CHAPTER XXXIV.
A Journey if you Like—Terrible Encounter with an American Interviewer.
In the train to Brushville, March 11.
Left Cincinnati this morning at ten o’clock and shall not arrive at Brushville before seven o’clock to-night. I am beginning to learn how to speak American. As I asked for my ticket this morning at the railroad office, the clerk said to me:
“C. H. D. or C. C. C. St. L. and St. P.?”
“C. H. D.,” I replied, with perfect assurance.
I happened to hit on the right line for Brushville.
By this time I know pretty well all those combinations of the alphabet by which the different railroad lines of America are designated.
No hope of comfort or of a dinner to-day. I shall have to change trains three times, but none of them, I am grieved to hear, have parlor cars or dining cars. There is something democratic about uniform cars for all alike. I am a democrat myself, yet I have a weakness for the parlor cars—and the dining cars.
At noon we stopped five minutes at a place which, two years ago, counted six wooden huts. To-day it has more than 5000 inhabitants, the electric light in the streets, a public library, two hotels, four churches, two banks, a public school, a high school, cuspidores, toothpicks, and all the signs of American civilization.
I changed trains at one o’clock at Castle Green Junction. No hotel in the place. I inquired where food could be obtained. A little wooden hut, on the other side of the depot, bearing the inscription “Lunch Room,” was pointed out to me. Lunch in America has not the meaning that it has in England, as I often experienced to my despair. The English are solid people. In England lunch means something. In America, it does not. However, as there was no Beware written outside, I entered the place. Several people were eating pies, fruit pies, pies with crust under, and crust over: sealed mysteries.
| “PEACH POY AND APPLE POY.” |
“I want something to eat,” I said to a man behind the counter, who was in possession of only one eye, and hailed from Old Oireland.
“What ’d ye loike?” replied he, winking with the eye that was not there.
“Well, what have you got?”
“Peach poy, apricot poy, apple poy, and mince poy.”
“And, shure, what more do you want?”
I have always suspected something mysterious about mince pies. At home, I eat mince pies. I also trust my friends’ cooks. Outside, I pass. I think that mince pies and sausages should be made at home.
“I like a little variety,” I said to the Irishman, “give me a small slice of apple pie, one of apricot pie, and another of peach pie.”
The Irishman stared at me.
“What’s the matter with the mince poy?” he seemed to say.
I could see from his eye that he resented the insult offered to his mince pies.
I ate my pies and returned on the platform. I was told that the train was two hours behind time, and I should be too late to catch the last Brushville train at the next change.
I walked and smoked.
The three pies began to get acquainted with each other.
.......
Brushville, March 12.
Oh, those pies!
At the last change yesterday, I arrived too late. The last Brushville train was gone.
The pies were there.
A fortune I would have given for a dinner and a bed, which now seemed more problematic than ever.
I went to the station-master.
“Can I have a special train to take me to Brushville to-night?”
“How much for a locomotive alone?”
“Sixty dollars.”
“Have you a freight train going to Brushville?”
“What will you do with it?”
“Board it.”
“Board it! I can’t stop the train.”
“I’ll take my chance.”
“Your life is insured?”
“Yes; for a great deal more than it is worth.”
“Very well,” he said, “I’ll let you do it for five dollars.”
| ON THE ROAD TO BRUSHVILLE. |
And he looked as if he was going to enjoy the fun. The freight train arrived, slackened speed, and I boarded, with my portmanteau and my umbrella, a car loaded with timber. I placed my handbag on the timber—you know, the one I had when traveling in “the neighborhood of Chicago”—sat on it, opened my umbrella, and waved a “tata” to the station-master.
It was raining fast, and I had a journey of some thirty miles to make at the rate of about twelve miles an hour.
Oh, those pies! They now seemed to have resolved to fight it out. Sacrebleu! De bleu! de bleu!
A few miles from Brushville I had to get out, or rather, get down, and take a ticket for Brushville on board a local train.
Benumbed with cold, wet through, and famished, I arrived here at ten o’clock last night. The peach pie, the apple pie, and the apricot pie had settled their differences and become on friendly and accommodating terms.
I was able, on arriving at the hotel, to enjoy some light refreshments, which I only obtained, at that time of night, thanks to the manager, whom I had the pleasure of knowing personally.
At eleven o’clock I went to bed, or, to use a more proper expression for my Philadelphia readers, I retired.
I had been “retiring” for about half an hour, when I heard a knock at the door.
“Who’s there?” I grumbled from under the bedclothes.
“A representative of the Brushville Express.”
“Oh,” said I, “I am very sorry—but I’m asleep.”
“Please let me in; I won’t detain you very long.”
“I guess you won’t. Now, please do not insist. I am tired, upset, ill, and I want rest. Come to-morrow morning.”
“No, I can’t do that,” answered the voice behind the door; “my paper appears in the morning, and I want to put in something about you.”
