Chapter IV: Part 4

German servants seem to have more self-respect, for while they expect it quite as much, they smile and thank you and never look at the coin before your eyes. Perhaps they know from the feeling of it, but even if you place it upon the table behind them they thank you and never look at it or take it until you turn away.

However, you fee unmercifully here too. You fee the man at the bank who cashes your checks, you fee the street-car conductor who takes your fare, you fee every uniformed hireling of the government, whether he has done anything for you or not.

The only persons whom I have neglected to fee so far are the ambassadors.

But then, they do not wear uniforms!

IV ON BOARD THE YACHT “HELA”

I am just able to sit up, and I couldn’t think of a thing I wanted to eat if I thought a week. I came on this yachting trip because my friends begged me to. They said it would be an experience for me. It has been.

The _Hela_ started out with a party of ten on board, who were on pleasure bent. We have come up the English Channel from Dinard to Ostend, but before we had been out an hour we struck a gale, to which veterans on seasickness will refer for many a long day as “that fearful time on the Channel.”

On the whole, I don’t know but that I myself might be considered a veteran on seasickness. I have averaged crossing the Channel once a month ever since I’ve been over here. I have got into the habit of crossing the Channel, and I can’t seem to stop. It always appears that I am in the wrong place for whatever is going on, for just as sure as I go to London somebody sends for me to come to Paris, and I rush for the Channel, and I have no sooner unpacked my trunks in Paris, and bargained that service and electric lights shall be included, than somebody discovers that I am imperatively needed in England, and I make for the Channel again. The Channel is like Jordan. It always rolls between.

But even in crossing the Channel there is everything in knowing how. I have discarded the private state-room. It is too expensive, and I am not a bit less uncomfortable than when occupying six feet of the settee in the ladies’ cabin, with my feet in the flowers of another woman’s hat. In fact, I prefer the latter. The other woman is always too ill to protest or to move. I have now, by long and patient practice, proved to my own satisfaction what serves me best in case of seasickness. I will not stay on deck. I will not eat or drink anything to cure it. I will not take anything to prevent it. I will not sit up, and I will not keep my hat on. When I go on board of a Channel steamer my first act is to shake hands with my friends and to go below. There I present the stewardess with a modest testimonial of my regard. I also give her my ticket. Then I select the most desirable portion of the settee, near a port-hole, from which I can get fresh air. I take off my hat and lie down. The steamer may not start for an hour. No matter. There I am, and there I stay. The Channel may be as smooth as glass, but I travel better flat. Like manuscript, I am not to be rolled. Sometimes I am not ill at all, but I freely confess that those times are infrequent and disappointing.

Now, of course, this is always to be expected in crossing the Channel, but my friends said in going up the Channel we would not get those choppy waves, and that I would find that the _Hela_ swam like a duck.

In analyzing that statement since, with a view to classifying it as truth or otherwise, I have studied my recollections of ducks, and I have come to the conclusion that in a rough sea a duck has every right to be seasick, for she wobbles like everything else that floats. For real comfort, give me something that’s anchored. Nevertheless, I was persuaded to join the party.

Everybody came down at Dinard to see us off, and quite a number even went over to St. Malo with us in the electric launch, for the _Hela_ drew too much water to enter the harbor at Dinard at low tide.

We were a merry party for the first hour on board the _Hela_—until we struck the gale. It has seemed to me since that our evil genius was hovering over us from the first, and simply waited until it would be out of the question to turn back before emptying the vials of her wrath on our devoted heads. It did not rain. The sun kept a malevolent eye upon us all the time. It simply blew just one straight, unrelenting, unswerving gale. And it came so suddenly. We were all sitting on deck as happy as angels, when, without a word of warning, the _Hela_ simply turned over on her side and threw us all out of our chairs. I caught at a mast as I went by and clung like a limpet. There was tar on the mast. It isn’t there any more. It is on the front of my new white serge yachting dress. Jimmie coasted across the deck, and landed on his hands and knees against the gunwale. If he had persisted in standing up he would have gone overboard. The women all shrieked and remained in a tangled heap of chairs, and rugs, and petticoats, waiting for the yacht to right herself, and for the men to come and pick them up. But the yacht showed no intention of righting herself. She continued to careen in the position of a cab going round Piccadilly Circus on one wheel. The sailors were all running around like ants on an ant-hill, and the captain was shouting orders, and even lending a hand with the ropes himself. I don’t know the nautical terms, but they were taking down the middle sail—the mainsail, that’s it. It did not look dangerous, because the sun kept shining, and I never thought of being frightened. I just clung to the mast, watching the other people right themselves, and laughing, when suddenly everything ceased to be funny. The decks of the _Hela_ took on a wavy motion, and I blinked my eyes in order to see better, for everything was getting very indistinct, and there were green spots on the sun. Suddenly I realized that I was a long way from home, and that I was even a long way from my state-room. I only had just about sense enough left to remember that the mast was my very best friend and that I must cling there.

