THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD.
The Master of the Horse receives two thousand five hundred pounds, the Master of the Buck-hounds one thousand sevenhundred pounds, Hereditary Grand Falconer one thousand two hundred pounds, (by the way kings don’t falcon any more), then there are eight Equerries in Ordinary at seven hundred pounds each, which is certainly cheap; five Pages of Honor at one hundred and twenty pounds each, and a Master of the Tennis Court, which is a sort of a ten pins, I suppose, at one hundred and thirty-two pounds.
These, understand, are only a few of the people belonging to the Royal household. There are over a thousand persons, male and female, attached thereto, all receiving magnificent salaries, for real or imaginary services to Her Majesty.
INHABITANTS OF A BOG VILLAGE.
INHABITANTS OF A BOG VILLAGE.
INHABITANTS OF A BOG VILLAGE.
The Queen receives, exclusive of the vast income of her estates, for the running of her household and pensions for the dead-beats who get too old to show themselves, the enormous sum of four hundred and seven thousand pounds, or, in American money, two million thirty-five thousand dollars per annum! And this represents but a portion of the swindle, as constantly allowances are being made and annuities granted which do not show upon paper, and can only be reached by the most ferret-like acuteness and perseverance.
Ninety per cent. of all this mummery, for which the people of England have to pay in good hard cash, is the most absurd and utter nonsense. Like falconry and all that business, it has gone out of date. In the old times kings kept buck-houndsand flew falcons, and such offices were necessary, that is, if kings were ever necessary, which I deny, but it has all gone, never to return. But the offices remain—and the salaries. They are kept up to make places for illegitimate children of lords, for poor relations of royalty and nobility, and for favorites whose fathers or themselves have done dirty work for the government.
In the name of all that’s good, what does the Queen of England want of eight ladies of the bed-chamber, and thirteen women of the bed-chamber? Can’t she unhook her dress and corset, untie the fastenings of her skirts, peel off her clothes, draw on her woolen night-cap over her foolish old head, and turn in the same as other women? What does she want of all these people about her? I can understand that it would take that number and more to make the ancient nuisance presentable in the morning, but why tax the people of Great Britain forty-four thousand pounds a year for this service?
And then when it is taken into account that the entire royal family have each all this humbuggery, to a less extent, it can be figured up what a very expensive thing royalty is, and how wise the American people were to bundle the whole business off the continent at the time they did.
One thousand people at salaries ranging from one hundred to ten thousand dollars a year, to take care of one rickety old woman, who is mortal the same as is the humblest of those ground into the dust by her and hers, and who has no more title to the place she occupies than a thief has to your watch.
THE PALACE AND THE WORKHOUSE.
Ireland swarms with soldiers, and, for that matter, every nook and corner of the British Empire is scarlet with military. Royalty and nobility, having no reason for existence, have to be maintained by brute force. Royalty and nobility do not pay for this expenditure; a subjugated people pay for their own debasement. To every pound of the expenditure in the British Empire, sixteen shillings four and one-eighth pence go to the war debt and the support of the army, leaving three shillings seven and seven-eighth pence for all other purposes whatsoever. Military power is the basis of despotism everywhere. Germany groans under it; Russia sweats under it; and wherever a king is tolerated you will find bayonets andartillery in most uncomfortable plenty. Some day, let it be hoped, the kings and nobles will experience the delight of looking down the muzzles of these arms themselves.
Up to the time of the disestablishment of the Irish Church, the Irish were compelled to support the archbishops and bishops of a church whose religion is as foreign to them as Buddhism, paying therefor the sum of one hundred and two thousand eight hundred and twenty-five pounds per annum, and to other attaches, for curacies and all that business, a vast amount more. This immense amount of money was a tax yearly upon a starved and overworked people, to keep in luxurious idleness a parcel of drones whose only functions in life were to eat, sleep and hunt; who were of no earthly use to the people who supported them, either in a temporal or a spiritual way. There is one English church at Glengariff, in a parish in which there are only six Protestants, the rector, his wife, two children, and two servants. The rector has as fine a house as there is in the country-side, the cost of which and its support is a burden on a people struggling for their daily bread.
Pauperism is a certain consequence of royalty and nobility. The Queen of England cannot have one thousand men and women about her person under pay without taking bread from the mouths of many people, and the luxury of a noble must find an echo in the other extreme, the workhouse.
The number of adult paupers in England and Wales in 1880, exclusive of vagrants, was seven hundred and eleven thousand seven hundred and twelve and the cost to the labor of the country to relieve them footed up eight millions eight hundred and nineteen thousand six hundred and seventy-eight pounds.
