CHAPTER XXVI
A Tramp Abroad | ||
26. CHAPTER XXVI
The Hofkirche is celebrated for its organ concerts. All summer long the tourists flock to that church about six o'clock in the evening, and pay their franc, and listen to the noise. They don't stay to hear all of it, but get up and tramp out over the sounding stone floor, meeting late comers who tramp in in a sounding and vigorous way. This tramping back and forth is kept up nearly all the time, and is accented by the continuous slamming of the door, and the coughing and barking and sneezing of the crowd. Meantime, the big organ is booming and crashing and thundering away, doing its best to prove that it is the biggest and best organ in Europe, and that a tight little box of a church is the most favorable place to average and appreciate its powers in. It is true, there were some soft and merciful passages occasionally, but the tramp-tramp of the tourists only allowed one to get fitful glimpses of them, so to speak. Then right away the organist would let go another avalanche.
The commerce of Lucerne consists mainly in gimcrackery of the souvenir sort; the shops are packed with Alpine crystals, photographs of scenery, and wooden and ivory carvings. I will not conceal the fact that miniature figures of the Lion of Lucerne are to be had in them. Millions of them. But they are libels upon him, every one of them. There is a subtle something about the majestic pathos of the original which
The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of
a low cliff,—for he is carved from the living rock of
the cliff. His
THE LION OF LUCERNE
[Description: Framed etching of the two travellers, looking small
in the lower left hand corner, loooking at a massive statue of
a lion atop a large, rectangular base.
]
Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered, reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion,—and all this is fitting, for lions do die in
Martyrdom is the luckiest fate that can befall some people. Louis XVI did not die in his bed, consequently history is very gentle with him; she is charitable toward his failings, and she finds in him high virtues which are not usually considered to be virtues when they are lodged in kings. She makes him out to be a person with a meek and modest spirit, the heart of a female saint, and a wrong head. None of these qualities are kingly but the last. Taken together they make a character which would have fared harshly at the hands of history if its owner had had the ill luck to miss martyrdom. With the best intentions to do the right thing, he always managed to do the wrong one. Moreover, nothing could get the female saint out of him. He knew, well enough, that in national emergencies he must not consider how he ought to act, as a man, but how he ought to act as a king; so he honestly tried to sink the man and be the king,—but it was a failure, he only succeeded in being the female saint. He was not instant in season, but out of season. He could not be persuaded to do a thing while it could do any good,—he was iron, he was adamant in his stubbornness then,—but as soon as the thing had reached a point where it would be positively harmful to do it, do it he would, and nothing could stop him. He did not do it because it would be harmful, but because he hoped it was not yet too late to achieve by it the good which it would have done if applied earlier. His comprehension was always a train or two behindhand. If a national toe required amputating, he could not see that it needed anything more than poulticing; when others saw that the mortification had reached the knee, he first perceived that the toe needed cutting off,—so he cut it off; and he severed the leg at the knee when others saw that the disease had reached the thigh. He was good, and honest, and well meaning, in the
His was a most unroyal career, but the most pitiable spectacle in it was his sentimental treachery to his Swiss guard on that memorable 10th of August, when he allowed those heroes to be massacred in his cause, and forbade them to shed the "sacred French blood" purporting to be flowing in the veins of the red-capped mob of miscreants that was raging around the palace. He meant to be kingly, but he was only the female saint once more. Some of his biographers think that upon this occasion the spirit of Saint Louis had descended upon him. It must have found pretty cramped quarters. If Napoleon the First had stood in the shoes of Louis XVI that day, instead of being merely a casual and unknown looker-on, there would be no Lion of Lucerne, now, but there would be a well-stocked Communist graveyard in Paris which would answer just as well to remember the 10th of August by.
Martyrdom made a saint of Mary Queen of Scots three hundred years ago, and she has hardly lost all of her saintship yet. Martyrdom made a saint of the trivial and foolish Marie Antoinette, and her biographers still keep her fragrant with the odor of sanctity to this day, while unconsciously proving upon almost every page they write that the only calamitous instinct which her husband lacked, she supplied,—the instinct to root out and get rid of an honest, able, and loyal official, wherever she found him. The hideous but beneficent French Revolution would have been deferred, or would have fallen short of completeness, or even might not have happened at all, if Marie Antoinette had made the unwise mistake of not being born. The world owes a great deal to the French Revolution, and consequently to its two chief promoters, Louis the Poor in Spirit and his queen.
