If you want to enjoy a trip to a foreign country—let us say France,—spend a week or two reading about the history and literature of that country. Make notes while you are reading, give your imagination full rein, and absorb just as much knowledge as you can of the habits and customs of the French people. The cultivation of the imagination is especially important; while you read about France, picture the tiny villages and big cities to yourself, try to visualize the people and their homes. And when you do arrive in France, you will find keen enjoyment in seeing the people and places that lived first in your imagination. We promise that you will enjoy your trip a great deal more than if you neglected to devote a little time to the reading up of the important facts about the country you intended to visit.
Another very good plan is to buy a French-and-English or a Spanish-and-English dictionary before or as soon as reaching those countries. Whether one knows the language or not, it is always safest to have one of these little volumes handy. They are absolutely indispensable to those who expect to travel in a country the language of which is entirely unknown to them.
Wise tourists carry a map of the countries they intend visiting. It saves them much time, and often prevents mistakes. These maps may be obtained of most reliable stationers, and they take up very little space. There are times, during the journey, when their help is well nigh invaluable; and a map is nearly always a safer guide than a native.
A camera is a splendid thing to have along on one's trips abroad. No matter how vivid an impression a certain scene makes upon one's mind, it is bound to fade with the passing of a year or so. But a clear snap-shot taken of that scene will keep it fresh indefinitely, for one needs only to glance at the picture to have all associations with the scene recalled. The latest cameras have a device for writing the date and name of the place on the negative, to be printed with the picture. It is most convenient for the tourist.
There are too many of us who rush through the world seeing nothing. We race through one country after another, hustling and bustling, feeling important and acting the part—and we feel that we have traveled. But that is not travel. True travel is when a man or woman visits a strange country and carries back with him, or her, to be remembered forever, impressions of the people and customs of that country—valuable impressions that make his or her life fuller, wider, more in sympathy with the great world of fellow-men. Better stay at home and read good books about foreign countries, than rush through them with unseeing eyes, merely to be able to tell those at home that you have "been abroad."
CHAPTER VIII
TIPPING
AN UN-AMERICAN CUSTOM
Everyone knows that tipping is a European custom and is entirely un-American in principle. But while the custom is observed as widely in this country as it is to-day, it is both inconsiderate and bad form to ignore it. The wages of waiters end waitresses, porters and hotel servants are outrageously small, for the reason that they receive tips for each service they perform for individual guests and travelers. If the tipping custom were abolished, the wages of these people would be correspondingly increased; but as things are now, it is inconsiderate to deprive them of the tips that both they and their employers expect that they will receive.
In a little tea shop in Fifth Avenue in New York, the following is printed on the back of each menu: "Tipping is an un-American custom. Help us abolish it by adding 10c to the amount of your bill. At the end of the week, the waiter will receive the entire amount added to his wages." Patrons have greeted this plan enthusiastically. They feel that it presages the ultimate abolition of a custom that has long been in disrepute because it is so distinctly un-American. The waiters in this progressive little tea-room serve each patron with the same degree of courtesy and respect; there is no fawning servility, no unfair dividing of service between two patrons.
Let us hope that before long all restaurants and hotels will follow the lead of the little tea-shop that revolts against the undemocratic custom of tipping. But for the present, while it remains a national custom, we must know when to tip and how to tip, and the correct amounts.