This kind of reading naturally did not bring me any nearer my Ph. D. But it taught me to keep quiet, dodgeDie Ferne, and to take an interest in what other men had done—to remember that all the traveling in the world was never intended to be done by me. Of course, I had dreams of becoming an explorer, but they were harmless arm-chair efforts, that gave my mother no anxiety, and were profitable in so far as I seriously studied geography. Possibly, had a berth in an exploring expedition been offered me, I should have been tempted to take it; but no such opportunity came to hand.
My companions in the university were nearly allStreber, young men who were determined topromoviren. A more mixed collection of friends I have never had. My most intimate "pal" was a Japanese, the others next intimate were a Greek, a German-American,a British-American, somebona fideTeutons, and my dog Spicer—the latter being in the university by proxy, so to speak. In the early semesters we did pretty much what all students at German universities do. Here in the United States there are minute observers of college morals who would have said that we were all bound devil-wards. We attendedKneipen, spent our Sundays in the Gruhewald, and wouldschwänzen—omit attendance at lectures, when convenient. But all of my friends except one have done well. The unfortunate exception was probably the most strenuousstreberin the company. He took his degree with all sails set for a promised professorship at home, went home, was disappointed in what he had been led to think he was to teach, became discouraged and despondent, and finally tossed himself in front of a train. Poor "Zink"! He had studied History and wanted to give lectures about it. The western college trustees, who had promised him a chair in History, insisted on his teaching Grammar also, or some other subject that he had paid no attention to since college days, and his sense of the fitness of things revolted. He had specialized honestly and fearlessly, and he desired to continue as a specialist. The college trustees wanted a complete faculty in one or two men, and "Zink" would not submit. If any man deserved fairer treatment, this old university friend did.
I believe that Spicer, my fox-terrier, is the only other member of the class that has quit the game completely. She stayed with my family for nine years, nevercomprehending the Germans as a people—she was English—and apparently never wanting to. Pilsner beer was the only German product she would succumb to. Three saucerfuls after each afternoon tramp constituted her portion. As she never staggered, and never misbehaved herself otherwise under the Pilsner influence, I think it agreed with her. In saying that she succumbed to the three saucerfuls, I merely mean that she knew when she had had enough.
If I could tell what "Pizey," as she was called later, meant to my family in ways that are dear and affectionate, and what she stood for in the "Colony," a great dog book would be the result. She came to us in a basket, after a serious tossing in the North Sea—a fat, pudgy little thing, full of John Bullism and herself. My mother and younger sister brought her to Berlin, and mother presented her to me, in the same language as in former days when she had given me "Major"—"Josiah, I've brought you a dog!" I rejoiced at twenty-two over such a gift as much as I did in my early teens. Little did I reckon then what it means to train a pup in a Berlin flat. With "Pizey" I would gladly go through the whole business again, but it is a task I feel that I must save my countrymen against. Even in Oskaloosa there are trying months ahead of him who rears a pup three flights up. (Fire escapes don't help a bit.)
"Pizey's" main interests were her own short tail and her long-tailed pups. When mother had nothing better to offer her guests by way of entertainment,"Pizey" was requisitioned, called into the parlor and made to chase her stub of a tail. If her guests were looking for other amusement they were disappointed, but "Pizey" wasn't, and I think that mother enjoyed the fracas. She once told the family physician that under no circumstances, no matter whether "Pizey" committedlesé majesté, would she destroy "Pizey," because she reminded her of Josiah, "when he was away from home."
"Pizey's" distinction as a member of the "Colony" lay almost entirely in her disregard of the Malthusian dream. She increased the Anglo-Germanententeby at least forty-seven little "Pizeys." Some of her progeny found their way into American homes and are trying to do right—perhaps a half-dozen. The remaining forty-one areauf der Wanderschaft.
"Pizey's" death was mysterious. I had long since left Berlin, and heard only infrequently about her. Finally the entire family moved away, and the dog was left in the old home, but under a new régime; she absolutely refused to emigrate. They say that she was stricken with asthma, and had to be put out of the way. I only hope that she was put out of the way in a square deal. The German scientists are very much given to dissecting dogs like "Pizey" while they are yet alive. If any German scientist perpetrated such an outrage on Spicer, I trust that his science will fall to pieces—certainly those parts of it based on "Pizey's" evidence.
Years and years ago, when Luther was giving us, or rather demanding of us, two strong legs and an obstinate "No" when it was our duty to say "No," there were thousands of young men in Germany who had wheelbarrows, and, I trust, the two strong legs; they were calledHandwerksburschen, traveling apprentices, a name that remains intact with their counterpart of our day. The apprentices in honorably quitting their masters—I fear, sometimes before honor had become a definite part of their moral baggage—would put their bits of tools into the wheelbarrows, the masters would give them aglückauf, and away the young men would go over Europe, studying their trades in different countries, and getting acquainted with life in towns, villages and fields. In the main, they were earnest inquirers of their kind, seeking comparative wisdom and a friendly acquaintance with theChaussee.
Luther has long since gone, and with him theHandwerksburschof his time. TheChausseehas given away to the fourth-class railway car, and the wheelbarrow and kit of tools to a stingy knapsack. TheHandwerksburschstill has two legs, as a rule, but he hates to use them.
Such good nature and fellowship as must have prevailed among Luther's traveling apprentices could also be found among the students of the time. They took to theChaussee, saw men, cities and things, and their vacation over, returned to their lectures and books. Like theHandwerksbursch, however, they have found their accounting with the present, and to-day are quite as much at home in the fourth-class car as were their predecessors on theChaussee.
In course of time it came my turn to make one of the students' tours of Germany. TheSemesterwas over, a friendly companion was at hand, and, for aRundreiseexcursion, we had sufficient money in our pockets. It may or may not have been a sop toDie Fernethat I undertook this jaunt, but I think now that it was merely a well-timed outing in order thatDie Ferneshould not be consciously considered. Here again, as so often before and since, credit must be given to my mother. She seemed to know to the hour almost, the time when it was necessary for me to jump out of harness and take to the open again.
My companion on this first exploration of Germany was a gentleman considerably older than myself. He was a stalwart Norwegian, perhaps forty years of age, with a burly blond beard, a great "bundle of hair," as the tramps say, and a pugnacious belief in the prohibition of the liquor traffic. Physically, Nietzsche'sguter grosser blondes Menschwas found in him to a nicety.Some months before my arrival in Berlin, he appeared at my mother's door one evening and said in a western nasal drawl: "Glad to meet you. Believed in your sister-in-law's principles, and thought I'd come around and call."
My mother saw in him at first merely the typical Prohibitionist with a long rehearsal of the reasons why, if need be, one should go dry in a waterless, but alcoholic neighborhood. A partial rehearsal there was, and then the tall, blond man from "Minnesoty" got to talking most interestingly about the university, philosophy, religion, Norway—and Ibsen. He spoke also of his native language, of literature in general, and of men in "Minnesoty" who were trying to make a new Norwegian literature.
