American Notes | Page 5

was none of my
business, but I rather wanted to know what had happened to the
gentleman who had dealt the stab. It said a great deal for the excellence
of the municipal arrangement of the town that a surging crowd did not
at once block the street to see what was going for-ward. I was the sixth
man and the last who assisted at the performance, and my curiosity was
six times the greatest. Indeed, I felt ashamed of showing it.
There were no more incidents till I reached the Palace Hotel, a
seven-storied warren of humanity with a thousand rooms in it. All the
travel books will tell you about hotel arrangements in this country.
They should be seen to be appreciated. Understand clearly--and this
letter is written after a thousand miles of experiences--that money will
not buy you service in the West. When the hotel clerk--the man who
awards your room to you and who is supposed to give you
information--when that resplendent individual stoops to attend to your

wants he does so whistling or hum-ming or picking his teeth, or pauses
to converse with some one he knows. These performances, I gather, are
to impress upon you that he is a free man and your equal. From his
general appearance and the size of his diamonds he ought to be your
superior. There is no necessity for this swaggering self-consciousness
of freedom. Business is business, and the man who is paid to attend to a
man might reasonably devote his whole attention to the job. Out of
office hours he can take his coach and four and pervade society if he
pleases.
In a vast marble-paved hall, under the glare of an electric light, sat forty
or fifty men, and for their use and amusement were provided spittoons
of infinite capacity and generous gape. Most of the men wore
frock-coats and top-hats--the things that we in India put on at a
wedding-break-fast, if we possess them--but they all spat. They spat on
principle. The spittoons were on the staircases, in each bedroom--yea,
and in chambers even more sacred than these. They chased one into
retirement, but they blossomed in chiefest splendor round the bar, and
they were all used, every reeking one of them.
Just before I began to feel deathly sick another reporter grappled me.
What he wanted to know was the precise area of India in square miles. I
referred him to Whittaker. He had never heard of Whittaker. He wanted
it from my own mouth, and I would not tell him. Then he swerved off,
just like the other man, to details of journalism in our own country. I
ventured to suggest that the interior economy of a paper most
concerned the people who worked it.
"That's the very thing that interests us," he said. "Have you got
reporters anything like our reporters on Indian newspapers?"
"We have not," I said, and suppressed the "thank God" rising to my
lips.
"Why haven't you?" said he.
"Because they would die," I said.
It was exactly like talking to a child--a very rude little child. He would
begin almost every sentence with, "Now tell me something about
India," and would turn aimlessly from one question to the other without
the least continuity. I was not angry, but keenly interested. The man
was a revelation to me. To his questions I re-turned answers
mendacious and evasive. After all, it really did not matter what I said.

He could not understand. I can only hope and pray that none of the
readers of the "Pioneer" will ever see that portentous interview. The
man made me out to be an idiot several sizes more drivelling than my
destiny intended, and the rankness of his ignorance managed to distort
the few poor facts with which I supplied him into large and elaborate
lies. Then, thought I, "the matter of American journalism shall be
looked into later on. At present I will enjoy myself."
No man rose to tell me what were the lions of the place. No one
volunteered any sort of conveyance. I was absolutely alone in this big
city of white folk. By instinct I sought refreshment, and came upon a
bar-room full of bad Salon pictures in which men with hats on the
backs of their heads were wolfing food from a counter. It was the
institution of the "free lunch" I had struck. You paid for a drink and got
as much as you wanted to eat. For something less than a rupee a day a
man can feed himself sumptuously in San Francisco, even though he be
a bankrupt. Remember this if ever you are stranded in these parts.
Later I began a vast but unsystematic exploration of the streets. I asked
for no names. It