Transcriber’s Notes.

Hyphenation has been standardised.

Other changes made are noted at the [end of the book.]

ARMED AND EQUIPPED, AS ADVISED BY FRIENDS.

A JOURNEY
OF A JAYHAWKER

BY
W. Y. MORGAN

WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY
ALBERT T. REID

MONOTYPED AND PRINTED BY
CRANE & COMPANY, PRINTERS
TOPEKA
1905

Copyright 1905,
By W. Y. MORGAN.

PREFACE.

These letters were written to the Hutchinson Daily News, and are printed in book form without revision. With this understanding the reader will kindly overlook inconsistencies and inaccuracies, which easily creep into what is only an impression and not a study. Any other mistakes are to be charged to the printer and proof-reader, who are likewise to be credited for the correct grammar and English which may be found in some places.

There is no excuse for the publication of these letters. No one is guilty except the writer, and he is responsible only to his conscience, which is not sensitive.

W. Y. MORGAN.

Hutchinson, Kansas, December 1, 1905.

To the
PEOPLE OF HUTCHINSON,
Who have stood for much from the same
source, and for whom there is no
relief in sight, this book is
respectfully dedicated.

CONTENTS.

A JOURNEY OF A JAYHAWKER.

GOING TO EUROPE.

Boston, May 25, 1905.

When one decides to make a European trip he immediately becomes impressed with the importance of his intention, and thinks that everyone else is likewise affected. Of course this is a mistake, but you have to stop and think before you realize it. You go down the street imagining everyone is saying, “There is a man who is going to Europe.” In fact, the other fellow is probably merely wondering whether or not you will pay the two dollars you owe him or stand him off for another thirty days. You are in an exhilarated state. You think over the cherished desires of a lifetime to see London, Paris, Rome, and the places made famous by history. You can’t pick up a paper but you read some reference to a place or thing which you are going to see across the Atlantic, and which ordinarily you would skip as you do a patent-medicine advertisement. You go to reading the accounts of Emperor William’s plans as if you would soon meet William and talk them over with him. You read about the comings and goings of nobility and wonder if the pope knows you are likely to call on him some day in July, and whether the Swiss Guards will realize the honor of a visit from an American citizen by the name of Morgan or Jones. You read of European travel and sights, and, worst of all, you actually get to believe the things. In fact, you work yourself up to a fine point of enthusiasm and in your mind go cavorting around among ancient heroes and crowned heads. As a first guess I would say that probably the most successful part of a trip to the Old World is the one you take in advance.

As soon as I disclosed my European intentions, I began to get advice from friends and old travelers. This is a trying experience. Everybody has ideas as to what should be done, and no two will agree. One of the first questions to be settled is that of clothing. The importance of this is impressed upon the prospective tourist. In the first place I am told to take no baggage except the very simplest that can be carried in the hand. In the second place I am advised that when traveling in Europe, even more than in this country, one should be prepared for all kinds of climate and be ready with the proper clothes to meet every emergency. Every bit of information is absolutely as true as common law or the gospel, for the informant has either made the trip, or his wife’s cousin has, or he knows a man who knows another man who did,—and you are told what happened with all the harrowing details. Clothes do not make the man or the woman, but they help out a lot. So that our friends will realize the difficulties we may meet. I will admit that we are going to the “simple” extreme, taking only light baggage, very little more than a clean collar and a pleasant smile. If royalty wants to call upon us, royalty will not find us prepared with the clothes required by the books of etiquette, unless I can hire a dress suit or borrow one from the head waiter.

I have also discovered that it is going to be difficult to please everybody with our route. Nearly every person has something that just must be seen, and not to do so would make a trip to Europe a flat failure. Most of these important places are dug up by inspiration from the memory of some novel or play. There is the scientific man who urges German universities, the musically inclined who would make Wagnerian objects the great points, the historical student who prescribes battlefields, the sportive gent who urges Monte Carlo, the classical enthusiast who can think of nothing less than a thousand years old, the art-lover who has a list of seventy-seven different styles of Madonnas, the novel-reader who would wander over the country of Scott, the social oracle who would spend the time in London and “Paree,” the enthusiast in civics who is interested in government railroads, the initiative and referendum of Switzerland, and the man whose ideas of a trip abroad are condensed in the parting injunction, “Take one for me at Munich or Heidelberg.” It is shocking to see the disappointed look of the friendly adviser if you do not agree with him that his recommendation is the great thing in Europe. A friend of mine who is an archæologist said: “Of course you are going to Greece?” Now I had not thought of Greece, and ventured to say so. “What, not going to Greece!” was the withering answer in a tone which plainly meant that you were undoubtedly going to throw your opportunity away like an empty sack when the peanuts are gone. Another type of adviser is the man who says: “You must see the Coliseum,” when you know the man would not know the Coliseum if he were to meet it in the road. He has simply heard some one say something about the Coliseum, and takes that word in order to show off his superior knowledge of the sights of Europe. During the weeks of preparation we have made “itineraries” to suit the suggestions of our friends. It is easy to make an itinerary, and no trouble at all to change it the next day when a more profitable route is offered. On a rough estimate I should say that in the last few weeks we have made European itineraries enough to take about seventeen years’ time, and we are intending to be away only about three months. The fact is that while Europe is only a little continent, not near as big as the United States, it has been fought over, scrapped over, built over, written about and has been doing business for so many hundreds of years that there is hardly a pin-point on the map which for some good reason you do not want to visit. It is like taking a newspaper article about seven columns long and condensing it to a small paragraph. You feel you are cutting out all the really good places, and about the extent of your trip is to the points to which you have ordered your mail sent and where you have to go to change trains.

And then there is the friend who can’t go to Europe and who could hardly get to Newton if he had to pay for a round-trip ticket, who comfortingly says: “I wouldn’t go to Europe until I had seen all of my own country.” This remark has been made to me so often in the last few weeks that I have learned to dodge when I see it coming. I have traveled around some in the United States, and as a matter of fact the people in one section are pretty much the same as the people in another, and it is people that I like to see and not mountains or museums. Of course some parts are more so than others. There is no State like Kansas and no people like Kansans. The object of a trip to Europe is to see something different, as different as possible. It is to get the local “color” for the things you read about. It is to learn if the men and women of the Old World are as they are pictured in books, and to compare them with the people whom you associate with every day at home. I am told that in Paris even little children can talk French, and that in Germany the people stand it to have an emperor and never organize any boss-buster movements or bolt the party nominations. I have read about these things all my life, and they may be true. I want to see them. I am not from Missouri, but I have lived near enough to want to be shown.

We sailed from Hutchinson on the Santa Fe. After touching at a few places we reached Boston safely, and unless the police intervene we will embark this afternoon on the White Star steamship Arabic. It is still two hours until we go aboard but I am already seasick, or am imagining how it will feel, which is nearly as bad. I am not afraid of water. I have lived too long on the Arkansas and Cow creek and my boyhood was spent on the shores of the Cottonwood. But nevertheless and notwithstanding, I feel as I think everybody must when he takes his first long ocean voyage. I never noticed so many accounts of wrecks as I have in the last month. If there was an item in a newspaper about the wreck of some ocean steamer or the drowning of a passenger, and I did not see the piece, some friend always did, and brought it to me to comfort me. Statistics prove that it is as safe to travel across the ocean in a steamship as across Kansas in a railroad train. This is comforting, but statistics do not look big and substantial when you contemplate a week’s existence with nothing but a few boards and bolts between yourself and the place where McGinty went. One little man in a little old boat seems mighty small in the middle of a big ocean.

LEAVING THE LAND.

Steamship Arabic, May 29, 1905.

In spite of the fact that a trip across the Atlantic is not considered dangerous or exceptional, there is always a lot of sentiment which comes up into the throat of the traveler when he goes aboard the ship that is to take him out of his own country and across the ocean to a foreign land. Long before the Arabic was to sail it was filled with passengers and friends who had come to say good-by and wave farewell. The custom is whenever a friend is to start on such a trip to accompany him or her to the dock, send flowers to be placed in the stateroom, and to stand on the wharf and wave a handkerchief until the responding figure on the deck of the ship is no longer recognizable in the distance. Of course, we were so far from home that there was nobody to do these honors for wandering Kansans, so we picked out a few nice-looking people who seemed to be there for curiosity and vigorously shouted and waved good-by to them, and they had the good taste to respond. A Colorado man who had been on the trip before told me afterward that the young fellow who had called so cheerily and waved so vigorously at him as the steamer pulled away from land, was a hotel porter whom he had hired for a half-dollar to come to the wharf and bid him godspeed on his journey.

The Arabic turned away from the dock at 4.30 in the afternoon of May 25, and steamed slowly and majestically down the harbor and out toward the ocean with a half-dozen little pilot-boats and revenue cutters whistling and dancing like a lot of little dogs frisking and playing around a big dog as it walks down the street. The old ship Constitution, heroine of America’s early naval warfare, was passed, the forts and the navy yard with the modern warships and guns, the last island and the last American flag faded into the distance, and a solemn thought of leaving one’s native land and of possible seasickness makes one choke with patriotism and foreboding. It is too late now to back out. There is no chance to get off. For a week the ship will never stop, and there will be no place upon which the eye can rest except water and sky. A flood of sentiment rushes through one and leaks a little at the eyes as the mind turns to those who have been so near and dear and are now to be so far away. That is the feeling experienced by all travelers, and I want to be recorded present and voting on the question, although as a matter of fact while the Arabic was leaving the dock and country I was quarreling with the purser over the stateroom and trying to get the steward to help me handle baggage when he was so full of American liquor that he could do nothing but say “yessir” (hic) and smile.

NO TIME FOR SENTIMENT.

No doubt everyone has noticed how the apparently little things of life occupy us at most critical and important times. I remember when at a certain stage I was accomplishing an object to which I had worked industriously and whole-heartedly. I should have been filled with happiness and pride as I faced a large crowd of people. As a matter of fact I was miserable because my collar did not fit my shirt and kept bobbing up and down in a refractory way. The first time I saw Niagara Falls, whither I had gone to be overcome with the grandeur and beauty of the scene, I put in all my time trying to find a place to get a sandwich. It is said that when Gladstone was making his great fight for Irish home rule he was sitting on his bench in parliament, apparently wrapped in deep thought. His colleagues did not disturb him, for they supposed he was pondering the question which was agitating every mind. Finally he straightened himself up and said to himself, but so those near could hear: “After all, I will plant that rosebush in the front instead of at the side of the doorway.” The energetic man who is traveling amid picturesque and historical places puts in more time figuring out time-tables and wondering whether he will get dinner in a dining-car or at a lunch station, than he does in soulful meditation on the wonders of nature or the handiwork of man. And the general run of women, I am firmly convinced by circumstantial evidence, will approach the subject of a European trip or a church wedding, not with the thoughts of the lands to be visited or the responsibility to be assumed, but with minds full of the problem of whether four shirtwaists and a skirt will do better than two dresses. This peculiarity of humanity has often impressed me, so I was not surprised when I realized as I returned more or less triumphant from my battles with purser and steward that I missed most of the thrills and throbs that had been promised me by all the guidebooks and books of travel that I had read.

An ocean voyage is being robbed of most of its terrors. The Arabic is a big ship, one of the largest. It stretches out over so many waves that it does very little rolling or plunging. We have been out for three days and there have been really no cases of seasickness. I fully expected to be seasick, and it is a great disappointment. However, I am not going to ask the company to refund my fare on that account. Everybody is afraid of seasickness, and down in his heart everybody wishes that everybody else might be sick and he alone left to proudly walk the deck and smile at the victims. The only person who suffers from seasickness is the individual affected. You may run a sliver in your finger and the family will gather around with words of sympathy. You may get a cinder in your eye and your friends will hurry forward to help get it out. But if you are suffering with seasickness, and death would almost be welcome, your friends will only grin and their words of condolence are false and mocking.

A modern steamship is constructed for safety, comfort, and almost luxury. When you get those three qualities there is very little left of the poetry or novelty of ocean traveling. We still speak of the ship “sailing,” although, of course, it doesn’t. The modern ship steams. We have read all of our lives about the beautiful white-wings and the jolly jack tars. The reality is a mammoth engine out of sight, a big smoke-stack, and a lot of black, dust-covered, sweaty firemen. The “sailors” no longer climb the rigging and the masts, but go down in the hole and shovel coal. My ideas of the sea came from Oliver Optic. I want to hear the boatswain pipe, the mate’s command, “All hands belay ship,” and see the captain as he stands at his post and with an occasional “Steady, my hearties,” direct the seamen as they sing their songs and clamber up the masts. That is beauty and poetry. But the reality is that the captain whistles down the tube to the engineer and he gives the order, “More coal, you sons of guns; stop that noise and fire up.” That is fact, and makes traveling comfortable but not soul-inspiring.