Ibsen was much discussed at the time, and "Nora" was the talk of the town. It had become almost an affair of state whether Nora did right in leaving her home, and decidedly a matter of etiquette whether a husband should, or should not, offer a disappearing wife an umbrella on a rainy night. (The "Doll's House," as I saw it, presumed a storm outside.) Ibsen was living in Munich in those days.
Our friend, the Norwegian, wrote to Ibsen, and asked him whether he would receive two Americans anxious to pay their respects to him. It had been decided that the Norwegian and I should makeRundreisetogether, and Munich was included in our itinerary. Ibsen replied to the Norwegian's letter in very neat handwriting, that he was usually at home in the Maximilian strasseat eleven o'clock, and that callers usually looked in on him at that hour. There was no conventional etiquette about the note; we were not even told that we should be welcome. The small missive might have been a dentist's "time card" so far as it expressed any sentiment. But scrupulously to the point it certainly was. Later Ibsen told us that so many people wrote to him that he had been compelled to boil his correspondence down as much as possible.
The journey to Munich in company with the Norwegian was very similar to all students' outings, and need not be described in detail here. The talk with Ibsen, our unheard of abstemiousness in restaurants, and the pains that we were at to see everything on a five pfennig tipping basis, were the only special features of the trip.
Madam Willard. Josiah Flynt's Grandmother
On leaving Berlin we resolved to go as far as our allowance would permit, into the Tyrol if possible, and we thought that our mileage could be prodigiously increased if we drank water with our meals, and "looked the other way" when more than five pfennigs was wanted asTrinkgeld. The Norwegian never once swerved in living up to this programme, but I fell from grace at times. The looks and "faces" that we got from guides, palace lackeys and waiters were specimens that, could we have drawn them, would make a very interesting gallery to look over to-day. But, alas! neither one of us could sketch, all that we have now is the remembrance. During the six weeks or more that we traveled we saw disappointment, distrust, hatredand pugnaciousness in all the different shades and colorings which the German countenance is equal to. The Norwegian said that he enjoyed such sights, but there were moments when I begged off, and tipped as I saw fit. It made no difference to the Norwegian, however, whether the service rendered was a two-hour chaperoning through a great castle, or a mere response to a question. Five pfennigs remained his limit in the tipping line to the end, and I doubt whether his entire bill on this score came to over three marks. His non-alcoholic régime nearly got us into serious trouble in Nürnberg. As had been our custom in other towns, we had selected a modest restaurant at the noon hour, and called for the regular meal. Although we did not order beer, it was served to us, but left untouched. When we came to pay our reckoning we called the waiter's attention to the beer item, saying that we would not pay it as the beer had not been asked for. Such a hubbub and pow-wowing as then began I have never seen over two glasses of beer. The proprietor came, the other waiters also, and even some of the guests labored with us in the matter.
"But it is the custom,Meine Herren," the landlord kept saying, to all of which the Norwegian returned a determined "No." It might or might not be the custom, and whether it was or not, did not make a particle of difference; he was not going to pay for something that he had neither wanted nor asked for.
The upshot of the arguing was that we picked up our grips and started to leave. The burly proprietor snatched my bag away from me in the hallway. The Norwegian sprang at him with an oath—the first and last I ever heard him use.
"Damn you!" he hissed through his teeth. "I'll break every bone in your body," and I think he would have fulfilled the contract had the proprietor given him a chance. The latter dropped my bag, and fled back into the restaurant for reinforcements. But, by the time he was ready for war again, we were in the street, and the landlord contented himself with calling us swindlers and pigs. I make no doubt that later there was a protracted discussion in the restaurant about the matter, and that for many a day afterward theStarumgäste, who had witnessed the affair, made beery conjectures as to our nationality and education. Whatever their final decision may have been, the Norwegian had carried his point. Alone, I doubt whether my independence would have been so assertive, but I was glad at the time to have witnessed a successful revolt against the tyrannical GermanGetränkezwang.
What Ibsen, whom we saw in his home a few days later, would have said to this episode, is hard to conjecture. Very possibly he might have told us that we were in the wrong in going to such a place, that we should have sought out a vegetarian eating-place—the teetotaler's refuge, when theBierzwangis to be avoided. He very frankly told us, however, what he thought of Prohibition as a cure-all for the liquor traffic problem. The Norwegian had asked his opinion in the matter and he got it. This is about what Ibsen said:
"You can't make people good by law. Only that which a man does of his own free will and because he knows that it is therightthing to do, counts in this world. Legislating about morals is at best a sorry makeshift. Men will have to learn to legislate for themselves without any state interference, before human conduct is on a right basis."
This deliverance on the part of Ibsen came in its turn with other topics on which he expressed himself during our interview with him. We had called at his home at the suggested hour—eleven—and had been immediately shown into the parlor, I think it was. Pretty soon Ibsen strolled in. I should have recognized him without trouble anywhere. The long, defiant hair pushed back from his forehead, the silky side whiskers, the inevitable spectacles, the tightly closed lips, the long coat—these things had all been brought out prominently in his photographs, and were unmistakable. At the time he was the most famous literary man I had ever met, and he was easily the most talked about dramatist in Europe. I was much impressed by this fact, and for the moment probably looked at him as if it was the last chance to see a great public character that I was to have. The Norwegian took the event more calmly, walking up to Ibsen with his great hand outstretched as if to an older brother. The two men looked each other well in the eyes—their eyes were strikingly similar in color and shape—passed greetings in Norwegian, and then I was introduced.
"And what is it that you want?" Ibsen asked bluntly enough, motioning to the sofa, he himself taking achair. From his manner and curtness of speech he might have been taken for a doctor during calling hours. He was friendly after a fashion, but the fashion was as if he had long since finished with making intimate acquaintances, and henceforth meant to hold the world at a distance. He looked "business" to the last degree.
As the conversation progressed he thawed a little, and was not quite so reserved. But throughout our two visits with him—there was a second call on the next day—he at leastansweredquestions as if he were on the witness stand, and had been cautioned by his counsel not to overstate things.
When questioning us as well as when volunteering an opinion which was not in direct reply to a query, he was not so painfully cautious.
The Norwegian had prepared a list of questions threateningly long, to put to the old gentleman, but he religiously went through it from beginning to end. He quizzed him about everything and everybody, it seemed, from Prohibition, the Kaiser, Bismarck, Scandinavia, Russia and general European politics, to family matters, his manner of writing, his forthcoming play, and about numberless obscure passages in his earlier dramas. Ibsen took the blows as they fell, dodging, as I have said, when he felt like it, but receiving them in the main quite stolidly. Many of the questions were killed almost before they were delivered, by a frown or a gesture. Speaking about the alleged obscure passages in his books, he said: "They may be there, but I did not mean themto be obscure. For a time I used to answer letters from persons who wanted me to explain this or that sentence, but I had to give up the job—it got so enervating. I make my words as plain as I know how. Most of my readers comprehend me, I trust."
