XXIAMERICAN AFFAIRSASTRANGER, and especially a Frenchman who has never travelled in America simply cannot imagine what our country is like. A Frenchman may get an idea of Germany without having seen it; of Italy, without having been there; of India even, without having visited it. It is impossible for him to understand America as it is.I had proof of the truth of this observation in certain circumstances that were altogether unexpected. This experience I recall frequently as one that was peculiarly amusing, so amusing indeed that I regard the incident as one of the most comic I have ever encountered.The hero of the adventure was a young journalist and man about town named Pierre Mortier. One might imagine that from the fact of his profession, which usually gives those who follow it a reasonable smattering of everything, that he would be less liable to surprise and astonishment than some shop assistant or railway employee. The actual occurrences proved the contrary.But let us view this farce from the rising of the curtain.I embarked on a steamer at Cherbourg, with my mother and some friends, bound for New York. Pierre Mortier came on board to offer his best wishes for a delightful voyage. We made him inspect our state-rooms, my friends and I, and we shut him in one of them. In vain he battered the wooden door with fist and foot. We were deaf to his appeals, for we had decided to release him only when the boat was already out of the roadstead and bound for the shores of the new world.At first he protested, not without vehemence, for he was not at all equipped as regards wardrobe for such a voyage, but he soon cooled off and gaily assumed his part in the rather strenuous farce into which we had precipitated him.“Be quiet,” I said to him, “everything will come out all right.”“But how? I haven’t even a spare collar with me.”His appearance was so disconsolate that I began to laugh heartily. Gaiety spreads from one person to another as easily as gloom. He began, in his turn, to laugh.Arrived in New York we went to the best hotel in Brooklyn. The first thing that caught Pierre Mortier’s eye in the hotel lobby was the unusual number of spittoons. They were everywhere, ofall sizes and shapes, for Americans do not hesitate, if they have no receptacle within easy reach, to spit on the floor, and to throw the ends of their cigars anywhere, without even taking the trouble to extinguish them.We reached our rooms. There in an array along the wall some buckets, filled with water, attracted his attention. “Some more spittoons!” cried Mortier.Everybody laughed, and he said in a somewhat peevish tone:“Then what are those buckets for?”“Why, in case of fire.”“I thought,” said Mortier, “that all American buildings were fire-proof.”“That is what you hear in Paris, but houses of that sort are really very rare.”“Yet you pay enough in your country to have more comfort and security than anywhere else. For instance, that carriage just now. It was nothing short of robbery. Twenty-five francs to take us from the station here. And such an old trap! I don’t understand why your laws tolerate such things.”Already he was beginning to protest. There was sure to be something else the next day.On awakening on the first morning he pressed once on the electric button in his bedroom. A bell-boy appeared, bringing a pitcher of ice water. Thinking this a form of cheap wit Mortier sputteredsome of his worst insults, happily couched in French. The bell-boy, a huge negro, looked calmly down upon this excited little man with the fair hair and skin, and then, without asking for his tip, quietly closed the door and went away.This attitude of unconcern was not calculated to assuage our friend’s bellicose mood. He rang the bell again, and three times instead of once. That was the summons to be made when a guest wanted a boot-black sent to take his boots. Such a personage presented himself.The personage explained to Mortier that if he touched the bell once that brought ice water; three times a boot-black. But Mortier did not understand a word of English. Accordingly the boot-black did what the bearer of ice water had done before, quite unconcernedly he went away.Pierre Mortier was in a furious rage when a third boy presented himself, as black as the two preceding, for all the attendants are negroes in American hotels. This fellow was willing to remove his boots. Some minutes passed. Mortier was almost apoplectic with anger. The boy reappeared. He explained to his client that he gave the boots back only in return for a dollar. Mortier was still in bed. To make him understand, the negro lifted his clothes, which were folded on a chair, and, whistling, all the while, rifled the pockets. He picked out a dollar, andput it carelessly into his own pocket. Then he left the boots on the floor and disappeared.In a paroxysm of rage our friend dressed himself in a great hurry and went to the hotel desk, where he made the place resound with curses that no one paid any attention to since no one understood them.On the evening of the same day Mortier put his boots outside his door in order that they might be cleaned before next morning, as is done everywhere in England and France.In America when something is left in front of the door it is only as a sign that the object can be thrown away. Mortier never saw his shoes again.He