“Now, do go away,” I pleaded, “there’s a good fellow.”
“I must see you,” insisted the voice.
“You go!” I cried, “you go——” without mentioning any place.
For a couple of minutes there was silence, and I thought the interviewer was gone. The illusion was sweet, but short. There was another knock, followed by a “I really must see you to-night.” Seeing that there would be no peace until I had let the reporter in, I unbolted the door, and jumped back into my—you know.
THE INTERVIEWER.
It was pitch dark.
The door opened; and I heard the interviewer’s steps in the room. By and by, the sound of a pocket being searched was distinct. It was his own. A match was pulled out and struck; the premises examined and reconnoitered.
A chandelier with three lights hung in the middle of the room. The reporter, speechless and solemn, lighted one burner, then two, then three, chose the most comfortable seat, and installed himself in it, looking at me with an air of triumph.
I was sitting up, wild and desheveled, in my “retiring” clothes.
“Que voulez-vous?” I wanted to yell, my state of drowsiness allowing me to think only in French.
Instead of translating this query by “What do you want?” as I should have done, if I had been in the complete enjoyment of my intellectual faculties, I shouted to him:
“What will you have?”
“Oh, thanks, I’m not particular,” he calmly replied. “I’ll have a little whisky and soda—rye whisky, please.”
My face must have been a study as I rang for whisky and soda.
The mixture was brought—for two.
“I suppose you have no objection to my smoking?” coolly said the man in the room.
“Not at all,” I remarked; “this is perfectly lovely; I enjoy it all.”
He pulled out his pocket-book and his pencil, crossed his legs, and having drawn a long whiff from his cigar, he said:
“I see that you have no lecture to deliver in Brushville; may I ask you what you have come here for?”
“Now,” said I, “what the deuce is that to you? If this is the kind of questions you have to ask me, you go——”
He pocketed the rebuff, and went on undisturbed:
“How are you struck with Brushville?”
“I am struck,” said I, “with the cheek of some of the inhabitants. I have driven to this hotel from the depot in a closed carriage, and I have seen nothing of your city.”
The man wrote down something.
“I lecture to-morrow night,” I continued, “before the students of the State University, and I have come here for rest.”
He took this down.
“All this, you see, is very uninteresting; so, good-night.”
And I disappeared.
The interviewer rose and came to my side.
“Really, now that I am here, you may as well let me have a chat with you.”
“You wretch!” I exclaimed. “Don’t you see that I am dying for sleep? Is there nothing sacred for you? Have you lost all sense of charity? Have you no mother? Don’t you believe in future punishment? Are you a man or a demon?”
“Tell me some anecdotes, some of your reminiscences of the road,” said the man, with a sardonic grin.
I made no reply. The imperturbable reporter resumed his seat and smoked.
“Are you gone?” I sighed, from under the blankets.
The answer came in the following words:
“I understand, sir, that when you were a young man——”
“When I was what?” I shouted, sitting up once more.
“I understand, sir, that when you were quite a young man,” repeated the interviewer, with the sentence improved, “you were an officer in the French army.”
“I was,” I murmured, in the same position.
“I also understand you fought during the Franco-Prussian war.”
“I did,” I said, resuming a horizontal position.
“May I ask you to give me some reminiscences of the Franco-Prussian war—just enough to fill about a column?”
I rose and again sat up.
“Free citizen of the great American Republic,” said I, “beware, beware! There will be blood shed in this room to-night.”
And I seized my pillow.
“You are not meaty,” exclaimed the reporter.
“May I inquire what the meaning of this strange expression is?” I said, frowning; “I don’t speak American fluently.”
“It means,” he replied, “that there is very little to be got out of you.”
“Are you going?” I said, smiling.
“Well, I guess I am.”
“Good-night.”
“Good-night.”
I bolted the door, turned out the gas, and “re-retired.”
“Poor fellow,” I thought; “perhaps he relied on me to supply him with material for a column. I might have chatted with him. After all, these reporters have invariably been kind to me. I might as well have obliged him. What is he going to do?”
And I dreamed that he was dismissed.
I ought to have known better.
This morning I opened the Brushville Express, and, to my stupefaction, saw a column about me. My impressions of Brushville, that I had no opportunity of looking at, were there. Nay, more. I would blush to record here the exploits I performed during the Franco-Prussian war, as related by my interviewer, especially those which took place at the battle of Gravelotte, where, unfortunately, I was not present. The whole thing was well written. The reference to my military services began thus: “Last night a hero of the great Franco-Prussian war slept under the hospitable roof of Morrison Hotel, in this city.”
“Slept!” This was adding insult to injury.
.......
This morning I had the visit of two more reporters.
“What do you think of Brushville?” they said; and, seeing that I would not answer the question, they volunteered information on Brushville, and talked loud on the subject. I have no doubt that the afternoon papers will publish my impressions of Brushville.