Ibsen used Norwegian when fencing with my companion, but with me he very kindly resorted to German, asking me in quite a fatherly way about my family, my travels and studies and my opinion of Germany. Occasionally he would smile, and then we saw the man at his best. Crabbed and curt he might be at times, but behind that genial smile there was without doubt a very kind nature, and I was sure of it then and have been ever since. In the years that are to come much will be written about Ibsen, the writer, the pessimist, the sociological surgeon, and what not, but nothing that has been or is still to be written about him will ever succeed in revealing to me the man, as that friendly chat in his home in Munich. An experience, by the way, which may possibly prove that my friend, Mr. Arthur Symons, was correct in an argument we had some years ago in London, about personal interviews or "sittings" with famous people, particularly writers. At the time I advanced the opinion that writers, if they were worth while at all, proved their worth best in what they wrote, and not in what they said, that their books and not their physical presence were what ought to interest. Symons held that he had never read an author who would not have beenmoreinteresting to him (Symons) had he been able to meet and talk with him. More about Symons later on.His books and personal friendship are both valuable to me, but for very different reasons. I seldom think of Symons, the man, when I read his essays and verses, and I only infrequently think of his books, or of him as a literary man at all, when we are together.
In the autumn of 1892 my university days were interrupted by a visit to London. Political economy, as taught and written in German, was becoming more and more of a puzzle to me, in spite of the fact that I had made valuable progress in picking up and using German colloquial expressions. I could berate a cabby, for instance, very forcefully, but somehow I could not accustom my ear to the academic language of Professors Schmoller and Wagner. I finally persuaded my people that if I was to continue to explore political economy I ought to be allowed to come to terms with it in my own vernacular, at least until I knew something about it separate from German, which, at that time, was quite as much a study to me as political economy itself. My arguments in this matter eventually prevailed, and I was sent off to London to read up on the subject in the British Museum. That this reading was a good thing in its way is doubtless true, and the six months spent in London at that time I have always counted among theStrebermonths of my career. Perhaps I devoted more time than was right to geography and the books of travelers and explorers, but I peggedaway at my major too, after a fashion, at times covering my desk with books on the subject. If many volumes stacked up in front of a reader make a savant in the British Museum, then I deserved a place in the front rank.
But with all my good intentions, reading and note-taking, the main good that London did for me, was accomplished outside of the somber pile in Bloomsbury. The Museum was principally a place in which to retreat when the life in the streets seemed likely to unduly excite myWanderlust. There I could also read about many of the things that interested me in London itself.
Colonization was the special subject I was supposed to be looking into, but Dr. Richard Garnett, the official at the Museum who gave me my reader's ticket, could never get over the notion that I meant "composition," when telling him the subject I was to take up. Three times I insisted that it wascolonization, but whether the good man was deaf, or determined that I should tackle composition, I never found out. My friend, Arthur Symons, introduced me to him and distinctly heard me say colonization, but this did not help matters. The good doctor insisted on showing me about the reading room, pointing out the general reference books which he thought would facilitate my acquaintance with composition. We frequently greeted each other in the corridors afterwards, but the doctor kindly refrained from quizzing me concerning my reading, and probably had quite forgotten what it was all about anyhow—a matter of conjecture in my own mind on occasions.
My most intimate friend during this first visit to London was Symons, and I have to thank him for putting me on the track of many interesting people and experiences. I went to him with an introduction from Berlin, where he visited me later on. In 1892 he was living in Fentin Court in The Temple, Mr. George Moore being a close neighbor in Pump Court, I think. Both men took hold of my imagination very much, being the first English writers that I learned to know. With Moore I had only slight conversations, but I remember now that he evinced considerable interest in my "tramp material." Indeed, ten years after our first meeting he reminded me of an adventure which I, at one time, had related to him.
Symons, on the other hand, I saw very frequently, and I might as well accuse him right away of being my literary god-father, if I may be said to deserve one. Whether he realized it at the time or not, it was the writer's atmosphere which he let me into, that made me ambitious to scribble on my own account.
One day he told me that he had received fifteen pounds for an article forThe Fortnightly.
"Fifteen pounds!" I mumbled to myself on the way back to my lodgings. "Why, that sum would keep me here in London over a month." Later, in Berlin, I experimented for the first time with the effects of an article by me in a magazine. Symons' wonderful fifteen pounds were to blame. I sent the paper, a short account of the American tramp, toThe Contemporary. It was accepted. In a few days I received page proofs of thearticle, and in the next number it was published. No youthful writer ever had his horizon more ambitiously widened than mine was when that article was printed and paid for. I assured the editor instanter that my tramp lore was inexhaustible, and begged him to consider other submissive efforts on my part. He intimated in his reply that submission was a fine quality, but thatThe Contemporarydid not confine its pages to trampology, and that his readers had had enough of that subject for the time being.
The little back room in the Crown Tavern, near Leicester Square, where a number of the young writers in London congregated at night, in my time, has given way to much more pretentious quarters. Symons and I had got into the habit of taking nightly walks about town, leading nowhere in particular at the start, but interrupted usually, for an hour at least, about half-past eleven at "The Crown." The place itself never meant much to me as a rendezvous because I have never been able to get enjoyment out of a back-parlor pushed up against a bar. Separate, each institution has its amenities but Englishmen seem fond of a combination of the sort mentioned.
Two of the young men who forgathered at "The Crown" in 1892 have passed on for keeps—Lionel Johnson, the author of "The Art of Thomas Hardy," and the personal statement to me that he knew every inch of Wales; and Ernest Dowson, a man who lived in a queer, rambling old storehouse on the docks—a possessionof his own, and who knew much about London that he should have been allowed to tell.
The gatherings in the back parlor were comparatively innocent little intentions upon life and literature. I got good out of them in a number of ways, and might have benefited by them more had my intentions been more distinctly literary. What Swinburne, Pater, Wilde, Verlaine and others were doing and saying was not half so interesting to me as what some haphazard pick-up might say to me and Symons, during our stroll after the Crown meeting was over. On one occasion, however, an Irish journalist, who was present, succeeded in getting me patriotically indignant. He had spent the afternoon in Westminster Abbey, happening, among other things, upon Longfellow's bust.
"I can't see," he said, at the end of his account of his afternoon, unmistakably referring to the Longfellow bust, "why the Americans can't bury their dead at home." It was on the tip of my tongue to ask him why the Irish couldn't keep their alive at home, when some one said: "Soda, please," and the difficulty was both watered and bridged over.
I suppose that "The Crown" meetings were mutual admiration parties of a kind, but of an innocent kind. I recall a callow youth (who had squandered his patrimony in Paris), with a slender volume of reminiscent verse, button-holing me and saying: "Really, you know —— (a member of the company) is a genius. His command over vocables is something stupendous." Blank has since made a name for himself, but I rememberlooking at him at the time, innocently wondering whether he was a genius, and, if so, what vocables were.