rang, a negro presented himself. Mortier demanded his shoes. He cried, stormed, threatened. The negro backed up against the wall and unconcernedly whistled a cakewalk.Speechless with rage, Mortier hurled himself upon the black. The hotel negroes, especially when they are not armed, are ordinarily lacking in courage. Besides, this one had good reasons for believing that his client had gone mad. So he hastily decamped.After that nothing could induce any one of the negroes of the establishment to enter Mortier’s room as long as he remained at this hotel.We did our best to explain to M. Mortier that the domestics were nowise in the wrong. He would not listen to a word, but kept exclaiming,with his eyes sticking further out of his head than usual (his eyes were naturally prominent):“No, no! In America you are savages, all savages. Yes, savages and thieves. It is much worse here than I had supposed.”One morning he went down alone into the restaurant for breakfast. Some minutes after we saw him bounding up the stairs. He was livid and trembling with rage. On reaching the door of our apartment, he burst out:“This time it is too much. What is the matter with these brutes here? Has some change come over me? Tell me. Am I an object of ridicule? What is the matter with me? When I entered the restaurant a great fool looked me over from top to bottom, and said something, thereupon everybody began to stare at me. What is the trouble with me? Tell me what is the matter?”What was the matter? He wore a straw hat with very narrow brim, one of those hats called “American” in Paris and of a kind that is never worn in America. He also had “New Yorkey” trousers such as were never cut in New York. That was enough to let loose the risibilities of this Yankee public, a public that is far from being indulgent of little eccentricities in other people.Instead of calming him our explanations exasperated him, and it was only after he had spent his violence that we succeeded in getting him down to breakfast again.The breakfast was not extraordinarily expensive. But when he looked over his account Mortier went into a rage. He had ordered the same things that we did, and his bill was two dollars and a half, that is about twelve and a half francs, higher than ours. These twelve and a half francs represented the price of a bottle of very ordinary red wine, which he had ordered.“Do you want me to tell you what your Americans are,” he shouted. “Well, they are, and don’t you forget it either, they are every one thieves, savages, hogs. They are hogs, hogs! That one word expresses it.”One morning at eight o’clock, after we had had coffee together, he left us.“I am going to take a little walk,” he said. “I shall be back in half an hour.”The half hour lasted until seven o’clock in the evening. You can imagine how anxious we became.This is what happened.Seeing that everybody, almost without exception, was headed in the same direction, he followed the crowd along the side walk. Presently he found himself on Brooklyn Bridge, black with people and burdened with cars, those bound to New York filled to overflowing, the others returning to Brooklyn completely empty.Mortier did not know that all Brooklyn goes to work on the New York side, where the businessdistrict is situated, and that everybody goes to work at the same hour in this peculiar country. Astonished, curious, a little bewildered, he followed the crowd. Once across the bridge he found himself in one of the innumerable streets of New York.On the New York side he looked round him to establish a landmark by which he could find his way back. He did not discover one, but it seemed impossible to get lost, as he had only to return to the base of this big bridge to retrace his steps to Brooklyn. He kept on, therefore, until he had completely satisfied his curiosity. Then he retraced his steps, or at least he thought he was doing so. He looked for the bridge, but in vain. Everybody walked so quickly that his very courteous “Pardon, Monsieur,” met with no response. Once or twice he made a bad effort at asking for “Brooklyn Bridge.” This met with no better success.All the while he was unable to find a policeman.The idea occurred to him, a magnificent idea, of going into a shop. No one made the slightest effort to help him. The assistants were interested only in trying to sell him everything which the house contained. Finally he found himself in a street where there were only clothing merchants. Hardly had he set foot there when he was seized and dragged into a shop. An hour passed before Mortier could escape, more dead than alive, fromthe merchant’s clutches. The information he gave led us to suppose that this must have been the famous Baxter Street, the quarter in which Jewish second-hand dealers ply their trade. It was past five o’clock when he succeeded finally in regaining the bridge, and then it was only with difficulty that he got across, for it was already overcrowded with workers returning to their homes in Brooklyn.Finally he found the hotel again, swearing that he was going to take the first steamer for Europe.