by George Ade
CHAPTER II
A LIFE ON THE OCEAN WAVE, WITH MODERN VARIATIONS
A month before sailing I visited the floating skyscraper which was tobear us away. It was hitched to a dock in Hoboken, and it reminded meof a St. Bernard dog tied by a silken thread. It was the biggest skiffafloat, with an observatory on the roof and covered porches running allthe way around. It was a very large boat.
After inspecting the boat and approving of it, I selected a room withsouthern exposure. Later on, when we sailed, the noble craft backedinto the river and turned round before heading for the Old World, and Ifound myself on the north side of the ship, with nothing coming in atthe porthole except a current of cold air direct from Labrador.
This room was on the starboard or port side of the ship--I forgetwhich. After travelling nearly one million miles, more or less, bysteamer, I am still unable to tell which is starboard and which isport. I can tell time by the ship's bell if you let me use a pencil,but "starboard" means nothing to me. In order to make it clear to thereader, I will say that the room was on the "haw" side of the boat. Ithought I was getting the "gee" side as the vessel lay at the dock, butI forgot that it had to turn around in order to start for Europe, and Ifound myself "haw." I complained to one of the officers and said thatI had engaged a stateroom with southern exposure. He said theycouldn't back up all the way across the Atlantic just to give me thesunny side of the boat. This closed the incident. He did explain,however, that if I remained in the ship and went back with them I wouldhave southern exposure all the way home.
_I complained to one of the officers_]
Our ship was the latest thing out. To say that it was about sevenhundred feet long and nearly sixty feet beam and 42,000 tonsdisplacement does not give a graphic idea of its huge proportions. ANew Yorker might understand if told that this ship, stood on end, wouldbe about as tall as two Flatiron buildings spliced end to end.
Out in Indiana this comparison was unavailing, as few of the residentshave seen the Flatiron Building and only a small percentage of themhave any desire to see it. So when a Hoosier acquaintance asked mesomething about the ship I led him out into Main Street and told himthat it would reach from the railroad to the Presbyterian church. Helooked down street at the depot and then he looked up street at thedistant Presbyterian church, and then he looked at me and walked away.Every statement that I make in my native town is received with doubt.People have mistrusted me ever since I came home years ago andannounced that I was working.
Evidently he repeated what I had said, for in a few minutes anotherresident came up and casually asked me something about the ship andwanted to know how long she was. I repeated the Presbyterian churchstory. He merely remarked "I thought 'Bill' was lyin' to me," and thenwent his way.
It is hard to live down a carefully acquired reputation, and thereforethe statement as to the length of the vessel was regarded as a specimenoutburst of native humour. When I went on to say that the boat wouldhave on board three times as many people as there were in our wholetown, that she had seven decks, superimposed like the layers of a jellycake, that elevators carried passengers from one deck to another, thata daily newspaper was printed on board, and that a brass band gaveconcerts every day, to say nothing of the telephone exchange and thefree bureau of information, then all doubt was dispelled and my localstanding as a dealer in morbid fiction was largely fortified.
The chief wonder of our new liner (for all of us had a proprietaryinterest the moment we came aboard) was the system of elevators. Justthink of it! Elevators gliding up and down between decks the same asin a modern office building. Very few passengers used the elevators,but it gave us something to talk about on board ship and it would giveus something to blow about after we had returned home.
Outside of the cage stood a young German with a blonde pompadour and ajacket that came just below his shoulder blades. He was so clean helooked as if he had been scrubbed with soap and then rubbed withholystone. Every German menial on board seemed to have two guidingambitions in life. One was to keep himself immaculate and the otherwas to grow a U-shaped moustache, the same as the one worn by theKaiser.
The boy in charge of the elevator would plead with people to get in andride. Usually, unless he waylaid them, they would forget all about thenew improvement and would run up and down stairs in the old-fashionedmanner instituted by Noah and imitated by Christopher Columbus.
This boy leads a checkered career on each voyage. When he departs fromNew York he is the elevator boy. As the vessel approaches Plymouth,England, he becomes the lift attendant. At Cherbourg he is transformedinto a _garcon d'ascenseur_, and as the ship draws near Hamburg he isthe _Aufzugsbehueter_, which is an awful thing to call a mere child.
Goodness only knows what will be the ultimate result of presentcompetition between ocean liners. As our boat was quite new andextravagantly up-to-date, perhaps some information concerning it willbe of interest, even to those old and hardened travellers who have beenacross so often that they no longer set down the run of the ship andhave ceased sending pictorial post-cards to their friends at home.