The White Star line, on which we are traveling, belongs to the big steamship company merger, formed by Pierpont Morgan a few years ago. It is really owned by American capital and controlled by American financiers, but the ships carry the British flag and are manned by British officers and men. England manages things so that it pays to carry the English flag. I have a great deal of respect for England. With all our American enterprise, energy and ability, we look like a tallow candle beside an electric light when it comes to ships and international commerce. The government of England always looks after its shipping interests and encourages capital to send English vessels and English crews carrying English merchandise to the furthermost parts. Prizes, bounties, subsidies and favors of all kinds have been used to make the merchant marine of Great Britain greater than that of the rest of the world. The English are a great people, and they are conscious of it. And they see to it that everybody else understands the fact. There isn’t anything in this American-owned ship that comes from the United States except what the passengers have in their baggage. The crew from captain to cook are English. The supplies are all bought in England. The ships are built and repaired at Belfast. Coal for the voyage both ways comes from Wales. English meats and even ice-cream are purchased in Liverpool for the round trip. You can’t buy an American postage stamp, and United States money is not taken except at exchange below par. The American who has been going through life under the impression that America is the whole thing has his feelings stepped on nearly every time he turns around.

The daily life on a steamship is a good deal like I am told it is on a limited Santa Fe Pullman train, only there is a little more room. There are all kinds of people on the Arabic, mostly from England, the United States or Boston. Soon after we left port I met a fellow who looked like somebody from home. I asked him where he was from, and he said Nevada. I said I was from Kansas, and he enthusiastically grasped my hand and said, “Then we are neighbors.” You do get a good deal of that feeling. Afterward we met some folks from Colorado, and to see us warm up to each other would have made you think we were a long separated but happily reunited family. When anyone asks me where I hail from and I say “Kansas,” the answer is nearly always “Oh.” And then I shut my eyes and wait for the next remark. It never fails to come: “Do you know Carrie Nation?” If I get a fair show I generally manage in the course of conversation to incidentally ring in a few things about Kansas that they never heard before (and once in a long while something I never heard before myself). I don’t have to confine myself to things I can prove. Colorado and Nevada will stand by me, and if the returning English tourists are not regretting they did not see the wonderful State of Kansas they are simply figuring me out a liar. The poet said: “How sweet it is for one’s country to die.” Let us add: “How sweet it is for one’s country to lie.”

That reminds me of a good joke on myself. An Englishman was complaining of the voyage and wishing he was in old. England. I did a little rapture talk about the ocean, and said I loved to go on the deck, watching the never-ending blue of water and sky and just lie and lie and lie there. He said: “I believe you told me you were a newspaper man.”

CROSSING THE ATLANTIC.

Steamship Arabic, June 1, 1905.

I have come to a realization of the work of Christopher Columbus. It took nerve to keep on sailing day in and day out, week in and week out, with no sight of anything that looked like land,—nothing but a great stretch of water, not even a stick in it. If I had been on board the Santa Maria I would surely have joined the crowd of sailors who wanted to quit and go home. We have come now nearly 3,000 miles through the Atlantic, and if someone had not been over the route before and we did not believe that land would appear at a certain time it would certainly look as if the ocean would never end. If Columbus were to make the trip now on the Arabic he would probably be as surprised as were the Indians when the Spaniards landed on San Salvador something over 400 years ago. The monotony of the ocean is only broken by an occasional passing ship, and a high-strung imagination. We have met or passed five ships in seven days. Each one has provided us with excitement for half a day. We took sides as to whether the strange vessel was a Cunarder, an American liner, a North German Lloyd or what not. Every line that crosses the ocean would have partisans and each corner of the argument would be vigorously sustained by expert evidence. I decided on a system. I always maintained that the ship was an American liner. By sticking to the text and not changing I hit it once, which was better than the average. Then we have long and sometimes bitter discussions as to the number of miles the Arabic will make in the next twenty-four hours. Tips are anxiously obtained from officers, sailors, stewards and cooks. Every man who ever bet in his life and some who never do at home, back their opinions with their money. And when we are not arguing or betting we are eating. Passengers on this line are full-fed. The day begins with 8 o’clock breakfast, at 10:30 a lunch is served, on deck, at 1 o’clock an elaborate lunch, at 4 o’clock tea, cakes and sandwiches are distributed, and at 7 o’clock a course dinner. People do all of these and eat sandwiches and stuff between times and then wonder why their stomachs are “disturbed.”

It takes all kinds of people to make up the world, and there are samples of most of the varieties on an ocean steamer. Some of our passengers are very swell and some are very bum. But they meet on the level—provided you can call the deck of a ship level when it is usually tilted one way or the other at an angle of 20 to 30 degrees. In the spirit of investigation I listened to the talk of a couple of ladies who are society leaders and members of the 400 at home. The subjects they discussed were babies, servants and clothes, and they talked just about like the women-folks of Kansas. There is a touch of human nature through all of us.

When I left home I decided not to change my watch until I got to Europe. At Boston I was only one hour behind and could easily remember and count on that. But every day on the ocean the clock has been shoved up thirty-five minutes for the 400 miles traveled eastward the preceding twenty-four hours. When it got so we were eating noonday lunch at 8 A. M. by my watch I gave it up and turned the hands around. When we reach London we will be about six hours ahead of Hutchinson time, and anyone can see the ridiculous side of getting up at 2 o’clock in the morning and going to bed at 4 in the afternoon. By a strange coincidence the sun has changed its time for rising and setting to agree with the ship’s clock.

There is great system on a big ship. Everything is done just so and no other way. I have had a hard time locating the “stewards.” I never realized what a steward was before. We have a bedroom steward, who looks after the stateroom, a bath steward who runs the bathroom, a deck steward in charge of the deck, an assistant deck steward, a library steward, a smoking-room steward, a table steward, and a few more whose titles I can’t remember. One steward never gets on another’s line of duty. If you want a deck chair you must see the deck steward, if you want a blanket you must see the saloon steward, and so on. If I fall overboard I hope the proper steward will be around, for the system is so fine that I fear the other stewards would refuse to act until the proper steward could be called. Each steward will be expecting a tip when the voyage is ended, and if he weren’t a “steward,” he probably could not get it so easily.

Sunday we had religious service in the saloon. (Not the kind of a saloon that Mrs. Nation holds service in.) It was the Church of England service, but out of respect to the American passengers the reader ran in President Roosevelt’s name in the prayer for the royal family. It was a quiet, beautiful day and the amount of the collection was small. I was told by an officer that when Sunday is a stormy day and the boat acts as if it might tip over most any time, the passengers contribute much more liberally to the offering than they do when the day is fair. Some people go to church on board ship who never see the inside of a church on land. I suppose they learn from the sailors the advantage of casting an anchor out to the windward.

We will see land in a few hours, the southwest coast of Ireland. A few hours later we will land at Queenstown. It will be mighty good to get one’s feet on ground that doesn’t move just when you don’t expect it to. We will find out what has happened in the world, for we haven’t had any news for a week. They are betting on whether or not the Jap and Russian fleets have met during our absence from the earth. Like a great many good things, the best part of an ocean voyage is the end. I have enjoyed the trip very much, but if I get a chance to walk back to America I will be mighty glad to take it.

IRELAND.

FIRST DAY IN IRELAND.

Cork, Ireland, June 3.

The first vivid impression made upon me in Ireland was the morning after we landed. We had come ashore late at night at Queenstown, and except for the Irish names and Irish brogue there was nothing to indicate but that we were going through an American custom-house into an American hotel. But when we went to breakfast up came the waiter attired in full dress and extra long-tailed coat with a red vest. I had always supposed the pictures of an English or Irish waiter in such livery at breakfast was a joke. It is not a joke. It is a most serious and proper attire, and I suppose an Irish waiter in a first-class hotel would as soon appear to serve breakfast without any pants as without the long swallowtail coat. And when I saw that, I knew I was far away from home.

A European breakfast is “rolls and coffee.” In anticipation I had thought of hot rolls and delicious coffee. Put this down: There are no hot rolls in Ireland, and I am guessing there will be none in Europe. “Rolls” means plain, very plain, cold bread, hard and a trifle stale. The coffee is bum and the cream is skim-milk. An English hotel, for that is what Irish first-class hotels are, ought to put more into the eating and less into the waiter’s uniform. Along with other Americans at that first breakfast, we joined in a howl and managed to get some eggs.

Queenstown is one of the largest and best of the British harbors. It has an important navy yard and several English warships are anchored among the numerous merchant vessels. The town is on the side of a high hill which comes down to the water’s edge, and the narrow streets go up and down the slope at every angle except a right angle to the street along the waterfront. The chief resources of Queenstown are sailors and tourists, and the main occupations of the leading inhabitants are lodging-houses and saloons. Over nearly every store is the sign, “Licensed to sell ale, porter and spirits seven days in the week.”

THE IRISH JAUNTING (JOLTING) CAR.

There is nothing much to Queenstown except the quaintness that comes from age and dirt, and I have seen enough American towns with the same characteristics to make this an old story. But we walked and climbed to the top of the hill, and there I saw a panorama spread out before me which will stick to my memory a good long while. The large harbor, locked on three sides and part of the fourth with land, made a blue setting for the white of the numerous ships. Little sailboats drifted over the quiet water and tugs and launches darted in and out among the big vessels. Eight-oared boats from the warships, manned with uniformed sailors from the royal navy, skimmed back and forth, the eight oars rising and falling as one. Flags were flying from mastheads, and the decks were lively with the work of the day. Up from the shore on every side except where the ocean’s blue appeared, rose the greenest green hills you ever saw, and they reached to the bluest blue sky you ever saw, a frame for the picture which no artist could ever hope to portray.

An Irish woman whose son had gone to America and sent back for the mother and little sister, had never been far from home before. Leading the little girl by the hand she was walking to Queenstown and came in sight of the harbor from the top of the hill. The beauty of the scene impressed her, but she added a lesson for the benefit of the daughter: “Look at the beautiful sight and see how wonderful is the work of Nature. See the big ships side by side, and all around them their little ones.”

Queenstown is the harbor for Cork, which is twelve miles up the river Lee. It is the commercial metropolis of southern Ireland and has furnished more policemen to America than any town of twice its size in the United States. Of course the first thing we did was to ride in a jaunting-car and go to Blarney Castle. The castle looks just about as it did last summer on the Pike at St. Louis. But the surrounding grounds are as pretty as they can be. I hesitate when it comes to describing the park with its stately trees, its beautiful grassy slopes crowned with wild flowers, its moss and ivy which cling to wall and tree, covering defects, revealing charms, enhancing beauties. The castle itself was built by McCarthy, king of Munster, in 1446, and while of course uninhabited and in partial ruin, is in good preservation, to make an Irish bull of it. We climbed to the top, we reveled in the rich scene around us, kissed the blarney stone and cheerfully gave the care-taker twice the usual fee because she said Americans were the best people on earth. Then we had the nicest lunch that has come our way since we left Kansas—an Irish lunch of bread and butter, cold ham and milk. We had traveled all morning and climbed among ruins from 12 to 2 o’clock. If you want the best lunch on earth, no matter what it is made of, climb towers for a couple of hours.

There are some things that are peculiarly Irish. The jaunting-car is one of them. It is the favorite vehicle for driving. It looks like a two-wheel cart, driver’s seat in the front end and passengers’ seats back to back, facing outward. My fellow-traveler, Mr. McGregor, says the Irish brogue has perverted into jaunting-car the real name, which is jolting-car. The driver is always a good fellow and he keeps the horse on the gallop much of the time. You have to learn to keep your seat on a jaunting-car as you do on a bicycle. You also have to learn to weigh the statements of your driver as to distances and legends as you do the promises of a candidate for office. We suggested to one that a jaunting-car driver had to lie. “We never lie, sir,” said the Irishman. “But we stretch it a little.”

After a week on shipboard, during which time I had patiently shaved myself, I yearned for the comforting work of a good barber. At the best hotel in Cork, a city of 80,000 people, I went to the best barber shop in town. The chair was just like a common wooden kitchen chair, only not quite so comfortable. There was a head-rest made out of a two-by-four scantling, and when the barber pulled my head back onto that I knew my dream of a comfortable shave was to be a nightmare. He made the lather in a wash-basin and I think he honed the razor on a grindstone. It cut all right when it didn’t pull out by the roots. When the operation was finished he combed my hair with my head still back, washed my face with cold water and rubbed it with a coarse towel. The barber charged me twopence (equivalent to four cents). And that was my first experience with a European tonsorial artist. Perhaps sometime in my life I have felt cross at a barber at home because the razor pulled or because he squirted bay rum into my eye. But in the future I will never murmur, except to recall my experience in Cork and thank God for American barbers.