“Anywhere,” he would groan; “I would rather be anywhere in the world than here. I’m not going to stay another hour in such a country. A rotten country! Rotten people!”This time, in Pierre Mortier’s eyes, we were “rotten.” It would be hard to estimate how many discourteous adjectives this young man applied to our people in a short time. He must have made a record.However, the Brooklyn hotel at which we were staying was equipped “on the European plan” with carefully chosen menusà la carte.In the city to which we went later there was a purely American hotel, at which we put up. A central plate surrounded by a dozen little plates stood in front of each guest. All these were filled simultaneously with soup, entrees, fish, meat, vegetables and fruit. The guests with hastymovements gobbled smoked salmon, roast beef, chicken, mashed potatoes, badly cooked “pie,” salad, cheese, fruit, pudding, ice-cream, with apparently no regard for the effect of the hazardous mixtures on their digestive organs.Mortier left the table completely disheartened by this spectacle.“What are those savages made of,” he said. “Upon my word they make me look back with regret to the thieves in New York. And when you consider that to urge down their hideous mixtures they incessantly guzzle ice water and keep chewing olives, just as civilised people eat bread!”When we returned to New York Mortier went to the Holland House, a hotel at which French was spoken, and where things were done in a manner approximating nearer to what he was accustomed to.America—this America which on the steamer he had assured himself would be perfect—had come to interest him only in places where it had lost its own character. He found it good only in the few spots where it resembled Paris. In this was not this young journalist, after all, like most of his compatriots when they undertake to travel even in other countries than in America?At the Holland House Pierre Mortier relaxed a little. He even became more polite in his expressions regarding America and Americans. But an incident occurred that brought the young reporter’sdistaste for the country to a head, and precipitated his departure.One day on returning to the Holland House he forgot to pay his cabman and found him ten hours later still standing in front of the hotel. His charge was a dollar and a half an hour. That meant that Mortier had to give up fifteen dollars.Our friend thought at first the house porter should have paid for the trip, and had the charge made on his bill. Accordingly he complained at the hotel desk regarding what he called a piece of negligence.Although the house was conducted on the French plan they gave him a thoroughly American answer:“Well, that has nothing to do with the porter. You ordered the carriage, didn’t you? Yes. You had the use of it, didn’t you? Yes. Well, then, what do you expect? If you don’t know what you want, it isn’t up to the employees to run after you to find out. They’ve got something else to do.”By the next steamer Pierre Mortier left the United States for good and all, swearing never again to set foot there.Mr. W. Boosey, the English publisher, had some very different experiences in the United States.On board the steamer he had become acquainted with a very interesting and companionable American, who invited him to lunch at Delmonico’s.“Thanks awfully,” said the Englishman as he accepted. “On what day?”“Any day you please.”That was a little vague, but Mr. Boosey assured him that he should be delighted, and would come as soon as he had a free day. He was afraid of not having said the proper thing, from the American point of view. This notion bothered him for several days.Finally, just before sailing, he asked the American again when they should lunch together at Delmonico’s.His friend replied: “On Thursday or Saturday, whichever suits you best.”The Englishman decided on Thursday.The day set for the lunch arrived and Mr. Boosey was prompt to keep the appointment. He asked for Mr. X., and they showed him to a table. Half-past one, two, half-past two, three o’clock, and still no American.The Englishman, patient though he was, began to find time hanging heavily on his hands. He thought he must have made a mistake as to the day, and at last he sent for the manager.“What,” said the manager, “didn’t the waiter tell you that Mr. X. had telephoned that he could not come, and that he begged you to order whatever you liked? He will attend to the account.”Imagine what the Englishman must havethought. He had come to lunch with a gentleman, not to have his food paid for by some one. Just at that moment the American rushed into the restaurant.“I am awfully sorry, my dear fellow, but I am glad to find you still here. I had quite forgotten about our lunch up to two o’clock, and then I telephoned. I didn’t think I could get here at all. I had a deal on, one involving a million dollars, and I simply couldn’t leave it. Have you had your bite? No? Well, I haven’t either. Well, then, let us go and sit down.”And they sat down. Mr. Boosey will never forget his American entertainer.The American had, it must be confessed, treated his English guest with a certain negligence. However little he may be inclined to philosophical considerations, nothing is more instructive to a thorough-going Englishman than to observe the manner in which a Yankee ordinarily observes the civilised conventions and the lofty spirit in which he also looks upon anyone who is not an American. Nothing gives him a better notion of the high opinion Americans have of themselves than to hear a Yankee say:“Well, what