In the first place, a telephone in every room, connected with a centralstation. The passenger never uses it, because when he is a thousandmiles from shore there is no one to be called up, and if he needs thesteward he pushes a button. But it is there--a real German telephone,shaped like a broken pretzel, and anyone who has a telephone in hisroom feels that he is getting something for his money.
After two or three lessons any American can use a foreign telephone.All he has to learn is which end to put to his ear and how to keep twoor three springs pressed down all the time he is talking. In Americahe takes down the receiver and talks into the 'phone. Elsewhere hetakes the entire telephone down from a rack and holds it the same as aslide trombone.
_Holds it the same as a slide trombone_]
In some of the cabins were electric hair curlers. A Cleveland man whowished to call up the adjoining cabin on the 'phone, just to see if thething would work, put the hair curler to his ear and began talking intothe dynamo. There was no response, so he pushed a button and nearlyruined his left ear. It was a natural mistake. In Europe, anythingattached to the wall is liable to be a telephone.
On the whole, I think our telephone system is superior to that of anyforeign cities. Our telephone girls have larger vocabularies, for onething. In England the "hello" is never used. When an Englishmangathers up the ponderous contrivance and fits it against his head heasks:--"Are you there?" If the other man answers "No," that stops thewhole conversation.
Travellers throughout the world should rise up and unite in a vote ofthanks to whoever it was that abolished the upper berth in the newerboats. Mahomet's coffin suspended in mid air must have been a cheeryand satisfactory bunk compared with the ordinary upper berth. Only atrained athlete can climb into one of them. The woodwork that youembrace and rub your legs against as you struggle upward is very cold.When you fall into the clammy sheets you are only about six inches fromthe ceiling. In the early morning the sailors scour the deck justoverhead and you feel as if you were getting a shampoo. The aerialsarcophagus is built deep, like a trough, so that the prisoner cannotroll out during the night. It is narrow, and the man who is addictedto the habit of "spraddling" feels as if he were tied hand and foot.
In nearly all of the staterooms of the new boat there were no upperberths, and the lower ones were wide and springy--they were almostbeds, and a bed on board ship is something that for years has beenreserved as the special luxury of the millionaire.
I like the democracy of a shipboard community. You take the most staidand awe-inspiring notable in the world, bundle him in a damp storm-coatand pull a baggy travelling cap down over his ears and there is none sohumble as to do him reverence. One passenger may say to another asthis great man teeters along the deck, squinting against the wind: "Doyou know who that man is?"
"No, who is it?"
"That's William Bilker, the mi
llionaire philanthropist. He owns nearlyall the coke ovens in the world--has built seven theologicalseminaries. He's going to Europe to escape a Congressionalinvestigation."
That is the end of it so far as any flattering attentions to Mr. Bilkerare concerned. If he goes in the smoking-room some beardless youthwill invite him to sit in a game of poker. His confidential friend atthe table may be a Montana miner, a Chicago real estate agent or aKentucky horseman. He may hold himself aloof from the betting crowdand discourage those who would talk with him on deck, but he cannot byany possibility be a man of importance. Compared with the captain, forinstance, he is a worm. And the captain draws probably $2500 a year.It must be a lot of fun to stay on board ship all the time. Otherwisethe ocean liner could not get so many high class and capable men towork for practically nothing.
On the open sea a baby is much more interesting than a railwaypresident and juveniles in general are a mighty welcome addition to thepassenger list. If a child in the house is a wellspring of pleasure,then a child on a boat is nothing less than a waterspout. The sea air,with its cool vapours of salt and iodine, may lull the adult into onecontinuous and lazy doze, but it is an invigorant to the offspring. Wehad on board children from Buffalo, Chicago, Jamestown, Poughkeepsie,Worcester, Philadelphia, and other points. These children traded namesbefore the steamer got away from the dock, and as we went down the bayunder a bright sunshine they were so full of emotion that they ranmadly around the upper decks, shrieking at every step. Nine full lapson the upper deck make a mile, and one man gave the opinion that thechildren travelled one hundred miles that first afternoon. This wasprobably an exaggeration.
The older people lay at full length in steamer chairs and drowsed likeso many hibernating bears. That is, they slept when they were noteating. The boat was one of a German line, and on a German boat thepassenger's first duty is to gorge. In the smoking-room the last nightout there was a dispute as to the number of meals, whole or partial,served every day. One man counted up and made it nine. Another, whowas trying to slander the company, made the number as low as five. Acount was taken and the following schedule was declared to be accurateand official:
6 a.m.--Coffee and rolls in the dining room.