The day we came to Cork there was an election for poor-law guardians, only a local affair, but I attended. The voting is by Australian ballot just as in America. The suffrage is restricted to householders, including those who pay a certain rent, and women vote the same as men. The politicians at the polling-place treated me well and explained all the methods. One of the workers told the judge that they should let me vote, as when he had visited his brother in America they had let him vote twice while there. I proposed that if they would let me vote for poor-law guardians in the county of Cork I would let any of them vote for councilman in the Fourth ward of Hutchinson. We had a good friendly visit, and it was easy to see that Irishmen are politicians in the Old World as well as the New. After a man or woman voted he or she was always given a drink at the nearest place where “spirits” are sold. But when the polls closed instead of going ahead and counting the votes, the judges adjourned until noon the next day—the invariable custom. It was not until the afternoon following the election when it was learned who “stood at the top of the poll.” We couldn’t stand the pressure that long in America.

There were placards up all around telling the voters to “vote the straight ticket,” “vote for the interest of labor,” and “vote for your own interests.” The newspapers the next day told of the vicious conduct of the opposition and the immoral practices resorted to. But as a rule the Irish people are like Americans, accepting the result with good feeling and promises of what will be done to the other fellows the next time.

BY KILLARNEY’S LAKES.

Killarney, June 8, 1905.

We have spent four days in the Irish mountains and have ridden a hundred miles in a jaunting-car and coach. I have had mountain scenery, lake scenery and plain scenery for every meal in the day. I enjoy scenery, but I fear I am getting it in too large quantities and am having it shaken too well while taking. Sunday was spent in Glengariff, a picturesque place where the mountains rise abruptly from the salt water of Bantry bay. Monday we coached from Glengariff to Killarney and Tuesday we did the lakes with a jaunting-car, slightly assisted by a row-boat. The Irish mountains are not as high as the Rocky Mountains, but they are a very good imitation. The Rockies are grand and beautiful. The mountains of Cork and Kerry are pretty and beautiful. The Irish mountains are covered with green. It is as if the Rocky Mountains were smaller, covered with ivy and moss, dotted here and there with whitewashed cottages and flocks of sheep, and topped with a blue sky which is bluer than any indigo and clearer than any crystal.

There are several ruined castles about Killarney. I am already getting to shy at ruined castles. The proposal to visit one makes my feet ache as an approaching thunder-storm affects some people’s corns. We first went to Muckross Abbey, a well-preserved ruin about 400 years old. The Muckross family, which owned the estate, has played out, and the property has been bought by Guinness, the Dublin brewer, who was made a lord by Queen Victoria. Whatever the earl of Kenmare does not own around Killarney belongs to Guinness. You can imagine how Muckross Abbey looked 300 years ago when the old monks lived there and occupied the cells and cloister now unroofed. The banquet hall has a big fireplace and there are dark spiral stairways running up and down such as you read about in Ivanhoe. On the tombstones are inscriptions telling of the virtues and sanctity of knights and lords who would be considered tough bats if they lived nowadays and swaggered around as they did in the good old times. I like to look at old tombstones and wonder what the men who lie beneath them would say if they could read the catalogue of virtues accredited to them. I always think of the little girl who had evidently been visiting Muckross Abbey, or some such place, and anxiously inquired if the people in those days did not bury bad folks, as all who were interred there were supremely good. And then the thought comes up that all of these men were great and strong in their time, making history and imagining that they were cutting a gash in the world. Now they are forgotten and their deeds unknown, and they are the subjects of sportive remarks by tourists from a country they never heard of.

The lakes of Killarney have been praised in prose and verse, and they are up to the advance advertising. They are not large, but they nestle among the mountains and reflect on their clear surface the heights that surround them. There is a legend everywhere and the Irish driver knows them all. Here is a reasonable one: One of the O’Donohues, which family was once the royal power in Kerry, was hunting in the mountains. He met the devil, and the two had an altercation in which O’Donohue got decidedly the best of the argument. The devil became so angry that he bit a big chunk out of a mountain. O’Donohue took his shillelah and hit the devil so hard a crack that he dropped the mouthful of mountain into the lake. This tale must be true, for as the driver said: “There’s the place the devil bit and it is called so to this day, and out in the lake is the little island of rock, just as the devil dropped it into the water.”

Everybody who has read Tom Moore—and if anyone has not he should do so—will remember the lines:

“There is not in the wide world a valley so sweet

As the vale in whose bosom the bright waters meet.”

The meeting of the three Killarney lakes was referred to, and Moore was telling truth as well as poetry. The upper lake and the middle lake narrow to small streams and flow together as they merge into the little rosebud of a mouth which the lower lake puts up to greet them. There is a rapid which the boat shoots for a sixpence, but it was not thrilling. In the triangular park made by lakes and mountains are said to be specimens of every kind of tree known. The driver told this proudly, but when I called for a cottonwood he couldn’t produce. Then I told him all about the wonderful cottonwood, and he promised to see the keeper and find out why they couldn’t have one in Killarney.

That reminds me of my experience with music. The first morning I awoke in Ireland at Queenstown I heard the voices of a number of sailors of the royal navy, and as the melodious sounds rolled into the window I was surprised to realize that they were singing “Under the Anheuser-Busch.” At the hotel in Cork the orchestra played the same. At the theatre that night it was greeted with an encore. The driver on the jaunting-car whistled the tune. And last night when I had made friends with a cottager and was sitting with him by the side of a peat fire and he was telling me of Ireland’s woes, his little girl came in and he proceeded to show her off. First he had her sing an old Gaelic song. Then he said, “Now give us an American song,” and she responded with “Under the Anheuser-Busch.”

I have hardly met an Irishman but has told me he had brothers and sisters in America. At Glengariff the hotel proprietor said at least 2,000 young men and women had gone to America from that parish in the last few years—the brightest and best of the young people, he said—nearly all of them to Boston. From Killarney nearly all go to New York. I told them how Boston and New York were ruled by the Irish, and put the question as to why the Irish couldn’t run Ireland. I am trying to answer that conundrum to my own satisfaction, and am gathering ideas on the subject from everyone I meet.

The ordinary Irish village like Killarney is a quaint picture. The streets are narrow, mostly eight to twelve feet wide. The main street is about thirty feet wide. Nearly all the houses are a story or a story and a half, thatched roof, whitewashed walls, dirt floors except in one room, low ceilings, doors and windows, full of chickens, cats and children. I have not yet seen a pig in the parlor. The pig is kept in a little room at one side. But the chickens have as much liberty of the house as anybody and the goat is monarch of the outside. There is very seldom any yard, the houses being built right up to the street. The house is heated by a fireplace and the cooking is done in the same. Peat is the fuel, and it is cleaner and not sooty like coal. The dirt floor and the chickens in the house sound as though the Irish cottage would be dirty, but the whitewash and the scrubbing-brush fight on the other side, and you don’t get that impression. The women-folks are always neat-looking and everybody is pleasant and cheerful. Every window has a window-box of geraniums. There are usually so many children that the house does not hold them, and the street is always filled with them. Remember when you are driving through a town the street is filled with children, and if you are an American and not used to it your heart will be jumping into your throat for fear some of them will be run over—but I am told they never are.

After the chickens and the children the most novel sight is the donkeys with their two-wheel carts, the only ordinary carriages for passengers or freight of the people. The donkey is the size of our mountain burro, and has the same degree of intelligent expression. All of the hauling is done by this patient animal, and he is looked upon as a valued member of the family.

In riding or walking the rule of the country is the same as in England—turn to the left. I have not yet gotten over the yearning to grab the lines from the driver when he turns to the left to avoid a passing carriage. Fortunately the other driver is always fool enough to also turn to the left. I confided my trouble to an Irish driver, and he said it was ridiculous to turn to the right.

One of my traveling companions is a man who chews tobacco, and he had neglected to lay in a supply before leaving America. No one else used the weed that way and there was no help for him. The Irish chew and smoke the same plug tobacco, very dry and not tasting like American tobacco. For a week my friend had been looking through shops trying to find something that would touch the spot. Last night soon after reaching Killarney he came to me greatly excited and said, “Hurry! the finest scenery since we left home.” Away we went down the narrow street and up to a window in which was a familiar shape and a sign, “Battle Ax.” I don’t chew myself, but I have some bad habits, and I could appreciate the tear of joy that glistened in my fellow-traveler’s eye as he gazed on that sign and felt that he had met an old friend just from home.

IRELAND AND THE IRISH.

Dublin, June 9, 1905.

In my short stay in the Emerald Isle I have endeavored to find out what is the matter with Ireland. Why is it that a country of great beauty and resources, with a healthful and productive climate, an intelligent and attractive people, is a country where poverty is widespread, although disguised by picturesque surroundings, and is accepted in such a matter-of-fact and almost nonchalant manner? Why is it that the population of Ireland is decreasing while the number of successful and prosperous Irishmen is rapidly increasing in America, Canada, and Australia? A very intelligent Irishman at Glengariff told me why it was, and this in brief is his story:

A thousand years ago Ireland was ahead of all neighbors in education, religion, and refinement. Then came the civil wars between the chieftains. Then came England, and by utilizing the demoralization of the civil wars and playing one chieftain against another, acquired sovereignty. But this was only nominal, for the Irish chieftains did not submit permanently. In Glengariff country the O’Sullivans maintained practical independence. Finally the English rulers adopted the policy of confiscating the land of the rebellious chieftains and giving it to English soldiers and queen’s favorites. In many places this meant the massacre of the people. The O’Sullivans and their fighting men who escaped went to France and continued to strike at their Saxon foes. But the land passed into the ownership of strangers, who kept it only for the profit they could get out of it. The new Irish nobles lived in London and their agents ran the estates. When the nobles needed more money their agents advanced the rents. If the people who tilled the soil and whose tenancy had been unquestioned for generations, could not pay, they were evicted. Families were ejected from the places they had cultivated and made valuable and were set out on the road. This was done not without fighting for their rights by the Irish people, but by the superior force of English soldiers. No Irish farmer owns his place—he is only a tenant at the mercy of his absentee landlord, who does not know him. In other countries the feudal tenure has not worked so harshly, because the landlords lived among the people and were bound to them by ties of race, common history, and natural affection. But the fact that there was no way for an Irishman to get his own home, or have a reasonable chance to advance in fortune or freedom, sent the brightest to America, and left the others to struggle hopelessly along, knowing that the best they could do was to “pay the rent,” which was fixed like some railroad charges in the United States, on the basis of “all the traffic would stand.”

From the parish of Glengariff more than half the young men and at least half the young women have gone to the land of promise across the sea, and are sending back money to help the parents and brothers and sisters at home, either to “pay the rent” or to pay their passage to America.

What is true at Glengariff applies to the rest of Ireland. The ancient chieftains, the O’Sullivans, the O’Donohues, the McCartys and the rest, were succeeded by absentee landlords, and the law of supply and demand backed up by the English army simply worked out. At Killarney whatever land does not belong to the earl of Kenmare is the property of Guinness. The lakes and rivers are full of fish, but no Irishman can catch a fish; the mountains are full of game, but no one can hunt it except the owner of the estate. The farms are well tilled, but no one can buy the land upon which he works. It makes an American mad, and he says, “How do you stand it?” But it is the law, and along every country road there is a policeman and behind the policeman is the power of England. Far up on the mountain-side, several miles from town or settlement, I saw a fine stone building which on inquiry I found was a police station. The police, or the constabulary, as they are called, were not there to protect the lives of the citizens, but to prevent hunting and fishing in the brooks and mountains. So, after all, it is no wonder the Irishman leaves his beautiful island and emigrates to America.

The Irish have kept the English Parliament in an uproar for a generation on this land question, and in recent years they have secured some friendly legislation. A court can now fix the rent rate on appeal—but the English government names the court. So far as Englishmen of the present day are concerned they would be glad to get out of the Irish problem and let the Irish have their land, but of course that can’t be done. The present parliament provided a plan for the eventual purchase of land by tenant, at a price to be fixed by the court if the two parties cannot agree. This is a step in the right direction and the Irish are glad of it, but as my Glengariff friend said, “It will not do any good in this generation.” And the exodus to America continues.

The Irish are very intelligent. I do not think the poor people of any other country are naturally so bright and so full of perception and understanding. They are kind and gentle. They are affectionate and patriotic. The English say they are “lazy,” but under the circumstances you could hardly expect them to be yearning for work, when more work means more valuable holdings, and that only means more rent for the landlord. The Irish have a reputation among the English for honesty. They are religious, and I thought at first they gave too much to the church and did not keep enough for themselves, when I saw the large and rich cathedrals. But, as an Irishman told me, “We’d rather give to the Lord than the landlord.” Public schools are providing education for the rising generation, and in the public school the boys and girls are being taught the Irish language and prepared for the coming fight which the Irish must make to capture Ireland—not probably for an independent government, but for actual ownership of the Irish soil.