are you anyway? English, I’ll bet.”Then, after a profound sigh and with an indefinable sweep of the hand: “As for me,” with emphasis on the “me,” “I am an American.”He seems to experience genuine annoyance at having to face a man who isn’t an American.Every American thinks, without ever being guilty of profound reflection on the subject, that everybody, whatever his nationality, would have preferred first to see the light of day in the United States. For the United States, if one were to accept the cheerful American belief, is a free country whose parallel does not exist anywhere in the world.The native American claims to have the advantage of being a citizen of the world’s freest country. If you were to say to most Americans that there is a great deal of liberty in England, they would think that you were trying to make fun of them, and they would tell you that they did not believe it. They admit, occasionally, that there is a little freedom outside of the United States, but they will add:“What a pity there isn’t more of it.”The American believes himself completely emancipated, for freedom is the passion of the whole people. He pays for this catchword, which satisfies him, for having no basis of comparison he in reality does not know what he possesses and what he lacks.The Spanish American is not less picturesque than the Anglo-Saxon American.I had an engagement for a season at the city of Mexico. I made my first appearance atthe Grand Théâtre-National in presence of five thousand spectators. On returning to the Hotel Sands, the most beautiful hotel in the city, I found there the municipal orchestra come to serenade me.At the end of my stay I was asked to take part in a charitable performance. The house was packed, despite the high price of the seats. After the performance a great banquet was given, under the auspices of the festival committee.At the table I was received with an enthusiasm which was quite Mexican, and that means with an enthusiasm that could be hardly surpassed in any country of the world. Throughout the repast I kept receiving presents. Some of the women took off their bracelets, others their rings, others their brooches, and, in spite of my protestations, insisted on giving them to me.“Absolutely at your service!”They obliged me to take them all.I was inexpressibly embarrassed by my booty. When I returned to the hotel I asked the clerk to put all these jewels in a safe place.He looked at the jewels and said:“But you will have to send them back, madam.”“Send them back? Why, they were given me.”“It is the custom here, madam. Presents are always returned.”“What am I going to do? I am leaving to-morrow morning at six o’clock, and I don’tknow the names of the people who have entrusted their jewels to me.”He shook his head.“Well, then, I don’t know what to do. After all, keep them.”Next day, accordingly, when I departed, I took the precious package, thinking that we should return from Cuba, to which we were bound, by way of Mexico, and that I should then look up the owners of “my” jewels.In Cuba all our plans were changed. We left directly for New York, with the object of returning at once to Europe. Consequently I have never given back the jewels.I sometimes wonder what my friends of some hours must think of a woman who dared to accept, under protest, the presents that were tendered her.While we were in Mexico I had occasion to offer a cheque payable in New York for some books I was buying.No one, absolutely no one, wanted to accept it. Then I went to the Chief of Police, General Carbadjadoes, whom I knew and he telegraphed to a New York bank, from which the reply was received that, “Loie Fuller’s cheques are perfectly good.”That put an end to any reluctance among the merchants, who afterward, on the contrary, overwhelmed me with all sorts of propositions.My most vivid impressions of Mexico were of the abounding and well-regulated enthusiasm of the upper classes and the extraordinary insolence of the tradespeople. The whole character of the country is expressed in these two traits.On the liner that took us to the United States Pierre Mortier, for I shall have to mention him once more, made the acquaintance of a young Roumanian, who seemed to be a well-bred man, a very well-bred man. In Mortier enthusiasm is as easily evoked as is condemnation, and he presented this man to me in a most cordial manner.Upon our arrival the young man said to me:“I have so many little parcels that I don’t know where to put them. Would you do me the great favour of taking care of this one?”I gave the object to my maid, who put it in my travelling case, and it passed the inspection of the customs-house officer.That evening at the hotel the young man called on me with Mortier, and I gave him back his package.He opened it smiling, and showed me the contents.I had fraudulently brought in a bag of uncut rubies.I treated the Roumanian as a cheat and told him that if he did not make the matter right with the customs I should hand him over to the authorities. Smiling all the while he promisedthat, since I took the affair to heart, he would go and make his peace, and he left.I never saw him or his rubies again, it is needless to say.I believe that from this time forward they have been seeking me in vain to charge me with smuggling a package through the customs-house.
