And up the ancient Appian way
Will flock the ghostly legions,
From Gaul unto Calabria,
And from remoter regions;
From British bog and wild lagoon,
And Libyan desert sandy,
They’ll all come, marching to the tune
Of “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”
Prepare the triumph car for me
And purple throne to sit on,
For I’ve done more than Julius C.—
He could not down the Briton!
Cæsar and Cicero shall bow,
And ancient warriors famous,
Before the myrtle-bandaged brow
Of Buffalo Williamus.
We march, unwhipped, through history—
No bulwark can detain us—
And link the age of Grover C.
And Scipio Africanus.
I’ll take my stalwart Indian braves
Down to the Coliseum,
And the old Romans from their graves
Will all arise to see ’em.
Artistic Florence, practical Bologna, grand and stately Milan, and unique Verona were next added to the list. Verona’s superb and well-preserved Arena, excelling in superficial area the Coliseum and holding 45,000 people, was especially granted for the Wild West’s use. The Indians were taken by Buffalo Bill to picturesque Venice, and there shown the marvelous results of the ancient white man’s energy and artistic architectural skill. They were immortalized by the camera in the ducal palace, St. Marc’s Piazza, and in the strange street vehicle of the Adriatic’s erstwhile pride—the gondola; contributing another interesting object lesson to the distant juvenile student members of their tribe, to testify more fully to their puzzled senses the fact of strange sights and marvels whose existence is to be learned in the breadth of knowledge.
BUFFALO BILL AND HIS INDIANS IN VENICE.
Moving via Innsbruck through the beautifully scenic Tyrol, the Bavarian capital, Munich, with its naturally artistic instincts, gave a grand reception to the beginning of a marvelously successful tour through German land, which included Vienna (with an excursion on the “Blue Danube”), Berlin, Dresden, Leipsic, Magdeburg, Hanover, Brunswick, Hamburg, Bremen, Dusseldorf, Cologne, along the Rhine past Bonn, Coblentz, “Fair Bingen on the Rhine,” to Frankfort, Stuttgart, and Strasburg. These historic cities, with all their wealth of legendary interest, art galleries, scientific conservatories, educative edifices, cathedrals, modern palaces, ancient ruins, army maneuverings, fortifications, commercial and varied manufacturing and agricultural industries, and the social, genial, friendly, quiet customs of its peoples, should form good instruction to the rugged rovers of the American plains—heirs to an empire as much more vast in extent and resources as is the brightness of the diamond—after the skill expended by the lapidary—in dazzling brilliancy to the rude, unpolished stone before man’s industry lends value to its existence.
At Strasburg the management decided to close temporarily this extraordinary tour and winter the company. Although in the proximity of points contemplated for a winter campaign (southern France and the Riviera), this was deemed advisable on account of the first and only attack from envious humanity that the organization had encountered. This matter necessitated the manly but expensive voluntary procedure of taking the Indians to America to meet face to face and deny the imputations of some villifiers, whom circumstances of petty political “charity” and “I-am-ism” and native buoyancy permit at times to float temporarily on the surface of a cosmopolite community, and to whose ravings a too credulous public and press give hearing.
The quaint little village of Benfield furnished an ancient nunnery and a castle with stables and good range. Here the little community of Americans spent the winter comfortably, being feasted and fêted by the inhabitants, whose esteem they gained to such an extent that their departure was marked by a general holiday, assisting hands, and such public demonstrations of regret that many a rude cowboy when once again careering o’er the pampas of Texas will rest his weary steed while memory reverts to the pleasant days and whole-souled friendships cemented at the foot of the Vosges Mountains in disputed Alsace-Lorraine.
In Alsace-Lorraine! whose anomalous position menaces the peace not only of the two countries interested but of the civilized world; whose situation makes it intensely even sadly interesting as the theater of that future human tragedy for which the ear of mankind strains day and night, listening for detonations from the muzzles of the acme of invented mechanisms of destruction. The lurid-garbed Angel of Devastation hovers, careering through the atmosphere of the seemingly doomed valley, gaily laughing, shrieking exultingly, at the white-robed Angel of Peace as the latter gloomily wanders, prayerful, tearful, hopelessly hunting, ceaselessly seeking, the return of modern man’s boasted newly created gods—Equity, Justice, Reason!