After that, I remember that somebody came up behind me and pried my hands loose from the mast.

The doctor’s voice said, “Can you walk?”

I smiled feebly and said, “I used to know how.” But evidently my efforts were not highly successful, for he picked me up, white serge, tar, green spots on the sun, and all, and carried me below, a limp and humiliated bit of humanity.

Mrs. Jimmie and Commodore Strossi followed with more anxiety than the occasion warranted.

Then Mrs. Jimmie sent the men away, and I felt pillows under my head, and camphor under my nose, and hot-water bags about me; and I must have gone to sleep or died, or something, for I don’t remember anything more until the next day.

They were very nice to me, for I was such a cheerful invalid. It seemed to surprise them that I could even pretend to be happy. I knew that it must be an uncommon gale from the way Commodore Strossi studied the charts, and because even his wife, for whom the yacht was named, was ill, and she had spent half her life on the sea. The poor little French cabin-boy was ill, too, and went around, with a Nile-green countenance, waiting on people, before he was obliged to retire from active service.

The pitching of the yacht was something so terrible that it got to be hysterically funny. It couldn’t seem dangerous with the sun streaming down the companion-way and past my state-room windows. About five o’clock on the second day they began to tack, and then I heard shrieks of laughter and the crash of china, and groans from the saloon settee, where young Bashforth was lying ghastly ill.

At the first lurch my trunk tipped over, and all the bottles on the wash-stand bounded across to the bed, and most of them struck me on the head. It frightened me so that I shrieked, and Jimmie came running down to see if I was killed.

As I raised my head I saw his horrified gaze fairly riveted to my face, and I felt something softly trickling down. I touched it, and then looked at my hand and discovered that it was wet and red.

“Good heavens, your face is all cut open,” gasped Jimmie, in a voice that revealed his terror.

Mrs. Jimmie was just behind him, and I saw her turn pale. In a flash I saw myself disfigured for life, and probably having to be sewed up. The pain in my face became excruciating, and I began to think yachting rather serious business.

“Run for the doctor, Jimmie,” said his wife. Jimmie obediently ran.

“Does it hurt very much, dear?” she said, sitting on the edge of the bed.

“Awfully,” I murmured.

The doctor came, followed by François, with a basin of hot water and sponges, and a nasty-looking little case of instruments. Mrs. Jimmie held my hand. They turned on the electric lights and opened the windows. Jimmie had my salts. The doctor carefully wet a sponge and tenderly bathed my cheek, and I held my breath ready to shriek if he hurt me. Commodore Strossi stood at the door with an anxious face. Suddenly the doctor reached for a broken bottle half hidden under my pillow.

“Oh, what is it, doctor?” asked Mrs. Jimmie. “What makes you look so queer?”

“This is iodine on her face. Her bottle has emptied itself. That is all.”

We gazed at each other for a moment or two, then I nearly went into hysterics. Jimmie’s face was a study.

“You said it was blood, Jimmie,” I said.

“Well, you said it hurt,” he retorted.

“Well, it did. When you said I was covered with blood it hurt awfully.”

The doctor went out much chagrined that he had not been called upon to sew up a wound. I had a relapse, brought on by young Bashforth’s jeering remarks as he frantically clung to the handles of the locker which formed the back of the settee where he lay prostrate.

I was too utterly done up to reply, for two days’ violent seasickness rather takes the mental ginger out of one’s make-up. But Fate avenged me in this wise. The door of my state-room opened into the dining-room, and my bed faced the door. Opposite to me was the settee on which Bashforth was coiled, and back of him was the locker for the tinned mushrooms, sardines, lobster, shrimp, caviar, deviled ham, and all the things which well people can eat. This locker had brass handles let into the mahogany, and to these handles the poor fellow clung when the yacht lurched.

His cruel words of derision had hardly left his pale lips before they tacked again. He was not holding on, but he hastily snatched at the handles. He was too late, however, for he was tossed from the settee to the legs of the dining-room table (which, fortunately, were anchored) without touching the floor at all. He described a perfect parabola. It was just the way I should have tossed him had I been Destiny. He gripped the table-legs like a vise, coiling himself around them like a poor navy-blue python with a green face. He thought the worst was over, but in his last clutch at the locker he had accidentally opened it, and at the next lurch of the yacht all the cans bounded out and battered his unprotected back like a shower of grape-shot. The yacht lurched again and the cans rolled back. She pitched forward, and again the mushrooms and deviled ham aimed for him. The noise brought everybody, and at first nobody tried to help him. They just couldn’t see because of the tears in their eyes from laughing. As for me, I managed to crawl to the foot of the bed and cling to a post, so weak I couldn’t wipe the tears away, but laying up an amount of enjoyment which will enrich my old age.

Finally, Jimmie got sorry for him, and went and tried to pick him up. But he was laughing so, he dropped him.

“Oh, Jimmie,” I pleaded. “Don’t drop anybody who is seasick. Drop well people if you must. But put him on the settee carefully.”

