As Seen By Me Part 11

"Oh, nothing much. But don't you think they have arranged the k.n.o.bs in these mattresses in very curious places?"'

Well, it _was_ a little like sleeping on a wood-pile during a continuous earthquake. But that was nothing compared to the news broken to us about eleven o'clock that our luggage would be examined at the German frontier at five o'clock in the morning. That meant being wakened at half past four. But it was quite unnecessary, for we were not asleep.

It was cold and raining. I got up and dressed for the day. But my companion put her seal-skin on over her dressing-gown, and perched her hat on top of that hair of hers, and looked ready to cope with Diana herself.

"They'll ruin my things if they unpack them," I said.

"You just keep still and let me manage things," she answered. So I did. I made myself as small as possible and watched her. She selected her victim and smiled on him most charmingly. He was tearing open the trunk of a fat American got up in gray flannel and curl-papers. He dropped her tray and hurried up to my companion.

"Have you anything to declare, madam?" he asked.

"Tell him absolutely nothing," she whispered to me. I obeyed, but he never took his eyes from her. She was tugging at the strap of her trunk in apparently wild eagerness to get it open. She frowned and panted a little to show how hard it was, and he bounded forward to help her. Then she smiled at him, and he blinked his eyes and tucked the strap in and chalked her trunk, with a shrug. He hadn't opened it.

She kept her eye on him and pointed to my trunk, and he chalked that.

Then seven pieces of hand luggage, and he chalked them all. Then she smiled on him again, and I thanked him, but he didn't seem to hear me, and she nodded her thanks and pulled me down a long stone corridor to the dining-room where we could get some coffee.

At the door I looked back. The customs officer was still looking after my companion, but she never even saw it.

The dining-room was full of smoke, but the coffee and my first taste of zwieback were delicious. Then we went out through a narrow doorway to the train, where we were jostled by Frenchmen with their habitual "_Pardon!_" (which partially reconciles you to being walked on), and knocked into by monstrous Germans, who sent us spinning without so much as a look of apology, and both of whom puffed their tobacco smoke directly in our faces. It was still dark and the rain was whimpering down on the car-roof, and, take it all in all, the situation was far from pleasant, but we are hard to depress, and our spirits remain undaunted.

It was so stuffy in our compartment that I stood in the doorway for a few moments near an open window. My companion was lying down in my berth. We still had nineteen hours of travel before us with no prospect of sleep, for sleep in those berths and over such a rough road was absolutely out of the question.

Near me (and spitting in the saddest manner out of the open window) stood the meek little American husband of the gray flannel and curl-papers, whose fury at my companion for her quick work with the customs officer knew no bounds.

The gray flannel had gone to bed again in the compartment next to ours.

The precision of this gentleman's aim as he expectorated through the open window, and the marvellous rapidity with which he managed his diversion, led me to watch him. He looked tired and cold and ill. It was still dark outside, and the jolting of the train was almost unbearable. He had not once looked at me, but with his gaze still on the darkness he said, slowly,

"They can have the whole blamed country for all of me! _I_ don't want it."

It was so exactly the way I felt that even though he said something worse than "blamed," I gave a shriek of delight, and my companion pounded the pillow in her cooperation of the sentiment.

"You are an American and you are Southern," I said.

"Yes'm. How did you know?"

"By your accent."

"Yes'm, I was born in Virginia. I was in the Southern army four years, and I love my country. I hate these blamed foreigners and their blamed churches and their infernal foreign languages. I am over here for my health, my wife says. But I have walked more miles in picture-galleries than I ever marched in the army. I've seen more pictures by Raphael than he could have painted if he'd 'a' had ten arms and painted a thousand years without stopping to eat or sleep.

I've seen more 'old masters,' as they call 'em, but _I_ call 'em _daubs_, all varnished till they are so slick that a fly would slip on 'em and break his neck. And the stone floors are so cold that I get cold clean up to my knees, and I don't get warm for a week. Yet I am over here for my health! Then the way they rob you--these blamed French! Lord, if I ever get back to America, where one price includes everything and your hotel bill isn't sent in on a ladder, and where I can keep warm, won't I just be _too_ thankful."