Taxes are heavy. The burden of taxation is the income tax. “That falls on the landlord,” the thoughtless might say. Not on your life. The tax is simply added to the rent. There are fine public roads in Ireland, as good in the country districts as Main street in Hutchinson will be when it is paved. The only advantage a despotic government has over a popular government is that it builds better roads. When the people elect their own road bosses and levy their own road taxes I notice the roads are not so good as when some prince or cabinet minister who does not care what the people think, levies the tax and orders the road built right. The Irish statesmen are struggling for Irish ownership of Irish soil and an Irish parliament to deal with Irish affairs. They are “getting on,” and, as I said before, they make so much trouble in the English Parliament that I know the English would be glad to get rid of Irish local politics and give them back their parliament, if it were not for pride,—and the next parliament may cut out the pride.

I want to record one fact which I was surprised to find. The Irish are very temperate. I have been in city, town and country for ten days, have not been careful about keeping in the nice parts of town, and I have seen only one man under the influence of liquor, and he was an English sailor at Queenstown. This is in spite of the fact that every inn and grocery sells “spirits” and nearly everybody seems to drink them if he or she has the price. Perhaps the reason is that in Ireland all the liquor-selling is done by women—barmaids. Perhaps the influence of women behind the bar makes for temperance. I won’t state that as my conclusion, but just submit it for what it is worth to those who are trying to solve the liquor question in other countries.

Dublin is a good deal like an American city. It is full of business and not as Irish as the inland towns or Cork, although it has statues to O’Connell, Curran and Grattan, and will have one to Parnell. The lord lieutenant-governor, the representative of the king, resides at Dublin, and a big garrison of soldiers gives it an English tone. There is a fine university, which we visited. It was started by Queen Elizabeth, and has only recently been opened to Catholics and to women. Dublin has some great stores where Irish linen and Irish lace should naturally be cheap. If Mrs. Morgan were writing this letter she could add a chapter. I will only tell this little story: I was telling an Irish driver how nice everybody had been to us in Ireland and how pleasant the Irish were to Americans. “Yis,” he said. “Whin you go down the strate, everybody sez: ‘There’s some Americans, God bless ’em: mark up the prices on the linen and lace.’”

FRANCE.

THE CITY OF PLEASURE.

Paris, France, June 19, 1905.

Since my last letter to The News we have been “going some,” and I will leave a few ideas I may have gleaned about England until I get back there on my return from the continent. We are pushing for a short visit to Italy before the summer gets too far advanced.

To use a classical expression, Paris is a bully sort of a town. If there is anything you want and don’t know where it is, I am satisfied you will find it in Paris. In England it was customary to close up and go to bed sometime after midnight and to rest on Sunday. Nobody in Paris thinks of either proposition. The only difference between Paris at midnight and Paris at midday is that it is livelier at midnight. The performance is continuous and it is worth the price of admission.

Coming into a country where your language is not generally spoken is always a little trying on the nerves. The French people have made it as easy as possible, but the ways are strange and the helpless tourist can only do as others do and trust to Providence and the power of a little money distributed as well as possible. I do not know how much Providence has had to do with it, but I do believe there are mighty few doors in France which a piece of money will not unlock. When I came into France I knew only two French expressions, one meaning “How much?” and the other, “Thank you.” With that vocabulary we went through the custom-house examination, a five-hour railroad journey, landed in a big city station, got a carriage, reached the hotel and an interpreter without any more trouble than we would have in Sterling. Of course everybody from conductor to porter knew we were Americans and could not speak French, knew what we ought to do next and showed the way, and all we had to do was to look pleasant and hand out small change. And it doesn’t cost much to be liberal in France. I gave the conductor an equivalent to our 10 cents, and I know he thought I was rich. The porter who took my baggage through the custom-house and brought me a carriage was deeply impressed with my financial standing when I gave him 6 cents worth of French coppers. The coachman who brought Mrs. Morgan and myself with four big grips from the station to the hotel, two miles, charged me the full price, 30 cents for everything, and when I tossed him another dime like a millionaire he took his hat off three times. The French people I have met have been very polite. They always tip their hats and go out of their way to show me, and they are never so discourteous as to refuse 2 cents. Imagine giving a Santa Fe conductor 10 cents for showing you where to sit in the car!

As a lesson in political economy I will put in my observation so far as I have gone: Everything in Europe that is made or done by labor is cheap. I was offered a tailor-made suit of clothes in London for $18 that would cost $30 in Hutchinson. A farm laborer in England gets about 50 cents a day and boards himself. The barber shaves you for 2 or 3 cents. Bread and meat are higher than in the United States. You can see how the wage-earner gets it going and coming. I am learning a few things from experience that I had been told before, but I want to visit a few more places before I try to form my conclusions and put them into print.

Paris is a beautiful city. In spite of the great business houses, the manufactories and the banks which I have seen, it strikes me as a kind of play town. Every day in the week in Paris looks like an American town on the Fourth of July, and on Sunday it is Fourth of July and Christmas together and then some. The men who are working at wages that would make Americans vicious, are as light-hearted and pleasant appearing as a Sunday school picnic. The women are as vivacious as a lot of school ma’ams at institute. As soon as work is completed it seems as if every Parisian only goes home to put on his good clothes and then comes down town accompanied by his wife, or somebody’s wife. Half the places of business along the principal streets are restaurants and a good many of the others are also restaurants. The Frenchman sits at a little table on the sidewalk in front of the café and puts in the evening drinking one glass of wine or absinthe, chatting with his neighbor and watching the women go by with their good clothes and bright faces. Every French woman is an artist when it comes to clothes. The goods may not cost much, but the gown is tastefully made, and if the lady wants to she sticks on a bow or jabs a flower in her hat, regardless of every rule except that it looks pretty there—and it always does. Bright and light gowns, hats that are up-to-date or ahead, hair to match the hat and hose to match the dress—and the artist’s work is done. No wonder the men hurry down town and sit on the sidewalk!

In the afternoon and evening the Paris streets look like a spring millinery opening—also like a display of samples of fine hosiery. Perhaps I ought not to go into the subject, but it will not be a fair description of Paris if I leave it out, and I must warn any other Kansan who may venture this way. When a Parisian lady walks along a sidewalk that is perfectly clear and clean she daintily lifts her dress so as to display only the top of the shoe, maybe an inch or two more. Sometimes she thoughtlessly raises the gown a little higher. When she reaches the street-crossing—but I had better stop, for she doesn’t. I have always been of the opinion that under such circumstances a plain, respectful man should look the other way and I have a crick in my neck from looking—the other way—since I came to Paris. Remember this is in fine weather when the walks and crossings are clean. “They say” that when the walks are muddy the result is even more startling to a staid observer from Kansas. If the weather gets bad I don’t know what I will do.

IN PARIS: LOOKING THE OTHER WAY.

The philosophy in the above is that it gives you an idea of Paris with its brilliantly lighted streets, the men eating and drinking, sitting at the little tables along the walks, the well-dressed people, the brilliant colors, the laughter, the bright and polite conduct of men and women, the holiday appearance, the pleasure that everyone is having, and the general gait at which Parisians travel. As another example let me add, fully one-third of that part of Paris which in any other city would be devoted to business, is given up to public gardens, playgrounds for children, parks and drives,—not out in the country or to one side, but right through the center of Paris. The houses, business and residence, are none of them more than six stories high, and I am told the law does not permit higher structures. It is a good idea, for you get air and sunlight, which you often do not in New York and Chicago, and you can occasionally see out over the city. About every so often is a circle or square from which radiate from six to a dozen avenues and boulevards. These streets divide into others which reach forward to other squares, and are intersected at every conceivable angle by cross-streets. The object of this plan was to place artillery in the square and thus command the streets and boulevards against the revolutionists, who have always been doing or about to do something in Paris. The houses, five or six stories high, are built right up from the sidewalk, and have inner courts. Usually there are stores or shops in the downstairs rooms facing the street and living-rooms back and above. And speaking of stores, most of them are about ten by twelve feet, one-half display window. The interior is lined with mirrors which make the room look large and two or three customers like a crowd. The French use mirrors every chance—there are three beautiful mirrors in our small bedroom. The shops are generally decorated with flowers, pictures and statuary and a sign “English spoken,” the latter being usually a delusion and a snare. Instead of naming a street or avenue and then sticking to it, the names of the streets frequently change. The boulevard our hotel is on begins as the Madeleine, runs two blocks and then becomes the Capoucins, two blocks more and it is the Italiens. We are on the Capoucins part, and besides the Boulevard des Capoucins, there is street “Rue des Capoucins,” and a square “Place des Capoucins,” each in a different section. The necessity of a stranger in Paris keeping sober is very apparent. The streets, squares and public buildings are adorned with frequent statues—good ones. Almost any way you turn there is something beautiful to look at. The French are artists and lovers of art. If there were such a thing as a Kansas joint in Paris it would be decorated like an art gallery. But the joints in Paris are open and run twenty-four hours a day, seven days in the week, and the police never interfere with anything that goes on except in case of a disturbance of the peace or abuse of the government.

The French like Americans and don’t like the English or the Germans. But that does not mean they refuse anybody’s money. In our country when a man gets a comfortable income he grows gray-haired and wrinkled trying to make more. A Frenchman spoke to me of this trait, and said that when one of his countrymen reached the point where he could live nicely on what he had accumulated or the salary he was receiving, he quit worrying and took to the cafés and boulevards to enjoy life. Perhaps the French way is the best, at least the French look happier over mighty little than we do over much more. They go in for “pleasure” and they enjoy it as do no other people I have seen.

PARIS AND PARISIANS.

Paris, June 20, 1905.

Almost the first thing we did after we reached Paris was to go to the Place de la Concorde, where the guillotine did its bloody work during the French Revolution. It is now a beautiful square adorned with statues, and is the center of the pleasure-ground of Paris. After tightly shutting our eyes so as to avoid seeing the gay Parisians passing by, we recalled the terrible scenes which took place a little more than a hundred years ago. Here Louis XVI., the unfortunate king, paid the penalty for the crimes of his family and class. Here Marie Antoinette was executed, and scores and hundreds of the French nobility. Poor Marie Antoinette, who always did and said the wrong thing, has been the recipient of the sympathy of the world. But in addition to the sorrow for her I have never been able to get over my sympathy for the thousands of women who marched to Versailles and when the king and queen appeared to quiet them, cried, “Give us bread for our children!” For France at that time was suffering as no other nation has suffered from physical oppression and poverty resulting from misgovernment and utter disregard of the lives and property of the people. In order to carry on wars and build monuments and palaces and indulge in personal dissipation and pleasure, the rulers of France had sucked the life of the nation like the juice from an orange. The French still make a great fuss over Louis XIV., “The grand monarch,” who made France the leading nation of Europe. But it was the logical outcome of his methods and grinding government that resulted in the degradation of the people, their poverty and distress, and the revolution which sent his great grandson to the block.

After the French Jacobins executed their king and queen they began to fall out and “revolute” against each other, and so nearly all the leaders of the revolution went to the guillotine and got it where Louis and Antoinette did—in the neck. In a little more than two years over 2,800 persons perished here by the guillotine, and the place is very appropriately called “de la Concorde.” Around the square are statues representing eight of the cities of France, the one for Strassburg still there, but draped in black and with emblems of mourning for the city and province taken from France by Germany at the end of the last war. Every Frenchman has in his heart the intent to lick the Germans and recover Alsace.

I will not attempt to describe in detail the great palaces of the Tuileries and the magnificent gardens, the Louvre with its acres of paintings and statuary, most of which I did not see because it was like eating pie—there is a limit. These are historic grounds, for back and forth among statues of peace and beautiful works of art the French people have fought each other time and again, sometimes destroying but always rebuilding. From Place de la Concorde extends the Champs-Elysées (pronounced Shame-on-Lizzy, as near as I can get it). This is a great avenue 400 yards wide and over a mile long, consisting of parallel boulevards running through trees and flowers, playgrounds and palaces here and there, and at all times of the day and night filled with people and carriages.

The Champs-Elysées and the Bois de Boulogne, a park of over 2,000 acres in which it terminates, are the fashionable drives of Paris. It cost only 40 cents an hour for Mrs. Morgan and I to drive with the Parisian élite, and we took advantage of the opportunity to see Paris society. The carriages in the early evening extend in procession over miles of boulevard, and are often six or eight abreast. The drives wind around through woods, by good-sized lakes, along sides of cascades, and the carriages are filled with the swellest lot of gowns and cutest little dogs I have ever seen. Nearly every woman has a dog on her string as well as a man. In all of this style there is a general lack of formality which is appropriate to the scenery. It is not an uncommon sight to see the ladies and gentlemen with their arms around each other. It isn’t so bad when you get used to it, and the fashion is considered strictly proper in France. I am no longer shocked when I see a young man just ahead of me in the street put his arm around his girl, and in the street cars and automobiles the sight is a frequent one and never attracts comment or disapproval. At first Mrs. Morgan and I nudged each other at such things, but in less than a week’s time the novelty has disappeared.

I like the Champs-Elysées, for it looks a good deal as First avenue in Hutchinson would if it were about ten times as wide and the city kept up the parking.

