CONTENTS.

The Departure—How the Passengers Amused Themselves—Sea-sickness—Tibbitts, of Oshkosh—The Storm

London—The Englishman—A Few Statistics—The Climate—A Red-coated Romance

The Derby Races—Departure for the Derby—Sights and Scenes—Shows and Beggars—Betting

What the Londoners Quench their Thirst with—The Kind of Liquor—Tobacco—Early Closing

How London is Amused—The London Theaters—An English Idea of a Good Time—Punch and Judy

Madame Tussaud—American Worthies

The London Lawyer—The Solicitor’s Bill

English Capital—London Quacks—The London Advertiser

Petticoat Lane—The Home of Second-Hand—The Clothing Dealer—Diamonds—The Confiding Israelite

The Tower—The Royal Jewels—The Horse Armory—Interesting Relics—The Beef-Eaters

Two English Nuisances—A Badly Dressed People—An English Hotel—The English Landlord

Portsmouth—Nelson’s Ship—In the Harbor—Tibbitts’ Diary

Westminster Abbey—Seeing the Abbey—Warren Hastings—Epitaphs—Religious Service—A Little History

The American Showman—The Trainer’s Widow—Foggerty the Zulu

Richmond—The Star and Garter—Down the River

From London to Paris—The Custom House—Normandy—The Cathedral—On the Way to Paris

A Scattering View of Paris—Drinking in Paris—Wine and Whisky—The National Fête

Something About Parisians—French Cleanliness—The Polite French—The Disgust of Tibbitts

Parisian Gamin—Interview with a Gamin—A Contented Being

How Paris Amuses Itself—The Grand Opera—The Wicked Mabille—Gardens other than the Mabille—Tibbitts and the Professor

The Louvre—Art in the Louvre—The Commune

The Palais-Royal—A Tale of the Commune—The Wisdom of Therese—The Two Lovers

French Drinking—The Water of Paris—The Mild Swash

Parisian Living—The Market Woman—Parisian Washing—Female Shop-keepers—The Career of Sam

Ireland—Cork—The Jaunting Car—Another Cabin

Bantry—How My Lord Bantry Lives—The Real and the Ideal—Several Delusions—The Conversion of an Irish Lady

An Irish Mass Meeting—An Eviction—Boycotting—One Landlord who was Killed—How he was killed—Patsey’s Dead

Some Little History—The Question of Lease—A Foiled Landlord—Bantry Village—The Boatman and Nancy

England, Ireland, Scotland—Land Troubles in England—The Royal Family—The Palace and the Workhouse—Women’s Work

Paris to Geneva—A Night on the Rail—Geneva—Affecting Anecdote—Piracy on Lake Erie—The Irate Guest—Too Much Music

Switzerland—The Rhone—A Geneva Bakery—Swiss Roads—Female Climbers—Ascent of Mont Blanc—A Useful Man at Last

Chillon—Tibbitts and the Jew—On the Lake

From Geneva over the Alps—Mountain Climbing—Legend of the Gorge—Martigny—A Swiss Cottage—Alpine Ascents

Over the Alps—Tibbitts’ Idea—Dangers of Ascending Mt. Blanc

Going up the Mountain—The Mer de Glace—The Gorge—Something About Glaciers

In Switzerland—Tibbitts’ Letter—Berne and Bears—Barbers

Lake Thun and Beyond—Interlaken—Wood Carving—Geissbach

Lucerne and the Rigi—Up the Rigi—A Mountain Railway—The Rigi Kulm—Tell’s Chapel

Zurich and Strasburg—Beer and Music—The Cathedral—The Wonderful Clock

Baden-Baden—A Few Legends—Up the Mountain—To old Schloss

Heidelberg—The Great Cask—The Students

Mannheim—Opera—A Treatise on Treating

Frankfort-on-the-Maine—Red Tape—Jews’ Street—Lovely Gardens

Down the Rhine—Bingen—Mouse Tower—Tibbitts’ Romance

Cologne—The Cathedral—Eleven Thousand Virgins—Home

TOCharles A. B. Shepard,The “Poetical Bookseller,”This book is dedicated (without permission)as aTribute to a most Reliable Friend,a Thorough Business Man, andOne whose steady devotion to everything right and proper,and whosehatred for everything mean and disreputable,was never questioned by any onewho knew him.

