Europe Revised

by Irvin S. Cobb

Wherever we went I was constantly on the outlook for a kind of tourist who had been described to me frequently and at great length by more seasoned travelers—the kind who wore his country's flag as a buttonhole emblem, or as a shirtfront decoration; and regarded every gathering and every halting place as providing suitable opportunity to state for the benefit of all who might be concerned, how immensely and overpoweringly superior in all particulars was the land from which he hailed as compared with all other lands under the sun. I desired most earnestly to overhaul a typical example of this species, my intention then being to decoy him off to some quiet and secluded spot and there destroy him in the hope of cutting down the breed.

At length, along toward the fag end of our zigzagging course, I caught up with him; but stayed my hand and slew not. For some countries, you understand, are so finicky in the matter of protecting their citizens that they would protect even such a one as this. I was fearful lest, by exterminating the object of my homicidal desires, I should bring on international complications with a friendly Power, no matter however public-spirited and high-minded my intentions might be.

It was in Vienna, in a cafe, and the hour was late. We were just leaving, after having listened for some hours to a Hungarian band playing waltz tunes and an assemblage of natives drinking beer, when the sounds of a dispute at the booth where wraps were checked turned our faces in that direction. In a thick and plushy voice a short square person of a highly vulgar aspect was arguing with the young woman who had charge of the check room. Judging by his tones, you would have said that the nap of his tongue was at least a quarter of an inch long; and he punctuated his remarks with hiccoughs. It seemed that his excitement had to do with the disappearance of a neck-muffler. From argument he progressed rapidly to threats and the pounding of a fist upon the counter.

Drawing nigh, I observed that he wore a very high hat and a very short sack coat; that his waistcoat was of a combustible plaid pattern with gaiters to match; that he had taken his fingers many times to the jeweler, but not once to the manicure; that he was beautifully jingled and alcoholically boastful of his native land and that—a crowning touch—he wore flaring from an upper pocket of his coat a silk handkerchief woven in the design and colors of his country's flag. But, praises be, it was not our flag that he wore thus. It was the Union Jack. As we passed out into the damp Viennese midnight he was loudly proclaiming that he "Was'h Bri'sh subjesch," and that unless something was done mighty quick, would complain to "Is Majeshy's rep(hic)shenativ' ver' firsch thing 'n morn'."

So though I was sorry he was a cousin, I was selfishly and unfeignedly glad that he was not a brother. Since in the mysterious and unfathomable scheme of creation it seemed necessary that he should be born somewhere, still he had not been born in America, and that thought was very pleasing to me.

There was another variety of the tourist breed whose trail I most earnestly desired to cross. I refer to the creature who must be closely watched to prevent him, or her, from carrying off valuable relics as souvenirs, and defacing monuments and statues and disfiguring holy places with an inconsequential signature. In the flesh—and such a person must be all flesh and no soul—I never caught up with him, but more than once I came upon his fresh spoor.

In Venice our guide took us to see the nether prisons of the Palace of the Doges. From the level of the Bridge of Sighs we tramped down flights of stone stairs, one flight after another, until we had passed the hole through which the bodies of state prisoners, secretly killed at night, were shoved out into waiting gondolas and had passed also the room where pincers and thumbscrew once did their hideous work, until we came to a cellar of innermost, deepermost cells, fashioned out of the solid rock and stretching along a corridor that was almost as dark as the cells themselves. Here, so we were told, countless wretched beings, awaiting the tardy pleasure of the torturer or the headsman, had moldered in damp and filth and pitchy blackness, knowing day from night only by the fact that once in twenty-four hours food would be slipped through a hole in the wall by unseen hands; lying here until oftentimes death or the cruel mercy of madness came upon them before the overworked executioner found time to rack their limbs or lop off their heads.

We were told that two of these cells had been preserved exactly as they were in the days of the Doges, with no alteration except that lights had been swung from the ceilings. We could well accept this statement as the truth, for when the guide led us through a low doorway and flashed on an electric bulb we saw that the place where we stood was round like a jug and bare as an empty jug, with smooth stone walls and rough stone floor; and that it contained for furniture just two things—a stone bench upon which the captive might lie or sit and, let into the wall, a great iron ring, to which his chains were made fast so that he moved always to their grating accompaniment and the guard listening outside might know by the telltale clanking whether the entombed man still lived.

There was one other decoration in this hole—a thing more incongruous even than the modern lighting fixtures; and this stood out in bold black lettering upon the low-sloped ceiling. A pair of vandals, a man and wife—no doubt with infinite pains—had smuggled in brush and marking pot and somehow or other—I suspect by bribing guides and guards—had found the coveted opportunity of inscribing their names here in the Doges' black dungeon. With their names they had written their address too, which was a small town in the Northwest, and after it the legend: "Send us a postal card."

I imagine that then this couple, having accomplished this feat, regarded their trip to Europe as being rounded out and complete, and went home again, satisfied and rejoicing. Send them a postal card? Somebody should send them a deep-dish poison-pie!