But in spite of the ready assistance offered to all hands to think well of themselves, the gatherings usually netted one something worth while in the end, either in criticism or incident. They call to mind now a series of gatherings held a number of years later in New York among a collection of American writers. And this thinking of the two combinations reminds me of what George Augustus Sala once said to me in Rome. I had gone to him, according to agreement, to ask him what he had to say to a young man, anxious to do well in journalism, about writing in general. He was sitting at breakfast when I dropped in at his hotel, very much surrounded by macaroni and the local newspapers.
"And what are your pleasures?" Sala began without warning, as if I had gone to him for medical advice.
I was so upset by this beginning of things that, for the life of me, I could not think for a second or two what my pleasures were. I finally managed to say that I enjoyed whist.
"Stop it," said Sala, his Portuguese eyes fairly boring through me. "Stop it. Whist means cards, and cards mean gambling. Stop it."
After a pause, "What are the other pleasures?" If whist meant gambling, I reasoned that tobacco must premise opium. However, I admitted that I liked tobacco.
"Not strange—not strange," said Sala. "One whowrites needs a smoke. What else? Are you a woman-hater?"
"No, sir, I'm not," I replied most emphatically. Sala looked at me queerly, but did not pursue the subject. I had been introduced to him by a man who, wrongly or rightly, had the reputation of saying cross things about women.
"Do you drink?" Sala continued in a moment.
"Yes, when I feel like it."
"Stop it, stop it.Drinking means boozing, boozing means busting, and busting means hell—hell, young man, remember that."
There was a pause, during which Sala looked out of the window as if he had taken my pulse and was deciding how much faster it could beat before I must die. Pretty soon he turned my way, and, after some general advice about coming to an early decision as to whether I meant to be a purely descriptive writer or not, delivered himself to this statement: "If you settle in London as a journalist, you'll be a drudge. If you try New York, you'll be a boozer—unless," and again the Portuguese eyes shot at me, "you keep out of the rut."
In reviewing my past experiences I have often thought of this talk with Sala when comparing the two different sets of writers I learned to know in London and New York. Offhand I should say that honors were even between them as regards the virtues, any advantage in this particular falling, if there was any, to the Englishmen on account of the early closing hours in England.
It was after the celebrated closing hours that Symons and I often had some of our most entertaining strolls. Symons was inveterately on the scent for "impressions and sensations," while I found happiness merely in roving. I suppose that I received impressions and sensations of their kind just as well as Symons did, but somehow when I began to describe them they did not seem to have enough literary dignity to belong in the same class with those that Symons could tell about and later describe in print.
One night, we separated, each to wander as long as he was interested, and in the morning to compare reports. It so happened that neither of us on this particular occasion saw enough that we had not enjoyed together on other jaunts, to make the undertaking very amusing. But we both agreed that such explorations could be made uncommonly entertaining by a literary artist, if he would honestly tell what he had stumbled upon.
At another time we undertook a more audacious exploit—a 'bus ride to the city limits, or into the country as far as the schedule allowed, and then a tramp into the Beyond, as long as we could hold out. We took the first 'bus we saw bound well into the country. It started from Liverpool Street Station; Symons thought that it was headed east, but neither of us was sure, the road twisted and turned so. Nightfall found us pushing on bravely afoot, Symons glorying in the beautiful moonlight and "sensation" of being "at sea" on land, while I got pleasure out of Symons' romantic appreciation of a trip which reminded me very mundanely of other nocturnaltramps at home. Midnight stopped us at an inn. One of Symons' shoes was giving him trouble, and the romance of the adventure was growing a little dim. We were dusty, tired and, I suppose, suspicious-looking. The innkeeper hesitated before he would let us in, and we had to explain how simple and innocent we were. In the morning, having found our bearings to the extent that we learned we were headed toward the North Sea—we refused to listen to anything more minute than this—we went blithely on our way once more, happy in the consciousness that, for the moment we were care-free, and bound for "any old place" that took our fancy. But, alas! Symons' shoe got to annoying him again, and his spirits began to droop. By ten o'clock they were plainly at half-mast. His foot had become very painful, forcing him to sit down by the side of the road. The jolly adventurer of the night before and early morning had suddenly changed into an irascible literary man "on the road." He said nothing about art, sentences or vocables. He said nothing about anything but the pain in his foot was giving him. Blind travels into the countryside took on a different aspect. It was The Temple for Symons, and just as soon as a train could take him there. That fine indefiniteness of the evening in the moonlight—that joyous keeping in step withDie Ferne—the temptress into the Beyond—that dreamy, happy, careless chatting about the great city left behind—these things had vanished; our stroll to the North Sea or the North Pole, or wherever it was that we dreamed we might get to, was at an end. I haveseldom known innocent bucolic intentions—we thought ours were bucolic—dissipate into thin air so unconcernedly. But as Symons said about many of our trips together, "the best part of them comes when you look back over them in front of a good fire," and so he will probably smile and look pleasantly reminiscent when he comes across this reminder of our aimless jaunt into Essex.
I think he will also smile on reading my version of the Berlin-Havre expedition. He had spent a month with me in my home in Berlin, where, as usual, he dug all over the city for impressions and sensations—"impreshuns and sensashuns" was the way they were finally called in my household. When it came time for him to return to London, he decided to accompany my sister and me as far as Havre on our sail from Hamburg to New York. He had never been on an ocean liner, and thought that the new experience would recompense him for the "sensashuns" he failed to gather in Berlin. Besides, as we figured it out, he could get to London a little cheaper this way. We were all pretty poor at the time, and economy counted for a great deal in "sensation" researches. I was bound for America to see if I could not interest some publisher in printing articles and stories about tramps.
Down the Elbe from Hamburg, in fact all of the first day we were at sea, Symons thought he had seldom had a more enjoyable time. The sea was quiet, the weather was balmy, and there was a great deal to eat. The next morning the sea had kicked up somewhat. I foundSymons at breakfast time on deck, holding fast to a railing running around the smoking room. His face was wan and colorless, and he plainly showed that he had had his fill of "sensashuns" for the time being.
"Strange motion, isn't it?" he murmured, gripping the railing afresh. "Never fancied anything like this. I shall be glad to see Havre."
We made that port the following day. Symons was to ship from Havre to Southampton, after having a look at Havre. I learned that our boat was going to be delayed for twenty-four hours on account of repairs—she seemed to be repairing all the way to New York—and that all three of us could go ashore for a stroll. Symons' exchequer had, by this time, got perilously low—he had the price of his ticket to London and, perhaps, two francs over. All of us found some forgotten German coins of small denominations in our pockets, and proceeded to an exchange office. No transaction at the Bank of England ever seemed more important than did this one with the French money dealer. Symons was to be the beneficiary, and we higgled and haggled over the values of ourgroschenandsechseras if millions were at stake. In the end we managed to increase his holdings by two francs—that was all, and it was absolutely all that we could afford. Symons was so glad to be in the right mood forterra firmasensations again that the two francs looked like two hundred to him. At any rate he did not seem to care how large or small the sum was—he thanked the gods prodigiously that he was strong enough merely to walk.