“CASTOFF!” There was a bustle, a movement of fifty men, a rush of people to the gangways; hurried good-bys were said; another rush, assisted by the fifty men, the enormous gangways were lifted, there was a throb of steam, a mighty jar of machinery, a tremor along the line of the vast body of wood and iron, and the good ship “City of Richmond” was out at sea.

THE DEPARTURE.

I am not going to inflict upon the reader a description of the harbor of New York, or anything of the kind. The whole world knows that it is the finest in the world, and every Americanwould believe it so, whether it is so or not. Suffice it to say that the ship got out of the harbor safely, and before nightfall was upon the broad Atlantic, out of the way of telegraph and mail facilities, and one hundred and fifty-six saloon passengers—men, women, and children—found themselves beyond the reach of daily papers, though they had everything else that pertains to civilization and luxury.

A voyage at sea is not what it was when first I sailed from—but no, I have never been abroad before, and have not, therefore, the privilege of lying about travel. That will come in time, and doubtless I shall use it as others do. But I was going to say that sailing is not what it was, as I understand it to have been. The ship of to-day is nothing more or less than a floating hotel, with some few of the conveniences omitted, and a great many conveniences that hotels on shore have not. You have your luxurious barber-shop, you have a gorgeous bar, you have hot and cold water in your room, and a table as good as the best in New York. You eat, drink, and sleep just as well, if not better, than on shore.

The sailor is no more what he used to be than the ship is. I have seen any number of sailors, and know all about them. The tight young fellow in blue jacket and shiny tarpaulin, and equally shiny belt, and white trousers, the latter enormously wide at the bottom, which trousers he was always hitching up with a very peculiar movement of the body, standing first upon one leg and then upon the other; the sailor who could fight three pirates at once and kill them all, finishing the last one by disabling his starboard eye with a chew of tobacco thrown with terrible precision; who, if an English sailor, was always a match for three Frenchmen, if an American a match for three Englishmen, and no matter of what nationality, was always ready to d—n the eyes of the man he did not like, and protect prepossessing females and oppressed children even at the risk of being hung at the yard-arm by a court-martial—this kind of a sailor is gone, and I fear forever. I know I have given a proper description of him, for I have seen hundreds of them—at the theater.

WHO WERE ON BOARD.

In his stead is an unpoetic being, clad in all sorts of unpoetic clothing, and no two of them alike. There is a fainteffort at uniformity in their caps, which have sometimes the name of their ship on them, but even that not always. In fair weather he is in appearance very like a hod carrier, and in foul weather a New York drayman. He doesn’t d—n anybody’s eyes, and he doesn’t sing out “Belay there,” or “Avast, you lubber,” or indulge in any other nautical expressions. He uses just about the language that people on shore do, and is as dull and uninteresting a person as one would wish not to meet.

The traditional jack tar, of whom the Dibden of the last century sang, only remains in “Pinafore” opera, and can only be seen when the nautical pieces of the thirty years ago are revived. If such sailors ever existed, off the stage, they are as extinct a race as the icthyosaurus. Steam has knocked the poetry out of navigation, as it has out of everything else—that is, that kind of poetry. It will doubtless have a poetry of its own, when its gets older, but it is too new yet.

There is no holystoning the decks. On the contrary the decks are washed with hose, and scrubbed afterward by a patent appliance, which has nothing of the old time about it. The lifting is done by steam, and in fact every blessed thing about the ship is done by machinery. There is neither a ship nor a sailor any more. There are floating hotels, and help. The last remaining show for a ship is the masts and sails they all have, and they seem to be more for ornament than use.

The company on board was, on the whole, monotonous. Ocean travel is either monotonous or dangerous. Its principal advantage over land travel is, the track is not dusty.

We had on our passenger list precisely the usual people, and none others. There were three Jews of different types: the strong, robust, eagle-nosed and eagle-eyed German Jew, resident of New York, going abroad on business; the keen French Jew, returning from a successful foray on New York jewelers, and the Southern Jew, who, having made a fortune in cotton, attached no value to anything else.

I like the Jews, and ten days with them did not lessen my liking. They know something for certain; they do things, and they do well what they do.

