As a house-to-house visitation was impossible, I abandoned the quest,
and drove to a photographer's to buy some views of the town. The
photographer proved to be a chatty, vivacious man, and full of
information. I mentioned my dilemma to him. He said that the policeman
had told the exact truth, but that my author, to his positive knowledge,
was in the Crimea, "looking up material." Then he questioned me as to
what we had seen at the Fair, mentioning one or two places of evening
entertainment. I replied that we had not been to those places. I had
understood that they were not likely to suit my taste. Had I been
rightly informed, or ought I to have gone to them in spite of warning?
"No," he replied frankly, after a momentary hesitation, "you ought not
to see them. But all the American women do go to them. There was a party
here last year. O-o-o-oh, how they went on! They were told, as you have
been, that they ought not to go to certain places; so of course they
went, and took the men in the party with them,--which was just as
well. I'd have given something to see their faces at the time, or even
afterwards! An Englishman, who had traveled everywhere, and had seen
everything, told me that nowhere, even in India, had he seen the like of
the doings at this Fair; and he was greatly shocked." He added that an
officer could not appear at these places in uniform.
I begged the photographer to remember in future that there were several
sorts of American women, and that not all of them worked by the law of
contraries. In my own mind I wondered what those particular women had
done, and wished, for the hundredth time, that American women abroad
would behave themselves properly, and not earn such a reputation for
their country-people.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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