“And where,” I asked him, “would you advise us to go and get it?”
“The same place I got it,” said the captain.
“And what is it?”
“I don’t know.”
We adjourned to the diner. A sign there said: “Non Fumeurs.” The captain pointed to it.
“That’s brief enough,” he said. “That’s once when the French is concise. But you ought to see the Chinese for that. I was in a town near the British front recently where some Chinese laborers are encamped. In the station waiting-room, it says: ‘No Smoking’ in French, English, Russian and Italian. The Russian is something like ‘Do notski smokevitch,’ and the Italian is ‘Non Smokore.’ Recently they have added a Chinese version, and it’s longer than the Bible. A moderate smoker could disobey the rules forty times before he got through the first chapter and found out what they were driving at.”
Be that as it may, I have observed that everybody in France smokes whenever and wherever he or she desires, regardless of signs. We did now, and so did our guest, while waiting for the first course, which was black bread baked in a brickyard.
“I would love to go to America,” said mademoiselle.
“You wouldn’t care for it,” replied the captain promptly. “It’s too wild.”
“How is it wild?”
“Every way: manners, habits, morals. The majority of the people, of course, are Indians, and you just can’t make them behave.”
She asked whether either of us had ever been in New York. The captain said he’d passed through there once on the way to Coney Island. She wanted to know if New York was bigger than Paris. “It’s bigger than France,” said Captain Jones.
Monsieur was trying to make a game of her.
“Well, anyway,” said the captain, “you could lose France in Texas.”
What was Texas?
“Texas,” said the captain, “is the place they send soldiers when they’ve been bad. It’s way out west, near Chicago.”
The lady had heard of Chicago.
“This gentleman works there,” said the captain. “He’s part Indian, but he was educated at Carlisle and is somewhat civilized. He gets wild only on occasions.”
The lady regarded me rather scaredly.
“He lives on the plains outside the city,” continued the captain, “and rides to his work and back on a zebra. Practically all the suburban savages have zebras, and the Chicago traffic police have a fierce time handling them during their owners’ working hours. They run wild around the streets and in the department stores, and snap at women, especially brunettes.”
We had attained the potato course. The French positively will not serve potatoes as other than a separate course. I was about to help myself to a generous portion when the captain cried: “Here! Better leave those things alone. You know what they do to you.”
I told him I didn’t believe two or three would hurt, and proceeded to take three.
“When a half Indian eats potatoes,” said the captain, “he usually forgets himself and runs amuck.”
Our guest probably didn’t know what a muck was, but it had an unpleasant sound, and the look she gave me was neither friendly nor trusting.
“The greatest difference between France and America,” continued Captain Jones, “is in the people. In America a man ordinarily takes the initiative in striking up an acquaintance with a woman. He has to speak to her before she’ll speak to him. This would never do in France, where the men are too shy. Then there’s a difference in the way men treat their wives and horses. Americans use whips instead of clubs. And Americans have funny ideas about their homes. Private bedrooms and playrooms are provided for their pets—zebras, lizards and wild cats—and the little fellows are given to understand that they must remain in them and not run all over the house, like one of your cows.”
He paused to ask me how the potatoes were acting. I said it was too soon to tell, but I felt a little dizzy in the head. He suggested it were better to go back to our compartment, where there were less things to throw in the event of my reaching the throwing stage.
“On the other hand,” I said, “if I am deprived of knives, forks and plates, I will pick on human beings, and I usually aim out the windows.”
But he said he was sick of the atmosphere in the diner. We asked for l’addition and argued over who should pay it. I won, and when he had been given his change we returned to our own car, where mademoiselle demonstrated her fear of my expected outbreak by going to sleep.
We turned our attention to the scenery, the most striking feature of which was the abundance of boche prisoners at work in the fields.
“Lucky stiffs!” said the captain. “The war is over for them if they can just manage not to escape, and I guess there’s no difficulty about that. Better food than the soldiers, a soft job, and a bed to sleep in. And wages besides. Every private in the Fritz army would surrender if the officers hadn’t given them a lot of bunk about the way German prisoners are treated. They make them believe we cut off their feet and ears and give them one peanut and a glass of water every two weeks.”
Paris hove into view, and we quarreled about the girl. The fair thing, we decided, would be to turn over her and her baggage to a porter and wish her many happy returns of the day. We were spared this painful duty, however, for when she awoke she treated both of us as strangers. And the gentleman who attended to her baggage was not a porter, but a French aviator, waiting on the station platform for that very purpose.
“She’ll
