Europe Revised Part 19

Here it is--all of it; the tragic theater and the comic theater; the basilica; the greater forum and the lesser one; the market place; the amphitheater for the games; the training school for the gladiators; the temples; the baths; the villas of the rich; the huts of the poor; the cubicles of the slaves; shops; offices; workrooms; brothels.

The roofs are gone, except in a few instances where they have been restored; but the walls stand and many of the detached pillars stand too; and the pavements have endured well, so that the streets remain almost exactly as they were when this was a city of live beings instead of a tomb of dead memories, with deep groovings of chariot wheels in the flaggings, and at each crossing there are stepping stones, dotting the roadbed like punctuation marks. At the public fountain the well curbs are worn away where the women rested their water jugs while they swapped the gossip of the town; and at nearly every corner is a groggery, which in its appointments and fixtures is so amazingly like unto a family liquor store as we know it that, venturing into one, I caught myself looking about for the Business Men's Lunch, with a collection of greasy forks in a gla.s.s receptacle, a crock of pretzels on the counter, and a sign over the bar reading: No Checks Cashed--This Means You!

In the floors the mosaics are as fresh as though newly applied; and the ribald and libelous Latin, which disappointed litigants carved on the stones at the back of the law court, looks as though it might have been scored there last week--certainly not further back than the week before that. A great many of the wall paintings in the interiors of rich men's homes have been preserved and some of them are fairly spicy as to subject and text. It would seem that in these matters the ancient Pompeiians were pretty nearly as broad-minded and liberal as the modern Parisians are. The mural decorations I saw in certain villas were almost suggestive enough to be acceptable matter for publication in a French comic paper; almost, but not quite. Mr. Anthony Comstock would be an unhappy man were he turned loose in Pompeii--unhappy for a spell, but after that exceedingly busy.

We lingered on, looking and marveling, and betweenwhiles wondering whether our automobile's hacking cough had got any better by resting, until the sun went down and the twilight came. Following the guidebook's advice we had seen the Colosseum in Rome by moonlight. There was a full moon on the night we went there. It came heaving up grandly, a great, round-faced, full-cream, curdy moon, rich with rennet and yellow with b.u.t.ter fats; but by the time we had worked our way south to Naples a greedy fortnight had bitten it quite away, until it was reduced to a mere cheese rind of a moon, set up on end against the delft-blue platter of a perfect sky. We waited until it showed its thin rim in the heavens, and then, in the softened half-glow, with the purplish shadows deepening between the brown-gray walls of the dead city, I just naturally turned my imagination loose and let her soar.

Standing there, with the stage set and the light effects just right, in fancy I repopulated Pompeii. I beheld it just as it was on a fair, autumnal morning in 79 A. D. With my eyes half closed, I can see the vision now. At first the crowds are ma.s.sed and mingled in confusion, but soon figures detach themselves from the rest and reveal themselves as prominent personages. Some of them I know at a glance. Yon tall, imposing man, with the genuine imitation sealskin collar on his toga, who strides along so majestically, whisking his cane against his leg, can be no other than Gum Tragacanth, leading man of the Bon Ton Stock Company, fresh from his metropolitan triumphs in Rome and at this moment the reigning matinee idol of the South. This week he is playing Claude Melnotte in The Lady of Lyons; next week he will be seen in his celebrated characterization of Matthias in The Bells, with special scenery; and for the regular Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day bargain matinees Lady Audley's Secret will be given.

Observe him closely. It is evident that he values his art. Yet about him there is no false ostentation. With what gracious condescension does he acknowledge the half-timid, half-daring smiles of all the little caramel-chewing Floras and Faunas who have made it a point to be on Main Street at this hour! With what careless grace does he doff his laurel wreath, which is of the latest and most modish fall block, with the bow at the back, in response to the waved greeting of Mrs. Belladonna Capsic.u.m, the acknowledged leader of the artistic and Bohemian set, as she sweeps by in her chariot bound for Blumberg Brothers' to do a little shopping. She is not going to buy anything--she is merely out shopping.

