Europe After 8:15 | Page 5

one-horse church full of statues! And every statue crying for sapolio! You expect to see something magnificent, something enormous, something to knock your eye out and send you down for the count. What you do see is a second-rate graveyard under roof. And when you examine into it, you find that two-thirds of the graves haven't even got a dead man in them. Whenever a prominent Englishman dies, they put up a statue to him in Westminster Abbey--no matter where he happens to be buried. I call that clever advertising. That's the way to get the crowd."
"Yes, these foreigners know the game. They have made millions out of it in Paris. Every time you go to see a musical comedy at home, the second act is laid in Paris, and you see a whole stageful of girls doing the hesitation, and a lot of old sports having the time of their lives. All your life you hear that Paris is something rich and racy, something that makes New York look like Roanoke, Virginia. Well, you fall for the ballyhoo and come over to have your fling--and then you find that Paris is largely bunk. I spent a whole week in Paris, trying to find something really awful. I hired one of those Jew guides at five dollars a day and told him to go the limit. I said to him: 'Don't mind me. I am twenty-one years old. Let me have the genuine goods.' But the worst he could show me wasn't half as bad as what I have seen in Chicago. Every night I would say to that Jew: 'Come on, now Mr. Cohen; let's get away from these tinhorn shows. Lead me to the real stuff.' Well, I believe the fellow did his darndest, but he always fell down. I almost felt sorry for him. In the end, when I paid him off, I said to him: 'Save up your money, my boy, and come over to the States. Let me know when you land. I'll show you the sights for nothing. You need a little relaxation. This Baracca Class atmosphere is killing you.'
"And yet Paris is famous all over the world. No American ever came to Europe without dropping off there to have a look. I once saw the Bal Tabarin crowded with Sunday school superintendents returning from Jerusalem. And when the sucker gets home he goes around winking and hinting, and so the fake grows. I often think the government ought to take a hand. If the beer is inspected and guaranteed in Germany, why shouldn't the shows be inspected and guaranteed in Paris?"
"I guess the trouble is that the Frenchmen themselves never go to their own shows. They don't know what is going on. They see thousands of Americans starting out every night from the Place de l'Op��ra and coming back in the morning all boozed up, and so they assume that everything is up to the mark. You'll find the same thing in Washington. No Washingtonian has ever been up to the top of the Washington monument. Once the elevator in the monument was out of commission for two weeks, and yet Washington knew nothing about it. When the news got into the local papers at last, it came from Macon, Georgia. Some honeymooner from down there had written home about it, roasting the government."
"Well, me for the good old U.S.A. These Alps are all right, I guess--but I can't say I like the coffee."
"And it takes too long to get a letter from Jersey City."
"Yes, that reminds me. Just before I started up here this afternoon my wife got the Ladies' Home Journal of month before last. It had been following us around for six weeks, from London to Paris, to Berlin, to Munich, to Vienna, to a dozen other places. Now she's fixed for the night. She won't let up until she's read every word--the advertisements first. And she'll spend all day to-morrow sending off for things--new collar hooks, breakfast foods, complexion soaps and all that sort of junk. Are you married yourself?"
"No; not yet."
"Well, then, you don't know how it is. But I guess you play poker."
"Oh, to be sure."
"Well, let's go down into the town and hunt up some quiet barroom and have a civilised evening. This scenery gives me the creeps."
"I'm with you. But where are we going to get any chips?"
"Don't worry. I carry a set with me. I made my wife put it in the bottom of my trunk, along with a bottle of real whiskey and a couple of porous plasters. A man can't be too careful when he's away from home."
They start along the terrace toward the station of the funicular railway. The sun has now disappeared behind the great barrier of ice and the