Nasby in Exile: or, Six Months of Travel in England, Ireland, Scotland, France, Germany, Switzerland and Belgium, with many things not of travel
John Locke · en
Also we didn't see any chamois, nor any chamois hunters, nor any sweet
Swiss maidens in picturesque costumes. Like the fever and ague in the
West, "there ain't none of it here, but there's any quantity of it over
in the next county."
That evening, in the hotel, Tibbitts became indignant. He noticed for
the first time that the sheets and pillow cases on his bed were marked
with the name of the hotel in indelible ink.
"What is this for?" he demanded.
"To keep guests of the house from carrying them off, I suppose."
"Then the prevailing impression is that everybody in the world is a
thief? The idea is that I, Tibbitts, am going to snake off these sheets
and cram them in my valise and tote them all over the continent, and
finally take them to Oshkosh for my mother's use!
"It is my opinion, and I say it deliberately, that the vices of one-half
of mankind keep the other half of mankind busy. It is the wickedness of
man that makes courts necessary, and sheriffs and policemen, and all
that sort of thing. But for vice we could dispense with nine-tenths of
the churches and ministry, and we could let up on standing armies. All
the locksmiths and the time wasted upon marking these sheets and pillow
cases could have been devoted to the multiplication of the wealth of the
world. Think of the number of hotels in the world, and the number of
sheets and pillow cases in them, and the quantity of indelible ink and
the time spent in using it, just to keep them from being stolen! The
grand aggregate is appalling. And then add to that all the rest of the
precautions, and mighty expensive they are, that have to be taken to
keep the property you have, and it amounts to the absorption of fully a
half of the industry of the world.
"I have made up my mind what I am going to do. I am going home, and
shall immediately organize societies for the promotion of common
honesty. I shall have to pay for the marking of these sheets and
pillow-cases in my bill to-morrow. In self-defense these societies must
be organized, and this sort of thing done away. Had the time employed in
marking these sheets been used in making cheese, we should not have to
pay such prices for it in America. Vice is an expensive luxury--it eats
two ways; it consumes the time of the vicer, and the time of another man
to watch him. It must be crushed out!"
And Tibbitts went to bed full of projects for the suppression of vice
and for the eventual universality of virtue.
We had at the hotel, of course, the everlasting talker--that man is
ubiquitous, and as frequent as sin. The class was represented with us by
a commission merchant from Milwaukee.
One evening the discussion happened to turn upon the tariff question,
and overflowing its banks, as conversation always does, meandered off
into a variety of channels.
One gentleman asked Jones, the Milwaukee man, why wheat could be
manufactured into flour at Minneapolis, and not at points further East.
[Sidenote: THE MILWAUKEE MAN.]