A Frenchman in America Part 22

"No," I said, "you haven't. Do you know how the famous Regent diamond, worn by the last kings of France on their crowns, was smuggled into French territory?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CONTENTS.]

The creature looked at me with an air of impudence.

"No, I don't," he replied.

I explained to him, and added:

"You have not looked _there_."

The lion, that lies dormant at the bottom of the quietest man, was fairly roused in me, and on the least provocation, I would have given this man a first-cla.s.s hiding.

He went away, wondering whether I had insulted him or not, and left me in the van to repack my trunk as best I could, an operation which, I understand, it was his duty to perform himself.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XXIII.

CHICAGO (FIRST VISIT)--THE "NEIGHBORHOOD" OF CHICAGO--THE HISTORY OF CHICAGO--PUBLIC SERVANTS--A VERY DEAF MAN.

_Chicago, February 17._

Oh! a lecturing tour in America!

I am here on my way to St. Paul and Minneapolis.

Just before leaving New York, I saw in a comic paper that Bismarck must really now be considered as a great man, because, since his departure from office, there had been no rumor of his having applied to Major Pond to get up a lecturing tour for him in the United States.

It was not news to me that there are plenty of people in America who laugh at the European author's trick of going to the American platform as soon as he has made a little name for himself in his own country. The laugh finds an echo in England, especially from some journalists who have never been asked to go, and from a few men who, having done one tour, think it wise not to repeat the experience. For my part, when I consider that Emerson, Holmes, Mark Twain, have been lecturers, that d.i.c.kens, Thackeray, Matthew Arnold, Sala, Stanley, Archdeacon Farrar, and many more, all have made their bow to American audiences, I fail to discover anything very derogatory in the proceeding.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A PIG SQUEALING.]

Besides, I feel bound to say that there is nothing in a lecturing tour in America, even in a highly successful one, that can excite the envy of the most jealous "failure" in the world. Such work is about the hardest that a man, used to the comforts of this life, can undertake. Actors, at all events, stop a week, sometimes a fortnight, in the cities they visit; but a lecturer is on the road every day, happy when he has not to start at night.

No words can picture the monotony of journeys through an immense continent, the sameness of which strikes you as almost unbearable.

Everything is made on one pattern. All the towns are alike. To be in a railroad car for ten or twelve hours day after day can hardly be called luxury, or even comfort. To have one's poor brain matter thus shaken in the cranium is terrible, especially when the cranium is not quite full.

Constant traveling softens the brain, liquefies it, churns it, evaporates it, and it runs out of you through all the cracks of your head. I own that traveling is comfortable in America, even luxurious; but the best fare becomes monotonous and unpalatable when the dose is repeated every day.

To-morrow night I lecture in Minneapolis. The next night I am in Detroit. Distance about seven hundred miles.

"Can I manage it?" said I to my impresario, when he showed me my route.

"Why, certn'ly," he replied; "if you catch a train after your lecture, I guess you will arrive in time for your lecture in Detroit the next day."

These remarks, in America, are made without a smile.

On arriving at Chicago this morning, I found awaiting me at the Grand Pacific Hotel, a letter from my impresario. Here is the purport of it:

I know you have with you a trunk and a small portmanteau. I would advise you to leave your trunk at the Grand Pacific, and to take with you only the portmanteau, while you are in the neighborhood of Chicago. You will thus save trouble, expense, etc.

On looking at my route, I found that the "neighborhood of Chicago"

included St. Paul, Minneapolis, Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Indianapolis: something like a little two-thousand-mile tour "in the neighborhood of Chicago," to be done in about one week.

When I confided my troubles to my American friends, I got little sympathy from them.

"That's quite right," they would say; "we call the neighborhood of a city any place which, by starting after dinner, you can reach at about breakfast time the next day. You dine, you go on board the car, you have a smoke, you go to bed, you sleep, you wake up, you dress--and there you are. Do you see?"

After all you may be of this opinion, if you do not reckon sleeping time. But I do reckon it, when I have to spend the night in a closed box, six feet long, and three feet wide, and about two feet high, and especially when the operation has to be repeated three or four times a week.

And the long weary days that are not spent in traveling, how can they be pa.s.sed, even tolerably, in an American city, where the lonely lecturer knows n.o.body, and where there is absolutely nothing to be seen beyond the hotels and the dry-goods stores? Worse still: he sometimes has the good luck to make the acquaintance of some charming people: but he has hardly had time to fix their features in his memory, when he has to go, probably never to see them again.

The lecturer speaks for an hour and a half on the platform every evening, the rest of his time is exclusively devoted to keeping silence.

Poor fellow! how grateful he is to the hotel clerk who sometimes--alas, very seldom--will chat with him for a few minutes. As a rule the hotel clerk is a mute, who a.s.signs a room to you, or hands you the letters waiting for you in the box corresponding to your number. His mouth is closed. He may have seen you for half a minute only; he will remember you. Even in a hotel accommodating over a thousand guests, he will know you, he will know the number of your room, but he won't speak. He is not the only American that won't speak. Every man in America who is attending to some duty of other, has his mouth closed. I have tried the railroad conductor, and found him mute. I have had a shot at the porter in the Pullman car, and found him mute. I have endeavored to draw out the janitors of the halls where I was to speak in the evening, and I have failed. Even the negroes won't speak. You would imagine that speaking was prohibited by the statute-book. When my lecture was over, I returned to the hotel, and like a culprit crept to bed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE SLEEPING CAR.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE JANITOR.]

How I do love New York! It is not that it possesses a single building that I really care for; it is because it contains scores and scores of delightful people, brilliant, affable, hospitable, warm-hearted friends, who were kind enough to welcome me when I returned from a tour, and in whose company I could break up the cobwebs that had had time to form in the corners of my mouth.

The history of Chicago can be written in a few lines. So can the history of the whole of America.

In about 1830 a man called Benjamin Harris, with his family, moved to Chicago, or Fort Dearborn, as it was then called. Not more than half a dozen whites, all of whom were Indian traders, had preceded them. In 1832 they had a child, the first white female born in Chicago--now married, called Mrs. S. A. Holmes, and the mother of fourteen children.

In 1871 Chicago had over 100,000 inhabitants, and was burned to the ground. To-day Chicago has over 1,200,000 inhabitants, and in ten years'

time will have two millions.

The activity in Chicago is perfectly amazing. And I don't mean commercial activity only. Compare the following statistics: In the great reading rooms of the British Museum, there was an average of 620 readers daily during the year 1888. In the reading-room of the Chicago Public Library, there was an average of 1569 each day in the same year.

Considering that the population of London is nearly five times that of Chicago, it shows that the reading public is ten times more numerous in Chicago than in London.

It is a never failing source of amus.e.m.e.nt to watch the ways of public servants in this country.

I went to pay a visit to a public museum this afternoon.

In Europe, the keepers, that is to say, the servants of the public, have cautions posted in the museums, in which "the public are requested not to touch." In France, they are "begged," which is perhaps a more suitable expression, as the museums, after all, belong to the public.

In America, the notice is "Hands off!" This is short and to the point.

The servants of the public allow you to enter the museums, charge you twenty-five cents, and warn you to behave well. "Hands off" struck me as rather off-handed.