A Tramp Abroad

by Mark Twain

  CHAPTER XX

  [My Precious, Priceless Tear-Jug]

  Next morning brought good news--our trunks had arrived from Hamburgat last. Let this be a warning to the reader. The Germans are veryconscientious, and this trait makes them very particular. Therefore ifyou tell a German you want a thing done immediately, he takes youat your word; he thinks you mean what you say; so he does that thingimmediately--according to his idea of immediately--which is about aweek; that is, it is a week if it refers to the building of a garment,or it is an hour and a half if it refers to the cooking of a trout. Verywell; if you tell a German to send your trunk to you by "slow freight,"he takes you at your word; he sends it by "slow freight," and youcannot imagine how long you will go on enlarging your admiration of theexpressiveness of that phrase in the German tongue, before you get thattrunk. The hair on my trunk was soft and thick and youthful, when Igot it ready for shipment in Hamburg; it was baldheaded when it reachedHeidelberg. However, it was still sound, that was a comfort, it wasnot battered in the least; the baggagemen seemed to be conscientiouslycareful, in Germany, of the baggage entrusted to their hands. Therewas nothing now in the way of our departure, therefore we set about ourpreparations.

  Naturally my chief solicitude was about my collection of Ceramics. Ofcourse I could not take it with me, that would be inconvenient, anddangerous besides. I took advice, but the best brick-a-brackers weredivided as to the wisest course to pursue; some said pack the collectionand warehouse it; others said try to get it into the Grand Ducal Museumat Mannheim for safe keeping. So I divided the collection, and followedthe advice of both parties. I set aside, for the Museum, those articleswhich were the most frail and precious.

  Among these was my Etruscan tear-jug. I have made a little sketch ofit here; that thing creeping up the side is not a bug, it is a hole.I bought this tear-jug of a dealer in antiquities for four hundred andfifty dollars. It is very rare. The man said the Etruscans used to keeptears or something in these things, and that it was very hard to gethold of a broken one, now.

  I also set aside my Henri II. plate. See sketch from my pencil; it isin the main correct, though I think I have foreshortened one end of ita little too much, perhaps. This is very fine and rare; the shape isexceedingly beautiful and unusual. It has wonderful decorations on it,but I am not able to reproduce them. It cost more than the tear-jug, asthe dealer said there was not another plate just like it in theworld. He said there was much false Henri II ware around, but that thegenuineness of this piece was unquestionable.

  He showed me its pedigree, or its history, if you please; it was adocument which traced this plate's movements all the way down from itsbirth--showed who bought it, from whom, and what he paid for it--fromthe first buyer down to me, whereby I saw that it had gone steadily upfrom thirty-five cents to seven hundred dollars. He said that the wholeCeramic world would be informed that it was now in my possession andwould make a note of it, with the price paid. [Figure 8]

  There were Masters in those days, but, alas--it is not so now. Of coursethe main preciousness of this piece lies in its color; it is that oldsensuous, pervading, ramifying, interpolating, transboreal blue which isthe despair of modern art. The little sketch which I have made of thisgem cannot and does not do it justice, since I have been obliged toleave out the color. But I've got the expression, though.

  However, I must not be frittering away the reader's time with thesedetails. I did not intend to go into any detail at all, at first, butit is the failing of the true ceramiker, or the true devotee in anydepartment of brick-a-brackery, that once he gets his tongue or his penstarted on his darling theme, he cannot well stop until he drops fromexhaustion. He has no more sense of the flight of time than has anyother lover when talking of his sweetheart. The very "marks" on thebottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibberingecstasy; and I could forsake a drowning relative to help dispute aboutwhether the stopple of a departed Buon Retiro scent-bottle was genuineor spurious.