There was a Chicago operator in mining stocks, goingabroad to place the “Great Mastodon” in London. There was the smooth-chinned, side-whiskered minister, or “priest,” as he delighted in calling himself, of the Church of England, going home, and a fiery Welsh Baptist who had been laboring in the States for many years.

On Sunday evening the Chicago man and a Texan engaged the English minister in a discussion on the evidences of Christianity. It was a furious controversy, and an amusing one. The Welsh Baptist was a more zealous Christian than the Church of England man, and he did by far the best part of the argument; but the priest, by look at least, resented his interference. Being a Baptist, he was entirely irregular, and did not hold up his end of the argument regularly. The priest regarded the evangelist as a regular soldier might a guerilla serving the same side. The discussion embraced every point that religionists affirm and infidels deny, commencing with the creation and coming down to the present day, with long excursions into the future.

A terrible disaster was the result. The next morning the priest met the infidel on deck, and extended his hand humbly:

“My dear sir,” said he, “I have been thinking over the matter we discussed last night. I am convinced that you are right, and that—”

“What!” exclaimed the infidel. “My dear sir, I was looking for you. Your forcible and convincing statements satisfy me that there is truth in the Christian religion, and—”

Neither said more. The priest had converted the infidel to Christianity, and the infidel had converted the priest to infidelity. So far as the result upon the religion of the world was concerned, it was a stand-off.

The days were devoted to all sorts of occupations. There were young men spooning young women, and young women who made a business of flirtation, or what was akin to it. One young lady who could be seen at any time in the day, in a most bewitching attitude, reclining on a steamer chair, picturesque in all sorts of wraps, held a brief conversation with her mother, who had hooked a widower the second day out. The mother was skillful at looking young, and compelled her child, therefore, to be juvenile and shy of young men.

HOW THE PASSENGERS AMUSED THEMSELVES.

“Helen, you were flirting with that Chicago young man, this morning!”

“Flirting! Mamma! It’s too mean! You won’t let me flirt. I havn’t enjoyed myself a minute since we sailed. I wish you would let me alone to do as I please.”

The poor child envied her mother, and with good reason, for within ten minutes she was under the wing, or arm, of the widower, looking not a minute over thirty-five.

There were old maids who found themselves objects of attention for the first time for years; there were widows who grew sentimental looking at the changing waters, especially at night when the moon and stars were out; there were married men whose wives were many leagues away, determined to have a good time once more, flirting with all sorts and conditions of women, and there were all sorts and conditions of women flirting hungrily with all sorts and conditions of men. There were speculators driving bargains with each other just the same as on land—in brief, the ship was a little world by itself, and just about the same as any other world.

In the smoking room the great and muscular American game of draw poker was played incessantly, from early in the morning, till late in the night.

A portion of the passengers, including the English dominie, played a game called “shuffle-board.” Squares were marked upon the deck, which were numbered from one to seven. Then some distance from the squares a line was drawn, and what you had to do was to take an implement shaped like a crutch, and shove discs of wood at the squares. We all played it, sooner or later, for on ship-board one will get, in time, to playing pin alone in his room. The beauty about shuffle-board is, one player is as good as another, if not better, for there isn’t the slightest skill to be displayed in it. Indeed, the best playing is always done at first, when the player shoots entirely at random. There is a chance that he will strike a square, then; but when one gets to calculating distances, and looking knowingly, and attempting some particular square, the chances are even that the disc goes overboard.

However, it is a good and useful game. The young ladies look well handling the clumsy cues, and the attitudes theyare compelled to take are graceful. Then as the vessel lurches they fall naturally in your arms. By the way, it is a curious fact and one worthy of record, that I did not see a young lady fall into the arms of another young lady during the entire voyage.

We had on board, as a matter of course, the betting young man from Chicago. No steamer ever sailed that did not have this young fellow aboard, and there is enough of them to last the Atlantic for a great many years. He knew everything that everybody thinks they know, but do not, and his delight was to propound a query, and then when you had answered it, to very coolly and exasperatingly remark:—

“Bet yer bottle of wine you’re wrong.”

The matter would be so simple and one of so common repute that immediately you accepted the wager only to find that in some minute particular, youwerewrong, and that the knowing youth had won.