“I’ll put him there,” said Jimmie, wiping his eyes on his coat-sleeve. “But I don’t say I’ll do it the first time I try. I’ll get him there by dinner-time—I hope.”

It was dangerous to ridicule anybody in that gale, for the doctor in the companion-way was leaning in at my window and laughing in his big English voice, when the _Hela_ lurched and pitched him half-way into my state-room. There he balanced with his hands on my trunk.

He was rather a tight fit, which interested Jimmie more than young Bashforth, so he left the boy and came around and pried the doctor back into the companion-way.

The _Hela_ was a fickle jade, for no sooner would she shake us up in such an alarming manner than she would seem to regret her violence, and would skim like a bird for an hour or so, with no perceptible motion. She would not even flap her big white wings, but she cut through the water with a whir and a rush which exhilarated me as flying must stir the heart of a sea-gull.

She behaved so well after five o’clock that they decided to try to eat dinner from the dinner-table—a thing they had not done since we started. There were only four of them able to appear—Mr. and Mrs. Jimmie, the doctor, and the Commodore.

They put the racks up and took every precaution. The only mistake they made was in using the yacht’s lovely china, which bore the Strossi crest under the _Hela’s_ private flag.

Jimmie and his wife sat opposite each other. I put three pillows under my head, the better to watch them, when suddenly the yacht tilted Mrs. Jimmie and her chair over backward. Jimmie saw her going and reached to save her. But he forgot to set down his soup-plate. The result was that she got Jimmie’s soup in her face, and that he slid clear across the table on his hands and knees, taking china and table-cloth with him, and they all landed on top of poor Mrs. Jimmie (who, even as I write, is in her stateroom having her hair washed).

Her chief wail, when she could speak, was not that her head ached from the blow, or that she was half strangled with tepid soup, but that Jimmie had broken all the china. She could not be comforted until the Commodore proved that some of the china had been broken previously, by showing her the fragments wrecked on the first day out.

That last catastrophe has apparently settled things. Everybody has turned in to repair damages, and, perhaps, afterwards to sleep.

The Commodore is studying the charts on the dining-room table, and the captain, an American, has just put his head in at the door and said:

“She’s sailing twelve knots an hour under just the fores’l, sir, and she’s running like a scairt dog.”

Americans are so accustomed to outrageous distances that a journey of fifty hours is mere play. But I sincerely believe that no other trait of ours causes the European to regard our nation with such suspicion as our utter unconcern of long journeys. Nothing short of accession to a title or to escape being caught by the police would induce the Continental to travel over a few hours. So when I decided to go to Poland in order to be a member of a gorgeous house-party, I might as well have robbed a bank and given my friends something to be suspicious of. They never believed that I would do such a fatiguing and unheard-of thing until I really left.

But Poland has always beckoned me like a friend—a friend which combined all the poetry, romance, fascination, nobility, and honor of a first love. If the Pole is proud, he has something to be proud of. His honor has dignity. His country’s sorrows touch the heart. Polish literature has sentiment, her music has fire, her men of genius stand out like heroes, her women are adorable. Balzac describes not only one but a not infrequent type when he dedicates _Modeste Mignon_ “To a Polish Lady” in the most exquisite apostrophe which ever graced the entrance-hall to one of the noblest novels of this inimitable master.

“Daughter of an enslaved land, angel through love, witch through fancy, child by faith, aged by experience, man in brain, woman in heart, giant by hope, mother through sorrow, poet in thy dreams, to Thee belongs this book, in which thy love, thy fancy, thy experience, thy sorrow, thy hope, thy dreams, are the warp through which is shot a woof less brilliant than the poesy of thy soul, whose expression when it shines upon thy countenance is, to those who love thee, what the characters of a lost language are to scholars.”

Such a tribute as this would of itself be sufficient to turn the heart expectantly towards Poland, to say nothing of the interest her history has for the brain. The history of Poland is one long struggle for home and country. The Pole is a patriot by inheritance. His patriotism, goes deeper than his love.

His country comes first in his soul, and for that reason the Poles have in me an enthusiastic ally, an ardent admirer, and a sympathetic friend.

In speaking of the story of Poland with a cold-blooded reader of history I expressed my appreciation of the noble proportions of their struggles and my sympathy for their present unfortunate plight, to which she replied: “Yes, but it is so entirely their own fault. They are so fiery, so precipitate, so romantic. They got _themselves_ into it! Their poesy and romance and folly make them charming as individuals, but ridiculous as a nation. I like the Poles, but I have no patience with Poland.” How exactly the world’s verdict on the artistic temperament! There is a round hole, and, lo and behold! all squares must be forced into it!

Suppose that everything resolved itself into the commonplace; where would be your imagination, your fancy, your rich experience of the heart and soul? Poland furnishes just this element in history. Her struggles are so romantic, her follies so charmingly natural to a high-strung nation, her despair so profound, her frequent revolutions so buoyant in hope, that she reminds me of a brilliant woman striving to make dull women understand her, and failing as persistently and completely as the artistic temperament always fails.