ASTRANGER, and especially a Frenchman who has never travelled in America simply cannot imagine what our country is like. A Frenchman may get an idea of Germany without having seen it; of Italy, without having been there; of India even, without having visited it. It is impossible for him to understand America as it is.
I had proof of the truth of this observation in certain circumstances that were altogether unexpected. This experience I recall frequently as one that was peculiarly amusing, so amusing indeed that I regard the incident as one of the most comic I have ever encountered.
The hero of the adventure was a young journalist and man about town named Pierre Mortier. One might imagine that from the fact of his profession, which usually gives those who follow it a reasonable smattering of everything, that he would be less liable to surprise and astonishment than some shop assistant or railway employee. The actual occurrences proved the contrary.
But let us view this farce from the rising of the curtain.
I embarked on a steamer at Cherbourg, with my mother and some friends, bound for New York. Pierre Mortier came on board to offer his best wishes for a delightful voyage. We made him inspect our state-rooms, my friends and I, and we shut him in one of them. In vain he battered the wooden door with fist and foot. We were deaf to his appeals, for we had decided to release him only when the boat was already out of the roadstead and bound for the shores of the new world.
At first he protested, not without vehemence, for he was not at all equipped as regards wardrobe for such a voyage, but he soon cooled off and gaily assumed his part in the rather strenuous farce into which we had precipitated him.
“Be quiet,” I said to him, “everything will come out all right.”
“But how? I haven’t even a spare collar with me.”
His appearance was so disconsolate that I began to laugh heartily. Gaiety spreads from one person to another as easily as gloom. He began, in his turn, to laugh.
Arrived in New York we went to the best hotel in Brooklyn. The first thing that caught Pierre Mortier’s eye in the hotel lobby was the unusual number of spittoons. They were everywhere, ofall sizes and shapes, for Americans do not hesitate, if they have no receptacle within easy reach, to spit on the floor, and to throw the ends of their cigars anywhere, without even taking the trouble to extinguish them.
We reached our rooms. There in an array along the wall some buckets, filled with water, attracted his attention. “Some more spittoons!” cried Mortier.
Everybody laughed, and he said in a somewhat peevish tone:
“Then what are those buckets for?”
“Why, in case of fire.”
“I thought,” said Mortier, “that all American buildings were fire-proof.”
“That is what you hear in Paris, but houses of that sort are really very rare.”
“Yet you pay enough in your country to have more comfort and security than anywhere else. For instance, that carriage just now. It was nothing short of robbery. Twenty-five francs to take us from the station here. And such an old trap! I don’t understand why your laws tolerate such things.”
Already he was beginning to protest. There was sure to be something else the next day.
On awakening on the first morning he pressed once on the electric button in his bedroom. A bell-boy appeared, bringing a pitcher of ice water. Thinking this a form of cheap wit Mortier sputteredsome of his worst insults, happily couched in French. The bell-boy, a huge negro, looked calmly down upon this excited little man with the fair hair and skin, and then, without asking for his tip, quietly closed the door and went away.
This attitude of unconcern was not calculated to assuage our friend’s bellicose mood. He rang the bell again, and three times instead of once. That was the summons to be made when a guest wanted a boot-black sent to take his boots. Such a personage presented himself.
The personage explained to Mortier that if he touched the bell once that brought ice water; three times a boot-black. But Mortier did not understand a word of English. Accordingly the boot-black did what the bearer of ice water had done before, quite unconcernedly he went away.
Pierre Mortier was in a furious rage when a third boy presented himself, as black as the two preceding, for all the attendants are negroes in American hotels. This fellow was willing to remove his boots. Some minutes passed. Mortier was almost apoplectic with anger. The boy reappeared. He explained to his client that he gave the boots back only in return for a dollar. Mortier was still in bed. To make him understand, the negro lifted his clothes, which were folded on a chair, and, whistling, all the while, rifled the pockets. He picked out a dollar, andput it carelessly into his own pocket. Then he left the boots on the floor and disappeared.
In a paroxysm of rage our friend dressed himself in a great hurry and went to the hotel desk, where he made the place resound with curses that no one paid any attention to since no one understood them.
On the evening of the same day Mortier put his boots outside his door in order that they might be cleaned before next morning, as is done everywhere in England and France.
In America when something is left in front of the door it is only as a sign that the object can be thrown away. Mortier never saw his shoes again.
He rang, a negro presented himself. Mortier demanded his shoes. He cried, stormed, threatened. The negro backed up against the wall and unconcernedly whistled a cakewalk.