Just then the gray-flannel door banged open and a hand reached out and jerked the poor little old man inside, and we heard him say, "But I was only blaming the French. I ain't happy over here." And a sharp voice said, "Well, you've said enough. Don't talk any more at all."

Then she let him out again, but he did not find me in the corridor. He found his open window, and he leaned against our closed door and again aimed at the flying landscape, as he pondered over the disadvantages of Europe.

The sun was just rising over the cathedral as we reached Cologne.

"Let's get out here and have our breakfast comfortably, see the cathedral, and take the next train to Berlin," I said to my companion.

She is the courier and I am the banker. She hastily consulted her _indicateur_ and a.s.sented. We only had about two seconds in which to decide.

"Let's throw these bags out of the window," she said. "I've seen other people do it, and the porters catch them."

"Don't _throw_ them," I urged. "You will break my toilet bottles. Poke them out gently."

She did so, and we hopped off the train just at daybreak, perfectly delighted at doing something we had not planned.

A more lovely sight than the Cologne cathedral, with the rising sun gilding its numerous pinnacles and spires, would be difficult to imagine. The narrow streets were still comparatively dark, and when we arrived we heard the majestic notes of the organ in a Bach fugue, and found ourselves at early ma.s.s, with rows of humble worshippers kneeling before the high altar, and the twinkle of many candles in the soft gloom. As we stood and watched and listened, the smell of incense floated down to us, and gradually the first rays of the sun crept downward through the superb colored-gla.s.s windows and stained the marble statues in their niches into gorgeous hues of purple and scarlet and amber.

And as the priests intoned and the fresh young voices of an invisible choir floated out and the magnificent rumble of the organ shook the very foundation of the cathedral, we forgot that we were there to visit a sight of Cologne, we forgot our night of discomfort, we forgot everything but the spirit of worship, and we came away without speaking.

From Cologne to Dresden is stupid. We went through a country punctuated with myriads of tall chimneys of factories, which reminded us why so many things in England and America are stamped "Made in Germany."

We arrived at Dresden at five o'clock, and decided to stop there and go to the opera that night. The opera begins in Dresden at seven o'clock and closes at ten. The best seats are absurdly cheap, and whole families, whole schools, whole communities, I should say, were there together. I never saw so many children at an opera in my life.

Coming straight from Paris, from the theatrical, vivacious, enthusiastic French audiences, with their abominable _claqueurs_, this first German audience seemed serious, thoughtful, appreciative, but unenthusiastic. They use more judgment about applause than the French.

They never interrupt a scene or even a musical phrase with misplaced applause because the soprano has executed a flamboyant cadenza or the tenor has reached a higher note than usual. Their appreciation is slow but hearty and always worthily disposed. The French are given to exaggerating an emotion and to applauding an eccentricity. Even their subtlety is overdone.

The German drama is much cleaner than the French, the family tie is made more of, sentiment is encouraged instead of being ridiculed, as it too often is in America; but the German point of view of Americans is quite as much distorted as the French. That statement is severe, but true. For instance, it would be utterly impossible for the American girl to be more exquisitely misunderstood than by French and German men.

Berlin is so full of electric cars that it seemed much more familiar at first sight than Paris. It is a lovely city, although we ought to have seen it before Paris in order fully to appreciate it. Its Brandenburg Gate is most impressive, and I wanted to make some demonstration every time we drove under it and realized that the statue above it has been returned. Their statue of Victory in the Thiergarten is so hideous, however, that I was reminded of General Sherman's remark when he saw the Pension Office in Washington, "And they tell me the ---- thing is fireproof!"

The streets are filled with beautiful things, mostly German officers.