We smuggled him on board for supper, and finally left him, as we thought, until we should again be in England, as our boat was to sail early the next morning, the repairs having been accelerated, so we were told. Symons was to spend the night and next day ashore, waiting for the Southampton boat. The next morning found our ship still tied up. We were free to go ashore again, and have another "last" meal in a restaurant. As we strolled up the main street, whom should we meet striding proudly down the thoroughfare but Symons, his brown gossamer sailing merrily after him.
"Fancy this!" he exclaimed on seeing us. "How jolly! But do you think your boat ever will get started again."
Then he told us of the wonderful impressionistic night he had spent.
"After bidding you good-by," he explained, "I strolled back to Frascati's. The moon was up, and I felt like strolling. When Frascati's closed I walked along the beach for a while—it was a perfect night for 'sensations.'
"At last I got sleepy. There was a bathing machine near-by, and I thought it would be a jolly adventure to spend the rest of the night in it. Besides, I wanted to economize.
"I don't know how long I had been dozing, but toward morning I was awakened by footfalls near-by. I peaked out. It was a guard—at least he looked like one. I crept out of the bathing machine and dodgedaround it conveniently until the man had passed. Then I went down on the beach, and later up to the convent or monastery on the hill. The sun was just creeping up over the horizon and there was a wonderful early morning hush over everything. I sat down and wrote some verses. Really, the impressionistic appeal was so overwhelming I could not help it. I've never had such a jolly night."
We breakfasted together, took one more short stroll and then separated again. Later, after seventeen days at sea, we learned that Symons had made London without further accident.
Another circle of friends during my British Museum days, which I found entertaining, was the "Bloomsbury Guards," as they call themselves. This company of men, or "cla-ass," is apparently organized to stay on earth permanently in Bloomsbury. Some of the members die off now and then, but that does not matter. The generous museum flings wide its doors and out come new recruits.
The late George Gissing had considerable to report about the gentlemen in question in his book, "New Grub Street." I have purposely never read his account of them, because I have preferred to keep them in mind as I knew them myself.
Imagine a pretty threadbare, stoop-shouldered, but generally clean individual, anywhere between forty and sixty. Think of him as sitting at a desk in the great reading room, books piled up in front of him, pen and paper at hand, and a very longing, thirsty look tightly fitted to his face like a plaster, or, still better, like an "Es ist erreicht" mustache regulator to help one look like Kaiser Wilhelm. Whisper in his ear: "Let's be off to 'The Plough.'" Watch the set countenance relax.
If you will do these things you will get acquainted with one of the Bloomsbury Guards.
I made their acquaintance at the tavern opposite the museum. Political economy absolutely refused to interest me at times, and every now and then I would drop in at "The Plough," or "The Tavern." The exclusive saloon bar was the recreative room of the Guards in both cases. It took me some time to find out why the saloon bar was exclusive, but eventually a young barrister took me aside and explained.
"Don't be na-asty," he cautioned. "It's merely a matter of cla-ass, you know. Really, you must understand."
I feigned enlightenment instanter, and have always had a "cla-ass" feeling in London, from that day to this. I make no doubt that the cabby who frequents the public bar has a "cla-ass" feeling just as important.
The Guards that I knew best were "Mengy," "Q," and the "Swordsman," as I insisted on calling him on account of his special knowledge in pig-sticking. (He told me that he had spent two solid weeks on this subject in order to write an authoritative review forThe Times.) These three men, "Mengy" in the middle as "Little Billie," would have taken the prize in a "Trilby" interpretation of side-street trios.
"Mengy" was a doctor of philosophy in general, and lecturer on mummies in particular. Germany gave him his start, and London his pause. Academically, he intended to be wise in Egyptology; humanely, simply one of the guards.
"Q"—good old "Q"—had a gentleman's instincts unsupported financially. He dreamed about music, wrote articles, reviews, and poems about it, hummed it and buzzed it, but "Q" was no musician. Like "Mengy," he had quite resigned himselfinwardlyto the post of a "Guard."
The "Swordsman" was a great, canny Scot. But he had cannied and caddied in the wrong way, pecuniarily. Fifty odd years of "sax-pence" had slipped by him, and he had nary a one to show. But what a mine of useless facts he had got together over in the Reading Room! What a peripatetic gossiper about trifles he had become!
When these three men got together, and a liquidating friend was along, the "Tavern" or "Plough," as the case might be, became the scene of as doughty passages at arms at the bar as Bloomsbury has ever known. As guards of their beverages they were matchless, while, as "Pub" hunters, it is to be questioned whether Bloomsbury, until the Guards came to earth, ever knew how many public houses she had. Perhaps "Q" was the most inveterate explorer. When "Q" got a pound or two for a review, he slicked up in his finest manner and went forth alone to seek and find. Somehow the "Plough" and the "Tavern" did not appeal to him when he was in funds. But he would give you his shirt if you happened upon him in some new "Pub" which he had located, and was trying to impress with his spirit. Then was "Q" indeed in his glory. His high hat never had such a luster as on such occasions.
"Why, my dear fellow," he would say, "how fortunate to meet you here! What is it to be?"
Perhaps you wanted 'bus fare to Hampstead.
"Most assuredly. Have something to warm you up for the ride."
The other Guards did not like "Q's" running off when he felt flush—"Mengy," in particular; but "Mengy" ought to be very grateful to "Q." When "Mengy" got permission to lecture on mummies at the museum and sent out learned circulars about his accomplishments as an Egyptologist, who was it, "Mengy," that made up your audience at your first lecture? None other than poor, old, wayward "Q." If he hadn't exercised compassion, you would have had no hearers at all.
He paid, too, "Mengy."
In a way, "Mengy" was a whining man. One day, there had been too much tavern and too little museum, and "Mengy" was under the weather. I shall never forget the picture he made, as he lounged back in his chair after the last drink. His two soiled long coats enveloped his slender form like blankets around a lamp-post, and there was a forlorn, half-academic, half-nauseated look in his pale face that can often be seen at sea. His disgruntledness made him melancholy. Standing up during a pause in the conversation, he gathered the skirts of his coats about him, readjusted his shabby hat, and sobbed, as if his heart had been torn out of him, "Nobody likes 'Mengy'—Nobody!" Then, with tears tracing the grimaces in his face, hemade for the museum to clean up his desk, and go home to his corpulent wife. She was the bread-winner in "Mengy's" outfit.
