| 245A HOCHE-POTE OF GOSSIP
Chatter About Souvenir Spoons as an Incentive to Travel.
The Frenchman's Tea-Drinking Aunt-How Thebes Was Recalled - A Remarkable Family on Sunday Island.
The passion for collecting spoons from every city which one visits continues-as one would, say of a diphtheria epidemic-unabated. And every lady who really prides herself on having the daintest novelty in household godlets, now shows her full set of silver spoons, procured in cities as diverse as the patterns of the handles. San Francisco and Florence St. Petersburg and St. Augustine, Havana and Munich rattle together in metallic merriment, and display their roval designs, and Omaha is now represented in these collections by a most appropriate design. It is the head of an Omaha Indian-an actual portrait, and therefore, a really impressive face. The feathers of the head dress form the end of the handle, and the slope of the shoulders makes the outline of the spoon. Beneath, an open gate betrays the name of Omaha. This is the work of a very well known dealer a deal of good designing, but who has never confessed to his workmanship until recently. This maia for collecting spoons as souvenirs of one's journeyings is a harmless enough one, and does quite as well as any other device for getting rid of surplus money. But it emphasizes the fact which is undeniably true, that a good many travel, not because they want to see and know the world, but merely because they do not want to stay at home. It is somewhat irritating to know the benefits of life so frequently come to those who have not the ability to appreciate them. There are hundreds of girls in Europe today who remember very little about the cities they visit, except that they got a spoon of a certain design there on a particular street. And meantime, at home there are girls throbbing with the fine curiosity of the student or the adventurer, who would use such opportunities of travel in the largest and best ways. I remember once talking with a friend of mine who had just come back from Egypt.
"Tell me something about Thobes." I said to her, stretching myself on the grass in expectation of a treat. "Tell me everything about it that you can remember."
"Thebes," she said dreamily, taking a beautiful hat from her head and looking at it reflectively," is really the most surprising place. The shops are as good as those in Paris. You will hardly believe it, but I got this hat there."
I was telling this story one night to a friendly little Frenchman up in the harbor of Lake, in Alaska.
"Your friend was young," he cried charitably, "and you say she was also pretty." One forgives everything to such-even to be filled by one- that is also not past forgiveness. But consider my case. I have an aunt who is horribly old, but who never dies. When she does, what she has will be mine. She adores me, principally because when I go to see her I tell her very wild stories. All the time I am telling them she holds up her fan and emits little shrieks of horror. But all the same, she has cut off all her nephews, who are good young men, and do not amuse her. Fancy, then, my feeling when six months out of every year this dear aunt of mine exhausts her strength and consumes her fortune by traveling over the globe. And for what purpose? My dear madam, only to see in how many latitudes she can drink tea! Even if it were coffee the thought would not be so revoiting. But tea! She learned to drink it from an English lover whom she once had. He died, and I suppose her enternal tea drinking is a sort of votive offering-as one burns a lamp before the Virgin for the repose of a friend's soul. This aunt of mine has steeped tea in the shadow of the pyramids and never once looked up at the monuments. She has set her pot in the geyser water of New Zealand, and returned with poor reports of the country because her tea tasted of sulphur, she has roasted in Algiers and drunk tea with the notables of the English colony, and last year, if you can believe me, she actually went to South Africa and drank tea with a Dutch woman who whips her slaves with her own hands. She can show you a dent that her tea pot got in the Indian ocean, and another that it got on the steppnes of Russia, and I don't distinctly remember, but I think she told me she once dropped it off the matterhorn and walked down herself and picked it up off the ledge of a precipice."
He was a nice little Frenchman, and I highly valued him and his lies, but I found out that with all his cleverness he made mistakes.
There was an English woman on board our boat who divided her stateroom with me. She got on at a port somewhere in British Columbia, and at the close of a day in harbor. I had been ashore all day engaged in the pleasing occupation of wrecking buggies. That is to say, I had a good horse, who had a mouth of cast iron and a will as an unbending as the British lion's . And this brute instead, whenever we met a horse and vehicle on the road of turning out to the left. I resisted I swore by the American eagle that I would not be conquored by a bloody British quadruped. And I wasn't. I had my way. But to my astonishment I ran into nearly every team I encountered. it was not till the day was nearly ended that I found out that the horse was right and I was wrong, and that it was the custom of the country in driving to turn to the left.
| 245A HOCHE-POTE OF GOSSIP
Chatter About Souvenir Spoons as an Incentive to Travel.
