I had not slept well that night either, in spite of the fact that I had eaten sparingly. I think it was the Herr Director himself who had “got on my nerves,” and I was finding this task of “showing off” my beloved United States difficult and exacting.
That morning we were to leave New York and I would introduce my guests to the great American out-of-doors, and the prospect added to my already uncomfortable frame of mind.
If only we might start from that marvellous Central Station in the heart of the city; but in order to reach our destination, which was Lake Mohonk, we had to cross the West Side where it is irredeemably tawdry and ugly, and take one of the ferry-boats to Weehawken. This somewhat inconvenient procedure made the Herr Director doubly critical.
The Fates were against us, for it was a hot, humid day, the car was crowded, and the start from Weehawken anything but auspicious.
In Europe the Herr Director travels second class when he travels officially (the first, as is well known, being reserved for Americans and fools), and third when he travels incognito, for he is a thrifty soul. Nevertheless, he did not like our cars, they were “obtrusively decorated,” and privacy was impossible. Why should he have to look at a hundred or more human heads variously “frisired”?
I suggested that we take seats in front, which we succeeded in doing, and then he found that if he wished to take off his collar, he would have to do it with two hundred or more human eyes fastened upon him, when the hundred people possessing them had no business to see what he was doing.
I have already confessed how sensitive I am to criticism of anything American, no matter how just the criticism may be. So sensitive am I, that had he reflected upon the good looks of my wife, he could scarcely have hurt me more than when he reflected upon the beauty and arrangement of an American railway car.
And yet I have often wondered why our American genius seems to have exhausted itself when it evolved the present type of car, having done nothing to it except adding or taking away some of its “gingerbread.” Nevertheless I lost my patience and told him that if he liked to travel cooped in with seven other passengers, four of whom he must face and two of whom might at any moment poke their elbows into his ribs; if he preferred to breathe air polluted by seven other people, and have a fresh supply of ozone only at periods and in quantities regulated by law, I did not admire his taste. As far as I was concerned I preferred to travel in this big room on wheels, rather than in a jail-like box to which the conductor alone had the key. Anyway this represented American democracy with its unpartitioned space; but if he really wanted it, I could get him a stateroom in the Pullman, and he could ride in isolated splendor and be aristocratically stuffy and uncomfortable.
When the Frau Directorin in typical German phraseology complained about the draft: “Um Gottes Willen ein Zug!” I decided to save the day, and we retreated to the Pullman stateroom.
There they rested themselves back and looked tolerably happy while I, silently but fervently, prayed that this particular train would not disgrace itself by “committing” an accident.