Her fellow-travellers were not lavish of their rights, as Americans
are; what they got, that they kept; and in the run from Hamburg to
Leipsic she had several occasions to observe that no German, however
young or robust, dreams of offering a better place, if he has one, to a
lady in grace to her sex or age; if they got into a carriage too late to
secure a forward-looking seat, she rode backward to the end of that
stage. But if they appealed to their fellow-travellers for information
about changes, or stops, or any of the little facts that they wished to
make sure of, they were enlightened past possibility of error. At the
point where they might have gone wrong the explanations were renewed with
a thoughtfulness which showed that their anxieties had not been
forgotten. She said she could not see how any people could be both so
selfish and so sweet, and her husband seized the advantage of saying
something offensive:
"You women are so pampered in America that you are astonished when you
are treated in Europe like the mere human beings you are."
She answered with unexpected reasonableness:
"Yes, there's something in that; but when the Germans have taught us how
despicable we are as women, why do they treat us so well as human
beings?"
This was at ten o'clock, after she had ridden backward a long way, and at
last, within an hour of Leipsic, had got a seat confronting him.
Pages:
1142
1143
1144
1145
1146
1147
1148
1149
1150
1151
1152
1153
1154
1155
1156
1157
1158
1159
1160
1161
1162
1163
1164
1165
1166