For instance:—

“Thompson, do you know how many States there are in the Union?”

“SHUFFLE BOARD.”

Now any citizen of the United States who votes, and is eligible to the Presidency, ought to know how many States there are in his beloved country without thinking, but how many are there who can say, off-hand? And so poor Thompson answered:—

“What a question! Of course I know.”

“Bet ye bottle ye don’t!”

“Done. There are—”

THE YOUNG MAN FROM CHICAGO.

And then Thompson would find himself figuring the very important problem as to whether Colorado had been admitted, and Nevada, and Oregon, and he would decide that one hadand the other hadn’t, and finally state the number, with great certainty that it was wrong.

The Chicago man’s crowning bet occurred the last day out. The smoking room was tolerably full, as were the occupants, and everybody was bored, as everybody is on the last day. The Chicago man had been silent for an hour, when suddenly he broke out:

“Gentlemen—”

“Oh, no more bets,” was the exclamation of the entire party. “Give us a rest.”

“I don’t want to bet, but I can show you something curious.”

“Well?”

“I say it and mean it. I can drink a glass of water without it’s going down my throat.”

“And get it into your stomach?”

“Certainly.”

There was a silence of considerably more than a minute. Every man in the room had been victimized by this gatherer up of inconsidered trifles, and there was a general disposition to get the better of him in some way if possible. Here was the opportunity. How could a man get a glass of water into his stomach without its going down his throat? Impossible! And so the usual bottle of wine was wagered, and the Chicago man proceeded to accomplish the supposed impossible feat. It was very easily done. All he did was to stand upon his head on the seat that runs around the room and swallow a glass of water. It went to his stomach, but it did not godownhis throat. It wentuphis throat. And so his last triumph was greater than all his previous ones, for every man in the room had been eager to accept his wager. From that time out had he offered to wager that he would swallow his own head he would have got no takers.

It is astonishing how short remembrance is, and how the knowledge of one decade is swallowed up in the increasing volume of the next. Every one of the catches employed by this young man to keep himself in wine and cigars were well known ten years ago, but totally unknown now except by the few who use them. The water going up the throat instead ofdown was published years ago in a small volume called “Hocus Pocus,” and it sold by the million, but nobody knows of it to-day. I once asked a sharper who had lived thirty years by the practice of one simple trick, how it happened that the whole world did not know his little game?

THE BETTING YOUNG MAN FROM CHICAGO.

“There are new crops of fools coming on every year,” was his answer. He was right. The stock will never run out.

SEA-SICKNESS.

There were one hundred and fifty-six saloon passengers on board, but with the exception of those mentioned, a distressing monotony prevailed among them. Never was so good a set of people ever gathered together. They were fearfully good—too good by half.

True goodness is all very well in the abstract, but there is nothing picturesque about it. It is slightly tame. Your brigand, with short green jacket and yellow breeches, with blue or green garters, and a tall hat with a feather in it, is a much more striking being than a Quaker woman. The wicked is always the startling, and, therefore, taking to the eye.

On our ship the people were all good. There wasn’t a pickpocket, a card sharper, or anything of the sort to vary the monotony of life. It was a dead level of goodness, a sort of quiet mill-pond of morality, that to the lover of excitement was distressing in the extreme. The card parties were conducted decorously, and the religious services in the grand saloon were attended by nearly every passenger, and what is more they all seemed to enjoy it. Possibly it was because religious services were a novelty to the most of them.

The second day out was a very rough one. The wind freshened—I think that is the proper phrase—and a tremendously heavy sea was on. The “City of Richmond” is a very staunch ship, and behaves herself commendably in bad weather, but there is no ship that can resist the power of the enormous waves of the North Atlantic. Consequently she tossed like a cork, and, consequently, there was an amount of suffering for two days that was amusing to everybody but the sufferers.

Sea-sickness is probably the most distressing of all the maladies that do not kill. The sickness from first to last is a taste of death. The resultant vomiting is of a nature totally different from any other variety of vomiting known. The victim does not vomit—he throws up. There is a wild legend that one man in a severe fit of sea-sickness threw up his boots, but it is not credible. It is entirely safe to say, however, that one throws up everything but original sin, and he gives that a tolerable trial.