A frog spat at a glowworm. “Why do you spit at me?” said the glowworm. “Why do you shine so?” said the frog.

Poland’s singers have voices so piercingly sweet; her novelists have pens touched with such divine fire; her actors portray so much of the soul; her patriots have always shown such reckless and inspiring bravery; and now, in her desolation and subjection, there is still so much pride, such noble dignity under her losses, that of all the countries in the world Poland holds both the heart and mind by a fascination of which she herself is unconscious, marking a noble simplicity of soul which is in itself an added indication of her queenly inheritance.

Julia Marlowe in her _Countess Valeska_ is a Pole to her finger-tips. Her acting is superb. Cleopatra herself never felt nor inspired a diviner passion than Valeska; but when it came to a question of her love or her country she rose above self with an almost superhuman effort and saved her country at the expense of her love.

No American who has not the same awful passion of patriotism; no one who is not a lover of his country above home or friends or wife or children; who does not love his America second only to his God; whose blood does not prickle in his veins at the sound of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” and whose eyes do not fill with tears at the sight of “Old Glory” floating anywhere, can understand of what patriotism the Pole is capable.

Nor can one who has not the foolish, romantic, nervous, high-strung, artistic temperament understand from within Poland’s national history. For that reason one is apt to find famous places in Europe which have only an historical significance somewhat disappointing. One fails to find in a battle fought for the sake of conquest by an overweening ambition such soul-stirring pathos as in the leading of a forlorn hope from the spirit of patriotism, or of a woman’s pleadings where a man’s arguments have failed. For that reason Austerlitz touches one not so nearly as the struggle around Memel. As we drew near Memel things began to look lonely and foreign and queer, and its picturesque features were enhanced by recollection of Napoleon and Queen Louise.

Memel is near Tilsit, and the river Niemen, or Memel, empties into the Baltic just below here. The conference on the raft appeals to me as one of the most thrilling and yet pitiably human events in all history.

Its sickening anticlimax to poor Queen Louise was so exactly in keeping with the smaller disappointments which assail her more humble sister women in every walk of life that it takes on the air of a heart tragedy. I tried to imagine the feelings of the Queen when _she_ journeyed to Memel to hold her famous interview with Napoleon. How her pride must have suffered at the thought of lowering herself to plead for her husband and her country at Napoleon’s hands! How she hated him before she saw him! How she more than hated him after she left him! How she must have scorned the beauty upon which Napoleon commented so idly when a nation’s honor was at stake! A typical act of the emperor of the French nation! Napoleon proved by that one episode that he was more French than Corsican.

In the Queen’s illness at Memel she was so poorly housed that long lines of snow sifted in through the roof and fell across her bed. But that was as nothing to her mental disquiet while the fate of her beloved Prussia hung in the balance.

There is a bridge across the Memel at the exact spot where the famous raft conference is said to have taken place. As we crossed this bridge it seemed so far removed from those stormy days of strife that it was difficult to imagine the magnificent spectacle of the immense armies of Napoleon and Alexander drawn up on either bank, while these two powerful monarchs were rowed out to the raft to decide the fate of Frederick William and his lovely queen.

And although to them Prussia was the issue of the hour, how like the history of individual lives was this conference! For Prussia’s fate was almost ignored, while the conversation originally intended to consume but a few moments lengthened into hours, and Napoleon and Alexander, having sworn eternal friendship, proceeded to divide up Europe between them, and parted with mutual expressions of esteem and admiration, having quite forgotten a trifle like the King and Queen of Prussia and their rage of anxiety.

But all these memories of Napoleon and Prussia gave way before the vital fact that we were to visit a lovely Polish princess and see some of her charming home life. I had been duly informed by my friends of the various ceremonies which I would encounter, and which, I must confess, rendered me rather timid. I only hoped my wits would not desert me at the crucial moment.

For instance, if the archbishop were there I must give him my hand and then lean forward and kiss his sleeve just below the shoulder. I only hoped my chattering teeth would not meet in his robe. So when I saw the state carriage of the princess at the station of Memel, drawn by four horses, and with numbers of servants in such queer liveries to attend to my luggage, I simply breathed a prayer that I would get through it all successfully; and if not, that they would lay any lapses at the door of my own eccentricities, and not to the ignorance of Americans in general, for I never wish to disgrace my native land.

The servants wore an odd flat cap, like a tam-o’-shanter with a visor. Their coats were of bright blue, with the coat-of-arms of the princess on the brass buttons. This coat reached nearly to their feet, and in the back it was gathered full and stiffened with canvas, for all the world like a woman’s pannier. I thought I should die the first time I got a side view of those men.

It was late Friday afternoon when we left the train, and we drove at a tremendous pace through lonely forests which we were only too happy to leave behind us. Suddenly we came upon the little village of Kretynga, whose streets were paved with cobblestones the size of a man’s two fists.

To drive slowly over cobblestones is not a joy, but to drive four Russian horses at a gallop over such cobblestones as those was something to make you bite your tongue and to break your teeth and to shake your very soul from its socket.