This does not include Ireland and Scotland, but England, the most prosperous part of the British Empire. The English writers on political economy ascribe this appalling pauperism to every cause but the right one. Wipe out royalty, nobility, and landlordism, and give the people a chance to earn their bread, and this army would be reduced to almost nothing.
Crime goes on hand in hand with pauperism. In 1879 the United Kingdom had the enormous number of one million four hundred and ninety thousand four hundred and thirty-nine committals for crime. This does not include the cases ofdrunkenness or kindred offences which come before magistrates and are summarily disposed of.
DUBLIN.
DUBLIN.
DUBLIN.
HOW THE NOBILITY ARE EMPLOYED.
The principal business of the aristocracy of England is to make places for themselves and their sons and nephews. Nomatter how large the plunder of the tenantry, the landed aristocracy must have government employment for their surplus children, for they cannot all stay on the acres originally stolen from the people. And so British arms conquer other lands, or British diplomacy, which is a lie backed by a man-of-war, “acquires” it, and immediately a full staff of officials is sent out, all under magnificent salaries, to stay just long enough to be retired upon a fat pension. If possible, the expense of governing the “acquired” possession is squeezed out of the unfortunate natives; if not, the home government makes up the deficiency.
Cyprus, an island made almost barren by years of Turkish misrule and oppression, is now in the hands of the English, with a commander-in-chief at fifteen thousand pounds a year, and a complete staff, the cost of which is not less than seventy thousand pounds per annum, to say nothing about the armament necessary to be kept there.
The island of Maritius, a speck in the Indian Ocean, thirty-six miles long and twenty miles broad, furnishes sinecures for the scions of English nobility to the tune of eleven thousand six hundred pounds per year, and three little islands off the Malayan Peninsula are governed by a parcel of “Sirs” and “Hons.” at an annual cost of twenty-one thousand two hundred and ten pounds.
These are only samples. England has such harbors of refuge for her surplus nobility everywhere, and the cost of supporting these locusts is a crushing tax upon the labor of the country. The items of pauperism and crime are easily accounted for.
Some of her stolen dependencies, however, are made to pay very well. The total receipts from British India for the year 1879, (customs, taxes, etc.), were sixty-five million one hundred and ninety-nine thousand six hundred and sixty-two pounds, while the expenditures for the same year were sixty-three million one hundred and sixty-five thousand three hundred and fifty-six pounds. India is so worked as to support a vast army of officials and leave a balance of two million pounds for profit besides. But the real profit is much larger. The manufacturers and merchants of England compel the down-trodden natives to buy their goods at their own prices, and a never failingstream of wealth flows from India to England. India was a successful piece of brigandage, and has always paid very well.
Other steals have been successful—in fact they all have been. These younger sons, legitimate and illegitimate, have to be supported some how, by the labor of the country, and to transfer even a portion of their cost to the people of other countries is a saving of just that much from the people at home. But where is the necessity of supporting them at all? What necessity is there for their existence?
The peers of the realm number four hundred and eighty-seven, and of this number four hundred and two own, or at least get rent for, fourteen million one hundred and twenty-nine thousand nine hundred and thirty-one acres of land, which bring them a rental annually of eleven million six hundred and seventy-nine thousand eight hundred and thirty-nine pounds. In addition to this enormous income the most of them have appointments of various kinds, all of which make the position of peer a very comfortable one.
They have a very pleasant life of it. They all have a castle on their estates in the country, and in the season guests made up of the same class, with a few poets, novelists and painters to supply the intellect and make variety, indulge in all sorts of festivities, and in town, in the season, their houses are constantly filled, at no matter what expense. Then they each have a membership in all the clubs, and between their country houses, and their town houses, and their clubs, they take pleasure and cultivate gout till death, which has no more respect for them than it has for their oppressed tenants, takes them to a place where there is no difference between a duke and a laborer.
MY LORD.
Gout, by the way, is the fashionable English disease, and a nobleman or a squire of an old family would rather have it than not. It is a sort of mark of gentility, about as essential to his position as his family tree, and no matter how they suffer under it, they bear it with fortitude as one of the evils incident to their rank—an evil that emphasizes their dignity. When Dickens sent Sir Leicester Deadlock into the next worldviathe family gout, he did not satirize at all. The starved Irish never have the gout, nor do the working people who clamor for some measure of right. The Jack Cades neverwere so afflicted; only your noble, who toils not, neither does he spin, who goes to bed every night full of every flesh that exists, every wine that is pressed, to say nothing of more potent beverages. It is an accompaniment of “gentle birth,” and very liberal living—living so liberal as to be only possible by those who have other people’s unrequited labor to live upon.