It was amusing to see those who had done the voyage before, and who had been through sea-sickness, smile uponthose who were in the throes of agony. The look of superiority they took on, as much as to say, “when you have been through it as I have, you won’t have it any more.” And then to see these same fellows turn deadly pale, and leave their seats, and rush to their rooms and disappear from mortal view a day or so, was refreshing to those who were having their first experience.

The beauty of sea-sickness is that you may have it every voyage, which is fortunate, as having a tendency to restrain pride and keep down assumption of superiority; for when one has to suffer, one loves to see everybody else suffer.

One man aboard did not think it possible that he could be sick, and he was rather indignant that his wife should be. She, poor thing, was in the agonies of death, and he insisted, as he held her head, that she ought not to be sick, that her giving way to it was a weakness purely feminine, and he went on wondering why a woman could not—

He quit talking very quickly. The strong man who was not a woman, turned pale, the regular paleness that denotes the coming of the malady, and dropping the head he had been holding so patronizingly with no more compunction than as though it had been his pet dog’s, rushed to the side of the vessel, and there paid his tribute to Neptune. The suffering wife, sick as she was, could not resist the temptation to wreak a trifle of feminine vengeance upon him. “Dear,” said she, between the heaves that were rending her in several twains, “Sea-sickness is only a feminine weakness. Oh—ugh—ugh—how I wish I were a strong man!”

There is one good thing about sea-sickness, and only one: the sufferer cannot possibly have any other disease at the same time. One may have bronchitis and dyspepsia at once, but sea-sickness monopolizes the whole body. It is so all-pervading; it is such a giant of illness that there is room for nothing else when it takes possession of a human body.

During General Butler’s occupancy of New Orleans a fiery Rebel Frenchman was inveighing against him in set terms.

“But you must admit,” said a loyal Northerner, “that during General Butler’s administration your city was free from yellow fever.”

THE SHARP-NOSED MAN.

“Ze yellow fevair and General Butlair in one season? Have ze great God no maircy, zen?”

A kind Providence couldn’t possibly saddle sea-sickness with any other ailment.

“DEAR—, SEA-SICKNESS IS ONLY—A FEMININE WEAKNESS.”

Was there ever a ship or a rail car, or any other place where danger is possible, that there was not present the man with a sharp nose, slightly red at the tip, whose chief delight seems to be to point out the possibilities of all sorts of disaster, and to do it in the most friendly way? I remember once going down the Hoosac Tunnel before it was finished. Iwent down, not because I wanted to, (indeed I would have given a farm, if I had had one, to have avoided it,) but it was the thing to do there, and must be done. So with about the feeling that accompanied John Rogers to the stake, I stepped, with others, upon the platform, and down we went. It was a most terrible descent. A hole in the ground eighteen hundred feet deep, and a platform, suspended by a single rope! In my eyes that rope was not larger or stronger than pack-thread.

“Is this safe?” I asked of the sharp-nosed man.

“Wa’all, yes, I s’pose so. It does break sometimes—did last month and killed eight men. I guess we are all right, though the rope’s tollable old and yest’dy they histed out a very heavy ingine and biler, which may hev strained it. Long ways to fall—if she does break!”

Cheerful suggestion for people who were fifteen hundred feet from the bottom and couldn’t possibly get off.

Another time on the Shore Line between Boston and New York, there was an old lady who had never been upon a railroad train before, and who was exceedingly nervous. Behind her sat the sharp-nosed man of that train, who answered all her questions.

“Ya’as, railroad travelin’ is dangerous. Y’see they git keerless. Only a year ago, they left a draw opened, and a train run into it, and mor’n a hundred passengers wuz drownded.”

“Merciful heavens!” ejaculated the old lady, in an agony of horror. “We don’t go over that bridge.”

“Yes we do, and we’re putty nigh to it now. And the men are jest ez keerless now ez they wuz then. They git keerless. I never travel over this road ef I kin help it.”

Then he went on and told her of every accident that he could remember, especially those that had occurred upon that road.

And the old lady, with her blood frozen by the horrible recitals, sat during the entire trip with her hands grasping tightly the arms of her seat, expecting momentarily to be hurled from the track and torn limb from limb, or to be plunged into the wild waters of the Sound.

