A Book of Burlesques Part 11

THE FIRST MAN

It certainly is: all meat and gristle. I wonder what an Englishman would say if you put him next to a plate of genuine, crisp, _American_ bacon.

THE SECOND MAN

I guess he would yell for the police--or choke to death.

THE FIRST MAN

Did you like the German cooking on the _Kronprinz_?

THE SECOND MAN

Well, I did and I didn't. The chicken a la Maryland was very good, but they had it only once. I could eat it every day.

THE FIRST MAN

Why didn't you order it?

THE SECOND MAN

It wasn't on the bill.

THE FIRST MAN

Oh, bill be d.a.m.ned! You might have ordered it anyhow. Make a fuss and you'll get what you want. These foreigners have to be bossed around.

They're used to it.

THE SECOND MAN

I guess you're right. There was a fellow near me who set up a holler about his room the minute he saw it--said it was dark and musty and not fit to pen a hog in--and they gave him one twice as large, and the chief steward bowed and sc.r.a.ped to him, and the room stewards danced around him as if he was a duke. And yet I heard later that he was nothing but a Bismarck herring importer from Hoboken.

THE FIRST MAN

Yes, that's the way to get what you want. Did you have any n.o.bility on board?

THE SECOND MAN

Yes, there was a Hungarian baron in the automobile business, and two English sirs. The baron was quite a decent fellow: I had a talk with him in the smoking room one night. He didn't put on any airs at all. You would have thought he was an ordinary man. But the sirs kept to themselves. All they did the whole voyage was to write letters, wear their dress suits and curse the stewards.

THE FIRST MAN

They tell me over here that the best eating is on the French lines.

THE SECOND MAN

Yes, so I hear. But some say, too, that the Scandinavian lines are best, and then again I have heard people boosting the Italian lines.

THE FIRST MAN

I guess each one has its points. They say that you get wine free with meals on the French boats.

THE SECOND MAN

But I hear it's fourth-rate wine.

THE FIRST MAN

Well, you don't have to drink it.

THE SECOND MAN

That's so. But, as for me, I can't stand a Frenchman. I'd rather do without the wine and travel with the Dutch. Paris is dead compared with Berlin.

THE FIRST MAN

So it is. But those Germans are awful sharks. The way they charge in Berlin is enough to make you sick.

THE SECOND MAN

Don't tell _me_. I have been there. No longer ago than last Tuesday--or was it last Monday?--I went into one of those big restaurants on the Unter den Linden and ordered a small steak, French fried potatoes, a piece of pie and a cup of coffee--and what do you think those thieves charged me for it? Three marks fifty. That's eighty-seven and a half cents. Why, a man could have got the same meal at home for a dollar.

These Germans are running wild. American money has gone to their heads.

They think every American they get hold of is a millionaire.

THE FIRST MAN

The French are worse. I went into a hotel in Paris and paid ten francs a day for a room for myself and wife, and when we left they charged me one franc forty a day extra for sweeping it out and making the bed!

THE SECOND MAN