of everything else, and coming to feel the happy romance of
the thing in all its enchanting delightfulness—and to think of this skinny
veteran intruding with her vile English, at such a moment, to blow the fair
vision to the winds! It was exasperating.
We set out to find the centre of the city, inquiring the direction every now
and then. We never did succeed in making anybody understand just exactly
what we wanted, and neither did we ever succeed in comprehending just
exactly what they said in reply, but then they always pointed—they always
did that—and we bowed politely and said, “Merci, monsieur,” and so it was
a blighting triumph over the disaffected member anyway. He was restive
under these victories and often asked:
“What did that pirate say?”
“Why, he told us which way to go to find the Grand Casino.”
“Yes, but what did he say?”
“Oh, it don’t matter what he said—we understood him. These are
educated people—not like that absurd boatman."

“Well, I wish they were educated enough to tell a man a direction that
goes some where—for we’ve been going around in a circle for an hour. I’ve
passed this same old drugstore seven times.”
We said it was a low, disreputable falsehood (but we knew it was not). It
was plain that it would not do to pass that drugstore again, though—we
might go on asking directions, but we must cease from following finger-
pointings if we hoped to check the suspicions of the disaffected member.
A long walk through smooth, asphaltum-paved streets bordered by blocks
of vast new mercantile houses of cream-colored stone every house and
every block precisely like all the other houses and all the other blocks for a
mile, and all brilliantly lighted—brought us at last to the principal
thoroughfare. On every hand were bright colors, flashing constellations of
gas burners, gaily dressed men and women thronging the sidewalks—hurry,
life, activity, cheerfulness, conversation, and laughter everywhere! We

found the Grand Hotel du Louvre et de la Paix, and wrote down who we
were, where we were born, what our occupations were, the place we came
from last, whether we were married or single, how we liked it, how old we
were, where we were bound for and when we expected to get there, and a
great deal of information of similar importance—all for the benefit of the
landlord and the secret police. We hired a guide and began the business of
sightseeing immediately. That first night on French soil was a stirring one. I
cannot think of half the places we went to or what we particularly saw; we
had no disposition to examine carefully into anything at all—we only
wanted to glance and go—to move, keep moving! The spirit of the country
was upon us. We sat down, finally, at a late hour, in the great Casino, and
called for unstinted champagne. It is so easy to be bloated aristocrats where
it costs nothing of consequence! There were about five hundred people in
that dazzling place, I suppose, though the walls being papered entirely with
mirrors, so to speak, one could not really tell but that there were a hundred
thousand. Young, daintily dressed exquisites and young, stylishly dressed
women, and also old gentlemen and old ladies, sat in couples and groups
about innumerable marble-topped tables and ate fancy suppers, drank wine,
and kept up a chattering din of conversation that was dazing to the senses.
There was a stage at the far end and a large orchestra; and every now and
then actors and actresses in preposterous comic dresses came out and sang
the most extravagantly funny songs, to judge by their absurd actions; but
that audience merely suspended its chatter, stared cynically, and never once
smiled, never once applauded! I had always thought that Frenchmen were
ready to laugh at any thing.

CHAPTER XI.
We are getting foreignized rapidly and with facility. We are getting
reconciled to halls and bedchambers with unhomelike stone floors and no
carpets—floors that ring to the tread of one’s heels with a sharpness that is
death to sentimental musing. We are getting used to tidy, noiseless waiters,
who glide hither and thither, and hover about your back and your elbows
like butterflies, quick to comprehend orders, quick to fill them; thankful for
a gratuity without regard to the amount; and always polite—never
otherwise than polite. That is the strangest curiosity yet—a really polite
hotel waiter who isn’t an idiot. We are getting used to driving right into the
central court of the hotel, in the midst of a fragrant circle of vines and
flowers, and in the midst also of parties of gentlemen sitting quietly reading
the paper and smoking. We are getting used to ice frozen by artificial
process in ordinary bottles—the only kind of ice they have here. We are
getting used to all these things, but we are not getting used to carrying our
own soap. We are sufficiently civilized to carry our own combs and
toothbrushes, but this thing of having to ring for soap every time we wash is
new to us and not pleasant at all. We think of it just after we get our heads
and faces thoroughly wet or just when we think we have been in the bathtub
long enough, and then, of course, an annoying delay follows. These
Marseillaises make Marseillaise hymns and Marseilles vests and Marseilles
soap for all the world, but they never sing their hymns or wear their vests or
wash with their soap themselves.

We have learned to go through the lingering routine of the table d’hote
with patience, with serenity, with satisfaction. We take soup, then wait a
few minutes for the fish; a few minutes more and the plates are changed,
and the roast beef comes; another change and we take peas; change again
and take lentils; change and take snail patties (I prefer grasshoppers);
change and take roast chicken and salad; then strawberry pie and ice cream;
then green figs, pears, oranges, green almonds, etc.; finally coffee. Wine
with every course, of course, being in France. With such a cargo on board,
digestion is a slow process, and we must sit long in the cool chambers and
smoke—and read French newspapers, which have a strange fashion of
telling a perfectly straight story till you get to the “nub” of it, and then a
word drops in that no man can translate, and that story is ruined. An
embankment fell on some Frenchmen yesterday, and the papers are full of it
today—but whether those sufferers were killed, or crippled, or bruised, or
only scared is more than I can possibly make out, and yet I would just give
anything to know.

We were troubled a little at dinner today by the conduct of an American,
who talked very loudly and coarsely and laughed boisterously where all
others were so quiet and well behaved. He ordered wine with a royal
flourish and said:
“I never dine without wine, sir” (which was a pitiful falsehood), and
looked around upon the company to bask in the admiration he expected to
find in their faces. All these airs in a land where they would as soon expect
to leave the soup out of the bill of fare as the wine!—in a land where wine
is nearly as common among all ranks as water! This fellow said: “I am a
free-born sovereign, sir, an American, sir, and I want everybody to know
it!” He did not mention that he was a lineal descendant of Balaam’s ass, but
everybody knew that without his telling it.

We have driven in the Prado—that superb avenue bordered with patrician
mansions and noble shade trees—and have visited the chateau Boarely and
its curious museum. They showed us a miniature cemetery there—a copy of
the first graveyard that was ever in Marseilles, no doubt. The delicate little

skeletons were lying in broken vaults and had their household gods and
kitchen utensils with them. The original of this cemetery was dug up in the
principal street of the city a few years ago. It had remained there, only
twelve feet underground, for a matter of twenty-five hundred years or
thereabouts. Romulus was here before he built Rome, and thought
something of founding a city on this spot, but gave up the idea. He may
have been personally acquainted with some of these Phoenicians whose
skeletons we have been examining.
In the great Zoological Gardens we found specimens of all the animals
the world produces, I think, including a dromedary, a monkey ornamented
with tufts of brilliant blue and carmine hair—a very gorgeous monkey he
was—a hippopotamus from the Nile, and a sort of tall, long-legged bird
with a beak like a powder horn and close-fitting wings like the tails of a
dress coat. This fellow stood up with his eyes shut and his shoulders
stooped forward a little, and looked as if he had his hands under his coat
tails. Such tranquil stupidity, such supernatural gravity, such self-
righteousness, and such ineffable self-complacency as were in the
countenance and attitude of that gray-bodied, dark-winged, bald-headed,
and preposterously uncomely bird! He was so ungainly, so pimply about the
head, so scaly about the legs, yet so serene, so unspeakably satisfied! He
was the most comical-looking creature that can be imagined.

It was good to hear Dan and the doctor laugh—such natural and such
enjoyable laughter had not been heard among our excursionists since our
ship sailed away from America. This bird was a godsend to us, and I should
be an ingrate if I forgot to make honorable mention of him in these pages.
Ours was a pleasure excursion; therefore we stayed with that bird an hour
and made the most of him. We stirred him up occasionally, but he only
unclosed an eye and slowly closed it again, abating no jot of his stately
piety of demeanor or his tremendous seriousness. He only seemed to say,
“Defile not Heaven’s anointed with unsanctified hands.” We did not know
his name, and so we called him “The Pilgrim.” Dan said:
“All he wants now is a Plymouth Collection.”

The boon companion of the colossal elephant was a common cat! This
cat had a fashion of climbing up the elephant’s hind legs and roosting on his
back. She would sit up there, with her paws curved under her breast, and
sleep in the sun half the afternoon. It used to annoy the elephant at first, and
he would reach up and take her down, but she would go aft and climb up
again. She persisted until she finally conquered the elephant’s prejudices,
and now they are inseparable friends. The cat plays about her comrade’s
forefeet or his trunk often, until dogs approach, and then she goes aloft out
of danger. The elephant has annihilated several dogs lately that pressed his
companion too closely.
We hired a sailboat and a guide and made an excursion to one of the
small islands in the harbor to visit the Castle d’If. This ancient fortress has a
melancholy history. It has been used as a prison for political offenders for
two or three hundred years, and its dungeon walls are scarred with the
rudely carved names of many and many a captive who fretted his life away
here and left no record of himself but these sad epitaphs wrought with his
own hands. How thick the names were! And their long-departed owners
seemed to throng the gloomy cells and corridors with their phantom shapes.
We loitered through dungeon after dungeon, away down into the living rock
below the level of the sea, it seemed. Names everywhere!—some plebeian,
some noble, some even princely. Plebeian, prince, and noble had one
solicitude in common—they would not be forgotten! They could suffer
solitude, inactivity, and the horrors of a silence that no sound ever
disturbed, but they could not bear the thought of being utterly forgotten by
the world. Hence the carved names. In one cell, where a little light
penetrated, a man had lived twenty-seven years without seeing the face of a
human being—lived in filth and wretchedness, with no companionship but
his own thoughts, and they were sorrowful enough and hopeless enough, no
doubt. Whatever his jailers considered that he needed was conveyed to his
cell by night through a wicket.
This man carved the walls of his prison house from floor to roof with all
manner of figures of men and animals grouped in intricate designs. He had
toiled there year after year, at his self-appointed task, while infants grew to
boyhood—to vigorous youth—idled through school and college—acquired
a profession—claimed man’s mature estate—married and looked back to
infancy as to a thing of some vague, ancient time, almost. But who shall tell
how many ages it seemed to this prisoner? With the one, time flew

sometimes; with the other, never—it crawled always. To the one, nights
spent in dancing had seemed made of minutes instead of hours; to the other,
those selfsame nights had been like all other nights of dungeon life and
seemed made of slow, dragging weeks instead of hours and minutes.

One prisoner of fifteen years had scratched verses upon his walls, and
brief prose sentences—brief, but full of pathos. These spoke not of himself
and his hard estate, but only of the shrine where his spirit fled the prison to
worship—of home and the idols that were templed there. He never lived to
see them.
The walls of these dungeons are as thick as some bed-chambers at home
are wide—fifteen feet. We saw the damp, dismal cells in which two of
Dumas’ heroes passed their confinement—heroes of “Monte Cristo.” It was
here that the brave Abbe wrote a book with his own blood, with a pen made
of a piece of iron hoop, and by the light of a lamp made out of shreds of
cloth soaked in grease obtained from his food; and then dug through the
thick wall with some trifling instrument which he wrought himself out of a

stray piece of iron or table cutlery and freed Dantes from his chains. It was
a pity that so many weeks of dreary labor should have come to naught at
last.
They showed us the noisome cell where the celebrated “Iron Mask”—
that ill-starred brother of a hardhearted king of France—was confined for a
season before he was sent to hide the strange mystery of his life from the
curious in the dungeons of Ste. Marguerite. The place had a far greater
interest for us than it could have had if we had known beyond all question
who the Iron Mask was, and what his history had been, and why this most
unusual punishment had been meted out to him. Mystery! That was the
charm. That speechless tongue, those prisoned features, that heart so
freighted with unspoken troubles, and that breast so oppressed with its
piteous secret had been here. These dank walls had known the man whose
dolorous story is a sealed book forever! There was fascination in the spot.

CHAPTER XII.

We have come five hundred miles by rail through the heart of France.
What a bewitching land it is! What a garden! Surely the leagues of bright
green lawns are swept and brushed and watered every day and their grasses
trimmed by the barber. Surely the hedges are shaped and measured and their
symmetry preserved by the most architectural of gardeners. Surely the long
straight rows of stately poplars that divide the beautiful landscape like the
squares of a checker-board are set with line and plummet, and their uniform
height determined with a spirit level. Surely the straight, smooth, pure white
turnpikes are jack-planed and sandpapered every day. How else are these
marvels of symmetry, cleanliness, and order attained? It is wonderful. There
are no unsightly stone walls and never a fence of any kind. There is no dirt,
no decay, no rubbish anywhere—nothing that even hints at untidiness—
nothing that ever suggests neglect. All is orderly and beautiful—every thing
is charming to the eye.
We had such glimpses of the Rhone gliding along between its grassy
banks; of cosy cottages buried in flowers and shrubbery; of quaint old red-
tiled villages with mossy medieval cathedrals looming out of their midst; of

wooded hills with ivy-grown towers and turrets of feudal castles projecting
above the foliage; such glimpses of Paradise, it seemed to us, such visions
of fabled fairyland!
We knew then what the poet meant when he sang of: “—thy cornfields
green, and sunny vines, O pleasant land of France!”
And it is a pleasant land. No word describes it so felicitously as that one.
They say there is no word for “home” in the French language. Well,
considering that they have the article itself in such an attractive aspect, they
ought to manage to get along without the word. Let us not waste too much
pity on “homeless” France. I have observed that Frenchmen abroad seldom
wholly give up the idea of going back to France some time or other. I am
not surprised at it now.
We are not infatuated with these French railway cars, though. We took
first-class passage, not because we wished to attract attention by doing a
thing which is uncommon in Europe but because we could make our
journey quicker by so doing. It is hard to make railroading pleasant in any
country. It is too tedious. Stagecoaching is infinitely more delightful. Once I
crossed the plains and deserts and mountains of the West in a stagecoach,
from the Missouri line to California, and since then all my pleasure trips
must be measured to that rare holiday frolic. Two thousand miles of
ceaseless rush and rattle and clatter, by night and by day, and never a weary
moment, never a lapse of interest! The first seven hundred miles a level
continent, its grassy carpet greener and softer and smoother than any sea
and figured with designs fitted to its magnitude—the shadows of the clouds.
Here were no scenes but summer scenes, and no disposition inspired by
them but to lie at full length on the mail sacks in the grateful breeze and
dreamily smoke the pipe of peace—what other, where all was repose and
contentment? In cool mornings, before the sun was fairly up, it was worth a
lifetime of city toiling and moiling to perch in the foretop with the driver
and see the six mustangs scamper under the sharp snapping of the whip that
never touched them; to scan the blue distances of a world that knew no
lords but us; to cleave the wind with uncovered head and feel the sluggish
pulses rousing to the spirit of a speed that pretended to the resistless rush of
a typhoon! Then thirteen hundred miles of desert solitudes; of limitless
panoramas of bewildering perspective; of mimic cities, of pinnacled
cathedrals, of massive fortresses, counterfeited in the eternal rocks and

splendid with the crimson and gold of the setting sun; of dizzy altitudes
among fog-wreathed peaks and never-melting snows, where thunders and
lightnings and tempests warred magnificently at our feet and the storm
clouds above swung their shredded banners in our very faces! But I forgot. I
am in elegant France now, and not scurrying through the great South Pass
and the Wind River Mountains, among antelopes and buffaloes and painted
Indians on the warpath. It is not meet that I should make too disparaging
comparisons between humdrum travel on a railway and that royal summer
flight across a continent in a stagecoach. I meant in the beginning to say
that railway journeying is tedious and tiresome, and so it is—though at the
time I was thinking particularly of a dismal fifty-hour pilgrimage between
New York and St. Louis. Of course our trip through France was not really
tedious because all its scenes and experiences were new and strange; but as
Dan says, it had its “discrepancies.”
The cars are built in compartments that hold eight persons each. Each
compartment is partially subdivided, and so there are two tolerably distinct
parties of four in it. Four face the other four. The seats and backs are thickly
padded and cushioned and are very comfortable; you can smoke if you
wish; there are no bothersome peddlers; you are saved the infliction of a
multitude of disagreeable fellow passengers. So far, so well. But then the
conductor locks you in when the train starts; there is no water to drink in the
car; there is no heating apparatus for night travel; if a drunken rowdy should
get in, you could not remove a matter of twenty seats from him or enter
another car; but above all, if you are worn out and must sleep, you must sit
up and do it in naps, with cramped legs and in a torturing misery that leaves
you withered and lifeless the next day—for behold they have not that
culmination of all charity and human kindness, a sleeping car, in all France.
I prefer the American system. It has not so many grievous “discrepancies.”
In France, all is clockwork, all is order. They make no mistakes. Every
third man wears a uniform, and whether he be a marshal of the empire or a
brakeman, he is ready and perfectly willing to answer all your questions
with tireless politeness, ready to tell you which car to take, yea, and ready
to go and put you into it to make sure that you shall not go astray. You
cannot pass into the waiting room of the depot till you have secured your
ticket, and you cannot pass from its only exit till the train is at its threshold
to receive you. Once on board, the train will not start till your ticket has
been examined—till every passenger’s ticket has been inspected. This is

chiefly for your own good. If by any possibility you have managed to take
the wrong train, you will be handed over to a polite official who will take
you whither you belong and bestow you with many an affable bow. Your
ticket will be inspected every now and then along the route, and when it is
time to change cars you will know it. You are in the hands of officials who
zealously study your welfare and your interest, instead of turning their
talents to the invention of new methods of discommoding and snubbing
you, as is very often the main employment of that exceedingly self-satisfied
monarch, the railroad conductor of America.

But the happiest regulation in French railway government is—thirty
minutes to dinner! No five-minute boltings of flabby rolls, muddy coffee,
questionable eggs, gutta-percha beef, and pies whose conception and
execution are a dark and bloody mystery to all save the cook that created
them!

No, we sat calmly down—it was in old Dijon, which is so easy to spell
and so impossible to pronounce except when you civilize it and call it
Demijohn—and poured out rich Burgundian wines and munched calmly
through a long table d’hote bill of fare, snail patties, delicious fruits and all,
then paid the trifle it cost and stepped happily aboard the train again,
without once cursing the railroad company. A rare experience and one to be
treasured forever.

They say they do not have accidents on these French roads, and I think it
must be true. If I remember rightly, we passed high above wagon roads or
through tunnels under them, but never crossed them on their own level.
About every quarter of a mile, it seemed to me, a man came out and held up

a club till the train went by, to signify that everything was safe ahead.
Switches were changed a mile in advance by pulling a wire rope that passed
along the ground by the rail, from station to station. Signals for the day and
signals for the night gave constant and timely notice of the position of
switches.
No, they have no railroad accidents to speak of in France. But why?
Because when one occurs, somebody has to hang for it! Not hang, maybe,
but be punished at least with such vigor of emphasis as to make negligence
a thing to be shuddered at by railroad officials for many a day thereafter.
“No blame attached to the officers”—that lying and disaster-breeding
verdict so common to our softhearted juries is seldom rendered in France. If
the trouble occurred in the conductor’s department, that officer must suffer
if his subordinate cannot be proven guilty; if in the engineer’s department
and the case be similar, the engineer must answer.
The Old Travelers—those delightful parrots who have “been here before”
and know more about the country than Louis Napoleon knows now or ever
will know—tell us these things, and we believe them because they are
pleasant things to believe and because they are plausible and savor of the
rigid subjection to law and order which we behold about us everywhere.

But we love the Old Travelers. We love to hear them prate and drivel and
lie. We can tell them the moment we see them. They always throw out a few
feelers; they never cast themselves adrift till they have sounded every
individual and know that he has not traveled. Then they open their throttle
valves, and how they do brag, and sneer, and swell, and soar, and
blaspheme the sacred name of Truth! Their central idea, their grand aim, is
to subjugate you, keep you down, make you feel insignificant and humble
in the blaze of their cosmopolitan glory! They will not let you know
anything. They sneer at your most inoffensive suggestions; they laugh
unfeelingly at your treasured dreams of foreign lands; they brand the
statements of your traveled aunts and uncles as the stupidest absurdities;
they deride your most trusted authors and demolish the fair images they
have set up for your willing worship with the pitiless ferocity of the fanatic
iconoclast! But still I love the Old Travelers. I love them for their witless
platitudes, for their supernatural ability to bore, for their delightful asinine
vanity, for their luxuriant fertility of imagination, for their startling, their
brilliant, their overwhelming mendacity!
By Lyons and the Saone (where we saw the lady of Lyons and thought
little of her comeliness), by Villa Franca, Tonnere, venerable Sens, Melun,
Fontainebleau, and scores of other beautiful cities, we swept, always noting
the absence of hog-wallows, broken fences, cow lots, unpainted houses, and
mud, and always noting, as well, the presence of cleanliness, grace, taste in
adorning and beautifying, even to the disposition of a tree or the turning of
a hedge, the marvel of roads in perfect repair, void of ruts and guiltless of
even an inequality of surface—we bowled along, hour after hour, that
brilliant summer day, and as nightfall approached we entered a wilderness
of odorous flowers and shrubbery, sped through it, and then, excited,
delighted, and half persuaded that we were only the sport of a beautiful
dream, lo, we stood in magnificent Paris!
What excellent order they kept about that vast depot! There was no
frantic crowding and jostling, no shouting and swearing, and no swaggering
intrusion of services by rowdy hackmen. These latter gentry stood outside
—stood quietly by their long line of vehicles and said never a word. A kind

of hackman general seemed to have the whole matter of transportation in
his hands. He politely received the passengers and ushered them to the kind
of conveyance they wanted, and told the driver where to deliver them.
There was no “talking back,” no dissatisfaction about overcharging, no
grumbling about anything. In a little while we were speeding through the
streets of Paris and delightfully recognizing certain names and places with
which books had long ago made us familiar. It was like meeting an old
friend when we read Rue de Rivoli on the street corner; we knew the
genuine vast palace of the Louvre as well as we knew its picture; when we
passed by the Column of July we needed no one to tell us what it was or to
remind us that on its site once stood the grim Bastille, that grave of human
hopes and happiness, that dismal prison house within whose dungeons so
many young faces put on the wrinkles of age, so many proud spirits grew
humble, so many brave hearts broke.
We secured rooms at the hotel, or rather, we had three beds put into one
room, so that we might be together, and then we went out to a restaurant,
just after lamplighting, and ate a comfortable, satisfactory, lingering dinner.
It was a pleasure to eat where everything was so tidy, the food so well
cooked, the waiters so polite, and the coming and departing company so
moustached, so frisky, so affable, so fearfully and wonderfully Frenchy! All
the surroundings were gay and enlivening. Two hundred people sat at little
tables on the sidewalk, sipping wine and coffee; the streets were thronged
with light vehicles and with joyous pleasure-seekers; there was music in the
air, life and action all about us, and a conflagration of gaslight everywhere!
After dinner we felt like seeing such Parisian specialties as we might see
without distressing exertion, and so we sauntered through the brilliant
streets and looked at the dainty trifles in variety stores and jewelry shops.
Occasionally, merely for the pleasure of being cruel, we put unoffending
Frenchmen on the rack with questions framed in the incomprehensible
jargon of their native language, and while they writhed we impaled them,
we peppered them, we scarified them, with their own vile verbs and
participles.
We noticed that in the jewelry stores they had some of the articles
marked “gold” and some labeled “imitation.” We wondered at this
extravagance of honesty and inquired into the matter. We were informed
that inasmuch as most people are not able to tell false gold from the genuine

article, the government compels jewelers to have their gold work assayed
and stamped officially according to its fineness and their imitation work
duly labeled with the sign of its falsity. They told us the jewelers would not
dare to violate this law, and that whatever a stranger bought in one of their
stores might be depended upon as being strictly what it was represented to
be. Verily, a wonderful land is France!
Then we hunted for a barber-shop. From earliest infancy it had been a
cherished ambition of mine to be shaved some day in a palatial barber-shop
in Paris. I wished to recline at full length in a cushioned invalid chair, with
pictures about me and sumptuous furniture; with frescoed walls and gilded
arches above me and vistas of Corinthian columns stretching far before me;
with perfumes of Araby to intoxicate my senses and the slumbrous drone of
distant noises to soothe me to sleep. At the end of an hour I would wake up
regretfully and find my face as smooth and as soft as an infant’s. Departing,
I would lift my hands above that barber’s head and say, “Heaven bless you,
my son!”
So we searched high and low, for a matter of two hours, but never a
barber-shop could we see. We saw only wig-making establishments, with
shocks of dead and repulsive hair bound upon the heads of painted waxen
brigands who stared out from glass boxes upon the passer-by with their
stony eyes and scared him with the ghostly white of their countenances. We
shunned these signs for a time, but finally we concluded that the wig-
makers must of necessity be the barbers as well, since we could find no
single legitimate representative of the fraternity. We entered and asked, and
found that it was even so.
I said I wanted to be shaved. The barber inquired where my room was. I
said never mind where my room was, I wanted to be shaved—there, on the
spot. The doctor said he would be shaved also. Then there was an
excitement among those two barbers! There was a wild consultation, and
afterwards a hurrying to and fro and a feverish gathering up of razors from
obscure places and a ransacking for soap. Next they took us into a little
mean, shabby back room; they got two ordinary sitting-room chairs and
placed us in them with our coats on. My old, old dream of bliss vanished
into thin air!

I sat bolt upright, silent, sad, and solemn. One of the wig-making villains
lathered my face for ten terrible minutes and finished by plastering a mass
of suds into my mouth. I expelled the nasty stuff with a strong English
expletive and said, “Foreigner, beware!” Then this outlaw strapped his razor
on his boot, hovered over me ominously for six fearful seconds, and then
swooped down upon me like the genius of destruction. The first rake of his
razor loosened the very hide from my face and lifted me out of the chair. I
stormed and raved, and the other boys enjoyed it. Their beards are not
strong and thick. Let us draw the curtain over this harrowing scene.
Suffice it that I submitted and went through with the cruel infliction of a
shave by a French barber; tears of exquisite agony coursed down my cheeks
now and then, but I survived. Then the incipient assassin held a basin of
water under my chin and slopped its contents over my face, and into my
bosom, and down the back of my neck, with a mean pretense of washing
away the soap and blood. He dried my features with a towel and was going
to comb my hair, but I asked to be excused. I said, with withering irony, that
it was sufficient to be skinned—I declined to be scalped.
I went away from there with my handkerchief about my face, and never,
never, never desired to dream of palatial Parisian barber-shops anymore.
The truth is, as I believe I have since found out, that they have no barber
shops worthy of the name in Paris—and no barbers, either, for that matter.
The impostor who does duty as a barber brings his pans and napkins and

implements of torture to your residence and deliberately skins you in your
private apartments. Ah, I have suffered, suffered, suffered, here in Paris, but
never mind—the time is coming when I shall have a dark and bloody
revenge. Someday a Parisian barber will come to my room to skin me, and
from that day forth that barber will never be heard of more.
At eleven o’clock we alighted upon a sign which manifestly referred to
billiards. Joy! We had played billiards in the Azores with balls that were not
round and on an ancient table that was very little smoother than a brick
pavement—one of those wretched old things with dead cushions, and with
patches in the faded cloth and invisible obstructions that made the balls
describe the most astonishing and unsuspected angles and perform feats in
the way of unlooked-for and almost impossible “scratches” that were
perfectly bewildering. We had played at Gibraltar with balls the size of a
walnut, on a table like a public square—and in both instances we achieved
far more aggravation than amusement. We expected to fare better here, but
we were mistaken. The cushions were a good deal higher than the balls, and
as the balls had a fashion of always stopping under the cushions, we
accomplished very little in the way of caroms. The cushions were hard and
unelastic, and the cues were so crooked that in making a shot you had to
allow for the curve or you would infallibly put the “English” on the wrong
side of the ball. Dan was to mark while the doctor and I played. At the end
of an hour neither of us had made a count, and so Dan was tired of keeping
tally with nothing to tally, and we were heated and angry and disgusted. We
paid the heavy bill—about six cents—and said we would call around
sometime when we had a week to spend, and finish the game.
We adjourned to one of those pretty cafes and took supper and tested the
wines of the country, as we had been instructed to do, and found them
harmless and unexciting. They might have been exciting, however, if we
had chosen to drink a sufficiency of them.
To close our first day in Paris cheerfully and pleasantly, we now sought
our grand room in the Grand Hotel du Louvre and climbed into our
sumptuous bed to read and smoke—but alas!

It was pitiful,
In a whole city-full,
Gas we had none.

*(Joke by the Doctor)

No gas to read by—nothing but dismal candles. It was a shame. We tried
to map out excursions for the morrow; we puzzled over French “guides to
Paris”; we talked disjointedly in a vain endeavor to make head or tail of the
wild chaos of the day’s sights and experiences; we subsided to indolent
smoking; we gaped and yawned and stretched—then feebly wondered if we
were really and truly in renowned Paris, and drifted drowsily away into that
vast mysterious void which men call sleep.

CHAPTER XIII.
The next morning we were up and dressed at ten o’clock. We went to the
‘commissionaire’ of the hotel—I don’t know what a ‘commissionaire’ is,
but that is the man we went to—and told him we wanted a guide. He said
the national Exposition had drawn such multitudes of Englishmen and
Americans to Paris that it would be next to impossible to find a good guide
unemployed. He said he usually kept a dozen or two on hand, but he only
had three now.

He called them. One looked so like a very pirate that we let him go at
once. The next one spoke with a simpering precision of pronunciation that
was irritating and said:
“If ze zhentlemans will to me make ze grande honneur to me rattain in
hees serveece, I shall show to him every sing zat is magnifique to look upon
in ze beautiful Parree. I speaky ze Angleesh pairfaitemaw.”
He would have done well to have stopped there, because he had that
much by heart and said it right off without making a mistake. But his self-
complacency seduced him into attempting a flight into regions of
unexplored English, and the reckless experiment was his ruin. Within ten
seconds he was so tangled up in a maze of mutilated verbs and torn and
bleeding forms of speech that no human ingenuity could ever have gotten

him out of it with credit. It was plain enough that he could not “speaky” the
English quite as “pairfaitemaw” as he had pretended he could.
The third man captured us. He was plainly dressed, but he had a
noticeable air of neatness about him. He wore a high silk hat which was a
little old, but had been carefully brushed. He wore second-hand kid gloves,
in good repair, and carried a small rattan cane with a curved handle—a
female leg—of ivory. He stepped as gently and as daintily as a cat crossing
a muddy street; and oh, he was urbanity; he was quiet, unobtrusive self-
possession; he was deference itself! He spoke softly and guardedly; and
when he was about to make a statement on his sole responsibility or offer a
suggestion, he weighed it by drachms and scruples first, with the crook of
his little stick placed meditatively to his teeth. His opening speech was
perfect. It was perfect in construction, in phraseology, in grammar, in
emphasis, in pronunciation—everything. He spoke little and guardedly after
that. We were charmed. We were more than charmed—we were overjoyed.
We hired him at once. We never even asked him his price. This man—our
lackey, our servant, our unquestioning slave though he was—was still a
gentleman—we could see that—while of the other two one was coarse and
awkward and the other was a born pirate. We asked our man Friday’s name.
He drew from his pocketbook a snowy little card and passed it to us with a
profound bow:
A. BILLFINGER,
Guide to Paris, France, Germany,
Spain, etc., etc.
Grande Hotel du Louvre.
“Billfinger! Oh, carry me home to die!”
That was an “aside” from Dan. The atrocious name grated harshly on my
ear, too. The most of us can learn to forgive, and even to like, a countenance
that strikes us unpleasantly at first, but few of us, I fancy, become
reconciled to a jarring name so easily. I was almost sorry we had hired this
man, his name was so unbearable. However, no matter. We were impatient
to start. Billfinger stepped to the door to call a carriage, and then the doctor
said:
“Well, the guide goes with the barbershop, with the billiard-table, with
the gasless room, and may be with many another pretty romance of Paris. I

expected to have a guide named Henri de Montmorency, or Armand de la
Chartreuse, or something that would sound grand in letters to the villagers
at home, but to think of a Frenchman by the name of Billfinger! Oh! This is
absurd, you know. This will never do. We can’t say Billfinger; it is
nauseating. Name him over again; what had we better call him? Alexis du
Caulaincourt?”
“Alphonse Henri Gustave de Hauteville,” I suggested.
“Call him Ferguson,” said Dan.
That was practical, unromantic good sense. Without debate, we expunged
Billfinger as Billfinger, and called him Ferguson.
The carriage—an open barouche—was ready. Ferguson mounted beside
the driver, and we whirled away to breakfast. As was proper, Mr. Ferguson
stood by to transmit our orders and answer questions. By and by, he
mentioned casually—the artful adventurer—that he would go and get his
breakfast as soon as we had finished ours. He knew we could not get along
without him and that we would not want to loiter about and wait for him.
We asked him to sit down and eat with us. He begged, with many a bow, to
be excused. It was not proper, he said; he would sit at another table. We
ordered him peremptorily to sit down with us.
Here endeth the first lesson. It was a mistake.
As long as we had that fellow after that, he was always hungry; he was
always thirsty. He came early; he stayed late; he could not pass a restaurant;
he looked with a lecherous eye upon every wine shop. Suggestions to stop,
excuses to eat and to drink, were forever on his lips. We tried all we could
to fill him so full that he would have no room to spare for a fortnight, but it
was a failure. He did not hold enough to smother the cravings of his
superhuman appetite.
He had another “discrepancy” about him. He was always wanting us to
buy things. On the shallowest pretenses he would inveigle us into shirt
stores, boot stores, tailor shops, glove shops—anywhere under the broad
sweep of the heavens that there seemed a chance of our buying anything.
Anyone could have guessed that the shopkeepers paid him a percentage on
the sales, but in our blessed innocence we didn’t until this feature of his
conduct grew unbearably prominent. One day Dan happened to mention
that he thought of buying three or four silk dress patterns for presents.