The Frenchman's Tea-Drinking Aunt-How Thebes Was Recalled - A Remarkable Family on Sunday Island.
The passion for collecting spoons from every city which one visits continues-as one would, say of a diphtheria epidemic-unabated. And every lady who really prides herself on having the daintest novelty in household godlets, now shows her full set of silver spoons, procured in cities as diverse as the patterns of the handles. San Francisco and Florence St. Petersburg and St. Augustine, Havana and Munich rattle together in metallic merriment, and display their roval designs, and Omaha is now represented in these collections by a most appropriate design. It is the head of an Omaha Indian-an actual portrait, and therefore, a really impressive face. The feathers of the head dress form the end of the handle, and the slope of the shoulders makes the outline of the spoon. Beneath, an open gate betrays the name of Omaha. This is the work of a very well known dealer a deal of good designing, but who has never confessed to his workmanship until recently. This maia for collecting spoons as souvenirs of one's journeyings is a harmless enough one, and does quite as well as any other device for getting rid of surplus money. But it emphasizes the fact which is undeniably true, that a good many travel, not because they want to see and know the world, but merely because they do not want to stay at home. It is somewhat irritating to know the benefits of life so frequently come to those who have not the ability to appreciate them. There are hundreds of girls in Europe today who remember very little about the cities they visit, except that they got a spoon of a certain design there on a particular street. And meantime, at home there are girls throbbing with the fine curiosity of the student or the adventurer, who would use such opportunities of travel in the largest and best ways. I remember once talking with a friend of mine who had just come back from Egypt.
"Tell me something about Thobes." I said to her, stretching myself on the grass in expectation of a treat. "Tell me everything about it that you can remember."
"Thebes," she said dreamily, taking a beautiful hat from her head and looking at it reflectively," is really the most surprising place. The shops are as good as those in Paris. You will hardly believe it, but I got this hat there."
I was telling this story one night to a friendly little Frenchman up in the harbor of Lake, in Alaska.
"Your friend was young," he cried charitably, "and you say she was also pretty." One forgives everything to such-even to be filled by one- that is also not past forgiveness. But consider my case. I have an aunt who is horribly old, but who never dies. When she does, what she has will be mine. She adores me, principally because when I go to see her I tell her very wild stories. All the time I am telling them she holds up her fan and emits little shrieks of horror. But all the same, she has cut off all her nephews, who are good young men, and do not amuse her. Fancy, then, my feeling when six months out of every year this dear aunt of mine exhausts her strength and consumes her fortune by traveling over the globe. And for what purpose? My dear madam, only to see in how many latitudes she can drink tea! Even if it were coffee the thought would not be so revoiting. But tea! She learned to drink it from an English lover whom she once had. He died, and I suppose her enternal tea drinking is a sort of votive offering-as one burns a lamp before the Virgin for the repose of a friend's soul. This aunt of mine has steeped tea in the shadow of the pyramids and never once looked up at the monuments. She has set her pot in the geyser water of New Zealand, and returned with poor reports of the country because her tea tasted of sulphur, she has roasted in Algiers and drunk tea with the notables of the English colony, and last year, if you can believe me, she actually went to South Africa and drank tea with a Dutch woman who whips her slaves with her own hands. She can show you a dent that her tea pot got in the Indian ocean, and another that it got on the steppnes of Russia, and I don't distinctly remember, but I think she told me she once dropped it off the matterhorn and walked down herself and picked it up off the ledge of a precipice."
He was a nice little Frenchman, and I highly valued him and his lies, but I found out that with all his cleverness he made mistakes.
There was an English woman on board our boat who divided her stateroom with me. She got on at a port somewhere in British Columbia, and at the close of a day in harbor. I had been ashore all day engaged in the pleasing occupation of wrecking buggies. That is to say, I had a good horse, who had a mouth of cast iron and a will as an unbending as the British lion's . And this brute instead, whenever we met a horse and vehicle on the road of turning out to the left. I resisted I swore by the American eagle that I would not be conquored by a bloody British quadruped. And I wasn't. I had my way. But to my astonishment I ran into nearly every team I encountered. it was not till the day was nearly ended that I found out that the horse was right and I was wrong, and that it was the custom of the country in driving to turn to the left.
|