And that leads me to repeat an observation which I have made before. It takes a strong government to do big things. You couldn’t get the people in America to put up money to construct palaces, widen boulevards, set up statues in all directions and devote the main part of the city to trees, flowers, walks and drives, playgrounds and art galleries. But whether the government of France has been a monarchy or a republic has made no difference in the fact that it exercised nearly absolute power over such things. The government appoints the officials in all cities and provinces and the government has the army. We talk about “government ownership” as if it were something new. The government of France has been in business more than a century. For example, the government has the monopoly of the tobacco business—manufactures and sells all the tobacco used in France, charges what it pleases and puts out mighty poor stuff. The government has owned the Sèvres china decorating factory for over a century, and the Gobelin tapestry, and I don’t know how many more such things. Lack of knowledge of the language has kept me from finding out all on these subjects I am going to before I get home, but it seems to me that whenever the French government sees some exceptionally profitable business, it just takes hold of the proposition and passes a law forbidding anyone else competing. The French are used to this sort of thing and accept it as the inevitable. I wonder if Americans would stand for it and for all the petty regulations that go with it. An army of workingmen is required to maintain all these parks, palaces, art galleries, opera-houses and government institutions, and I suspect the number is never reduced. A friend was telling how in a short ride on a government railroad his ticket was examined by five conductors. We reached the conclusion that this work, which in America would have been done by one man, was strung out for the good political reason—more jobs. Of course nothing like that would happen in America.

The workingmen still wear the long blouse outside the trousers, which looks like a heavy night-shirt and reaches below the knees. At the time of the great revolution the workingmen were so poor that they could not afford to wear trousers and the long blouses were all that covered them. Hence came the nickname “sanscullottes,” meaning “without breeches,” and as all who have read the story of the revolution or Victor Hugo’s books will remember, the Sansculottes, the men without breeches, made up the mob which upset the throne and established the republic.

The French still worship Napoleon. They have forgiven the sacrifice of blood and treasure which he forced from them, and remember the glory and the greatness of the empire. And in spite of the fact that Napoleon III. quit the emperor business under a cloud, having been removed from office after his surrender to the Germans in 1870, he is well thought of, for during his reign France and Paris prospered and times were good. There is a large party in France that favors the return of the present representative of the Napoleon family, Prince Victor, to the throne. We went to the Church of Madeleine, the most beautiful and fashionable church in Paris, and over the altar is a beautiful painting of Napoleon receiving the crown from the pope, with Christ in the background of the picture. That is just like the French.

I made an effort to get into the meeting of the Chamber of Deputies, the French congress, but failed. You have to have a ticket of admission, and it must be applied for several days in advance. They tell me the session is a good deal like an old-time Kansas Populist convention, where everybody said what he wanted to and then everybody was of the same opinion still. The meeting often gets so tumultuous that the president of the body adjourns it. Such an assembly must be guarded by careful and tactful leadership or it will end in a row. I can’t understand French politics. There are really no parties such as we have. A large majority favor the republic. The minority is composed of Clericals, Bonapartists, Radicals, and Socialists. The government party is divided into factions, and the issues are personal rather than on economic questions. The minority is of course divided, and the result is that the government wins somehow or other nearly every time. If it should lose, a new cabinet would be formed; but that would be taken from the same party as the old, and would be merely a different lot of statesmen. The French republic is all right so long as there is no serious trouble, but a Dreyfus incident, or a war, or hard times might overturn the government, and nobody knows whether the monarchists might not get on top again. The church is opposed to the policy of the republic, which has been to decrease the power of the church, cut off the parochial schools, and take education out of the hands of the religious bodies. The men in France are not very religious, leaving that part of life to the women and children. But a large and respectable party is in opposition to the government on account of the way it has confiscated church property and driven out the religious orders.

There are only a few electric lines in Paris, and they are not in the main part of the city. The people use carriages a great deal, for they are so cheap; and also omnibuses. The usual means of traveling in the city, aside from the cab, is the omnibus, which is double-decked, carrying as many people on top as inside. This seems a trifle slow to Americans, but it works all right in Paris. The ’buses make regular processions up and down the principal streets, and as they are nearly always filled inside and outside, they add immensely to the Parisian picture. There is an underground railroad and there are dummy lines in the suburbs, but I think the people of Paris like to travel where they can see and be seen. The cabs are victorias. Automobiles are everywhere, and if you go to Paris to live and want to cut any ice you must get one.

I saw a little scene which seemed to show up Parisian character. A cab collided slightly with another. Immediately both drivers were off their vehicles, gesticulating and talking about 300 words a minute. As they shook their fists and grew red in the face with the words that came so fast they interfered with each other, I thought somebody would surely be killed. Nobody noticed them. No one paid any attention. And finally the two exhausted men climbed back to their places and drove on. I know they used French words to each other that in America would have ensured a police court trial for disturbance of the peace. A French friend to whom I mentioned the matter said it was the invariable way, and he thought the French method of taking out their wrath in words was better than the American way of fighting it out. Perhaps he was right, but as I afterward saw the scene repeated in different forms it always occurred to me that it was childish. And that reminds me to say that the Frenchman is in the habit of playing with his children, taking part in their games as excitedly as they do.

The French people are industrious and they save their money. France is really a rich nation. Most of the money is made in what seem small ways to Americans. The French are what we call “thrifty.” No matter how little they earn they save something, and the whole family works,—men, women and children. When their day’s labor is ended the whole family goes out for a good time—cheap, or within their means. Their natural temperaments and the beautiful surroundings make it easy for them to do this, and it is very seldom a Frenchman leaves his native land. He doesn’t travel much, but he believes in other people traveling and coming to France to spend their money. He is willing to help in the good work of separating foreigners from their cash, but he is gentlemanly about it. I like the French people even though I can’t understand some of the ways their minds work.

RURAL FRANCE.

Marseilles, France, June 23, 1905.

Rural France is a picture. Seen from a car-window it is a succession of fields and villages, at this time of year a continuous combination of greens and white. French farms are small. I suppose twenty or thirty acres is a big place, and many are much less than that. But the land is fertilized, drained, irrigated and worked to the limit. The people live in villages and not much on their own farms. Each village has a common pasture. During the day the farmers go out onto their little places and in the evening they return to town to spend the hours with their neighbors and friends. The houses are all white stone with red tiled roofs and the villages are numerous, one every two or three miles in every direction. A farm of twenty acres is divided into strips for various crops, so that the landscape is striped with the fields of wheat, alfalfa, potatoes and grass, which seem to be the popular products. Cattle are not so numerous, but sheep are plentiful, goats abound and hogs (always white that I have seen) are on every place. A strip of land a hundred yards wide in wheat will run across the twenty acres, and the next strip will be some other crop, making the hues of green vary. The most extensive crop besides grass is grapes, and hillsides which in our country would be considered too steep and too stony for cultivation are covered with vines. Nature is like the French, artistic when she has a chance, and the combination produces a beautiful effect. Coming from Paris to Marseilles through the valleys of the Seine and the Rhone, it was 500 miles of continuous agriculture and pretty towns. Do you wonder it looks like a picture, with the villages of white houses and red tops, the fields and hills of green, and the rivers like ribbons running here and there?

France is ahead of England and Ireland in this point: Nearly every French farmer owns his own place, even if it is small. In Great Britain the big landlords own the land and rent it to tenants. In France the farmers, or peasants, as they are called, are landlords of their own if it is small. The French nobility lost their possessions and they were bought up by the people. A French farmer does not have the opportunity to make himself a large land proprietor. He can work all his days and only hope to accumulate a little place and enough to take care of him in his last days. But he is able to do that, and it has been almost impossible to do so in Great Britain.

The farms are separated from one another by high stone walls. In driving along the highway these walls shut off the view of the fields and you have to get up above the walls to see the picture. The stone walls are the evidence that the place is the exclusive property of the owner. The grass field is inclosed by these high fences, and the gates are locked at night as if they were afraid somebody would steal the land. It looks strange indeed to a tourist from the land of quarter-sections and barb wires.

Every Frenchman has to serve in the army three years. This is not militia service, but regular soldiery. It takes three of the best years out of a young man’s life. Of course it gives some compensation in the way of discipline, and in continental Europe every nation has to keep its pockets full of rocks and its people ready for war with the neighbors. A republic cannot neglect this matter any more than a monarchy, and France loses a great deal by the withdrawal of its young men from the producing class during a time when they could be very useful.

In the fields men and women work side by side. The women of France have plenty of rights. They can plow or rake hay all day long, and then they can indulge in the recreation of housework in the evening. This is harvest-time, and on nearly every farm I saw the whole family at work, not with reapers and mowers, but with good sickles and hand-rakes. The women seem to age earlier than in America, but this fact is true wherever I have been outside of the United States.

That reminds me of a mistaken notion I had before coming here. I thought the women of the United States were more active in a business way than the women of other countries, and had progressed in taking hold of what is generally called “men’s work” more than the women of Europe. That is a mistake. Proportionately women have more to do with business in England and France than they do in America. Nearly all the hotels in Great Britain are managed by women. Shops, stores and offices are filled with women. The fact is, the combined labor of husband and wife is necessary among “the great plain people,” to get enough to support the family, and in Ireland, England and France this is taken as a matter of course. Especially in France do I find women managing business, and doing so with the skill and success which shows that it is neither a new thing nor a side occupation. In America it is generally accepted that a man who can do so will take the brunt of the work and a woman will find her time fully occupied with housekeeping. And there is also a widespread practice of raising the girls to sit in the parlor while their mother washes the dishes. That is not the way they do in France. A young woman is brought up to expect what she will get—a young man whom she will have to help, or they will go hungry. There are not many chances for a young man to get ahead fast. He has no reason to believe that he will be better fixed than his father or than his grandfather. In fact, in France a boy usually follows the occupation of his father, so that a family for generations will be farmers, shoemakers, shopkeepers, etc. In America a farmer usually wants his son to study law, while a lawyer hopes his son will be a business man, and a merchant sees the advantage of rural life. Our people change around from generation to generation, and I doubt on that account if we make as good workmen as the French do, who are brought up in their occupation. Of course our people would be discontented with the French way, but the Frenchmen seem to be satisfied and they get a good many compensating advantages to offset the opportunities which young Americans have, but of which young Frenchmen never dream.

There are some disadvantages under which these Europeans labor which they should remove. They never get any pie. Here in a land where the cherries grow big and red and juicy, a Frenchman will grow to manhood and old age without knowing the taste of cherry pie. It is a great misfortune. Since landing in Europe I have never seen a piece of pie of any description, from Queenstown to Marseilles. They have “tarts” and “sweetmeats,” but these can’t approach pie any more than Cow creek can be compared to the Mississippi river. Even in the best hotels and restaurants of London there is no sign of pie on the bill of fare, and the French cooks, who can make old hash taste like choice bits of fresh meat or better, have not learned the science of constructing pie, mince, apple, pumpkin, cherry or any kind of pie. I do not know how they do it, but the railroad restaurants are run without pie. Even the crowned heads go through life without knowing the taste of pumpkin pie, and one of my ideas of royalty in my early days was that a king or prince could have custard pie with flaky brown crust three times a day. No wonder the rulers of Europe are afraid of revolution. If they would see that their subjects had square meals and pie at least for dinner, the heads that wear the crowns need not be so uneasy.

And the Europeans are trying to live without hot cakes for breakfast. I suppose there is not a man or woman in Europe who would recognize by experience the rich and regal buckwheat cake, or the corn cake, or the pancake. I can’t understand why the reformers in this country do not get to the point, and see that the people have flapjacks for breakfast as well as pie for dinner, and then let the disbanding of the armies proceed.

Every American citizen who is sane and patriotic believes that he is a fisherman, and tries to prove it whenever he gets near a creek or river. Whether he actually catches any fish or not, he “goes fishing.” I was somewhat worked up in Ireland and England because the streams were nearly all private property and the ordinary citizen had no chance to fish any more than he did to attend the wedding of the prince. I was glad to know that it is different in France. Last Sunday in Paris we walked along the banks of the Seine as it runs through the city between the stone walls and under the stone bridges. The stream was lined with fishermen. One of the privileges the citizens of Paris enjoy is to fish in the Seine, and I was told that there were at least 10,000 Frenchmen watching the corks on the river that afternoon. I waited for a long time to see them catch a French fish. Occasionally one of the men or women would pull up a line, but the bait was never missing. Finally I asked a friend who has been in Paris some time if anybody ever caught a fish. He said he had never really heard of anyone but there was a tradition that along about the time of Napoleon III. somebody did catch a fish in the Seine. He doubted the story, but said I could believe it if I wanted to. And yet there are theologians and doctors of divinity who say the French people are losing in faith, when these thousands were demonstrating to the contrary and were heartily enjoying the privilege the government gives and for which the Parisians would doubtless fight, the right to fish in the river.

