There is yet again another type, always of the female gender and
generally middle-aged and very schoolteacherish in aspect, who, in
company with a group of kindred spirits, is viewing Europe under a
contract arrangement by which a worn and wearied-looking gentleman, a
retired clergyman usually, acts as escort and mentor for a given price.
I don't know how much he gets a head for this job; but whatever it is,
he earns it ninety-and-nine times over. This lady tourist is much given
to missing trains and getting lost and having disputes with natives
and wearing rubber overshoes and asking strange questions--but let me
illustrate with a story I heard.
The man from Cook's had convoyed his party through the Vatican, until he
brought them to the Apollo Belvidere. As they ranged themselves wearily
about the statue, he rattled off his regular patter without pause or
punctuation:
"Here we have the far-famed Apollo Belvidere found about the middle of
the fifteenth century at Frascati purchased by Pope Julius the Second
restored by the great Michelangelo taken away by the French in 1797 but
returned in 1815 made of Carara marble holding in his hand a portion of
the bow with which he slew the Python observe please the beauty of
the pose the realistic attitude of the limbs the noble and exalted
expression of the face of Apollo Belvidere he being known also as
Phoebus the god of oracles the god of music and medicine the son of Leto
and Jupiter--"
Here he ran out of breath and stopped. For a moment no one spoke.
Then from a flat-chested little spinster came this query in tired yet
interested tones:
"Was he--was he married?"
He who is intent upon studying the effect of foreign climes upon
the American temperament should by no means overlook the colonies of
resident Americans in the larger European cities, particularly the
colonies in such cities as Paris and Rome and Florence. In Berlin, the
American colony is largely made up of music students and in Vienna of
physicians; but in the other places many folks of many minds and many
callings constitute the groups. Some few have left their country for
their country's good and some have expatriated themselves because, as
they explain in bursts of confidence, living is cheaper in France
than it is in America. I suppose it is, too, if one can only become
reconciled to doing without most of the comforts which make life worth
while in America or anywhere else. Included among this class are many
rather unhappy old ladies who somehow impress you as having been shunted
off to foreign parts because there were no places for them in the homes
of their children and their grandchildren. So now they are spending
their last years among strangers, trying with a desperate eagerness to
be interested in people and things for which they really care not a fig,
with no home except a cheerless pension.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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