The town is inhabited by Polish Jews, and a filthy, greasy, nauseating set they are, both men and women. The men wear two or three long, oily, tight curls in front of their ears. Their noses are hooked like a parrot’s. Their countenances are sinister, and I believe they have not washed since the Flood. The women, when they marry, shave their heads. Then they either wear huge wigs, which they use to wipe their hands on without the ceremony of washing them first, or else they wear a black or white or gray satin hood-piece with a line to imitate the parting of the hair embroidered on it.

Nothing is clean about them. I no longer wonder that Jews are expelled from Russia. It makes one rather respect Russia as a clean country. As it was Friday night, one window-sill in each house was filled with a row of lighted candles representing each member of the family who was either absent or dead.

Being so far away from home myself, this appealed to me as such a touching custom that it made my eyes smart.

Presently a clearing in the forest revealed the famous monastery of Kretynga—a monastery famous for being peopled with priests and monks whom the Tzar has exiled because they took too much interest in politics for his nerves. Then soon after passing this monastery we entered the grounds of the castle. Still the longest part of the drive lay before us, for this one of the many estates of the Princess lies between the Memel and the Baltic Sea, and covers a large territory.

But finally, after driving through an avenue of trees which are worth a dictionary of words all to themselves, we came to the castle, a huge structure, which seemed to spread out before us interminably, for it was too dark to see anything but its majestic outlines.

The Princess in her own home was even lovelier than she had been in Paris, and charitably allowed us to have one night’s rest before meeting the family.

About three o’clock in the morning I was awakened by a mournful chant, all in minor, which began beneath my windows and receded, growing fainter and fainter, until at last it died away. It was the hymn which the peasants always sing as they go forth to their work in the fields; but its mournful cadence haunted me. The next morning the largeness of the situation dawned upon me. The size of the rooms and their majestic furnishings were almost barbaric in their splendor. The tray upon which my breakfast was served was of massive silver. The coffee-pot, sugar-bowl, and plates were of repoussé silver, exquisitely wrought, but so large that one could hardly lift them.

In a great openwork basket of silver were any number of sweetened breads and small cakes and buns, all made by the baker in the castle, who all day long does nothing but bake bread and pastry. They do not serve hot milk with coffee, for which I blessed them from the bottom of my soul, but they have little brown porcelain jugs which they fill with cream so thick that you have to take it out with a spoon—it won’t pour,—and these they heat in ovens, and so serve you hot cream for your coffee.

I call the gods from Olympus to testify to the quality of the nectar this combination produces. Some of those little porcelain jugs are going on their travels soon.

Meeting the various members of the Princess’s charming family and remembering their titles was not an ordeal at all—at least it was not after it was over. They were quite like other people, except that their manners were unusually good. There was to be a hunt that morning—an amusing, luxurious sort of hunt quite in my line; one where I could go in a carriage and see the animals caught, but where I need not see them killed.

They were to hunt a mischievous little burrowing animal something like our badger, which is as great a pest to Poland as the rabbits are to Australia. They destroy the crops by eating their roots, so every little while a hunt is organized to destroy them in large numbers. The foresters had been sent out the night before to discover a favorite haunt of theirs, and to fill up all the entrances to their burrows; so all that we had to do was to drive to the scene of action.

It sounds simple enough, but I most solemnly assure you that it was anything but a simple drive to one fresh from the asphalt of Paris, for, like Jehu, they drove furiously.

Their horses are all wild, runaway beasts, and they drive them at an uneven gallop resembling the gait of our fire-engine horses at home, except that ours go more slowly. Sometimes the horses fall down when they drive across country, as they stop only for stone walls or moats. The carriages must be built of iron, for the front wheels drop a few feet into a burrow every now and then, and at such times an unwary American is liable to be pitched over the coachman’s head. “Hold on with both hands, shut your eyes, and keep your tongue from between your teeth,” would be my instructions to one about to “take a drive” in Poland.

When we came to the place we found the foresters watching the _dachshunde_. These I discovered to be long, flat, shallow dogs with stumpy legs—a dog which an American has described as “looking as if he was always coming out from under a bureau.” Very cautiously here and there the foresters uncovered a burrow, and a _dachshund_ disappeared. Then from below ground came the sounds of fighting. The _dachshunde_ had found their prey. The foresters ran about, stooping to locate the sound. When they discovered the spot a dozen of them at once began to dig as fast as they could.

Presently a writhing, rolling, barking bunch of fur and flying sand came into view, when a forester with a long forked stick caught the animal just back of its head and flung it into a coarse sack, which was then tied up and thrown aside, and the hunt went on. After we all went home the foresters gathered up these bags and killed the poor little animals somehow—mercifully, I hope.

The dinner, which came at two o’clock, was so much of a function, on account of the number of guests in the house, that it impressed itself upon my memory.

