The city is the finest I have seen in Europe, barring Paris only. The public buildings are works of art and you see splendid architecture everywhere. The street cars are the most modern I have seen since leaving home, but why shouldn’t they be? I was sitting in a car the other night and happened to look around at the advertisements when I alighted on the builder’s name, “John Stephenson, Elizabeth, N.J.” It made me homesick to see the familiar name. I didn’t hesitate to tell some of the Portuguese sitting alongside me that Elizabeth was my home town, and they seemed very much interested.
I was taken through one fine building yesterday by a very distinguished-looking gentleman, elderly and good-natured, who showed a lot of interest in me and who introduced me to the Lord Mayor of the place and to some of the Cabinet members. He himself is a member of the Cabinet and one of the best-known men in Portugal, I later learned. I walked through some of the streets with him and his gold-headed cane, and almost everybody bowed to him or looked at him with awe. He understood English very well and told me a whole lot of the history of the country. As a plain American gob I got all I deserved, and then some.
This is a great old town. I suppose you have heard of the revolution that is going on here. We came just in time to see the skirmishes that are featured daily. A funny thing occurred last night. We were loafing along one of the main avenues when we came to a big bulletin in front of a newspaper office. About a thousand people were gathered in front of it and reading a notice. To catch your eye there was printed a huge hand holding a dagger dripping with blood, and beneath it the announcement of another episode of the revolution which was scheduled to take place on the following Saturday afternoon. Some class to this burg. They are not satisfied with trouble as it comes along, but even advertise it in advance.
We are all going uptown to see a bull-fight on Sunday. They have them two afternoons a week, but we have picked Sunday as we want to take in part two of the revolution as duly announced for to-morrow. In spite of the political rough-house the city is really wonderful and we are very lucky to be laid up here, even if we do miss out on a few weeks of the war. The only thing that gets me is how the deuce to talk this Portuguese lingo. We were all learning French very rapidly and can get along O.K. in that language, but the stuff these people patter is simply terrible to make out. Here we have to turn to and learn a third language, and by the time we return to God’s country we ought to be linguists of note.
The money here is very different from France. It is the reis, not the franc, that demands your careful attention. It takes sixteen hundred reis to make an American dollar, and when you get change for ten dollars or so, you get a basketful of junk that looks like so many United Cigar Store coupons. It costs about a million reis to buy a good meal, but the food is excellent and we get real honest-to-goodness hot rolls, just like back home, but about as big as a football. I brought a dozen back to the batteau last night and when I came to pay for them I handed the gink about seventeen hundred thousand reis, more or less. It makes you swell up and feel richer than Rockefeller to be handing out fortunes in this careless way, and it’s lucky for us, as the ship has not been paid off in the Lord knows when and most of us are flat broke. However, the moving-picture theatres are good and fairly cheap, and Charlie Chaplin is here, and we are allowed to stay ashore until eleven-thirty at night, which is a long liberty for a foreign port.
It was difficult for the officers of the Corsair to maintain the customary round of duty and discipline while the ship was under repair, with a crowd of Portuguese artisans aboard, many distractions ashore, and things more or less upset, but they succeeded in enforcing the high standards of the United States Navy aboard. No more gratifying evidence of this could be desired than the following letter from the Secretary of the Navy:
March 11th, 1918
To Commanding Officer, U.S.S. Corsair.
” ” ” ” Preston.
Subject: Good Behavior of Men in Lisbon.
The Department is much gratified to receive through the State Department an excellent report of the behavior of the men of the Corsair and Preston during their stay in Lisbon. The following is an extract from the letter of the American Minister:
I am sure that the Department will be pleased to know, as well, that all the men behaved splendidly and made a very creditable impression in Lisbon. It is needless for me to say that I was very much gratified by it all and personally felt that our men were worthy of the cordial attention and generous hospitality bestowed upon them by the Portuguese people and others.