8 to 10 a.m.--Breakfast in the dining room.
11 a.m.--Sandwiches and bouillon on deck.
12:35 p.m.--Luncheon.
4 p.m.--Cakes and lemonade on deck.
6 p.m.--Dinner.
9 p.m.--Supper (cold) in dining room.
10 to 11:30 p.m.--Sandwiches (Swiss cheese, caviar, tongue, beef,cervelat wurst, etc.) in the smoking-room.
It will be noted that anyone using ordinary diligence is enabled tostay the pangs of hunger at least eight times a day. But the companyin order to cover all emergencies, has made the humane provision thatarticles of food may be obtained at any hour, either in the smokingroom or dining room, or by giving the order to a steward. It is saidthat geese being fattened for the market or encouraged to develop theliver are tied to the ground so that they cannot take any harmfulexercise, and large quantities of rich food are then pushed into themby means of a stick. Anyone who has spent a lazy week on a Germansteamer can sympathise with the geese.
Of course we had wireless messages to give us an occasional throb ofexcitement. Wireless telegraphy, by the way, is more or less of anirritant to the traveller. The man with stocks purchased and lawsuitspending, and all sorts of deals under way, knows that he can be reached(probably) in some sort of a zig-zag manner by wireless telegraphy, nomatter where he may be on the wide ocean, and so, most of the time, heis standing around on one foot waiting for bad news. On shore hedoesn't fret so much about possible calamities, but as soon as he getsaway from Sandy Hook he begins to draw mental pictures of the mistakesbeing made by lunk-headed subordinates, and then he hangs around theMarconi station up on the sun deck, waiting for his most horrible fearsto be confirmed.
In 1895, during my first voyage to Europe, I wrote the following in oneof my letters, intending it as a mild pleasantry:
"Some day, perhaps, there will be invented a device by which oceansteamers may tap the Atlantic cable for news bulletins and stockquotations, or else receive them by special transmission through thewater, and then the last refuge will be denied the business slave whois attempting to get away from his work."
And to think that ten years later the miracle of shooting a messagethrough an open window and across five hundred miles of nothing butatmosphere has become a tame and every-day occurrence!
On the steamer I met an old friend--Mr. Peasley, of Iowa. We firstcollided in Europe in 1895, when both of us were over for the firsttime and were groping our way about the Continent and pretending toenjoy ourselves. About the time I first encountered Mr. Peasley he hadan experience which, in all probability, is without parallel in humanhistory. Some people to whom I have told the story frankly disbelievedit, but then they did not know Mr. Peasley. It is all very true, andit happened as follows:--
Mr. Peasley had been in Rotterdam for two days, and after gallopingmadly through churches, galleries, and museums for eight hours a day hesaid that he had seen enough Dutch art to last him a million years, ata very conservative estimate, so he started for Brussels. He asked theproprietor of the hotel at Rotterdam for the name of a good hotel inBrussels and the proprietor told him to go to the Hotel Victoria. Hesaid it was a first-class establishment and was run by hisbrother-in-law. Every hotel keeper in Europe has a brother-in-lawrunning a hotel in some other town.
Mr. Peasley was loaded into a train by watchful attendants, and asthere were no Englishmen in the compartment he succeeded in getting agood seat right by the window and did not have to ride backward. Verysoon he became immersed in one of the six best sellers. He read on andon, chapter after chapter, not heeding the flight of time, until thetrain rolled into a cavernous train shed and was attacked by the usualenergetic mob of porters and hotel runners. Mr. Peasley looked out andsaw that they had arrived at another large city. On the other side ofthe platform was a large and beautiful 'bus marked "Hotel Victoria."Mr. Peasley shrieked for a porter and began dumping Gladstone bags,steamer rugs, cameras, and other impedimenta out through the window.The man from the Victoria put these on top of the 'bus and in a fewminutes Mr. Peasley was riding through the tidy thoroughfares andthrowing mental bouquets at the street-cleaning department.
When he arrived at the Victoria he was met by the proprietor, who worethe frock coat and whiskers which are the world-wide insignia ofhospitality.