Speechless with rage, Mortier hurled himself upon the black. The hotel negroes, especially when they are not armed, are ordinarily lacking in courage. Besides, this one had good reasons for believing that his client had gone mad. So he hastily decamped.
After that nothing could induce any one of the negroes of the establishment to enter Mortier’s room as long as he remained at this hotel.
We did our best to explain to M. Mortier that the domestics were nowise in the wrong. He would not listen to a word, but kept exclaiming,with his eyes sticking further out of his head than usual (his eyes were naturally prominent):
“No, no! In America you are savages, all savages. Yes, savages and thieves. It is much worse here than I had supposed.”
One morning he went down alone into the restaurant for breakfast. Some minutes after we saw him bounding up the stairs. He was livid and trembling with rage. On reaching the door of our apartment, he burst out:
“This time it is too much. What is the matter with these brutes here? Has some change come over me? Tell me. Am I an object of ridicule? What is the matter with me? When I entered the restaurant a great fool looked me over from top to bottom, and said something, thereupon everybody began to stare at me. What is the trouble with me? Tell me what is the matter?”
What was the matter? He wore a straw hat with very narrow brim, one of those hats called “American” in Paris and of a kind that is never worn in America. He also had “New Yorkey” trousers such as were never cut in New York. That was enough to let loose the risibilities of this Yankee public, a public that is far from being indulgent of little eccentricities in other people.
Instead of calming him our explanations exasperated him, and it was only after he had spent his violence that we succeeded in getting him down to breakfast again.
The breakfast was not extraordinarily expensive. But when he looked over his account Mortier went into a rage. He had ordered the same things that we did, and his bill was two dollars and a half, that is about twelve and a half francs, higher than ours. These twelve and a half francs represented the price of a bottle of very ordinary red wine, which he had ordered.
“Do you want me to tell you what your Americans are,” he shouted. “Well, they are, and don’t you forget it either, they are every one thieves, savages, hogs. They are hogs, hogs! That one word expresses it.”
One morning at eight o’clock, after we had had coffee together, he left us.
“I am going to take a little walk,” he said. “I shall be back in half an hour.”
The half hour lasted until seven o’clock in the evening. You can imagine how anxious we became.
This is what happened.
Seeing that everybody, almost without exception, was headed in the same direction, he followed the crowd along the side walk. Presently he found himself on Brooklyn Bridge, black with people and burdened with cars, those bound to New York filled to overflowing, the others returning to Brooklyn completely empty.
Mortier did not know that all Brooklyn goes to work on the New York side, where the businessdistrict is situated, and that everybody goes to work at the same hour in this peculiar country. Astonished, curious, a little bewildered, he followed the crowd. Once across the bridge he found himself in one of the innumerable streets of New York.
On the New York side he looked round him to establish a landmark by which he could find his way back. He did not discover one, but it seemed impossible to get lost, as he had only to return to the base of this big bridge to retrace his steps to Brooklyn. He kept on, therefore, until he had completely satisfied his curiosity. Then he retraced his steps, or at least he thought he was doing so. He looked for the bridge, but in vain. Everybody walked so quickly that his very courteous “Pardon, Monsieur,” met with no response. Once or twice he made a bad effort at asking for “Brooklyn Bridge.” This met with no better success.
All the while he was unable to find a policeman.
The idea occurred to him, a magnificent idea, of going into a shop. No one made the slightest effort to help him. The assistants were interested only in trying to sell him everything which the house contained. Finally he found himself in a street where there were only clothing merchants. Hardly had he set foot there when he was seized and dragged into a shop. An hour passed before Mortier could escape, more dead than alive, fromthe merchant’s clutches. The information he gave led us to suppose that this must have been the famous Baxter Street, the quarter in which Jewish second-hand dealers ply their trade. It was past five o’clock when he succeeded finally in regaining the bridge, and then it was only with difficulty that he got across, for it was already overcrowded with workers returning to their homes in Brooklyn.
Finally he found the hotel again, swearing that he was going to take the first steamer for Europe.
“Anywhere,” he would groan; “I would rather be anywhere in the world than here. I’m not going to stay another hour in such a country. A rotten country! Rotten people!”
This time, in Pierre Mortier’s eyes, we were “rotten.” It would be hard to estimate how many discourteous adjectives this young man applied to our people in a short time. He must have made a record.
