Читать книгу American Adventures: A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' - Julian Street - Страница 21

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When two men are traveling together on an equal footing, and it becomes necessary to decide between two rooms in a hotel, how is the decision to be made? Which man is to take the big, bright corner room, and which the little room that faces on the court and is fragrant of the bakery below? Or again, which man shall occupy the lower berth in a Pullman drawing-room, and which shall try to sleep upon the shelf-like couch? Or when there is but one lower left, which shall take the upper? If an extra kit bag be required for the use of both, who shall pay for it and own it at the journey's end? Who shall pay for this meal and who for that? Or yet again, if there be but one cheap heavy overcoat in a shop, and both desire to own that coat, which one shall have the right of purchase? Who shall tip the bell boy for bringing up the bags, or the porter for taking down the trunks? Who shall take home from a dance the girl both want to take, and who shall escort the unattractive one who resides in a remote suburb?

Between two able-bodied men there is no uncomfortable complication of politeness in such matters. On a brief journey there might be, but on a long journey the thin veil of factitious courtesy is cast aside; each wants his fair share of what is best and makes no pretense to the contrary.

Upon our first long journey together, some years ago, my companion and I established a custom of settling all such questions by matching coins, and we have maintained this habit ever since. Upon the whole it has worked well. We have matched for everything except railroad fares and hotel bills, and though fortune has sometimes favored one or the other for a time, I believe that, had we kept accounts, we should find ourselves to-day practically even.

Our system of matching has some correlated customs. Now and then, for instance, when one of us is unlucky and has been "stuck" for a series of meals, the other, in partial reparation, will declare a "party." Birthdays and holidays also call for parties, and sometimes there will be a party for no particular reason other than that we feel like having one.

Two of our parties on this journey have been given in the basement café of the Shoreham Hotel in Washington. Both were supper parties. The first I gave in honor of my companion, for the reason that we both like the Shoreham café, and that a party seemed to be about due. That party brought on the other, which occurred a few nights later and was given by us jointly in honor of a very beautiful and talented young actress. And this one, we agree, was, in a way, the most amusing of all the parties we have had together.

It was early in the morning, when we were leaving the café after the first party, that we encountered the lady who caused the second one. I had never met her, but I was aware that my companion knew her, for he talked about her in his sleep. She was having supper with a gentleman at a table near the door, and had you seen her it would be unnecessary for me to tell you that my companion stopped to speak to her, and that I hung around until he introduced me.

After we had stood beside her, for a time, talking and gazing down into her beautiful world-wise eyes, the gentleman with whom she was supping took pity upon us, and upon the waiters, whose passageway we blocked, and invited us to sit down.

It was doubly delightful to meet her there in Washington, for besides being beautiful and celebrated, she had just come from New York and was able to give us news of mutual friends, bringing us up to date on suits for separation, alimony, and alienation of affections, on divorces and remarriages, and all the little items one loses track of when one has been away for a fortnight.

"I shall be playing in Washington all this week," she said as we were about to leave. "I hope that we may see each other again."

Whom did she mean by "we"? True, she looked at my companion as she spoke, but he was seated at one side of her and I at the other, and even with such eyes as hers, she could not have looked at both of us at once. Certainly the hope she had expressed was shared by me. I hoped that "we" might meet again, and it seemed to me desirable at the moment that she should understand (and that my companion should be reminded) that he and I were as Damon and Pythias, as Castor and Pollux, as Pylades and Orestes, and all that sort of thing. Therefore I leaped quickly at the word "we," and, before my companion had time to answer, replied:

"I hope so too."

This brought her eyes to me. She looked surprised, I thought, but what of that? Don't women like to be surprised? Don't they like men to be strong, resolute, determined, like heroes in the moving pictures? Don't they like to see a man handle matters with dash? I was determined to be dashing.

"We are off to Virginia to-morrow morning," I continued. "We are going to Fredericksburg and Charlottesville, and into the fox-hunting country. If we can get back here Saturday night let's have a party."

I spoke of the hunting country debonairely. I did not care what she thought my companion was going to the hunting country for, but I did not wish her to think that I was going only to look on. On the contrary, I desired her to suppose that I should presently be wearing a pair of beautiful, slim-legged riding boots and a pink coat, and leaping a thoroughbred mount over fences and gates. I wished her to believe me a wild, reckless, devil of a fellow, and to worry throughout the week lest I be killed in a fall from my horse, and she never see me more—poor girl!

That she felt such emotions I have since had reason to doubt. However, the idea of a party after the play on Saturday night seemed to appeal to her, and it was arranged that my companion and I should endeavor to get back to Washington after the Piedmont Hunt races, which we were to attend on Saturday afternoon, and that if we could get back we should telegraph to her.

We kept our agreement—but I shall come to that later.

Next morning we took train for Fredericksburg.

The city manager who runs the town is a good housekeeper; his streets are wide, pretty, and clean; and though there are many historic buildings—including the home of Washington's mother and the house in which Washington became a Mason—there are enough good new ones to give the place a progressive look.