Than this fair patrician dame, none is more prominent in the gay life of Pompeii. It was she who last season smoked a cigarette in public, and there is a report now that she is seriously considering wearing an ankle bracelet; withal she is a perfect lady and belongs to one of the old Southern families. Her husband has been through the bankruptcy courts twice and is thinking of going through again. At present he is engaged in promoting and writing a little life insurance on the side.

Now her equipage is lost in the throng and the great actor continues on his way, making a mental note of the fact that he has promised to attend her next Sunday afternoon studio tea. Near his own stage door he b.u.mps into Commodious Rotunda, the stout comedian of the comic theater, and they pause to swap the latest Lambs' Club repartee. This done, Commodius hauls out a press clipping and would read it, but the other remembers providentially that he has a rehearshal on and hurriedly departs. If there are any press clippings to be read he has a few of his own that will bear inspection.

Superior Maxillary, managing editor of the Pompeiian "Daily News-Courier," is also abroad, collecting items of interest and subscriptions for his paper, with preference given to the latter. He enters the Last Chance Saloon down at the foot of the street and in a minute or two is out again, wiping his mustache on the back of his hand.

We may safely opine that he has been taking a small ad. out in trade.

At the door of the county courthouse, where he may intercept the taxpayers as they come and go, is stationed our old friend, Colonel Pro Bono Publico. The Colonel has been running for something or other ever since Heck was a pup. To-day he is wearing his official campaign smile, for he is a candidate for county judge, subject to the action of the Republican party at the October primaries. He is wearing all his lodge b.u.t.tons and likewise his G. A. R. pin, for this year he figures on carrying the old-soldier vote.

See who comes now! It is Rigor Mortis, the worthy coroner. At sight of him the Colonel uplifts his voice in hoa.r.s.ely jovial salutation:

"Rigsy, my boy," he booms, "how are you? And how is Mrs. M. this morning?"

"Well, Colonel," answers his friend, "my wife ain't no better. She's mighty puny and complaining. Sometimes I get to wishing the old lady would get well--or something!"

The Colonel laughs, but not loudly. That wheeze was old in 79. In front of the drug-store on the corner a score of young bloods, dressed in snappy togas for Varsity men, are skylarking. They are especially brilliant in their flashing interchanges of wit and humor, because the Mastodon Minstrels were here only last week, with a new line of first-part jokes. Along the opposite side of the street pa.s.ses Nux Vomica, M.D., with a small black case in his hand, gravely intent on his professional duties. Being a young physician, he wears a beard and large-rimmed eyegla.s.ses. Young Ossius Dome sees him and hails him.

"Oh, Doc!" he calls out. "Come over here a minute. I've got some brand-new limerickii for you. Tertiary Tonsillitis got 'em from a traveling man he met day before yesterday when he was up in the city laying in his stock of fall and winter armor."

The healer of ills crosses over; and as the group push themselves in toward a common center I hear the voice of the speaker:

"Say, they're all bully; but this is the bullissimus one of the lot. It goes like this:

"'There was a young maid of Sorrento, Who said to her--'"

I have regretted ever since that at this juncture I came to and so failed to get the rest of it. I'll bet that was a peach of a limerick.

It started off so promisingly.

Chapter XXIII

Muckraking in Old Pompeii

It now devolves on me as a painful yet necessary duty to topple from its pedestal one of the most popular idols of legendary lore. I refer, I regret to say, to the widely famous Roman sentry of old Pompeii.

Personally I think there has been entirely too much of this sort of thing going on lately. Muckrakers, prying into the storied past, have destroyed one after another many of the pet characters in history.

Thanks to their meddlesome activities we know that Paul Revere did not take any midnight ride. On the night in question he was laid up in bed with inflammatory rheumatism. What happened was that he told the news to Mrs. Revere as a secret, and she in strict confidence imparted it to the lady living next door; and from that point on the word traveled with the rapidity of wildfire.

