H. L. MENCKEN
PREFACE IN THE SOCRATIC MANNER
"Nothing broadens and mellows the mind so much as foreign travel."Dr. Orison Swett Marden.
The scene is the brow of the Hungerberg at Innsbruck. It is the half-hour before sunset, and the whole lovely valley of the Innstill wie die Nacht, tief wie das Meerbegins to glow with mauves and apple greens, apricots and silvery blues. Along the peaks of the great snowy mountains which shut it in, as if from the folly and misery of the world, there are touches of piercing primary coloursred, yellow, violetthe palette of a synchromist. Far below, hugging the winding river, lies little Innsbruck, with its checkerboard parks and Christmas garden villas. A battalion of Austrian soldiers, drilling in the Exerzierplatz, appears as an army of grey ants, now barely visible. Somewhere to the left, beyond the broad flank of the Hungerberg, the night train for Venice labours toward the town.
It is a superbly beautiful scene, perhaps the most beautiful in all Europe. It has colour, dignity, repose. The Alps here come down a bit and so increase their spell. They are not the harsh precipices of Switzerland, nor the too charming stage mountains of Northern Italy, but rolling billows of clouds and snow, the high-flung waves of some titanic but stricken ocean. Now and then comes a faint clank of metal from the funicular railway, but the tracks themselves are hidden among the trees of the lower slopes. The tinkle of an angelus bell (or maybe it is only a sheep bell) is heard from afar. A great bird, an eagle or a falcon, sweeps across the crystal spaces.
Here where we are is a shelf on the mountainside, and the hand of man has converted it into a terrace. To the rear, clinging to the mountain, is an Alpine gasthausa bit overdone, perhaps, with its red-framed windows and elaborate fretwork, but still genuinely of the Alps. Along the front of the terrace, protecting sightseers from the sheer drop of a thousand feet, is a stout wooden rail.
A man in an American sack suit, with a bowler hat on his head, lounges against this rail. His elbows rest upon it, his legs are crossed in the fashion of a figure four, and his face is buried in the red book of Herr Baedeker. It is the volume on Southern Germany, and he is reading the list of Munich hotels. Now and then he stops to mark one with a pencil, which he wets at his lips each time. While he is thus engaged, another man comes ambling along the terrace, apparently from the direction of the funicular railway station. He, too, carries a red book. It is Baedeker on Austria-Hungary. After gaping around him a bit, this second man approaches the rail near the other and leans his elbows upon it. Presently he takes a package of chewing gum from his coat pocket, selects two pieces, puts them into his mouth and begins to chew. Then he spits idly into space, idly but homerically, a truly stupendous expectoration, a staggering discharge from the Alps to the first shelf of the Lombard plain! The first man, startled by the report, glances up. Their eyes meet and there is a vague glimmer of recognition.
The First Man"American?"
The Second Man"Yes: St. Louis."
"Been over long?"
"A couple of months."
"What ship'd you come over in?"
"The Kronprinz Friedrich."
"Aha, the German line! I guess you found the grub all right."
"Oh, in the main. I have eaten better, but then again, I have eaten worse."
"Well, they charge you enough for it, whether you get it or not. A man could live at the Plaza cheaper."
"I should say he could. What boat did you come over in?"
"The Maurentic."
"How is she?"
"Oh, so-so."
"I hear the meals on those English ships are nothing to what they used to be."
"That's what everybody tells me. But, as for me, I can't say I found them so bad. I had to send back the potatoes twice and the breakfast bacon once, but they had very good lima beans."
"Isn't that English bacon awful stuff to get down?"
"It certainly is: all meat and gristle. I wonder what an Englishman would say if you put him next to a plate of genuine, crisp, American bacon?"
"I guess he would yell for the policeor choke to death."
"Did you like the German cooking on the Kronprinz?"
"Well, I did and I didn't. The chicken la Maryland was very good, but they had it only once. I could eat it every day."
"Why didn't you order it?"
"It wasn't on the bill."
"Oh, bill be damned! You might have ordered it anyhow. Make a fuss and you'll get what you want. These foreigners have to be bossed around. They're used to it."
"I guess you're right. There was a fellow near me who set up a holler about his room the minute he saw itsaid it was dark and musty and not fit to pen a hog inand they gave him one twice as large, and the chief steward bowed and scraped to him, and the room stewards danced around him as if he was a duke. And yet I heard later that he was nothing but a Bismarck herring importer from Hoboken."
"Yes, that's the way to get what you want. Did you have any nobility on board?"
"Yes, there was a Hungarian baron in the automobile business, and two English sirs. The baron was quite a decent fellow: I had a talk with him in the smoking room one night. He didn't put on any airs at all. You would have thought he was an ordinary man. But the sirs kept to themselves. All they did the whole voyage was to write letters, wear their dress suits and curse the stewards."
"They tell me over here that the best eating is on the French lines."
"Yes, so I hear. But some say, too, that the Scandinavian lines are best, and then again I have heard people boosting the Italian lines."
"I guess each one has its points. They say that you get wine free with meals on the French boats."
"But I hear it's fourth rate wine."
"Well, you don't have to drink it."
"That's so. But, as for me, I can't stand a Frenchman. I'd rather do without the wine and travel with the Dutch. Paris is dead compared with Berlin."
"So it is. But those Germans are getting to be awful sharks. The way they charge in Berlin is enough to make you sick."
"Don't tell me. I have been there. No longer ago than last Tuesdayor was it last Monday?I went into one of those big restaurants on the Unter den Linden and ordered a small steak, French fried potatoes, a piece of pie and a cup of coffeeand what do you think those thieves charged me for it? Three marks fifty! Think of it! That's eighty-seven and a half cents. Why, a man could have got the same meal at home for a dollar. These Germans are running wild. American money has gone to their heads. They think every American they get hold of is a millionaire."
