Before starting out on the trip which brought me in contact with the police, I received from the late William Walter Phelps, our Minister to Germany at the time, a second passport, not wanting to take the other one away from the university. I expected to return to my lectures the next semester, and to take away my passport would later have involved re-matriculation, or other formalities worth while avoiding. Mr. Phelps very kindly entered into my plan, gave me another passport, and told me to let him know if I got into trouble at any time. A former tramp trip had taken me pretty well over North Germany, so I determined to explore the southern provinces on the second journey. I was out for six weeks, getting as far south as Strassburg. In Marburg, the old university town, where I learned that tramps could earn fifty pfennigs an hour, when the professors of physiology wanted to have human specimens for their illustrations, I had my tiff with the omnipotent police. With several other roadsters I went about nightfall to a Herberge, or lodging house, where supper and bed can be found at very reasonable prices. Soon after supper, while we were all sitting together chatting in the general dining and waiting room, a Schutzmann came in. His appearance did not in the least disconcert me, because I knew that my passport was in order, and had been through the pass-inspection ordeal on a number of previous occasions. In fact, I was a little forward in getting my pass into his hands, feeling proud of its menacing size. "That'll fetch him," I said to myself. "I wonder what will be made out of it this time." The pompous official took the sheet of paper, "star-gazed" at it fully three minutes by the clock, and then in a surprisingly mild voice said to me: "Sie sind ein Oesterreicher, nicht wahr?" (You are an Austrian, I take it.) I declared boldly enough that I was an American, as my pass proved. Some more "star-gazing" on the part of the policeman—then, as if he would explode unless he gave vent to his vulgar officiousness, and throwing the passport in my face, he bellowed: "American! American! Well, you go double-quick to your consul in Frankfort, and get a German pass. That big thing won't go," and away he stalked as if he were the whole German army bundled into one uniform. When he had left, the other Kunden gathered about me and told me not to mind the "old fool." But all that night I could not get over the feeling that the man had spat upon my flag. I suppose, however, that the poor ignoramus was simply ruffled because he had shown to the Herberge that he did not know the difference between an Austrian and an American pass, and did not mean any real insult.
[CHAPTER XVI]
SWITZERLAND AND ITALY
Perhaps the pleasantest break in my university studies came in the summer of 1894, when I went to Switzerland, and, later in the year, to Italy. My writings had begun to bring me in a small income by this time, and I had learned how to make a dollar do valiant service when it came to paying traveling expenses.
My companion in Switzerland was a fellow-student at the university. I understand he is now spending his days and nights trying to write a new history of Rome. We did the usual things on our trip together, some things that were unusual, and we saw, on comparatively little money, the greater part of Switzerland. We also climbed a mountain; and thereby hangs a tale.
Both of us had been diligently reading Mark Twain's "A Tramp Abroad"—particularly the chapters on Switzerland. Eventually we got into the Rhone Valley, and at Visp, or rather at St. Nicholas, midway between Visp and Zermatt, we stumbled upon our ideal of a mountain guide, or, rather, on the ideal that the "Tramp Abroad" book had conjured up for us. We had seen other guides before, dozens of them, but there was something in the "altogether" about the St. Nicholas discovery that captured us completely. We drew the guide into conversation. Yes, he knew of a mountain at Zermatt that we could climb.
"Roped together?" said the present historian of Rome. Somehow, unless we could be attached to a rope and dangle over precipices, the ascent presented no great charms. Yes, we could even be roped together, could march in single file, spend hours in the snow, and have a wonderful aussicht.
"And the price?" A sudden return of everyday sense prompted me to ask. By this time our funds were getting pretty low, and neither one of us was sure when his next remittance would arrive. My friend's, by the way, never did arrive when we most needed it.