We did not buy any wooden images of the Lion, nor any ivory or ebony or marble or chalk or sugar or chocolate ones,
HE LIKED CLOCKS
[Description: framed etching of Harris and Twain walking down a street, followed by two small boys bearing several clocks. ]For years my pet aversion had been the cuckoo clock; now here I was, at last, right in the creature's home; so wherever I went that distressing "hoo'hoo! hoo'hoo! hoo'hoo!" was always in my ears. For a nervous man, this was a fine state of
We visited the two long, covered wooden bridges which span the green and brilliant Reuss just below where it goes plunging and hurrahing out of the lake. These rambling, sway-backed tunnels are very attractive things, with their alcoved outlooks upon the lovely and inspiriting water. They contain two or three hundred queer old pictures, by old Swiss masters,—old boss sign-painters, who flourished before the decadence of art.
The lake is alive with fishes, plainly visible to the eye, for the water is very clear. The parapets in front of the hotels were usually fringed with fishers of all ages. One day I thought I would stop and see a fish caught. The result brought back to my mind, very forcibly, a circumstance which I had not thought of before for twelve years. This one:
THE MAN WHO PUT UP AT GADSBY'S
When my odd friend Riley and I were newspaper correspondents in Washington, in the winter of '67, we were coming down Pennsylvania Avenue one night, near midnight, in a driving storm of snow, when the flash of a street-lamp fell upon a man who was eagerly tearing along in the opposite direction. This is lucky! You are Mr. Riley, ain't you?"
Riley was the most self-possessed and solemnly deliberate person in the republic. He stopped, looked his man over from head to foot, and finally said:
"I am Mr. Riley. Did you happen to be looking for me?"
"That's just what I was doing," said the man, joyously, "and it's the biggest luck in the world that I've found you. My name is Lykins. I'm one of the teachers of the high school,—San Francisco. As soon as I heard the San Francisco postmastership was vacant, I made up my mind to get it,—and here I am."
"Yes," said Riley, slowly, "as you have remarked ... Mr. Lykins ... here you are. And have you got it?"
"Well, not exactly got it, but the next thing to it. I've brought a petition, signed by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and all the teachers, and by more than two hundred other people. Now I want you, if you'll be so good, to go around with me to the Pacific delegation, for I want to rush this thing through and get along home."
"If the matter is so pressing, you will prefer that we visit the delegation tonight," said Riley, in a voice which had nothing mocking in it,—to an unaccustomed ear.
"Oh, tonight, by all means! I haven't got any time to fool around. I want their promise before I go to bed,—I ain't the talking kind, I'm the doing kind!"
"Yes ... you've come to the right place for that. When did you arrive?"
"Just an hour ago."
"When are you intending to leave?"
"For New York tomorrow evening,—for San Francisco next morning."
"Just so.... What are you going to do tomorrow?"
"Do! Why, I've got to go to the President with the petition and the delegation, and get the appointment, haven't I?"
"Yes ... very true ... that is correct. And then what?"
"Executive session of the Senate at 2 P.M.,—got to get the appointment confirmed,—I reckon you'll grant that?"
"Yes ... yes," said Riley, meditatively, "you are right again. Then you take the train for New York in the evening, and the steamer for San Francisco next morning?"
"That's it,—that's the way I map it out!"
Riley considered a while, and then said:
"You couldn't stay ... a day ... well, say two days longer?"
"Bless your soul, no! It's not my style. I ain't a man to go fooling around,—I'm a man that does things, I tell you."
The storm was raging, the thick snow blowing in gusts. Riley stood silent, apparently deep in a reverie, during a minute or more, then he looked up and said:
"Have you ever heard about that man who put up at Gadsby's, once? ... But I see you haven't."
He backed Mr. Lykins against an iron fence, buttonholed him, fastened him with his eye, like the Ancient Mariner, and proceeded to unfold his narrative as placidly and peacefully as if we were all stretched comfortably in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted by a wintry midnight tempest:
"I will tell you about that man. It was in Jackson's time.
Gadsby's was the principal hotel, then. Well, this man
arrived from Tennessee about nine o'clock, one morning,
with a black coachman and a splendid four-horse
"I WILL TELL YOU"
[Description: Small framed etching of two men on a snowy evening
by a lamp post. The one on the left, slightly taller, leans
over and pokes the other man's chest. The latter waers a top
hat and carries a cane, and leans back uncomfortably.
]
COULDN'T WAIT
DIDN'T CARE FOR STYLE
[Description: Two small etchings of coaches; the first moving, the
second stationary.
]
"Well, about eleven o'clock that night he came back and ordered a bed and told them to put the horses up,—said he would collect the claim in the morning. This was in January, you understand,—January, 1834,—the 3d of January,—Wednesday.
"Well, on the 5th of February, he sold the fine carriage, and bought a cheap second-hand one,—said it would answer just as well to take the money home in, and he didn't care for style.
