In front of a café in Naples Mr. Peasley became deeply interested in a conversation between two well-dressed men at a table near ours. At first we thought they were going to "clinch" and fight it out, but then we saw that there was no real anger exhibited, but that apparently one was describing to the other some very thrilling experience. He waved his arms, struck at imaginary objects, made pinwheel movements with his fingers, and carried on generally in a most hysterical manner. Mr. Peasley, all worked up, beckoned the head waiter, who had been talking to us in English.
"Look here," he said confidentially, "I want you to listen and tell me what those fellows are talking about. I can't catch a word they say, but as near as I can make out from the way they act that fellow with the goatee is describing some new kind of torpedo boat. It goes through the water at about thirty miles an hour, having three or four screw propellers. When it comes within striking distance of the enemy—bang! they cut her loose and the projectile goes whizzing to the mark, and when it meets with any resistance there is a big explosion and everything within a quarter of a mile is blown to flindereens. Now, that's the plot, as near as I can follow it from watchin' that short guy make motions. You listen to them and tell me if I am right."
The head waiter listened and then translated to us as follows:—"He is saying to his friend that he slept very well last evening and got up feeling good, but was somewhat annoyed at breakfast time because the egg was not cooked to suit him."
"How about all these gymnastics?" asked the surprised Mr. Peasley. "Why does he hop up and down, side step and feint and wiggle his fingers and all that monkey business?"
"Quite so," replied the head waiter. "He is describing the egg."
"He is describing the egg."
What a people—to take five cents worth of cheap information and garland it with twenty dollars' worth of Delsarte and rhetoric!
Talk is one of the few things of which there is a superabundance in the Levant. In nearly all particulars the Arab is economical and abstemious. He eats sparingly and cheaply, wears just enough clothing to keep from violating the municipal ordinances, smokes conservatively, so as to get the full value of his tobacco, and lives in a house which is furnished with three or four primitive utensils. But when it comes to language, he is the most reckless spendthrift in the world. He uses up large bales of conversation.