Ferguson’s hungry eye was upon him in an instant. In the course of twenty
minutes the carriage stopped.
“What’s this?”
“Zis is ze finest silk magazin in Paris—ze most celebrate.”
“What did you come here for? We told you to take us to the palace of the
Louvre.”
“I suppose ze gentleman say he wish to buy some silk.”
“You are not required to ‘suppose’ things for the party, Ferguson. We do
not wish to tax your energies too much. We will bear some of the burden
and heat of the day ourselves. We will endeavor to do such ‘supposing’ as is
really necessary to be done. Drive on.” So spake the doctor.
Within fifteen minutes the carriage halted again, and before another silk
store. The doctor said:
“Ah, the palace of the Louvre—beautiful, beautiful edifice! Does the
Emperor Napoleon live here now, Ferguson?”
“Ah, Doctor! You do jest; zis is not ze palace; we come there directly.
But since we pass right by zis store, where is such beautiful silk—”
“Ah! I see, I see. I meant to have told you that we did not wish to
purchase any silks to-day, but in my absent-mindedness I forgot it. I also
meant to tell you we wished to go directly to the Louvre, but I forgot that
also. However, we will go there now. Pardon my seeming carelessness,
Ferguson. Drive on.”
Within the half hour we stopped again—in front of another silk store. We
were angry; but the doctor was always serene, always smooth-voiced. He
said:
“At last! How imposing the Louvre is, and yet how small! How
exquisitely fashioned! How charmingly situated!—Venerable, venerable
pile—”
“Pairdon, Doctor, zis is not ze Louvre—it is—”
“What is it?”
“I have ze idea—it come to me in a moment—zat ze silk in zis magazin
—“

that we did not wish to buy any silks to-day, and I also intended to tell
you that we yearned to go immediately to the palace of the Louvre, but
enjoying the happiness of seeing you devour four breakfasts this morning
has so filled me with pleasurable emotions that I neglect the commonest
interests of the time. However, we will proceed now to the Louvre,
Ferguson.”
“But, doctor,” (excitedly,) “it will take not a minute—not but one small
minute! Ze gentleman need not to buy if he not wish to—but only look at ze
silk—look at ze beautiful fabric. [Then pleadingly.] Sair—just only one
leetle moment!”
Dan said, “Confound the idiot! I don’t want to see any silks today, and I
won’t look at them. Drive on.”
And the doctor: “We need no silks now, Ferguson. Our hearts yearn for
the Louvre. Let us journey on—let us journey on.”
“But doctor! It is only one moment—one leetle moment. And ze time
will be save—entirely save! Because zere is nothing to see now—it is too
late. It want ten minute to four and ze Louvre close at four—only one leetle
moment, Doctor!”
The treacherous miscreant! After four breakfasts and a gallon of
champagne, to serve us such a scurvy trick. We got no sight of the countless

treasures of art in the Louvre galleries that day, and our only poor little
satisfaction was in the reflection that Ferguson sold not a solitary silk dress
pattern.
I am writing this chapter partly for the satisfaction of abusing that
accomplished knave Billfinger, and partly to show whosoever shall read
this how Americans fare at the hands of the Paris guides and what sort of
people Paris guides are. It need not be supposed that we were a stupider or
an easier prey than our countrymen generally are, for we were not. The
guides deceive and defraud every American who goes to Paris for the first
time and sees its sights alone or in company with others as little
experienced as himself. I shall visit Paris again someday, and then let the
guides beware! I shall go in my war paint—I shall carry my tomahawk
along.

I think we have lost but little time in Paris. We have gone to bed every
night tired out. Of course we visited the renowned International Exposition.
All the world did that. We went there on our third day in Paris—and we
stayed there nearly two hours. That was our first and last visit. To tell the

truth, we saw at a glance that one would have to spend weeks—yea, even
months—in that monstrous establishment to get an intelligible idea of it. It
was a wonderful show, but the moving masses of people of all nations we
saw there were a still more wonderful show. I discovered that if I were to
stay there a month, I should still find myself looking at the people instead of
the inanimate objects on exhibition. I got a little interested in some curious
old tapestries of the thirteenth century, but a party of Arabs came by, and
their dusky faces and quaint costumes called my attention away at once. I
watched a silver swan, which had a living grace about his movements and a
living intelligence in his eyes—watched him swimming about as
comfortably and as unconcernedly as if he had been born in a morass
instead of a jeweler’s shop—watched him seize a silver fish from under the
water and hold up his head and go through all the customary and elaborate
motions of swallowing it—but the moment it disappeared down his throat
some tattooed South Sea Islanders approached and I yielded to their
attractions.
Presently I found a revolving pistol several hundred years old which
looked strangely like a modern Colt, but just then I heard that the Empress
of the French was in another part of the building, and hastened away to see
what she might look like. We heard martial music—we saw an unusual
number of soldiers walking hurriedly about—there was a general movement
among the people. We inquired what it was all about and learned that the
Emperor of the French and the Sultan of Turkey were about to review
twenty-five thousand troops at the Arc de l’Etoile. We immediately
departed. I had a greater anxiety to see these men than I could have had to
see twenty expositions.
We drove away and took up a position in an open space opposite the
American minister’s house. A speculator bridged a couple of barrels with a
board and we hired standing places on it. Presently there was a sound of
distant music; in another minute a pillar of dust came moving slowly
toward us; a moment more and then, with colors flying and a grand crash of
military music, a gallant array of cavalrymen emerged from the dust and
came down the street on a gentle trot. After them came a long line of
artillery; then more cavalry, in splendid uniforms; and then their imperial
majesties Napoleon III and Abdul Aziz. The vast concourse of people
swung their hats and shouted—the windows and housetops in the wide
vicinity burst into a snowstorm of waving handkerchiefs, and the wavers of

the same mingled their cheers with those of the masses below. It was a
stirring spectacle.
But the two central figures claimed all my attention. Was ever such a
contrast set up before a multitude till then?

Napoleon in military uniform—a long-bodied, short-legged man, fiercely
moustached, old, wrinkled, with eyes half closed, and such a deep, crafty,
scheming expression about them!—Napoleon, bowing ever so gently to the
loud plaudits, and watching everything and everybody with his cat eyes
from under his depressed hat brim, as if to discover any sign that those
cheers were not heartfelt and cordial.
Abdul Aziz, absolute lord of the Ottoman empire—clad in dark green
European clothes, almost without ornament or insignia of rank; a red
Turkish fez on his head; a short, stout, dark man, black-bearded, black-
eyed, stupid, unprepossessing—a man whose whole appearance somehow
suggested that if he only had a cleaver in his hand and a white apron on, one
would not be at all surprised to hear him say: “A mutton roast today, or will
you have a nice porterhouse steak?”
Napoleon III, the representative of the highest modern civilization,
progress, and refinement; Abdul-Aziz, the representative of a people by
nature and training filthy, brutish, ignorant, unprogressive, superstitious—
and a government whose Three Graces are Tyranny, Rapacity, Blood. Here

in brilliant Paris, under this majestic Arch of Triumph, the First Century
greets the Nineteenth!
NAPOLEON III., Emperor of France! Surrounded by shouting
thousands, by military pomp, by the splendors of his capital city, and
companioned by kings and princes—this is the man who was sneered at and
reviled and called Bastard—yet who was dreaming of a crown and an
empire all the while; who was driven into exile—but carried his dreams
with him; who associated with the common herd in America and ran foot
races for a wager—but still sat upon a throne in fancy; who braved every
danger to go to his dying mother—and grieved that she could not be spared
to see him cast aside his plebeian vestments for the purple of royalty; who
kept his faithful watch and walked his weary beat a common policeman of
London—but dreamed the while of a coming night when he should tread
the long-drawn corridors of the Tuileries; who made the miserable fiasco of
Strasbourg; saw his poor, shabby eagle, forgetful of its lesson, refuse to
perch upon his shoulder; delivered his carefully prepared, sententious burst
of eloquence upon unsympathetic ears; found himself a prisoner, the butt of
small wits, a mark for the pitiless ridicule of all the world—yet went on
dreaming of coronations and splendid pageants as before; who lay a
forgotten captive in the dungeons of Ham—and still schemed and planned
and pondered over future glory and future power; President of France at
last! a coup d’etat, and surrounded by applauding armies, welcomed by the
thunders of cannon, he mounts a throne and waves before an astounded
world the sceptre of a mighty empire! Who talks of the marvels of fiction?
Who speaks of the wonders of romance? Who prates of the tame
achievements of Aladdin and the Magii of Arabia?
ABDUL-AZIZ, Sultan of Turkey, Lord of the Ottoman Empire! Born to a
throne; weak, stupid, ignorant, almost, as his meanest slave; chief of a vast
royalty, yet the puppet of his Premier and the obedient child of a tyrannical
mother; a man who sits upon a throne—the beck of whose finger moves
navies and armies—who holds in his hands the power of life and death over
millions—yet who sleeps, sleeps, eats, eats, idles with his eight hundred
concubines, and when he is surfeited with eating and sleeping and idling,
and would rouse up and take the reins of government and threaten to be a
sultan, is charmed from his purpose by wary Fuad Pacha with a pretty plan
for a new palace or a new ship—charmed away with a new toy, like any
other restless child; a man who sees his people robbed and oppressed by

soulless tax-gatherers, but speaks no word to save them; who believes in
gnomes and genii and the wild fables of The Arabian Nights, but has small
regard for the mighty magicians of to-day, and is nervous in the presence of
their mysterious railroads and steamboats and telegraphs; who would see
undone in Egypt all that great Mehemet Ali achieved, and would prefer
rather to forget than emulate him; a man who found his great empire a blot
upon the earth—a degraded, poverty-stricken, miserable, infamous
agglomeration of ignorance, crime, and brutality—and will idle away the
allotted days of his trivial life and then pass to the dust and the worms and
leave it so!
Napoleon has augmented the commercial prosperity of France in ten
years to such a degree that figures can hardly compute it. He has rebuilt
Paris and has partly rebuilt every city in the state. He condemns a whole
street at a time, assesses the damages, pays them, and rebuilds superbly.
Then speculators buy up the ground and sell, but the original owner is given
the first choice by the government at a stated price before the speculator is
permitted to purchase. But above all things, he has taken the sole control of
the empire of France into his hands and made it a tolerably free land—for
people who will not attempt to go too far in meddling with government
affairs. No country offers greater security to life and property than France,
and one has all the freedom he wants, but no license—no license to
interfere with anybody or make anyone uncomfortable.
As for the Sultan, one could set a trap any where and catch a dozen abler
men in a night.
The bands struck up, and the brilliant adventurer, Napoleon III., the
genius of Energy, Persistence, Enterprise; and the feeble Abdul-Aziz, the
genius of Ignorance, Bigotry, and Indolence, prepared for the Forward—
March!
We saw the splendid review, we saw the white-moustached old Crimean
soldier, Canrobert, Marshal of France, we saw—well, we saw every thing,
and then we went home satisfied.

CHAPTER XIV.
We went to see the Cathedral of Notre Dame. We had heard of it before.
It surprises me sometimes to think how much we do know and how
intelligent we are. We recognized the brown old Gothic pile in a moment; it
was like the pictures. We stood at a little distance and changed from one
point of observation to another and gazed long at its lofty square towers and
its rich front, clustered thick with stony, mutilated saints who had been
looking calmly down from their perches for ages. The Patriarch of
Jerusalem stood under them in the old days of chivalry and romance, and
preached the third Crusade, more than six hundred years ago; and since that
day they have stood there and looked quietly down upon the most thrilling
scenes, the grandest pageants, the most extraordinary spectacles that have
grieved or delighted Paris. These battered and broken-nosed old fellows
saw many and many a cavalcade of mail-clad knights come marching home
from Holy Land; they heard the bells above them toll the signal for the St.
Bartholomew’s Massacre, and they saw the slaughter that followed; later
they saw the Reign of Terror, the carnage of the Revolution, the overthrow
of a king, the coronation of two Napoleons, the christening of the young
prince that lords it over a regiment of servants in the Tuileries to-day—and
they may possibly continue to stand there until they see the Napoleon
dynasty swept away and the banners of a great republic floating above its
ruins. I wish these old parties could speak. They could tell a tale worth the
listening to.
They say that a pagan temple stood where Notre Dame now stands, in the
old Roman days, eighteen or twenty centuries ago—remains of it are still
preserved in Paris; and that a Christian church took its place about A.D.
300; another took the place of that in A.D. 500; and that the foundations of
the present cathedral were laid about A.D. 1100. The ground ought to be
measurably sacred by this time, one would think. One portion of this noble
old edifice is suggestive of the quaint fashions of ancient times. It was built
by Jean Sans-Peur, Duke of Burgundy, to set his conscience at rest—he had
assassinated the Duke of Orleans. Alas! Those good old times are gone
when a murderer could wipe the stain from his name and soothe his troubles

to sleep simply by getting out his bricks and mortar and building an
addition to a church.
The portals of the great western front are bisected by square pillars. They
took the central one away in 1852, on the occasion of thanksgivings for the
reinstitution of the presidential power—but precious soon they had occasion
to reconsider that motion and put it back again! And they did.
We loitered through the grand aisles for an hour or two, staring up at the
rich stained-glass windows embellished with blue and yellow and crimson
saints and martyrs, and trying to admire the numberless great pictures in the
chapels, and then we were admitted to the sacristy and shown the
magnificent robes which the Pope wore when he crowned Napoleon I; a
wagon-load of solid gold and silver utensils used in the great public
processions and ceremonies of the church; some nails of the true cross, a
fragment of the cross itself, a part of the crown of thorns. We had already
seen a large piece of the true cross in a church in the Azores, but no nails.
They showed us likewise the bloody robe which that archbishop of Paris
wore who exposed his sacred person and braved the wrath of the insurgents
of 1848, to mount the barricades and hold aloft the olive branch of peace in
the hope of stopping the slaughter. His noble effort cost him his life. He was
shot dead. They showed us a cast of his face taken after death, the bullet
that killed him, and the two vertebrae in which it lodged. These people have
a somewhat singular taste in the matter of relics. Ferguson told us that the
silver cross which the good archbishop wore at his girdle was seized and
thrown into the Seine, where it lay embedded in the mud for fifteen years,
and then an angel appeared to a priest and told him where to dive for it; he
did dive for it and got it, and now it is there on exhibition at Notre Dame, to
be inspected by anybody who feels an interest in inanimate objects of
miraculous intervention.
Next we went to visit the Morgue, that horrible receptacle for the dead
who die mysteriously and leave the manner of their taking off a dismal
secret. We stood before a grating and looked through into a room which was
hung all about with the clothing of dead men; coarse blouses, water-soaked;
the delicate garments of women and children; patrician vestments, hacked
and stabbed and stained with red; a hat that was crushed and bloody.

On a slanting stone lay a drowned man, naked, swollen, purple; clasping
the fragment of a broken bush with a grip which death had so petrified that
human strength could not unloose it—mute witness of the last despairing
effort to save the life that was doomed beyond all help. A stream of water
trickled ceaselessly over the hideous face. We knew that the body and the
clothing were there for identification by friends, but still we wondered if
anybody could love that repulsive object or grieve for its loss. We grew
meditative and wondered if, some forty years ago, when the mother of that
ghastly thing was dandling it upon her knee, and kissing it and petting it and
displaying it with satisfied pride to the passers-by, a prophetic vision of this
dread ending ever flitted through her brain. I half feared that the mother, or
the wife or a brother of the dead man might come while we stood there, but
nothing of the kind occurred. Men and women came, and some looked
eagerly in and pressed their faces against the bars; others glanced carelessly
at the body and turned away with a disappointed look—people, I thought,
who live upon strong excitements and who attend the exhibitions of the
Morgue regularly, just as other people go to see theatrical spectacles every
night. When one of these looked in and passed on, I could not help thinking
—

“Now this don’t afford you any satisfaction—a party with his head shot
off is what you need.”
One night we went to the celebrated Jardin Mabille, but only staid a little
while. We wanted to see some of this kind of Paris life, however, and
therefore the next night we went to a similar place of entertainment in a
great garden in the suburb of Asnieres. We went to the railroad depot,
toward evening, and Ferguson got tickets for a second-class carriage. Such
a perfect jam of people I have not often seen—but there was no noise, no
disorder, no rowdyism. Some of the women and young girls that entered the
train we knew to be of the demi-monde, but others we were not at all sure
about.
The girls and women in our carriage behaved themselves modestly and
becomingly all the way out, except that they smoked. When we arrived at
the garden in Asnieres, we paid a franc or two admission and entered a
place which had flower beds in it, and grass plots, and long, curving rows of
ornamental shrubbery, with here and there a secluded bower convenient for
eating ice cream in. We moved along the sinuous gravel walks, with the
great concourse of girls and young men, and suddenly a domed and
filigreed white temple, starred over and over and over again with brilliant
gas jets, burst upon us like a fallen sun. Nearby was a large, handsome
house with its ample front illuminated in the same way, and above its roof
floated the Star-Spangled Banner of America.
“Well!” I said. “How is this?” It nearly took my breath away.
Ferguson said an American—a New Yorker—kept the place, and was
carrying on quite a stirring opposition to the Jardin Mabille.
Crowds composed of both sexes and nearly all ages were frisking about
the garden or sitting in the open air in front of the flagstaff and the temple,
drinking wine and coffee or smoking. The dancing had not begun yet.
Ferguson said there was to be an exhibition. The famous Blondin was going
to perform on a tightrope in another part of the garden. We went thither.
Here the light was dim, and the masses of people were pretty closely
packed together. And now I made a mistake which any donkey might make,
but a sensible man never. I committed an error which I find myself
repeating every day of my life. Standing right before a young lady, I said:
“Dan, just look at this girl, how beautiful she is!”

“I thank you more for the evident sincerity of the compliment, sir, than
for the extraordinary publicity you have given to it!” This in good, pure
English.
We took a walk, but my spirits were very, very sadly dampened. I did not
feel right comfortable for some time afterward. Why will people be so
stupid as to suppose themselves the only foreigners among a crowd of ten
thousand persons?

But Blondin came out shortly. He appeared on a stretched cable, far away
above the sea of tossing hats and handkerchiefs, and in the glare of the
hundreds of rockets that whizzed heavenward by him he looked like a wee
insect. He balanced his pole and walked the length of his rope—two or
three hundred feet; he came back and got a man and carried him across; he
returned to the center and danced a jig; next he performed some gymnastic
and balancing feats too perilous to afford a pleasant spectacle; and he
finished by fastening to his person a thousand Roman candles, Catherine
wheels, serpents and rockets of all manner of brilliant colors, setting them
on fire all at once and walking and waltzing across his rope again in a
blinding blaze of glory that lit up the garden and the people’s faces like a
great conflagration at midnight.

The dance had begun, and we adjourned to the temple. Within it was a
drinking saloon, and all around it was a broad circular platform for the
dancers. I backed up against the wall of the temple, and waited. Twenty sets
formed, the music struck up, and then—I placed my hands before my face
for very shame. But I looked through my fingers. They were dancing the
renowned “Can-can.” A handsome girl in the set before me tripped forward
lightly to meet the opposite gentleman, tripped back again, grasped her
dresses vigorously on both sides with her hands, raised them pretty high,
danced an extraordinary jig that had more activity and exposure about it
than any jig I ever saw before, and then, drawing her clothes still higher, she
advanced gaily to the center and launched a vicious kick full at her vis-a-vis
that must infallibly have removed his nose if he had been seven feet high. It
was a mercy he was only six.

That is the can-can. The idea of it is to dance as wildly, as noisily, as
furiously as you can; expose yourself as much as possible if you are a
woman; and kick as high as you can, no matter which sex you belong to.
There is no word of exaggeration in this. Any of the staid, respectable, aged
people who were there that night can testify to the truth of that statement.

There were a good many such people present. I suppose French morality is
not of that straight-laced description which is shocked at trifles.
I moved aside and took a general view of the can-can. Shouts, laughter,
furious music, a bewildering chaos of darting and intermingling forms,
stormy jerking and snatching of gay dresses, bobbing beads, flying arms,
lightning flashes of white-stockinged calves and dainty slippers in the air,
and then a grand final rush, riot, a terrific hubbub, and a wild stampede!
Heavens! Nothing like it has been seen on earth since trembling Tam
O’Shanter saw the devil and the witches at their orgies that stormy night in
“Alloway’s auld haunted kirk.”
We visited the Louvre, at a time when we had no silk purchases in view,
and looked at its miles of paintings by the old masters. Some of them were
beautiful, but at the same time they carried such evidences about them of
the cringing spirit of those great men that we found small pleasure in
examining them. Their nauseous adulation of princely patrons was more
prominent to me and chained my attention more surely than the charms of
color and expression which are claimed to be in the pictures. Gratitude for
kindnesses is well, but it seems to me that some of those artists carried it so
far that it ceased to be gratitude and became worship. If there is a plausible
excuse for the worship of men, then by all means let us forgive Rubens and
his brethren.
But I will drop the subject, lest I say something about the old masters that
might as well be left unsaid.
Of course we drove in the Bois de Boulogne, that limitless park, with its
forests, its lakes, its cascades, and its broad avenues. There were thousands
upon thousands of vehicles abroad, and the scene was full of life and gaiety.
There were very common hacks, with father and mother and all the children
in them; conspicuous little open carriages with celebrated ladies of
questionable reputation in them; there were Dukes and Duchesses abroad,
with gorgeous footmen perched behind, and equally gorgeous outriders
perched on each of the six horses; there were blue and silver, and green and
gold, and pink and black, and all sorts and descriptions of stunning and
startling liveries out, and I almost yearned to be a flunkey myself, for the
sake of the fine clothes.
But presently the Emperor came along and he outshone them all. He was
preceded by a bodyguard of gentlemen on horseback in showy uniforms,

his carriage-horses (there appeared to be somewhere in the remote
neighborhood of a thousand of them,) were bestridden by gallant-looking
fellows, also in stylish uniforms, and after the carriage followed another
detachment of bodyguards. Everybody got out of the way; everybody
bowed to the Emperor and his friend the Sultan; and they went by on a
swinging trot and disappeared.
I will not describe the Bois de Boulogne. I can not do it. It is simply a
beautiful, cultivated, endless, wonderful wilderness. It is an enchanting
place. It is in Paris now, one may say, but a crumbling old cross in one
portion of it reminds one that it was not always so. The cross marks the spot
where a celebrated troubadour was waylaid and murdered in the fourteenth
century. It was in this park that that fellow with an unpronounceable name
made the attempt upon the Russian Czar’s life last spring with a pistol. The
bullet struck a tree. Ferguson showed us the place. Now in America that
interesting tree would be chopped down or forgotten within the next five
years, but it will be treasured here. The guides will point it out to visitors
for the next eight hundred years, and when it decays and falls down they
will put up another there and go on with the same old story just the same.

CHAPTER XV.
One of our pleasantest visits was to Pere la Chaise, the national burying-
ground of France, the honored resting-place of some of her greatest and best
children, the last home of scores of illustrious men and women who were
born to no titles, but achieved fame by their own energy and their own
genius. It is a solemn city of winding streets and of miniature marble
temples and mansions of the dead gleaming white from out a wilderness of
foliage and fresh flowers. Not every city is so well peopled as this, or has so
ample an area within its walls. Few palaces exist in any city that are so
exquisite in design, so rich in art, so costly in material, so graceful, so
beautiful.
We had stood in the ancient church of St. Denis, where the marble
effigies of thirty generations of kings and queens lay stretched at length
upon the tombs, and the sensations invoked were startling and novel; the
curious armor, the obsolete costumes, the placid faces, the hands placed
palm to palm in eloquent supplication—it was a vision of gray antiquity. It
seemed curious enough to be standing face to face, as it were, with old
Dagobert I., and Clovis and Charlemagne, those vague, colossal heroes,
those shadows, those myths of a thousand years ago! I touched their dust-
covered faces with my finger, but Dagobert was deader than the sixteen
centuries that have passed over him, Clovis slept well after his labor for
Christ, and old Charlemagne went on dreaming of his paladins, of bloody
Roncesvalles, and gave no heed to me.
The great names of Pere la Chaise impress one, too, but differently. There
the suggestion brought constantly to his mind is, that this place is sacred to
a nobler royalty—the royalty of heart and brain. Every faculty of mind,
every noble trait of human nature, every high occupation which men engage
in, seems represented by a famous name. The effect is a curious medley.
Davoust and Massena, who wrought in many a battle tragedy, are here, and
so also is Rachel, of equal renown in mimic tragedy on the stage. The Abbe
Sicard sleeps here—the first great teacher of the deaf and dumb—a man
whose heart went out to every unfortunate, and whose life was given to
kindly offices in their service; and not far off, in repose and peace at last,

lies Marshal Ney, whose stormy spirit knew no music like the bugle call to
arms. The man who originated public gas-lighting, and that other benefactor
who introduced the cultivation of the potato and thus blessed millions of his
starving countrymen, lie with the Prince of Masserano, and with exiled
queens and princes of Further India. Gay-Lussac the chemist, Laplace the
astronomer, Larrey the surgeon, de Suze the advocate, are here, and with
them are Talma, Bellini, Rubini; de Balzac, Beaumarchais, Beranger;
Moliere and Lafontaine, and scores of other men whose names and whose
worthy labors are as familiar in the remote by-places of civilization as are
the historic deeds of the kings and princes that sleep in the marble vaults of
St. Denis.
But among the thousands and thousands of tombs in Pere la Chaise, there
is one that no man, no woman, no youth of either sex, ever passes by
without stopping to examine. Every visitor has a sort of indistinct idea of
the history of its dead and comprehends that homage is due there, but not
one in twenty thousand clearly remembers the story of that tomb and its
romantic occupants. This is the grave of Abelard and Heloise—a grave
which has been more revered, more widely known, more written and sung
about and wept over, for seven hundred years, than any other in
Christendom save only that of the Saviour. All visitors linger pensively
about it; all young people capture and carry away keepsakes and
mementoes of it; all Parisian youths and maidens who are disappointed in
love come there to bail out when they are full of tears; yea, many stricken
lovers make pilgrimages to this shrine from distant provinces to weep and
wail and “grit” their teeth over their heavy sorrows, and to purchase the
sympathies of the chastened spirits of that tomb with offerings of
immortelles and budding flowers.
Go when you will, you find somebody snuffling over that tomb. Go when
you will, you find it furnished with those bouquets and immortelles. Go
when you will, you find a gravel-train from Marseilles arriving to supply
the deficiencies caused by memento-cabbaging vandals whose affections
have miscarried.

Yet who really knows the story of Abelard and Heloise? Precious few
people. The names are perfectly familiar to every body, and that is about all.
With infinite pains I have acquired a knowledge of that history, and I
propose to narrate it here, partly for the honest information of the public
and partly to show that public that they have been wasting a good deal of
marketable sentiment very unnecessarily.

STORY OF ABELARD AND HELOISE

Heloise was born seven hundred and sixty-six years ago. She may have
had parents. There is no telling. She lived with her uncle Fulbert, a canon of
the cathedral of Paris. I do not know what a canon of a cathedral is, but that
is what he was. He was nothing more than a sort of a mountain howitzer,
likely, because they had no heavy artillery in those days. Suffice it, then,
that Heloise lived with her uncle the howitzer and was happy. She spent the
most of her childhood in the convent of Argenteuil—never heard of
Argenteuil before, but suppose there was really such a place. She then
returned to her uncle, the old gun, or son of a gun, as the case may be, and
he taught her to write and speak Latin, which was the language of literature
and polite society at that period.

Just at this time, Pierre Abelard, who had already made himself widely
famous as a rhetorician, came to found a school of rhetoric in Paris. The
originality of his principles, his eloquence, and his great physical strength
and beauty created a profound sensation. He saw Heloise, and was
captivated by her blooming youth, her beauty, and her charming disposition.
He wrote to her; she answered. He wrote again; she answered again. He was
now in love. He longed to know her—to speak to her face to face.
His school was near Fulbert’s house. He asked Fulbert to allow him to
call. The good old swivel saw here a rare opportunity: his niece, whom he
so much loved, would absorb knowledge from this man, and it would not
cost him a cent. Such was Fulbert—penurious.
Fulbert’s first name is not mentioned by any author, which is unfortunate.
However, George W. Fulbert will answer for him as well as any other. We
will let him go at that. He asked Abelard to teach her.
Abelard was glad enough of the opportunity. He came often and staid
long. A letter of his shows in its very first sentence that he came under that
friendly roof like a cold-hearted villain as he was, with the deliberate
intention of debauching a confiding, innocent girl. This is the letter:

“I cannot cease to be astonished at the simplicity of
Fulbert; I was as much surprised as if he had placed a lamb
in the power of a hungry wolf. Heloise and I, under pretext
of study, gave ourselves up wholly to love, and the solitude
that love seeks our studies procured for us. Books were open
before us, but we spoke oftener of love than philosophy, and
kisses came more readily from our lips than words.”

And so, exulting over an honorable confidence which to his degraded
instinct was a ludicrous “simplicity,” this unmanly Abelard seduced the
niece of the man whose guest he was. Paris found it out. Fulbert was told of
it—told often—but refused to believe it. He could not comprehend how a
man could be so depraved as to use the sacred protection and security of
hospitality as a means for the commission of such a crime as that. But when
he heard the rowdies in the streets singing the love-songs of Abelard to
Heloise, the case was too plain—love-songs come not properly within the
teachings of rhetoric and philosophy.
He drove Abelard from his house. Abelard returned secretly and carried
Heloise away to Palais, in Brittany, his native country. Here, shortly
afterward, she bore a son, who, from his rare beauty, was surnamed
Astrolabe—William G. The girl’s flight enraged Fulbert, and he longed for
vengeance, but feared to strike lest retaliation visit Heloise—for he still
loved her tenderly. At length Abelard offered to marry Heloise—but on a
shameful condition: that the marriage should be kept secret from the world,
to the end that (while her good name remained a wreck, as before,) his
priestly reputation might be kept untarnished. It was like that miscreant.
Fulbert saw his opportunity and consented. He would see the parties
married, and then violate the confidence of the man who had taught him
that trick; he would divulge the secret and so remove somewhat of the
obloquy that attached to his niece’s fame. But the niece suspected his
scheme. She refused the marriage at first; she said Fulbert would betray the
secret to save her, and besides, she did not wish to drag down a lover who
was so gifted, so honored by the world, and who had such a splendid career
before him. It was noble, self-sacrificing love, and characteristic of the
pure-souled Heloise, but it was not good sense.