There is a story to the effect that "Q" at one time contemplated marriage and some one to look out for him. They say that he spruced up, and finally located a young lady of means. She was not unfriendly to his advances, and it looked like a match. But "Q" could not keep away from the comfortable quarters in the museum and the conferences at the "Tavern." The fair maid found this out, and went away to Edinburgh to think things over. One day, "Q" was in sore need of ten shillings. He could think of no one who would be so glad to let him have it as the fair one. He squandered sixpence on a telegram describing his distress. "If women but knew!" I have heard women sigh. Well, "Q's" girl knew. She wrote back by post: "Dear Q.—A shilling you will probably need for the evening; please find same enclosed. Yours, Janet." "Q" tells this story on himself to explain his continued singleness of purpose.
The Guards could not be referred to here without reference to "Bosky," although I never knew him as well as I did "Q" and "Mengy." "Bosky" probably had the greatest reputation of all as a learned man and writer. His writings on ancient men and things appear in our magazines at times. He once got me very much interested in what he knew about the art of burglary in Pharaoh's time, and I have often wondered why he did not write the article he had in mind. But, withall his knowledge of dead nations and languages, "Bosky" enjoyed his "Tavern" sittings quite as much as did "Q" and "Mengy." The last time I saw him I asked him to write me something in Chaldaic. He handed me some hieroglyphics on an envelope. "Meaning?" I said. "Bosky" smiled benevolently, and said: "I want a long drink from the Far West."
He then told me how a sixpence had disturbed his sleep the night before. He had got home late, he said, after a "Tavern" sitting, but he was sure on going to bed that he had managed to save the sixpence for his morning meal.
"My wife's right artful," he explained, "so I tucked the coin under the rug. I had a dream that I'd forgotten where I had hidden it, and from three o'clock on I couldn't sleep. I knew where it was afterwards all right, but I was afraid my wife might dream that she knew, too. Married life has its troubles, I can tell you."
As the years have gone by I have tried, whenever I have been in London, to look up the Guards that I knew during my first visit, as well as to make acquaintance with the new members. On one of my later visits a young English journalist accompanied me to the "Tavern." I told him what interesting times I had had there, and pointed out to him some of the men I knew.
"They're hacks, you know," he whispered. "Penny-a-liners. Gissing did them in 'New Grub Street.'" The young man liked neither his old companions nor the place, but he did not hesitate to borrow ten bob that he can hand back, if he wishes to, at his earliest convenience.
Call the Guards hacks, penny-a-liners or what you will; as a friend of mine once said about them, they know how to spell the word gentleman, anyhow, and that is more than many do who poke fun at them. They helped to make my first visit to London incomparably amusing at times, and for this I cannot help feeling grateful.
I have spoken of Arthur Symons' interest in my first efforts to describe tramp life. I think it was he and the magazine editors who abetted me in my scribblings, rather than the university and its doctrines of "Inquiral research," who are to blame for all tramp trips made by me in Europe. Of course, the inevitableWanderlustwas probably behind them to some extent, but all of them were undertaken with articles, and probably a book, as the ultimate object in view.
This can hardly be said of the earlier wanderings at home, and yet when eventually writing about them, they have interested me more than the tramps abroad. My vagabond days in foreign parts have received pretty much their just due in other books of mine and my wish here is more to explain what effect they had upon me as a student, and in leading on to other work here at home, than totellwhat befell me on the highways. There are a few episodes and anecdotes, however, that were overlooked when making my reports from the field which may not be out of place now.
The most entertaining experience I had in Great Britain during the three weeks or so that I tramped there in 1893, concerns a well meaning professor in Edinburgh. My companion in this venture is now also a professor at one of our universities; at the time he was a fellow-student of mine in Berlin.
One of our "stops" in the itinerary planned by me was Edinburgh. We were to land at Leith from New Castle, anyhow, so why not see Edinburgh, whether we were real tramps or not?
A local professor, a friend of my family, a guest in my Berlin home at one time, was a man who believed greatly in religious things, and I guess tried to act according to his beliefs. He was noted also for his interest in the students. My friend and I thought it might be interesting to see how far the old gentleman's benevolence stretched when it came to giving charity to an American student in distress. A boyish curiosity, no doubt, but I have found in later life that such curiosity is worth while in a number of ways—when it comes to quizzing "public-spirited men," for instance, as to how far they will go into their pockets to finance investigations and prosecutions in municipal affairs.
With my friend the question was, "What story shall I tell?" I could not undertake the adventure because the professor would have recognized me. We rummaged over my basket of "ghost stories," and finally determined that the best thing was the truth with a slight change in names.
So while I waited in a coffee house near a railway station, my friend went up to the fashionable house in Queen Street with a tale of woe about being stranded in Scotland, and needing the price of a railway ticket to Glasgow that he might again get in touch with friends. Not much of a story, but quite enough for my companion—a man who had never before in his life been on tramp, and whose whole bearing was as near that of a non-sinning person as can be imagined.
He could not even use a strong expletive with a sincere ring. His face and general innocent air piecedout this linguistic purity. He was just the man I thought to test the professor's charity. I had waited in the coffee house over half an hour when my tall friend loomed up in the distance. Pretty soon he held up five fingers, and I could see that he was chuckling. "Well, fivepence, anyhow," I thought. "He might not have done any better at home—the way he's dressed." In a minute he was upon me gasping "Five bob—five bob."
I asked him for details, and he told me how he had been met at the door by a "buttons," who ushered him into the professor's study, where the "ghost story" was told and listened to. "Finally," concluded my friend, "the old gentleman reached down into his jeans and handed me the five shillings, saying, 'Well, my good man, I sincerely trust that this money will not find its way into the next public house.'"
I laughed prodigiously. "The idea," I exclaimed, "of a medical man picking you out as a person likely to go near a public house."
The next day I did not laugh so much. My people in Berlin had written the good professor that my friend and I were on a trip in Scotland and might call on him. He divined that I was getting my mail at the general post office and wrote me this note:
"Dear Friend—Your friend called here yesterday and I did not realize who he was. Had I known I would not have been so hard on him. Come and see us."
"Dear Friend—Your friend called here yesterday and I did not realize who he was. Had I known I would not have been so hard on him. Come and see us."
How tramps in general leave Edinburgh on a hurry-upcall I cannot say, but after that note had been read two student tramps "hiked" out of that city double-quick. I took the Linlithgow road and my friend another—both, however, leading to the general post office in Glasgow, in front of which we agreed to meet thirty-six hours later. The five shillings were most punctiliously returned from this point, which also we left soon. The way that Edinburgh professor connected things was too Scotch for us.
Two experiences in Germany stand out very distinctly in my recollections of my tramp life there. The first occurred in Berlin, where, although I was officially still a student in the university, I had taken a vacation and secluded myself in theArbeiter Colonie, on the outskirts of the city near Tegel, Humboldt's old home. There are two workingmen's colonies in Berlin, one in the city proper, the other at Tegel. I chose residence in the Tegel resort because the superintendent of the city colony was afraid that some of the colonists there might have recognized me during my various visits to the place, and would know me when I applied for admission as an out-of-work.
