HOT SKETCH NO. 22
Typical American and Critical American
THERE was once a comfortable piece of suet who considered himself a Typical American and oozed oleaginous sentiments of Lofty Patriotism through a three-dimensional Mid Western brogue every time he saw a good opening.
He loved America so much that he used to spend six months out of every year Abroad with his big cigars and his fat wife. He liked to get up on a barrel in every port he backed into, and tell the natives a few things about Our great liberty-loving America where every man was free to spit on the sidewalk if he wanted to.
He took a Keen Delight in roasting everything that was non-American and making himself miserable every time he turned a foreign corner. He used to grease down three 18-inch collars every day pointing out to his billow-chinned Helpmeet how senseless These Here Foreigners were for doing things this way instead of doing them that way. Any time he overlooked anything for condemnation, the Little One (Ton) would heave-to and remind him of it in a whistling nasaletto that made you instinctively hang onto your hat.
From two to four hours were put in each day of the calender month grousing about the cold rooms, cold hotels, cold shops, cold theatres, cold everything. It made them both hot to think of the cold. During these protest meetings, Typical American would tread the floor heavily and work his cigar angrysomely from one side of his gasser to the other and then back again, and take a solemn oath before his Maker that if he ever got back home without cracking he would turn on the steam-heat until the walls began to run like sap.
Another thing that always added to the merriment of their foreign philandering was the Customs. Every time an inspector requested Typ. Am. or his Better Half Ton to open up a piece of luggage, Typ would bring down upon the inquisitive little inspectorial head a torrent of biting injective that would have made it crawl under the culvert in shame had it been able to get next to the linguistic delivery.
For the inconveniences and jarring out-of-dateness of Foreign Travel were but a mild rash when it came to the question of power to annoy. It was the systematic pillaging of Typ and Mrs. Typ that proved to be the big aching carbuncle.
Every time Typ went to pay a taxi fare, they tried to flam him out of two or three cents and he used to have to use up about seven dollars’ worth of American energy arguing the hold-up with the robber at the wheel and trying to prove to him in excited expletives that the legal Scale of Rates showed 20 cents for two miles instead of 22 cents.
When Typ would register at a hotel he always had to get into the ring for ten rounds with the Swiss Cheese in the long prince albert before he could get anything like the rate and the room he wanted. What he didn’t tell the Concierge down stairs about his old hotel he would tell the porters up stairs when they were juggling in the baggage.