But she was overruled, and the private marriage took place. Now for
Fulbert! The heart so wounded should be healed at last; the proud spirit so
tortured should find rest again; the humbled head should be lifted up once
more. He proclaimed the marriage in the high places of the city and rejoiced
that dishonor had departed from his house. But lo! Abelard denied the
marriage! Heloise denied it! The people, knowing the former
circumstances, might have believed Fulbert had only Abelard denied it, but
when the person chiefly interested—the girl herself—denied it, they
laughed, despairing Fulbert to scorn.
The poor canon of the cathedral of Paris was spiked again. The last hope
of repairing the wrong that had been done his house was gone. What next?
Human nature suggested revenge. He compassed it. The historian says:
“Ruffians, hired by Fulbert, fell upon Abelard by night, and inflicted
upon him a terrible and nameless mutilation.”
I am seeking the last resting place of those “ruffians.” When I find it I
shall shed some tears on it, and stack up some bouquets and immortelles,
and cart away from it some gravel whereby to remember that howsoever
blotted by crime their lives may have been, these ruffians did one just deed,
at any rate, albeit it was not warranted by the strict letter of the law.
Heloise entered a convent and gave good-bye to the world and its
pleasures for all time. For twelve years she never heard of Abelard—never
even heard his name mentioned. She had become prioress of Argenteuil and
led a life of complete seclusion. She happened one day to see a letter

written by him, in which he narrated his own history. She cried over it and
wrote him. He answered, addressing her as his “sister in Christ.” They
continued to correspond, she in the unweighed language of unwavering
affection, he in the chilly phraseology of the polished rhetorician. She
poured out her heart in passionate, disjointed sentences; he replied with
finished essays, divided deliberately into heads and sub-heads, premises and
argument. She showered upon him the tenderest epithets that love could
devise, he addressed her from the North Pole of his frozen heart as the
“Spouse of Christ!” The abandoned villain!
On account of her too easy government of her nuns, some disreputable
irregularities were discovered among them, and the Abbot of St. Denis
broke up her establishment. Abelard was the official head of the monastery
of St. Gildas de Ruys, at that time, and when he heard of her homeless
condition a sentiment of pity was aroused in his breast (it is a wonder the
unfamiliar emotion did not blow his head off,) and he placed her and her
troop in the little oratory of the Paraclete, a religious establishment which
he had founded. She had many privations and sufferings to undergo at first,
but her worth and her gentle disposition won influential friends for her, and
she built up a wealthy and flourishing nunnery. She became a great favorite
with the heads of the church, and also the people, though she seldom
appeared in public. She rapidly advanced in esteem, in good report, and in
usefulness, and Abelard as rapidly lost ground. The Pope so honored her
that he made her the head of her order. Abelard, a man of splendid talents,
and ranking as the first debater of his time, became timid, irresolute, and
distrustful of his powers. He only needed a great misfortune to topple him
from the high position he held in the world of intellectual excellence, and it
came. Urged by kings and princes to meet the subtle St. Bernard in debate
and crush him, he stood up in the presence of a royal and illustrious
assemblage, and when his antagonist had finished he looked about him and
stammered a commencement; but his courage failed him, the cunning of his
tongue was gone: with his speech unspoken, he trembled and sat down, a
disgraced and vanquished champion.
He died a nobody, and was buried at Cluny, A.D., 1144. They removed
his body to the Paraclete afterward, and when Heloise died, twenty years
later, they buried her with him, in accordance with her last wish. He died at
the ripe age of 64, and she at 63. After the bodies had remained entombed
three hundred years, they were removed once more. They were removed

again in 1800, and finally, seventeen years afterward, they were taken up
and transferred to Pere la Chaise, where they will remain in peace and quiet
until it comes time for them to get up and move again.
History is silent concerning the last acts of the mountain howitzer. Let the
world say what it will about him, I, at least, shall always respect the
memory and sorrow for the abused trust and the broken heart and the
troubled spirit of the old smooth-bore. Rest and repose be his!
Such is the story of Abelard and Heloise. Such is the history that
Lamartine has shed such cataracts of tears over. But that man never could
come within the influence of a subject in the least pathetic without
overflowing his banks. He ought to be dammed—or leveed, I should more
properly say. Such is the history—not as it is usually told, but as it is when
stripped of the nauseous sentimentality that would enshrine for our loving
worship a dastardly seducer like Pierre Abelard. I have not a word to say
against the misused, faithful girl, and would not withhold from her grave a
single one of those simple tributes which blighted youths and maidens offer
to her memory, but I am sorry enough that I have not time and opportunity
to write four or five volumes of my opinion of her friend the founder of the
Parachute, or the Paraclete, or whatever it was.
The tons of sentiment I have wasted on that unprincipled humbug in my
ignorance! I shall throttle down my emotions hereafter, about this sort of
people, until I have read them up and know whether they are entitled to any
tearful attentions or not. I wish I had my immortelles back, now, and that
bunch of radishes.
In Paris we often saw in shop windows the sign “English Spoken Here,”
just as one sees in the windows at home the sign “Ici on parle francaise.”
We always invaded these places at once—and invariably received the
information, framed in faultless French, that the clerk who did the English
for the establishment had just gone to dinner and would be back in an hour
—would Monsieur buy something? We wondered why those parties
happened to take their dinners at such erratic and extraordinary hours, for
we never called at a time when an exemplary Christian would be in the least
likely to be abroad on such an errand. The truth was, it was a base fraud—a
snare to trap the unwary—chaff to catch fledglings with. They had no
English-murdering clerk. They trusted to the sign to inveigle foreigners into

their lairs, and trusted to their own blandishments to keep them there till
they bought something.
We ferreted out another French imposition—a frequent sign to this effect:
“ALL MANNER OF AMERICAN DRINKS ARTISTICALLY PREPARED
HERE.” We procured the services of a gentleman experienced in the
nomenclature of the American bar, and moved upon the works of one of
these impostors. A bowing, aproned Frenchman skipped forward and said:
“Que voulez les messieurs?” I do not know what “Que voulez les
messieurs?” means, but such was his remark.
Our general said, “We will take a whiskey straight.”
[A stare from the Frenchman.]
“Well, if you don’t know what that is, give us a champagne cock-tail.”
[A stare and a shrug.]
“Well, then, give us a sherry cobbler.”
The Frenchman was checkmated. This was all Greek to him.
“Give us a brandy smash!”

The Frenchman began to back away, suspicious of the ominous vigor of
the last order—began to back away, shrugging his shoulders and spreading
his hands apologetically.
The General followed him up and gained a complete victory. The
uneducated foreigner could not even furnish a Santa Cruz Punch, an Eye-
Opener, a Stone-Fence, or an Earthquake. It was plain that he was a wicked
impostor.
An acquaintance of mine said the other day that he was doubtless the
only American visitor to the Exposition who had had the high honor of
being escorted by the Emperor’s bodyguard. I said with unobtrusive
frankness that I was astonished that such a long-legged, lantern-jawed,
unprepossessing-looking specter as he should be singled out for a
distinction like that, and asked how it came about. He said he had attended
a great military review in the Champ de Mars some time ago, and while the
multitude about him was growing thicker and thicker every moment he
observed an open space inside the railing. He left his carriage and went into
it. He was the only person there, and so he had plenty of room, and the
situation being central, he could see all the preparations going on about the
field. By and by there was a sound of music, and soon the Emperor of the
French and the Emperor of Austria, escorted by the famous Cent Gardes,
entered the enclosure. They seemed not to observe him, but directly, in
response to a sign from the commander of the guard, a young lieutenant
came toward him with a file of his men following, halted, raised his hand,
and gave the military salute, and then said in a low voice that he was sorry
to have to disturb a stranger and a gentleman, but the place was sacred to
royalty. Then this New Jersey phantom rose up and bowed and begged
pardon, then with the officer beside him, the file of men marching behind
him, and with every mark of respect, he was escorted to his carriage by the
imperial Cent Gardes! The officer saluted again and fell back, the New
Jersey sprite bowed in return and had presence of mind enough to pretend
that he had simply called on a matter of private business with those
emperors, and so waved them an adieu and drove from the field!

Imagine a poor Frenchman ignorantly intruding upon a public rostrum
sacred to some six-penny dignitary in America. The police would scare him
to death first with a storm of their elegant blasphemy, and then pull him to
pieces getting him away from there. We are measurably superior to the
French in some things, but they are immeasurably our betters in others.
Enough of Paris for the present. We have done our whole duty by it. We
have seen the Tuileries, the Napoleon Column, the Madeleine, that wonder
of wonders the tomb of Napoleon, all the great churches and museums,
libraries, imperial palaces, and sculpture and picture galleries, the Pantheon,
Jardin des Plantes, the opera, the circus, the legislative body, the billiard
rooms, the barbers, the grisettes—

Ah, the grisettes! I had almost forgotten. They are another romantic
fraud. They were (if you let the books of travel tell it) always so beautiful—
so neat and trim, so graceful—so naive and trusting—so gentle, so winning
—so faithful to their shop duties, so irresistible to buyers in their prattling
importunity—so devoted to their poverty-stricken students of the Latin
Quarter—so lighthearted and happy on their Sunday picnics in the suburbs
—and oh, so charmingly, so delightfully immoral!
Stuff! For three or four days I was constantly saying:
“Quick, Ferguson! Is that a grisette?”
And he always said, “No.”
He comprehended at last that I wanted to see a grisette. Then he showed
me dozens of them. They were like nearly all the Frenchwomen I ever saw
—homely. They had large hands, large feet, large mouths; they had pug
noses as a general thing, and moustaches that not even good breeding could
overlook; they combed their hair straight back without parting; they were
ill-shaped, they were not winning, they were not graceful; I knew by their
looks that they ate garlic and onions; and lastly and finally, to my thinking it
would be base flattery to call them immoral.

Aroint thee, wench! I sorrow for the vagabond student of the Latin
Quarter now, even more than formerly I envied him. Thus topples to earth
another idol of my infancy.
We have seen every thing, and tomorrow we go to Versailles. We shall
see Paris only for a little while as we come back to take up our line of
march for the ship, and so I may as well bid the beautiful city a regretful
farewell. We shall travel many thousands of miles after we leave here and
visit many great cities, but we shall find none so enchanting as this.
Some of our party have gone to England, intending to take a roundabout
course and rejoin the vessel at Leghorn or Naples several weeks hence. We

came near going to Geneva, but have concluded to return to Marseilles and
go up through Italy from Genoa.
I will conclude this chapter with a remark that I am sincerely proud to be
able to make—and glad, as well, that my comrades cordially endorse it, to
wit: by far the handsomest women we have seen in France were born and
reared in America.
I feel now like a man who has redeemed a failing reputation and shed
luster upon a dimmed escutcheon, by a single just deed done at the eleventh
hour.
Let the curtain fall, to slow music.

CHAPTER XVI.
VERSAILLES! It is wonderfully beautiful! You gaze and stare and try to
understand that it is real, that it is on the earth, that it is not the Garden of
Eden—but your brain grows giddy, stupefied by the world of beauty around
you, and you half believe you are the dupe of an exquisite dream. The scene
thrills one like military music! A noble palace, stretching its ornamented
front, block upon block away, till it seemed that it would never end; a grand
promenade before it, whereon the armies of an empire might parade; all
about it rainbows of flowers, and colossal statues that were almost
numberless and yet seemed only scattered over the ample space; broad
flights of stone steps leading down from the promenade to lower grounds of
the park—stairways that whole regiments might stand to arms upon and
have room to spare; vast fountains whose great bronze effigies discharged
rivers of sparkling water into the air and mingled a hundred curving jets
together in forms of matchless beauty; wide grass-carpeted avenues that
branched hither and thither in every direction and wandered to seemingly
interminable distances, walled all the way on either side with compact ranks
of leafy trees whose branches met above and formed arches as faultless and
as symmetrical as ever were carved in stone; and here and there were
glimpses of sylvan lakes with miniature ships glassed in their surfaces. And
every where—on the palace steps, and the great promenade, around the
fountains, among the trees, and far under the arches of the endless avenues
—hundreds and hundreds of people in gay costumes walked or ran or
danced, and gave to the fairy picture the life and animation which was all of
perfection it could have lacked.
It was worth a pilgrimage to see. Everything is on so gigantic a scale.
Nothing is small—nothing is cheap. The statues are all large; the palace is
grand; the park covers a fair-sized county; the avenues are interminable. All
the distances and all the dimensions about Versailles are vast. I used to think
the pictures exaggerated these distances and these dimensions beyond all
reason, and that they made Versailles more beautiful than it was possible for
any place in the world to be. I know now that the pictures never came up to
the subject in any respect, and that no painter could represent Versailles on

canvas as beautiful as it is in reality. I used to abuse Louis XIV for spending
two hundred millions of dollars in creating this marvelous park, when bread
was so scarce with some of his subjects; but I have forgiven him now. He
took a tract of land sixty miles in circumference and set to work to make
this park and build this palace and a road to it from Paris. He kept 36,000
men employed daily on it, and the labor was so unhealthy that they used to
die and be hauled off by cartloads every night. The wife of a nobleman of
the time speaks of this as an “inconvenience,” but naively remarks that “it
does not seem worthy of attention in the happy state of tranquillity we now
enjoy.”

I always thought ill of people at home who trimmed their shrubbery into
pyramids and squares and spires and all manner of unnatural shapes, and
when I saw the same thing being practiced in this great park I began to feel
dissatisfied. But I soon saw the idea of the thing and the wisdom of it. They
seek the general effect. We distort a dozen sickly trees into unaccustomed
shapes in a little yard no bigger than a dining room, and then surely they
look absurd enough. But here they take two hundred thousand tall forest
trees and set them in a double row; allow no sign of leaf or branch to grow
on the trunk lower down than six feet above the ground; from that point the
boughs begin to project, and very gradually they extend outward further and
further till they meet overhead, and a faultless tunnel of foliage is formed.
The arch is mathematically precise. The effect is then very fine. They make
trees take fifty different shapes, and so these quaint effects are infinitely
varied and picturesque. The trees in no two avenues are shaped alike, and
consequently the eye is not fatigued with anything in the nature of

monotonous uniformity. I will drop this subject now, leaving it to others to
determine how these people manage to make endless ranks of lofty forest
trees grow to just a certain thickness of trunk (say a foot and two-thirds);
how they make them spring to precisely the same height for miles; how
they make them grow so close together; how they compel one huge limb to
spring from the same identical spot on each tree and form the main sweep
of the arch; and how all these things are kept exactly in the same condition
and in the same exquisite shapeliness and symmetry month after month and
year after year—for I have tried to reason out the problem and have failed.
We walked through the great hall of sculpture and the one hundred and
fifty galleries of paintings in the palace of Versailles, and felt that to be in
such a place was useless unless one had a whole year at his disposal. These
pictures are all battle scenes, and only one solitary little canvas among them
all treats of anything but great French victories. We wandered, also, through
the Grand Trianon and the Petit Trianon, those monuments of royal
prodigality, and with histories so mournful—filled, as it is, with souvenirs
of Napoleon the First, and three dead kings and as many queens. In one
sumptuous bed they had all slept in succession, but no one occupies it now.
In a large dining room stood the table at which Louis XIV and his mistress
Madame Maintenon, and after them Louis XV, and Pompadour, had sat at
their meals naked and unattended—for the table stood upon a trapdoor,
which descended with it to regions below when it was necessary to
replenish its dishes. In a room of the Petit Trianon stood the furniture, just
as poor Marie Antoinette left it when the mob came and dragged her and the
King to Paris, never to return. Near at hand, in the stables, were prodigious
carriages that showed no color but gold—carriages used by former kings of
France on state occasions, and never used now save when a kingly head is
to be crowned or an imperial infant christened. And with them were some
curious sleighs, whose bodies were shaped like lions, swans, tigers, etc.—
vehicles that had once been handsome with pictured designs and fine
workmanship, but were dusty and decaying now. They had their history.
When Louis XIV had finished the Grand Trianon, he told Maintenon he had
created a Paradise for her, and asked if she could think of anything now to
wish for. He said he wished the Trianon to be perfection—nothing less. She
said she could think of but one thing—it was summer, and it was balmy
France—yet she would like well to sleigh ride in the leafy avenues of
Versailles! The next morning found miles and miles of grassy avenues

spread thick with snowy salt and sugar, and a procession of those quaint
sleighs waiting to receive the chief concubine of the gaiest and most
unprincipled court that France has ever seen!
From sumptuous Versailles, with its palaces, its statues, its gardens, and
its fountains, we journeyed back to Paris and sought its antipodes—the
Faubourg St. Antoine. Little, narrow streets; dirty children blockading them;
greasy, slovenly women capturing and spanking them; filthy dens on first
floors, with rag stores in them (the heaviest business in the Faubourg is the
chiffonier’s); other filthy dens where whole suits of second and third-hand
clothing are sold at prices that would ruin any proprietor who did not steal
his stock; still other filthy dens where they sold groceries—sold them by the
half-pennyworth—five dollars would buy the man out, goodwill and all. Up
these little crooked streets they will murder a man for seven dollars and
dump the body in the Seine. And up some other of these streets—most of
them, I should say—live lorettes.
All through this Faubourg St. Antoine, misery, poverty, vice, and crime
go hand in hand, and the evidences of it stare one in the face from every
side. Here the people live who begin the revolutions. Whenever there is
anything of that kind to be done, they are always ready. They take as much
genuine pleasure in building a barricade as they do in cutting a throat or
shoving a friend into the Seine. It is these savage-looking ruffians who
storm the splendid halls of the Tuileries occasionally, and swarm into
Versailles when a king is to be called to account.
But they will build no more barricades, they will break no more soldiers’
heads with paving-stones. Louis Napoleon has taken care of all that. He is
annihilating the crooked streets and building in their stead noble boulevards
as straight as an arrow—avenues which a cannon ball could traverse from
end to end without meeting an obstruction more irresistible than the flesh
and bones of men—boulevards whose stately edifices will never afford
refuges and plotting places for starving, discontented revolution breeders.
Five of these great thoroughfares radiate from one ample centre—a centre
which is exceedingly well adapted to the accommodation of heavy artillery.
The mobs used to riot there, but they must seek another rallying-place in
future. And this ingenious Napoleon paves the streets of his great cities with
a smooth, compact composition of asphaltum and sand. No more barricades
of flagstones—no more assaulting his Majesty’s troops with cobbles. I

cannot feel friendly toward my quondam fellow-American, Napoleon III.,
especially at this time,—[July, 1867.]—when in fancy I see his credulous
victim, Maximilian, lying stark and stiff in Mexico, and his maniac widow
watching eagerly from her French asylum for the form that will never come
—but I do admire his nerve, his calm self-reliance, his shrewd good sense.

CHAPTER XVII.
We had a pleasant journey of it seaward again. We found that for the
three past nights our ship had been in a state of war. The first night the
sailors of a British ship, being happy with grog, came down on the pier and
challenged our sailors to a free fight. They accepted with alacrity, repaired
to the pier, and gained—their share of a drawn battle. Several bruised and
bloody members of both parties were carried off by the police and
imprisoned until the following morning. The next night the British boys
came again to renew the fight, but our men had had strict orders to remain
on board and out of sight. They did so, and the besieging party grew noisy
and more and more abusive as the fact became apparent (to them) that our
men were afraid to come out. They went away finally with a closing burst
of ridicule and offensive epithets. The third night they came again and were
more obstreperous than ever. They swaggered up and down the almost
deserted pier, and hurled curses, obscenity, and stinging sarcasms at our
crew. It was more than human nature could bear. The executive officer
ordered our men ashore—with instructions not to fight. They charged the
British and gained a brilliant victory. I probably would not have mentioned
this war had it ended differently. But I travel to learn, and I still remember
that they picture no French defeats in the battle-galleries of Versailles.
It was like home to us to step on board the comfortable ship again and
smoke and lounge about her breezy decks. And yet it was not altogether like
home, either, because so many members of the family were away. We
missed some pleasant faces which we would rather have found at dinner,
and at night there were gaps in the euchre-parties which could not be
satisfactorily filled. “Moult” was in England, Jack in Switzerland, Charley
in Spain. Blucher was gone, none could tell where. But we were at sea
again, and we had the stars and the ocean to look at, and plenty of room to
meditate in.
In due time the shores of Italy were sighted, and as we stood gazing from
the decks, early in the bright summer morning, the stately city of Genoa
rose up out of the sea and flung back the sunlight from her hundred palaces.

Here we rest for the present—or rather, here we have been trying to rest,
for some little time, but we run about too much to accomplish a great deal
in that line.
I would like to remain here. I had rather not go any further. There may be
prettier women in Europe, but I doubt it. The population of Genoa is
120,000; two-thirds of these are women, I think, and at least two-thirds of
the women are beautiful. They are as dressy and as tasteful and as graceful
as they could possibly be without being angels. However, angels are not
very dressy, I believe. At least the angels in pictures are not—they wear
nothing but wings. But these Genoese women do look so charming. Most of
the young demoiselles are robed in a cloud of white from head to foot,
though many trick themselves out more elaborately. Nine-tenths of them
wear nothing on their heads but a filmy sort of veil, which falls down their
backs like a white mist. They are very fair, and many of them have blue
eyes, but black and dreamy dark brown ones are met with oftenest.

The ladies and gentlemen of Genoa have a pleasant fashion of
promenading in a large park on the top of a hill in the center of the city,

from six till nine in the evening, and then eating ices in a neighboring
garden an hour or two longer. We went to the park on Sunday evening. Two
thousand persons were present, chiefly young ladies and gentlemen. The
gentlemen were dressed in the very latest Paris fashions, and the robes of
the ladies glinted among the trees like so many snowflakes. The multitude
moved round and round the park in a great procession. The bands played,
and so did the fountains; the moon and the gas lamps lit up the scene, and
altogether it was a brilliant and an animated picture. I scanned every female
face that passed, and it seemed to me that all were handsome. I never saw
such a freshet of loveliness before. I did not see how a man of only ordinary
decision of character could marry here, because before he could get his
mind made up he would fall in love with somebody else.
Never smoke any Italian tobacco. Never do it on any account. It makes
me shudder to think what it must be made of. You cannot throw an old cigar
“stub” down anywhere, but some vagabond will pounce upon it on the
instant. I like to smoke a good deal, but it wounds my sensibilities to see
one of these stub-hunters watching me out of the corners of his hungry eyes
and calculating how long my cigar will be likely to last. It reminded me too
painfully of that San Francisco undertaker who used to go to sick-beds with
his watch in his hand and time the corpse. One of these stub-hunters
followed us all over the park last night, and we never had a smoke that was
worth anything. We were always moved to appease him with the stub before
the cigar was half gone, because he looked so viciously anxious. He
regarded us as his own legitimate prey, by right of discovery, I think,
because he drove off several other professionals who wanted to take stock
in us.
Now, they surely must chew up those old stubs, and dry and sell them for
smoking-tobacco. Therefore, give your custom to other than Italian brands
of the article.
“The Superb” and the “City of Palaces” are names which Genoa has held
for centuries. She is full of palaces, certainly, and the palaces are sumptuous
inside, but they are very rusty without and make no pretensions to
architectural magnificence. “Genoa the Superb” would be a felicitous title if
it referred to the women.
We have visited several of the palaces—immense thick-walled piles, with
great stone staircases, tesselated marble pavements on the floors,

(sometimes they make a mosaic work, of intricate designs, wrought in
pebbles or little fragments of marble laid in cement,) and grand salons hung
with pictures by Rubens, Guido, Titian, Paul Veronese, and so on, and
portraits of heads of the family, in plumed helmets and gallant coats of mail,
and patrician ladies in stunning costumes of centuries ago. But, of course,
the folks were all out in the country for the summer, and might not have
known enough to ask us to dinner if they had been at home, and so all the
grand empty salons, with their resounding pavements, their grim pictures of
dead ancestors, and tattered banners with the dust of bygone centuries upon
them, seemed to brood solemnly of death and the grave, and our spirits
ebbed away, and our cheerfulness passed from us. We never went up to the
eleventh story. We always began to suspect ghosts. There was always an
undertaker-looking servant along, too, who handed us a program, pointed to
the picture that began the list of the salon he was in, and then stood stiff and
stark and unsmiling in his petrified livery till we were ready to move on to
the next chamber, whereupon he marched sadly ahead and took up another
malignantly respectful position as before. I wasted so much time praying
that the roof would fall in on these dispiriting flunkies that I had but little
left to bestow upon palace and pictures.

And besides, as in Paris, we had a guide. Perdition catch all the guides.
This one said he was the most gifted linguist in Genoa, as far as English
was concerned, and that only two persons in the city beside himself could
talk the language at all. He showed us the birthplace of Christopher
Columbus, and after we had reflected in silent awe before it for fifteen
minutes, he said it was not the birthplace of Columbus, but of Columbus’
grandmother! When we demanded an explanation of his conduct he only
shrugged his shoulders and answered in barbarous Italian. I shall speak
further of this guide in a future chapter. All the information we got out of
him we shall be able to carry along with us, I think.
I have not been to church so often in a long time as I have in the last few
weeks. The people in these old lands seem to make churches their specialty.
Especially does this seem to be the case with the citizens of Genoa. I think
there is a church every three or four hundred yards all over town. The
streets are sprinkled from end to end with shovel-hatted, long-robed, well-
fed priests, and the church bells by dozens are pealing all the day long,

nearly. Every now and then one comes across a friar of orders gray, with
shaven head, long, coarse robe, rope girdle and beads, and with feet cased
in sandals or entirely bare. These worthies suffer in the flesh and do
penance all their lives, I suppose, but they look like consummate famine-
breeders. They are all fat and serene.

The old Cathedral of San Lorenzo is about as notable a building as we
have found in Genoa. It is vast, and has colonnades of noble pillars, and a
great organ, and the customary pomp of gilded moldings, pictures, frescoed
ceilings, and so forth. I cannot describe it, of course—it would require a
good many pages to do that. But it is a curious place. They said that half of
it—from the front door halfway down to the altar—was a Jewish synagogue
before the Saviour was born, and that no alteration had been made in it
since that time. We doubted the statement, but did it reluctantly. We would
much rather have believed it. The place looked in too perfect repair to be so
ancient.
The main point of interest about the cathedral is the little Chapel of St.
John the Baptist. They only allow women to enter it on one day in the year,

on account of the animosity they still cherish against the sex because of the
murder of the Saint to gratify a caprice of Herodias. In this Chapel is a
marble chest, in which, they told us, were the ashes of St. John; and around
it was wound a chain, which, they said, had confined him when he was in
prison. We did not desire to disbelieve these statements, and yet we could
not feel certain that they were correct—partly because we could have
broken that chain, and so could St. John, and partly because we had seen St.
John’s ashes before, in another church. We could not bring ourselves to
think St. John had two sets of ashes.
They also showed us a portrait of the Madonna which was painted by St.
Luke, and it did not look half as old and smoky as some of the pictures by
Rubens. We could not help admiring the Apostle’s modesty in never once
mentioning in his writings that he could paint.
But isn’t this relic matter a little overdone? We find a piece of the true
cross in every old church we go into, and some of the nails that held it
together. I would not like to be positive, but I think we have seen as much
as a keg of these nails. Then there is the crown of thorns; they have part of
one in Sainte Chapelle, in Paris, and part of one also in Notre Dame. And as
for bones of St. Denis, I feel certain we have seen enough of them to
duplicate him if necessary.
I only meant to write about the churches, but I keep wandering from the
subject. I could say that the Church of the Annunciation is a wilderness of
beautiful columns, of statues, gilded moldings, and pictures almost
countless, but that would give no one an entirely perfect idea of the thing,
and so where is the use? One family built the whole edifice, and have got
money left. There is where the mystery lies. We had an idea at first that only
a mint could have survived the expense.
These people here live in the heaviest, highest, broadest, darkest, solidest
houses one can imagine. Each one might “laugh a siege to scorn.” A
hundred feet front and a hundred high is about the style, and you go up
three flights of stairs before you begin to come upon signs of occupancy.
Everything is stone, and stone of the heaviest—floors, stairways, mantels,
benches—everything. The walls are four to five feet thick. The streets
generally are four or five to eight feet wide and as crooked as a corkscrew.
You go along one of these gloomy cracks, and look up and behold the sky
like a mere ribbon of light, far above your head, where the tops of the tall

houses on either side of the street bend almost together. You feel as if you
were at the bottom of some tremendous abyss, with all the world far above
you. You wind in and out and here and there, in the most mysterious way,
and have no more idea of the points of the compass than if you were a blind
man. You can never persuade yourself that these are actually streets, and the
frowning, dingy, monstrous houses dwellings, till you see one of these
beautiful, prettily dressed women emerge from them—see her emerge from
a dark, dreary-looking den that looks dungeon all over, from the ground
away halfway up to heaven. And then you wonder that such a charming
moth could come from such a forbidding shell as that. The streets are wisely
made narrow and the houses heavy and thick and stony, in order that the
people may be cool in this roasting climate. And they are cool, and stay so.
And while I think of it—the men wear hats and have very dark
complexions, but the women wear no headgear but a flimsy veil like a
gossamer’s web, and yet are exceedingly fair as a general thing. Singular,
isn’t it?
The huge palaces of Genoa are each supposed to be occupied by one
family, but they could accommodate a hundred, I should think. They are
relics of the grandeur of Genoa’s palmy days—the days when she was a
great commercial and maritime power several centuries ago. These houses,
solid marble palaces though they be, are in many cases of a dull pinkish
color, outside, and from pavement to eaves are pictured with Genoese battle
scenes, with monstrous Jupiters and Cupids, and with familiar illustrations
from Grecian mythology. Where the paint has yielded to age and exposure
and is peeling off in flakes and patches, the effect is not happy. A noseless
Cupid or a Jupiter with an eye out or a Venus with a fly-blister on her
breast, are not attractive features in a picture. Some of these painted walls
reminded me somewhat of the tall van, plastered with fanciful bills and
posters, that follows the bandwagon of a circus about a country village. I
have not read or heard that the outsides of the houses of any other European
city are frescoed in this way.
I can not conceive of such a thing as Genoa in ruins. Such massive
arches, such ponderous substructions as support these towering broad-
winged edifices, we have seldom seen before; and surely the great blocks of
stone of which these edifices are built can never decay; walls that are as
thick as an ordinary American doorway is high cannot crumble.

The republics of Genoa and Pisa were very powerful in the Middle Ages.
Their ships filled the Mediterranean, and they carried on an extensive
commerce with Constantinople and Syria. Their warehouses were the great
distributing depots from whence the costly merchandise of the East was
sent abroad over Europe. They were warlike little nations and defied, in
those days, governments that overshadow them now as mountains
overshadow molehills. The Saracens captured and pillaged Genoa nine
hundred years ago, but during the following century Genoa and Pisa entered
into an offensive and defensive alliance and besieged the Saracen colonies
in Sardinia and the Balearic Isles with an obstinacy that maintained its
pristine vigor and held to its purpose for forty long years. They were
victorious at last and divided their conquests equably among their great
patrician families. Descendants of some of those proud families still inhabit
the palaces of Genoa, and trace in their own features a resemblance to the
grim knights whose portraits hang in their stately halls, and to pictured
beauties with pouting lips and merry eyes whose originals have been dust
and ashes for many a dead and forgotten century.
The hotel we live in belonged to one of those great orders of knights of
the Cross in the times of the Crusades, and its mailed sentinels once kept
watch and ward in its massive turrets and woke the echoes of these halls
and corridors with their iron heels.

But Genoa’s greatness has degenerated into an unostentatious commerce
in velvets and silver filagree-work. They say that each European town has
its specialty. These filagree things are Genoa’s specialty. Her smiths take
silver ingots and work them up into all manner of graceful and beautiful
forms. They make bunches of flowers, from flakes and wires of silver, that
counterfeit the delicate creations the frost weaves upon a windowpane; and
we were shown a miniature silver temple whose fluted columns, whose
Corinthian capitals and rich entablatures, whose spire, statues, bells, and
ornate lavishness of sculpture were wrought in polished silver, and with
such matchless art that every detail was a fascinating study and the finished
edifice a wonder of beauty.

We are ready to move again, though we are not really tired yet of the
narrow passages of this old marble cave. Cave is a good word—when
speaking of Genoa under the stars. When we have been prowling at
midnight through the gloomy crevices they call streets, where no footfalls
but ours were echoing, where only ourselves were abroad, and lights
appeared only at long intervals and at a distance, and mysteriously
disappeared again, and the houses at our elbows seemed to stretch upward
farther than ever toward the heavens, the memory of a cave I used to know
at home was always in my mind, with its lofty passages, its silence and
solitude, its shrouding gloom, its sepulchral echoes, its flitting lights, and
more than all, its sudden revelations of branching crevices and corridors
where we least expected them.
We are not tired of the endless processions of cheerful, chattering
gossipers that throng these courts and streets all day long, either; nor of the
coarse-robed monks; nor of the “Asti” wines, which that old doctor (whom
we call the Oracle,) with customary felicity in the matter of getting
everything wrong, misterms “nasty.” But we must go, nevertheless.
Our last sight was the cemetery (a burial place intended to accommodate
60,000 bodies,) and we shall continue to remember it after we shall have
forgotten the palaces. It is a vast marble collonaded corridor extending
around a great unoccupied square of ground; its broad floor is marble, and
on every slab is an inscription—for every slab covers a corpse. On either
side, as one walks down the middle of the passage, are monuments, tombs,
and sculptured figures that are exquisitely wrought and are full of grace and
beauty. They are new and snowy; every outline is perfect, every feature
guiltless of mutilation, flaw, or blemish; and therefore, to us these far-
reaching ranks of bewitching forms are a hundred fold more lovely than the
damaged and dingy statuary they have saved from the wreck of ancient art
and set up in the galleries of Paris for the worship of the world.

Well provided with cigars and other necessaries of life, we are now ready
to take the cars for Milan.