An Englishman dearly loves a lord. There is a cringing servility, a hat-off reverence for noble birth, in England, that to an American is about the most disgusting thing he sees. My Lord may be a thin-haired, weak-legged, half-witted being, capable of nothing under heaven but billiards and horses, loaded to the guards with vices, and only not possessing all of them because of his lack of ability to master them. He may be the most infernal cumberer of the earth in existence, but if he is of noble birth, if he has the proper handle to his name, he is bowed to, deferred to in every possible way. A London tradesman had rather be swindled by a nobleman than paid honestly by a common man, and for one to have permission to put over his door, “Plumber (for instance) to His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales,” is to put him in the seventh heaven of ecstacy. The farm population of England show outward deference, but they don’t feel it, and the Irish have so intimate an acquaintance with them that they refuse even lip service and ignore the “hat-off” requirement altogether. This lack of respect for the nobility in Ireland is considered one of the most alarming signs of the times.
I saw a sample of this bowing to royalty, in Scotland. I happened to be doing Holyrood Castle at the same time His Majesty Kalakeau, King of the Sandwich Islands, was in Edinburgh. Now King K. may be a very good man, but in appearance he is an ordinary looking man of half negro blood, and not a very remarkable mulatto at that. Our Fred Douglas would cut up into a thousand of him.
He is a sort of a two-for-a-penny king; but he is a king for all that, and so all the dignitaries of Edinburgh, the mayor, the principal citizens, a duke or two, and a half dozen right honorables showed him the city, and escorted him, and lunched him, and banquetted him. They brought him to Holyrood, and the entire lot of them formed in two ranks, and, with hatsin hand, bowed reverently as this king of a few thousand breechless, semi-civilized savages, passed to his carriage. And they glared ferociously upon the few Americans who, not justau faitin such matters, and not knowing precisely who the distinguished colored man was, stood with their hats on their heads, inasmuch as it was raining. Had it been the King of the Fijis, and had it been raining hot pitchforks, these snobs would have stood with uncovered and bowed heads, simply because he was a king. To these people, “there is a divinity which doth hedge a king,” no matter what kind of a king it is. They do the same thing for that venerable old stupidity, Victoria Guelph, precisely as they did it for that amiable imbecility, Albert, her husband, and are doing it every day for those embryo locusts, their children. Burns wrote:—
“Rank is but the guinea’s stamp,A man’s a man for a’ that.”
“Rank is but the guinea’s stamp,A man’s a man for a’ that.”
“Rank is but the guinea’s stamp,A man’s a man for a’ that.”
THEY GLARED FEROCIOUSLY UPON THE AMERICANS.
THEY GLARED FEROCIOUSLY UPON THE AMERICANS.
THEY GLARED FEROCIOUSLY UPON THE AMERICANS.
LIVING IN IRELAND.
But this class of Scotch have forgotten Burns. Possibly they never understood him. But Burns was wrong. Kalakeaumay be a man, but the snobs who toadied to him so meekly, are not, and never can be.
“Look upon that picture, and then upon this!” I have shown how the English oppressor lives. Let us go, by actual figures, taken from official sources, for a few actual facts as to the Irish tenant. The Parish of Glencolumbkille, in County Donegal, is a fair sample of the west coast. In this parish there are eight hundred families. In the famine of 1880, seven hundred of these families were on the relief list, and on to the end of the famine (if famine may be said to ever end in Ireland), four hundred families had absolutely nothing but what the relief committees gave them.
The committees were able to give each of these families per head per week seven pounds of Indian meal, costing five pence farthing, up to about five dollars and fifty cents per year.
These people all said that if they got half as much more, ten and one-half pounds, it would be as much as they would use in times of plenty.
Your pencil and figures will show you that this would be equivalent in good years, to an expenditure per head for food for every individual, of one pound thirteen shillings and sixpence a year, or for the average family of say four and one-half, seven pounds thirteen shillings and sixpence per year.
This is the cost of food for the average family per year when the times are good.
When potatoes are cheaper than Indian meal potatoes are eaten, but one or the other constitutes the sole food of the people. As the cost is always about the same, the figures are not changed in either case.
