The Galaxy, June 1877 Part 24

The birds on every budding tree Take up anew the old refrain: The spring has come: rejoice all ye Who breathe its air again.

H. R. H.

DRIFT-WOOD.

THE TRAVELLERS.

May brings the travelling season. Thanks to steam and Cook, we can all find time for a trip to Florida or Labrador, if not to Lapland and Thibet. Travel is a pastime of both s.e.xes, all ages, all sorts and conditions of men. Lord Bateman was a n.o.ble lord, a n.o.ble lord he was of high degree; and, adds the ballad, "he determined to go abroad, strange countries for to see." Cheek by jowl with Lord Bateman, in the railroad car, is Samuel Shears, Esq., his lords.h.i.+p's tailor, on the same errand.

"Pa, I think we ought to go to Paris," says matronly Mrs. Brood.

"Why do you think that, my dear?" asks paterfamilias.

"Because I do," rejoins the lady, wheeling in a circle of small radius.

Impressed by that logic, Brood has his trunks mended, and embarks his family on the first available steamer.

Mrs. B's spring of action is that the Breeds have started, or that the McBrides went last year. Fas.h.i.+on pries us out of our comfortable domesticity, our cozy home-keeping ruts, which we exchange for the miseries of inns and the perils of voyaging; precisely as custom, gathering at length the force of law, "moves" a hundred thousand hapless New Yorkers, more or less, every May, with smash of household goods, cost, loss, hurry, flurry, and worry--they exchange houses as in the children's game everybody changes "chairs" or "corners" to see who will get the worst of it. This is a species of May travelling with all its curses and none of its compensations.

Presently our European voyagers will be sending home the tale of their misadventures. They fell among the London servants--soft and sweet to the face, perfect devils behind your back; stealing all your provisions under pretence of perquisites, and drinking enough beer in a week to last an American a year; whereas, if you yourself so much as send for a gla.s.s of ice-water at the hotel, the butler grumbles at the messenger, "Those Americans lap water like dogs!" At Paris our pilgrims fall a prey to landlords who charge the price of new furniture for every microscopic scratch on a chair, besides cheating them out of a thousand francs extra rent, as a parting token, on the ground that the laws require a certain notice of quitting.

A more agreeable theme will be the people our travellers meet. Whoever goes from another American city to New York is struck by the strange faces he sees--phizzes and figures that make Hans Breitmann commonplace and Nast a portrait painter instead of a caricaturist. Could one have suspected such oddities in human shape, such outlandish rigs? The New Yorker going to London is still more surprised at the queer-looking specimens he sees there, surpa.s.sing the fancy of d.i.c.kens and Cruikshank: plenty of Bagstocks, Peggotys and Skewtons; perfumed old beaux, with enormous gloves, too long in the fingers, and with an eyegla.s.s held muscularly in one eye socket by s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up the face; and all sorts of people belonging to the last century, and magically coming out of bandboxes a hundred years old.

So, at least, writes Augustus from London; and presently, as if whisked off by an enchanter, we hear of the youth in Naples, "the noisiest city in Europe," he says, where all the people chatter incessantly--"the dirtiest city, too, and one of the most delightful." There is something enviable to us desk-tethered mortals in these wide-striding rovers who one week are in Copenhagen and the next in Constantinople. "Hang it,"

says Brown, coming down to breakfast in Brussels and finding that Smith has gone, "I meant to bid Smith good-by, and forgot it. But I shall run across him in Smyrna next month, and can do it then."

Before we have digested the Neapolitan missive of Augustus, and its funny account of his fellow voyagers--how the men kissed all their male friends at parting, as women do with us, and, after kissing, ran again to the car windows to blow and throw last kisses--we see the traveller in Toledo, and reeling off his diary to us in some such fas.h.i.+on as this: "Here we find Burgos, formerly the capital of Castile and Leon, showing signs of former greatness, but now fallen to decay. It has a magnificent cathedral, a convent, and a nunnery, in which the people seem to have spent all their money, the rest of the city being mostly in ruins. Next we come to the Escurial, that vast pile, embracing palace, monastery, and cathedral, with burying place for the reigning kings. Leaving Madrid for a few moments, we will look at Toledo. Toledo is one of the old cities of Spain, and was a place of some importance when taken by the Romans, about 200 B.C. It had at one time 200,000 inhabitants; now but 17,000. What struck me so strangely was, why they should build up such a city among these rocky hills, not a tree or shrub to be seen outside the city, and very few inside," etc.

I quite like to read these travellers' letters, with their odd jumpings from city to city and century to century. True, a man might girdle the earth as many times as the Wandering Jew, without reaping a t.i.the of the instruction that Xavier de Maistre got from his "Voyage Autour de Ma Chambre"; and again, one untravelled, humorous pen made a small Connecticut town more talked of than any other of its size in the United States--I mean, of course, Danbury. Still, the exhilaration of travel, and its habit of observation, do lend freshness to writing.