CHAPTER XVIII.
All day long we sped through a mountainous country whose peaks were
bright with sunshine, whose hillsides were dotted with pretty villas sitting
in the midst of gardens and shrubbery, and whose deep ravines were cool
and shady and looked ever so inviting from where we and the birds were
winging our flight through the sultry upper air.
We had plenty of chilly tunnels wherein to check our perspiration,
though. We timed one of them. We were twenty minutes passing through it,
going at the rate of thirty to thirty-five miles an hour.
Beyond Alessandria we passed the battle-field of Marengo.
Toward dusk we drew near Milan and caught glimpses of the city and the
blue mountain peaks beyond. But we were not caring for these things—they
did not interest us in the least. We were in a fever of impatience; we were
dying to see the renowned cathedral! We watched—in this direction and
that—all around—everywhere. We needed no one to point it out—we did
not wish any one to point it out—we would recognize it even in the desert
of the great Sahara.
At last, a forest of graceful needles, shimmering in the amber sunlight,
rose slowly above the pygmy housetops, as one sometimes sees, in the far
horizon, a gilded and pinnacled mass of cloud lift itself above the waste of
waves, at sea,—the Cathedral! We knew it in a moment.
Half of that night, and all of the next day, this architectural autocrat was
our sole object of interest.
What a wonder it is! So grand, so solemn, so vast! And yet so delicate, so
airy, so graceful! A very world of solid weight, and yet it seems in the soft
moonlight only a fairy delusion of frost-work that might vanish with a
breath! How sharply its pinnacled angles and its wilderness of spires were
cut against the sky, and how richly their shadows fell upon its snowy roof!
It was a vision!—a miracle!—an anthem sung in stone, a poem wrought in
marble!

Howsoever you look at the great cathedral, it is noble, it is beautiful!
Wherever you stand in Milan or within seven miles of Milan, it is visible
and when it is visible, no other object can chain your whole attention. Leave
your eyes unfettered by your will but a single instant and they will surely
turn to seek it. It is the first thing you look for when you rise in the
morning, and the last your lingering gaze rests upon at night. Surely it must
be the princeliest creation that ever brain of man conceived.
At nine o’clock in the morning we went and stood before this marble
colossus. The central one of its five great doors is bordered with a bas-relief
of birds and fruits and beasts and insects, which have been so ingeniously
carved out of the marble that they seem like living creatures—and the
figures are so numerous and the design so complex that one might study it a

week without exhausting its interest. On the great steeple—surmounting the
myriad of spires—inside of the spires—over the doors, the windows—in
nooks and corners—every where that a niche or a perch can be found about
the enormous building, from summit to base, there is a marble statue, and
every statue is a study in itself! Raphael, Angelo, Canova—giants like these
gave birth to the designs, and their own pupils carved them. Every face is
eloquent with expression, and every attitude is full of grace. Away above,
on the lofty roof, rank on rank of carved and fretted spires spring high in the
air, and through their rich tracery one sees the sky beyond. In their midst the
central steeple towers proudly up like the mainmast of some great Indiaman
among a fleet of coasters.
We wished to go aloft. The sacristan showed us a marble stairway (of
course it was marble, and of the purest and whitest—there is no other stone,
no brick, no wood, among its building materials) and told us to go up one
hundred and eighty-two steps and stop till he came. It was not necessary to
say stop—we should have done that any how. We were tired by the time we
got there. This was the roof. Here, springing from its broad marble
flagstones, were the long files of spires, looking very tall close at hand, but
diminishing in the distance like the pipes of an organ. We could see now
that the statue on the top of each was the size of a large man, though they all
looked like dolls from the street. We could see, also, that from the inside of
each and every one of these hollow spires, from sixteen to thirty-one
beautiful marble statues looked out upon the world below.

From the eaves to the comb of the roof stretched in endless succession
great curved marble beams, like the fore-and-aft braces of a steamboat, and
along each beam from end to end stood up a row of richly carved flowers
and fruits—each separate and distinct in kind, and over 15,000 species
represented. At a little distance these rows seem to close together like the
ties of a railroad track, and then the mingling together of the buds and
blossoms of this marble garden forms a picture that is very charming to the
eye.
We descended and entered. Within the church, long rows of fluted
columns, like huge monuments, divided the building into broad aisles, and
on the figured pavement fell many a soft blush from the painted windows
above. I knew the church was very large, but I could not fully appreciate its
great size until I noticed that the men standing far down by the altar looked
like boys, and seemed to glide, rather than walk. We loitered about gazing
aloft at the monster windows all aglow with brilliantly colored scenes in the

lives of the Saviour and his followers. Some of these pictures are mosaics,
and so artistically are their thousand particles of tinted glass or stone put
together that the work has all the smoothness and finish of a painting. We
counted sixty panes of glass in one window, and each pane was adorned
with one of these master achievements of genius and patience.

The guide showed us a coffee-colored piece of sculpture which he said
was considered to have come from the hand of Phidias, since it was not
possible that any other artist, of any epoch, could have copied nature with
such faultless accuracy. The figure was that of a man without a skin; with
every vein, artery, muscle, every fiber and tendon and tissue of the human
frame represented in minute detail. It looked natural, because somehow it
looked as if it were in pain. A skinned man would be likely to look that way
unless his attention were occupied with some other matter. It was a hideous
thing, and yet there was a fascination about it some where. I am very sorry I

saw it, because I shall always see it now. I shall dream of it sometimes. I
shall dream that it is resting its corded arms on the bed’s head and looking
down on me with its dead eyes; I shall dream that it is stretched between the
sheets with me and touching me with its exposed muscles and its stringy
cold legs.
It is hard to forget repulsive things. I remember yet how I ran off from
school once, when I was a boy, and then, pretty late at night, concluded to
climb into the window of my father’s office and sleep on a lounge, because
I had a delicacy about going home and getting thrashed. As I lay on the
lounge and my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness, I fancied I could see
a long, dusky, shapeless thing stretched upon the floor. A cold shiver went
through me. I turned my face to the wall. That did not answer. I was afraid
that that thing would creep over and seize me in the dark. I turned back and
stared at it for minutes and minutes—they seemed hours. It appeared to me
that the lagging moonlight never, never would get to it. I turned to the wall
and counted twenty, to pass the feverish time away. I looked—the pale
square was nearer. I turned again and counted fifty—it was almost touching
it. With desperate will I turned again and counted one hundred, and faced
about, all in a tremble. A white human hand lay in the moonlight! Such an
awful sinking at the heart—such a sudden gasp for breath! I felt—I cannot
tell what I felt. When I recovered strength enough, I faced the wall again.
But no boy could have remained so with that mysterious hand behind him. I
counted again and looked—the most of a naked arm was exposed. I put my
hands over my eyes and counted till I could stand it no longer, and then—
the pallid face of a man was there, with the corners of the mouth drawn
down, and the eyes fixed and glassy in death! I raised to a sitting posture
and glowered on that corpse till the light crept down the bare breastline by
line—inch by inch—past the nipple—and then it disclosed a ghastly stab!

I went away from there. I do not say that I went away in any sort of a
hurry, but I simply went—that is sufficient. I went out at the window, and I
carried the sash along with me. I did not need the sash, but it was handier to
take it than it was to leave it, and so I took it.—I was not scared, but I was
considerably agitated.
When I reached home, they whipped me, but I enjoyed it. It seemed
perfectly delightful. That man had been stabbed near the office that
afternoon, and they carried him in there to doctor him, but he only lived an
hour. I have slept in the same room with him often since then—in my
dreams.
Now we will descend into the crypt, under the grand altar of Milan
Cathedral, and receive an impressive sermon from lips that have been silent
and hands that have been gestureless for three hundred years.
The priest stopped in a small dungeon and held up his candle. This was
the last resting-place of a good man, a warm-hearted, unselfish man; a man
whose whole life was given to succoring the poor, encouraging the faint-
hearted, visiting the sick; in relieving distress, whenever and wherever he
found it. His heart, his hand, and his purse were always open. With his story
in one’s mind he can almost see his benignant countenance moving calmly
among the haggard faces of Milan in the days when the plague swept the
city, brave where all others were cowards, full of compassion where pity

had been crushed out of all other breasts by the instinct of self-preservation
gone mad with terror, cheering all, praying with all, helping all, with hand
and brain and purse, at a time when parents forsook their children, the
friend deserted the friend, and the brother turned away from the sister while
her pleadings were still wailing in his ears.
This was good St. Charles Borromeo, Bishop of Milan. The people
idolized him; princes lavished uncounted treasures upon him. We stood in
his tomb. Near by was the sarcophagus, lighted by the dripping candles.
The walls were faced with bas-reliefs representing scenes in his life done in
massive silver. The priest put on a short white lace garment over his black
robe, crossed himself, bowed reverently, and began to turn a windlass
slowly. The sarcophagus separated in two parts, lengthwise, and the lower
part sank down and disclosed a coffin of rock crystal as clear as the
atmosphere. Within lay the body, robed in costly habiliments covered with
gold embroidery and starred with scintillating gems. The decaying head was
black with age, the dry skin was drawn tight to the bones, the eyes were
gone, there was a hole in the temple and another in the cheek, and the
skinny lips were parted as in a ghastly smile! Over this dreadful face, its
dust and decay and its mocking grin, hung a crown sown thick with flashing
brilliants; and upon the breast lay crosses and croziers of solid gold that
were splendid with emeralds and diamonds.
How poor, and cheap, and trivial these gew-gaws seemed in presence of
the solemnity, the grandeur, the awful majesty of Death! Think of Milton,
Shakespeare, Washington, standing before a reverent world tricked out in
the glass beads, the brass ear-rings and tin trumpery of the savages of the
plains!
Dead Bartolomeo preached his pregnant sermon, and its burden was: You
that worship the vanities of earth—you that long for worldly honor, worldly
wealth, worldly fame—behold their worth!
To us it seemed that so good a man, so kind a heart, so simple a nature,
deserved rest and peace in a grave sacred from the intrusion of prying eyes,
and believed that he himself would have preferred to have it so, but
peradventure our wisdom was at fault in this regard.
As we came out upon the floor of the church again, another priest
volunteered to show us the treasures of the church.

What, more? The furniture of the narrow chamber of death we had just
visited weighed six millions of francs in ounces and carats alone, without a
penny thrown into the account for the costly workmanship bestowed upon
them! But we followed into a large room filled with tall wooden presses
like wardrobes. He threw them open, and behold, the cargoes of “crude
bullion” of the assay offices of Nevada faded out of my memory. There
were Virgins and bishops there, above their natural size, made of solid
silver, each worth, by weight, from eight hundred thousand to two millions
of francs, and bearing gemmed books in their hands worth eighty thousand;
there were bas-reliefs that weighed six hundred pounds, carved in solid
silver; croziers and crosses, and candlesticks six and eight feet high, all of
virgin gold, and brilliant with precious stones; and beside these were all
manner of cups and vases, and such things, rich in proportion. It was an
Aladdin’s palace. The treasures here, by simple weight, without counting
workmanship, were valued at fifty millions of francs! If I could get the
custody of them for a while, I fear me the market price of silver bishops
would advance shortly, on account of their exceeding scarcity in the
Cathedral of Milan.

The priests showed us two of St. Paul’s fingers, and one of St. Peter’s; a
bone of Judas Iscariot, (it was black,) and also bones of all the other
disciples; a handkerchief in which the Saviour had left the impression of his
face. Among the most precious of the relics were a stone from the Holy
Sepulchre, part of the crown of thorns, (they have a whole one at Notre
Dame,) a fragment of the purple robe worn by the Saviour, a nail from the
Cross, and a picture of the Virgin and Child painted by the veritable hand of
St. Luke. This is the second of St. Luke’s Virgins we have seen. Once a year
all these holy relics are carried in procession through the streets of Milan.
I like to revel in the dryest details of the great cathedral. The building is
five hundred feet long by one hundred and eighty wide, and the principal
steeple is in the neighborhood of four hundred feet high. It has 7,148 marble
statues, and will have upwards of three thousand more when it is finished.
In addition it has one thousand five hundred bas-reliefs. It has one hundred
and thirty-six spires—twenty-one more are to be added. Each spire is
surmounted by a statue six and a half feet high. Every thing about the
church is marble, and all from the same quarry; it was bequeathed to the
Archbishopric for this purpose centuries ago. So nothing but the mere
workmanship costs; still that is expensive—the bill foots up six hundred
and eighty-four millions of francs thus far (considerably over a hundred
millions of dollars,) and it is estimated that it will take a hundred and
twenty years yet to finish the cathedral. It looks complete, but is far from
being so. We saw a new statue put in its niche yesterday, alongside of one
which had been standing these four hundred years, they said. There are four
staircases leading up to the main steeple, each of which cost a hundred
thousand dollars, with the four hundred and eight statues which adorn them.
Marco Compioni was the architect who designed the wonderful structure
more than five hundred years ago, and it took him forty-six years to work
out the plan and get it ready to hand over to the builders. He is dead now.
The building was begun a little less than five hundred years ago, and the
third generation hence will not see it completed.
The building looks best by moonlight, because the older portions of it,
being stained with age, contrast unpleasantly with the newer and whiter

portions. It seems somewhat too broad for its height, but may be familiarity
with it might dissipate this impression.
They say that the Cathedral of Milan is second only to St. Peter’s at
Rome. I cannot understand how it can be second to anything made by
human hands.
We bid it good-bye, now—possibly for all time. How surely, in some
future day, when the memory of it shall have lost its vividness, shall we half
believe we have seen it in a wonderful dream, but never with waking eyes!

CHAPTER XIX.
“Do you wis zo haut can be?”
That was what the guide asked when we were looking up at the bronze
horses on the Arch of Peace. It meant, do you wish to go up there? I give it
as a specimen of guide-English. These are the people that make life a
burthen to the tourist. Their tongues are never still. They talk forever and
forever, and that is the kind of billingsgate they use. Inspiration itself could
hardly comprehend them. If they would only show you a masterpiece of art,
or a venerable tomb, or a prison-house, or a battle-field, hallowed by
touching memories or historical reminiscences, or grand traditions, and then
step aside and hold still for ten minutes and let you think, it would not be so
bad. But they interrupt every dream, every pleasant train of thought, with
their tiresome cackling. Sometimes when I have been standing before some
cherished old idol of mine that I remembered years and years ago in
pictures in the geography at school, I have thought I would give a whole
world if the human parrot at my side would suddenly perish where he stood
and leave me to gaze, and ponder, and worship.
No, we did not “wis zo haut can be.” We wished to go to La Scala, the
largest theater in the world, I think they call it. We did so. It was a large
place. Seven separate and distinct masses of humanity—six great circles
and a monster parquette.

We wished to go to the Ambrosian Library, and we did that also. We saw
a manuscript of Virgil, with annotations in the handwriting of Petrarch, the
gentleman who loved another man’s Laura, and lavished upon her all
through life a love which was a clear waste of the raw material. It was
sound sentiment, but bad judgment. It brought both parties fame, and
created a fountain of commiseration for them in sentimental breasts that is
running yet. But who says a word in behalf of poor Mr. Laura? (I do not
know his other name.) Who glorifies him? Who bedews him with tears?
Who writes poetry about him? Nobody. How do you suppose he liked the
state of things that has given the world so much pleasure? How did he enjoy
having another man following his wife every where and making her name a
familiar word in every garlic-exterminating mouth in Italy with his sonnets
to her pre-empted eyebrows? They got fame and sympathy—he got neither.
This is a peculiarly felicitous instance of what is called poetical justice. It is
all very fine; but it does not chime with my notions of right. It is too one-
sided—too ungenerous.
Let the world go on fretting about Laura and Petrarch if it will; but as for
me, my tears and my lamentations shall be lavished upon the unsung

defendant.
We saw also an autograph letter of Lucrezia Borgia, a lady for whom I
have always entertained the highest respect, on account of her rare
histrionic capabilities, her opulence in solid gold goblets made of gilded
wood, her high distinction as an operatic screamer, and the facility with
which she could order a sextuple funeral and get the corpses ready for it.
We saw one single coarse yellow hair from Lucrezia’s head, likewise. It
awoke emotions, but we still live. In this same library we saw some
drawings by Michael Angelo (these Italians call him Mickel Angelo,) and
Leonardo da Vinci. (They spell it Vinci and pronounce it Vinchy; foreigners
always spell better than they pronounce.) We reserve our opinion of these
sketches.
In another building they showed us a fresco representing some lions and
other beasts drawing chariots; and they seemed to project so far from the
wall that we took them to be sculptures. The artist had shrewdly heightened
the delusion by painting dust on the creatures’ backs, as if it had fallen there
naturally and properly. Smart fellow—if it be smart to deceive strangers.
Elsewhere we saw a huge Roman amphitheatre, with its stone seats still
in good preservation. Modernized, it is now the scene of more peaceful
recreations than the exhibition of a party of wild beasts with Christians for
dinner. Part of the time, the Milanese use it for a race track, and at other
seasons they flood it with water and have spirited yachting regattas there.
The guide told us these things, and he would hardly try so hazardous an
experiment as the telling of a falsehood, when it is all he can do to speak the
truth in English without getting the lock-jaw.
In another place we were shown a sort of summer arbor, with a fence
before it. We said that was nothing. We looked again, and saw, through the
arbor, an endless stretch of garden, and shrubbery, and grassy lawn. We
were perfectly willing to go in there and rest, but it could not be done. It
was only another delusion—a painting by some ingenious artist with little
charity in his heart for tired folk. The deception was perfect. No one could
have imagined the park was not real. We even thought we smelled the
flowers at first.
We got a carriage at twilight and drove in the shaded avenues with the
other nobility, and after dinner we took wine and ices in a fine garden with
the great public. The music was excellent, the flowers and shrubbery were

pleasant to the eye, the scene was vivacious, everybody was genteel and
well-behaved, and the ladies were slightly moustached, and handsomely
dressed, but very homely.
We adjourned to a cafe and played billiards an hour, and I made six or
seven points by the doctor pocketing his ball, and he made as many by my
pocketing my ball. We came near making a carom sometimes, but not the
one we were trying to make. The table was of the usual European style—
cushions dead and twice as high as the balls; the cues in bad repair. The
natives play only a sort of pool on them. We have never seen any body
playing the French three-ball game yet, and I doubt if there is any such
game known in France, or that there lives any man mad enough to try to
play it on one of these European tables. We had to stop playing finally
because Dan got to sleeping fifteen minutes between the counts and paying
no attention to his marking.
Afterward we walked up and down one of the most popular streets for
some time, enjoying other people’s comfort and wishing we could export
some of it to our restless, driving, vitality-consuming marts at home. Just in
this one matter lies the main charm of life in Europe—comfort. In America,
we hurry—which is well; but when the day’s work is done, we go on
thinking of losses and gains, we plan for the morrow, we even carry our
business cares to bed with us, and toss and worry over them when we ought
to be restoring our racked bodies and brains with sleep. We burn up our
energies with these excitements, and either die early or drop into a lean and
mean old age at a time of life which they call a man’s prime in Europe.
When an acre of ground has produced long and well, we let it lie fallow and
rest for a season; we take no man clear across the continent in the same
coach he started in—the coach is stabled somewhere on the plains and its
heated machinery allowed to cool for a few days; when a razor has seen
long service and refuses to hold an edge, the barber lays it away for a few
weeks, and the edge comes back of its own accord. We bestow thoughtful
care upon inanimate objects, but none upon ourselves. What a robust
people, what a nation of thinkers we might be, if we would only lay
ourselves on the shelf occasionally and renew our edges!
I do envy these Europeans the comfort they take. When the work of the
day is done, they forget it. Some of them go, with wife and children, to a
beer hall and sit quietly and genteelly drinking a mug or two of ale and

listening to music; others walk the streets, others drive in the avenues;
others assemble in the great ornamental squares in the early evening to
enjoy the sight and the fragrance of flowers and to hear the military bands
play—no European city being without its fine military music at eventide;
and yet others of the populace sit in the open air in front of the refreshment
houses and eat ices and drink mild beverages that could not harm a child.
They go to bed moderately early, and sleep well. They are always quiet,
always orderly, always cheerful, comfortable, and appreciative of life and
its manifold blessings. One never sees a drunken man among them. The
change that has come over our little party is surprising. Day by day we lose
some of our restlessness and absorb some of the spirit of quietude and ease
that is in the tranquil atmosphere about us and in the demeanor of the
people. We grow wise apace. We begin to comprehend what life is for.
We have had a bath in Milan, in a public bath-house. They were going to
put all three of us in one bath-tub, but we objected. Each of us had an
Italian farm on his back. We could have felt affluent if we had been
officially surveyed and fenced in. We chose to have three bathtubs, and
large ones—tubs suited to the dignity of aristocrats who had real estate, and
brought it with them. After we were stripped and had taken the first chilly
dash, we discovered that haunting atrocity that has embittered our lives in
so many cities and villages of Italy and France—there was no soap. I called.
A woman answered, and I barely had time to throw myself against the door
—she would have been in, in another second. I said:
“Beware, woman! Go away from here—go away, now, or it will be the
worse for you. I am an unprotected male, but I will preserve my honor at
the peril of my life!”
These words must have frightened her, for she skurried away very fast.
Dan’s voice rose on the air:
“Oh, bring some soap, why don’t you!”
The reply was Italian. Dan resumed:
“Soap, you know—soap. That is what I want—soap. S-o-a-p, soap; s-o-p-
e, soap; s-o-u-p, soap. Hurry up! I don’t know how you Irish spell it, but I
want it. Spell it to suit yourself, but fetch it. I’m freezing.”
I heard the doctor say impressively:

“Dan, how often have we told you that these foreigners cannot
understand English? Why will you not depend upon us? Why will you not
tell us what you want, and let us ask for it in the language of the country? It
would save us a great deal of the humiliation your reprehensible ignorance
causes us. I will address this person in his mother tongue: ‘Here, cospetto!
corpo di Bacco! Sacramento! Solferino!—Soap, you son of a gun!’ Dan, if
you would let us talk for you, you would never expose your ignorant
vulgarity.”
Even this fluent discharge of Italian did not bring the soap at once, but
there was a good reason for it. There was not such an article about the
establishment. It is my belief that there never had been. They had to send
far up town, and to several different places before they finally got it, so they
said. We had to wait twenty or thirty minutes. The same thing had occurred
the evening before, at the hotel. I think I have divined the reason for this
state of things at last. The English know how to travel comfortably, and
they carry soap with them; other foreigners do not use the article.
At every hotel we stop at we always have to send out for soap, at the last
moment, when we are grooming ourselves for dinner, and they put it in the
bill along with the candles and other nonsense. In Marseilles they make half
the fancy toilet soap we consume in America, but the Marseillaise only have
a vague theoretical idea of its use, which they have obtained from books of
travel, just as they have acquired an uncertain notion of clean shirts, and the
peculiarities of the gorilla, and other curious matters. This reminds me of
poor Blucher’s note to the landlord in Paris:

PARIS, le 7 Juillet. Monsieur le Landlord—Sir: Pourquoi
don’t you mettez some savon in your bed-chambers? Est-ce
que vous pensez I will steal it? La nuit passee you charged
me pour deux chandelles when I only had one; hier vous
avez charged me avec glace when I had none at all; tout les
jours you are coming some fresh game or other on me, mais
vous ne pouvez pas play this savon dodge on me twice.
Savon is a necessary de la vie to any body but a Frenchman,
et je l’aurai hors de cet hotel or make trouble. You hear me.
Allons. BLUCHER.

I remonstrated against the sending of this note, because it was so mixed
up that the landlord would never be able to make head or tail of it; but
Blucher said he guessed the old man could read the French of it and average
the rest.
Blucher’s French is bad enough, but it is not much worse than the
English one finds in advertisements all over Italy every day. For instance,
observe the printed card of the hotel we shall probably stop at on the shores
of Lake Como:

“NOTISH.”
“This hotel which the best it is in Italy and most superb, is
handsome locate on the best situation of the lake, with the
most splendid view near the Villas Melzy, to the King of
Belgian, and Serbelloni. This hotel have recently enlarge, do
offer all commodities on moderate price, at the strangers
gentlemen who whish spend the seasons on the Lake Come.”

How is that, for a specimen? In the hotel is a handsome little chapel
where an English clergyman is employed to preach to such of the guests of
the house as hail from England and America, and this fact is also set forth in
barbarous English in the same advertisement. Wouldn’t you have supposed
that the adventurous linguist who framed the card would have known
enough to submit it to that clergyman before he sent it to the printer?
Here in Milan, in an ancient tumble-down ruin of a church, is the
mournful wreck of the most celebrated painting in the world—“The Last
Supper,” by Leonardo da Vinci. We are not infallible judges of pictures, but
of course we went there to see this wonderful painting, once so beautiful,
always so worshipped by masters in art, and forever to be famous in song
and story. And the first thing that occurred was the infliction on us of a
placard fairly reeking with wretched English. Take a morsel of it:

“Bartholomew (that is the first figure on the left hand side at
the spectator,) uncertain and doubtful about what he thinks
to have heard, and upon which he wants to be assured by
himself at Christ and by no others.”

Good, isn’t it? And then Peter is described as “argumenting in a
threatening and angrily condition at Judas Iscariot.”
This paragraph recalls the picture. “The Last Supper” is painted on the
dilapidated wall of what was a little chapel attached to the main church in
ancient times, I suppose. It is battered and scarred in every direction, and
stained and discolored by time, and Napoleon’s horses kicked the legs off
most the disciples when they (the horses, not the disciples,) were stabled
there more than half a century ago.
I recognized the old picture in a moment—the Saviour with bowed head
seated at the centre of a long, rough table with scattering fruits and dishes
upon it, and six disciples on either side in their long robes, talking to each
other—the picture from which all engravings and all copies have been made
for three centuries. Perhaps no living man has ever known an attempt to
paint the Lord’s Supper differently. The world seems to have become settled
in the belief, long ago, that it is not possible for human genius to outdo this
creation of da Vinci’s. I suppose painters will go on copying it as long as
any of the original is left visible to the eye. There were a dozen easels in the
room, and as many artists transferring the great picture to their canvases.
Fifty proofs of steel engravings and lithographs were scattered around, too.
And as usual, I could not help noticing how superior the copies were to the
original, that is, to my inexperienced eye. Wherever you find a Raphael, a
Rubens, a Michelangelo, a Carracci, or a da Vinci (and we see them every
day,) you find artists copying them, and the copies are always the
handsomest. Maybe the originals were handsome when they were new, but
they are not now.

The colors are dimmed with age; the countenances are scaled and
marred, and nearly all expression is gone from them; the hair is a dead blur
upon the wall, and there is no life in the eyes. Only the attitudes are certain.
People come here from all parts of the world, and glorify this
masterpiece. They stand entranced before it with bated breath and parted
lips, and when they speak, it is only in the catchy ejaculations of rapture:
“Oh, wonderful!”
“Such expression!”
“Such grace of attitude!”
“Such dignity!”
“Such faultless drawing!”
“Such matchless coloring!”
“Such feeling!”
“What delicacy of touch!”
“What sublimity of conception!”
“A vision! A vision!”
I only envy these people; I envy them their honest admiration, if it be
honest—their delight, if they feel delight. I harbor no animosity toward any

of them. But at the same time the thought will intrude itself upon me, How
can they see what is not visible? What would you think of a man who
looked at some decayed, blind, toothless, pock-marked Cleopatra, and said:
“What matchless beauty! What soul! What expression!” What would you
think of a man who gazed upon a dingy, foggy sunset, and said: “What
sublimity! What feeling! What richness of coloring!” What would you think
of a man who stared in ecstasy upon a desert of stumps and said: “Oh, my
soul, my beating heart, what a noble forest is here!”
You would think that those men had an astonishing talent for seeing
things that had already passed away. It was what I thought when I stood
before “The Last Supper” and heard men apostrophizing wonders, and
beauties and perfections which had faded out of the picture and gone, a
hundred years before they were born. We can imagine the beauty that was
once in an aged face; we can imagine the forest if we see the stumps; but
we can not absolutely see these things when they are not there. I am willing
to believe that the eye of the practiced artist can rest upon the Last Supper
and renew a lustre where only a hint of it is left, supply a tint that has faded
away, restore an expression that is gone; patch, and color, and add, to the
dull canvas until at last its figures shall stand before him aglow with the
life, the feeling, the freshness, yea, with all the noble beauty that was theirs
when first they came from the hand of the master. But I can not work this
miracle. Can those other uninspired visitors do it, or do they only happily
imagine they do?
After reading so much about it, I am satisfied that the Last Supper was a
very miracle of art once. But it was three hundred years ago.
It vexes me to hear people talk so glibly of “feeling,” “expression,”
“tone,” and those other easily acquired and inexpensive technicalities of art
that make such a fine show in conversations concerning pictures. There is
not one man in seventy-five hundred that can tell what a pictured face is
intended to express. There is not one man in five hundred that can go into a
court-room and be sure that he will not mistake some harmless innocent of
a juryman for the black-hearted assassin on trial. Yet such people talk of
“character” and presume to interpret “expression” in pictures. There is an
old story that Matthews, the actor, was once lauding the ability of the
human face to express the passions and emotions hidden in the breast. He
said the countenance could disclose what was passing in the heart plainer

than the tongue could.

“Now,” he said, “observe my face—what does it express?”
“Despair!”
“Bah, it expresses peaceful resignation! What does this express?”
“Rage!”
“Stuff! It means terror! This!”
“Imbecility!”
“Fool! It is smothered ferocity! Now this!”
“Joy!”
“Oh, perdition! Any ass can see it means insanity!”
Expression! People coolly pretend to read it who would think themselves
presumptuous if they pretended to interpret the hieroglyphics on the
obelisks of Luxor—yet they are fully as competent to do the one thing as
the other. I have heard two very intelligent critics speak of Murillo’s
Immaculate Conception (now in the museum at Seville,) within the past few
days. One said:
“Oh, the Virgin’s face is full of the ecstasy of a joy that is complete—that
leaves nothing more to be desired on earth!”
The other said:
“Ah, that wonderful face is so humble, so pleading—it says as plainly as
words could say it: ‘I fear; I tremble; I am unworthy. But Thy will be done;
sustain Thou Thy servant!’”

The reader can see the picture in any drawing-room; it can be easily
recognized: the Virgin (the only young and really beautiful Virgin that was
ever painted by one of the old masters, some of us think,) stands in the
crescent of the new moon, with a multitude of cherubs hovering about her,
and more coming; her hands are crossed upon her breast, and upon her
uplifted countenance falls a glory out of the heavens. The reader may amuse
himself, if he chooses, in trying to determine which of these gentlemen read
the Virgin’s “expression” aright, or if either of them did it.
Any one who is acquainted with the old masters will comprehend how
much “The Last Supper” is damaged when I say that the spectator can not
really tell, now, whether the disciples are Hebrews or Italians. These ancient
painters never succeeded in denationalizing themselves. The Italian artists
painted Italian Virgins, the Dutch painted Dutch Virgins, the Virgins of the
French painters were Frenchwomen—none of them ever put into the face of
the Madonna that indescribable something which proclaims the Jewess,
whether you find her in New York, in Constantinople, in Paris, Jerusalem,
or in the empire of Morocco. I saw in the Sandwich Islands, once, a picture
copied by a talented German artist from an engraving in one of the
American illustrated papers. It was an allegory, representing Mr. Davis in
the act of signing a secession act or some such document. Over him
hovered the ghost of Washington in warning attitude, and in the background
a troop of shadowy soldiers in Continental uniform were limping with
shoeless, bandaged feet through a driving snow-storm. Valley Forge was
suggested, of course. The copy seemed accurate, and yet there was a
discrepancy somewhere. After a long examination I discovered what it was
—the shadowy soldiers were all Germans! Jeff Davis was a German! even
the hovering ghost was a German ghost! The artist had unconsciously
worked his nationality into the picture. To tell the truth, I am getting a little
perplexed about John the Baptist and his portraits. In France I finally grew
reconciled to him as a Frenchman; here he is unquestionably an Italian.
What next? Can it be possible that the painters make John the Baptist a
Spaniard in Madrid and an Irishman in Dublin?
We took an open barouche and drove two miles out of Milan to “see ze
echo,” as the guide expressed it. The road was smooth, it was bordered by
trees, fields, and grassy meadows, and the soft air was filled with the odor
of flowers. Troops of picturesque peasant girls, coming from work, hooted
at us, shouted at us, made all manner of game of us, and entirely delighted

me. My long-cherished judgment was confirmed. I always did think those
frowsy, romantic, unwashed peasant girls I had read so much about in
poetry were a glaring fraud.
We enjoyed our jaunt. It was an exhilarating relief from tiresome sight-
seeing.
We distressed ourselves very little about the astonishing echo the guide
talked so much about. We were growing accustomed to encomiums on
wonders that too often proved no wonders at all. And so we were most
happily disappointed to find in the sequel that the guide had even failed to
rise to the magnitude of his subject.
We arrived at a tumble-down old rookery called the Palazzo Simonetti—
a massive hewn-stone affair occupied by a family of ragged Italians. A
good-looking young girl conducted us to a window on the second floor
which looked out on a court walled on three sides by tall buildings. She put
her head out at the window and shouted. The echo answered more times
than we could count. She took a speaking trumpet and through it she
shouted, sharp and quick, a single “Ha!” The echo answered:
“Ha!—ha!——ha!—ha!—ha!-ha! ha! h-a-a-a-a-a!” and finally went off
into a rollicking convulsion of the jolliest laughter that could be imagined.
It was so joyful—so long continued—so perfectly cordial and hearty, that
every body was forced to join in. There was no resisting it.

