Major said we were not in a hurry, and would wait for the car to be put on. The conductor responded, with pleasant irony:
'It may be that you are not in a hurry, just as you say, but we are. Come, get aboard, gentlemen, get aboard—don't keep us waiting.'
But the Major would not get aboard himself nor allow me to do it. He wanted his car, and said he must have it. This made the hurried and perspiring conductor impatient, and he said:
'It's the best we can do—we can't do impossibilities. You will take the section or go without. A mistake has been made and can't be rectified at this late hour. It's a thing that happens now and then, and there is nothing for it but to put up with it and make the best of it. Other people do.'
'Ah, that is just it, you see. If they had stuck to their rights and enforced them you wouldn't be trying to trample mine underfoot in this bland way now. I haven't any disposition to give you unnecessary trouble, but it is my duty to protect the next man from this kind of imposition. So I must have my car. Otherwise I will wait in Chicago and sue the company for violating its contract.'
'Sue the company?—for a thing like that!'
'Certainly.'
'Do you really mean that?'
'Indeed, I do.'
The conductor looked the Major over wonderingly, and then said:
'It beats me—it's bran-new—I've never struck the mate to it before. But I swear I think you'd do it. Look here, I'll send for the station-master.'
When the station-master came he was a good deal annoyed—at the Major, not at the person who had made the mistake. He was rather brusque, and took the same position which the conductor had taken in the beginning; but he failed to move the soft-spoken artilleryman, who still insisted that he must have his car. However, it was plain that there was only one strong side in this case, and that that side was the Major's. The station-master banished his annoyed manner, and became pleasant and even half-apologetic. This made a good opening for a compromise, and the Major made a concession. He said he would give up the engaged state-room, but he must have a state-room. After a deal of ransacking, one was found whose owner was persuadable; he exchanged it for our section, and we got away at last. The conductor called on us in the evening, and was kind and courteous and obliging, and we had a long talk and got to be good friends. He said he wished the public would make trouble oftener—it would have a good effect. He said that the railroads could not be expected to do their whole duty by the traveller unless the traveller would take some interest in the matter himself.
I hoped that we were done reforming for the trip now, but it was not so. In the hotel car, in the morning, the Major called for broiled chicken. The waiter said:
'It's not in the bill of fare, sir; we do not serve anything but what is in the bill.'
'That gentleman yonder is eating a broiled chicken.'
'Yes, but that is different. He is one of the superintendents of the road.'
'Then all the more must I have broiled chicken. I do not like these discriminations. Please hurry—bring me a broiled chicken.'
The waiter brought the steward, who explained in a low and polite voice that the thing was impossible—it was against the rule, and the rule was rigid.
'Very well, then, you must either apply it impartially or break it impartially. You must take that gentleman's chicken away from him or bring me one.'
The steward was puzzled, and did not quite know what to do. He began an incoherent argument, but the conductor came along just then, and asked what the difficulty was. The steward explained that here was a gentleman who was insisting on having a chicken when it was dead against the rule and not in the bill. The conductor said:
'Stick by your rules—you haven't any option. Wait a moment—is this the gentleman?' Then he laughed and said: 'Never mind your rules—it's my advice, and sound: give him anything he wants—don't get him started on his rights. Give him whatever he asks for; and it you haven't got it, stop the train and get it.'
The Major ate the chicken, but said he did it from a sense of duty and to establish a principle, for he did not like chicken.
I missed the Fair it is true, but I picked up some diplomatic tricks which I and the reader may find handy and useful as we go along.
DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES
VIENNA, January 5—I find in this morning's papers the statement that the Government of the United States has paid to the two members of the Peace Commission entitled to receive money for their services 100,000 dollars each for their six weeks' work in Paris.
I hope that this is true. I will allow myself the satisfaction of considering that it is true, and of treating it as a thing finished and settled.
It is a precedent; and ought to be a welcome one to our country. A precedent always has a chance to be valuable (as well as the other way); and its best chance to be valuable (or the other way) is when it takes such a striking form as to fix a whole nation's attention upon it. If it come justified out of the discussion which will follow, it will find a career ready and waiting for it.
We realise that the edifice of public justice is built of precedents, from the ground upward; but we do not always realise that all the other details of our civilisation are likewise built of precedents. The changes also which they undergo are due to the intrusion of new precedents, which hold their ground against opposition, and keep their place. A precedent may die at birth, or it may live—it is mainly a matter of luck. If it be imitated once, it has a chance; if twice a better chance; if three times it is reaching a point where account must be taken of it; if four, five, or six times, it has probably come to stay—for a whole century, possibly. If a town start a new bow, or a new dance, or a new temperance project, or a new kind of hat, and can get the precedent adopted in the next town, the career of that precedent is begun; and it will be unsafe to bet as to where the end of its journey is going to be. It may not get this start at all, and may have no career; but, if a crown prince introduce the precedent, it will attract vast attention, and its chances for a career are so great as to amount almost to a certainty.
For a long time we have been reaping damage from a couple of disastrous precedents. One is the precedent of shabby pay to public servants standing for the power and dignity of the Republic in foreign lands; the other is a precedent condemning them to exhibit themselves officially in clothes which are not only without grace or dignity, but are a pretty loud and pious rebuke to the vain and frivolous costumes worn by the other officials. To our day an American ambassador's official costume remains under the reproach of these defects. At a public function in a European court all foreign representatives except ours wear clothes which in some way distinguish them from the unofficial throng, and mark them as standing for their countries. But our representative appears in a plain black swallow-tail, which stands for neither country, nor people. It has no nationality. It is found in all countries; it is as international as a night-shirt. It has no particular meaning; but our Government tries to give it one; it tries to make it stand for Republican Simplicity, modesty and unpretentiousness. Tries, and without doubt fails, for it is not conceivable that this loud ostentation of simplicity deceives any one. The statue that advertises its modesty with a fig-leaf really brings its modesty under suspicion. Worn officially, our nonconforming swallow-tail is a declaration of ungracious independence in the matter of manners, and is uncourteous. It says to all around: 'In Rome we do not choose to do as Rome does; we refuse to respect your tastes and your traditions; we make no sacrifices to anyone's customs and prejudices; we yield no jot to the courtesies of life; we prefer our manners, and intrude them here.'
That is not the true American spirit, and those clothes misrepresent us. When a foreigner comes among us and trespasses against our customs and our code of manners, we are offended, and justly so; but our Government commands our ambassadors to wear abroad an official dress which is an offence against foreign manners and customers; and the discredit of it falls upon the nation.
We did not dress our public functionaries in undistinguished raiment before Franklin's time; and the change would not have come if he had been an obscurity. But he was such a colossal figure in the world that whatever he