  Many people say that for a male person, bric-a-brac hunting is about asrobust a business as making doll-clothes, or decorating Japanese potswith decalcomania butterflies would be, and these people fling mud atthe elegant Englishman, Byng, who wrote a book called _The Bric-a-bracHunter_, and make fun of him for chasing around after what they chooseto call "his despicable trifles"; and for "gushing" over these trifles;and for exhibiting his "deep infantile delight" in what they call his"tuppenny collection of beggarly trivialities"; and for beginning hisbook with a picture of himself seated, in a "sappy, self-complacentattitude, in the midst of his poor little ridiculous bric-a-brac junkshop."

  It is easy to say these things; it is easy to revile us, easy to despiseus; therefore, let these people rail on; they cannot feel as Byng andI feel--it is their loss, not ours. For my part I am content to be abrick-a-bracker and a ceramiker--more, I am proud to be so named. I amproud to know that I lose my reason as immediately in the presence of arare jug with an illustrious mark on the bottom of it, as if I hadjust emptied that jug. Very well; I packed and stored a part of mycollection, and the rest of it I placed in the care of the Grand DucalMuseum in Mannheim, by permission. My Old Blue China Cat remains thereyet. I presented it to that excellent institution.

  I had but one misfortune with my things. An egg which I had kept backfrom breakfast that morning, was broken in packing. It was a great pity.I had shown it to the best connoisseurs in Heidelberg, and they all saidit was an antique. We spent a day or two in farewell visits, and thenleft for Baden-Baden. We had a pleasant trip to it, for the Rhine valleyis always lovely. The only trouble was that the trip was too short. IfI remember rightly it only occupied a couple of hours, therefore I judgethat the distance was very little, if any, over fifty miles. Wequitted the train at Oos, and walked the entire remaining distance toBaden-Baden, with the exception of a lift of less than an hour whichwe got on a passing wagon, the weather being exhaustingly warm. We cameinto town on foot.

  One of the first persons we encountered, as we walked up the street,was the Rev. Mr. ------, an old friend from America--a lucky encounter,indeed, for his is a most gentle, refined, and sensitive nature, and hiscompany and companionship are a genuine refreshment. We knew he had beenin Europe some time, but were not at all expecting to run across him.Both parties burst forth into loving enthusiasms, and Rev. Mr. ------said:

  "I have got a brimful reservoir of talk to pour out on you, and an emptyone ready and thirsting to receive what you have got; we will sit uptill midnight and have a good satisfying interchange, for I leave hereearly in the morning." We agreed to that, of course.

  I had been vaguely conscious, for a while, of a person who was walkingin the street abreast of us; I had glanced furtively at him once ortwice, and noticed that he was a fine, large, vigorous young fellow,with an open, independent countenance, faintly shaded with a pale andeven almost imperceptible crop of early down, and that he was clothedfrom head to heel in cool and enviable snow-white linen. I thought I hadalso noticed that his head had a sort of listening tilt to it. Now aboutthis time the Rev. Mr. ------ said:

  "The sidewalk is hardly wide enough for three, so I will walk behind;but keep the talk going, keep the talk going, there's no time to lose,and you may be sure I will do my share." He ranged himself behind us,and straightway that stately snow-white young fellow closed up to thesidewalk alongside him, fetched him a cordial slap on the shoulder withhis broad palm, and sung out with a hearty cheeriness:

  "_Americans_ for two-and-a-half and the money up! _Hey_?"

  The Reverend winced, but said mildly:

  "Yes--we are Americans."

  "Lord love you, you can just bet that's what _I_ am, every time! Put itthere!"

  He held out his Sahara of his palm, and the Reverend laid his diminutivehand in it, and got so cordial a shake that we heard his glove burstunder it.

  "Say, didn't I put you up right?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "Sho! I spotted you for _my_ kind the minute I heard your clack. You
been over here long?"

  "About four months. Have you been over long?"

  "_Long_? Well, I should say so! Going on two _years_, by geeminy! Say,are you homesick?"

  "No, I can't say that I am. Are you?"

  "Oh, _hell_, yes!" This with immense enthusiasm.

  The Reverend shrunk a little, in his clothes, and we were aware, ratherby instinct than otherwise, that he was throwing out signals of distressto us; but we did not interfere or try to succor him, for we were quitehappy.

