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 scraped 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 nobility 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 That's nothing. Here in Innsbruck they charge you half a krone a day _taxes_. THE FIRST MAN What! You don't say! THE SECOND MAN Sure thing. And if you don't eat breakfast in the hotel they charge you a krone for it anyhow. THE FIRST MAN Well, well, what next? But, after all, you can't blame them. We Americans come over here and hand them our pocket-books, and we ought to be glad if we get anything back at all. The way a man has to tip is something fearful. THE SECOND MAN