"Your brother-in-law in Rotterdam told me to come here and put up withyou," explained Mr. Peasley. "He said you were running a first-classplace, which means, I s'pose, first class for this country. If youfellows over here would put in steam heat and bathrooms and electriclights and then give us something to eat in the bargain your hotelswouldn't be so bad. I admire the stationery in your writing rooms, andthe regalia worn by your waiters is certainly all right, but that'sabout all I can say for you."
The proprietor smiled and bowed and said he hoped his brother-in-law inRotterdam was in good health and enjoying prosperity, and Mr. Peasleysaid that he, personally, had left with the brother-in-law enough moneyto run the hotel for another six months.
After Mr. Peasley had been conducted to his room he dug up his Baedekerand very carefully read the introduction to Brussels. Then he studiedthe map for a little while. He believed in getting a good general ideaof the lay of things before he tackled a new town. He marked on themap a few of the show places which seemed worth while, and then hesallied out, waving aside the smirking guide who attempted to fawn uponhim as he paused at the main entrance. Mr. Peasley would have nothingto do with guides. He always said that the man who had to be ledaround by the halter would do better to stay right at home.
It was a very busy afternoon for Mr. Peasley. At first he had somedifficulty in finding the places that were marked in red spots on themap. This was because he had been holding the map upside down. Byturning the
map the other way and making due allowance for theinaccuracies to be expected in a book written by ignorant foreigners,the whole ground plan of the city straightened itself out, and heboldly went his way. He visited an old cathedral and two artgalleries, reading long and scholarly comments on the more celebratedmasterpieces. Some of the paintings were not properly labelled, but heknew that slipshod methods prevailed in Europe--that a civilisationwhich is on the downhill and about to play out cannot be expected tobreed a business-like accuracy. He wrote marginal corrections in hisguide book and doctored up the map a little, several streets havingbeen omitted, and returned to the hotel at dusk feeling very wellrepaid. From the beginning of his tour he had maintained that when aman goes out and gets information or impressions of his own unaidedefforts he gets something that will abide with him and become a part ofhis intellectual and artistic fibre. That which is ladled into him bya verbose guide soon evaporates or oozes away.
At the _table d'hote_ Mr. Peasley had the good fortune to be seatednext to an Englishman, to whom he addressed himself. The Englishmanwas not very communicative, but Mr. Peasley persevered. It was histheory that when one is travelling and meets a fellow Caucasian who isshy or reticent or suspicious the thing to do is to keep on talking tohim until he feels quite at ease and the _entente cordiale_ is fullyestablished. So Mr. Peasley told the Englishman all about Iowa andsaid that it was "God's country." The Englishman fully agreed withhim--that is, if silence gives consent. There was a lull in theconversation and Mr. Peasley, seeking to give it a new turn, said tohis neighbour, "I like this town best of any I've seen. Is this yourfirst visit to Brussels?"
"I have never been to Brussels," replied the Englishman.
"That is, never until this time," suggested Mr. Peasley. "I'm in thesame boat. Just landed here to-day. I've heard of it before, onaccount of the carpet coming from here, and of course everybody knowsabout Brussels sprouts, but I had no idea it was such a big place.It's bigger than Rock Island and Davenport put together."
The Englishman began to move away, at the same time regarding thecheerful Peasley with solemn wonderment. Then he said:--
"My dear sir, I am quite unable to follow you. Where do you think youare?"
"Brussels--it's in Belgium--capital, same as Des Moines in Iowa."
"My good man, you are not in Brussels. You are in Antwerp."
"Antwerp!"
"Certainly."
"Why, I've been all over town to-day, with a guide book, and----" Hepaused and a horrible suspicion settled upon him. Arising from thetable he rushed to the outer office and confronted the manager.
"What's the name of this town I'm in?" he demanded.
"Antwerp," replied the astonished manager.
Mr. Peasley leaned against the wall and gasped.
"Well, I'll be ----!" he began, and then language failed him.
"You said you had a brother-in-law in Rotterdam," he said, when herecovered his voice.
"That is quite true."
"And the Victoria Hotel--is there one in Brussels and another inAntwerp?"
"There is a Victoria Hotel in every city in the whole world. TheVictoria Hotel is universal--the same as Scotch whiskey."
"And I am now in Antwerp?"
"Most assuredly."
Mr. Peasley went to his room. He did not dare to return to face theEnglishman. Next day he proceeded to Brussels and found that he couldwork from the same guide book just as successfully as he had in Antwerp.
When I met him on the steamer he said that during all of his travelssince 1895 he never had duplicated the remarkable experience atAntwerp. As soon as he alights from a train he goes right up tosomeone and asks the name of the town.