To this you want to add about three pounds a year for “luxuries.” Luxury in an Irish cabin means an ounce of tobacco a week for the man of the house, and the remainder of the three pounds goes for tea. I admit this is an extravagance, this tobacco and tea, and I doubt not that a commission will be appointed by Parliament to devise ways and means to extinguish the dudheen of the man and abolish the teapot of the woman. This three pounds a year, thus squandered, would enable the landlords to have a great many more comforts than they now enjoy. I presume the Earl of Cork could buildanother yacht on what his tenantry squander in tea and tobacco.
Add to this one pound for clothing (an extravagant estimate) for each member of the family, and you have the entire cost of the existence of the Donegal family, twelve pounds three shillings six and three-quarters pence, or, in American money, fifty-seven dollars and sixty-one cents!
The clothing provided by this pound a year means for the man of the house a pair of brogans, which he must have to work at all, a couple of shirts, a pair of corduroy trowsers, and a second-hand coat of some kind. The women and children wear no shoes or stockings, and their clothing I have described before. Of bed-clothing they have nothing to speak of. A few potato sacks, or gunny bags, or anything else that contributes anything of warmth, makes up that item.
The Queen and the Princess of Wales sleep on down and under silk, and the Queen has one thousand people about her person. My Lord has his yacht in the harbor, and the humblest seaman on board sleeps under woolen and has meat three times a day.
Some day there will be a Board of Equalization from whose decision there will be no appeal. Then I would rather be the Donegal peasant’s wife than the Queen. Despite the fact that she sent one hundred pounds to the starving Irish, she won’t need silken covering to keep her warm.
To pay the rent and provide this fifty-eight dollars for food and clothing consumes the entire time of every member of the household. The land will not pay it—it is impossible to get it off the soil. So the man of the house plants his crops and leaves them for the women and children to care for, and he goes off to England or Wales, and works in mines, or in harvest fields in the season, or at anything to make some little money to fill the insatiable maw of the landlord, and to keep absolute starvation from the house.
Then the boy in America sends his stipend, which helps—provided his remittances can be kept from the lynx-eyed agent, who would raise the rent in a minute if he knew that remittances were coming.
WOMEN’S WORK.
But the work of caring for the crops is not all the women
BOG VILLAGE, COUNTY ROSCOMMON.
BOG VILLAGE, COUNTY ROSCOMMON.
BOG VILLAGE, COUNTY ROSCOMMON.
and children do. They knit and sew, every minute of the spare time they have from field work, making thereby from two to three cents a day. This knitting is done for dealers who furnish the material and pay for the work, and to get thematerial journeys of twenty to forty miles, and the same distance back again to deliver the finished work, have to be performed.
In brief, there is not a moment to be lost, nor an opportunity wasted to make a penny. The penny not earned makes the difference between enough food to sustain life, bare as life is of everything that makes it desirable, and absolute pinching, merciless hunger. No matter at what sacrifice, the penny must be earned and religiously applied either for rent or food. Clothing is always a secondary consideration—a place to stay in and food to keep life in the body, these are the first.
What is the amount paid the drones of England in the form of pensions? How much does the Queen receive? How much do the little Princes and Princesses cost the Nation? How much the Dukes and Dukelings, the Right Honorables and the Generals and Colonels, and the Secretaries and all that? “Look upon this picture and then upon that!” A nobility rioting in extravagance—a whole people starving!
And yet there are those who believe the people of Great Britain have no grievances, but should settle down contentedly and in quiet!
If there is an American who does not hate royalty, nobility, and aristocracy, in no matter what form they come to view, he either wants to be an aristocrat himself, or is grossly ignorant of what this triplet of infamy means. If there is an American who does not sympathize with the common people of England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales, he is either a heartless man or does not know the condition of the laboring classes of that unhappy Empire. And if there is an American who reads these pages, and does not from this time out, make politics just as much a part of his business as planting his crops, that American does not know what is good for him. Government is the most important matter on this earth. Good or bad government makes the difference between nobility-ridden England and free America.
FROMIreland with its woes, Ireland with its oppressions, through England, the world’s oppressor, to Paris, and from Paris to Switzerland—that was the route our party took; not so much because it was consecutive or in order, but because the whim so to do seized us. We were out to see, and to us all countries that were to be seen were alike of interest. We spent a few more days in Paris—everybody wants to spend a few more days in Paris—and then turned our reluctant faces southward.
