CHAPTER XVI.
FROM LONDON TO PARIS.
GOOD-BYE for the present to London. Good-bye to its smoke, its fogs, its predatory hackmen, its bad water, its worse beer, its still worse gin. Good-bye to its eternal rains, its never-ending badly dressed men and worse dressed women. Good-bye to very bad bread. Good-bye to the greatest collection of shams and realities, goodness and cruelty in the world. Seven weeks in London and its environs is all that an American can endure, who ever expects to get back to his own country. Were fate to have a spite at him, and condemn him to make his residence there forever, he would settle down as a man does in a penitentiary and do the best he could, but for one who has a hope of returning to a country that was made after the Maker had had some experience in making countries, a longer stay in London than seven weeks would be too much. Seven weeks of biliousness and depression—seven weeks of exasperation and discomfort, seven weeks of extortion and tipping, seven weeks in an English suit of clothes, is all that an average American can endure.
And so good-bye to London till we renew our strength and can tackle it again. It is not exhausted, nor could it be in a year. It is a brute among cities, but it is a mastodon. It is a very large and variegated animal.
THE LANDLADY’S OBJECTION TO PARIS.
To the south lies France—La Belle France—and thither we go. Our landlady would hold us if she could, and gives expression to many reasons why we should stay in London: It is very warm in Paris; it is very disagreeable crossing the channel; Paris is unhealthy. At this time of the year Paris is crowded, and it is probable that we will not be able to get apartments such as would be suitable. It is not the season in Paris, and we had better go there later, and so on and so forth. You see the season in London is waning, and the good lady will have difficulty in filling her rooms. It is delicately hinted that if a slight deduction in rent (we have been paying three prices) would be an object, etc. But it all avails nothing. We should go to Paris if we should be compelled to sleep under a bridge and eat in a market. It is not so much to get to Paris as it is to get out of London, and raise our spirits to something like their normal condition. And so, when the good woman finds there is no holding us, she makes out our bill vindictively, racking her imagination to find items to insert, and weeping, no doubt, after our departure, over items that she might have inserted, but, in the hurry, forgot. The cabman, knowing by the station he was driving us to that we were going, managed to charge an extra shilling, and at the lunch counter at the station we paid an extra penny for the everlasting ham sandwich, which was to be the last. And when the last tip was paid, and the last extortion submitted to, we were finally locked in our villainous compartment, and were off. London, or the fog that covered it, faded from our sight, we saw the sun, and were scurrying through the green fields and the real delights of rural England.
From Victoria Station to New Haven is not the most interesting trip that can be imagined, although there are picturesque towns, waving fields of grass, with an occasional bit of woods, that relieve the journey of some of its unpleasant features, and make it rather enjoyable. But by the time one has gone through miles and miles of such scenery, the towns become monotonous, each succeeding field of grain waves just as the one before it did, the woods, miniature forests, are just alike, and, leaning back in the corner of the compartment, the time is spent in dozing until eleven o’clock, when the train rushes into the station at New Haven, and we struggle through the dimly lighted passages to the dock, where lies the steamer that is to take us across that bugbear of all tourists, the English Channel.
And then we have the satisfaction of learning that the tide is not in, and the steamer will not leave for two hours and a half. It is a dark, windy night, and there is no way to spend the time save by pacing up and down the narrow confines of the deck, watching the enormous cranes loading huge packages of merchandize into the vessel’s hold; or taking a stroll along the dock, regardless of the momentary danger of stumbling over an unseen cable and pitching headlong into the water.
There is one other way of passing the time. Whenever a tourist can find nothing else to do, he eats. There is in the station at New Haven the inevitable lunch counter, with the orthodox ham sandwich and bitter beer. To this everybody was attracted as by a magnet. There is no escaping it. No body was hungry; but it seems to be a law of Nature that you must eat ham sandwiches while you wait at railroad stations. And in obedience to this law, a cart-load of the sandwiches were devoured and paid for.