The only trouble is that they themselves seem to know it only too well, and as they will not give us any of the sidewalk, we are obliged to admire them from the gutters. The only way you can keep Germans from knocking you into the middle of the street is to walk sideways and pretend you are examining the shop windows.

In the eyes of men, women are of little account in England compared to the way we are treated in America; of less in France; and of still less in Germany. We have not got to Russia yet.

Paris seems a city of leisure, Berlin a city of war. The streets of Paris are quite as full of soldiers as Berlin, but French soldiers look to me like mechanical toys. I have sent Billy a box of them for Christmas--of mechanical soldiers, I mean. The chief difference I noticed was that Billy's were smaller than the live ones, although French soldiers are small enough. That portion of the French army which I have seen--at Longchamps, Chalons-sur-Marne, Saumur, and at various other places--are, as a rule, undersized, badly dressed, and badly groomed. They do not look neat, nor even clean, if you want the truth. The uniform is very ugly, and was evidently designed for men thirteen feet high; so that on those comical little toy Frenchmen it is grotesque in the extreme.

Their trousers are always much too long, and so ample in width that they seem to need only a belt at the ankle to turn them into perfect Russian blouses. But English and German soldiers not only appear, but _are_, in perfect condition, as though they could go to war at a moment's notice, and would be glad of the chance.

I am keeping my eyes open to see how America bears comparison with other nations in all particulars. In point of appearance the English army stands first, the German second, the American third, and the French fourth. I put the American third only because our uniforms are less impressive. In everything else, except in numbers, they might easily stand first. But uniforms and gold lace, and bright scarlet and waving plumes, make a vast difference in appearance, and every country in the world recognizes this, except America. I wish that everybody in the United States who boasts of democracy and Jeffersonian simplicity could share my dissatisfaction in seeing our amba.s.sadors at Court b.a.l.l.s and diplomatic receptions in deacons' suits of modest black, without even a medal or decoration of any kind, except perhaps that gorgeous and overpowering insignia known as the Loyal Legion b.u.t.ton, while every little twopenny kingdom of a mile square sends a representative in a uniform as brilliant as a peony and stiff with gold embroidery.

No matter how magnificent a man, personally, our amba.s.sador may be, no matter how valuable his public services, no matter how unimpeachable his private character, I wish you could see how small and miserable and mean is the appearance he presents at Court functions, where every man there, except the representative of seventy millions of people, is in some sort of uniform. If it really were Thomas Jefferson whose administration inaugurated the disgusting simplicity which goes by his name, I wish the words had stuck in his throat and strangled him.

"Jeffersonian simplicity!" How I despise it! Thomas Jefferson, I believe, was the first Populist. We had had gentlemen for Presidents before him, but he was the first one who rooted for votes with the common herd by catering to the gutter instead of to the skyline, and the tail end of his policy is to be seen in the mortifying appearance of our highest officials and representatives. _Hinc illae lachrymae_!

I looked at the servant who announced our names in Paris at General Porter's first official reception, and even he was much more gorgeous in dress than the master of the house, the Amba.s.sador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary representing seventy millions of people!

Not even in his uniform of a general! The only man in the room in plain black. The United States ought to treat her representatives better. When Mr. White at Berlin was received by the Emperor, he, too, was the only man in plain black.

No wonder we are taken no account of socially when we don't even give our amba.s.sador a house, as all the other countries do, and when his salary is so inadequate. Every other amba.s.sador except the American has a furnished house given him, and a salary sufficient to entertain as becomes the representative of a great country. All except _ours_!

Yet none of them is obliged to entertain as continuously as our amba.s.sador, because _only_ Americans travel unremittingly, and _only_ Americans expect their amba.s.sador to be their host.

"O wad some power the giftie gie us To see oursels as ithers see us!"

Of course I notice such things immensely more in Berlin than in Paris, because the glory of a Court is much more than the twinkle of a republic.

I have worked myself into such a towering rage over this subject that there is no getting down to earth gracefully or gradually. I have not polished off the matter by any manner of means. I have only just started in, but a row of stars will cool me off.