A dismal, gloomy night; the fine, penetrating rain, cold and disagreeable, that chills the very marrow, half hides the dimly burning gas-lights, and makes the streets utterly forlorn. The belated pedestrian bends his head to the blast and hurries along, eager to reach the cozy room where the gloom that pervades everything out of doors cannot penetrate. The cabs roll along the stony pavements with a dead, metallic sound that adds to the general dreariness.
Everything and everybody is depressed.
So it was when the train drew out of the dimly lighted station in Paris, and plunged into the unfathomable gloom and darkness of the country beyond.
Wonderful invention—this railroad! and never so wonderful as at night. The mariner has his compass to guide him—the engine-driver has the rail. You go to sleep, or try to, in Paris; you wake in Switzerland. It makes reality of the magic carpet in the “Arabian Night’s Tales.”
Though the coarse, stuffy compartment afforded no pleasure, the dull roar of the train as it sped on through the driving storm lulled the senses, gave our memory full sway; gradually
COMPARTMENT IN A FRENCH CAR.
COMPARTMENT IN A FRENCH CAR.
COMPARTMENT IN A FRENCH CAR.
A NIGHT ON THE RAIL.
the rain ceased its pattering against the window pane, the sky broke into a rosy blue, the brilliant sunlight streamed out in the night over the beautiful white city, and Paris, the frivolous empress of the world, held out to the mind its multitudinous attractions and unlimited pleasures. We saw again, reflected in the memory of the last six weeks, the long, wide boulevards, with their cheerful cafés filled with beautifully dressed women and leisure-loving men. There was the constant, ever-changingstreams of humanity surging on to some end, each in his own way. There were the lights, the flowers, the gaities of the beautiful city, where the attainment of happiness and pleasure seems to be the chief aim of existence. The Louvre with its infinity of beauties, the Palais Royal with its bewildering jewels, the Place de Concorde with its historic memories, the Champ Elysées dazzling bright, with its arch-crowned vista of brilliant equipages, the Bois du Boulogne with its flower-lined walls and flower-lined lakes. There was rare relief, ever present to us, in all its glory, all its pleasure, all its gaiety. Days passed into weeks, and weeks into months, of perfect enjoyment that came to an end only when the guard in gruff tones hustled us out of the car at Macon, to change for the train going to Geneva. The transition was sudden and decidedly unpleasant.
There were eight of us in the compartment all that night—a Frenchman and four small daughters, on their way to Geneva, Tibbitts and ourselves. Tibbitts, who could not speak a word of French, except “Der bock,” which means in English “two beers,” and “Combien?” which is “how much,” entered into a cheerful conversation with the Frenchman, who could not speak a word of English. It was vastly entertaining. Tibbitts would make a beautiful remark in English, to which the Frenchman would reply, “Oui, Monsieur.” Then the Frenchman would make an elaborate observation on something or other in French, to which Tibbitts would reply, “Oui, Monsieur,” and so on all night.
It was not pleasant for those trying to sleep, but it seemed to amuse the two participants.
At Macon, in the morning, the Frenchman followed Tibbitts around the platform, attempting by gesture and a volley of Parisian French, to make something known to him.
Tibbitts came to me alarmed.
“What is ‘Oui Monsieur’ in English?”
“It means simply ‘Yes, sir,’ or ‘Certainly, sir.’ ”
“Did you know what that Frenchman was saying last night?”
“Not a word.”
“I said ‘Oui, Monsieur’ to everything he said. Suppose heasked me to lend him a hundred francs! I am in a fix about it. I can’t go back on my word, and if he asked me that I certainly promised to do it, and if I have to do it I shall have to borrow it of you.”
Mr. Tibbitts’ fears were unfounded. A hotel-porter who could master a trifle of English, came between them, and found that the Frenchman had been so impressed with the urbanity of my Oshkosh friend as to ask him in the night to take care of his four children to Geneva, that he might return by the next train to Paris, and Tibbitts had said “Oui, Monsieur” to the proposition, and he had the babies on his hands all the way.
THEY WERE LIVELY CHILDREN.
THEY WERE LIVELY CHILDREN.
THEY WERE LIVELY CHILDREN.
They were lively children, and made the poor fellow much trouble, and Tibbitts heaved a prodigious sigh of relief when he turned them over to their waiting guardian at Geneva. He immediately asked for the French word for “No,” and vowed solemnly to ever after use that word when in conversation with Frenchmen on railroads or elsewhere.