Then the girl took a gun and fired it. We stood ready to count the
astonishing clatter of reverberations. We could not say one, two, three, fast
enough, but we could dot our notebooks with our pencil points almost
rapidly enough to take down a sort of short-hand report of the result. My
page revealed the following account. I could not keep up, but I did as well
as I could.
I set down fifty-two distinct repetitions, and then the echo got the
advantage of me. The doctor set down sixty-four, and thenceforth the echo
moved too fast for him, also. After the separate concussions could no longer
be noted, the reverberations dwindled to a wild, long-sustained clatter of
sounds such as a watchman’s rattle produces. It is likely that this is the most
remarkable echo in the world.

The doctor, in jest, offered to kiss the young girl, and was taken a little
aback when she said he might for a franc! The commonest gallantry
compelled him to stand by his offer, and so he paid the franc and took the
kiss. She was a philosopher. She said a franc was a good thing to have, and
she did not care any thing for one paltry kiss, because she had a million left.
Then our comrade, always a shrewd businessman, offered to take the whole
cargo at thirty days, but that little financial scheme was a failure.

CHAPTER XX.
We left Milan by rail. The Cathedral six or seven miles behind us; vast,
dreamy, bluish, snow-clad mountains twenty miles in front of us,—these
were the accented points in the scenery. The more immediate scenery
consisted of fields and farm-houses outside the car and a monster-headed
dwarf and a moustached woman inside it. These latter were not show-
people. Alas, deformity and female beards are too common in Italy to
attract attention.
We passed through a range of wild, picturesque hills, steep, wooded,
cone-shaped, with rugged crags projecting here and there, and with
dwellings and ruinous castles perched away up toward the drifting clouds.
We lunched at the curious old town of Como, at the foot of the lake, and
then took the small steamer and had an afternoon’s pleasure excursion to
this place,—Bellaggio.
When we walked ashore, a party of policemen (people whose cocked
hats and showy uniforms would shame the finest uniform in the military
service of the United States,) put us into a little stone cell and locked us in.
We had the whole passenger list for company, but their room would have
been preferable, for there was no light, there were no windows, no
ventilation. It was close and hot. We were much crowded. It was the Black
Hole of Calcutta on a small scale. Presently a smoke rose about our feet—a
smoke that smelled of all the dead things of earth, of all the putrefaction and
corruption imaginable.
We were there five minutes, and when we got out it was hard to tell
which of us carried the vilest fragrance.

These miserable outcasts called that “fumigating” us, and the term was a
tame one indeed. They fumigated us to guard themselves against the
cholera, though we hailed from no infected port. We had left the cholera far
behind us all the time. However, they must keep epidemics away somehow
or other, and fumigation is cheaper than soap. They must either wash
themselves or fumigate other people. Some of the lower classes had rather
die than wash, but the fumigation of strangers causes them no pangs. They
need no fumigation themselves. Their habits make it unnecessary. They
carry their preventive with them; they sweat and fumigate all the day long. I
trust I am a humble and a consistent Christian. I try to do what is right. I
know it is my duty to “pray for them that despitefully use me;” and
therefore, hard as it is, I shall still try to pray for these fumigating,
maccaroni-stuffing organ-grinders.
Our hotel sits at the water’s edge—at least its front garden does—and we
walk among the shrubbery and smoke at twilight; we look afar off at
Switzerland and the Alps, and feel an indolent willingness to look no closer;
we go down the steps and swim in the lake; we take a shapely little boat and
sail abroad among the reflections of the stars; lie on the thwarts and listen to
the distant laughter, the singing, the soft melody of flutes and guitars that
comes floating across the water from pleasuring gondolas; we close the
evening with exasperating billiards on one of those same old execrable

tables. A midnight luncheon in our ample bed-chamber; a final smoke in its
contracted veranda facing the water, the gardens, and the mountains; a
summing up of the day’s events. Then to bed, with drowsy brains harassed
with a mad panorama that mixes up pictures of France, of Italy, of the ship,
of the ocean, of home, in grotesque and bewildering disorder. Then a
melting away of familiar faces, of cities, and of tossing waves, into a great
calm of forgetfulness and peace.
After which, the nightmare.
Breakfast in the morning, and then the lake.
I did not like it yesterday. I thought Lake Tahoe was much finer. I have to
confess now, however, that my judgment erred somewhat, though not
extravagantly. I always had an idea that Como was a vast basin of water,
like Tahoe, shut in by great mountains. Well, the border of huge mountains
is here, but the lake itself is not a basin. It is as crooked as any brook, and
only from one-quarter to two-thirds as wide as the Mississippi. There is not
a yard of low ground on either side of it—nothing but endless chains of
mountains that spring abruptly from the water’s edge and tower to altitudes
varying from a thousand to two thousand feet. Their craggy sides are
clothed with vegetation, and white specks of houses peep out from the
luxuriant foliage everywhere; they are even perched upon jutting and
picturesque pinnacles a thousand feet above your head.

Again, for miles along the shores, handsome country seats, surrounded
by gardens and groves, sit fairly in the water, sometimes in nooks carved by
Nature out of the vine-hung precipices, and with no ingress or egress save
by boats. Some have great broad stone staircases leading down to the water,
with heavy stone balustrades ornamented with statuary and fancifully
adorned with creeping vines and bright-colored flowers—for all the world
like a drop curtain in a theatre, and lacking nothing but long-waisted, high-
heeled women and plumed gallants in silken tights coming down to go
serenading in the splendid gondola in waiting.
A great feature of Como’s attractiveness is the multitude of pretty houses
and gardens that cluster upon its shores and on its mountain sides. They
look so snug and so homelike, and at eventide when every thing seems to
slumber, and the music of the vesper bells comes stealing over the water,
one almost believes that nowhere else than on the lake of Como can there
be found such a paradise of tranquil repose.
From my window here in Bellaggio, I have a view of the other side of the
lake now, which is as beautiful as a picture. A scarred and wrinkled

precipice rises to a height of eighteen hundred feet; on a tiny bench half
way up its vast wall, sits a little snowflake of a church, no bigger than a
martin-box, apparently; skirting the base of the cliff are a hundred orange
groves and gardens, flecked with glimpses of the white dwellings that are
buried in them; in front, three or four gondolas lie idle upon the water—and
in the burnished mirror of the lake, mountain, chapel, houses, groves and
boats are counterfeited so brightly and so clearly that one scarce knows
where the reality leaves off and the reflection begins!
The surroundings of this picture are fine. A mile away, a grove-plumed
promontory juts far into the lake and glasses its palace in the blue depths; in
midstream a boat is cutting the shining surface and leaving a long track
behind, like a ray of light; the mountains beyond are veiled in a dreamy
purple haze; far in the opposite direction a tumbled mass of domes and
verdant slopes and valleys bars the lake, and here indeed does distance lend
enchantment to the view—for on this broad canvas, sun and clouds and the
richest of atmospheres have blended a thousand tints together, and over its
surface the filmy lights and shadows drift, hour after hour, and glorify it
with a beauty that seems reflected out of Heaven itself. Beyond all question,
this is the most voluptuous scene we have yet looked upon.
Last night the scenery was striking and picturesque. On the other side
crags and trees and snowy houses were reflected in the lake with a
wonderful distinctness, and streams of light from many a distant window
shot far abroad over the still waters. On this side, near at hand, great
mansions, white with moonlight, glared out from the midst of masses of
foliage that lay black and shapeless in the shadows that fell from the cliff
above—and down in the margin of the lake every feature of the weird
vision was faithfully repeated.
Today we have idled through a wonder of a garden attached to a ducal
estate—but enough of description is enough, I judge.
I suspect that this was the same place the gardener’s son deceived the
Lady of Lyons with, but I do not know. You may have heard of the passage
somewhere:

“A deep vale,
Shut out by Alpine hills from the rude world,
Near a clear lake margined by fruits of gold

And whispering myrtles:
Glassing softest skies, cloudless,
Save with rare and roseate shadows;
A palace, lifting to eternal heaven its marbled walls,
From out a glossy bower of coolest foliage musical with birds.”

That is all very well, except the “clear” part of the lake. It certainly is
clearer than a great many lakes, but how dull its waters are compared with
the wonderful transparence of Lake Tahoe! I speak of the north shore of
Tahoe, where one can count the scales on a trout at a depth of a hundred and
eighty feet. I have tried to get this statement off at par here, but with no
success; so I have been obliged to negotiate it at fifty percent discount. At
this rate I find some takers; perhaps the reader will receive it on the same
terms—ninety feet instead of one hundred and eighty. But let it be
remembered that those are forced terms—Sheriff’s sale prices. As far as I
am privately concerned, I abate not a jot of the original assertion that in
those strangely magnifying waters one may count the scales on a trout (a
trout of the large kind,) at a depth of a hundred and eighty feet—may see
every pebble on the bottom—might even count a paper of dray-pins. People
talk of the transparent waters of the Mexican Bay of Acapulco, but in my
own experience I know they cannot compare with those I am speaking of. I
have fished for trout, in Tahoe, and at a measured depth of eighty-four feet I
have seen them put their noses to the bait and I could see their gills open

and shut. I could hardly have seen the trout themselves at that distance in
the open air.
As I go back in spirit and recall that noble sea, reposing among the snow-
peaks six thousand feet above the ocean, the conviction comes strong upon
me again that Como would only seem a bedizened little courtier in that
august presence.
Sorrow and misfortune overtake the legislature that still from year to year
permits Tahoe to retain its unmusical cognomen! Tahoe! It suggests no
crystal waters, no picturesque shores, no sublimity. Tahoe for a sea in the
clouds: a sea that has character and asserts it in solemn calms at times, at
times in savage storms; a sea whose royal seclusion is guarded by a cordon
of sentinel peaks that lift their frosty fronts nine thousand feet above the
level world; a sea whose every aspect is impressive, whose belongings are
all beautiful, whose lonely majesty types the Deity!
Tahoe means grasshoppers. It means grasshopper soup. It is Indian, and
suggestive of Indians. They say it is Pi-ute—possibly it is Digger. I am
satisfied it was named by the Diggers—those degraded savages who roast
their dead relatives, then mix the human grease and ashes of bones with tar,
and “gaum” it thick all over their heads and foreheads and ears, and go
caterwauling about the hills and call it mourning. These are the gentry that
named the Lake.
People say that Tahoe means “Silver Lake”—“Limpid Water”—“Falling
Leaf.” Bosh. It means grasshopper soup, the favorite dish of the Digger
tribe,—and of the Pi-utes as well. It isn’t worth while, in these practical
times, for people to talk about Indian poetry—there never was any in them
—except in the Fenimore Cooper Indians. But they are an extinct tribe that
never existed. I know the Noble Red Man. I have camped with the Indians;
I have been on the warpath with them, taken part in the chase with them—
for grasshoppers; helped them steal cattle; I have roamed with them,
scalped them, had them for breakfast. I would gladly eat the whole race if I
had a chance.
But I am growing unreliable. I will return to my comparison of the lakes.
Como is a little deeper than Tahoe, if people here tell the truth. They say it
is eighteen hundred feet deep at this point, but it does not look a dead
enough blue for that. Tahoe is one thousand five hundred and twenty-five
feet deep in the centre, by the state geologist’s measurement. They say the

great peak opposite this town is five thousand feet high: but I feel sure that
three thousand feet of that statement is a good honest lie. The lake is a mile
wide, here, and maintains about that width from this point to its northern
extremity—which is distant sixteen miles: from here to its southern
extremity—say fifteen miles—it is not over half a mile wide in any place, I
should think. Its snow-clad mountains one hears so much about are only
seen occasionally, and then in the distance, the Alps. Tahoe is from ten to
eighteen miles wide, and its mountains shut it in like a wall. Their summits
are never free from snow the year round. One thing about it is very strange:
it never has even a skim of ice upon its surface, although lakes in the same
range of mountains, lying in a lower and warmer temperature, freeze over
in winter.
It is cheerful to meet a shipmate in these out-of-the-way places and
compare notes with him. We have found one of ours here—an old soldier of
the war, who is seeking bloodless adventures and rest from his campaigns
in these sunny lands.
[Colonel J. HERON FOSTER, editor of a Pittsburgh journal, and a most
estimable gentleman. As these sheets are being prepared for the press I am
pained to learn of his decease shortly after his return home—M.T.]

CHAPTER XXI.
We voyaged by steamer down the Lago di Lecco, through wild mountain
scenery, and by hamlets and villas, and disembarked at the town of Lecco.
They said it was two hours, by carriage to the ancient city of Bergamo, and
that we would arrive there in good season for the railway train. We got an
open barouche and a wild, boisterous driver, and set out. It was delightful.
We had a fast team and a perfectly smooth road. There were towering cliffs
on our left, and the pretty Lago di Lecco on our right, and every now and
then it rained on us. Just before starting, the driver picked up, in the street, a
stump of a cigar an inch long, and put it in his mouth. When he had carried
it thus about an hour, I thought it would be only Christian charity to give
him a light. I handed him my cigar, which I had just lit, and he put it in his
mouth and returned his stump to his pocket! I never saw a more sociable
man. At least I never saw a man who was more sociable on a short
acquaintance.

We saw interior Italy, now. The houses were of solid stone, and not often
in good repair. The peasants and their children were idle, as a general thing,
and the donkeys and chickens made themselves at home in drawing-room
and bed-chamber and were not molested. The drivers of each and every one
of the slow-moving market-carts we met were stretched in the sun upon
their merchandise, sound a sleep. Every three or four hundred yards, it
seemed to me, we came upon the shrine of some saint or other--a rude
picture of him built into a huge cross or a stone pillar by the road-side.--
Some of the pictures of the Saviour were curiosities in their way. They
represented him stretched upon the cross, his countenance distorted with
agony. From the wounds of the crown of thorns; from the pierced side; from
the mutilated hands and feet; from the scourged body--from every hand-
breadth of his person streams of blood were flowing! Such a gory, ghastly
spectacle would frighten the children out of their senses, I should think.
There were some unique auxiliaries to the painting which added to its
spirited effect. These were genuine wooden and iron implements, and were
prominently disposed round about the figure: a bundle of nails; the hammer
to drive them; the sponge; the reed that supported it; the cup of vinegar; the
ladder for the ascent of the cross; the spear that pierced the Saviour’s side.
The crown of thorns was made of real thorns, and was nailed to the sacred
head. In some Italian church-paintings, even by the old masters, the Saviour
and the Virgin wear silver or gilded crowns that are fastened to the pictured
head with nails. The effect is as grotesque as it is incongruous.

Here and there, on the fronts of roadside inns, we found huge, coarse
frescoes of suffering martyrs like those in the shrines. It could not have
diminished their sufferings any to be so uncouthly represented. We were in
the heart and home of priest craft--of a happy, cheerful, contented
ignorance, superstition, degradation, poverty, indolence, and everlasting
unaspiring worthlessness. And we said fervently: it suits these people
precisely; let them enjoy it, along with the other animals, and Heaven forbid
that they be molested. We feel no malice toward these fumigators.
We passed through the strangest, funniest, undreampt-of old towns,
wedded to the customs and steeped in the dreams of the elder ages, and

perfectly unaware that the world turns round! And perfectly indifferent, too,
as to whether it turns around or stands still. They have nothing to do but eat
and sleep and sleep and eat, and toil a little when they can get a friend to
stand by and keep them awake. They are not paid for thinking--they are not
paid to fret about the world’s concerns. They were not respectable people--
they were not worthy people--they were not learned and wise and brilliant
people--but in their breasts, all their stupid lives long, resteth a peace that
passeth understanding! How can men, calling themselves men, consent to
be so degraded and happy.

We whisked by many a gray old medieval castle, clad thick with ivy that
swung its green banners down from towers and turrets where once some old
Crusader’s flag had floated. The driver pointed to one of these ancient
fortresses, and said, (I translate):
“Do you see that great iron hook that projects from the wall just under
the highest window in the ruined tower?”
We said we could not see it at such a distance, but had no doubt it was
there.
“Well,” he said; “there is a legend connected with that iron hook. Nearly
seven hundred years ago, that castle was the property of the noble Count
Luigi Gennaro Guido Alphonso di Genova----”

“What was his other name?” said Dan.
“He had no other name. The name I have spoken was all the name he
had. He was the son of----”
“Poor but honest parents--that is all right--never mind the particulars--go
on with the legend."

THE LEGEND.

Well, then, all the world, at that time, was in a wild excitement about the
Holy Sepulchre. All the great feudal lords in Europe were pledging their
lands and pawning their plate to fit out men-at-arms so that they might join
the grand armies of Christendom and win renown in the Holy Wars. The
Count Luigi raised money, like the rest, and one mild September morning,
armed with battle-ax, portcullis and thundering culverin, he rode through
the greaves and bucklers of his donjon-keep with as gallant a troop of
Christian bandits as ever stepped in Italy. He had his sword, Excalibur, with
him. His beautiful countess and her young daughter waved him a tearful

adieu from the battering-rams and buttresses of the fortress, and he galloped
away with a happy heart.
He made a raid on a neighboring baron and completed his outfit with the
booty secured. He then razed the castle to the ground, massacred the family
and moved on. They were hardy fellows in the grand old days of chivalry.
Alas! Those days will never come again.
Count Luigi grew high in fame in Holy Land. He plunged into the
carnage of a hundred battles, but his good Excalibur always brought him
out alive, albeit often sorely wounded. His face became browned by
exposure to the Syrian sun in long marches; he suffered hunger and thirst;
he pined in prisons, he languished in loathsome plague-hospitals. And many
and many a time he thought of his loved ones at home, and wondered if all
was well with them. But his heart said, Peace, is not thy brother watching
over thy household?
*******
Forty-two years waxed and waned; the good fight was won; Godfrey
reigned in Jerusalem--the Christian hosts reared the banner of the cross
above the Holy Sepulchre!
Twilight was approaching. Fifty harlequins, in flowing robes, approached
this castle wearily, for they were on foot, and the dust upon their garments
betokened that they had traveled far. They overtook a peasant, and asked
him if it were likely they could get food and a hospitable bed there, for love
of Christian charity, and if perchance, a moral parlor entertainment might
meet with generous countenance--“for,” said they, “this exhibition hath no
feature that could offend the most fastidious taste.”
“Marry,” quoth the peasant, “an’ it please your worships, ye had better
journey many a good rood hence with your juggling circus than trust your
bones in yonder castle.”
“How now, sirrah!” exclaimed the chief monk, “explain thy ribald
speech, or by’r Lady it shall go hard with thee.”
“Peace, good mountebank, I did but utter the truth that was in my heart.
San Paolo be my witness that did ye but find the stout Count Leonardo in
his cups, sheer from the castle’s topmost battlements would he hurl ye all!
Alack-a-day, the good Lord Luigi reigns not here in these sad times.”
“The good Lord Luigi?”

“Aye, none other, please your worship. In his day, the poor rejoiced in
plenty and the rich he did oppress; taxes were not known, the fathers of the
church waxed fat upon his bounty; travelers went and came, with none to
interfere; and whosoever would, might tarry in his halls in cordial welcome,
and eat his bread and drink his wine, withal. But woe is me! some two and
forty years agone the good count rode hence to fight for Holy Cross, and
many a year hath flown since word or token have we had of him. Men say
his bones lie bleaching in the fields of Palestine.”
“And now?”
“Now! God ’a mercy, the cruel Leonardo lords it in the castle. He wrings
taxes from the poor; he robs all travelers that journey by his gates; he
spends his days in feuds and murders, and his nights in revel and debauch;
he roasts the fathers of the church upon his kitchen spits, and enjoyeth the
same, calling it pastime. These thirty years Luigi’s countess hath not been
seen by any in all this land, and many whisper that she pines in the
dungeons of the castle for that she will not wed with Leonardo, saying her
dear lord still liveth and that she will die ere she prove false to him. They
whisper likewise that her daughter is a prisoner as well. Nay, good jugglers,
seek ye refreshment other wheres. ’Twere better that ye perished in a
Christian way than that ye plunged from off yon dizzy tower. Give ye good-
day.”
“God keep ye, gentle knave--farewell.”
But heedless of the peasant’s warning, the players moved straightway
toward the castle.
Word was brought to Count Leonardo that a company of mountebanks
besought his hospitality.
“’Tis well. Dispose of them in the customary manner. Yet stay! I have
need of them. Let them come hither. Later, cast them from the battlements--
or--how many priests have ye on hand?”
“The day’s results are meagre, good my lord. An abbot and a dozen
beggarly friars is all we have.”
“Hell and furies! Is the estate going to seed? Send hither the
mountebanks. Afterward, broil them with the priests.”
The robed and close-cowled harlequins entered. The grim Leonardo sate
in state at the head of his council board. Ranged up and down the hall on

either hand stood near a hundred men-at-arms.
“Ha, villains!” quoth the count, “What can ye do to earn the hospitality
ye crave.”
“Dread lord and mighty, crowded audiences have greeted our humble
efforts with rapturous applause. Among our body count we the versatile and
talented Ugolino; the justly celebrated Rodolpho; the gifted and
accomplished Roderigo; the management have spared neither pains nor
expense--”
“S’death! What can ye do? Curb thy prating tongue.”
“Good my lord, in acrobatic feats, in practice with the dumb-bells, in
balancing and ground and lofty tumbling are we versed--and sith your
highness asketh me, I venture here to publish that in the truly marvelous
and entertaining Zampillaerostation--”
“Gag him! throttle him! Body of Bacchus! am I a dog that I am to be
assailed with polysyllabled blasphemy like to this? But hold! Lucretia,
Isabel, stand forth! Sirrah, behold this dame, this weeping wench. The first I
marry, within the hour; the other shall dry her tears or feed the vultures.
Thou and thy vagabonds shall crown the wedding with thy merry-makings.
Fetch hither the priest!”
The dame sprang toward the chief player.
“O, save me!” she cried; “save me from a fate far worse than death!
Behold these sad eyes, these sunken cheeks, this withered frame! See thou
the wreck this fiend hath made, and let thy heart be moved with pity! Look
upon this damosel; note her wasted form, her halting step, her bloomless
cheeks where youth should blush and happiness exult in smiles! Hear us
and have compassion. This monster was my husband’s brother. He who
should have been our shield against all harm, hath kept us shut within the
noisome caverns of his donjon-keep for lo these thirty years. And for what
crime? None other than that I would not belie my troth, root out my strong
love for him who marches with the legions of the cross in Holy Land, (for
O, he is not dead!) and wed with him! Save us, O, save thy persecuted
suppliants!”
She flung herself at his feet and clasped his knees.
“Ha!-ha!-ha!” shouted the brutal Leonardo. “Priest, to thy work!” and he
dragged the weeping dame from her refuge. “Say, once for all, will you be

mine?--for by my halidome, that breath that uttereth thy refusal shall be thy
last on earth!”
“NE-VER?”
“Then die!” and the sword leaped from its scabbard.
Quicker than thought, quicker than the lightning’s flash, fifty monkish
habits disappeared, and fifty knights in splendid armor stood revealed! fifty
falchions gleamed in air above the men-at-arms, and brighter, fiercer than
them all, flamed Excalibur aloft, and cleaving downward struck the brutal
Leonardo’s weapon from his grasp!
“A Luigi to the rescue! Whoop!”
“A Leonardo! ‘tare an ouns!’”
“Oh, God, Oh, God, my husband!”
“Oh, God, Oh, God, my wife!”
“My father!”
“My precious!” [Tableau.]
Count Luigi bound his usurping brother hand and foot. The practiced
knights from Palestine made holyday sport of carving the awkward men-at-
arms into chops and steaks. The victory was complete. Happiness reigned.
The knights all married the daughter. Joy! wassail! finis!
“But what did they do with the wicked brother?”
“Oh nothing--only hanged him on that iron hook I was speaking of. By
the chin.”
“As how?”
“Passed it up through his gills into his mouth.”
“Leave him there?”
“Couple of years.”
“Ah--is--is he dead?”
“Six hundred and fifty years ago, or such a matter.”
“Splendid legend--splendid lie--drive on."

We reached the quaint old fortified city of Bergamo, the renowned in
history, some three-quarters of an hour before the train was ready to start.
The place has thirty or forty thousand inhabitants and is remarkable for
being the birthplace of harlequin. When we discovered that, that legend of
our driver took to itself a new interest in our eyes.
Rested and refreshed, we took the rail happy and contented. I shall not
tarry to speak of the handsome Lago di Gardi; its stately castle that holds in
its stony bosom the secrets of an age so remote that even tradition goeth not
back to it; the imposing mountain scenery that ennobles the landscape
thereabouts; nor yet of ancient Padua or haughty Verona; nor of their
Montagues and Capulets, their famous balconies and tombs of Juliet and
Romeo et al., but hurry straight to the ancient city of the sea, the widowed
bride of the Adriatic. It was a long, long ride. But toward evening, as we sat

silent and hardly conscious of where we were--subdued into that meditative
calm that comes so surely after a conversational storm--some one shouted--
“VENICE!”
And sure enough, afloat on the placid sea a league away, lay a great city,
with its towers and domes and steeples drowsing in a golden mist of sunset.

CHAPTER XXII.
This Venice, which was a haughty, invincible, magnificent Republic for
nearly fourteen hundred years; whose armies compelled the world’s
applause whenever and wherever they battled; whose navies well nigh held
dominion of the seas, and whose merchant fleets whitened the remotest
oceans with their sails and loaded these piers with the products of every
clime, is fallen a prey to poverty, neglect and melancholy decay. Six
hundred years ago, Venice was the Autocrat of Commerce; her mart was the
great commercial centre, the distributing-house from whence the enormous
trade of the Orient was spread abroad over the Western world. To-day her
piers are deserted, her warehouses are empty, her merchant fleets are
vanished, her armies and her navies are but memories. Her glory is
departed, and with her crumbling grandeur of wharves and palaces about
her she sits among her stagnant lagoons, forlorn and beggared, forgotten of
the world. She that in her palmy days commanded the commerce of a
hemisphere and made the weal or woe of nations with a beck of her
puissant finger, is become the humblest among the peoples of the earth,--a
peddler of glass beads for women, and trifling toys and trinkets for school-
girls and children.
The venerable Mother of the Republics is scarce a fit subject for flippant
speech or the idle gossipping of tourists. It seems a sort of sacrilege to
disturb the glamour of old romance that pictures her to us softly from afar
off as through a tinted mist, and curtains her ruin and her desolation from
our view. One ought, indeed, to turn away from her rags, her poverty and
her humiliation, and think of her only as she was when she sunk the fleets
of Charlemagne; when she humbled Frederick Barbarossa or waved her
victorious banners above the battlements of Constantinople.
We reached Venice at eight in the evening, and entered a hearse
belonging to the Grand Hotel d’Europe. At any rate, it was more like a
hearse than any thing else, though to speak by the card, it was a gondola.
And this was the storied gondola of Venice!--the fairy boat in which the
princely cavaliers of the olden time were wont to cleave the waters of the
moonlit canals and look the eloquence of love into the soft eyes of patrician

beauties, while the gay gondolier in silken doublet touched his guitar and
sang as only gondoliers can sing! This the famed gondola and this the
gorgeous gondolier!--the one an inky, rusty old canoe with a sable hearse-
body clapped on to the middle of it, and the other a mangy, barefooted
guttersnipe with a portion of his raiment on exhibition which should have
been sacred from public scrutiny. Presently, as he turned a corner and shot
his hearse into a dismal ditch between two long rows of towering,
untenanted buildings, the gay gondolier began to sing, true to the traditions
of his race. I stood it a little while. Then I said:
“Now, here, Roderigo Gonzales Michael Angelo, I’m a pilgrim, and I’m
a stranger, but I am not going to have my feelings lacerated by any such
caterwauling as that. If that goes on, one of us has got to take water. It is
enough that my cherished dreams of Venice have been blighted forever as to
the romantic gondola and the gorgeous gondolier; this system of destruction
shall go no farther; I will accept the hearse, under protest, and you may fly
your flag of truce in peace, but here I register a dark and bloody oath that
you shan’t sing. Another yelp, and overboard you go.”
I began to feel that the old Venice of song and story had departed forever.
But I was too hasty. In a few minutes we swept gracefully out into the
Grand Canal, and under the mellow moonlight the Venice of poetry and
romance stood revealed. Right from the water’s edge rose long lines of
stately palaces of marble; gondolas were gliding swiftly hither and thither
and disappearing suddenly through unsuspected gates and alleys; ponderous
stone bridges threw their shadows athwart the glittering waves. There was
life and motion everywhere, and yet everywhere there was a hush, a
stealthy sort of stillness, that was suggestive of secret enterprises of bravoes
and of lovers; and clad half in moonbeams and half in mysterious shadows,
the grim old mansions of the Republic seemed to have an expression about
them of having an eye out for just such enterprises as these at that same
moment. Music came floating over the waters--Venice was complete.
It was a beautiful picture--very soft and dreamy and beautiful. But what
was this Venice to compare with the Venice of midnight? Nothing. There
was a fete--a grand fete in honor of some saint who had been instrumental
in checking the cholera three hundred years ago, and all Venice was abroad
on the water. It was no common affair, for the Venetians did not know how
soon they might need the saint’s services again, now that the cholera was

spreading every where. So in one vast space--say a third of a mile wide and
two miles long--were collected two thousand gondolas, and every one of
them had from two to ten, twenty and even thirty colored lanterns
suspended about it, and from four to a dozen occupants. Just as far as the
eye could reach, these painted lights were massed together--like a vast
garden of many-colored flowers, except that these blossoms were never
still; they were ceaselessly gliding in and out, and mingling together, and
seducing you into bewildering attempts to follow their mazy evolutions.
Here and there a strong red, green, or blue glare from a rocket that was
struggling to get away, splendidly illuminated all the boats around it. Every
gondola that swam by us, with its crescents and pyramids and circles of
colored lamps hung aloft, and lighting up the faces of the young and the
sweet-scented and lovely below, was a picture; and the reflections of those
lights, so long, so slender, so numberless, so many-colored and so distorted
and wrinkled by the waves, was a picture likewise, and one that was
enchantingly beautiful. Many and many a party of young ladies and
gentlemen had their state gondolas handsomely decorated, and ate supper
on board, bringing their swallow-tailed, white-cravatted varlets to wait upon
them, and having their tables tricked out as if for a bridal supper. They had
brought along the costly globe lamps from their drawing-rooms, and the
lace and silken curtains from the same places, I suppose. And they had also
brought pianos and guitars, and they played and sang operas, while the
plebeian paper-lanterned gondolas from the suburbs and the back alleys
crowded around to stare and listen.
There was music every where--choruses, string bands, brass bands,
flutes, every thing. I was so surrounded, walled in, with music,
magnificence and loveliness, that I became inspired with the spirit of the
scene, and sang one tune myself. However, when I observed that the other
gondolas had sailed away, and my gondolier was preparing to go overboard,
I stopped.

The fete was magnificent. They kept it up the whole night long, and I
never enjoyed myself better than I did while it lasted.
What a funny old city this Queen of the Adriatic is! Narrow streets, vast,
gloomy marble palaces, black with the corroding damps of centuries, and
all partly submerged; no dry land visible any where, and no sidewalks
worth mentioning; if you want to go to church, to the theatre, or to the
restaurant, you must call a gondola. It must be a paradise for cripples, for
verily a man has no use for legs here.
For a day or two the place looked so like an overflowed Arkansas town,
because of its currentless waters laving the very doorsteps of all the houses,
and the cluster of boats made fast under the windows, or skimming in and
out of the alleys and by-ways, that I could not get rid of the impression that
there was nothing the matter here but a spring freshet, and that the river
would fall in a few weeks and leave a dirty high-water mark on the houses,
and the streets full of mud and rubbish.
In the glare of day, there is little poetry about Venice, but under the
charitable moon her stained palaces are white again, their battered
sculptures are hidden in shadows, and the old city seems crowned once
more with the grandeur that was hers five hundred years ago. It is easy,
then, in fancy, to people these silent canals with plumed gallants and fair
ladies--with Shylocks in gaberdine and sandals, venturing loans upon the
rich argosies of Venetian commerce--with Othellos and Desdemonas, with

Iagos and Roderigos--with noble fleets and victorious legions returning
from the wars. In the treacherous sunlight we see Venice decayed, forlorn,
poverty-stricken, and commerceless--forgotten and utterly insignificant. But
in the moonlight, her fourteen centuries of greatness fling their glories
about her, and once more is she the princeliest among the nations of the
earth.