Horatius never held the bridge; he just let the blamed thing go. The boy did not stand on the burning deck, whence all but him had fled; he was among the first in the lifeboats. That other boy--the Spartan youth--did not have his vitals gnawed by a fox; the Spartan youth had been eating wild grapes and washing them down with spring water. Hence that gnawing sensation of which so much mention has been made. n.o.body hit Billy Patterson. He acquired his black eye in the same way in which all married men acquire a black eye--by running against a doorjamb while trying to find the ice-water pitcher in the dark. He said so himself the next day.

Even Barbara Frietchie is an exploded myth. She did not nail her country's flag to the window cas.e.m.e.nt. Being a female, she could not nail a flag or anything else to a window. In the first place, she would have used a wad of chewing gum and a couple of hairpins. In the second place, had she recklessly undertaken to nail up a flag with hammer and nails, she would never have been on hand at the psychological moment to invite Stonewall Jackson to shoot her old gray head. When General Jackson pa.s.sed the house she would have been in the bathroom bathing her left thumb in witch-hazel.

Furthermore, she did not have any old gray head. At the time of the Confederate invasion of Maryland she was only seventeen years old--some authorities say only seven--and a p.r.o.nounced blonde. Also, she did not live in Frederick; and even if she did live there, on the occasion when the troops went through she was in Baltimore visiting a school friend.

Finally, Frederick does not stand where it stood in the sixties. The cyclone of 1884 moved it three miles back into the country and twisted the streets round in such a manner as to confuse even lifelong residents. These facts have repeatedly been proved by volunteer investigators and are not to be gainsaid.

I repeat that there has been too much of this. If the craze for smashing all our romantic fixtures persists, after a while we shall have no glorious traditions left with which to fire the youthful heart at high-school commencements. But in the interests of truth, and also because I made the discovery myself, I feel it to be my solemn duty to expose the Roman sentry, stationed at the gate of Pompeii looking toward the sea, who died because he would not quit his post without orders and had no orders to quit.

Until now this party has stood the acid test of centuries. Everybody who ever wrote about the fall of Pompeii, from Plutarch and Pliny the Younger clear down to Bulwer Lytton and Burton Holmes, had something to say about him. The lines on this subject by the Greek poet Laryngitis are familiar to all lovers of that great master of cla.s.sic verse, and I shall not undertake to quote from them here.

Suffice it to say that the Roman sentry, perishing at his post, has ever been a favorite subject for historic and romantic writers. I myself often read of him--how on that dread day when the devil's stew came to a boil and spewed over the sides of Vesuvius, and death and destruction poured down to blight the land, he, typifying fort.i.tude and discipline and unfaltering devotion, stood firm and stayed fast while all about him chaos reigned and fathers forgot their children and husbands forgot their wives, and vice versa, though probably not to the same extent; and how finally the drifting ashes and the choking dust fell thicker upon him and mounted higher about him, until he died and in time turned to ashes himself, leaving only a void in the solidified slag. I had always admired that soldier--not his judgment, which was faulty, but his heroism, which was immense. To myself I used to say:

"That unknown common soldier, nameless though he was, deserves to live forever in the memory of mankind. He lacked imagination, it is true, but he was game. It was a glorious death to die--painful, yet splendid.

Those four poor wretches whose sh.e.l.ls were found in the prison under the gladiators' school, with their ankles fast in the iron stocks--I know why they stayed. Their feet were too large for their own good. But no bonds except his dauntless will bound him at the portals of the doomed city. Duty was the only chain that held him.