ON THE WAY TO GENEVA
The day broke dull and cheerless, but as soon as the sun came up the clouds were driven away, and the whole countrywas bright and beautiful. The road passes through some of the best wine districts of France, and nearly all of the little towns through which the train whirls with only a long shriek of the whistle, are devoted to the handling of wine, although in most of them there is a church or two and some monuments, just enough to make it a show place.
A town on this side of the water is no town at all if it does not have at least two or three places that were either old or historical, or both. Thus at Tournus, a little town of six thousand inhabitants, there is an Abbey church that was begun in 960, and not completed until late in the twelfth century. It isn’t much of a church, but it attracts visitors to the town, and so adds to its revenue. It pays to have show places.
From Macon to Culoz the line passes through lovely vineyards that lie spread out almost as far as the eye can reach, over gently undulating hills and dales that are watered by pretty little streams, clear and pure, having their source way off in the mountains, dimly discernible in the distance. Soon after passing Culoz the country assumes a more picturesque appearance, the vine-clad hills giving way to rugged mountains that tower high above the fertile valley, through which the train has been rushing for the past two or three hours. Swift, deep streams, fed by mountain springs, come tumbling down the sides of the high cliffs and lose themselves in the mass of foliage that skirts the base of the range, which hourly grows more and more imposing. We are whirled through long tunnels, over high bridges, and are treated to magnificent prospects. Green mountain sides crowned with the ruins of old castles that in days long gone by had been the terror of the neighborhood, picturesque towns nestling in cozy nooks flit by as the train speeds rapidly on, until, early in the forenoon, we arrive at Geneva, the Mecca of all strangers who contemplate an Alpine or Swiss tour.
The day was perfect. A cool breeze from lovely Lake Leman tempered the heat that otherwise would have been oppressive; the sky was without a cloud and as the pure air was gratefully inhaled by long delightful breaths, there was a sense of joyousness and happiness that was heavenly. Near at hand a long range of high mountains stretched out into the country andlost itself in the range that skirts the shores of the long irregular lake. Far off in the distance, between the dimly outlined peaks of another range, Mont Blanc rears its grand white head high among the clouds, its aged covering of pure white, glistening and glinting in the sunlight. It is an impressive scene, full of strange fascinating beauty.
THE LAKE AND CITY OF GENEVA.
THE LAKE AND CITY OF GENEVA.
THE LAKE AND CITY OF GENEVA.
GENEVA.
Grandly the view changes. A light fleecy cloud floats languidly past the summit, casting a weird shadow on the spotless white. That delicate lace-like cloud, beautiful in form and color, is followed by another, darker and more threatening. Another and another comes, each darker and more forbidding, until suddenly the whole is overcast. Mont Blanc is enveloped in a sable mantle from which, presently, issues a low rumbling noise that foretells in unmistakable language what is to come. Now long jagged flashes of lightning rend the gloomy masses of fast scudding clouds, that turned the bright day into darkness, the wind sweeps down from the mountain with a wail half human; the rain comes down in torrents, not in fitful gusts but in a steady, angry stream. The placid waters of the lake, only a moment before laughing in the bright sunlight, are lashed to a fury, as the storm increases in violence. Terrific peals of thunder that seem to shake the earth, break directly overhead and then go rolling and rumbling away up the valley, until they exhaust themselves and die away with one final crash. All the elements seem to combine to produce a grandspectacle that strikes the beholder with awe-tempered admiration.
As quickly as it came the storm died away, and in a short time all nature smiled again and seemed to feel better after the display of its ability in getting up grand sights on short notice. The sun came out with renewed splendor and tinged Mont Blanc forty miles away, with a rosy hue, that lasted all the afternoon, long until the other and less pretentious peaks had become mere outlines in the twilight that presaged the coming night. And then even the King of Peaks began to fade. Gradually but constantly the pink tints turned lighter until it was ashen. Then it became darker and darker until at length its massive proportions faded entirely away and were lost in the darkness that had come so gradually that its presence was hardly felt.
Geneva is a curious old city, one of the links that connect the dead past with the terribly active and quite distinct present. Its memories are of monks and opposers of monks; its present is of watches and music boxes. However, the Genevan has been shrewd enough to carefully preserve the dust of the past, out of which, combined with its delightful situation, it gathers many shekels from the horde of tourists who sweep over Europe every year. Everybody must and does see Geneva. It is the capital of the smallest canton in Switzerland but one, the entire territory being but fifteen miles long by as many square, a large portion of this being taken up by the lake. Its population is less than fifty thousand, but, nevertheless, it is the largest city in Switzerland, and one which has the most of historical interest attached to it.
The land is so nearly perpendicular in Switzerland that large cities are impossible.