This city of Marseilles, in which we are spending a couple of days, is the principal seaport of France. It was established by the Phœnicians, and was an important town when Julius Cæsar was setting up the primaries in Rome. It is the port from which France does business with southern Europe, Africa, Asia, and even America. Consequently the harbor is full of all kinds of shipping, the streets are crowded with Arabs, Greeks, Spaniards, Turks, Italians, and representatives of all nations which use the sea, and the town has the largest collection of odors and smells that I have met. As a strange fact I will add that Marseilles is the first large city I have visited in Europe with a good up-to-date electric railway system. Americans do not come here very much. So far as I know, Mrs. Morgan and I are the only Americans in the city, and there is not a soul at our hotel who can speak English. So you see we are running up against a little real foreign experience.

ITALY.

GETTING INTO ITALY.

Rome, June 27, 1905.

One can hardly realize until he has had some experience how quick and how decided is the transition from one country to another, and especially the change in language. At 5 o’clock yesterday afternoon we were in France, everybody around us and on the train talking French. At 6 o’clock we were in Italy: everybody was talking Italian, and the French language had disappeared as quickly as did the English when we landed at Calais. You know when you are going from one country to the next, also, because the custom-house is on the line and you have to haul out all your dirty clothes and souvenirs for the officials to examine to see if you are a smuggler. Let me tell how we came into Italy.

We boarded the train on the French railroad at Monte Carlo and had an hour’s ride to the frontier. By this time I had picked up enough French so I could get along reasonably well with the help of the sign language and a little money. But neither of us knew a word of Italian, and there was no one with us that day who could talk English. At Vintimille, where we crossed the line, we had to change trains, have our tickets signed and our baggage examined in forty minutes. With a full realization that nobody could understand me and I could understand no one, I tackled the job, putting my trust in Providence and a pocketful of small Italian coins which I had secured at Monte Carlo. When the train stopped in the Vintimille station a porter came alongside and according to the custom of the country I handed the four “bags” which constitute our baggage to him through the car-window. Then we got out and I told him in English what I wanted. He reeled off a lot of Italian and two or three bystanders chipped in, and a hotel runner attempted to capture us. But I took out my through ticket, pointed to it, jingled the coins in my pocket, and the porter understood. Of course I did not know at first whether he did or not, but we followed him and he led us into the custom-house and put our grips on a big table. Up came an inspector and jabbered Italian and I jabbered back in English. We both laughed, and of course neither understood what the other wanted. He asked me several questions, to all of which I said, “Can’t understand,” and then he gave me a final grin and said, “Tobac?” To that I said “No,” and shook my head. Without looking into the grips at all he chalked something on them which I suppose corresponds to our “O. K.,” threw up his hands and said something to the porter which made him and the surrounding onlookers burst forth in a loud guffaw. I felt as I suppose a poor Dago does when he strikes America. I again showed my ticket to the porter and pointed to the place where it must be signed. He puzzled over that a while and then took it and went away for a few minutes and came back with the work properly done. Then he took us to the Italian train the other side of the station, put our bags in the racks and we hoped we were on the right train—we were. I gave that porter a lot of Italian money, aggregating about 20 cents American, and he saluted me as if I were a duke or a saint. Mrs. Morgan says I spoiled him with my extravagant tip. But I felt so grateful to him that I didn’t care if I did make him proud with all that money at once. Let him swell up inside and parade the avenue all the evening and take his family out to dinner if he wants to. Let him take that 20 cents and pose as an Italian Rockefeller.

Then we were in Italy and couldn’t even read the signs. It makes you foolish to look over the door of your car and see the words which mean “Smoking permitted,” or “Smoking forbidden” and not know which. We were the only people in the compartment, and the conductor took a great deal of interest in us. He tried to tell us something and I tried to tell him something, but when we got through neither of us had added to our stock of knowledge. After the train had been going for a while he came to us and began to make signs and chatter. He held up both hands with the fingers extended. Mrs. Morgan was quite sure he meant $10 fine for smoking in that compartment, so I threw away my cigar, but he didn’t stop. At last I realized that he was making the signs of a man eating and drinking. I guessed he meant by both hands that the train would stop ten minutes for lunch, or that we wouldn’t get anything to eat until 10 o’clock. When the train stopped at the next station it turned out that the first of these two was right.

The road from Vintimille to Genoa is a branch, and the ticket had to be signed and trains changed again at Genoa, and we also wanted to get a sleeping-car on to Rome. We had twenty-seven minutes at the station in Genoa, which is bigger than the Union Depot at Kansas City. Again I threw the grips out of the window and followed the porter. Then I left Mrs. Morgan with the baggage while the porter led me a merry chase around the block to the office where the ticket was to be signed or “viséd.” It was 11 o’clock at night, and you can imagine how it felt to be guided around among those Italians wondering all the while if the porter knew what I wanted. But he did and I returned in safety, and then I tried to find out about the sleeping-car. In French this is called a “Litts-salon,” and in German a “Schlaf-wagen,” literally a sleep-wagon. I tried English, French and German, but finally found the sleeper by examining the train,—next to the engine, of course, just where I wasn’t expecting it. We got on board safely, and after distributing a lot more Italian coppers I found we had transacted the business and had five minutes to spare,—as good time as I could have made in America to do all those things. All I then had to do was to hand out the required sleeper fare, $7.50 to Rome, 300 miles, three times what Mr. Pullman would have charged. But I reserve my comments on European sleeping-cars until I get a little more experience for a letter on railroads in the Old World.

And this is an old world. When I was in Boston I looked with awe upon the churches and monuments of 1776. In England these years seemed recent, and it took a cathedral or a castle of Elizabeth’s time or back to William the Conqueror. But here in Rome the very latest and newest buildings that we look at are those of the early Christians, and to get a real thrill they have to show me something B. C. It is really a good deal like living back in those times. I can’t read the newspapers and don’t know what has happened since I left Paris nearly a week ago. At that time the Russians and Japs were either going to have a conference or a fight, or both. Sometimes I wonder what has occurred, but generally I am concerning myself with what Julius Cæsar did, standing by the old forum and imagining Mark Antony denouncing the boss-busters, or wondering if Cicero’s speech against Catiline was not a political blunder which would make the old man trouble at the next city election. The only difficulty is to make the modern Italians fit in with the old Romans. Somehow or other it is hard to imagine the lazy gents who hold out their hands for coppers as real Romans who ruled the world.

The first real striking feature of Italy we noticed at Vintimille was the policemen. They wear handsome full-dress uniforms with red braid down the trousers, gilt lace and epaulets on the coats, tri-cornered hat with an immense plume, and carry in sight a sword and revolver. An Italian policeman walking his beat makes a gorgeous Knight Templar uniform look cheap. You never see one policeman—there are always two together. The police of the whole country are appointed by the royal government, not by local officials, and are selected from the army. They are good-looking fellows, and wear their tight, heavy coats buttoned up in front regardless of the fact that it is Italy and the climate is not better than Kansas the last of June. One of the troubles with Italy is that it is really a second-class power, but it tries to keep up an army and navy in rivalry with Germany, Russia, and France. Every Italian must put in three years in active service. Take a country about the size of Kansas, fill it up with an army of 300,000 men and you see soldiers in every direction. Immense cathedrals and palaces filled with valuable gems and works of art, an army of expensive uniforms, and a poverty-stricken people,—that is Italy. The tourist hurries along and shuts his eyes to the distress as much as he can, visits the galleries and the churches, the ruins and the historic spots. He tries to see only the Italy of 2,000 years ago. He is fortunate if he can keep himself worked up in an ecstasy over the Cæsars and the old masters, so that the half-clothed children, the broken-down women and the men working without hope, do not leave an impression on his heart. I can’t shut my eyes tight enough to avoid seeing those things and sympathizing with the poor Italian people who have no show.

But here we are in Italy, not the Italy of to-day, but the Italy of Cæsar and Cicero, Nero and Constantine, the Italy where Paul and Peter planted the Christian religion and where they died the death of martyrs; the Italy of temples and colosseums, cathedrals and catacombs,—the Italy we read about, if you please, and not the Italy now on the map.

ROME AND ROMANS.

Rome, June 29, 1905.

There is so much in the point of view. Here are things which I have studied about, read about, wondered about. Some of them on close inspection are impressive yet. Others are commonplace. And there are even some which are ridiculous. On approaching Rome I had tried to take an inventory of the things I most wanted to see first: The Forum, St. Peter’s, the Appian Way, the Coliseum, the Sistine Chapel, the Tarpeian Rock, the Vatican, and the list was as long as I could set down. But really the words that kept haunting me and which were always in my mind were “the yellow Tiber.” Like every other school-boy of my time, I had learned and recited “Horatius at the Bridge,” and I wanted to see the raging torrent which saved Rome when Horatius held back the foe until the Romans had cut down the only bridge. I kept saying to myself:

“Then up spake brave Horatius,

The captain of the gate:

‘To every man upon this earth

Death cometh soon or late;

And how can man die better

Than when facing fearful odds,

For the ashes of his fathers

And the temples of his gods?’”

THE ITALIAN NOBLEMAN OF THE STAGE, AND THE REAL THING

Accordingly the first observation I made in Rome was of the Tiber. It is yellow, all right, and about as wide as the Cottonwood river. It seemed impossible to associate that stream with the Tiber of which historians had told and poets sung. But it was the Tiber, all right—from another view-point.

Now with St. Peter’s it was different. I have seen some right nice churches in America, but of course they do not come up to European cathedrals. St. Paul’s in London was disappointing, and Notre Dame in Paris was not up to the advance advertising. But when it comes to impressiveness St. Peter’s at Rome is to my mind the greatest imaginable. It is so big and yet so proportioned, so grand and yet so substantial, so full of precious memories of martyrs and divines and so tastefully and magnificently decorated with pictures that tell the story of the faith it stands for. All the people in Hutchinson could worship in one side of St. Peter’s, and yet there is none of that barny, barracksy look which usually goes with great size and capacity. The length is 232 yards, the transept is 150 yards and the height of the nave 151 feet, the dome is 435 feet to the cross. But figures don’t tell anything about St. Peter’s. The interior is tapestry and painting, gold without tinsel, pictures without tawdry effect, and columns that add and do not detract from the dignity of the structure. Under the great dome is the tomb of Peter, the disciple who made so much trouble, but knowing his energy and power, whom Christ made the rock upon which the church was to be built.

Next door to St. Peter’s is the Vatican, where the pope resides, and the first thing we saw there was the Sistine Chapel. Here is where my view-point differs from most people. I concede that the paintings in the Sistine Chapel are beautiful, especially in their design and their color. The old masters who did the work under the direction of Michael Angelo have never been equaled in their ability to make rich color. But I contend that the subject of a picture should count as well as the drawing and the color. When Michael Angelo attempted to paint God Almighty he couldn’t do it. The color is all right and the proportions are perfect, but all that Michael Angelo did was to paint a man a little larger than Adam, and that does not come up to my ideal of the Divine. The fact is that neither Michael Angelo nor anyone else can put onto canvas such a subject, and therefore Michael should not have tried it. His fault was in his judgment of what can be painted. The entire effect of the remainder of the beautiful ceilings and walls with their paintings of scenes from Old and New Testament, was spoiled for me when I couldn’t get away from that central figure, that failure of ability to do the impossible.

I would like to have the support of the women-folks in my theory in regard to the failure of the Sistine Chapel, so I will add that in the picture where Michael paints the devil, he makes the devil half snake and the upper half a woman. If I remember correctly, the great painter was an old bachelor,—probably not one of his own motion.

The paintings mix up the pagan with the Christian. “The Last Judgment” has Christ the central figure as judge, surrounded by apostles and saints, and the hell part of the painting is according to Dante, with the old Roman idea of the boatman Charon ferrying the lost across the river. In this picture Michael Angelo made a hit. He put the face of an enemy of his, an officer of the pope, on the painting of Minos, one of the leading devils of hell. The offending official had objected to some of the artist’s work on account of the nudity of the figures, and Michael has sent him down the ages as the face of a devil.

But there is no call for me to describe paintings and statuary and cathedrals. A hasty sketch like this is not giving them fair treatment. You can’t go anywhere in Rome without running into something beautiful or something historic. Go down a street and there will be the baths of Diocletian, turn around and there will be the Forum, and next is the Coliseum, the Arch of Constantine, Trajan’s forum and column, the Palace of Tiberius, the Stadium, and so on until you can’t rest with the long list of things you saw and ought to remember, and some that you ought to have seen but didn’t because you were just too tired to look around. The Forum, the Coliseum and all this kind of things look just like the pictures, and they are there,—that’s all I can say about them, although the feeling of actually having seen and touched is one of a great deal of satisfaction and worth going to Rome to have.

I don’t know how many churches there are in Rome. There are eighty dedicated to the Virgin and fully as many to St. Peter. They are filled with great paintings and statuary. Rome is the center of the greatest Christian church, and for centuries the civilized world, or a large part of it, has sent its gifts to the temples and shrines. Thousands and tens of thousands of young men are studying here for the priesthood. The streets are filled with their black gowns and hats. Here and there along the streets and roads are shrines erected to patron saints. All the churches are open seven days in the week, and there are always people in them at their devotions.