"On the 11th of August he sold a pair of the fine horses,
A PAIR BETTER THAN FOUR
TWO WASN'T NECESSARY
JUST THE TRICK
[Description: Three small etchings of coaches in motion, in profile.
]
"On the 13th of December he sold another horse,—said two warn't necessary to drag that old light vehicle with,—in fact, one could snatch it along faster than was absolutely necessary, now that it was good solid winter weather and the roads in splendid condition.
"On the 17th of February, 1835, he sold the old carriage and bought a cheap second-hand buggy,—said a buggy was just the trick to skim along mushy, slushy early spring roads with, and he had always wanted to try a buggy on those mountain roads, anyway.
"On the 1st August he sold the buggy and bought the
GOING TO MAKE THEM STARE
NOT THROWN AWAY
WHAT THE DOCTOR RECOMMENDED
[Description: Three small etchings; the first of a two-wheeled
carriage (a sulky) pulled by a single horse; the second of
two men consulting, standing outside; the third of a man on
a horse, with a dog in front confronting horse and rider.
]
"Well, on the 29th of August he sold his colored coachman,—said he didn't need a coachman for a sulky,—wouldn't be room enough for two in it anyway,—and, besides, it wasn't every day that Providence sent a man a fool who was willing to pay nine hundred dollars for such a third-rate negro as that,—been wanting to get rid of the creature for years, but didn't like to throw him away.
"Eighteen months later,—that is to say, on the 15th of February, 1837,—he sold the sulky and bought a saddle,—said horseback-riding was what the doctor had always recommended him to take, and dog'd if he wanted to risk his neck going over those mountain roads on wheels in the dead of winter, not if he knew himself.
"On the 9th of April he sold the saddle,—said he wasn't
going to risk his life with any perishable
saddle-girth that ever
WANTED TO FEEL SAFE
[Description: Two small etchings, the first of a man presenting a
saddle to another, in front of the saddelry shop; the second
of the man with a dog,—on foot.
]
PREFERRED TO TRAMP ON FOOT
"On the 24th of April he sold his horse,—said `I'm just fifty-seven today, hale and hearty,—it would be a pretty howdy-do for me to be wasting such a trip as that and such weather as this, on a horse, when there ain't anything in the world so splendid as a tramp on foot through the fresh spring woods and over the cheery mountains, to a man that is a man,—and I can make my dog carry my claim in a little bundle, anyway, when it's collected. So tomorrow I'll be up bright and early, make my little old collection, and mosey off to Tennessee, on my own hind legs, with a rousing good-by to Gadsby's.'
"On the 22d of June he sold his dog,—said `Dern a dog, anyway, where you're just starting off on a rattling bully pleasure tramp through the summer woods and hills,—perfect nuisance,—chases the squirrels, barks at everything, goes a-capering and splattering around in the fords,—man can't
DERN A DOG, ANYWAY
[Description: Small etching of a man dragging a resistant dog by his leash. ]There was a pause and a silence,—except the noise of the wind and the pelting snow. Mr. Lykins said, impatiently:
"Well?"
Riley said:
"Well,—that was thirty years ago."
"Very well, very well,—what of it?"
"I'm great friends with that old patriarch. He comes every evening to tell me good-by. I saw him an hour ago,— he's off for Tennessee early tomorrow morning,—as usual; said he calculated to get his claim through and be off before night-owls like me have turned out of bed. The tears were in his eyes, he was so glad he was going to see his old Tennessee and his friends once more."
Another silent pause. The stranger broke it:
"Is that all?"
"That is all."
"Well, for the time of night, and the kind of night, it seems to me the story was full long enough. But what's it all for?"
"Oh, nothing in particular."
"Well, where's the point of it?"
"Oh, there isn't any particular point to it. Only, if you are not in too much of a hurry to rush off to San Francisco
So saying, Riley blandly turned on his heel and left the astonished school-teacher standing there, a musing and motionless snow image shining in the broad glow of the street-lamp.
He never got that post-office.
To go back to Lucerne and its fishers, I concluded, after about nine hours' waiting, that the man who proposes to tarry till he sees something hook one of those well-fed and experienced fishes will find it wisdom to "put up at Gadsby's" and take it easy. It is likely that a fish has not been caught on that lake pier for forty years; but no matter, the patient fisher watches his cork there all the day long, just the same, and seems to enjoy it. One may see the fisher-loafers just as thick and contented and happy and patient all along the Seine at Paris, but tradition says that the only thing ever caught there in modern times is a thing they don't fish for at all,—the recent dog and the translated cat.
CHAPTER XXVI
A Tramp Abroad | ||