Americans -- Europe -- Fiction; Europe -- Fiction; Humorous stories; Walking -- Fiction
I have enlarged upon the ways of this girl because they are typical;
her manners are the manners of a goodly number of the Baden-Baden
shopkeepers. The shopkeeper there swindles you if he can, and insults
you whether he succeeds in swindling you or not. The keepers of baths
also take great and patient pains to insult you. The frowsy woman who
sat at the desk in the lobby of the great Friederichsbad and sold bath
tickets, not only insulted me twice every day, with rigid fidelity
to her great trust, but she took trouble enough to cheat me out of a
shilling, one day, to have fairly entitled her to ten. Baden-Baden's
splendid gamblers are gone, only her microscopic knaves remain.
An English gentleman who had been living there several years, said:
"If you could disguise your nationality, you would not find any
insolence here. These shopkeepers detest the English and despise the
Americans; they are rude to both, more especially to ladies of your
nationality and mine. If these go shopping without a gentleman or
a man-servant, they are tolerably sure to be subjected to petty
insolences--insolences of manner and tone, rather than word, though
words that are hard to bear are not always wanting. I know of an
instance where a shopkeeper tossed a coin back to an American lady with
the remark, snappishly uttered, 'We don't take French money here.' And
I know of a case where an English lady said to one of these shopkeepers,
'Don't you think you ask too much for this article?' and he replied with
the question, 'Do you think you are obliged to buy it?' However, these
people are not impolite to Russians or Germans. And as to rank, they
worship that, for they have long been used to generals and nobles. If
you wish to see what abysses servility can descend, present yourself
before a Baden-Baden shopkeeper in the character of a Russian prince."
It is an inane town, filled with sham, and petty fraud, and snobbery,
but the baths are good. I spoke with many people, and they were all
agreed in that. I had the twinges of rheumatism unceasingly during three
years, but the last one departed after a fortnight's bathing there,
and I have never had one since. I fully believe I left my rheumatism in
Baden-Baden. Baden-Baden is welcome to it. It was little, but it was
all I had to give. I would have preferred to leave something that was
catching, but it was not in my power.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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