Then the returned traveller has a fund of new ideas for us stay-at-homes, and his story is agreeable provided he does not p.r.o.nounce his French and German too abominably. He corrects our fancies by his experience. Who does not know Mrs. Norton's "A soldier of the Legion lay dying in Algiers," and has not conjured up an image of "fair Bingen on the Rhine"? "_Fair_ Bingen!" cries Miss Kate contemptuously, when we ask her memory of the place. "Why, Bingen is nothing--not handsome, not picturesque, not poetic, not even clean. In fact, it is the smelliest place on earth, except Cologne." So the traveller modifies our stay-at-home impressions.

Again, we always notice signs of mental growth and widening in our returned travellers. Besides, for a time they are less anxious over details, less overcome by trivial mishaps; they have an agreeable _aplomb_; they bring a certain refres.h.i.+ng atmosphere of leisure to our round of careful routine. One palpable danger of the traveller is becoming a slave to his guide-book, as some opera-goers are to the libretto; he is verifying the a.s.sertions of his Murray, when he should be seeing the landscape or the cathedral; he spends the time he has for picture galleries in checking off the catalogue, as if hired to certify that the alleged contents are there. Travellers who see only what the books tell them to see bring us home no facts and opinions of value.

The earth has now been so tracked from pole to equator that the traveller, to gain the world's attention, must see old things with new eyes, or must ferret out new paths and places. Still, for a Stanley and a Cameron mankind has immeasurable wonder; so has it for some tremendous exploring sportsman like Lieutenant Colonel Gordon c.u.mming, who takes only an ordinary paragraph to describe such an episode as the crunching to death of his gun-bearer on a certain Indian "nullah,"

adding: "This was a sad termination to what had been a brief but successful _cha.s.se_--my bag during the trip consisting of seven tigers, a panther, and a bear."

As to types of travellers, they have nearly all been drawn--the irascible, the erratic, the English, the _nil admirari_, the enthusiastic, and so on. Travelling is bad for some people, like Jack Peters, who had his cards in Europe printed "Mr. Jacques Petersilli,"

pretending it to be easier for his European friends to get the hang of that t.i.tle, of which the "silly" part was all acquired across the sea.

The ex-Reverend Christopher Cheeseman, tutor and philosopher, is a voyager of a sort perhaps destined to be more generally known among us.

He visits Europe as often as he can procure his pa.s.sage and pocket money in return for his valuable services as escort and adviser. He arranges the preliminaries of purchasing the tickets and outfits, but, once afloat, allows little to burden him with anxiety. Aboard s.h.i.+p he is recognized as a good teller of stories, some serious but not truthful, some comic but not truthful, these last being nicely graduated in delicacy from the boudoir to the mess table. Reaching England, he has prayers put up in the established church for the safe arrival of "Christopher Crozier Cheeseman and party"--the humor being that he is only the courier or nominally useful man of the persons who pay for him, and whom he lumps as "party." He studies the peerage attentively, carefully deciphering the mysteries of the coats of arms on the equipages. In England, when visiting the cathedrals, he expresses a great desire to be a monk (probably of the _bon vivant_ sort), and actually pushes his asceticism to the point of attending religious services with great regularity; but at Rome the rogue will do as Romans do, and may be found any Sunday afternoon listening to the band on the Pincio. He likes best to travel as tutor to some ingenuous youth, because it comes handy to leave the lad to fight a duel in France, or gamble in Germany, or fall in love in Switzerland, while the judicious mentor is supplied with funds to take a little diversion on his own account, after his arduous duties. But let us stop at the threshold of this sketch, because it is plainly one for the skilled novelist, rather than the rambling, loitering prattler, to undertake.

SWINDLERS AND DUPES.

The number of people ready to buy $200 watches for $20, and then to find them not worth $10, was made known by a recent exposure of pretended Kansas "lotteries." A like eagerness maintains "gift concerts" and similar swindles. Conducted honestly, they would earn fortunes for their projectors, whose instinct, however, is for a total swindle.

The gift swindle is known by its circular, with its voluble a.s.surances that "ticket-holders can confide in our honor"; that the drawing is to be done from two boxes, a securely blindfolded deacon at one and a real blind girl at the other; that all funds received will "remain inviolably pledged for prizes and donations"; that the result of the drawing of the 9,999 prizes by the 99,990 ticket-holders will be telegraphed the same night to all parts of the United States and to Mexico and Canada, and the prizes distributed the day following; that agents may trust the honesty of the enterprise, "as its founders are men of high standing," and so on.

One trick is the "cash a.s.sessment on prizes." The investor is notified that he has drawn a $150 prize, deliverable on the payment of "the usual five per cent. for handling," which sum he will "please forward"

to the Grand Atlantic and Great Western Monster Gift Carnival and Bottle Washer's Library Fund a.s.sociation. The gudgeon protests that there was no such condition on his ticket, but not liking to lose $150 by grudging $7.50, "forwards" this sum, and receives $150 worth of stock in the Seash.o.r.e Gold-Mining Company, or 3 undivided acres in the Atahualpa Swamp--"the directors of the a.s.sociation having recently decided to invest the receipts for their wards, the ticket-holders, in this splendid property." There really need be no ticket drawing or tickets for this swindle, as people who never heard of the enterprise can be informed of their luck, and will all the more quickly forward their "five per cent."