"And to think that centuries and centuries afterward they should find his monument--a vacant, empty mold in the piled-up pumice! Had I been in his place I should have created my vacancy much sooner--say, about thirty seconds after the first alarm went in. But he was one who chose rather that men should say, 'How natural he looks!' than 'Yonder he goes!' And he has my sincere admiration. When I go to Pompeii--if ever I do go there--I shall seek out the spot where he made the supremest sacrifice to authority that ever any man could make, and I shall tarry a while in those hallowed precincts!"

That was what I said I would do and that was what I did do that afternoon at Pompeii. I found the gate looking toward the sea and I found all the other gates, or the sites of them; but I did not find the Roman sentry nor any trace of him, nor any authentic record of him. I questioned the guides and, through an interpreter, the curator of the Museum, and from them I learned the lamentably disillusioning facts in this case. There is no trace of him because he neglected to leave any trace.

Doubtless there was a sentry on guard at the gate when the volcano belched forth, and the skin of the earth flinched and shivered and split asunder; but he did not remain for the finish. He said to himself that this was no place for a minister's son; and so he girded up his loins and he went away from there.

He went away hurriedly--even as you and I.

Chapter XXIV

Mine Own People

Wherever we went I was constantly on the outlook for a kind of tourist who had been described to me frequently and at great length by more seasoned travelers--the kind who wore his country's flag as a b.u.t.tonhole emblem, or as a shirtfront decoration; and regarded every gathering and every halting place as providing suitable opportunity to state for the benefit of all who might be concerned, how immensely and overpoweringly superior in all particulars was the land from which he hailed as compared with all other lands under the sun. I desired most earnestly to overhaul a typical example of this species, my intention then being to decoy him off to some quiet and secluded spot and there destroy him in the hope of cutting down the breed.

At length, along toward the f.a.g end of our zigzagging course, I caught up with him; but stayed my hand and slew not. For some countries, you understand, are so finicky in the matter of protecting their citizens that they would protect even such a one as this. I was fearful lest, by exterminating the object of my homicidal desires, I should bring on international complications with a friendly Power, no matter however public-spirited and high-minded my intentions might be.

It was in Vienna, in a cafe, and the hour was late. We were just leaving, after having listened for some hours to a Hungarian band playing waltz tunes and an a.s.semblage of natives drinking beer, when the sounds of a dispute at the booth where wraps were checked turned our faces in that direction. In a thick and plushy voice a short square person of a highly vulgar aspect was arguing with the young woman who had charge of the check room. Judging by his tones, you would have said that the nap of his tongue was at least a quarter of an inch long; and he punctuated his remarks with hiccoughs. It seemed that his excitement had to do with the disappearance of a neck-m.u.f.fler. From argument he progressed rapidly to threats and the pounding of a fist upon the counter.

Drawing nigh, I observed that he wore a very high hat and a very short sack coat; that his waistcoat was of a combustible plaid pattern with gaiters to match; that he had taken his fingers many times to the jeweler, but not once to the manicure; that he was beautifully jingled and alcoholically boastful of his native land and that--a crowning touch--he wore flaring from an upper pocket of his coat a silk handkerchief woven in the design and colors of his country's flag. But, praises be, it was not our flag that he wore thus. It was the Union Jack. As we pa.s.sed out into the damp Viennese midnight he was loudly proclaiming that he "Was'h Bri'sh subjesch," and that unless something was done mighty quick, would complain to "Is Majeshy's rep(hic)shenativ'

ver' firsch thing 'n morn'."

So though I was sorry he was a cousin, I was selfishly and unfeignedly glad that he was not a brother. Since in the mysterious and unfathomable scheme of creation it seemed necessary that he should be born somewhere, still he had not been born in America, and that thought was very pleasing to me.

There was another variety of the tourist breed whose trail I most earnestly desired to cross. I refer to the creature who must be closely watched to prevent him, or her, from carrying off valuable relics as souvenirs, and defacing monuments and statues and disfiguring holy places with an inconsequential signature. In the flesh--and such a person must be all flesh and no soul--I never caught up with him, but more than once I came upon his fresh spoor.