As a contrast to the power and greatness of the present church we went to see the catacombs, the burrows in the earth to which the Christians of the early centuries fled for safety, and in which they buried their dead. The catacombs of St. Calixtus, which we visited are said to contain twelve miles of underground passages. Along the sides and in the occasional niches and chapels are the places where the bodies were put. The passages go down thirty to forty feet and the catacombs are from four to six stories downward, just as a building is that much above ground. In these places the early Christians kept alive their faith under the terrible persecution of the emperors. Amid the tombs they met and worshipped in spite of imperial decree and certain death if captured. Rude pictures and inscriptions on the walls tell part of the story which has made the world wonder ever since as the Roman government did then, at the power of the faith for which men and women would so live and so die.

Coming out of the catacombs we drove along the Appian Way, the great military road constructed over 300 years B. C. I had expected to have a good thrill of enthusiasm over the Appian Way, but somehow it did not come. The Appian Way is an ordinary good country road lined with old houses, wine gardens, ruins and high fences. There are still a number of villas and palaces, but the owners are poor and the basements are usually rented out for stables and the upper apartments for tenements. Italian noblemen are generally poor, and if they have palaces are obliged to rent rooms and keep boarders.

Another cherished hope of mine is gone. I had read about the beautiful Italian peasant girls and have seen them on the stage singing in opera and dressed in fetching short skirts and bright-colored bodices. Italian girls work in the fields with the boys and then help their mothers with the children, and most of them look tired and sickly. The fetching skirts hang like loose wall-paper and the “bright bodice” looks as if the girl was wearing her mother’s old corset outside her clothes.

The largest and most numerous ruins in Rome are those of the public baths erected by the state and by the emperors. The Romans in those days were sporty, banqueted all night and bathed all next day to get over the effects. But there are no public baths now—at least none of consequence. And judging by the ordinary senses of sight and smell, bathing has become one of the lost arts with a large number of the Romans of to-day.

VENICE, THE BEAUTIFUL.

Venice, July 3, 1905.

I suppose everybody knows about Venice, the city built in the water. During the sixth century the “barbarians” from the north were overrunning Italy, killing or making slaves of the people and destroying the cities and towns. A number of the inhabitants of northeast Italy fled for safety to a group of small islands in the shallow bay of the Adriatic sea, and there built up little villages which were united in a republic and became the city and suburbs which we call Venice. They naturally were a seafaring and trading people, and Venice was the port of commerce between the Orient and Europe. The Crusades stimulated business, and Venice was the most important trading-point on the Mediterranean. At that time there was no Suez canal and no knowledge of an ocean route to Asia, and all commerce passed through Venice. The little republic grew strong and powerful, captured and retained possessions in Italy and the islands of the Mediterranean. Venice was one of the powers of Europe about the fifteenth century, and thought she had the world by the tail. But the Turks captured Constantinople, other routes to Asia were discovered about the time Columbus reached America, and Venice as a great political power and business center suffered a collapse. In other words, the boom in Venice busted and Venice has never done much on her own account since. The first few hundred years the government was that of a republic, but about the close of the thirteenth century the nobles who had won leadership through trade and war declared their offices hereditary, and thereafter Venice was an aristocracy with a president called “the doge.” During the French Revolution the French captured Venice, and then Austria got it, and finally, in 1868, it was united with the kingdom of Italy, where it belongs.

Built on islands, crossed by canals like streets in other cities, without a carriage or a horse, Venice is a strange, and to me, an attractive place. The railroad runs out on a long trestle bridge. It is hardly appropriate to say “landed” in a place like Venice, but we arrived here at ten o’clock at night. The porter for the hotel to which we were going took us through the station and put us into a gondola, and away we went, down back streets and under bridges, with no light except a few corner lamps and the stars. The Venetian gondoliers may be poetical, but their looks do not invite the confidence of the traveler when he intrusts himself to their hands for the first time and late at night. Little chills creep up and down your back as you see the gondola going straight for a corner—sure to hit it, but accidentally doesn’t. After you get acquainted with the ways of the city you learn to trust the gondolier, but the first time, late at night, you have your doubts. You may forget just how you arrived in other cities, but not in Venice.

The Grand canal, the main street in Venice, is about seventy-five yards wide and averages sixteen feet deep. The paving question does not bother the city council in Venice. Most of their canal streets are only twelve to thirty feet in width. There are also a few real streets four to ten feet wide, on the inside of the blocks formed by the canals, and the total result is a labyrinth of alleys and canals which are impossible for a stranger to get head or tail of. Along the Grand canal and many others the fine houses of the old prosperous times loom up straight from the water six or seven stories. For example, the front of our hotel, on the Grand canal, has absolutely no sidewalk, only marble steps leading to the water, up which the tide rises about two and a half feet twice a day. The architecture of Venice is Oriental, and is refreshing after the Roman and Greek styles everywhere else in Italy. The churches and public buildings, mostly constructed between the eleventh and fifteenth centuries, have round Moorish towers and are decorated with gold and colors and have very ornate pillars and façades. That makes Venice a beautiful city, and so it is,—if you don’t go into the little back alleys where you see the undecorated side. Of the 125,000 people one-fourth have no means of support except charity. In the last few years Venice has revived the glass industry and has developed the lace-making, and times are better than they were. But just think of a people where one-fourth have no chance to earn their living! We visited one of the big lace-making suburbs on the island of Burano. The lace, which Mrs. Morgan says is “b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l” and over which all good women rave, is made by girls and women who sit all day on straight-back chairs and labor over the pillow,—and get about twenty-five cents a day wages. We visited the glass-blowers at Murano, the finest in the world, and skilled workmen get up to two dollars a day for a dexterity and ability which would easily command three or four times that amount in America. The people live mostly on fish and vegetables, are very poor and apparently very happy. They are the best-looking folks I have seen in Italy, and evidently enjoy the improvident life which would drive an American to strong drink, or if he were in Italy would drive him to drink the water.

The center of Venice is “the Piazza of St. Mark,” a square about two hundred yards long and nearly half as wide, paved with marble and inclosed by fine buildings, including the great Church of St. Mark, the old palace of the doge, the present royal palace, and a glittering array of shops. I should say there were ten thousand beautiful shops in Venice selling lace, glass, art works, beads, curios, pictures, etc. Of course there are not that many, but there seem to be. There is practically nothing else of importance. Venice is a good deal like the world’s fair grounds, all glitter and glass, Oriental towers and marble palaces, beautiful bridges and lagoons, and everybody trying to separate the stranger from his money.

Venice is a night town. In the evening the canals are filled with gondolas and everybody is out for a good time. Regular musical clubs drift along with the sweetest Italian opera rendered with real ability, and arias and Italian serenades and love songs until you think the world is nothing but lights glancing on the water, drifting gondolas, song and gladness. Every few minutes one of the singers will pass the hat and you contribute two or three cents and remember you are still on earth. We sit at our hotel and watch the gay crowd in the passing gondolas, or for a few cents get into one, lean back on the easy cushions, smoke a two-cent cigar, and forget all about these poor people with their poverty and their fleas. They have forgotten them themselves.

The patron saint of Venice is St. Mark. In the early days, say a thousand years ago and more, some doge dreamed that Venice would never prosper until the bones of St. Mark were brought here for burial. The bones happened to be in Asia or Africa, and for years the Venetians put in their time fighting the Turks and trying to capture the relics. Finally the bright idea struck them that it would be easier to steal St. Mark’s bones than capture them by battle, and an enterprising Venetian merchant did the job. The remains of St. Mark were brought to Venice and a beautiful cathedral with Oriental towers and rich colors built above them. The doge’s dream was no fake, for after that Venice prospered greatly. Tradition says that St. Mark used to have a winged lion for a companion, and accordingly the winged lion is the Venetian emblem. The cathedral and the public buildings are full of Oriental works of art captured or stolen from the Turks during the years of the Crusades when Venice was a stronghold of Christendom. Venetian painters have done St. Mark and the lion in every conceivable place, and wherever you go you see his kindly face, the quill pen he used in writing, and the playful winged lion. The only horses in the city are of bronze, and decorate the façade of St. Mark’s cathedral. Except for these rather poor imitations I suppose nine-tenths of the people of Venice never saw a horse. Incidentally I will add that it is a great advantage to live in a city where you are not awakened at daylight by the rumble of wagons and carts over stone-paved streets.

The government of Venice during the Middle Ages was something fierce. Nominally a republic, it was controlled by the nobles, who had a general assembly, which selected a senate of seventy-five, of which there was an inner council of ten and a secret tribunal of three, who met masked and did not know each other’s identity. If you lived in Venice at that time and had an enemy you wanted to do away with, you would drop a letter accusing him of treason into the letter-box shaped like a lion’s head in the counter outside the room of the council of three. It was a pretty sure thing that he would not be heard from again. Of course you would have to do this first, for your enemy might be dropping in a letter while you were thinking about it.

We went through the rooms of the various councils down the secret stairway and over the “Bridge of Sighs,” which connected the palace with the prison across the canal street. This was the way the prisoners were brought for trial, and if they went back it was to torture and death. The jails in those times were not built for health or sanitary purposes, and were evidently not examined by the county commissioners. The dungeons are dark and damp, and the guide tells you some awful stories of the rack, the thumbscrew and the block. You can imagine the “good old days” and shudder as you think of the cruelty and the crime. Paraphrasing Byron, who wrote some lines on the subject:

I stood in Venice on the Bridge of Sighs,

Visions of Old from those deep dungeons rise,—

The shrieks of pain, the terrifying cries,

Then I reflect: Perhaps it’s mostly lies.

SOME THINGS ON ART.

Venice, Italy, July 3, 1905.

Because I have not been writing much to The News on the subject of art, it must not be supposed that I am omitting the regular work of every tourist. Nor do I want it presupposed that I don’t know enough about art to tell the difference between a renaissance and a vermicelli. If industry and a desire to thoroughly do the job so it will not have to be done a second time will count for anything, I have been an arduous lover of art in all its forms since I passed the custom-house on the Italian border. Everybody knows that the center of art is Italy and that anything that isn’t old and Italian is second-class. When you come to Italy you expect to see the heights of the artistic and you are expected to have fits of ecstasy over the said heights. I have had ’em every time the guidebook told me to. I have endeavored in every way to show that a plain, common citizen of Kansas knew what to do when brought face to face with Raphael, Titian, Michael Angelo and the other gentlemen since whose death the world has never really seen much in art. According to my pedometer I have traveled through 171 miles of cathedrals, 56 miles of public buildings and 85 miles of art galleries—all in ten days. Some people may think my pedometer is too rapid, but I know it is too slow. You know a good bird dog learns never to “set” for anything but a game bird. And it is well established that people with a certain kind of rheumatism can tell the approaching changes in the weather by the twinges in their joints. And it is a fact that even when I do not know there is a cathedral or an art gallery within a hundred miles, let me approach one accidentally and my feet will begin to ache. Then I know what is before me and I try to do my duty. If the work of absorbing Italian art should prove too much for me, the words could be as appropriately put on my tombstone as they were over the early citizen of Dodge who died with a dozen bullets in his body and a half-dozen enemies lying on the floor:

HERE LIES BILL.

HE DONE HIS DAMDEST.

ANGELS COULD DO

NO MORE.

There are three places where you always find art in Italy: First and foremost, the churches; second, the public buildings; third, the art galleries and museums. The churches come first, because the Catholic Church has always been the support and promoter of art. For centuries it was the only strong power that encouraged artists. It had the tasteful men of the age and it had the money. The great artists both in painting and sculpture would have had no opportunity and their works would have been destroyed if it had not been for the church. In return, the artists took the subjects of religion and portrayed them most beautifully and effectively. There is hardly a church in Italy which does not have paintings by some of those old painters which would be worth a fortune now if they were for sale. The Catholic faith especially appeals to the artistic sense, and the history of the church furnished a boundless field of subjects. Walls and ceilings of churches are covered with magnificent pictures, the exteriors are decorated with sculpture, and the architecture of the buildings is brilliant and effective. To see paintings, statues or architecture in Italy you first go to the churches, and there you see the greatest and best.

After the churches the art treasures and galleries are found in the public buildings, and there we get what is left of the art of Greece and Rome, together with much of a later time. The old pagan mythology furnished most of the ancient art, together with a few attempts at transferring abstract ideas into concrete form. Of course I don’t want to set up as an art critic—I have trouble enough without that. But according to the way I was raised, a large per cent. of ancient sculpture isn’t fit to be exhibited to young folks—or to old men. Probably the times were different and fashions in art were acute, but the Grecian and Roman sculptors paid no attention to the rules of common decency as generally understood in this generation. While doing my duty in the art galleries I have actually blushed so much that it grew noticeable to the other art critics, and I fear that I lost standing with them. Of course I am not a regular critic, but I know a few things, and this is one of them.

