no trouble, for I at once dramatized a little scene between myself and
the Duke, in which I should bring him the bath-gowns, and he should
offer me the tip, and I should refuse it with a low bow, and say that I
was an American. What I did not dramatize, or what seemed to enter into
the dialogue quite without my agency, was the Duke's reply to my proud
speech. It was foreshown me that he would say, He did not see why that
should make any difference. I suppose it was in the hurt I felt at this
wound to our national dignity that I now instantly invented the society
of some ladies, whom I told of my business with those bath-gowns (I
still had them in my hands), and urged them to go with me and call upon
the Duke. They expressed, somehow, that they would rather not, and then
I urged that the Duke was very handsome. This seemed to end the whole
affair, and I passed on to other visions, which I cannot recall.
I have not often had a dream of such international import, in the
offense offered through me to the American character and its well-known
superiority to tips, but I have had others quite as humiliating to me
personally. In fact, I am rather in the habit of having such dreams, and
I think I may not unjustly attribute to them the disciplined modesty
which the reader will hardly fail to detect in the present essay. It has
more than once been my fate to find myself during sleep in battle,
where I behave with so little courage as to bring discredit upon our
flag and shame upon myself. In these circumstances I am not anxious to
make even a showing of courage; my one thought is to get away as rapidly
and safely as possible. It is said that this is really the wish of all
novices under fire, and that the difference between a hero and a coward
is that the hero hides it, with a duplicity which finally does him
honor, and that the coward frankly runs away. I have never really been
in battle, and if it is anything like a battle in dreams I would not
willingly qualify myself to speak by the card on this point. Neither
have I ever really been upon the stage, but in dreams I have often been
there, and always in a great trouble of mind at not knowing my part. It
seems a little odd that I should not sometimes be prepared, but I never
am, and I feel that when the curtain rises I shall be disgraced beyond
all reprieve. I dare say it is the suffering from this that awakens me
in time, or changes the current of my dreams so that I have never yet
been actually hooted from the stage.
II
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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