My purpose in becoming a colonist was to learn from personal observation what good theArbeiter Colonienwere accomplishing for bona fide out-of-works, and also as corrective institutions for vagrants. All told, there are not over fifty of these places in Germany. Their aim is to furnish temporary shelter to the worthy unemployed men who apply for admission and are willing to remain a month under the strict régime. The colonists work at such industries as the different coloniestake up, and receive about eighteen cents a day for their labor. Each colony keeps in close touch with the labor market, and tries to secure outside positions for the inmates as far as possible. In winter, of course, they are much more heavily patronized than in summer, but they are open the year round. I think they do good in so far as they winnow the willing from the unwilling, the genuine worker from the tramp. They also help an honest man over temporary difficulties, which, without the assistance of the colonies, might make him a vagabond. But I hardly think they are necessary in the United States, except possibly as places where the professionally unemployed could be made to support themselves.
My work in the Tegel colony was a strange one indeed for such a place—sewing together straw coverings for champagne bottles. For about eight hours out of the twenty-four I had to tread the machine, and divide the straw for the needle. I hope somebody got the benefit of the champagne we colonists were merely permitted to dream about.
The daily routine was about as follows: All hands up, and beds made at 5:30 in the morning, breakfast at six, prayers at half-past six, and work at seven. After two hours there was the inevitable second breakfast—one of the silliest time-consumers in German industrial life. At twelve there was dinner, at six supper, at eight prayers again, and by nine all lights had to be out.
One day, with two companions, I was sent on a unique errand—unique for me at least, in spite of all myformer varied activities and employments. We were ordered to wheel a hogshead of swill into Berlin—or perhaps it was grease. Whatever it was, it had to be delivered in the Chaussee-Strasse, and we were the chosen cart horses. The big barrel was put on a four-wheeled hand wagon, such as one sees so often in Berlin drawn by dogs—sometimes women—and away we started for town, my German companions teasing me (an American, so, of course, a millionaire!) about having to push a swill cart in Germany. I retaliated by doing just as little pushing as possible. I suppose it would have amused my friends in the city to have surprised me at this task, but fortunately our journey did not take us into their part of town. I have never had quite the same feeling of humility as that which possessed me during this experience. Indeed it preyed on my mind so that I soon arranged to have word sent to the colony that work awaited me outside, and that I should be released. I was given an honorable discharge as champagne protector and defender of that which makes soap.
The other occurrence deals with the German police. It is worth telling, if only to show how painfully stupid some of Germany's policemen can be.
Before starting out on the trip which brought me in contact with the police, I received from the late William Walter Phelps, our Minister to Germany at the time, a second passport, not wanting to take the other one away from the university. I expected to return to my lectures the next semester, and to take away my passport would later have involved re-matriculation, or other formalitiesworth while avoiding. Mr. Phelps very kindly entered into my plan, gave me another passport, and told me to let him know if I got into trouble at any time. A former tramp trip had taken me pretty well over North Germany, so I determined to explore the southern provinces on the second journey. I was out for six weeks, getting as far south as Strassburg. In Marburg, the old university town, where I learned that tramps could earn fiftypfennigsan hour, when the professors of physiology wanted to have human specimens for their illustrations, I had my tiff with the omnipotent police. With several other roadsters I went about nightfall to aHerberge, or lodging house, where supper and bed can be found at very reasonable prices. Soon after supper, while we were all sitting together chatting in the general dining and waiting room, aSchutzmanncame in. His appearance did not in the least disconcert me, because I knew that my passport was in order, and had been through the pass-inspection ordeal on a number of previous occasions. In fact, I was a little forward in getting my pass into his hands, feeling proud of its menacing size. "That'll fetch him," I said to myself. "I wonder what will be made out of it this time." The pompous official took the sheet of paper, "star-gazed" at it fully three minutes by the clock, and then in a surprisingly mild voice said to me: "Sie sind ein Oesterreicher, nicht wahr?" (You are an Austrian, I take it.) I declared boldly enough that I was an American, as my pass proved. Some more "star-gazing" on the part of the policeman—then, as if he would explode unless he gave vent to his vulgar officiousness,and throwing the passport in my face, he bellowed: "American! American! Well, you go double-quick to your consul in Frankfort, and get a German pass. That big thing won't go," and away he stalked as if he were the whole German army bundled into one uniform. When he had left, the otherKundengathered about me and told me not to mind the "old fool." But all that night I could not get over the feeling that the man had spat upon my flag. I suppose, however, that the poor ignoramus was simply ruffled because he had shown to theHerbergethat he did not know the difference between an Austrian and an American pass, and did not mean any real insult.
Perhaps the pleasantest break in my university studies came in the summer of 1894, when I went to Switzerland, and, later in the year, to Italy. My writings had begun to bring me in a small income by this time, and I had learned how to make a dollar do valiant service when it came to paying traveling expenses.
My companion in Switzerland was a fellow-student at the university. I understand he is now spending his days and nights trying to write a new history of Rome. We did the usual things on our trip together, some things that were unusual, and we saw, on comparatively little money, the greater part of Switzerland. We also climbed a mountain; and thereby hangs a tale.
Both of us had been diligently reading Mark Twain's "A Tramp Abroad"—particularly the chapters on Switzerland. Eventually we got into the Rhone Valley, and at Visp, or rather at St. Nicholas, midway between Visp and Zermatt, we stumbled upon our ideal of a mountain guide, or, rather, on the ideal that the "Tramp Abroad" book had conjured up for us. We had seen other guides before, dozens of them, but there was somethingin the "altogether" about the St. Nicholas discovery that captured us completely. We drew the guide into conversation. Yes, he knew of a mountain at Zermatt that we could climb.
"Roped together?" said the present historian of Rome. Somehow, unless we could be attached to a rope and dangle over precipices, the ascent presented no great charms. Yes, we could even be roped together, could march in single file, spend hours in the snow, and have a wonderfulaussicht.
"And the price?" A sudden return of everyday sense prompted me to ask. By this time our funds were getting pretty low, and neither one of us was sure when his next remittance would arrive. My friend's, by the way, never did arrive when we most needed it.
The guide told us the prices for the Matterhorn and the other "horns" in and about Zermatt.
"Three hundred francs to go up the Matterhorn!" the historian gasped. "Why, we haven't over a hundred in the outfit."