However, the Brooklyn hotel at which we were staying was equipped “on the European plan” with carefully chosen menusà la carte.
In the city to which we went later there was a purely American hotel, at which we put up. A central plate surrounded by a dozen little plates stood in front of each guest. All these were filled simultaneously with soup, entrees, fish, meat, vegetables and fruit. The guests with hastymovements gobbled smoked salmon, roast beef, chicken, mashed potatoes, badly cooked “pie,” salad, cheese, fruit, pudding, ice-cream, with apparently no regard for the effect of the hazardous mixtures on their digestive organs.
Mortier left the table completely disheartened by this spectacle.
“What are those savages made of,” he said. “Upon my word they make me look back with regret to the thieves in New York. And when you consider that to urge down their hideous mixtures they incessantly guzzle ice water and keep chewing olives, just as civilised people eat bread!”
When we returned to New York Mortier went to the Holland House, a hotel at which French was spoken, and where things were done in a manner approximating nearer to what he was accustomed to.
America—this America which on the steamer he had assured himself would be perfect—had come to interest him only in places where it had lost its own character. He found it good only in the few spots where it resembled Paris. In this was not this young journalist, after all, like most of his compatriots when they undertake to travel even in other countries than in America?
At the Holland House Pierre Mortier relaxed a little. He even became more polite in his expressions regarding America and Americans. But an incident occurred that brought the young reporter’sdistaste for the country to a head, and precipitated his departure.
One day on returning to the Holland House he forgot to pay his cabman and found him ten hours later still standing in front of the hotel. His charge was a dollar and a half an hour. That meant that Mortier had to give up fifteen dollars.
Our friend thought at first the house porter should have paid for the trip, and had the charge made on his bill. Accordingly he complained at the hotel desk regarding what he called a piece of negligence.
Although the house was conducted on the French plan they gave him a thoroughly American answer:
“Well, that has nothing to do with the porter. You ordered the carriage, didn’t you? Yes. You had the use of it, didn’t you? Yes. Well, then, what do you expect? If you don’t know what you want, it isn’t up to the employees to run after you to find out. They’ve got something else to do.”
By the next steamer Pierre Mortier left the United States for good and all, swearing never again to set foot there.
Mr. W. Boosey, the English publisher, had some very different experiences in the United States.
On board the steamer he had become acquainted with a very interesting and companionable American, who invited him to lunch at Delmonico’s.
“Thanks awfully,” said the Englishman as he accepted. “On what day?”
“Any day you please.”
That was a little vague, but Mr. Boosey assured him that he should be delighted, and would come as soon as he had a free day. He was afraid of not having said the proper thing, from the American point of view. This notion bothered him for several days.
Finally, just before sailing, he asked the American again when they should lunch together at Delmonico’s.
His friend replied: “On Thursday or Saturday, whichever suits you best.”
The Englishman decided on Thursday.
The day set for the lunch arrived and Mr. Boosey was prompt to keep the appointment. He asked for Mr. X., and they showed him to a table. Half-past one, two, half-past two, three o’clock, and still no American.
The Englishman, patient though he was, began to find time hanging heavily on his hands. He thought he must have made a mistake as to the day, and at last he sent for the manager.
“What,” said the manager, “didn’t the waiter tell you that Mr. X. had telephoned that he could not come, and that he begged you to order whatever you liked? He will attend to the account.”
Imagine what the Englishman must havethought. He had come to lunch with a gentleman, not to have his food paid for by some one. Just at that moment the American rushed into the restaurant.
“I am awfully sorry, my dear fellow, but I am glad to find you still here. I had quite forgotten about our lunch up to two o’clock, and then I telephoned. I didn’t think I could get here at all. I had a deal on, one involving a million dollars, and I simply couldn’t leave it. Have you had your bite? No? Well, I haven’t either. Well, then, let us go and sit down.”
And they sat down. Mr. Boosey will never forget his American entertainer.
The American had, it must be confessed, treated his English guest with a certain negligence. However little he may be inclined to philosophical considerations, nothing is more instructive to a thorough-going Englishman than to observe the manner in which a Yankee ordinarily observes the civilised conventions and the lofty spirit in which he also looks upon anyone who is not an American. Nothing gives him a better notion of the high opinion Americans have of themselves than to hear a Yankee say:
“Well, what are you anyway? English, I’ll bet.”