First in the salon there were small tables set, containing _hors d’oeuvres_. There were large decanters containing _vodke_, a liquor something like Chinese rice-brandy. There were smoked goose, smoked bear, and salmon, white and black bread, all sorts of sausages, anchovies and caviar, of course. After these had been tasted largely by the guests who were not Americans, and who knew that a formidable dinner yet had to be discussed, we were all seated at a table in the grand dining-room.

There were a hundred of us, and the table held enough for twice that many. We began with a hot soup made of fermented beet-juice. This we found to be delicious, but I seemed to be eating transparent red ink with parsley in it. This was followed by a cold soup made of sour cream and cucumbers, with _écrevisse_, a small and delicious lobster. There was ice in this.

Cucumbers and sour cream! Let me see, wasn’t it President Taylor who died of eating cherries and milk?

Then came a salad of chicken and lettuce, and then huge roasts garnished with exquisite French skill.

After the sweets came the fruit, such fruits as even our own California cannot produce, with white raspberries of a size and taste quite indescribable. When dinner is over comes a very pretty custom. The hostess, whose seat is nearest the door, rises, and each guest kisses her hand or her arm as he passes out, and thanks her in a phrase for her hospitality. Sometimes it is only “Thank you, princess”; sometimes “Many thanks for your beautiful dinner,” or anything you like. They speak Polish to each other and to their servants, but they are such wonderful linguists that they always address a guest in his own language. To their peasants, however, who speak an unlearnable dialect, they are obliged always to have an interpreter.

At six o’clock came tea from samovars four feet high and of the most gorgeous repoussé silver. Melons, fruit, and all sorts of bread are served with this. Then at eight a supper, very heavy, very sumptuous, very luxurious.

The whole day had been charming, exhilarating, different from anything we had ever seen before; but there was to follow something which impressed itself upon my excitable nerves with a fascination so bewildering that I can think of but one thing which would give me the same amount of heavenly satisfaction. This would be to have Theodore Thomas conduct the Chicago orchestra in the “Tannhäuser” overture in the Court of Honor at the World’s Fair some night with a full moon.

But to return. The Princess excused herself to her Protestant guests after supper, and then her family, with the servants and all the guests who wished, assembled in the winter garden to sing hymns to the Virgin. The winter garden is like a gigantic conservatory four stories high. It connects the two wings of the castle on the ground floor, and all the windows and galleries of the floors above overlook it.

It is the most beautiful spot even in the daytime that I ever saw connected with any house built for man. But at night to look down upon its beauty, with its palms, its tall ferns, its growing, climbing, waving vines and flowering shrubs, with its divine odors and fragrances and sweet dampnesses from mosses and lovely, moist, green, growing things, is to have one’s soul filled with a poetry undreamed of on the written page.

The candles dotting the soft gloom, the spray from the fountains blowing in the air and tinkling into their marble basins, the tones of the grand organ rumbling and soaring up to us, the moonlight pouring through the great glass dome and filtering through the waving green leaves, dimpling on the marble statues and making trembling shades and shadows upon the earnest faces of the worshippers, the penetrating sadness of their minor hymns—all the sights and sounds and fragrances of this winter garden made of that hour “one to be forever marked with a white stone.”

V VILNA, RUSSIA

We met our first real discourtesy in Berlin at the hands of a German, and although he was only the manager of an hotel, we lay it up against him and cannot forgive him for it. It happened in this wise:

My companion, being the courier, bought our tickets straight through to St. Petersburg, with the privilege of stopping a week in Vilna, where we were to be the guests of a Polish nobleman. When she sent the porter to check our trunks she told him in faultless German to check them only to Vilna on those tickets. But as her faultless German generally brings us soap when she orders coffee, and hot water when she calls for ice, I am not so severe upon the stupidity of the porter as she is. However, when he came back and asked for fifty-five marks extra luggage to St. Petersburg we gave a wail, and explained to the manager, who spoke English, that we were not going to St. Petersburg, and that we were not particularly eager to pay out fifty-five marks for the mere fun of spending money. If the choice were left to us we felt that we could invest it more to our satisfaction in belts and card-cases.

He was very big and handsome, this German, and doubtless some meek _fräulein_ loves him, but we do not, and, moreover, we pity her, whoever and wherever she may be, for we know by experience that if they two are ever to be made one he will be that one. He said he was sorry, but that, doubtless, when we got to the Russian frontier we could explain matters and get our trunks. But we could not speak Russian, we told him, and we wanted things properly arranged then and there. He clicked his heels together and bowed in a superb manner, and we were sure our eloquence and our distress had fetched him, so to speak, when to our amazement he simply reiterated his statements.

“But surely you are not going to let two American women leave your hotel all alone at eleven o’clock at night with their luggage checked to the wrong town?” I said, in wide-eyed astonishment.

Again he clicked those heels of his. Again that silk hat came off. Again that superb bow. He was very sorry, but he could do nothing. Doubtless we could arrange things at the frontier. It was within ten minutes of train time, and we were surrounded by no fewer than thirty German men—guests, porters, hall-boys—who listened curiously, and offered no assistance.

