A Book of Burlesques Part 14

THE SECOND MAN

Well, what can you expect? A country where all the charwomen are men and all the garbage men are women!--

_For the moment the two have talked each other out, and so they lounge upon the rail in silence and gaze out over the valley. Anon the gumchewer spits. By now the sun has reached the skyline to the westward and the tops of the ice mountains are in gorgeous conflagration.

Scarlets war with golden oranges, and vermilions fade into palpitating pinks. Below, in the valley, the colours begin to fade slowly to a uniform seash.e.l.l grey. It is a scene of indescribable loveliness; the wild reds of hades splashed riotously upon the cold whites and pale blues of heaven. The night train for Venice, a long line of black coaches, is entering the town. Somewhere below, apparently in the barracks, a sunset gun is fired. After a silence of perhaps two or three minutes, the Americans gather fresh inspiration and resume their conversation._

THE FIRST MAN

I have seen worse scenery.

THE SECOND MAN

Very pretty.

THE FIRST MAN

Yes, sir; it's well worth the money.

THE SECOND MAN

But the Rockies beat it all hollow.

THE FIRST MAN

Oh, of course. They have nothing over here that we can't beat to a whisper. Just consider the Rhine, for instance. The Hudson makes it look like a country creek.

THE SECOND MAN

Yes, you're right. Take away the castles, and not even a German would give a hoot for it. It's not so much what a thing _is_ over here as what _reputation_ it's got. The whole thing is a matter of press-agenting.

THE FIRST MAN

I agree with you. There's the "beautiful, blue Danube." To me it looks like a sewer. If _it's_ blue, then _I'm_ green. A man would hesitate to drown himself in such a mud puddle.

THE SECOND MAN

But you hear the bands playing that waltz all your life, and so you spend your good money to come over here to see the river. And when you get back home you don't want to admit that you've been a sucker, so you start touting it from h.e.l.l to breakfast. And then some other fellow comes over and does the same, and so on and so on.

THE FIRST MAN

Yes, it's all a matter of boosting. Day in and day out you hear about Westminster Abbey. Every English book mentions it; it's in the newspapers almost as much as Jane Addams or Caruso. Well, one day you pack your grip, put on your hat and come over to have a look--and what do you find? A one-horse church full of statues! And every statue crying for sapolio! You expect to see something magnificent and enormous, something to knock your eye out and send you down for the count. What you do see is a second-rate graveyard under roof. And when you examine into it, you find that two-thirds of the graves haven't even got dead men in them! Whenever a prominent Englishman dies, they put up a statue to him in Westminster Abbey--_no matter where he happens to be buried_!

I call that clever advertising. That's the way to get the crowd.

THE SECOND MAN

Yes, these foreigners know the game. They have made millions out of it in Paris. Every time you go to see a musical comedy at home, the second act is laid in Paris, and you see a whole stageful of girls wriggling around, and a lot of old sports having the time of their lives. All your life you hear that Paris is something rich and racy, something that makes New York look like Roanoke, Virginia. Well, you fall for the ballyho and come over to have your fling--and then you find that Paris is largely bunk. I spent a whole week in Paris, trying to find something really awful. I hired one of those Jew guides at five dollars a day and told him to go the limit. I said to him: "Don't mind _me_. I am twenty-one years old. Let me have the genuine goods." But the worst he could show me wasn't half as bad as what I have seen in Chicago. Every night I would say to that Jew: "Come on, now Mr. Cohen; let's get away from these tinhorn shows. Lead me to the real stuff." Well, I believe the fellow did his darndest, but he always fell down. I almost felt sorry for him. In the end, when I paid him off, I said to him: "Save up your money, my boy, and come over to the States. Let me know when you land. I'll show you the sights for nothing. This Baracca Cla.s.s atmosphere is killing you."

THE FIRST MAN

And yet Paris is famous all over the world. No American ever came to Europe without dropping off there to have a look. I once saw the Bal Tabarin crowded with Sunday-school superintendents returning from Jerusalem. And when the sucker gets home he goes around winking and hinting, and so the fake grows. I often think the government ought to take a hand. If the beer is inspected and guaranteed in Germany, why shouldn't the shows be inspected and guaranteed in Paris?

THE SECOND MAN

I guess the trouble is that the Frenchmen themselves never go to their own shows. They don't know what is going on. They see thousands of Americans starting out every night from the Place de l'Opera and coming back in the morning all boozed up, and so they a.s.sume that everything is up to the mark. You'll find the same thing in Was.h.i.+ngton. No Was.h.i.+ngtonian has ever been up to the top of the Was.h.i.+ngton monument.

Once the elevator in the monument was out of commission for two weeks, and yet Was.h.i.+ngton knew nothing about it. When the news got into the papers at last, it came from Macon, Georgia. Some honeymooner from down there had written home about it, roasting the government.

THE FIRST MAN

Well, me for the good old U. S. A.! These Alps are all right, I guess--but I can't say I like the coffee.

THE SECOND MAN

And it takes too long to get a letter from Jersey City.

THE FIRST MAN

Yes, that reminds me. Just before I started up here this afternoon my wife got the _Ladies' Home Journal_ of the month before last. It had been following us around for six weeks, from London to Paris, to Berlin, to Munich, to Vienna, to a dozen other places. Now she's fixed for the night. She won't let up until she's read every word--the advertis.e.m.e.nts first. And she'll spend all day to-morrow sending off for things; new collar hooks, breakfast foods, complexion soaps and all that sort of junk. Are you married yourself?

THE SECOND MAN

No; not yet.

THE FIRST MAN

Well, then, you don't know how it is. But I guess you play poker.

THE SECOND MAN

Oh, to be sure.