Europe Revised

subject had led me to expect that the Channel would be very choppy and that we should all be very seasick. Nothing of the sort befell. The chann

his invention. It resembled a hammock swung between uprights. The supports were to be bolted to the deck of the ship, and when the Channel began to misbehave the squeamish passenger would climb into the hammock and fasten himself in; and then, by a system of reciprocating oscillations

owd. He was seasick with a Gallic abandon; he was seasick both ways from the jack, and other ways too. He was strapped down so he could not get out, which added no little to the pleasure of the occasion for ev

ne country to another; we found we had gone from one world to another. That narr

those white chalk cliffs dimly visible along the horizon. Gone were the phlegm and stolidity of thos

ve the

n is doi

field Parrish might have painted, so vivid were they in their burnished green-and-yellow coloring, so spectacular in their grouping. Gone was the five-franc note which I had intrusted to a san

ng a fat, kindly looking old priest in a long gown and a shovel hat; and a market woman came, who had arms like a wrestler and skirts that stuck out like a ballet dancer's; and a soldier in baggy red pants came; and thirty or forty others of all ages and sizes

d cities, each one dominated by its crumbly old cathedral; sliding through open country where the fields were all diked and ditched wi

uare and firm and exact that sections might be sliced off them like cheese, and doors and windows might be carved in them; but these French haystacks were devil-may-care haystacks wearing tufts on their polls like headdresses. The windmills had a rakish air; an

e racing with us. It seemed a mighty, winged Thunder Lizard that had come back to link the Age of Stone with the Age of Air. On second thought I am

ives among the passengers jammed into the passageway that flanked the compartments and speculated regarding the identity of the aviators and the mak

of Englishman. They were tall and lean, and had the languid eyes and the long, weary faces and the yellow buck teeth of weary cart-horses, and they each wore a fixed expression of intense gloom. You felt sure it was a fixed expression b

train, either, for that matter. The compartment was full, too, which made the situation all the more intolerable: an elderly English lady with a pla

ed, belonged to others, and that the seats for which they held reservations faced rearward, so that they must ride with their b

med picture of the Death of Nelson-and all the rest of it; and they piled those things in the luggage racks until both the racks were chock-full; so the rest of us had to hold our baggage in our laps or sit on it. One of them was facing me not more than five

us, looking on, seemed to hear that sneeze coming from a long way off. It reminded me of a musical-sketch team giving an imitation of a brass band marching down Ma

llowed that sneeze it would have drowned him. His nose jibed and went about; his head tilted back farther and farther; his countenance expressed dee

ntil the last sneeze shifted his cargo and left him with a list to port and his lee scuppers awash. It made a ruin of him-the Prophet Isaiah could not have remained dignified wrestling w

ve and hit his friend on the nose. We should have felt better satisfied if it had been a coal scuttle; but it was a reasonably hard and heavy hat and it hit him brim first o

r station-calling, we slid silently, almost surreptitiously, into the Gare du Nord, at Paris. Neither in E

e eats it she is a she. In Europe if it is your destination you get off, and if it is not your destination you stay on. On this occasion we s

riminal Insane, at Matteawan, New York. I knew the place instantly, though the decorations had been changed since I was there last. It was a joy to come on a home institution so far from home-joysome, but a trifle d

and detained him against his will, and asked him for some directions; but the persons to whom I spoke could not understand me, and when they answered I could not understand them; so we did not make much headway by that. I could not get out of that asylum until I had surrendered the covers of our ticket books and claimed our baggage and put it through the customs office. I knew that; the trouble w

cries. To be on the safe side I tendered retaining fees to three of the porters; and thus by the time I had satisfied the customs officials that I had no imported spirits or playing cards or tobacco or soap, or other contraband goods, and had cleared our

nt I can think of but one finer thing-and that is when, wearied of being short-changed and bilked and double-charg

, while one lighted his cigarette butt from the cigarette butt of his friend; a handful of roistering soldiers, singing as they swept six abreast along the wide, rutty sidewalk; the kiosks for advertising, all thickly plastered over with posters, half of which should have been in an art gallery and the other half in a garbage barrel; a well-dressed pair, kissing in the full glare of a street light; an imitation art student, got up to look like an Apache, and-no doubt-plenty of real A

e ingenious people, the Parisians, to tame the mole, which other races have always regarded as unbeautiful and unornamental, and make a cunning little companion of it and spend hours str

ris and look its inhabitants over at more length; but for the time being I think it well for us to be on our

-but yo

use he laughs so seldom. Let us go to Rome, the Eternal City, sitting on her Seven Hills, remembering as we go along that the currency has changed and we no longer compute sums of money in the fr