Then, after a profound sigh and with an indefinable sweep of the hand: “As for me,” with emphasis on the “me,” “I am an American.”
He seems to experience genuine annoyance at having to face a man who isn’t an American.
Every American thinks, without ever being guilty of profound reflection on the subject, that everybody, whatever his nationality, would have preferred first to see the light of day in the United States. For the United States, if one were to accept the cheerful American belief, is a free country whose parallel does not exist anywhere in the world.
The native American claims to have the advantage of being a citizen of the world’s freest country. If you were to say to most Americans that there is a great deal of liberty in England, they would think that you were trying to make fun of them, and they would tell you that they did not believe it. They admit, occasionally, that there is a little freedom outside of the United States, but they will add:
“What a pity there isn’t more of it.”
The American believes himself completely emancipated, for freedom is the passion of the whole people. He pays for this catchword, which satisfies him, for having no basis of comparison he in reality does not know what he possesses and what he lacks.
The Spanish American is not less picturesque than the Anglo-Saxon American.
I had an engagement for a season at the city of Mexico. I made my first appearance atthe Grand Théâtre-National in presence of five thousand spectators. On returning to the Hotel Sands, the most beautiful hotel in the city, I found there the municipal orchestra come to serenade me.
At the end of my stay I was asked to take part in a charitable performance. The house was packed, despite the high price of the seats. After the performance a great banquet was given, under the auspices of the festival committee.
At the table I was received with an enthusiasm which was quite Mexican, and that means with an enthusiasm that could be hardly surpassed in any country of the world. Throughout the repast I kept receiving presents. Some of the women took off their bracelets, others their rings, others their brooches, and, in spite of my protestations, insisted on giving them to me.
“Absolutely at your service!”
They obliged me to take them all.
I was inexpressibly embarrassed by my booty. When I returned to the hotel I asked the clerk to put all these jewels in a safe place.
He looked at the jewels and said:
“But you will have to send them back, madam.”
“Send them back? Why, they were given me.”
“It is the custom here, madam. Presents are always returned.”
“What am I going to do? I am leaving to-morrow morning at six o’clock, and I don’tknow the names of the people who have entrusted their jewels to me.”
He shook his head.
“Well, then, I don’t know what to do. After all, keep them.”
Next day, accordingly, when I departed, I took the precious package, thinking that we should return from Cuba, to which we were bound, by way of Mexico, and that I should then look up the owners of “my” jewels.
In Cuba all our plans were changed. We left directly for New York, with the object of returning at once to Europe. Consequently I have never given back the jewels.
I sometimes wonder what my friends of some hours must think of a woman who dared to accept, under protest, the presents that were tendered her.
While we were in Mexico I had occasion to offer a cheque payable in New York for some books I was buying.
No one, absolutely no one, wanted to accept it. Then I went to the Chief of Police, General Carbadjadoes, whom I knew and he telegraphed to a New York bank, from which the reply was received that, “Loie Fuller’s cheques are perfectly good.”
That put an end to any reluctance among the merchants, who afterward, on the contrary, overwhelmed me with all sorts of propositions.
My most vivid impressions of Mexico were of the abounding and well-regulated enthusiasm of the upper classes and the extraordinary insolence of the tradespeople. The whole character of the country is expressed in these two traits.
On the liner that took us to the United States Pierre Mortier, for I shall have to mention him once more, made the acquaintance of a young Roumanian, who seemed to be a well-bred man, a very well-bred man. In Mortier enthusiasm is as easily evoked as is condemnation, and he presented this man to me in a most cordial manner.
Upon our arrival the young man said to me:
“I have so many little parcels that I don’t know where to put them. Would you do me the great favour of taking care of this one?”
I gave the object to my maid, who put it in my travelling case, and it passed the inspection of the customs-house officer.
That evening at the hotel the young man called on me with Mortier, and I gave him back his package.
He opened it smiling, and showed me the contents.
I had fraudulently brought in a bag of uncut rubies.
I treated the Roumanian as a cheat and told him that if he did not make the matter right with the customs I should hand him over to the authorities. Smiling all the while he promisedthat, since I took the affair to heart, he would go and make his peace, and he left.
I never saw him or his rubies again, it is needless to say.
I believe that from this time forward they have been seeking me in vain to charge me with smuggling a package through the customs-house.