Some readers may remember B. Sharp & Co.'s fine "gift enterprise,"

whose drawing was postponed so many times on the plea that "the last drawn numbers are as fortunate as the first," as indeed they were. It begged ticket-holders to "exhibit to your friends and neighbors the many rich presents we have so generously bestowed upon you." The "committee" were engaged in the herculean labors of "drawing and registering tickets at the rate of 6,000 per week, and in packing and expressing prizes"; but alas! "owing to unforeseen expenses we have been put to in purchasing presents for our ticket-holders," this is what happened:

_We are compelled to make an a.s.sessment of_ 5 PER CENT. _on all prizes over fifty dollars_ ($50) awarded to them; and in order to expedite the business of the distribution in packing and forwarding the gifts, ticket-holders must within _ten days_ after notification of the value of the gift awarded to them, forward to us the amount of per centage, with directions for the packing and expressing of their gift, or else at the expiration of that time it will be forfeited.

Then there was B. Flat's "National Engineers Gift Enterprise," which with a spice of humor announced that it was controlled by the cla.s.s of men for whose benefit it was devised--"all engineers." It had as "references" a "State senator" of New York and another of Illinois, a lithographer, an editor, a hardware merchant, and other like distinguished personages, whose callings were proudly set forth, presumably to show that they were not mere adventurers. An enlightened press, if we may believe the circulars, backed up this "a.s.sociation."

"Its managers are men of the strictest integrity," said one Milwaukee paper; "We believe they will discharge all their obligations to purchasers of tickets with punctuality and integrity," said a second; "An inst.i.tution above suspicion, and worthy in every respect of public patronage. The managers we believe to be honest, reliable, and trustworthy," said a third. "The safest investment of the kind in America," said one Chicago paper, unless the circular falsifies; "Considered as a sure success," said a second. One New York paper is quoted as commending the enterprise, and another as thinking that "$30,000 for $2.00 is worth chancing." But when the thing went to pieces, and B. Flat escaped on bail, it was announced that "the swindle had been exposed by the press," as indeed it was.

PEGASUS IN HARNESS.

The muse that in our day quits Parna.s.sus to pay gossiping visits among the pill-kneaders, and to lounge in the haunts of trade, has of late been pressed into service by the guild of beggars. Perceiving, doubtless, that fortunes are got in teas, trousers, and tooth washes by sheer dint of literary advertising, the mendicants too have quaffed the Pierian spring, and now leave their sheets of verses at our doors for the accommodating price of "whatever you choose to give." The rogues have learned wisdom by experience. When a long-winded legislator troubles his fellow Solons with an unwelcome speech, he is sometimes gently rebuked by cries of "Oh, print the rest!" That is what the professional beggars have learned to do. Habitually cut off in their tale of woe at the door sill by an unfeeling "There's nothing for you!"

they have learned to print the rest, and now before Dora the doormaid can utter her formula of rejection, a neat circular is in her hand, on which is printed: "Please give this to the lady or gentleman. Will call in an hour."

Such, in fact, was the inscription on a printed page left at the Maison Quilibet this very morning, purporting to be a "copy of verses by a party of mechanics," as indeed one may easily believe that it is, from the internal evidence of such stanzas as these:

For many weeks we work have sought, But work we cannot procure.

Sad distress has been our lot, To go from door to door.

May want upon you never frown, Nor in your dwelling come; May Heaven pour its blessings down On every friendly soul.

Lord Jesus, thou hast shed thy blood For thousands such as we; Many despise the poor tradesman's lot, But to Thy Cross I flee.

Suddenly s.h.i.+fting then from poesy to prose, the circular continues:

A BLESSING.--May the blessings of G.o.d await you; may the bright sun of glory s.h.i.+ne above thy bed; may the gates of plenty, honor, and happiness be ever open to thee; may no sorrow distress thy days, and when the dim curtain of death is closing around thy last sleep, and the lamp of life extinguis.h.i.+ng, may it not receive one rude blast to hasten its extinction.

Thus having propitiated the aesthetic feeling as well as the benevolent heart of the householder, the circular proceeds to business by declaring that "the bearers are a party of unemployed tradesmen, who,"

etc. There is, of course, no resisting the appeal to buy the poem and the benediction; only, when Dora the doormaid is afterward questioned how many unemployed tradesmen formed the party, and she answers, "Only one, ma'am, and he's no tradesman," we look at each other as we do when "The Blind Man's Prayer" is given to us in the street car by some bright-eyed little girl, or some boy who meanwhile munches an apple.

"It's my uncle," says the lad, if asked whether he is perhaps, the person alluded to in the lines, "You see before you a poor, blind man,"

etc.; and I fancy that the literature of mendicancy has now become important enough to furnish a large variety of printed forms, so that the regular customer can choose for himself whether in any particular season he will be a poor blind man, or a lady that has seen better days, or a party of poetical mechanics.

PHILIP QUILIBET.

SCIENTIFIC MISCELLANY.

THE SURVEY IN CALIFORNIA.