PAGE 4
Myself
by
Listening, if we did but know it, sits more gracefully on us than speech, when that speech involves the denial of genders, and the utter confusion of all cases and tenses.
Next to holding their tongues, there’s another thing I wish you English would do abroad, which is, to dress like sane and responsible people. Men are simply absurd; but the women, with their ill-behaved hoops and short petticoats, are positively indecent; but the greatest of all their travelling offences is the proneness to form acquaintance at tables-d’hote.
It is, first of all, a rank indiscretion for any but men to dine at these places. They are almost, as a rule, the resort of all that is disreputable in both sexes. You are sure to eat badly, and in the very worst of company. My warning is, however, meant for my countrywomen only: men can, or at least ought, to take care of themselves. As for myself, don’t be shocked; but I do like doubtful company–that is, I am immensely interested by all that class of people which the world calls adventurers, whether the same be railroad speculators, fortune-hunters, discoverers of inexhaustible mines, or Garibaldians. Your respectable man, with a pocket-book well stored with his circular notes, and his passport in order, is as uninteresting as a “Treckshuyt” on a Dutch canal; but your “martyr to circumstance” is like a smart felucca in a strong Levanter; and you can watch his course–how he shakes out his reefs or shortens sail–how he flaunts out his bunting, or hides his colours–with an unflagging interest I have often thought what a deal of cleverness–what stores of practical ability–were lost to the world in these out-at-elbow fellows, who speak every language fluently, play every game well, sing pleasingly, dance, ride, row, and shoot, especially with the pistol, to perfection. There they are, with a mass of qualities that win success! and, what often is harder, win goodwill in life! There they are, by some unhappy twist in their natures, preferring the precarious existence of the race-course or the billiard-table; while others, with about a tithe of their talents, are high in place and power. I met one of these men to-day, and a strong specimen of the class, well dressed, well whiskered, very quiet in manner, almost subdued in tone, but with a slight restlessness in his eye that was very significant. We found ourselves at table, over our coffee, when the others had left, and fell into conversation. He declined my offered cigar with much courtesy, preferring to smoke little cigarettes of his own making; and really the manufacture was very adroit, and, in its way, a study of the maker’s habits. We talked over the usual topics–the bad dinner we had just eaten, the strange-looking company, the discomfort of the hotel generally, and suchlike.
“Have we not met before?” asked he, after a pause. “If I don’t mistake, we dined together aboard of Leslie’s yacht, the Fawn.”
I shook my head. “Only knew Sir Francis Leslie by name; never saw the Fawn.”
The shot failed, but there was no recoil in his gun, and he merely bowed a half apology.
“A yacht is a mistake,” added he, after another interval. “One is obliged to take, not the men one wants, but the fellows who can bear the sea. Leslie, for instance, had such a set that I left him at Messina. Strange enough, they took us for pirates there.”
“For pirates!”
“Yes. There were three fishing-boats–what they call Bilancelle–some fifteen or sixteen miles out at sea, and when they saw us coming along with all canvass set, they hauled up their nets and ran with all speed for shore. Rather absurd, wasn’t it? but, as I told Leslie about his friends, ‘the blunder wasn’t so great after all; there was only a vowel between Raffs and Riffs.'”
The disparagement of “questionable people” is such an old device of adventurers, that I was really surprised such a master of his art as my present friend would condescend to it. It belonged altogether to an inferior practitioner; and, indeed, he quickly saw the effect it had produced upon me, as he said, “Not that I care a straw for the fellows I associate with; my theory is, a gentleman can know any one.”