I looked at my companion, and she looked at me, and ground her teeth.

“Then you absolutely refuse us the courtesy of walking across the street with us and mending matters, do you?” I said.

Again those heels, that hat, that bow. I could have killed him. I am sorry now that I didn’t. I missed a glorious opportunity.

So off we started alone at eleven o’clock at night for Poland, with our trunks safely checked through to St. Petersburg, and fifty-five marks lighter in pocket.

My companion kept saying, “Well, I never!” A pause. And again, “Well, I never!” And again, “Did you ever in all your life!” Yet there was no sameness in my ears to her remarks, for it was all that I, too, wanted to say. It covered the ground completely.

I was speechless with surprise. It kept recurring to my mind that my friends in America who had lived in Germany had told me that I need expect nothing at the hands of German men on account of being a woman. I couldn’t seem to get it through my head. But now that it had happened to me—now that a man had deliberately refused to cross the street—no farther, mind you!—to get us out of such a mess! Why, in America, there isn’t a man from the President to a chimney-sweep, from a major-general to the blackest nigger in the cotton fields, who wouldn’t do ten times that much for _any_ woman!

I shall never get over it.

With the courage of despair I accosted every man and woman on the platform with the words, “Do you speak English?” But not one of them did. Nor French either. So with heavy hearts we got on the train, feed the porter four marks for getting us into this dilemma (and incidentally carrying our hand-luggage), and when he had the impertinence to demand more I turned on him and assured him that if he dared to speak another word to us we would report him to His Excellency the American Ambassador, who was on intimate terms with the Kaiser; and that I would use my influence to have him put in prison for life. He fled in dismay, although I know he did not understand one word. My manner, however, was not affable. Then I cast myself into my berth in a despairing heap, and broke two of the wings in my hat.

My companion was almost in tears. “Never mind,” she said. “It was all my fault. But we may get our trunks, anyway. And if not, perhaps we can get along without them.”

“Impossible!” I said. “How can we spend a week as guests in a house without a change of clothes?”

In order not to let her know how worried I was, I told her that if we couldn’t get our trunks off the train at Vilna we would give up our visit and telegraph our excuses and regrets to our expectant hostess, or else come back from St. Petersburg after we had got our precious trunks once more within our clutches.

All the next day we tried to find some one who spoke English or French, but to no avail. We spent, therefore, a dreary day. By letting my companion manage the customs officers in patomime we got through the frontier without having to unlock anything, although it is considered the most difficult one in Europe.

The trains in Russia fairly crawl. Instead of coal they use wood in their engines, which sends back thousands of sparks like the tail of a comet. It grew dark about two o’clock in the afternoon, and we found ourselves promenading through the bleakest of winter landscapes. Tiny cottages, emitting a bright red glow from infinitesimal windows, crouched in the snow, and silent fir-trees silhouetted themselves against the moonlit sky. It only needed the howl of wolves to make it the loneliest picture the mind could conceive.

When we were within an hour of Vilna I heard in the distance my companion’s familiar words, “Pardon me, sir, but do you speak English?” And a deep voice, which I knew without seeing him came from a big man, replied in French, “For the first time in my life I regret that I do not.”

At the sound of French I hurried to the door of our compartment, and there stood a tall Russian officer in his gray uniform and a huge fur-lined pelisse which came to his feet.

When my companion wishes to be amusing she says that as soon as I found that the man spoke French I whirled her around by the arm and sent her spinning into the corner among the valises. But I don’t remember even touching her. I only remembered that here was some one to whom I could talk, and in two minutes this handsome Russian had untangled my incoherent explanations, had taken our luggage receipt, and had assured us that he himself would not pause until he had seen our trunks taken from the train at Vilna. If I should live a thousand years I never shall forget nor cease to be grateful to that superb Russian. He was so very much like an American gentleman.

We were met at the station by our Polish friends, our precious trunks were put into sledges, we were stowed into the most comfortable of equipages, and in an hour we were installed in one of the most delightful homes it was ever my good fortune to enter.

I never realized before what people can suffer at the hands of a conquering government, and were it not that the young Tzar of Russia has done away, either by public ukase or private advice, with the worst of the wrongs his father permitted to be put upon the Poles, I could not bear to listen to their recitals.

Politics, as a rule, make little impression upon me. Guide-books are a bore, and histories are unattractive, they are so dry and accurate. My father’s grief at my lack of essential knowledge is perennial and deep-seated. But, somehow, facts are the most elusive things I have to contend with. I can only seem to get a firm grasp on the imaginary. Of course, I know the historical facts in this case, but it does not sound personally pathetic to read that Russia, Prussia, and Austria divided Poland between them.

But to be here in Russia, in what was once Poland, visiting the families of the Polish nobility; to see their beautiful home-life, their marvellous family affection, the respect they pay to their women; to feel all the charm of their broad culture and noble sympathy for all that makes for the general good, and then to hear the story of their oppression, is to feel a personal ache in the heart for their national burdens.