So small was the canton of Geneva that Voltaire said of it: “When I shake my wig, I powder the whole Republic,” and when some commotion occurred in the little Republic the Emperor Paul said of it: “It is a tempest in a glass of water.”
But, small as it is, it has played its part, and a very important one it has been, in the history of the world. Here lived John Calvin, or Jean Caulvin, who originated that cheerful form of religious faith known as Calvinism. As he preached,and, to the credit of his powers of endurance be it said, practiced, it made a good heaven necessary in the next world, to compensate somewhat for what his disciples had to endure in this. He eliminated from life everything that was pleasant, everything that was cheerful, everything that was pleasurable, and brought mankind into a sort of religious straight-jacket, that made any swerving from a straight line impossible.
Daring Calvin’s reign, for his rule was almost absolute, Geneva was a safe place to live in (if you believed with Calvin, or pretended to believe hard enough), but it would hardly suit a Parisian. Theaters were considered the especially wide gateways to perdition, and everything that savored of amusement was strictly prohibited. As his was a stern and gloomy religion, which made the business of this life a constant preparation for the next, and the reward for all this sort of penance a continuance of the same in the next, his doctrines found more ardent support in Scotland than in France.
In opposing the Catholic Church, as the Catholic Church was in that day, Calvin, with Luther, did a great work, but Calvin, after all, simply wanted the people to exchange one form of spiritual despotism for another. The chief benefit arising to the world was that, in moving the people out of Romanism he taught them that theycouldmove, and, so instructed, they lost but little time in moving out from the perpetual thunder-cloud he put over them.
For many years he was supreme in Geneva in temporal as well as spiritual matters. As a Liberal who hates authority invariably becomes in time the worst bigot, so Calvin, who commenced as a champion of liberty of conscience, came to executing and banishing all who differed with him on points of religious belief. He wanted everybody to believe as their conscience taught them, provided it taught them his belief. Castellio, one of his oldest supporters, differed with him on the doctrine of predestination, and Calvin promptly banished him. Servetus, a Spaniard, wrote a treatise on the doctrine of the Trinity. He was arrested by Calvin in 1553, and was promptly tried, found guilty of not believing as the great reformer did, and was condemned to the stake, and was burned, Calvin standing by to make it impressive.
AN AFFECTING ANECDOTE.
Tibbitts told an old Boston story of a confirmed joker who was dying. A friend called upon him one morning, and finding his feet warm sought to encourage him.
“Barnes, you ain’t going to die. No man ever died with warm feet.”
“One did.”
“Who?”
“John Rogers!”
Servetus died with warm feet, and his ashes were scattered to the four winds. He and Calvin differed about the exact meaning of some passages of scripture and as it had not been revised at that date, Calvin made himself the authority. As he had supreme power and could do as he pleased he succeeded in having a tolerable degree of unanimity. After the burning of Servetus there were but few who desired to argue with Calvin.
I have observed that burning and otherwise killing for the up-building of the kingdom of the Prince of Peace has been common in all ages, and that the sect that does the most of it is always the one that happens to be in power. The Jesuits have published a sort of Catholic “Fox’s Book of Martyrs,” which sets forth with ghastly wood engravings the histories of the persecutions of Catholics by Protestants. The burning of Servetus by Calvin is the subject of one of the illustrations, though the editor carefully omits the fact that Servetus was not a Catholic at all.
Rosseau, the great Socialist, was born here, and here he wrote the works that have consigned his memory to infamy or glory, according as the reader believes. He was a man of wonderful genius, one of the foremost writers of the world, but he was as fantastic as any other Frenchman, and his doctrines were based upon a condition of things which only a dreamy poet could imagine as possible. He was a Socialist, a latitudinarian, and one of the kind of “world reformers” who hold that everything that is, is wrong, and that to destroy anything is to better the condition of the world.
It is a curious commentary upon French morals that after he had been the lover, (with all that the word implies) of a dozen or more of French titled women who affected men ofletters, and while living openly with his cook, who bore him five illegitimate children, a French college invited him to write a treatise upon the “Effect of Science and Art Upon Morals,” which invitation he most cheerfully accepted. He was the reverse of Calvin, but like Calvin, he left his impress upon the thought of the little city.