“There is a glorious city in the sea;
The sea is in the broad, the narrow streets,
Ebbing and flowing; and the salt-sea weed
Clings to the marble of her palaces.
No track of men, no footsteps to and fro,
Lead to her gates! The path lies o’er the sea,
Invisible: and from the land we went,
As to a floating city--steering in,
And gliding up her streets, as in a dream,
So smoothly, silently--by many a dome,
Mosque-like, and many a stately portico,
The statues ranged along an azure sky;
By many a pile, in more than Eastern pride,
Of old the residence of merchant kings;
The fronts of some, tho’ time had shatter’d them,
Still glowing with the richest hues of art,
As tho’ the wealth within them had run o’er."
What would one naturally wish to see first in Venice? The Bridge of
Sighs, of course--and next the Church and the Great Square of St. Mark, the
Bronze Horses, and the famous Lion of St. Mark.
We intended to go to the Bridge of Sighs, but happened into the Ducal
Palace first--a building which necessarily figures largely in Venetian poetry
and tradition. In the Senate Chamber of the ancient Republic we wearied
our eyes with staring at acres of historical paintings by Tintoretto and Paul
Veronese, but nothing struck us forcibly except the one thing that strikes all
strangers forcibly--a black square in the midst of a gallery of portraits. In
one long row, around the great hall, were painted the portraits of the Doges
of Venice (venerable fellows, with flowing white beards, for of the three

hundred Senators eligible to the office, the oldest was usually chosen
Doge,) and each had its complimentary inscription attached--till you came
to the place that should have had Marino Faliero’s picture in it, and that was
blank and black--blank, except that it bore a terse inscription, saying that
the conspirator had died for his crime. It seemed cruel to keep that pitiless
inscription still staring from the walls after the unhappy wretch had been in
his grave five hundred years.
At the head of the Giant’s Staircase, where Marino Faliero was beheaded,
and where the Doges were crowned in ancient times, two small slits in the
stone wall were pointed out--two harmless, insignificant orifices that would
never attract a stranger’s attention--yet these were the terrible Lions’
Mouths! The heads were gone (knocked off by the French during their
occupation of Venice,) but these were the throats, down which went the
anonymous accusation, thrust in secretly at dead of night by an enemy, that
doomed many an innocent man to walk the Bridge of Sighs and descend
into the dungeon which none entered and hoped to see the sun again. This
was in the old days when the Patricians alone governed Venice--the
common herd had no vote and no voice. There were one thousand five
hundred Patricians; from these, three hundred Senators were chosen; from
the Senators a Doge and a Council of Ten were selected, and by secret
ballot the Ten chose from their own number a Council of Three. All these
were Government spies, then, and every spy was under surveillance
himself--men spoke in whispers in Venice, and no man trusted his neighbor-
-not always his own brother. No man knew who the Council of Three were-
-not even the Senate, not even the Doge; the members of that dread tribunal
met at night in a chamber to themselves, masked, and robed from head to
foot in scarlet cloaks, and did not even know each other, unless by voice. It
was their duty to judge heinous political crimes, and from their sentence
there was no appeal. A nod to the executioner was sufficient. The doomed
man was marched down a hall and out at a door-way into the covered
Bridge of Sighs, through it and into the dungeon and unto his death. At no
time in his transit was he visible to any save his conductor. If a man had an
enemy in those old days, the cleverest thing he could do was to slip a note
for the Council of Three into the Lion’s mouth, saying “This man is plotting
against the Government.” If the awful Three found no proof, ten to one they
would drown him anyhow, because he was a deep rascal, since his plots
were unsolvable. Masked judges and masked executioners, with unlimited

power, and no appeal from their judgements, in that hard, cruel age, were
not likely to be lenient with men they suspected yet could not convict.
We walked through the hall of the Council of Ten, and presently entered
the infernal den of the Council of Three.
The table around which they had sat was there still, and likewise the
stations where the masked inquisitors and executioners formerly stood,
frozen, upright and silent, till they received a bloody order, and then,
without a word, moved off like the inexorable machines they were, to carry
it out. The frescoes on the walls were startlingly suited to the place. In all
the other saloons, the halls, the great state chambers of the palace, the walls
and ceilings were bright with gilding, rich with elaborate carving, and
resplendent with gallant pictures of Venetian victories in war, and Venetian
display in foreign courts, and hallowed with portraits of the Virgin, the
Saviour of men, and the holy saints that preached the Gospel of Peace upon
earth--but here, in dismal contrast, were none but pictures of death and
dreadful suffering!--not a living figure but was writhing in torture, not a
dead one but was smeared with blood, gashed with wounds, and distorted
with the agonies that had taken away its life!
From the palace to the gloomy prison is but a step--one might almost
jump across the narrow canal that intervenes. The ponderous stone Bridge
of Sighs crosses it at the second story--a bridge that is a covered tunnel--
you can not be seen when you walk in it. It is partitioned lengthwise, and
through one compartment walked such as bore light sentences in ancient
times, and through the other marched sadly the wretches whom the Three
had doomed to lingering misery and utter oblivion in the dungeons, or to
sudden and mysterious death. Down below the level of the water, by the
light of smoking torches, we were shown the damp, thick-walled cells
where many a proud patrician’s life was eaten away by the long-drawn
miseries of solitary imprisonment--without light, air, books; naked,
unshaven, uncombed, covered with vermin; his useless tongue forgetting its
office, with none to speak to; the days and nights of his life no longer
marked, but merged into one eternal eventless night; far away from all
cheerful sounds, buried in the silence of a tomb; forgotten by his helpless
friends, and his fate a dark mystery to them forever; losing his own memory
at last, and knowing no more who he was or how he came there; devouring
the loaf of bread and drinking the water that were thrust into the cell by

unseen hands, and troubling his worn spirit no more with hopes and fears
and doubts and longings to be free; ceasing to scratch vain prayers and
complainings on walls where none, not even himself, could see them, and
resigning himself to hopeless apathy, driveling childishness, lunacy! Many
and many a sorrowful story like this these stony walls could tell if they
could but speak.
In a little narrow corridor, near by, they showed us where many a
prisoner, after lying in the dungeons until he was forgotten by all save his
persecutors, was brought by masked executioners and garroted, or sewed up
in a sack, passed through a little window to a boat, at dead of night, and
taken to some remote spot and drowned.
They used to show to visitors the implements of torture wherewith the
Three were wont to worm secrets out of the accused--villainous machines
for crushing thumbs; the stocks where a prisoner sat immovable while water
fell drop by drop upon his head till the torture was more than humanity
could bear; and a devilish contrivance of steel, which inclosed a prisoner’s
head like a shell, and crushed it slowly by means of a screw. It bore the
stains of blood that had trickled through its joints long ago, and on one side
it had a projection whereon the torturer rested his elbow comfortably and
bent down his ear to catch the moanings of the sufferer perishing within.
Of course we went to see the venerable relic of the ancient glory of
Venice, with its pavements worn and broken by the passing feet of a
thousand years of plebeians and patricians--The Cathedral of St. Mark. It is
built entirely of precious marbles, brought from the Orient--nothing in its
composition is domestic. Its hoary traditions make it an object of absorbing
interest to even the most careless stranger, and thus far it had interest for
me; but no further. I could not go into ecstasies over its coarse mosaics, its
unlovely Byzantine architecture, or its five hundred curious interior
columns from as many distant quarries. Every thing was worn out--every
block of stone was smooth and almost shapeless with the polishing hands
and shoulders of loungers who devoutly idled here in by-gone centuries and
have died and gone to the dev--no, simply died, I mean.
Under the altar repose the ashes of St. Mark--and Matthew, Luke and
John, too, for all I know. Venice reveres those relics above all things earthly.
For fourteen hundred years St. Mark has been her patron saint. Every thing
about the city seems to be named after him or so named as to refer to him in

some way--so named, or some purchase rigged in some way to scrape a sort
of hurrahing acquaintance with him. That seems to be the idea. To be on
good terms with St. Mark, seems to be the very summit of Venetian
ambition. They say St. Mark had a tame lion, and used to travel with him--
and every where that St. Mark went, the lion was sure to go. It was his
protector, his friend, his librarian. And so the Winged Lion of St. Mark,
with the open Bible under his paw, is a favorite emblem in the grand old
city. It casts its shadow from the most ancient pillar in Venice, in the Grand
Square of St. Mark, upon the throngs of free citizens below, and has so done
for many a long century. The winged lion is found every where--and
doubtless here, where the winged lion is, no harm can come.

St. Mark died at Alexandria, in Egypt. He was martyred, I think.
However, that has nothing to do with my legend. About the founding of the
city of Venice--say four hundred and fifty years after Christ--(for Venice is
much younger than any other Italian city,) a priest dreamed that an angel
told him that until the remains of St. Mark were brought to Venice, the city
could never rise to high distinction among the nations; that the body must

be captured, brought to the city, and a magnificent church built over it; and
that if ever the Venetians allowed the Saint to be removed from his new
resting-place, in that day Venice would perish from off the face of the earth.
The priest proclaimed his dream, and forthwith Venice set about procuring
the corpse of St. Mark. One expedition after another tried and failed, but the
project was never abandoned during four hundred years. At last it was
secured by stratagem, in the year eight hundred and something. The
commander of a Venetian expedition disguised himself, stole the bones,
separated them, and packed them in vessels filled with lard. The religion of
Mahomet causes its devotees to abhor anything that is in the nature of pork,
and so when the Christian was stopped by the officers at the gates of the
city, they only glanced once into his precious baskets, then turned up their
noses at the unholy lard, and let him go. The bones were buried in the vaults
of the grand cathedral, which had been waiting long years to receive them,
and thus the safety and the greatness of Venice were secured. And to this
day there be those in Venice who believe that if those holy ashes were
stolen away, the ancient city would vanish like a dream, and its foundations
be buried forever in the unremembering sea.

CHAPTER XXIII.
The Venetian gondola is as free and graceful, in its gliding movement, as
a serpent. It is twenty or thirty feet long, and is narrow and deep, like a
canoe; its sharp bow and stern sweep upward from the water like the horns
of a crescent with the abruptness of the curve slightly modified.
The bow is ornamented with a steel comb with a battle-ax attachment
which threatens to cut passing boats in two occasionally, but never does.
The gondola is painted black because in the zenith of Venetian
magnificence the gondolas became too gorgeous altogether, and the Senate
decreed that all such display must cease, and a solemn, unembellished black
be substituted. If the truth were known, it would doubtless appear that rich
plebeians grew too prominent in their affectation of patrician show on the
Grand Canal, and required a wholesome snubbing. Reverence for the
hallowed Past and its traditions keeps the dismal fashion in force now that
the compulsion exists no longer. So let it remain. It is the color of
mourning. Venice mourns. The stern of the boat is decked over and the
gondolier stands there. He uses a single oar--a long blade, of course, for he
stands nearly erect. A wooden peg, a foot and a half high, with two slight
crooks or curves in one side of it and one in the other, projects above the
starboard gunwale.

Against that peg the gondolier takes a purchase with his oar, changing it
at intervals to the other side of the peg or dropping it into another of the
crooks, as the steering of the craft may demand--and how in the world he
can back and fill, shoot straight ahead, or flirt suddenly around a corner, and
make the oar stay in those insignificant notches, is a problem to me and a
never diminishing matter of interest. I am afraid I study the gondolier’s
marvelous skill more than I do the sculptured palaces we glide among. He
cuts a corner so closely, now and then, or misses another gondola by such
an imperceptible hair-breadth that I feel myself “scrooching,” as the
children say, just as one does when a buggy wheel grazes his elbow. But he

makes all his calculations with the nicest precision, and goes darting in and
out among a Broadway confusion of busy craft with the easy confidence of
the educated hackman. He never makes a mistake.
Sometimes we go flying down the great canals at such a gait that we can
get only the merest glimpses into front doors, and again, in obscure alleys in
the suburbs, we put on a solemnity suited to the silence, the mildew, the
stagnant waters, the clinging weeds, the deserted houses and the general
lifelessness of the place, and move to the spirit of grave meditation.
The gondolier is a picturesque rascal for all he wears no satin harness, no
plumed bonnet, no silken tights. His attitude is stately; he is lithe and
supple; all his movements are full of grace. When his long canoe, and his
fine figure, towering from its high perch on the stern, are cut against the
evening sky, they make a picture that is very novel and striking to a foreign
eye.
We sit in the cushioned carriage-body of a cabin, with the curtains drawn,
and smoke, or read, or look out upon the passing boats, the houses, the
bridges, the people, and enjoy ourselves much more than we could in a
buggy jolting over our cobble-stone pavements at home. This is the
gentlest, pleasantest locomotion we have ever known.
But it seems queer--ever so queer--to see a boat doing duty as a private
carriage. We see business men come to the front door, step into a gondola,
instead of a street car, and go off down town to the counting-room.

We see visiting young ladies stand on the stoop, and laugh, and kiss
good-bye, and flirt their fans and say “Come soon--now do--you’ve been
just as mean as ever you can be--mother’s dying to see you--and we’ve
moved into the new house, O such a love of a place!--so convenient to the
post office and the church, and the Young Men’s Christian Association; and
we do have such fishing, and such carrying on, and such swimming-
matches in the back yard--Oh, you must come--no distance at all, and if you
go down through by St. Mark’s and the Bridge of Sighs, and cut through the
alley and come up by the church of Santa Maria dei Frari, and into the
Grand Canal, there isn’t a bit of current--now do come, Sally Maria--by-
bye!” and then the little humbug trips down the steps, jumps into the
gondola, says, under her breath, “Disagreeable old thing, I hope she won’t!”
goes skimming away, round the corner; and the other girl slams the street
door and says, “Well, that infliction’s over, any way,--but I suppose I’ve got
to go and see her--tiresome stuck-up thing!” Human nature appears to be
just the same, all over the world. We see the diffident young man, mild of
moustache, affluent of hair, indigent of brain, elegant of costume, drive up
to her father’s mansion, tell his hackman to bail out and wait, start fearfully

up the steps and meet “the old gentleman” right on the threshold!--hear him
ask what street the new British Bank is in--as if that were what he came for-
-and then bounce into his boat and skurry away with his coward heart in his
boots!--see him come sneaking around the corner again, directly, with a
crack of the curtain open toward the old gentleman’s disappearing gondola,
and out scampers his Susan with a flock of little Italian endearments
fluttering from her lips, and goes to drive with him in the watery avenues
down toward the Rialto.
We see the ladies go out shopping, in the most natural way, and flit from
street to street and from store to store, just in the good old fashion, except
that they leave the gondola, instead of a private carriage, waiting at the
curbstone a couple of hours for them,--waiting while they make the nice
young clerks pull down tons and tons of silks and velvets and moire
antiques and those things; and then they buy a paper of pins and go
paddling away to confer the rest of their disastrous patronage on some other
firm. And they always have their purchases sent home just in the good old
way. Human nature is very much the same all over the world; and it is so
like my dear native home to see a Venetian lady go into a store and buy ten
cents’ worth of blue ribbon and have it sent home in a scow. Ah, it is these
little touches of nature that move one to tears in these far-off foreign lands.
We see little girls and boys go out in gondolas with their nurses, for an
airing. We see staid families, with prayer-book and beads, enter the gondola
dressed in their Sunday best, and float away to church. And at midnight we
see the theatre break up and discharge its swarm of hilarious youth and
beauty; we hear the cries of the hackman-gondoliers, and behold the
struggling crowd jump aboard, and the black multitude of boats go
skimming down the moonlit avenues; we see them separate here and there,
and disappear up divergent streets; we hear the faint sounds of laughter and
of shouted farewells floating up out of the distance; and then, the strange
pageant being gone, we have lonely stretches of glittering water--of stately
buildings--of blotting shadows--of weird stone faces creeping into the
moonlight--of deserted bridges--of motionless boats at anchor. And over all
broods that mysterious stillness, that stealthy quiet, that befits so well this
old dreaming Venice.
We have been pretty much every where in our gondola. We have bought
beads and photographs in the stores, and wax matches in the Great Square

of St. Mark. The last remark suggests a digression. Every body goes to this
vast square in the evening. The military bands play in the centre of it and
countless couples of ladies and gentlemen promenade up and down on
either side, and platoons of them are constantly drifting away toward the old
Cathedral, and by the venerable column with the Winged Lion of St. Mark
on its top, and out to where the boats lie moored; and other platoons are as
constantly arriving from the gondolas and joining the great throng. Between
the promenaders and the side-walks are seated hundreds and hundreds of
people at small tables, smoking and taking granita, (a first cousin to ice-
cream;) on the side-walks are more employing themselves in the same way.
The shops in the first floor of the tall rows of buildings that wall in three
sides of the square are brilliantly lighted, the air is filled with music and
merry voices, and altogether the scene is as bright and spirited and full of
cheerfulness as any man could desire. We enjoy it thoroughly. Very many of
the young women are exceedingly pretty and dress with rare good taste. We
are gradually and laboriously learning the ill-manners of staring them
unflinchingly in the face--not because such conduct is agreeable to us, but
because it is the custom of the country and they say the girls like it. We
wish to learn all the curious, outlandish ways of all the different countries,
so that we can “show off” and astonish people when we get home. We wish
to excite the envy of our untraveled friends with our strange foreign
fashions which we can’t shake off. All our passengers are paying strict
attention to this thing, with the end in view which I have mentioned. The
gentle reader will never, never know what a consummate ass he can
become, until he goes abroad. I speak now, of course, in the supposition that
the gentle reader has not been abroad, and therefore is not already a
consummate ass. If the case be otherwise, I beg his pardon and extend to
him the cordial hand of fellowship and call him brother. I shall always
delight to meet an ass after my own heart when I shall have finished my
travels.
On this subject let me remark that there are Americans abroad in Italy
who have actually forgotten their mother tongue in three months--forgot it
in France. They can not even write their address in English in a hotel
register. I append these evidences, which I copied verbatim from the
register of a hotel in a certain Italian city:

“John P. Whitcomb, Etats Unis.
“Wm. L. Ainsworth, travailleur (he meant traveler, I suppose,) Etats Unis.
“George P. Morton et fils, d’Amerique.
“Lloyd B. Williams, et trois amis, ville de Boston, Amerique.
“J. Ellsworth Baker, tout de suite de France, place de naissance Amerique,
destination la Grand Bretagne."
I love this sort of people. A lady passenger of ours tells of a fellow-
citizen of hers who spent eight weeks in Paris and then returned home and
addressed his dearest old bosom friend Herbert as Mr. “Er-bare!” He
apologized, though, and said, “’Pon my soul it is aggravating, but I cahn’t
help it--I have got so used to speaking nothing but French, my dear Erbare--
damme there it goes again!--got so used to French pronunciation that I
cahn’t get rid of it--it is positively annoying, I assure you.” This
entertaining idiot, whose name was Gordon, allowed himself to be hailed
three times in the street before he paid any attention, and then begged a
thousand pardons and said he had grown so accustomed to hearing himself
addressed as “M’sieu Gor-r-dong,” with a roll to the r, that he had forgotten
the legitimate sound of his name! He wore a rose in his button-hole; he
gave the French salutation--two flips of the hand in front of the face; he
called Paris Pairree in ordinary English conversation; he carried envelopes
bearing foreign postmarks protruding from his breast-pocket; he cultivated
a moustache and imperial, and did what else he could to suggest to the
beholder his pet fancy that he resembled Louis Napoleon--and in a spirit of
thankfulness which is entirely unaccountable, considering the slim
foundation there was for it, he praised his Maker that he was as he was, and
went on enjoying his little life just the same as if he really had been
deliberately designed and erected by the great Architect of the Universe.

Think of our Whitcombs, and our Ainsworths and our Williamses writing
themselves down in dilapidated French in foreign hotel registers! We laugh
at Englishmen, when we are at home, for sticking so sturdily to their
national ways and customs, but we look back upon it from abroad very

forgivingly. It is not pleasant to see an American thrusting his nationality
forward obtrusively in a foreign land, but Oh, it is pitiable to see him
making of himself a thing that is neither male nor female, neither fish, flesh,
nor fowl--a poor, miserable, hermaphrodite Frenchman!
Among a long list of churches, art galleries, and such things, visited by
us in Venice, I shall mention only one--the church of Santa Maria dei Frari.
It is about five hundred years old, I believe, and stands on twelve hundred
thousand piles. In it lie the body of Canova and the heart of Titian, under
magnificent monuments. Titian died at the age of almost one hundred years.
A plague which swept away fifty thousand lives was raging at the time, and
there is notable evidence of the reverence in which the great painter was
held, in the fact that to him alone the state permitted a public funeral in all
that season of terror and death.
In this church, also, is a monument to the doge Foscari, whose name a
once resident of Venice, Lord Byron, has made permanently famous.
The monument to the doge Giovanni Pesaro, in this church, is a curiosity
in the way of mortuary adornment. It is eighty feet high and is fronted like
some fantastic pagan temple. Against it stand four colossal Nubians, as
black as night, dressed in white marble garments. The black legs are bare,
and through rents in sleeves and breeches, the skin, of shiny black marble,
shows. The artist was as ingenious as his funeral designs were absurd.
There are two bronze skeletons bearing scrolls, and two great dragons
uphold the sarcophagus. On high, amid all this grotesqueness, sits the
departed doge.

In the conventual buildings attached to this church are the state archives
of Venice. We did not see them, but they are said to number millions of
documents. “They are the records of centuries of the most watchful,
observant and suspicious government that ever existed--in which every
thing was written down and nothing spoken out.” They fill nearly three
hundred rooms. Among them are manuscripts from the archives of nearly
two thousand families, monasteries and convents. The secret history of
Venice for a thousand years is here--its plots, its hidden trials, its

assassinations, its commissions of hireling spies and masked bravoes--food,
ready to hand, for a world of dark and mysterious romances.
Yes, I think we have seen all of Venice. We have seen, in these old
churches, a profusion of costly and elaborate sepulchre ornamentation such
as we never dreampt of before. We have stood in the dim religious light of
these hoary sanctuaries, in the midst of long ranks of dusty monuments and
effigies of the great dead of Venice, until we seemed drifting back, back,
back, into the solemn past, and looking upon the scenes and mingling with
the peoples of a remote antiquity. We have been in a half-waking sort of
dream all the time. I do not know how else to describe the feeling. A part of
our being has remained still in the nineteenth century, while another part of
it has seemed in some unaccountable way walking among the phantoms of
the tenth.
We have seen famous pictures until our eyes are weary with looking at
them and refuse to find interest in them any longer. And what wonder, when
there are twelve hundred pictures by Palma the Younger in Venice and
fifteen hundred by Tintoretto? And behold there are Titians and the works
of other artists in proportion. We have seen Titian’s celebrated Cain and
Abel, his David and Goliah, his Abraham’s Sacrifice. We have seen
Tintoretto’s monster picture, which is seventy-four feet long and I do not
know how many feet high, and thought it a very commodious picture. We
have seen pictures of martyrs enough, and saints enough, to regenerate the
world. I ought not to confess it, but still, since one has no opportunity in
America to acquire a critical judgment in art, and since I could not hope to
become educated in it in Europe in a few short weeks, I may therefore as
well acknowledge with such apologies as may be due, that to me it seemed
that when I had seen one of these martyrs I had seen them all. They all have
a marked family resemblance to each other, they dress alike, in coarse
monkish robes and sandals, they are all bald headed, they all stand in about
the same attitude, and without exception they are gazing heavenward with
countenances which the Ainsworths, the Mortons and the Williamses, et
fils, inform me are full of “expression.” To me there is nothing tangible
about these imaginary portraits, nothing that I can grasp and take a living
interest in. If great Titian had only been gifted with prophecy, and had
skipped a martyr, and gone over to England and painted a portrait of
Shakspeare, even as a youth, which we could all have confidence in now,
the world down to the latest generations would have forgiven him the lost

martyr in the rescued seer. I think posterity could have spared one more
martyr for the sake of a great historical picture of Titian’s time and painted
by his brush--such as Columbus returning in chains from the discovery of a
world, for instance. The old masters did paint some Venetian historical
pictures, and these we did not tire of looking at, notwithstanding
representations of the formal introduction of defunct doges to the Virgin
Mary in regions beyond the clouds clashed rather harshly with the
proprieties, it seemed to us.
But humble as we are, and unpretending, in the matter of art, our
researches among the painted monks and martyrs have not been wholly in
vain. We have striven hard to learn. We have had some success. We have
mastered some things, possibly of trifling import in the eyes of the learned,
but to us they give pleasure, and we take as much pride in our little
acquirements as do others who have learned far more, and we love to
display them full as well. When we see a monk going about with a lion and
looking tranquilly up to heaven, we know that that is St. Mark. When we
see a monk with a book and a pen, looking tranquilly up to heaven, trying to
think of a word, we know that that is St. Matthew. When we see a monk
sitting on a rock, looking tranquilly up to heaven, with a human skull beside
him, and without other baggage, we know that that is St. Jerome. Because
we know that he always went flying light in the matter of baggage. When
we see a party looking tranquilly up to heaven, unconscious that his body is
shot through and through with arrows, we know that that is St. Sebastian.
When we see other monks looking tranquilly up to heaven, but having no
trade-mark, we always ask who those parties are. We do this because we
humbly wish to learn. We have seen thirteen thousand St. Jeromes, and
twenty-two thousand St. Marks, and sixteen thousand St. Matthews, and
sixty thousand St. Sebastians, and four millions of assorted monks,
undesignated, and we feel encouraged to believe that when we have seen
some more of these various pictures, and had a larger experience, we shall
begin to take an absorbing interest in them like our cultivated countrymen
from Amerique.

Now it does give me real pain to speak in this almost unappreciative way
of the old masters and their martyrs, because good friends of mine in the
ship--friends who do thoroughly and conscientiously appreciate them and
are in every way competent to discriminate between good pictures and
inferior ones--have urged me for my own sake not to make public the fact
that I lack this appreciation and this critical discrimination myself. I believe
that what I have written and may still write about pictures will give them
pain, and I am honestly sorry for it. I even promised that I would hide my
uncouth sentiments in my own breast. But alas! I never could keep a
promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie
in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of
space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises, that the
organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve
not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed
than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity. I certainly meant to keep that
promise, but I find I can not do it. It is impossible to travel through Italy
without speaking of pictures, and can I see them through others’ eyes?
If I did not so delight in the grand pictures that are spread before me
every day of my life by that monarch of all the old masters, Nature, I should
come to believe, sometimes, that I had in me no appreciation of the
beautiful, whatsoever.
It seems to me that whenever I glory to think that for once I have
discovered an ancient painting that is beautiful and worthy of all praise, the
pleasure it gives me is an infallible proof that it is not a beautiful picture
and not in any wise worthy of commendation. This very thing has occurred
more times than I can mention, in Venice. In every single instance the guide
has crushed out my swelling enthusiasm with the remark:
“It is nothing--it is of the Renaissance.”
I did not know what in the mischief the Renaissance was, and so always I
had to simply say,
“Ah! so it is--I had not observed it before.”
I could not bear to be ignorant before a cultivated negro, the offspring of
a South Carolina slave. But it occurred too often for even my self-
complacency, did that exasperating “It is nothing--it is of the Renaissance.”
I said at last:

“Who is this Renaissance? Where did he come from? Who gave him
permission to cram the Republic with his execrable daubs?”
We learned, then, that Renaissance was not a man; that renaissance was a
term used to signify what was at best but an imperfect rejuvenation of art.
The guide said that after Titian’s time and the time of the other great names
we had grown so familiar with, high art declined; then it partially rose
again--an inferior sort of painters sprang up, and these shabby pictures were
the work of their hands. Then I said, in my heat, that I “wished to goodness
high art had declined five hundred years sooner.” The Renaissance pictures
suit me very well, though sooth to say its school were too much given to
painting real men and did not indulge enough in martyrs.
The guide I have spoken of is the only one we have had yet who knew
any thing. He was born in South Carolina, of slave parents. They came to
Venice while he was an infant. He has grown up here. He is well educated.
He reads, writes, and speaks English, Italian, Spanish, and French, with
perfect facility; is a worshipper of art and thoroughly conversant with it;
knows the history of Venice by heart and never tires of talking of her
illustrious career. He dresses better than any of us, I think, and is daintily
polite. Negroes are deemed as good as white people, in Venice, and so this
man feels no desire to go back to his native land. His judgment is correct.
I have had another shave. I was writing in our front room this afternoon
and trying hard to keep my attention on my work and refrain from looking
out upon the canal. I was resisting the soft influences of the climate as well
as I could, and endeavoring to overcome the desire to be indolent and
happy. The boys sent for a barber. They asked me if I would be shaved. I
reminded them of my tortures in Genoa, Milan, Como; of my declaration
that I would suffer no more on Italian soil. I said “Not any for me, if you
please.”
I wrote on. The barber began on the doctor. I heard him say:
“Dan, this is the easiest shave I have had since we left the ship.”
He said again, presently:
“Why Dan, a man could go to sleep with this man shaving him.”
Dan took the chair. Then he said:
“Why this is Titian. This is one of the old masters.”
I wrote on. Directly Dan said:

“Doctor, it is perfect luxury. The ship’s barber isn’t any thing to him.”
My rough beard wee distressing me beyond measure. The barber was
rolling up his apparatus. The temptation was too strong. I said:
“Hold on, please. Shave me also.”
I sat down in the chair and closed my eyes. The barber soaped my face,
and then took his razor and gave me a rake that well nigh threw me into
convulsions. I jumped out of the chair: Dan and the doctor were both
wiping blood off their faces and laughing.
I said it was a mean, disgraceful fraud.
They said that the misery of this shave had gone so far beyond any thing
they had ever experienced before, that they could not bear the idea of losing
such a chance of hearing a cordial opinion from me on the subject.
It was shameful. But there was no help for it. The skinning was begun
and had to be finished. The tears flowed with every rake, and so did the
fervent execrations. The barber grew confused, and brought blood every
time. I think the boys enjoyed it better than any thing they have seen or
heard since they left home.
We have seen the Campanile, and Byron’s house and Balbi’s the
geographer, and the palaces of all the ancient dukes and doges of Venice,
and we have seen their effeminate descendants airing their nobility in
fashionable French attire in the Grand Square of St. Mark, and eating ices
and drinking cheap wines, instead of wearing gallant coats of mail and
destroying fleets and armies as their great ancestors did in the days of
Venetian glory. We have seen no bravoes with poisoned stilettos, no masks,
no wild carnival; but we have seen the ancient pride of Venice, the grim
Bronze Horses that figure in a thousand legends. Venice may well cherish
them, for they are the only horses she ever had. It is said there are hundreds
of people in this curious city who never have seen a living horse in their
lives. It is entirely true, no doubt.
And so, having satisfied ourselves, we depart to-morrow, and leave the
venerable Queen of the Republics to summon her vanished ships, and
marshal her shadowy armies, and know again in dreams the pride of her old
renown.

CHAPTER XXIV.
Some of the Quaker City’s passengers had arrived in Venice from
Switzerland and other lands before we left there, and others were expected
every day. We heard of no casualties among them, and no sickness.
We were a little fatigued with sight seeing, and so we rattled through a
good deal of country by rail without caring to stop. I took few notes. I find
no mention of Bologna in my memorandum book, except that we arrived
there in good season, but saw none of the sausages for which the place is so
justly celebrated.
Pistoia awoke but a passing interest.
Florence pleased us for a while. I think we appreciated the great figure of
David in the grand square, and the sculptured group they call the Rape of
the Sabines. We wandered through the endless collections of paintings and
statues of the Pitti and Ufizzi galleries, of course. I make that statement in
self-defense; there let it stop. I could not rest under the imputation that I
visited Florence and did not traverse its weary miles of picture galleries. We
tried indolently to recollect something about the Guelphs and Ghibelines
and the other historical cut-throats whose quarrels and assassinations make
up so large a share of Florentine history, but the subject was not attractive.
We had been robbed of all the fine mountain scenery on our little journey
by a system of railroading that had three miles of tunnel to a hundred yards
of daylight, and we were not inclined to be sociable with Florence. We had
seen the spot, outside the city somewhere, where these people had allowed
the bones of Galileo to rest in unconsecrated ground for an age because his
great discovery that the world turned around was regarded as a damning
heresy by the church; and we know that long after the world had accepted
his theory and raised his name high in the list of its great men, they had still
let him rot there. That we had lived to see his dust in honored sepulture in
the church of Santa Croce we owed to a society of literati, and not to
Florence or her rulers. We saw Dante’s tomb in that church, also, but we
were glad to know that his body was not in it; that the ungrateful city that
had exiled him and persecuted him would give much to have it there, but
need not hope to ever secure that high honor to herself. Medicis are good

enough for Florence. Let her plant Medicis and build grand monuments
over them to testify how gratefully she was wont to lick the hand that
scourged her.