It does not sound as if a grievous hardship were being put upon a conquered people to read in histories or guide-books that Prussia is colonizing her part of Poland with Germans—selling them land for almost nothing in order to infuse German blood, German language, German customs into a conquered land. It does not touch one’s sympathies very much to know that Austria is the only one of the three to give Poland the most of her rights, and in a measure to restore her self-respect by allowing her representation in the Reichstag and by permitting Poles to hold office.

But when you come to Russian Poland and know that in the province of Lithuania—which was a separate and distinct province until a prince of Lithuania fell in love with and married a queen of Poland, and the two countries were joined—Poles are not allowed to buy one foot of land in the country where they were born and bred, are not permitted to hold office even when elected, are prohibited from speaking their own language in public, are forbidden to sing their Polish hymns, or to take children in from the streets and teach them in anything but Russian, and that every one is taught the Greek religion, then this colonization becomes a burning question. Then you know how to appreciate America, where we have full, free, and unqualified liberty.

The young Tzar has greatly endeared himself to his Polish subjects by several humane and generous acts. One was to remove the tax on all estates (over and above the ordinary taxes), which Poles were obliged to pay annually to the Russian government. Another was to release school-children from the necessity of attending the Greek church on all Russian feast-days. These two were by public ukase, and as the Poles are passionately grateful for any act of kindness, one hears nothing but good words for the Tzar, and there is the utmost feeling of loyalty to him among them. I hear it constantly said that if he continue in this generous policy Russia need never apprehend another Polish revolution. And while by a revolution they could never hope to accomplish anything, there being now but fourteen million Poles to contend against these three powerful nations, still, as long as they have one about every thirty-five years, perhaps it is a wise precaution on the part of the young Tzar to begin with his kindness promptly, as it is about time for another one!

Another recent thing which the Poles attribute to the Tzar was the removal from the street corners, the shops, the railroad stations, and the clubs, of the placards forbidding the Polish language to be spoken in public.

Thus the Poles hope much from the young Tzar in the future, and believe that he would do more were he not held back by Russian public opinion. For example, the other day two Russians were overheard in the train to say: “For thirty years we have tried to force our religion on the Poles, our language on the Poles, and our customs on the Poles, but now here comes ‘The Little Colonel’ (the young Tzar), and in a moment he sweeps away all the progress we had made.”

To call him “The Little Colonel” is a term of great endearment, and the name arose from the fact that by some strange oversight he was never made a General by his father, but remained at the death of the late Tzar only a Colonel. When urged by his councillors to make himself General, as became a Tzar of all the Russias, he said: “No. The power which should have made me a General is no more. Now that I am at the head of the government I surely could not be so conceited as to promote myself.”

The misery among the poor in Poland is almost beyond belief, yet all charities for them must be conducted secretly, for the government stills forbids the establishment of kindergartens or free schools where Polish children would be taught in the Polish language. I have been questioned very closely about our charities in America, especially in Chicago, and I have given them all the working plans of the college settlements, the kindergartens, and the sewing-schools. The Poles are a wonderfully sympathetic and warm-hearted people, and are anxious to ameliorate the bitter poverty which exists here to an enormous extent. They sigh in vain for the freedom with which we may proceed, and regard Americans as seated in the very lap of a luxurious government because we are at liberty to give our money to any cause without being interfered with.

One of the noblest young women I have ever met is a Polish countess, wealthy, beautiful, and fascinating, who has turned her back upon society and upon the brilliant marriage her family had hoped for her, and has taken a friend who was at the head of a London training-school for nurses to live with her upon her estates, and these two have consecrated their lives to the service of the poor. They will educate Polish nurses to use in private charity. With no garb, no creed, no blare of trumpet, they have made themselves into “Little Sisters of the Poor.”

I could not fail to notice the difference in the young girls as soon as I crossed the Russian frontier and came into the land of the Slav. Here at once I found individuality. Polish girls are more like American girls. If you ask a young English girl what she thinks of Victor Hugo she tells you that her mamma does not allow her to read French novels. If you ask a French girl how she likes to live in Paris she tells you that she never went down town alone in her life.

But the Polish girls are different. They are individual. They all have a personality. When you have met one you never feel as if you had met all. In this respect they resemble American girls, but only in this respect, for whereas there is a type of Polish young girl—and a charming type she is—I never in my life saw what I considered a really typical American girl. You cannot typify the psychic charm of the young American girl. It is altogether beyond you.

These Polish girls who have titles are as simple and unaffected as possible. I had no difficulty in calling their mothers Countess and Princess, etc., but I tripped once or twice with the young girls, whereat they begged me in the sweetest way to call them by their first names without any prefix. They were charming. They taught us the Polish mazurka—a dance which has more go to it than any dance I ever saw. It requires the Auditorium ball-room to dance it in, and enough breath to play the trombone in an orchestra. The officers dance with their spurs on, which jingle and click in an exciting manner, and to my surprise never seem to catch in the women’s gowns.