Geneva is a pleasant place to come to, and, but for the extortionate hotels, would be a place that one would be loth to leave. Swiss hotel keepers have got swindling down to so fine a point that further progress in that direction is impossible. There is a legend afloat that hotel keepers from all over Europe come to Geneva to learn the business, and that lectures on the art of swindling travelers are given regularly by the managers of Geneva hotels; in short, that Geneva is a sort of hotel college, but I don’t know as to its truth. Any hotel keeper here, however, is competent to fill a professorship—in such an institution.
You are charged for candles, a franc each. You never use a candle, except during the minute necessary to disrobe for your bed, but you are charged a franc for it just the same. The more conscientious hotel manager wants to satisfy you with a new candle every night, and so he has a little machine, something like a pencil sharpener, with which he tapers off the top of the burned candle, making it look as though it had never been lighted, and charges you right over again for it.
Tibbitts exasperated his landlord by putting his candle in his pocket every morning, and from the front of the hotel giving it to the first poor person who passed. But the landlord smiled grimly, in French, when he saw the little trick, and promptly instructed his clerk to charge Monsieur Tibbitts two francs a day for broken glass.
THE CHAMBERMAID’S TRICK.
You are to depart to-morrow morning, and you charge the clerk with great distinctness to have your bill made out before you retire. You want to go over the items and see that everything is correct. The clerk, with great suavity, assures you that it shall be done, but it isn’t. You come for it and find the office closed. The next morning you arise betimes and make the same request; you say you want your bill immediately, to which the same answer is given with an apologyfor its not having been done the night before. You get through your breakfast—it is not yet done. Minutes fly, the carriage is at the door to take you to your train, and just as the last minute possible to catch the train is on you, it comes—as long as your arm, written in French, which you can’t understand if you had time to, but which now is utterly impossible. You glance at the grand total—it is a grand total—and you pay it, objurgating because it is a trifle over twice what it should be.
Then comes the long array of servants, the chambermaid, the boots, the elevator boy, the head waiter, the table waiter, and so on, all of whom expect and plumply demand recognition, and you think you are done. But you are not.
Just as you are getting into the carriage, a chambermaid, not the one who had charge of your room, but her sister, appears with one of your silk handkerchiefs.
“Monsieur forgot the handkerchief.”
She extends the handkerchief with one hand, holding out the other for a franc. You give it to her of course, knowing all the time that your own chambermaid abstracted it and gave it to her for the purpose of wringing the last possible drop of blood out of you, and that this wretch has done the same kind office for your chambermaid, to be practised upon another victim who leaves to-morrow.
I presume the landlord compels a division of these swindles, for as they all lay awake nights to devise ways and means to wrench money from tourists it is not likely they would let so easy a source of revenue escape them.
Here everybody takes gratuities, even excelling the English in the practice.
There is a story which comes in here by way of illustration. An old lady had a case in court which was going slowly. She desired more speed, and asked an old man, who was supposed to know everything, how she could accelerate the matter.
“Give your lawyer twenty francs.”
“What! will the grave and great man take twenty francs? Would he not throw the money in my face and feel so insulted that he would throw up my case?”
“He might, but I can tell you how to know whether hewill take the gratuity or not. When you come into his presence observe his mouth. If it runs up and down his face don’t offer it to him, for he would not take it. But if his mouth runs across his face offer it with confidence. Every man in Switzerland whose mouth is cut crosswise the face will accept a gratuity.”
It so happened that in sailing up the lake the question of piracy came up,—it grew out of a discussion of the charges at the various hotels—when Tibbitts broke in with that calm confidence that distinguishes the young man:—
“I have been giving the matter of piracy most serious consideration, its rise, decline and fall. Formerly piracy was everywhere on the high seas. Adventurous spirits manned vessels which were built, armed and sent out by wealthy corporations, their business being to capture merchant vessels, cut the throats of the male passengers and crew and confiscate the property. In those halcyon days money was gold and silver, and the pirates after capturing a rich prize sailed their vessels to some point on the Spanish main, where there was a convenient cove, captured a Spanish village, murdered the men, and made such love to the women that they very soon preferred the picturesque villains to their virtuous but common-place and insipid (because honest) husbands. And there they lived; gaily dancing fandangos and boleros, under the shade of palms, to the soft pleasings of the lute, till the money was spent (by the way I never could see how they spent money in such places after they had killed all the shop-keepers and saloon men) and then they sailed sweetly out to be a scourge of the seas once more.
“It was a pleasant thing to be a pirate in those days.
“The first blow this industry received was the invention of sight draft, by which money could be transmitted. The pirate who seized drafts couldn’t forge the names necessary to their collection, to say nothing of the risk of presenting himself at a bank in London to collect them.