An International Episode | Page 4

the deep blue sky.
Here, outside, in the light and the shade and the heat, there was a great
tinkling of the bells of innumerable streetcars, and a constant strolling
and shuffling and rustling of many pedestrians, a large proportion of
whom were young women in Pompadour-looking dresses. Within, the
place was cool and vaguely lighted, with the plash of water, the odor of
flowers, and the flitting of French waiters, as I have said, upon
soundless carpets.

"It's rather like Paris, you know," said the younger of our two
travelers."
"It's like Paris--only more so," his companion rejoined.
"I suppose it's the French waiters," said the first speaker. "Why don't
they have French waiters in London?"
"Fancy a French waiter at a club," said his friend.
The young Englishman started a little, as if he could not fancy it. "In
Paris I'm very apt to dine at a place where there's an English waiter.
Don't you know what's-his-name's, close to the thingumbob? They
always set an English waiter at me. I suppose they think I can't speak
French."
"Well, you can't." And the elder of the young Englishmen unfolded his
napkin.
His companion took no notice whatever of this declaration. "I say," he
resumed in a moment, "I suppose we must learn to speak American. I
suppose we must take lessons."
"I can't understand them," said the clever man.
"What the deuce is HE saying?" asked his comrade, appealing from the
French waiter.
"He is recommending some soft-shell crabs," said the clever man.
And so, in desultory observation of the idiosyncrasies of the new
society in which they found themselves, the young Englishmen
proceeded to dine-- going in largely, as the phrase is, for cooling
draughts and dishes, of which their attendant offered them a very long
list. After dinner they went out and slowly walked about the
neighboring streets. The early dusk of waning summer was coming on,
but the heat was still very great. The pavements were hot even to the
stout boot soles of the British travelers, and the trees along the

curbstone emitted strange exotic odors. The young men wandered
through the adjoining square--that queer place without palings, and
with marble walks arranged in black and white lozenges. There were a
great many benches, crowded with shabby-looking people, and the
travelers remarked, very justly, that it was not much like Belgrave
Square. On one side was an enormous hotel, lifting up into the hot
darkness an immense array of open, brightly lighted windows. At the
base of this populous structure was an eternal jangle of horsecars, and
all round it, in the upper dusk, was a sinister hum of mosquitoes. The
ground floor of the hotel seemed to be a huge transparent cage, flinging
a wide glare of gaslight into the street, of which it formed a sort of
public adjunct, absorbing and emitting the passersby promiscuously.
The young Englishmen went in with everyone else, from curiosity, and
saw a couple of hundred men sitting on divans along a great
marble-paved corridor, with their legs stretched out, together with
several dozen more standing in a queue, as at the ticket office of a
railway station, before a brilliantly illuminated counter of vast extent.
These latter persons, who carried portmanteaus in their hands, had a
dejected, exhausted look; their garments were not very fresh, and they
seemed to be rendering some mysterious tribute to a magnificent young
man with a waxed mustache, and a shirtfront adorned with diamond
buttons, who every now and then dropped an absent glance over their
multitudinous patience. They were American citizens doing homage to
a hotel clerk.
"I'm glad he didn't tell us to go there," said one of our Englishmen,
alluding to their friend on the steamer, who had told them so many
things. They walked up the Fifth Avenue, where, for instance, he had
told them that all the first families lived. But the first families were out
of town, and our young travelers had only the satisfaction of seeing
some of the second--or perhaps even the third-- taking the evening air
upon balconies and high flights of doorsteps, in the streets which
radiate from the more ornamental thoroughfare. They went a little way
down one of these side streets, and they saw young ladies in white
dresses--charming-looking persons-- seated in graceful attitudes on the
chocolate-colored steps. In one or two places these young ladies were
conversing across the street with other young ladies seated in similar

postures and costumes in front of the opposite houses, and in the warm
night air their colloquial tones sounded strange in the ears of the young
Englishmen. One of our friends, nevertheless--the younger
one--intimated that he felt a disposition to interrupt a few of these soft
familiarities; but his companion observed, pertinently enough, that he