  The young fellow hooked his arm into the Reverend's, now, with theconfiding and grateful air of a waif who has been longing for a friend,and a sympathetic ear, and a chance to lisp once more the sweet accentsof the mother-tongue--and then he limbered up the muscles of his mouthand turned himself loose--and with such a relish! Some of his words werenot Sunday-school words, so I am obliged to put blanks where they occur.

  "Yes indeedy! If _I_ ain't an American there _ain't_ any Americans,that's all. And when I heard you fellows gassing away in the good oldAmerican language, I'm ------ if it wasn't all I could do to keep fromhugging you! My tongue's all warped with trying to curl it around these------ forsaken wind-galled nine-jointed German words here; now I _tell_you it's awful good to lay it over a Christian word once more and kindof let the old taste soak it. I'm from western New York. My name isCholley Adams. I'm a student, you know. Been here going on two years.I'm learning to be a horse-doctor! I _like_ that part of it, you know,but ------these people, they won't learn a fellow in his ownlanguage, they make him learn in German; so before I could tackle thehorse-doctoring I had to tackle this miserable language.

  "First off, I thought it would certainly give me the botts, but I don'tmind now. I've got it where the hair's short, I think; and dontchuknow,they made me learn Latin, too. Now between you and me, I wouldn't give a------for all the Latin that was ever jabbered; and the first thing _I_calculate to do when I get through, is to just sit down and forget it.'Twon't take me long, and I don't mind the time, anyway. And I tellyou what! the difference between school-teaching over yonder andschool-teaching over here--sho! _we_ don't know anything about it! Hereyou've got to peg and peg and peg and there just ain't any let-up--andwhat you learn here, you've got to _know_, dontchuknow--or else you'llhave one of these ------ spavined, spectacles, ring-boned, knock-kneedold professors in your hair. I've been here long _enough_, and I'mgetting blessed tired of it, mind I _tell_ you. The old man wrote methat he was coming over in June, and said he'd take me home in August,whether I was done with my education or not, but durn him, he didn'tcome; never said why; just sent me a hamper of Sunday-school books, andtold me to be good, and hold on a while. I don't take to Sunday-schoolbooks, dontchuknow--I don't hanker after them when I can get pie--but I_read_ them, anyway, because whatever the old man tells me to do, that'sthe thing that I'm a-going to _do_, or tear something, you know. Ibuckled in and read all those books, because he wanted me to; but thatkind of thing don't excite _me_, I like something _hearty_. But I'mawful homesick. I'm homesick from ear-socket to crupper, and fromcrupper to hock-joint; but it ain't any use, I've got to stay here, tillthe old man drops the rag and give the word--yes, _sir_, right herein this ------ country I've got to linger till the old man says_come_!--and you bet your bottom dollar, Johnny, it _ain't_ just as easyas it is for a cat to have twins!"

  At the end of this profane and cordial explosion he fetched a prodigious"WHOOSH!" to relieve his lungs and make recognition of the heat, andthen he straightway dived into his narrative again for "Johnny's"benefit, beginning, "Well, ------it ain't any use talking, some of thoseold American words DO have a kind of a bully swing to them; a man can_express_ himself with 'em--a man can get at what he wants to _say_,dontchuknow."

  When we reached our hotel and it seemed that he was about to lose theReverend, he showed so much sorrow, and begged so hard and so earnestlythat the Reverend's heart was not hard enough to hold out against thepleadings--so he went away with the parent-honoring student, like aright Christian, and took supper with him in his lodgings, and sat inthe surf-beat of his slang and profanity till near midnight, and thenleft him--left him pretty well talked out, but grateful "clear downto his frogs," as he expressed it. The Reverend said it had transpiredduring the interview that "Cholley" Adams's father was an extensivedealer in horses in western New York; this accounted for Cholley'schoice of a profession. The Reverend brought away a pretty high opinionof Cholley as a manly young fellow, with stuff in him for a usefulcitizen; he considered him rather a rough gem, but a gem, nevertheless.