"Ah, but the Breithorn!" the guide went on, readjusting his coil of rope and ax, as if he knew that it was these very things that were tempting us and leading us into bankruptcy. Never before or since have ropes and axes possessed such fascinating qualities as they did that day. The guide told us that the Breithorn was ours for thirty francs—"Sehr billig, sehr billig," he added. The historian and I took stock of our resources. We finally concluded that, if the hotel bill at Zermatt didn't exhaust our means, we could just barely hire the guide, climbthe mountain, pay railroad fare back to Brieg, and have a few francs left over for incidentals until fresh funds arrived. We knew a hotel man in Brieg who would trust us—at least we thought he would—and the main thing just then was going up the Breithorn. At a pinch we knew that we could go "on tramp," or rather I did. The historian just guessed that he could.
We stopped by the wayside to rest and think. Foolishly, I pulled the "Tramp Abroad" book out of my pocket by way of reference. I wanted to make sure that our guide was the real thing,a la"A Tramp Abroad." Then I glanced at his rope and ax. That decided the matter for me.
"Up the Breithorn we go," I cried, and the guide was formally engaged.
In ascending this mountain from Zermatt the average traveler, I believe, stops over night at the Theodule Pass, continuing the journey early in the morning. Our guide, for some foolish reason, decided that we were not average travelers, that it would be a mere bagatelle for us to sleep in Zermatt until early morning, and then do the whole thing in one gasp. My clothes—a light summer outfit from head to feet—were about as suitable for such an adventure as for the North Pole. The historian was a little more warmly clad, but not much. However, perhaps we should never pass that way again, as Heine sighs in his "Harzreise," and then—what regrets we might suffer! The time came when, for a moment, we regretted that we had ever passed that way at all—but I anticipate.
At three o'clock in the morning we got away, the guide carrying ropes, ax and lunch. At five or thereabouts we reached the pass. Thus far everything was delightful—landscape, atmosphere, temperament and intentions. The view that morning from the Theodule Pass, over the glacier below, was the most wonderful I have ever enjoyed. The clouds were tossing about over the glacier like stormy waves at sea, and the morning sun threw over the scene a most beautiful medley of colors. At our right was the Matterhorn, but that represented three hundred francs, and inspired covetousness. Pretty soon we were off again, and when we struck the snow my delight was climaxed. We were roped together! Never before or since in my life have I felt the sense of personal responsibility in such an exalted degree. I thought of the historian, and what I should do if he tumbled into a crevice. I even pictured myself hauling the stalwart guide out of a hole. These thrilling notions of possible valor did not last long, however. In an hour my light summer shoes were wet through, my face had begun to burn, my hands had got cold, and the top of the world looked all awry. "Get your money's worth," the historian encouraged me, and I plodded on to the top. There we stood, and were supposed to enjoy life. My feet ached, and I said "d——." An Englishman, brother of a well-known novelist, whom I took to be a clergyman, said, "Tut, tut!" I repeated my expression, and he and his party crossed over to the Little Breithorn, to be alone. I said a number of other things before the day was over, but we managed to get back toZermatt without interference. As we paid the guide off before going into the village, I asked him whether he would not like to have us write a recommendation for him in his book. He smiled. "Oh, I can go up that hill backwards," he said, "but I am much obliged." This is the way he left us: bankrupt practically, wet, tired, and with the humiliating inference that had we been real sportsmen we could have climbed the "Breithorn" heels foremost. I have never read "A Tramp Abroad" since that experience.
Of our impoverished condition on reaching Breig there is little to say except that it was whole-hearted and genuine. We could hardly have had over two francs between us. The hotel man insisted that we were honest, however, and would pay him when we could. So for ten days we settled down upon him to wonder why we had ever attempted the "Breithorn." There was a stone wall, or abutment, near the town, about sixty feet high. Climbing it was like going up a New England stone fence to the same height—there was not a particle of difference. If one lost his footing, there was nothing to do but fall to the bottom and think things over. A fall from near the top, which nearly happened to me, could only have stopped all things, because there was nothing but bowlders to light on.
For two hours, every day of our stay in Brieg, we fools risked our limbs and necks in finding new ways to climb the wall. Perhaps the Matterhorn presents more difficult problems in climbing to solve than those of our wall, but I doubt it. At any rate, I should want tobe paid, and notpay, three hundred francs before I would attempt either wall or mountain to-day.
The journey into Italy was made alone. One bright afternoon in October, I left Poschiavo, in the Italian Engadine, where I had spent several weeks in calm retreat, writing, studying Italian, and climbing mountains, by eyesight, and made off for Venice. I had, perhaps, sixty dollars in my pocket, a sum quite sufficient, in those days, to have emboldened me to tackle Africa, had it seemed the next thing to do. Italy was nearest to hand just then, and I wanted to experiment with my Italian on the Venetians. Learning German had given me a healthy appetite for other languages, and I had dreams of becoming a polyglot in course of time. I also had a notion that I could learn to write better in a warm climate. Berlin seemed to warp my vocabulary when I felt moved to write, and I persuaded myself that words would come more readily in a sunny clime.
A genuine seizure ofWanderlustwas probably the predominant motive in the southern venture, but I was determined that it should be attended with good resolutions. Indeed, at this time, I was so far master ofDie Fernethat, although temptations to wander were numerous enough, I was able to beat them off unless the wandering promised something useful in return, either in study or money-making.
Besides the intention to scribble and learn the language, I furthermore contemplated a course of study with Lombroso at Turin. My collateral reading at the University of Berlin had got me deeply interested incriminology, and Lombroso's writings, of course, had been included. From the very beginning I disagreed with his main thesis, and I do yet, as far as professional crime is concerned. However, I thought it would be valuable to come in contact with such a man, and I expected to learn much from his experimental apparatus. This plan fell through in the end. I found there was quite enough criminology for my purposes in watching the Italian people in the open, and I invented some apparatus of my own for experimentation, which, under the circumstances, probably revealed as much to me as would have that of Lombroso. Nevertheless, I regret now that I did not make the professor's acquaintance, for, say what one will, of the men that I know about he has done the most in recent times to awaken at least scientific interest in crime as a social disorder.
My first ride down the Grand Canal in Venice, from the railway station to the Riva, was my initial introduction to the Venetian wonderland. As a boy, I had read my "Arabian Nights" and had had, I suppose, dreams of Oriental things, but on no occasion that I can recall had anything Eastern ever taken hold of me sufficiently to inveigle me into a trip outside of my own country. That was wonderful enough for me then, and it becomes more wonderful to me every day that I grow older.
But that first ride in Venice! As the gondola bore me down the canal to the Riva where my lodgings had been secured in advance, it seemed to me as if I were gliding into a new world, a world, indeed, that hardly belongedto our world at all. The mere strangeness of things did not impress me so much as their soft and gentle outlines. I thought then of the city, as I do still, more as a lovely, breathing creature, truly as a bride of the Adriatic, than as a dwelling place of man. I walked from my lodgings to the Piazza. As I turned into the Piazzetta, and the glory of that wonderful square flashed upon me in the glow of the bright afternoon sun, I came suddenly to a halt. Such moments mean different things to different men. I remember now what passed through my mind, as if it were yesterday: