Then they pack up and depart, galloping, for Prague with their tongues hanging out. For Wednesday is Prague and Prague is Wednesday—the two words are synonymous and interchangeable. Surely to such as these, the places they have visited must mean as much to them, afterward, as the labels upon their trunks mean to the trunks—just flimsy names pasted on, all confused and overlapping, and certain to be scraped off in time, leaving nothing but faint marks upon an indurated surface.
There is yet again another type, always of the female gender and generally middle-aged and very schoolteacherish in aspect, who, in company with a group of kindred spirits, is viewing Europe under a contract arrangement by which a worn and wearied-looking gentleman, a retired clergyman usually, acts as escort and mentor for a given price. I don't know how much he gets a head for this job; but whatever it is, he earns it ninety-and-nine times over. This lady tourist is much given to missing trains and getting lost and having disputes with natives and wearing rubber overshoes and asking strange questions—but let me illustrate with a story I heard.
The man from Cook's had convoyed his party through the Vatican, until he brought them to the Apollo Belvidere. As they ranged themselves wearily about the statue, he rattled off his regular patter without pause or punctuation:
"Here we have the far-famed Apollo Belvidere found about the middle of the fifteenth century at Frascati purchased by Pope Julius the Second restored by the great Michelangelo taken away by the French in 1797 but returned in 1815 made of Carara marble holding in his hand a portion of the bow with which he slew the Python observe please the beauty of the pose the realistic attitude of the limbs the noble and exalted expression of the face of Apollo Belvidere he being known also as Phoebus the god of oracles the god of music and medicine the son of Leto and Jupiter—"
Here he ran out of breath and stopped. For a moment no one spoke. Then from a flat-chested little spinster came this query in tired yet interested tones:
"Was he—was he married?"
He who is intent upon studying the effect of foreign climes upon the American temperament should by no means overlook the colonies of resident Americans in the larger European cities, particularly the colonies in such cities as Paris and Rome and Florence. In Berlin, the American colony is largely made up of music students and in Vienna of physicians; but in the other places many folks of many minds and many callings constitute the groups. Some few have left their country for their country's good and some have expatriated themselves because, as they explain in bursts of confidence, living is cheaper in France than it is in America. I suppose it is, too, if one can only become reconciled to doing without most of the comforts which make life worth while in America or anywhere else. Included among this class are many rather unhappy old ladies who somehow impress you as having been shunted off to foreign parts because there were no places for them in the homes of their children and their grandchildren. So now they are spending their last years among strangers, trying with a desperate eagerness to be interested in people and things for which they really care not a fig, with no home except a cheerless pension.
Also there are certain folk—products, in the main, of the Eastern seaboard—who, from having originally lived in America and spent most of their time abroad, have now progressed to the point where they now live mostly abroad and visit America fleetingly once in a blue moon. As a rule these persons know a good deal about Europe and very little about the country that gave them birth. The stock-talk of European literature is at their tongue's tip. They speak of Ibsen in the tone of one mourning the passing of a near, dear, personal friend, and as for Zola—ah, how they miss the influence of his compelling personality! But for the moment they cannot recall whether Richard K. Fox ran the Police Gazette or wrote the "Trail of the Lonesome Pine."
They are up on the history of the Old World. From memory they trace the Bourbon dynasty from the first copper-distilled Charles to the last sourmashed Louis. But as regards our own Revolution, they aren't quite sure whether it was started by the Boston Tea Party or Mrs. O'Leary's Cow. Languidly they inquire whether that quaint Iowa character, Uncle Champ Root, is still Speaker of the House? And so the present Vice-President is named Elihu Underwood? Or isn't he? Anyway, American politics is such a bore. But they stand ready, at a minute's notice, to furnish you with the names, dates and details of all the marriages that have taken place during the last twenty years in the royal house of Denmark.
Some day we shall learn a lesson from Europe. Some fair day we shall begin to exploit our own historical associations. We shall make shrines of the spots where Washington crossed the ice to help end one war and where Eliza did the same thing to help start another. We shall erect stone markers showing where Charley Ross was last seen and Carrie Nation was first sighted. We shall pile up tall monuments to Sitting Bull and Nonpareil Jack Dempsey and the man who invented the spit ball. Perhaps then these truant Americans will come back oftener from Paris and Florence and abide with us longer. Meanwhile though they will continue to stay on the other side. And on second thought, possibly it is just as well for the rest of us that they do.