FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75  
76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   >>   >|  
ces yourself, you might at least consider the feelings of others"; and Miss Jewett, regarding him severely, added, in her quaint Yankee fashion: "Now, you've been spoke to!" He felt duly reprimanded, but his taste did not materially reform. He realized that he was no longer in a proper frame of mind to write of general sight-seeing. One must be eager, verdant, to write happily the story of travel. Replying to a letter from Howells on the subject he said: I wish I could give those sharp satires on European life which you mention, but of course a man can't write successful satire except he be in a calm, judicial good-humor; whereas I hate travel, and I hate hotels, and I hate the opera, and I hate the old masters. In truth I don't ever seem to be in a good enough humor with anything to satirize it. No, I want to stand up before it and curse it and foam at the mouth, or take a club and pound it to rags and pulp. I have got in two or three chapters about Wagner's operas, and managed to do it without showing temper, but the strain of another such effort would burst me. Clemens became his own courier for a time in Italy, and would seem to have made more of a success of it than he did a good many years afterward, if we may believe the story he has left us of his later attempt: "Am a shining success as a courier," he records, "by the use of francs. Have learned how to handle the railway guide intelligently and with confidence." He declares that he will have no more couriers; but possibly he could have employed one to advantage on the trip out of Italy, for it was a desperately hard one, with bad connections and delayed telegrams. When, after thirty-six hours weary, continuous traveling, they arrived at last in Munich in a drizzle and fog, and were domiciled in their winter quarters, at No. 1a, Karlstrasse, they felt that they had reached the home of desolation itself, the very throne of human misery. And the rooms were so small, the conveniences so meager, and the porcelain stove was grim, ghastly, dismal, intolerable! So Livy and Clara Spaulding sat down forlorn and cried, and I retired to a private place to pray. By and by we all retired to our narrow German beds, and when Livy and I had finished talking across the room it was all decided that we should rest twenty-four hours, then pay whatever damages were required and straightway fly to the
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75  
76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

retired

 

success

 

travel

 
courier
 

arrived

 

thirty

 

continuous

 

traveling

 

delayed

 
telegrams

connections

 

declares

 

records

 
francs
 

learned

 

shining

 

attempt

 

handle

 

possibly

 

couriers


employed

 

advantage

 
railway
 

intelligently

 

confidence

 

desperately

 

desolation

 
narrow
 

German

 
finished

forlorn
 

private

 
talking
 

damages

 
required
 

straightway

 

decided

 

twenty

 

Spaulding

 

reached


Karlstrasse

 

quarters

 

drizzle

 

domiciled

 

winter

 

throne

 

ghastly

 

dismal

 
intolerable
 

porcelain