Magnanimous Florence! Her jewelry marts are filled with artists in
mosaic. Florentine mosaics are the choicest in all the world. Florence loves
to have that said. Florence is proud of it. Florence would foster this
specialty of hers. She is grateful to the artists that bring to her this high
credit and fill her coffers with foreign money, and so she encourages them
with pensions. With pensions! Think of the lavishness of it. She knows that
people who piece together the beautiful trifles die early, because the labor is
so confining, and so exhausting to hand and brain, and so she has decreed
that all these people who reach the age of sixty shall have a pension after
that! I have not heard that any of them have called for their dividends yet.
One man did fight along till he was sixty, and started after his pension, but
it appeared that there had been a mistake of a year in his family record, and
so he gave it up and died.

These artists will take particles of stone or glass no larger than a mustard
seed, and piece them together on a sleeve button or a shirt stud, so smoothly
and with such nice adjustment of the delicate shades of color the pieces
bear, as to form a pigmy rose with stem, thorn, leaves, petals complete, and
all as softly and as truthfully tinted as though Nature had builded it herself.
They will counterfeit a fly, or a high-toned bug, or the ruined Coliseum,
within the cramped circle of a breastpin, and do it so deftly and so neatly
that any man might think a master painted it.
I saw a little table in the great mosaic school in Florence--a little trifle of
a centre table--whose top was made of some sort of precious polished stone,
and in the stone was inlaid the figure of a flute, with bell-mouth and a mazy
complication of keys. No painting in the world could have been softer or
richer; no shading out of one tint into another could have been more perfect;
no work of art of any kind could have been more faultless than this flute,

and yet to count the multitude of little fragments of stone of which they
swore it was formed would bankrupt any man’s arithmetic! I do not think
one could have seen where two particles joined each other with eyes of
ordinary shrewdness. Certainly we could detect no such blemish. This table-
top cost the labor of one man for ten long years, so they said, and it was for
sale for thirty-five thousand dollars.
We went to the Church of Santa Croce, from time to time, in Florence, to
weep over the tombs of Michael Angelo, Raphael and Machiavelli, (I
suppose they are buried there, but it may be that they reside elsewhere and
rent their tombs to other parties--such being the fashion in Italy,) and
between times we used to go and stand on the bridges and admire the Arno.
It is popular to admire the Arno. It is a great historical creek with four feet
in the channel and some scows floating around. It would be a very plausible
river if they would pump some water into it. They all call it a river, and they
honestly think it is a river, do these dark and bloody Florentines. They even
help out the delusion by building bridges over it. I do not see why they are
too good to wade.
How the fatigues and annoyances of travel fill one with bitter prejudices
sometimes! I might enter Florence under happier auspices a month hence
and find it all beautiful, all attractive. But I do not care to think of it now, at
all, nor of its roomy shops filled to the ceiling with snowy marble and
alabaster copies of all the celebrated sculptures in Europe--copies so
enchanting to the eye that I wonder how they can really be shaped like the
dingy petrified nightmares they are the portraits of. I got lost in Florence at
nine o’clock, one night, and staid lost in that labyrinth of narrow streets and
long rows of vast buildings that look all alike, until toward three o’clock in
the morning. It was a pleasant night and at first there were a good many
people abroad, and there were cheerful lights about. Later, I grew
accustomed to prowling about mysterious drifts and tunnels and astonishing
and interesting myself with coming around corners expecting to find the
hotel staring me in the face, and not finding it doing any thing of the kind.
Later still, I felt tired. I soon felt remarkably tired. But there was no one
abroad, now--not even a policeman. I walked till I was out of all patience,
and very hot and thirsty. At last, somewhere after one o’clock, I came
unexpectedly to one of the city gates. I knew then that I was very far from
the hotel. The soldiers thought I wanted to leave the city, and they sprang up
and barred the way with their muskets. I said:

“Hotel d’Europe!”
It was all the Italian I knew, and I was not certain whether that was Italian
or French. The soldiers looked stupidly at each other and at me, and shook
their heads and took me into custody. I said I wanted to go home. They did
not understand me. They took me into the guard-house and searched me,
but they found no sedition on me. They found a small piece of soap (we
carry soap with us, now,) and I made them a present of it, seeing that they
regarded it as a curiosity. I continued to say Hotel d’Europe, and they
continued to shake their heads, until at last a young soldier nodding in the
corner roused up and said something. He said he knew where the hotel was,
I suppose, for the officer of the guard sent him away with me. We walked a
hundred or a hundred and fifty miles, it appeared to me, and then he got
lost. He turned this way and that, and finally gave it up and signified that he
was going to spend the remainder of the morning trying to find the city gate
again. At that moment it struck me that there was something familiar about
the house over the way. It was the hotel!
It was a happy thing for me that there happened to be a soldier there that
knew even as much as he did; for they say that the policy of the government
is to change the soldiery from one place to another constantly and from

country to city, so that they can not become acquainted with the people and
grow lax in their duties and enter into plots and conspiracies with friends.
My experiences of Florence were chiefly unpleasant. I will change the
subject.
At Pisa we climbed up to the top of the strangest structure the world has
any knowledge of--the Leaning Tower. As every one knows, it is in the
neighborhood of one hundred and eighty feet high--and I beg to observe
that one hundred and eighty feet reach to about the hight of four ordinary
three-story buildings piled one on top of the other, and is a very
considerable altitude for a tower of uniform thickness to aspire to, even
when it stands upright--yet this one leans more than thirteen feet out of the
perpendicular. It is seven hundred years old, but neither history or tradition
say whether it was built as it is, purposely, or whether one of its sides has
settled. There is no record that it ever stood straight up. It is built of marble.
It is an airy and a beautiful structure, and each of its eight stories is
encircled by fluted columns, some of marble and some of granite, with
Corinthian capitals that were handsome when they were new. It is a bell
tower, and in its top hangs a chime of ancient bells. The winding staircase
within is dark, but one always knows which side of the tower he is on
because of his naturally gravitating from one side to the other of the
staircase with the rise or dip of the tower. Some of the stone steps are foot-
worn only on one end; others only on the other end; others only in the
middle. To look down into the tower from the top is like looking down into
a tilted well. A rope that hangs from the centre of the top touches the wall
before it reaches the bottom. Standing on the summit, one does not feel
altogether comfortable when he looks down from the high side; but to crawl
on your breast to the verge on the lower side and try to stretch your neck out
far enough to see the base of the tower, makes your flesh creep, and
convinces you for a single moment in spite of all your philosophy, that the
building is falling. You handle yourself very carefully, all the time, under
the silly impression that if it is not falling, your trifling weight will start it
unless you are particular not to “bear down” on it.

The Duomo, close at hand, is one of the finest cathedrals in Europe. It is
eight hundred years old. Its grandeur has outlived the high commercial
prosperity and the political importance that made it a necessity, or rather a
possibility. Surrounded by poverty, decay and ruin, it conveys to us a more
tangible impression of the former greatness of Pisa than books could give
us.
The Baptistery, which is a few years older than the Leaning Tower, is a
stately rotunda, of huge dimensions, and was a costly structure. In it hangs
the lamp whose measured swing suggested to Galileo the pendulum. It
looked an insignificant thing to have conferred upon the world of science
and mechanics such a mighty extension of their dominions as it has.
Pondering, in its suggestive presence, I seemed to see a crazy universe of
swinging disks, the toiling children of this sedate parent. He appeared to
have an intelligent expression about him of knowing that he was not a lamp
at all; that he was a Pendulum; a pendulum disguised, for prodigious and

inscrutable purposes of his own deep devising, and not a common
pendulum either, but the old original patriarchal Pendulum--the Abraham
Pendulum of the world.
This Baptistery is endowed with the most pleasing echo of all the echoes
we have read of. The guide sounded two sonorous notes, about half an
octave apart; the echo answered with the most enchanting, the most
melodious, the richest blending of sweet sounds that one can imagine. It
was like a long-drawn chord of a church organ, infinitely softened by
distance. I may be extravagant in this matter, but if this be the case my ear
is to blame--not my pen. I am describing a memory--and one that will
remain long with me.
The peculiar devotional spirit of the olden time, which placed a higher
confidence in outward forms of worship than in the watchful guarding of
the heart against sinful thoughts and the hands against sinful deeds, and
which believed in the protecting virtues of inanimate objects made holy by
contact with holy things, is illustrated in a striking manner in one of the
cemeteries of Pisa. The tombs are set in soil brought in ships from the Holy
Land ages ago. To be buried in such ground was regarded by the ancient
Pisans as being more potent for salvation than many masses purchased of
the church and the vowing of many candles to the Virgin.
Pisa is believed to be about three thousand years old. It was one of the
twelve great cities of ancient Etruria, that commonwealth which has left so
many monuments in testimony of its extraordinary advancement, and so
little history of itself that is tangible and comprehensible. A Pisan
antiquarian gave me an ancient tear-jug which he averred was full four
thousand years old. It was found among the ruins of one of the oldest of the
Etruscan cities. He said it came from a tomb, and was used by some
bereaved family in that remote age when even the Pyramids of Egypt were
young, Damascus a village, Abraham a prattling infant and ancient Troy not
yet [dreampt] of, to receive the tears wept for some lost idol of a household.
It spoke to us in a language of its own; and with a pathos more tender than
any words might bring, its mute eloquence swept down the long roll of the
centuries with its tale of a vacant chair, a familiar footstep missed from the
threshold, a pleasant voice gone from the chorus, a vanished form!--a tale
which is always so new to us, so startling, so terrible, so benumbing to the
senses, and behold how threadbare and old it is! No shrewdly-worded

history could have brought the myths and shadows of that old dreamy age
before us clothed with human flesh and warmed with human sympathies so
vividly as did this poor little unsentient vessel of pottery.
Pisa was a republic in the middle ages, with a government of her own,
armies and navies of her own and a great commerce. She was a warlike
power, and inscribed upon her banners many a brilliant fight with Genoese
and Turks. It is said that the city once numbered a population of four
hundred thousand; but her sceptre has passed from her grasp, now, her ships
and her armies are gone, her commerce is dead. Her battle-flags bear the
mold and the dust of centuries, her marts are deserted, she has shrunken far
within her crumbling walls, and her great population has diminished to
twenty thousand souls. She has but one thing left to boast of, and that is not
much, viz: she is the second city of Tuscany.
We reached Leghorn in time to see all we wished to see of it long before
the city gates were closed for the evening, and then came on board the ship.
We felt as though we had been away from home an age. We never
entirely appreciated, before, what a very pleasant den our state-room is; nor
how jolly it is to sit at dinner in one’s own seat in one’s own cabin, and hold
familiar conversation with friends in one’s own language. Oh, the rare
happiness of comprehending every single word that is said, and knowing
that every word one says in return will be understood as well! We would
talk ourselves to death, now, only there are only about ten passengers out of
the sixty-five to talk to. The others are wandering, we hardly know where.
We shall not go ashore in Leghorn. We are surfeited with Italian cities for
the present, and much prefer to walk the familiar quarterdeck and view this
one from a distance.
The stupid magnates of this Leghorn government can not understand that
so large a steamer as ours could cross the broad Atlantic with no other
purpose than to indulge a party of ladies and gentlemen in a pleasure
excursion. It looks too improbable. It is suspicious, they think. Something
more important must be hidden behind it all. They can not understand it,
and they scorn the evidence of the ship’s papers. They have decided at last
that we are a battalion of incendiary, blood-thirsty Garibaldians in disguise!
And in all seriousness they have set a gun-boat to watch the vessel night
and day, with orders to close down on any revolutionary movement in a
twinkling! Police boats are on patrol duty about us all the time, and it is as

much as a sailor’s liberty is worth to show himself in a red shirt. These
policemen follow the executive officer’s boat from shore to ship and from
ship to shore and watch his dark maneuvers with a vigilant eye. They will
arrest him yet unless he assumes an expression of countenance that shall
have less of carnage, insurrection and sedition in it. A visit paid in a friendly
way to General Garibaldi yesterday (by cordial invitation,) by some of our
passengers, has gone far to confirm the dread suspicions the government
harbors toward us. It is thought the friendly visit was only the cloak of a
bloody conspiracy. These people draw near and watch us when we bathe in
the sea from the ship’s side. Do they think we are communing with a
reserve force of rascals at the bottom?
It is said that we shall probably be quarantined at Naples. Two or three of
us prefer not to run this risk. Therefore, when we are rested, we propose to
go in a French steamer to Civita and from thence to Rome, and by rail to
Naples. They do not quarantine the cars, no matter where they got their
passengers from.

CHAPTER XXV.
There are a good many things about this Italy which I do not understand--
and more especially I can not understand how a bankrupt Government can
have such palatial railroad depots and such marvels of turnpikes. Why,
these latter are as hard as adamant, as straight as a line, as smooth as a floor,
and as white as snow. When it is too dark to see any other object, one can
still see the white turnpikes of France and Italy; and they are clean enough
to eat from, without a table-cloth. And yet no tolls are charged.
As for the railways--we have none like them. The cars slide as smoothly
along as if they were on runners. The depots are vast palaces of cut marble,
with stately colonnades of the same royal stone traversing them from end to
end, and with ample walls and ceilings richly decorated with frescoes. The
lofty gateways are graced with statues, and the broad floors are all laid in
polished flags of marble.
These things win me more than Italy’s hundred galleries of priceless art
treasures, because I can understand the one and am not competent to
appreciate the other. In the turnpikes, the railways, the depots, and the new
boulevards of uniform houses in Florence and other cities here, I see the
genius of Louis Napoleon, or rather, I see the works of that statesman
imitated. But Louis has taken care that in France there shall be a foundation
for these improvements--money. He has always the wherewithal to back up
his projects; they strengthen France and never weaken her. Her material
prosperity is genuine. But here the case is different. This country is
bankrupt. There is no real foundation for these great works. The prosperity
they would seem to indicate is a pretence. There is no money in the
treasury, and so they enfeeble her instead of strengthening. Italy has
achieved the dearest wish of her heart and become an independent State--
and in so doing she has drawn an elephant in the political lottery. She has
nothing to feed it on. Inexperienced in government, she plunged into all
manner of useless expenditure, and swamped her treasury almost in a day.
She squandered millions of francs on a navy which she did not need, and
the first time she took her new toy into action she got it knocked higher than
Gilderoy’s kite--to use the language of the Pilgrims.

But it is an ill-wind that blows nobody good. A year ago, when Italy saw
utter ruin staring her in the face and her greenbacks hardly worth the paper
they were printed on, her Parliament ventured upon a ‘coup de main’ that
would have appalled the stoutest of her statesmen under less desperate
circumstances. They, in a manner, confiscated the domains of the Church!
This in priest-ridden Italy! This in a land which has groped in the midnight
of priestly superstition for sixteen hundred years! It was a rare good fortune
for Italy, the stress of weather that drove her to break from this prison-
house.
They do not call it confiscating the church property. That would sound
too harshly yet. But it amounts to that. There are thousands of churches in
Italy, each with untold millions of treasures stored away in its closets, and
each with its battalion of priests to be supported. And then there are the
estates of the Church--league on league of the richest lands and the noblest
forests in all Italy--all yielding immense revenues to the Church, and none
paying a cent in taxes to the State. In some great districts the Church owns
all the property--lands, watercourses, woods, mills and factories. They buy,
they sell, they manufacture, and since they pay no taxes, who can hope to
compete with them?
Well, the Government has seized all this in effect, and will yet seize it in
rigid and unpoetical reality, no doubt. Something must be done to feed a
starving treasury, and there is no other resource in all Italy--none but the
riches of the Church. So the Government intends to take to itself a great
portion of the revenues arising from priestly farms, factories, etc., and also
intends to take possession of the churches and carry them on, after its own
fashion and upon its own responsibility. In a few instances it will leave the
establishments of great pet churches undisturbed, but in all others only a
handful of priests will be retained to preach and pray, a few will be
pensioned, and the balance turned adrift.
Pray glance at some of these churches and their embellishments, and see
whether the Government is doing a righteous thing or not. In Venice, today,
a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants, there are twelve hundred priests.
Heaven only knows how many there were before the Parliament reduced
their numbers. There was the great Jesuit Church. Under the old regime it
required sixty priests to engineer it--the Government does it with five, now,
and the others are discharged from service. All about that church

wretchedness and poverty abound. At its door a dozen hats and bonnets
were doffed to us, as many heads were humbly bowed, and as many hands
extended, appealing for pennies--appealing with foreign words we could
not understand, but appealing mutely, with sad eyes, and sunken cheeks,
and ragged raiment, that no words were needed to translate. Then we passed
within the great doors, and it seemed that the riches of the world were
before us! Huge columns carved out of single masses of marble, and inlaid
from top to bottom with a hundred intricate figures wrought in costly verde
antique; pulpits of the same rich materials, whose draperies hung down in
many a pictured fold, the stony fabric counterfeiting the delicate work of
the loom; the grand altar brilliant with polished facings and balustrades of
oriental agate, jasper, verde antique, and other precious stones, whose
names, even, we seldom hear--and slabs of priceless lapis lazuli lavished
every where as recklessly as if the church had owned a quarry of it. In the
midst of all this magnificence, the solid gold and silver furniture of the altar
seemed cheap and trivial. Even the floors and ceilings cost a princely
fortune.
Now, where is the use of allowing all those riches to lie idle, while half of
that community hardly know, from day to day, how they are going to keep
body and soul together? And, where is the wisdom in permitting hundreds
upon hundreds of millions of francs to be locked up in the useless trumpery
of churches all over Italy, and the people ground to death with taxation to
uphold a perishing Government?
As far as I can see, Italy, for fifteen hundred years, has turned all her
energies, all her finances, and all her industry to the building up of a vast
array of wonderful church edifices, and starving half her citizens to
accomplish it. She is to-day one vast museum of magnificence and misery.
All the churches in an ordinary American city put together could hardly buy
the jeweled frippery in one of her hundred cathedrals. And for every beggar
in America, Italy can show a hundred--and rags and vermin to match. It is
the wretchedest, princeliest land on earth.
Look at the grand Duomo of Florence--a vast pile that has been sapping
the purses of her citizens for five hundred years, and is not nearly finished
yet. Like all other men, I fell down and worshipped it, but when the filthy
beggars swarmed around me the contrast was too striking, too suggestive,
and I said, “O, sons of classic Italy, is the spirit of enterprise, of self-

reliance, of noble endeavor, utterly dead within ye? Curse your indolent
worthlessness, why don’t you rob your church?”
Three hundred happy, comfortable priests are employed in that Cathedral.

And now that my temper is up, I may as well go on and abuse every body
I can think of. They have a grand mausoleum in Florence, which they built
to bury our Lord and Saviour and the Medici family in. It sounds
blasphemous, but it is true, and here they act blasphemy. The dead and
damned Medicis who cruelly tyrannized over Florence and were her curse
for over two hundred years, are salted away in a circle of costly vaults, and
in their midst the Holy Sepulchre was to have been set up. The expedition
sent to Jerusalem to seize it got into trouble and could not accomplish the
burglary, and so the centre of the mausoleum is vacant now. They say the
entire mausoleum was intended for the Holy Sepulchre, and was only
turned into a family burying place after the Jerusalem expedition failed--but
you will excuse me. Some of those Medicis would have smuggled
themselves in sure.--What they had not the effrontery to do, was not worth
doing. Why, they had their trivial, forgotten exploits on land and sea
pictured out in grand frescoes (as did also the ancient Doges of Venice) with
the Saviour and the Virgin throwing bouquets to them out of the clouds, and
the Deity himself applauding from his throne in Heaven! And who painted

these things? Why, Titian, Tintoretto, Paul Veronese, Raphael--none other
than the world’s idols, the “old masters.”
Andrea del Sarto glorified his princes in pictures that must save them for
ever from the oblivion they merited, and they let him starve. Served him
right. Raphael pictured such infernal villains as Catherine and Marie de
Medicis seated in heaven and conversing familiarly with the Virgin Mary
and the angels, (to say nothing of higher personages,) and yet my friends
abuse me because I am a little prejudiced against the old masters--because I
fail sometimes to see the beauty that is in their productions. I can not help
but see it, now and then, but I keep on protesting against the groveling spirit
that could persuade those masters to prostitute their noble talents to the
adulation of such monsters as the French, Venetian and Florentine Princes
of two and three hundred years ago, all the same.
I am told that the old masters had to do these shameful things for bread,
the princes and potentates being the only patrons of art. If a grandly gifted
man may drag his pride and his manhood in the dirt for bread rather than
starve with the nobility that is in him untainted, the excuse is a valid one. It
would excuse theft in Washingtons and Wellingtons, and unchastity in
women as well.
But somehow, I can not keep that Medici mausoleum out of my memory.
It is as large as a church; its pavement is rich enough for the pavement of a
King’s palace; its great dome is gorgeous with frescoes; its walls are made
of--what? Marble?--plaster?--wood?--paper? No. Red porphyry--verde
antique--jasper--oriental agate--alabaster--mother-of-pearl--chalcedony--red
coral--lapis lazuli! All the vast walls are made wholly of these precious
stones, worked in, and in and in together in elaborate pattern s and figures,
and polished till they glow like great mirrors with the pictured splendors
reflected from the dome overhead. And before a statue of one of those dead
Medicis reposes a crown that blazes with diamonds and emeralds enough to
buy a ship-of-the-line, almost. These are the things the Government has its
evil eye upon, and a happy thing it will be for Italy when they melt away in
the public treasury.
And now----. However, another beggar approaches. I will go out and
destroy him, and then come back and write another chapter of vituperation.
Having eaten the friendless orphan--having driven away his comrades--
having grown calm and reflective at length--I now feel in a kindlier mood. I

feel that after talking so freely about the priests and the churches, justice
demands that if I know any thing good about either I ought to say it. I have
heard of many things that redound to the credit of the priesthood, but the
most notable matter that occurs to me now is the devotion one of the
mendicant orders showed during the prevalence of the cholera last year. I
speak of the Dominican friars--men who wear a coarse, heavy brown robe
and a cowl, in this hot climate, and go barefoot. They live on alms
altogether, I believe. They must unquestionably love their religion, to suffer
so much for it. When the cholera was raging in Naples; when the people
were dying by hundreds and hundreds every day; when every concern for
the public welfare was swallowed up in selfish private interest, and every
citizen made the taking care of himself his sole object, these men banded
themselves together and went about nursing the sick and burying the dead.
Their noble efforts cost many of them their lives. They laid them down
cheerfully, and well they might. Creeds mathematically precise, and hair-
splitting niceties of doctrine, are absolutely necessary for the salvation of
some kinds of souls, but surely the charity, the purity, the unselfishness that
are in the hearts of men like these would save their souls though they were
bankrupt in the true religion--which is ours.
One of these fat bare-footed rascals came here to Civita Vecchia with us
in the little French steamer. There were only half a dozen of us in the cabin.
He belonged in the steerage. He was the life of the ship, the bloody-minded
son of the Inquisition! He and the leader of the marine band of a French
man-of-war played on the piano and sang opera turn about; they sang duets
together; they rigged impromptu theatrical costumes and gave us
extravagant farces and pantomimes. We got along first-rate with the friar,
and were excessively conversational, albeit he could not understand what
we said, and certainly he never uttered a word that we could guess the
meaning of.
This Civita Vecchia is the finest nest of dirt, vermin and ignorance we
have found yet, except that African perdition they call Tangier, which is just
like it. The people here live in alleys two yards wide, which have a smell
about them which is peculiar but not entertaining. It is well the alleys are
not wider, because they hold as much smell now as a person can stand, and
of course, if they were wider they would hold more, and then the people
would die. These alleys are paved with stone, and carpeted with deceased
cats, and decayed rags, and decomposed vegetable-tops, and remnants of

old boots, all soaked with dish-water, and the people sit around on stools
and enjoy it. They are indolent, as a general thing, and yet have few
pastimes. They work two or three hours at a time, but not hard, and then
they knock off and catch flies. This does not require any talent, because
they only have to grab--if they do not get the one they are after, they get
another. It is all the same to them. They have no partialities. Whichever one
they get is the one they want.
They have other kinds of insects, but it does not make them arrogant.
They are very quiet, unpretending people. They have more of these kind of
things than other communities, but they do not boast.
They are very uncleanly--these people--in face, in person and dress.
When they see any body with a clean shirt on, it arouses their scorn. The
women wash clothes, half the day, at the public tanks in the streets, but they
are probably somebody else’s. Or may be they keep one set to wear and
another to wash; because they never put on any that have ever been washed.
When they get done washing, they sit in the alleys and nurse their cubs.
They nurse one ash-cat at a time, and the others scratch their backs against
the door-post and are happy.

All this country belongs to the Papal States. They do not appear to have
any schools here, and only one billiard table. Their education is at a very

low stage. One portion of the men go into the military, another into the
priesthood, and the rest into the shoe-making business.
They keep up the passport system here, but so they do in Turkey. This
shows that the Papal States are as far advanced as Turkey. This fact will be
alone sufficient to silence the tongues of malignant calumniators. I had to
get my passport vised for Rome in Florence, and then they would not let me
come ashore here until a policeman had examined it on the wharf and sent
me a permit. They did not even dare to let me take my passport in my hands
for twelve hours, I looked so formidable. They judged it best to let me cool
down. They thought I wanted to take the town, likely. Little did they know
me. I wouldn’t have it. They examined my baggage at the depot. They took
one of my ablest jokes and read it over carefully twice and then read it
backwards. But it was too deep for them. They passed it around, and every
body speculated on it awhile, but it mastered them all.
It was no common joke. At length a veteran officer spelled it over
deliberately and shook his head three or four times and said that in his
opinion it was seditious. That was the first time I felt alarmed. I
immediately said I would explain the document, and they crowded around.
And so I explained and explained and explained, and they took notes of all I
said, but the more I explained the more they could not understand it, and
when they desisted at last, I could not even understand it myself.

They said they believed it was an incendiary document, leveled at the
government. I declared solemnly that it was not, but they only shook their
heads and would not be satisfied. Then they consulted a good while; and
finally they confiscated it. I was very sorry for this, because I had worked a
long time on that joke, and took a good deal of pride in it, and now I
suppose I shall never see it any more. I suppose it will be sent up and filed
away among the criminal archives of Rome, and will always be regarded as
a mysterious infernal machine which would have blown up like a mine and
scattered the good Pope all around, but for a miraculous providential
interference. And I suppose that all the time I am in Rome the police will
dog me about from place to place because they think I am a dangerous
character.
It is fearfully hot in Civita Vecchia. The streets are made very narrow and
the houses built very solid and heavy and high, as a protection against the
heat. This is the first Italian town I have seen which does not appear to have
a patron saint. I suppose no saint but the one that went up in the chariot of
fire could stand the climate.
There is nothing here to see. They have not even a cathedral, with eleven
tons of solid silver archbishops in the back room; and they do not show you
any moldy buildings that are seven thousand years old; nor any smoke-dried
old fire-screens which are chef d’oeuvres of Reubens or Simpson, or Titian
or Ferguson, or any of those parties; and they haven’t any bottled fragments
of saints, and not even a nail from the true cross. We are going to Rome.
There is nothing to see here.

CHAPTER XXVI.
What is it that confers the noblest delight? What is that which swells a
man’s breast with pride above that which any other experience can bring to
him? Discovery! To know that you are walking where none others have
walked; that you are beholding what human eye has not seen before; that
you are breathing a virgin atmosphere. To give birth to an idea--to discover
a great thought--an intellectual nugget, right under the dust of a field that
many a brain--plow had gone over before. To find a new planet, to invent a
new hinge, to find the way to make the lightnings carry your messages. To
be the first--that is the idea. To do something, say something, see
something, before any body else--these are the things that confer a pleasure
compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other
ecstasies cheap and trivial. Morse, with his first message, brought by his
servant, the lightning; Fulton, in that long-drawn century of suspense, when
he placed his hand upon the throttle-valve and lo, the steamboat moved;
Jenner, when his patient with the cow’s virus in his blood, walked through
the smallpox hospitals unscathed; Howe, when the idea shot through his
brain that for a hundred and twenty generations the eye had been bored
through the wrong end of the needle; the nameless lord of art who laid
down his chisel in some old age that is forgotten, now, and gloated upon the
finished Laocoon; Daguerre, when he commanded the sun, riding in the
zenith, to print the landscape upon his insignificant silvered plate, and he
obeyed; Columbus, in the Pinta’s shrouds, when he swung his hat above a
fabled sea and gazed abroad upon an unknown world! These are the men
who have really lived--who have actually comprehended what pleasure is--
who have crowded long lifetimes of ecstasy into a single moment.
What is there in Rome for me to see that others have not seen before me?
What is there for me to touch that others have not touched? What is there
for me to feel, to learn, to hear, to know, that shall thrill me before it pass to
others? What can I discover?--Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. One charm of
travel dies here. But if I were only a Roman!--If, added to my own I could
be gifted with modern Roman sloth, modern Roman superstition, and
modern Roman boundlessness of ignorance, what bewildering worlds of

unsuspected wonders I would discover! Ah, if I were only a habitant of the
Campagna five and twenty miles from Rome! Then I would travel.

