Pomonas Travels | Page 8

the Babylon Hotel, where we are now, for more than
two days when I said to Jone that this sort of thing wasn't going to do.
He looked at me amazed. "What on earth is the matter now?" he said.
"Here is a room fit for a royal duke, in a house with marble corridors
and palace stairs, and gorgeous smoking-rooms, and a post-office, and
a dining-room pretty nigh big enough for a hall of Congress, with
waiters enough to make two military companies, and the bills of fare all
in French. If there is anything more you want, Pomona--"
"Stop there" said I; "the last thing you mention is the rub. It's the
dining-room; it's in that resplendent hall that we've got to give
ourselves a social boom or be content to fold our hands and fade away
forever."
"Which I don't want to do yet," said Jone, "so speak out your trouble."
[Illustration: "Ask the waiter what the French words mean"]
"The trouble this time is you," said I, "and your awful meekness. I
never did see anybody anywhere as meek as you are in that
dining-room. A half-drowned fly put into the sun to dry would be
overbearing and supercilious compared to you. When you sit down at
one of those tables you look as if you was afraid of hurting the chair,
and when the waiter gives you the bill of fare you ask him what the
French words mean, and then he looks down on you as if he was a
superior Jove contemplating a hop-toad, and he tells you that this one
means beef and the other means potatoes, and brings you the things that
are easiest to get. And you look as if you was thankful from the bottom
of your heart that he is good enough to give you anything at all. All the
airs I put on are no good while you are so extra humble. I tell him I

don't want this French thing--when I don't know what it is--and he must
bring me some of the other--which I never heard of--and when it comes
I eat it, no matter what it turns out to be, and try to look as if I was used
to it, but generally had it better cooked. But, as I said before, it is of no
use--your humbleness is too much for me. In a few days they will be
bringing us cold victuals, and recommending that we go outside
somewhere and eat them, as all the seats in the dining-room are wanted
for other people."
"Well," said Jone, "I must say I do feel a little overshadowed when I go
into that dining-room and see those proud and haughty waiters, some of
them with silver chains and keys around their necks, showing that they
are lords of the wine-cellar, and all of them with an air of lofty scorn
for the poor beings who have to sit still and be waited on; but I'll try
what I can do. As far as I am able, I'll hold up my end of the social
boom."
You may think I break off my letters sudden, madam, like the
instalments in a sensation weekly, which stops short in the most
harrowing parts, so as to make certain the reader will buy the next
number; but when I've written as much as I think two foreign stamps
will carry--for more than fivepence seems extravagant for a letter--I
generally stop.

Letter Number Three
[Illustration]
LONDON
At dinner-time the day when I had the conversation with Jone
mentioned in my last letter, we was sitting in the dining-room at a little
table in a far corner, where we'd never been before. Not being
considered of any importance they put us sometimes in one place and
sometimes in another, instead of giving us regular seats, as I noticed
most of the other people had, and I was looking around to see if

anybody was ever coming to wait on us, when suddenly I heard an
awful noise.
I have read about the rumblings of earthquakes, and although I never
heard any of them, I have felt a shock, and I can imagine the awfulness
of the rumbling, and I had a feeling as if the building was about to sway
and swing as they do in earthquakes. It wasn't all my imagining, for I
saw the people at the other tables near us jump, and two waiters who
was hurrying past stopped short as if they had been jerked up by a curb
bit. I turned to look at Jone, but he was sitting up straight in his chair,
as solemn and as steadfast as a gate-post, and I thought to myself that if
he hadn't heard anything he must have