TIBBITTS, OF OSHKOSH.

We had the sharp-nosed man with us. His delight was totake timid girls, or nervous women, and explain if the slightest thing should get wrong with the machinery how we should be at the mercy of the waves. For instance, if we should lose our propeller what would happen? Or if any one of the boilers should explode, filling the ship with hot steam, scalding the passengers, or if the main shaft should break, in such a sea as we were then having, or if we should run upon an iceberg, or collide with some floating hulk?

“They say all these ships are built with water-tight compartments. Sho! Stave in one part of the ship and it must go down. What happened to the ‘City of Boston?’ Never heard of. ‘City of Paris?’ Lost half her passengers. But we must take our chances if we will travel.”

And this to a lot of people who had never been at sea before, with an ugly wind blowing and a tremendous sea on. Imagine the frame of mind he left his auditors in, and he made it his business, day after day, to regale the very timid ones with harrowing histories of shipwrecks and disasters at sea till their blood would run cold.

Some night this old raven will be lost overboard, but there will be others just like him to take his place. Nature duplicates her monstrosities as well as her good things.

LEMUEL TIBBITTS, FROM NEAR OSHKOSH, WISCONSIN, WRITING A LETTER TO HIS MOTHER.

Among the passengers was a young man from Oshkosh, Wisconsin, named Tibbitts. He was an excellent young man, of his kind, and he very soon acquired the reputation, which he deserved, of being the very best poker player on the ship.He was uneasy till a game was organized in the morning, and he growled ferociously when the lights were turned down at twelve at night. He was impatient with slow players, because, as he said, all the time they wasted was so much loss to him. He could drink more Scotch whisky than any one on the ship, and he was the pet of the entire crew, for his hand was always in his pocket. He ruined the rest of the passengers by his reckless liberality. His father was a rich Wisconsin farmer, and this was his first experience in travel.

What time he could spare from poker and his meals, was devoted to writing a letter to his mother, for whom the scape-grace did seem to have a great deal of respect and a very considerable amount of love. His letter was finished the day before we made Queenstown, so that he could mail it from there. He read it to me. The sentences in parenthesis were his comments:—

On Board the City of Richmond, }near Queenstown, May 23, 1881. }Dear Mother:—While there is everything to interest one from the interior in a sea voyage, I confess that I have not enjoyed the passage at all. I have no heart for it for my mind is perpetually on you and my home in the far West. (You see it will please the old lady to know I am thinking of her all the time. Didn’t I scoop in that jack pot nicely last evening? Hadn’t a thing in my hand, and Filkins actually opened it with three deuces.) The ship is one of the strongest and best on the ocean, and is commanded and manned by the best sailors on the sea. The passengers are all good, serious people, with perhaps one exception. There is one young man from New York of dissolute habits, who has a bottle of whisky in his room, and who actually tried to tempt me to play cards with him. But he is known and avoided by the entire company.We have regular services in the grand saloon, every morning, and occasional meetings for vocal exercises and conversation at other hours. I have just come from one, at which—

On Board the City of Richmond, }near Queenstown, May 23, 1881. }

Dear Mother:—While there is everything to interest one from the interior in a sea voyage, I confess that I have not enjoyed the passage at all. I have no heart for it for my mind is perpetually on you and my home in the far West. (You see it will please the old lady to know I am thinking of her all the time. Didn’t I scoop in that jack pot nicely last evening? Hadn’t a thing in my hand, and Filkins actually opened it with three deuces.) The ship is one of the strongest and best on the ocean, and is commanded and manned by the best sailors on the sea. The passengers are all good, serious people, with perhaps one exception. There is one young man from New York of dissolute habits, who has a bottle of whisky in his room, and who actually tried to tempt me to play cards with him. But he is known and avoided by the entire company.

We have regular services in the grand saloon, every morning, and occasional meetings for vocal exercises and conversation at other hours. I have just come from one, at which—

“You are not going to send this infernal aggregation of lies to your mother, are you?” I asked.

“Why not? She don’t know any better, and it will make her feel good. I have my opinion of a man who won’t give his old mother a pleasure when he can just as well as not. I will, you bet?”

“But such atrocious lies!”

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