I would go to America, and see, and learn, and return to the Campagna
and stand before my countrymen an illustrious discoverer. I would say:
“I saw there a country which has no overshadowing Mother Church, and
yet the people survive. I saw a government which never was protected by
foreign soldiers at a cost greater than that required to carry on the
government itself. I saw common men and common women who could
read; I even saw small children of common country people reading from
books; if I dared think you would believe it, I would say they could write,
also.
“In the cities I saw people drinking a delicious beverage made of chalk
and water, but never once saw goats driven through their Broadway or their
Pennsylvania Avenue or their Montgomery street and milked at the doors of
the houses. I saw real glass windows in the houses of even the commonest
people. Some of the houses are not of stone, nor yet of bricks; I solemnly
swear they are made of wood. Houses there will take fire and burn,
sometimes--actually burn entirely down, and not leave a single vestige
behind. I could state that for a truth, upon my death-bed. And as a proof that
the circumstance is not rare, I aver that they have a thing which they call a
fire-engine, which vomits forth great streams of water, and is kept always in
readiness, by night and by day, to rush to houses that are burning. You
would think one engine would be sufficient, but some great cities have a
hundred; they keep men hired, and pay them by the month to do nothing but
put out fires. For a certain sum of money other men will insure that your
house shall not burn down; and if it burns they will pay you for it. There are
hundreds and thousands of schools, and any body may go and learn to be
wise, like a priest. In that singular country if a rich man dies a sinner, he is
damned; he can not buy salvation with money for masses. There is really
not much use in being rich, there. Not much use as far as the other world is
concerned, but much, very much use, as concerns this; because there, if a
man be rich, he is very greatly honored, and can become a legislator, a
governor, a general, a senator, no matter how ignorant an ass he is--just as
in our beloved Italy the nobles hold all the great places, even though
sometimes they are born noble idiots. There, if a man be rich, they give him
costly presents, they ask him to feasts, they invite him to drink complicated
beverages; but if he be poor and in debt, they require him to do that which
they term to ‘settle.’ The women put on a different dress almost every day;
the dress is usually fine, but absurd in shape; the very shape and fashion of

it changes twice in a hundred years; and did I but covet to be called an
extravagant falsifier, I would say it changed even oftener. Hair does not
grow upon the American women’s heads; it is made for them by cunning
workmen in the shops, and is curled and frizzled into scandalous and
ungodly forms. Some persons wear eyes of glass which they see through
with facility perhaps, else they would not use them; and in the mouths of
some are teeth made by the sacrilegious hand of man. The dress of the men
is laughably grotesque. They carry no musket in ordinary life, nor no \ long-
pointed pole; they wear no wide green-lined cloak; they wear no peaked
black felt hat, no leathern gaiters reaching to the knee, no goat-skin
breeches with the hair side out, no hob-nailed shoes, no prodigious spurs.
They wear a conical hat termed a “nail-keg;” a coat of saddest black; a shirt
which shows dirt so easily that it has to be changed every month, and is
very troublesome; things called pantaloons, which are held up by shoulder
straps, and on their feet they wear boots which are ridiculous in pattern and
can stand no wear. Yet dressed in this fantastic garb, these people laughed at
my costume. In that country, books are so common that it is really no
curiosity to see one. Newspapers also. They have a great machine which
prints such things by thousands every hour.
“I saw common men, there--men who were neither priests nor princes--
who yet absolutely owned the land they tilled. It was not rented from the
church, nor from the nobles. I am ready to take my oath of this. In that
country you might fall from a third story window three several times, and
not mash either a soldier or a priest.--The scarcity of such people is
astonishing. In the cities you will see a dozen civilians for every soldier, and
as many for every priest or preacher. Jews, there, are treated just like human
beings, instead of dogs. They can work at any business they please; they
can sell brand new goods if they want to; they can keep drug-stores; they
can practice medicine among Christians; they can even shake hands with
Christians if they choose; they can associate with them, just the same as one
human being does with another human being; they don’t have to stay shut
up in one corner of the towns; they can live in any part of a town they like
best; it is said they even have the privilege of buying land and houses, and
owning them themselves, though I doubt that, myself; they never have had
to run races naked through the public streets, against jackasses, to please the
people in carnival time; there they never have been driven by the soldiers
into a church every Sunday for hundreds of years to hear themselves and

their religion especially and particularly cursed; at this very day, in that
curious country, a Jew is allowed to vote, hold office, yea, get up on a
rostrum in the public street and express his opinion of the government if the
government don’t suit him! Ah, it is wonderful. The common people there
know a great deal; they even have the effrontery to complain if they are not
properly governed, and to take hold and help conduct the government
themselves; if they had laws like ours, which give one dollar of every three
a crop produces to the government for taxes, they would have that law
altered: instead of paying thirty-three dollars in taxes, out of every one
hundred they receive, they complain if they have to pay seven. They are
curious people. They do not know when they are well off. Mendicant priests
do not prowl among them with baskets begging for the church and eating up
their substance. One hardly ever sees a minister of the gospel going around
there in his bare feet, with a basket, begging for subsistence. In that country
the preachers are not like our mendicant orders of friars--they have two or
three suits of clothing, and they wash sometimes. In that land are mountains
far higher than the Alban mountains; the vast Roman Campagna, a hundred
miles long and full forty broad, is really small compared to the United
States of America; the Tiber, that celebrated river of ours, which stretches
its mighty course almost two hundred miles, and which a lad can scarcely
throw a stone across at Rome, is not so long, nor yet so wide, as the
American Mississippi--nor yet the Ohio, nor even the Hudson. In America
the people are absolutely wiser and know much more than their
grandfathers did. They do not plow with a sharpened stick, nor yet with a
three-cornered block of wood that merely scratches the top of the ground.
We do that because our fathers did, three thousand years ago, I suppose. But
those people have no holy reverence for their ancestors. They plow with a
plow that is a sharp, curved blade of iron, and it cuts into the earth full five
inches. And this is not all. They cut their grain with a horrid machine that
mows down whole fields in a day. If I dared, I would say that sometimes
they use a blasphemous plow that works by fire and vapor and tears up an
acre of ground in a single hour--but--but--I see by your looks that you do
not believe the things I am telling you. Alas, my character is ruined, and I
am a branded speaker of untruths!”
Of course we have been to the monster Church of St. Peter, frequently. I
knew its dimensions. I knew it was a prodigious structure. I knew it was
just about the length of the capitol at Washington--say seven hundred and

thirty feet. I knew it was three hundred and sixty-four feet wide, and
consequently wider than the capitol. I knew that the cross on the top of the
dome of the church was four hundred and thirty-eight feet above the
ground, and therefore about a hundred or may be a hundred and twenty-five
feet higher than the dome of the capitol.--Thus I had one gauge. I wished to
come as near forming a correct idea of how it was going to look, as
possible; I had a curiosity to see how much I would err. I erred
considerably. St. Peter’s did not look nearly so large as the capitol, and
certainly not a twentieth part as beautiful, from the outside.
When we reached the door, and stood fairly within the church, it was
impossible to comprehend that it was a very large building. I had to cipher a
comprehension of it. I had to ransack my memory for some more similes.
St. Peter’s is bulky. Its height and size would represent two of the
Washington capitol set one on top of the other--if the capitol were wider; or
two blocks or two blocks and a half of ordinary buildings set one on top of
the other. St. Peter’s was that large, but it could and would not look so. The
trouble was that every thing in it and about it was on such a scale of
uniform vastness that there were no contrasts to judge by--none but the
people, and I had not noticed them. They were insects. The statues of
children holding vases of holy water were immense, according to the tables
of figures, but so was every thing else around them. The mosaic pictures in
the dome were huge, and were made of thousands and thousands of cubes
of glass as large as the end of my little finger, but those pictures looked
smooth, and gaudy of color, and in good proportion to the dome. Evidently
they would not answer to measure by. Away down toward the far end of the
church (I thought it was really clear at the far end, but discovered afterward
that it was in the centre, under the dome,) stood the thing they call the
baldacchino--a great bronze pyramidal frame-work like that which upholds
a mosquito bar. It only looked like a considerably magnified bedstead--
nothing more. Yet I knew it was a good deal more than half as high as
Niagara Falls. It was overshadowed by a dome so mighty that its own
height was snubbed. The four great square piers or pillars that stand
equidistant from each other in the church, and support the roof, I could not
work up to their real dimensions by any method of comparison. I knew that
the faces of each were about the width of a very large dwelling-house front,
(fifty or sixty feet,) and that they were twice as high as an ordinary three-
story dwelling, but still they looked small. I tried all the different ways I

could think of to compel myself to understand how large St. Peter’s was,
but with small success. The mosaic portrait of an Apostle who was writing
with a pen six feet long seemed only an ordinary Apostle.
But the people attracted my attention after a while. To stand in the door
of St. Peter’s and look at men down toward its further extremity, two blocks
away, has a diminishing effect on them; surrounded by the prodigious
pictures and statues, and lost in the vast spaces, they look very much
smaller than they would if they stood two blocks away in the open air. I
“averaged” a man as he passed me and watched him as he drifted far down
by the baldacchino and beyond--watched him dwindle to an insignificant
school-boy, and then, in the midst of the silent throng of human pigmies
gliding about him, I lost him. The church had lately been decorated, on the
occasion of a great ceremony in honor of St. Peter, and men were engaged,
now, in removing the flowers and gilt paper from the walls and pillars. As
no ladders could reach the great heights, the men swung themselves down
from balustrades and the capitals of pilasters by ropes, to do this work. The
upper gallery which encircles the inner sweep of the dome is two hundred
and forty feet above the floor of the church--very few steeples in America
could reach up to it. Visitors always go up there to look down into the
church because one gets the best idea of some of the heights and distances
from that point. While we stood on the floor one of the workmen swung
loose from that gallery at the end of a long rope. I had not supposed, before,
that a man could look so much like a spider. He was insignificant in size,
and his rope seemed only a thread. Seeing that he took up so little space, I
could believe the story, then, that ten thousand troops went to St. Peter’s,
once, to hear mass, and their commanding officer came afterward, and not
finding them, supposed they had not yet arrived. But they were in the
church, nevertheless--they were in one of the transepts. Nearly fifty
thousand persons assembled in St. Peter’s to hear the publishing of the
dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It is estimated that the floor of the
church affords standing room for--for a large number of people; I have
forgotten the exact figures. But it is no matter--it is near enough.
They have twelve small pillars, in St. Peter’s, which came from
Solomon’s Temple. They have, also--which was far more interesting to me--
a piece of the true cross, and some nails, and a part of the crown of thorns.

Of course we ascended to the summit of the dome, and of course we also
went up into the gilt copper ball which is above it.--There was room there
for a dozen persons, with a little crowding, and it was as close and hot as an
oven. Some of those people who are so fond of writing their names in
prominent places had been there before us--a million or two, I should think.
From the dome of St. Peter’s one can see every notable object in Rome,
from the Castle of St. Angelo to the Coliseum. He can discern the seven
hills upon which Rome is built. He can see the Tiber, and the locality of the
bridge which Horatius kept “in the brave days of old” when Lars Porsena
attempted to cross it with his invading host. He can see the spot where the
Horatii and the Curatii fought their famous battle. He can see the broad
green Campagna, stretching away toward the mountains, with its scattered
arches and broken aqueducts of the olden time, so picturesque in their gray
ruin, and so daintily festooned with vines. He can see the Alban Mountains,
the Appenines, the Sabine Hills, and the blue Mediterranean. He can see a
panorama that is varied, extensive, beautiful to the eye, and more illustrious
in history than any other in Europe.--About his feet is spread the remnant of
a city that once had a population of four million souls; and among its
massed edifices stand the ruins of temples, columns, and triumphal arches
that knew the Caesars, and the noonday of Roman splendor; and close by
them, in unimpaired strength, is a drain of arched and heavy masonry that
belonged to that older city which stood here before Romulus and Remus
were born or Rome thought of. The Appian Way is here yet, and looking
much as it did, perhaps, when the triumphal processions of the Emperors
moved over it in other days bringing fettered princes from the confines of
the earth. We can not see the long array of chariots and mail-clad men laden
with the spoils of conquest, but we can imagine the pageant, after a fashion.
We look out upon many objects of interest from the dome of St. Peter’s; and
last of all, almost at our feet, our eyes rest upon the building which was
once the Inquisition. How times changed, between the older ages and the
new! Some seventeen or eighteen centuries ago, the ignorant men of Rome
were wont to put Christians in the arena of the Coliseum yonder, and turn
the wild beasts in upon them for a show. It was for a lesson as well. It was
to teach the people to abhor and fear the new doctrine the followers of
Christ were teaching. The beasts tore the victims limb from limb and made
poor mangled corpses of them in the twinkling of an eye. But when the
Christians came into power, when the holy Mother Church became mistress

of the barbarians, she taught them the error of their ways by no such means.
No, she put them in this pleasant Inquisition and pointed to the Blessed
Redeemer, who was so gentle and so merciful toward all men, and they
urged the barbarians to love him; and they did all they could to persuade
them to love and honor him--first by twisting their thumbs out of joint with
a screw; then by nipping their flesh with pincers--red-hot ones, because
they are the most comfortable in cold weather; then by skinning them alive
a little, and finally by roasting them in public. They always convinced those
barbarians. The true religion, properly administered, as the good Mother
Church used to administer it, is very, very soothing. It is wonderfully
persuasive, also. There is a great difference between feeding parties to wild
beasts and stirring up their finer feelings in an Inquisition. One is the
system of degraded barbarians, the other of enlightened, civilized people. It
is a great pity the playful Inquisition is no more.

I prefer not to describe St. Peter’s. It has been done before. The ashes of
Peter, the disciple of the Saviour, repose in a crypt under the baldacchino.
We stood reverently in that place; so did we also in the Mamertine Prison,
where he was confined, where he converted the soldiers, and where
tradition says he caused a spring of water to flow in order that he might
baptize them. But when they showed us the print of Peter’s face in the hard
stone of the prison wall and said he made that by falling up against it, we
doubted. And when, also, the monk at the church of San Sebastian showed
us a paving-stone with two great footprints in it and said that Peter’s feet

made those, we lacked confidence again. Such things do not impress one.
The monk said that angels came and liberated Peter from prison by night,
and he started away from Rome by the Appian Way. The Saviour met him
and told him to go back, which he did. Peter left those footprints in the
stone upon which he stood at the time. It was not stated how it was ever
discovered whose footprints they were, seeing the interview occurred
secretly and at night. The print of the face in the prison was that of a man of
common size; the footprints were those of a man ten or twelve feet high.
The discrepancy confirmed our unbelief.
We necessarily visited the Forum, where Caesar was assassinated, and
also the Tarpeian Rock. We saw the Dying Gladiator at the Capitol, and I
think that even we appreciated that wonder of art; as much, perhaps, as we
did that fearful story wrought in marble, in the Vatican--the Laocoon. And
then the Coliseum.
Every body knows the picture of the Coliseum; every body recognizes at
once that “looped and windowed” band-box with a side bitten out. Being
rather isolated, it shows to better advantage than any other of the
monuments of ancient Rome. Even the beautiful Pantheon, whose pagan
altars uphold the cross, now, and whose Venus, tricked out in consecrated
gimcracks, does reluctant duty as a Virgin Mary to-day, is built about with
shabby houses and its stateliness sadly marred. But the monarch of all
European ruins, the Coliseum, maintains that reserve and that royal
seclusion which is proper to majesty. Weeds and flowers spring from its
massy arches and its circling seats, and vines hang their fringes from its
lofty walls. An impressive silence broods over the monstrous structure
where such multitudes of men and women were wont to assemble in other
days. The butterflies have taken the places of the queens of fashion and
beauty of eighteen centuries ago, and the lizards sun themselves in the
sacred seat of the Emperor. More vividly than all the written histories, the
Coliseum tells the story of Rome’s grandeur and Rome’s decay. It is the
worthiest type of both that exists. Moving about the Rome of to-day, we
might find it hard to believe in her old magnificence and her millions of
population; but with this stubborn evidence before us that she was obliged
to have a theatre with sitting room for eighty thousand persons and standing
room for twenty thousand more, to accommodate such of her citizens as
required amusement, we find belief less difficult. The Coliseum is over one

thousand six hundred feet long, seven hundred and fifty wide, and one
hundred and sixty-five high. Its shape is oval.
In America we make convicts useful at the same time that we punish
them for their crimes. We farm them out and compel them to earn money
for the State by making barrels and building roads. Thus we combine
business with retribution, and all things are lovely. But in ancient Rome
they combined religious duty with pleasure. Since it was necessary that the
new sect called Christians should be exterminated, the people judged it wise
to make this work profitable to the State at the same time, and entertaining
to the public. In addition to the gladiatorial combats and other shows, they
sometimes threw members of the hated sect into the arena of the Coliseum
and turned wild beasts in upon them. It is estimated that seventy thousand
Christians suffered martyrdom in this place. This has made the Coliseum
holy ground, in the eyes of the followers of the Saviour. And well it might;
for if the chain that bound a saint, and the footprints a saint has left upon a
stone he chanced to stand upon, be holy, surely the spot where a man gave
up his life for his faith is holy.
Seventeen or eighteen centuries ago this Coliseum was the theatre of
Rome, and Rome was mistress of the world. Splendid pageants were
exhibited here, in presence of the Emperor, the great ministers of State, the
nobles, and vast audiences of citizens of smaller consequence. Gladiators
fought with gladiators and at times with warrior prisoners from many a
distant land. It was the theatre of Rome--of the world--and the man of
fashion who could not let fall in a casual and unintentional manner
something about “my private box at the Coliseum” could not move in the
first circles. When the clothing-store merchant wished to consume the
corner grocery man with envy, he bought secured seats in the front row and
let the thing be known. When the irresistible dry goods clerk wished to
blight and destroy, according to his native instinct, he got himself up
regardless of expense and took some other fellow’s young lady to the
Coliseum, and then accented the affront by cramming her with ice cream
between the acts, or by approaching the cage and stirring up the martyrs
with his whalebone cane for her edification. The Roman swell was in his
true element only when he stood up against a pillar and fingered his
moustache unconscious of the ladies; when he viewed the bloody combats
through an opera-glass two inches long; when he excited the envy of
provincials by criticisms which showed that he had been to the Coliseum

many and many a time and was long ago over the novelty of it; when he
turned away with a yawn at last and said,

“He a star! handles his sword like an apprentice brigand! he’ll do for the
country, may be, but he don’t answer for the metropolis!”

Glad was the contraband that had a seat in the pit at the Saturday
matinee, and happy the Roman street-boy who ate his peanuts and guyed
the gladiators from the dizzy gallery.
For me was reserved the high honor of discovering among the rubbish of
the ruined Coliseum the only playbill of that establishment now extant.
There was a suggestive smell of mint-drops about it still, a corner of it had
evidently been chewed, and on the margin, in choice Latin, these words
were written in a delicate female hand:
“Meet me on the Tarpeian Rock tomorrow evening, dear, at sharp seven.
Mother will be absent on a visit to her friends in the Sabine Hills.
CLAUDIA.”
Ah, where is that lucky youth to-day, and where the little hand that wrote
those dainty lines? Dust and ashes these seventeen hundred years!
Thus reads the bill:

ROMAN COLISEUM.
UNPARALLELED ATTRACTION!
NEW PROPERTIES! NEW LIONS! NEW
GLADIATORS!

Engagement of the renowned

MARCUS MARCELLUS VALERIAN!
FOR SIX NIGHTS ONLY!

The management beg leave to offer to the public an
entertainment surpassing in magnificence any thing that has
heretofore been attempted on any stage. No expense has
been spared to make the opening season one which shall be
worthy the generous patronage which the management feel

sure will crown their efforts. The management beg leave to
state that they have succeeded in securing the services of a

GALAXY OF TALENT!

such as has not been beheld in Rome before.

The performance will commence this evening with a

GRAND BROADSWORD COMBAT!
between two young and promising amateurs and a
celebrated Parthian
gladiator who has just arrived a prisoner from the Camp of
Verus.
This will be followed by a grand moral

BATTLE-AX ENGAGEMENT!
between the renowned Valerian (with one hand tied behind
him,) and two gigantic savages from Britain.

After which the renowned Valerian (if he survive,) will fight
with the broad-sword,

LEFT HANDED!
against six Sophomores and a Freshman from the
Gladiatorial College!
A long series of brilliant engagements will follow, in which
the finest talent of the Empire will take part

After which the celebrated Infant Prodigy known as

“THE YOUNG ACHILLES,”

will engage four tiger whelps in combat, armed with no
other weapon than his little spear!
The whole to conclude with a chaste and elegant

GENERAL SLAUGHTER!

In which thirteen African Lions and twenty-two Barbarian
Prisoners will war with each other until all are
exterminated.

BOX OFFICE NOW OPEN.

Dress Circle One Dollar; Children and Servants half price.
An efficient police force will be on hand to preserve order
and keep the wild beasts from leaping the railings and
discommoding the audience.

Doors open at 7; performance begins at 8.

POSITIVELY NO FREE LIST. Diodorus Job Press.

It was as singular as it was gratifying that I was also so fortunate as to
find among the rubbish of the arena, a stained and mutilated copy of the
Roman Daily Battle-Ax, containing a critique upon this very performance.
It comes to hand too late by many centuries to rank as news, and therefore I
translate and publish it simply to show how very little the general style and
phraseology of dramatic criticism has altered in the ages that have dragged
their slow length along since the carriers laid this one damp and fresh
before their Roman patrons:

“THE OPENING SEASON.--COLISEUM.--
Notwithstanding the inclemency of the weather, quite a
respectable number of the rank and fashion of the city
assembled last night to witness the debut upon metropolitan
boards of the young tragedian who has of late been winning
such golden opinions in the amphitheatres of the provinces.
Some sixty thousand persons were present, and but for the
fact that the streets were almost impassable, it is fair to
presume that the house would have been full. His august
Majesty, the Emperor Aurelius, occupied the imperial box,
and was the cynosure of all eyes. Many illustrious nobles
and generals of the Empire graced the occasion with their
presence, and not the least among them was the young
patrician lieutenant whose laurels, won in the ranks of the
“Thundering Legion,” are still so green upon his brow. The
cheer which greeted his entrance was heard beyond the
Tiber!
“The late repairs and decorations add both to the
comeliness and the comfort of the Coliseum. The new
cushions are a great improvement upon the hard marble
seats we have been so long accustomed to. The present
management deserve well of the public. They have restored
to the Coliseum the gilding, the rich upholstery and the
uniform magnificence which old Coliseum frequenters tell us
Rome was so proud of fifty years ago.
“The opening scene last night--the broadsword combat
between two young amateurs and a famous Parthian
gladiator who was sent here a prisoner--was very fine. The
elder of the two young gentlemen handled his weapon with a
grace that marked the possession of extraordinary talent.
His feint of thrusting, followed instantly by a happily
delivered blow which unhelmeted the Parthian, was received
with hearty applause. He was not thoroughly up in the
backhanded stroke, but it was very gratifying to his
numerous friends to know that, in time, practice would have
overcome this defect. However, he was killed. His sisters,
who were present, expressed considerable regret. His mother

left the Coliseum. The other youth maintained the contest
with such spirit as to call forth enthusiastic bursts of
applause. When at last he fell a corpse, his aged mother ran
screaming, with hair disheveled and tears streaming from
her eyes, and swooned away just as her hands were
clutching at the railings of the arena. She was promptly
removed by the police. Under the circumstances the
woman’s conduct was pardonable, perhaps, but we suggest
that such exhibitions interfere with the decorum which
should be preserved during the performances, and are
highly improper in the presence of the Emperor. The
Parthian prisoner fought bravely and well; and well he
might, for he was fighting for both life and liberty. His wife
and children were there to nerve his arm with their love, and
to remind him of the old home he should see again if he
conquered. When his second assailant fell, the woman
clasped her children to her breast and wept for joy. But it
was only a transient happiness. The captive staggered
toward her and she saw that the liberty he had earned was
earned too late. He was wounded unto death. Thus the first
act closed in a manner which was entirely satisfactory. The
manager was called before the curtain and returned his
thanks for the honor done him, in a speech which was
replete with wit and humor, and closed by hoping that his
humble efforts to afford cheerful and instructive
entertainment would continue to meet with the approbation
of the Roman public
“The star now appeared, and was received with
vociferous applause and the simultaneous waving of sixty
thousand handkerchiefs. Marcus Marcellus Valerian (stage
name--his real name is Smith,) is a splendid specimen of
physical development, and an artist of rare merit. His
management of the battle-ax is wonderful. His gayety and
his playfulness are irresistible, in his comic parts, and yet
they are inferior to his sublime conceptions in the grave
realm of tragedy. When his ax was describing fiery circles
about the heads of the bewildered barbarians, in exact time

with his springing body and his prancing legs, the audience
gave way to uncontrollable bursts of laughter; but when the
back of his weapon broke the skull of one and almost in the
same instant its edge clove the other’s body in twain, the
howl of enthusiastic applause that shook the building, was
the acknowledgment of a critical assemblage that he was a
master of the noblest department of his profession. If he has
a fault, (and we are sorry to even intimate that he has,) it is
that of glancing at the audience, in the midst of the most
exciting moments of the performance, as if seeking
admiration. The pausing in a fight to bow when bouquets
are thrown to him is also in bad taste. In the great left-
handed combat he appeared to be looking at the audience
half the time, instead of carving his adversaries; and when
he had slain all the sophomores and was dallying with the
freshman, he stooped and snatched a bouquet as it fell, and
offered it to his adversary at a time when a blow was
descending which promised favorably to be his death-
warrant. Such levity is proper enough in the provinces, we
make no doubt, but it ill suits the dignity of the metropolis.
We trust our young friend will take these remarks in good
part, for we mean them solely for his benefit. All who know
us are aware that although we are at times justly severe
upon tigers and martyrs, we never intentionally offend
gladiators.

“The Infant Prodigy performed wonders. He overcame his
four tiger whelps with ease, and with no other hurt than the
loss of a portion of his scalp. The General Slaughter was
rendered with a faithfulness to details which reflects the
highest credit upon the late participants in it.
“Upon the whole, last night’s performances shed honor
not only upon the management but upon the city that
encourages and sustains such wholesome and instructive
entertainments. We would simply suggest that the practice of
vulgar young boys in the gallery of shying peanuts and
paper pellets at the tigers, and saying “Hi-yi!” and
manifesting approbation or dissatisfaction by such
observations as “Bully for the lion!” “Go it, Gladdy!”
“Boots!” “Speech!” “Take a walk round the block!” and so
on, are extremely reprehensible, when the Emperor is
present, and ought to be stopped by the police. Several times
last night, when the supernumeraries entered the arena to
drag out the bodies, the young ruffians in the gallery
shouted, “Supe! supe!” and also, “Oh, what a coat!” and

“Why don’t you pad them shanks?” and made use of various
other remarks expressive of derision. These things are very
annoying to the audience.
“A matinee for the little folks is promised for this
afternoon, on which occasion several martyrs will be eaten
by the tigers. The regular performance will continue every
night till further notice. Material change of programme
every evening. Benefit of Valerian, Tuesday, 29th, if he
lives.”

I have been a dramatic critic myself, in my time, and I was often
surprised to notice how much more I knew about Hamlet than Forrest did;
and it gratifies me to observe, now, how much better my brethren of ancient
times knew how a broad sword battle ought to be fought than the gladiators.

CHAPTER XXVII.
So far, good. If any man has a right to feel proud of himself, and
satisfied, surely it is I. For I have written about the Coliseum, and the
gladiators, the martyrs, and the lions, and yet have never once used the
phrase “butchered to make a Roman holiday.” I am the only free white man
of mature age, who has accomplished this since Byron originated the
expression.
Butchered to make a Roman holiday sounds well for the first seventeen
or eighteen hundred thousand times one sees it in print, but after that it
begins to grow tiresome. I find it in all the books concerning Rome--and
here latterly it reminds me of Judge Oliver. Oliver was a young lawyer,
fresh from the schools, who had gone out to the deserts of Nevada to begin
life. He found that country, and our ways of life, there, in those early days,
different from life in New England or Paris. But he put on a woollen shirt
and strapped a navy revolver to his person, took to the bacon and beans of
the country, and determined to do in Nevada as Nevada did. Oliver accepted
the situation so completely that although he must have sorrowed over many
of his trials, he never complained--that is, he never complained but once.
He, two others, and myself, started to the new silver mines in the Humboldt
mountains--he to be Probate Judge of Humboldt county, and we to mine.
The distance was two hundred miles. It was dead of winter. We bought a
two-horse wagon and put eighteen hundred pounds of bacon, flour, beans,
blasting-powder, picks and shovels in it; we bought two sorry-looking
Mexican “plugs,” with the hair turned the wrong way and more corners on
their bodies than there are on the mosque of Omar; we hitched up and
started. It was a dreadful trip. But Oliver did not complain. The horses
dragged the wagon two miles from town and then gave out. Then we three
pushed the wagon seven miles, and Oliver moved ahead and pulled the
horses after him by the bits.

We complained, but Oliver did not. The ground was frozen, and it froze
our backs while we slept; the wind swept across our faces and froze our
noses. Oliver did not complain. Five days of pushing the wagon by day and
freezing by night brought us to the bad part of the journey--the Forty Mile
Desert, or the Great American Desert, if you please. Still, this mildest-
mannered man that ever was, had not complained. We started across at eight
in the morning, pushing through sand that had no bottom; toiling all day
long by the wrecks of a thousand wagons, the skeletons of ten thousand
oxen; by wagon-tires enough to hoop the Washington Monument to the top,
and ox-chains enough to girdle Long Island; by human graves; with our
throats parched always, with thirst; lips bleeding from the alkali dust;
hungry, perspiring, and very, very weary--so weary that when we dropped
in the sand every fifty yards to rest the horses, we could hardly keep from
going to sleep--no complaints from Oliver: none the next morning at three
o’clock, when we got across, tired to death.
Awakened two or three nights afterward at midnight, in a narrow canon,
by the snow falling on our faces, and appalled at the imminent danger of
being “snowed in,” we harnessed up and pushed on till eight in the
morning, passed the “Divide” and knew we were saved. No complaints.
Fifteen days of hardship and fatigue brought us to the end of the two
hundred miles, and the Judge had not complained. We wondered if any
thing could exasperate him. We built a Humboldt house.

It is done in this way. You dig a square in the steep base of the mountain,
and set up two uprights and top them with two joists. Then you stretch a
great sheet of “cotton domestic” from the point where the joists join the
hill-side down over the joists to the ground; this makes the roof and the
front of the mansion; the sides and back are the dirt walls your digging has
left. A chimney is easily made by turning up one corner of the roof. Oliver
was sitting alone in this dismal den, one night, by a sage-brush fire, writing
poetry; he was very fond of digging poetry out of himself--or blasting it out
when it came hard. He heard an animal’s footsteps close to the roof; a stone
or two and some dirt came through and fell by him. He grew uneasy and
said “Hi!--clear out from there, can’t you!”--from time to time. But by and
by he fell asleep where he sat, and pretty soon a mule fell down the

chimney! The fire flew in every direction, and Oliver went over backwards.
About ten nights after that, he recovered confidence enough to go to writing
poetry again. Again he dozed off to sleep, and again a mule fell down the
chimney. This time, about half of that side of the house came in with the
mule. Struggling to get up, the mule kicked the candle out and smashed
most of the kitchen furniture, and raised considerable dust. These violent
awakenings must have been annoying to Oliver, but he never complained.
He moved to a mansion on the opposite side of the canon, because he had
noticed the mules did not go there. One night about eight o’clock he was
endeavoring to finish his poem, when a stone rolled in--then a hoof
appeared below the canvas--then part of a cow--the after part. He leaned
back in dread, and shouted “Hooy! hooy! get out of this!” and the cow
struggled manfully--lost ground steadily--dirt and dust streamed down, and
before Oliver could get well away, the entire cow crashed through on to the
table and made a shapeless wreck of every thing!
Then, for the first time in his life, I think, Oliver complained. He said,
“This thing is growing monotonous!”
Then he resigned his judgeship and left Humboldt county. “Butchered to
make a Roman holyday” has grown monotonous to me.
In this connection I wish to say one word about Michael Angelo
Buonarotti. I used to worship the mighty genius of Michael Angelo--that
man who was great in poetry, painting, sculpture, architecture--great in
every thing he undertook. But I do not want Michael Angelo for breakfast--
for luncheon--for dinner--for tea--for supper--for between meals. I like a
change, occasionally. In Genoa, he designed every thing; in Milan he or his
pupils designed every thing; he designed the Lake of Como; in Padua,
Verona, Venice, Bologna, who did we ever hear of, from guides, but
Michael Angelo? In Florence, he painted every thing, designed every thing,
nearly, and what he did not design he used to sit on a favorite stone and
look at, and they showed us the stone. In Pisa he designed every thing but
the old shot-tower, and they would have attributed that to him if it had not
been so awfully out of the perpendicular. He designed the piers of Leghorn
and the custom house regulations of Civita Vecchia. But, here--here it is
frightful. He designed St. Peter’s; he designed the Pope; he designed the
Pantheon, the uniform of the Pope’s soldiers, the Tiber, the Vatican, the
Coliseum, the Capitol, the Tarpeian Rock, the Barberini Palace, St. John

Lateran, the Campagna, the Appian Way, the Seven Hills, the Baths of
Caracalla, the Claudian Aqueduct, the Cloaca Maxima--the eternal bore
designed the Eternal City, and unless all men and books do lie, he painted
every thing in it! Dan said the other day to the guide, “Enough, enough,
enough! Say no more! Lump the whole thing! say that the Creator made
Italy from designs by Michael Angelo!”

I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled with a
blessed peace, as I did yesterday when I learned that Michael Angelo was
dead.
But we have taken it out of this guide. He has marched us through miles
of pictures and sculpture in the vast corridors of the Vatican; and through
miles of pictures and sculpture in twenty other palaces; he has shown us the
great picture in the Sistine Chapel, and frescoes enough to frescoe the
heavens--pretty much all done by Michael Angelo. So with him we have

played that game which has vanquished so many guides for us--imbecility
and idiotic questions. These creatures never suspect--they have no idea of a
sarcasm.
He shows us a figure and says: “Statoo brunzo.” (Bronze statue.)

We look at it indifferently and the doctor asks: “By Michael Angelo?”
“No--not know who.”
Then he shows us the ancient Roman Forum. The doctor asks: “Michael
Angelo?”
A stare from the guide. “No--thousan’ year before he is born.”
Then an Egyptian obelisk. Again: “Michael Angelo?”
“Oh, mon dieu, genteelmen! Zis is two thousan’ year before he is born!”
He grows so tired of that unceasing question sometimes, that he dreads to
show us any thing at all. The wretch has tried all the ways he can think of to
make us comprehend that Michael Angelo is only responsible for the
creation of a part of the world, but somehow he has not succeeded yet.
Relief for overtasked eyes and brain from study and sightseeing is

necessary, or we shall become idiotic sure enough. Therefore this guide
must continue to suffer. If he does not enjoy it, so much the worse for him.
We do.
In this place I may as well jot down a chapter concerning those necessary
nuisances, European guides. Many a man has wished in his heart he could
do without his guide; but knowing he could not, has wished he could get
some amusement out of him as a remuneration for the affliction of his
society. We accomplished this latter matter, and if our experience can be
made useful to others they are welcome to it.
Guides know about enough English to tangle every thing up so that a
man can make neither head or tail of it. They know their story by heart--the
history of every statue, painting, cathedral or other wonder they show you.
They know it and tell it as a parrot would--and if you interrupt, and throw
them off the track, they have to go back and begin over again. All their lives
long, they are employed in showing strange things to foreigners and
listening to their bursts of admiration. It is human nature to take delight in
exciting admiration. It is what prompts children to say “smart” things, and
do absurd ones, and in other ways “show off” when company is present. It
is what makes gossips turn out in rain and storm to go and be the first to tell
a startling bit of news. Think, then, what a passion it becomes with a guide,
whose privilege it is, every day, to show to strangers wonders that throw
them into perfect ecstasies of admiration! He gets so that he could not by
any possibility live in a soberer atmosphere. After we discovered this, we
never went into ecstasies any more--we never admired any thing--we never
showed any but impassible faces and stupid indifference in the presence of
the sublimest wonders a guide had to display. We had found their weak
point. We have made good use of it ever since. We have made some of
those people savage, at times, but we have never lost our own serenity.
The doctor asks the questions, generally, because he can keep his
countenance, and look more like an inspired idiot, and throw more
imbecility into the tone of his voice than any man that lives. It comes
natural to him.
The guides in Genoa are delighted to secure an American party, because
Americans so much wonder, and deal so much in sentiment and emotion
before any relic of Columbus. Our guide there fidgeted about as if he had