Another objection I have to the old masters is that they never considered any subject too big for them. I have written something of this when I kicked on Michael Angelo attempting to make a picture of God Almighty. There is too much of that kind of business in Italian art. And another thing is that they couldn’t paint good animals. Some of the pictures by the great masters have horses or lions in them, and I believe even the horses would laugh at their own appearance.

Aside from these unimportant objections and a trifling criticism of a great deal of ignorance about drawing and the fitness of things, the “old masters,” by which is meant the great painters from about 1400 to 1600, are certainly worthy of their reputation. Everybody I met knew more about art than I did—so they thought—and everyone said: “What wonderful color.” The old masters certainly did know how to mix paints so as to make the most beautiful and most lasting colors. I think Titian’s red-headed girls are the prettiest reds I have ever seen. Raphael’s paintings cannot be criticized by me—their feeling and their execution will make a cynical Kansan stand and admire. Michael Angelo I did not take to so well as I did Titian and Raphael, but he did a lot of work, and he, too, had the ability to make his pictures like life. The other great painters of Italy in these two centuries of the renaissance have not been equaled in any period since, and in spite of the fact that the experience of one generation ought to help the next, I do not believe that the modern Italian painters, or the Englishmen and Americans who go to Italy and copy, can come within several blocks of equaling the work of the “old masters.”

There is one more objection I have to the “old masters,” and I would like to tell it to their faces. They had the habit of taking a great subject and making it a means of flattery for wealthy patrons. For example, a picture of Christ or the Virgin sitting and talking confidentially with some old scamp of a Medici. Of course I don’t blame the old artists. The Medici were a lot of thugs, thieves, highwaymen, murderers, and lovers of art. They put up handsomely for the great masters, and undoubtedly assisted much in promoting art at a time when the princes and nobility of Italy were not respectable according to our standard. This flattery by the old masters may have been necessary to make a living, but I don’t think it is Art.

I had one objection which has been overruled on the ground that it was simply because my apprenticeship in art had been too short. Every artist painted a “Madonna.” Each had a different ideal or model. Mary was a Jewess. But the Italian artists nearly all ran in pictures of Italians, and each had a different style. It makes a confusing aggregation. I think I have seen a thousand Madonnas, five hundred Magdalens, and from one to three hundred of each of the saints. There is a sameness of subject and a variance in execution which makes me a little nervous. I haven’t worked at the art business as long as I should, and therefore I may be too hasty in my judgment, although I am fairly perspiring art at every pore and the climate of Italy in the latter part of June and the first of July has nearly as much cause for perspiration as the climate of Kansas.

AN ITALIAN FOURTH AND SO FORTH.

Menagio, Italy, July 5, 1905.

At an early hour yesterday morning, July 4, we left the hotel in Venice in a gondola, and defiantly waving in the air was an American flag which I carried as proudly and as exuberantly as a ten-year-old boy would at a picnic in Kansas. We met several Americans at the station, and they waved and cheered “Old Glory.” We met all kinds of Italians, who looked as amused and curious as a lot of Americans would at an Italian carrying a green, white and red banner down the streets of Hutchinson. I flaunted the stars and stripes in the faces of the Italian policemen, and they seemed to enjoy it. Several people tried to find out from me what it all meant, and in spite of the fact that I told them in good English that this was the Fourth of July, the anniversary of independence, they shook their heads and did not “comprehendo.” The weather was very hot and very dry, the train was dusty, and the conditions as near ideal for a successful Fourth of July celebration as could be imagined. The American flag that day floated in the Italian breeze from Venice to Milan and then to Lake Como. The inability to make the Dagoes understand what I meant was embarrassing at times, and I longed vainly for a pack of firecrackers or a few good torpedoes. The conductor on the train was greatly interested. We talked in sign language and all the Italian I knew and all the English he knew, but to no effect. Finally I said the word “liberty,” and as the Italian word is about the same, he caught on and I could tell he was approving. “Vive l’America!” I cried, and he took off his hat and said it after me and smiled agreement to the remarks I was making on what the old flag meant. I gave him a big tip, 10 cents,—5 cents for hurrahing for America and 5 cents for listening to my speech.

To-night we are out of the heat of the fertile plains of Lombardy and are in a delightful cool place on the shore of Lake Como, the prettiest and pleasantest place I have seen since we left Killarney. The last part of the day the flag waved over Como, Bellagio, Cernobio, Nesso, Colomo, Bellano, and all the other “o’s” that make the list of Italian towns look like the roster of an Irish Fenian society, only the o is at the wrong end of the names.

Speaking of “tipping” the conductor reminds me of the tipping system in Italy, which is a subject of the greatest importance to the traveler. I think I have seen only one man in Italy who did not hold out his hand, and that was an armless beggar at the Milan station who had a tin cup in which you were expected to deposit. The tipping custom is general in Europe, but it reaches its greatest development in Italy. Everybody you meet is so courteous and polite, willing to show you or tell you or take you, but always expecting something. You tip the conductor, the porter, the hotel manager, the chambermaid, the “man chambermaid,” the elevator boy, the waiter, the head waiter, the clerk, the interpreter, the attendants, the driver, the man who opens the door, the church janitor, the policeman, and everybody you ask a question or who is there to answer if you do ask, and then you tip a few more just because they expect it. This looks like an alarming expenditure of money. But as a matter of fact the total amount of tips is not more than is expected at a big hotel in New York. And when you tip the waiter at the restaurant he does not keep it, but all tips go into a common fund that is divided and is the wages the waiters receive in most cases.

Here is a schedule of “tips,” which, after considerable study and comparison with that of others, I have figured as about right:

• Baggageman, 2 cents.
• Elevator boy, 2 cents.
• Chambermaid, 3 cents.
• Man chambermaid, 3 cents.
• Waiter, per day, 5 cents.
• Head waiter, 10 cents.
• Manager of hotel, 20 cents.
• Miscellaneous men and boys, each 1 cent.
• Railroad conductor, 5 cents.
• Policeman, 2 cents.
• Driver, 2 cents.
• Italian nobleman, 3 cents.
• Italian merchant, 2 cents.
• Clerk in store, 1 cent.
• Ordinary civility, 1 cent.

I haven’t met the king or queen, but I estimate that if I did and asked a favor they would look like about 30 cents.

The Italian money is like the French money, based on a unit which is equivalent to 20 cents. So when you give a man 10 cents you give him a half-lire or half-franc. The lire is divided into 100 centimes, and when you give a man 2 cents you hand him a great big copper coin with “ten centimes” on it. This small unit of measurement causes an American a peculiar sensation. For example, I had to buy a shirt in Venice and it was marked 5.50. That looked like a big price for a shirt, but reduced to American currency it was only $1.10. I bought some of the long Italian cigars which look like stogies and have straws down the center so they will draw. They were 30 centimes each—only 6 cents American. For a carriage and driver to go anywhere in Rome, carrying Mrs. Morgan and myself and a lot of baggage, it was 1.00, twenty American cents. When two Americans can ride a couple of miles in a comfortable victoria for 20 cents they don’t walk much, and they feel as if they were beating somebody and are perfectly willing to “tip” the driver an extra 2 cents. So when you are “doing” Italy and get used to the custom, you do not mind carrying a pound or so of copper coins and distributing them whenever you speak to a native.

The effect of this custom on the people must be very pernicious. And it takes away the charm of recognizing courtesy and hospitality as a national trait when you remember that you pay for it and it is cheap.

I wrote from Paris that the government of France has the monopoly of the tobacco business. In Italy the government has the monopoly of tobacco and salt, the two great necessities. It looks funny to go along the street and see the little government shops with the sign in Italian, “Tobacco and Salt.” The Italian government doesn’t sell good tobacco or good salt. The best cigars are from the island of Luzon, manufactured into alleged cigars in the government factories in Italy. The salt is heavy and coarse, something like old-style yellow-brown sugar. If you don’t like the tobacco or the salt you can go without, for the government allows no competitor who might do better.

I have learned a little Italian, not so much but I can forget it when I cross the line. And that leads me to tell of a little experience with a moral. I had been so annoyed by the numerous beggars and vendors of trinkets that I asked a hotel porter who knew some English what I should say in Italian to tell them to go away. He told me something that sounded like “Muffa tora.” Accordingly I went around for a couple of days saying “Muffa tora” to all that bothered me. Then a friend who knew a little more Italian happened to hear me and suggested that my language was too strong. The words were about what in America is meant by “Go-to-hell.” And there I had been going around St. Peter’s, St. Paul, and all the churches and art galleries in Rome, saying to half the people who approached me, “Go-to-hell,” “Go-to-hell.” A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.

Of course Americans stop at the best hotels, and they are about the same everywhere, being based on the French model. They are from one-third to one-half cheaper than the best hotels in American cities. We are supposed to get three meals a day: First, rolls and coffee; second, about 12 o’clock, what is really a late breakfast but is called “dejeuner” and has three to five courses: eggs (always—generally omelet), macaroni, a cutlet or chop with potatoes, a roast meat, cheese, and fruit. No coffee or tea or anything to drink except water, which they say is bad and unhealthful. Dinner at 7 o’clock and a good meal: Soup, fish, cutlet or chop with macaroni, roast, vegetables, roast chicken and salad, cheese, small cakes, and fruit. No coffee or tea. If you want coffee after dinner you have it served in the lounging-room or out-of-doors, and it is extra. Nobody but Americans drink water, and they do not use enough to hurt. When you enter the hotel you are received by the “hall porter,” really the manager, who bows and takes you or sends you to a room. After a while he sends up for your name and nationality, but that is for the police. There is no hotel register. When you pay your bill and are leaving the porter rings a bell and everybody from proprietor to chambermaid appears to say “good-by,” speed the parting guest and receive the parting tips. At first your royal reception and leave-taking makes quite an impression and you feel “set up,” but after a while it gets to be a bore and you try to escape it but can’t. The cooking and service are first-class, better than in America. There is one kind of dishes I steer clear of, those labeled on the bill of fare, “a la Americaine.” They are like those served in Hutchinson, “a la Italia,” or “a la Français,” which means that they are probably spoiled by the cook trying to do something he does not understand.

Of course in the small Italian hotels the cooking is different, but they tell me it is good. The restaurants where the poorer people eat are full of garlicky smells which can be heard for a block. The staple articles of food for Italians are soup, macaroni and vegetables, all flavored with garlic. The ordinary Italian does not eat meat. There are probably several reasons why, but the first one is that he has not the price, and that is enough. When a man is working for 30 cents a day he is a stranger to roast beef, for meat is as high as it is in America.

I haven’t seen a real clothing store in Italy. There are two classes of Italians only: The rich, who have a tailor, and the poor, who put the goods together themselves. Again I want to repeat what I have said before: The things that are cheap in Europe are those in which labor is the principal factor. When it comes to hiring a man to do work, you name your price. That is why carriage-driving, servants, clothes-making, the building trades and labor of every kind from lace-makers to railroad engineers, are so low.

The Italian shopkeepers have a well-deserved reputation as bargainers. Go into a shop, ask a price, and very likely the proprietor or clerk will say “So much: what will you give?” Americans have a reputation of being “easy,” and so they usually start us with a price of “6 francs,” when they will come down to one or two rather than lose a sale. When you get through you never know just how much you have been beaten—you only know you have been. Some stores advertise “fixed prices,” but they are unfixed if necessary. The process of “shopping” thus has another and delicious feature for the American “shopper.”

I have found the Italians honest. We hardly ever lock our room. I am always leaving the umbrella, but somebody always finds it and brings it to me, and I can’t say that much for Americans. The hackmen do not overcharge, or at least not near as much as in Chicago or New York. I think a stranger is better treated in Rome than in Kansas City. But then comes the suspicious thought—we pay for it.

Previous to this trip I had often heard people talk about the fleas in Italy, and had thought it was very funny. It is no joke. At first I was much amused when I would see a well-dressed lady stop suddenly on the street, elevate her skirt and go hunting. I now consider it a perfectly justifiable and proper action. If there is a game law in Italy with a closed season on fleas it is not at this time of the year. I have seen the anxious, heart-stricken look on the faces of the martyrs and saints as painted by the old masters, and I know now where they got their models, for I have seen the man and the woman conscious of the march of the flea along the small of the back or in some other unreachable place, and have seen the haunted, hunted look on the face as conjecture what the flea would do next changed into realization. The Italian flea works a good deal like the American mosquito, only he makes no music and you can only tell where he is by sad experience. He can dodge better than some politicians and he can get in his work early and often. I am growing accustomed to the sensation myself, but I do not think I shall ever enjoy it. The Bible says the wicked flee when no man pursueth, but in Italy the wicked flea is improving each minute whether anyone pursueth or not. Mingled with art and old masters, lagoons, and gondolas, cathedrals and Cæsars, blue sky and green fields, will always be my recollection of the flea that never takes a siesta and to whom the poets have never done justice.

SWITZERLAND.