Having arrived at Naples, Palermo, or some other Italian city, the reader of my “Tramp Trip” will, nine chances to one, say something not suited to polite society, and not flattering to my veracity. For, notwithstanding my repeated expositions of Italian trickery, the tramp fresh from America will overlook some loophole, and the first days of his arrival, before he is taught by his own experience as well as by mine, will in all probability be charged, or rather overcharged, as much as though he were going first-class, with glasses slung over his shoulder and a red guidebook in his hand. I recall one of my first experiences in Naples. At a restaurant, before taking a seat, a certain sum was stipulated upon for a dinner. When it came to settling, the Italian charged just double the amount agreed on—perche? “Because,” and the rogue shrugged his shoulders as he said it—“because, signore, you took two pieces of meat instead of one.”
Of course it was a mere cheat, but what can you do? At first you pay, as I did; later, when you see such things are going to occur, not once but twenty or a hundred times a day, you lay down the right sum and walk off.
The tomb of Virgil is a few yards without one of the gates of Naples. Within the walls cab drivers are limited in their charges by a tariff—without, they charge what they like, or what they can get. I knew this, and so when I started for the poet’s grave, I bade the Jehu stop just inside the gate, where I meant to get out and walk the few yards to the tomb. But when we reached the gate Jehu drove on through, despite my remonstrance, saying he wished to let his horse stand outside in the shade of the wall. On this slight ground he built an outrageous charge, four times as much as the tariff rate to the gate. When he had driven me back to the city and I offered him the correct fare, he fumed like a Turk, swore he would have me arrested, that he had taken me into the country, into the campagna, and that he didn’t mean to let himself be cheated by a base foreigner. And all the while he danced and jumped about me, shaking his fist like a madman. When my curiosity was satisfied, I threw the right fare, one lira, on the ground, and walked off. Instantly there was a transformation that would have done credit to a veteran comedian. The cabman, seeing I did not mean to be cheated, ceased his fierce antics, stooped and picked up the silver, and waved me an “addio” with a smile as pleasant and as fresh as a May morn.
In Vienna I stepped into a money-changer’s to buy Turkish money. “Wait a few minutes,” said the manager, “I must send to the Börse to see what the exchange is to-day.” I took a seat. In ten minutes the money-changer came to me with the Turkish gold, and I rose to go. But in passing out the door a man stopped me and demanded a gulden. “For what?” “I went to the Börse to find out the exchange.” His going to the Börse was none of my affair; I refused to pay him forty cents for running the money-changer’s errand. Then followed a curious scene. The man threatened to invoke the power of the entire Empire unless he received his gulden. I told him to invoke. An excited crowd began to gather and block the narrow street.
“Young man, you are wrong,” shouted one in the crowd. “He went to the Börse; you must pay him.”
“The law is on his side; you will have to go to jail,” shouted another. Whereupon I sprang on a box that stood in front of the money-changer’s window, and harangued the crowd in the best German I could command. I told them I was traveling to see strange sights; that nothing would interest me more than an experience in a Vienna jail. “That,” I said, “will be something to tell my countrymen and make them stare. Come, I am ready; take me to jail.”
The man who wanted a gulden looked puzzled, but finally made up his mind to brave it out. Summoning a gendarme, he made his complaint, and I was placed under arrest. Away we went, followed by a hooting, jeering crowd, some of whom tried to shake my determination by shouting out the horrors of an Austrian dungeon. But the gulden not being forthcoming, there was no change in the line of march, and at length we brought up at the police station. Here the accuser spoke to me in a low tone, and said if I would pay half a gulden he would withdraw his charge. No. Well, ten kreutzers, five—anything, and finally nothing! For, unwilling or unable to deposit the necessary security for the costs of the case should he fail to prove his charge, he at length strode away sullen and furious because he had failed either to frighten or to cheat me.
I mention these incidents that the reader may understand what fifty-cents-a-day traveling means. The majority of tourists would have paid that gulden, and other similar guldens, and thus run their expenses up to five or ten dollars a day. Perhaps they would rather it should be twenty dollars than go through such scenes. It all depends upon one’s “point of view,” as Henry James says. For my part, I refused to pay that cheating messenger not so much to save my gulden, as for the sake of the scene. That surly, disappointed churl, the mob, the scene at the station before the stern gendarmes afforded me more enjoyment than I could have bought with twenty guldens. I would advise none to take a tramp trip who cannot, if necessary, enter such scrimmages with a feeling of positive delight. If you have not that disposition—if you cannot enjoy this close contact with and study of the lower classes—stay at home, else will your trip be one not of delight, but of petty humiliations and counting pennies.
One of the most frequent questions put to me by my inquisitive correspondents is: “How is it possible to find cheap lodging-places the first night in strange cities? and if you don’t find them, if you must go, even temporarily, to a first-class hotel, how is the per diem to be kept within fifty cents?”
The reason this question is so often asked is because the writers have never been to Europe, and have never traveled as tramps. They are thinking of their occasional trips to New York or Philadelphia, when, with a heavy valise in their hands, they are compelled to go straightway to an hotel. Different is it with the tramp tourist abroad. He has nothing but a cane in his hand; his knapsack now fits like another garment, and is unnoted. So accoutred, he arrives in town, walks about, sees the sights, and when he sees also the legend “casa locanda” over a door, he stops to investigate. If prices do not suit, off he goes again, looking until he finds one that does suit. When that is done he will do well, in stipulating a price, to say over and over again, “Tutti compresso”—everything included—else will he be obliged to pay not, indeed, more than the five soldi agreed on for the room, but twenty, thirty, one knows not how many soldi more for the candle, or the furniture, or the soap, or the water and towels, or something that was not agreed on. In Verona, home of Juliet, I had a pitched battle (of words) with a landlord who wanted to charge two lire (forty cents) extra for the candle, when I had bargained for the room “tutti compresso” for una mezza lira (ten cents). But for that magic phrase he might possibly have succeeded in his demands—possibly only, for I had then been in Italy some months, and was not so easily “squeezed” as the day when first I stepped on her historic soil at Genoa.