In the days of the State's magnificence Fredericksburg was the center for all this part of northeastern Virginia, and particularly for the Rappahannock Valley; and from pre-Revolutionary times, when tobacco was legal tender and ministers got roaring drunk, down to the Civil War, there came rolling into the town the coaches of the great plantation owners of the region, who used Fredericksburg as a headquarters for drinking, gambling, and business. Among these probably the most famous was "King" Carter, who not only owned miles upon miles of land and a thousand slaves, but was the husband of five (successive) Mrs. Carters.

Falmouth, a river town a mile above Fredericksburg, where a few scattered houses stand to-day, was in early times a busy place. It is said that the first flour mill in America stood there, and that one Gordon, who made his money by shipping flour and tobacco direct from his wharf to England, and bringing back bricks as ballast for his ships, was the first American millionaire.

Besides having known intimately such historic figures as Washington, Monroe, and Robert E. Lee, and having been the scene of sanguinary fighting in the Civil War, the neighborhood of Fredericksburg boasts the birth-place of a man of whom I wish to speak briefly here, for the reason that he was a great man, that he has been partially overlooked by history, and that it is said in the South that the fame which should justly be his has been deliberately withheld by historians and politicians for the sole reason that as a naval officer he espoused the southern cause in the Civil War.

Every one who has heard of Robert Fulton, certainly every one who has heard of S. F. B. Morse or Cyrus W. Field, ought also to have heard of Matthew Fontaine Maury. But that is not the case. For myself, I must confess that, until I visited Virginia, I was ignorant of the fact that such a person had existed; nor have northern schoolboys, to whom I have spoken of Maury, so much as heard his name. Yet there is no one living in the United States, or in any civilized country, whose daily life is not affected through the scientific researches and attainments of this man.

Maury's claim to fame rests on his eminent services to navigation and meteorology. If Humboldt's work, published in 1817, was the first great contribution to meteorological science, it remained for Maury to make that science exact.

While it is perhaps an exaggeration to say that Maury alone laid the foundation for our present Weather Bureau, he certainly shares with Professors Redfield, Espy, Loomis, Joseph Henry, Dr. Increase Lapham, and others, the honor of having been one of the first to suggest the feasibility of our present systematic storm warnings.

Maury was born in 1806. When nineteen years of age he secured a midshipman's warrant, and, as there was no naval academy at Annapolis then, was immediately assigned to a man-of-war. Within six years he was master of an American war vessel. Before starting on a voyage to the Pacific he sought information on the winds and currents, and finding that it was not available, determined himself to gather it for general publication. This he did, issuing a book upon the subject.

When a broken leg, the result of a stage-coach accident, caused his retirement from active service at sea, he continued his studies, and, in recognition of his services to navigation, was given charge of the Depot of Charts and Instruments at Washington. There he found stored away the log books of American naval vessels, and from the vast number of observations they contained, began the compilation of the Wind and Currents Charts known to all mariners.

A monograph on Maury, issued by N. W. Ayer & Son, of Philadelphia, says of these charts:

"They were, at first, received with indifference and incredulity. Finally, a Captain Jackson determined to trust the new chart absolutely. As a result he made a round trip to Rio de Janeiro in the time often required for the outward passage alone. Later, four clipper ships started from New York for San Francisco, via Cape Horn. These vessels arrived at their destination in the order determined by the degree of fidelity with which they had followed the directions of Maury's charts. The arrival of these ships in San Francisco marked, likewise, the arrival of Maury's Wind and Currents Charts in the lasting favor of the mariners of the world. The average voyage to San Francisco was reduced, by use of the charts, from one hundred and eighty-three to one hundred and thirty-five days, a saving of forty-eight days.

"Soon after this, the ship San Francisco, with hundreds of United States troops on board, foundered in an Atlantic hurricane. The rumor reached port that there was need of help. Maury was called upon to indicate her probable location. He set to work to show where the wind and currents would combine to place a helpless wreck, and marked the place with a blue pencil. There the relief was sent, and there the survivors of the wreck were found. From that day to this, Maury's word has been accepted without challenge by the matter-of-fact men of the sea.

"These charts, only a few in number, are among the most wonderful and useful productions of the human mind. One of them combined the result of 1,159,353 separate observations on the force and direction of the wind, and upward of 100,000 observations on the height of the barometer, at sea. As the value of such observations was recognized, more of them were made. Through the genius and devotion of one man, Commander Maury, every ship became a floating observatory, keeping careful records of winds, currents, limits of fogs, icebergs, rain areas, temperature, soundings, etc., while every maritime nation of the world coöperated in a work that was to redound to the benefit of commerce and navigation, the increase of knowledge, the good of all.

"In 1853, at the instance of Commander Maury, the United States called the celebrated Brussels Conference for the coöperation of nations in matters pertaining to maritime affairs. At this conference, Maury advocated the extension of the system of meteorological observation to the land, thus forming a weather bureau helpful to agriculture. This he urged in papers and addresses to the close of his life. Our present Weather Bureau and Signal Service are largely the outcome of his perception and advocacy."

Maury's "Physical Geography of the Sea," the work by which he is best known, was published in 1855. He discovered, among other things, the causes of the Gulf Stream, and the existence of the still-water plateau of the North Atlantic which made possible the laying of the first cable. Cyrus W. Field said, with reference to Maury's work in this connection: "Maury furnished the brains, England gave the money, and I did the work."