The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg, and Other Stories
'It may be that you are not in a hurry, just as you say, but we are.
Come, get aboard, gentlemen, get aboard--don't keep us waiting.'
But the Major would not get aboard himself nor allow me to do it. He
wanted his car, and said he must have it. This made the hurried and
perspiring conductor impatient, and he said:
'It's the best we can do--we can't do impossibilities. You will take the
section or go without. A mistake has been made and can't be rectified
at this late hour. It's a thing that happens now and then, and there
is nothing for it but to put up with it and make the best of it. Other
people do.'
'Ah, that is just it, you see. If they had stuck to their rights and
enforced them you wouldn't be trying to trample mine underfoot in
this bland way now. I haven't any disposition to give you unnecessary
trouble, but it is my duty to protect the next man from this kind of
imposition. So I must have my car. Otherwise I will wait in Chicago and
sue the company for violating its contract.'
'Sue the company?--for a thing like that!'
'Certainly.'
'Do you really mean that?'
'Indeed, I do.'
The conductor looked the Major over wonderingly, and then said:
'It beats me--it's bran-new--I've never struck the mate to it
before. But I swear I think you'd do it. Look here, I'll send for the
station-master.'
When the station-master came he was a good deal annoyed--at the Major,
not at the person who had made the mistake. He was rather brusque, and
took the same position which the conductor had taken in the beginning;
but he failed to move the soft-spoken artilleryman, who still insisted
that he must have his car. However, it was plain that there was only
one strong side in this case, and that that side was the Major's. The
station-master banished his annoyed manner, and became pleasant and
even half-apologetic. This made a good opening for a compromise, and
the Major made a concession. He said he would give up the engaged
state-room, but he must have a state-room. After a deal of ransacking,
one was found whose owner was persuadable; he exchanged it for our
section, and we got away at last. The conductor called on us in the
evening, and was kind and courteous and obliging, and we had a long
talk and got to be good friends. He said he wished the public would make
trouble oftener--it would have a good effect. He said that the railroads
could not be expected to do their whole duty by the traveller unless the
traveller would take some interest in the matter himself.
I hoped that we were done reforming for the trip now, but it was not so.
In the hotel car, in the morning, the Major called for broiled chicken.
The waiter said:
'It's not in the bill of fare, sir; we do not serve anything but what is
in the bill.'
'That gentleman yonder is eating a broiled chicken.'
'Yes, but that is different. He is one of the superintendents of the
road.'
'Then all the more must I have broiled chicken. I do not like these
discriminations. Please hurry--bring me a broiled chicken.'
The waiter brought the steward, who explained in a low and polite voice
that the thing was impossible--it was against the rule, and the rule was
rigid.
'Very well, then, you must either apply it impartially or break it
impartially. You must take that gentleman's chicken away from him or
bring me one.'
The steward was puzzled, and did not quite know what to do. He began an
incoherent argument, but the conductor came along just then, and asked
what the difficulty was. The steward explained that here was a gentleman
who was insisting on having a chicken when it was dead against the rule
and not in the bill. The conductor said:
'Stick by your rules--you haven't any option. Wait a moment--is this the
gentleman?' Then he laughed and said: 'Never mind your rules--it's my
advice, and sound: give him anything he wants--don't get him started on
his rights. Give him whatever he asks for; and it you haven't got it,
stop the train and get it.'
The Major ate the chicken, but said he did it from a sense of duty and
to establish a principle, for he did not like chicken.
I missed the Fair it is true, but I picked up some diplomatic tricks
which I and the reader may find handy and useful as we go along.
DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES
VIENNA, January 5--I find in this morning's papers the statement that
the Government of the United States has paid to the two members of the
Peace Commission entitled to receive money for their services 100,000
dollars each for their six weeks' work in Paris.
I hope that this is true. I will allow myself the satisfaction of
considering that it is true, and of treating it as a thing finished and
settled.
It is a precedent; and ought to be a welcome one to our country. A
precedent always has a chance to be valuable (as well as the other way);
and its best chance to be valuable (or the other way) is when it takes
such a striking form as to fix a whole nation's attention upon it. If it
come justified out of the discussion which will follow, it will find a
career ready and waiting for it.
We realise that the edifice of public justice is built of precedents,
from the ground upward; but we do not always realise that all the
other details of our civilisation are likewise built of precedents.
The changes also which they undergo are due to the intrusion of new
precedents, which hold their ground against opposition, and keep their
place. A precedent may die at birth, or it may live--it is mainly a
matter of luck. If it be imitated once, it has a chance; if twice a
better chance; if three times it is reaching a point where account must
be taken of it; if four, five, or six times, it has probably come to
stay--for a whole century, possibly. If a town start a new bow, or a new
dance, or a new temperance project, or a new kind of hat, and can get
the precedent adopted in the next town, the career of that precedent is
begun; and it will be unsafe to bet as to where the end of its journey
is going to be. It may not get this start at all, and may have no
career; but, if a crown prince introduce the precedent, it will attract
vast attention, and its chances for a career are so great as to amount
almost to a certainty.
For a long time we have been reaping damage from a couple of disastrous
precedents. One is the precedent of shabby pay to public servants
standing for the power and dignity of the Republic in foreign lands; the
other is a precedent condemning them to exhibit themselves officially
in clothes which are not only without grace or dignity, but are a pretty
loud and pious rebuke to the vain and frivolous costumes worn by the
other officials. To our day an American ambassador's official costume
remains under the reproach of these defects. At a public function in
a European court all foreign representatives except ours wear clothes
which in some way distinguish them from the unofficial throng, and mark
them as standing for their countries. But our representative appears
in a plain black swallow-tail, which stands for neither country, nor
people. It has no nationality. It is found in all countries; it is as
international as a night-shirt. It has no particular meaning; but
our Government tries to give it one; it tries to make it stand for
Republican Simplicity, modesty and unpretentiousness. Tries, and without
doubt fails, for it is not conceivable that this loud ostentation of
simplicity deceives any one. The statue that advertises its modesty with
a fig-leaf really brings its modesty under suspicion. Worn officially,
our nonconforming swallow-tail is a declaration of ungracious
independence in the matter of manners, and is uncourteous. It says to
all around: 'In Rome we do not choose to do as Rome does; we refuse
to respect your tastes and your traditions; we make no sacrifices to
anyone's customs and prejudices; we yield no jot to the courtesies of
life; we prefer our manners, and intrude them here.'
That is not the true American spirit, and those clothes misrepresent us.
When a foreigner comes among us and trespasses against our customs and
our code of manners, we are offended, and justly so; but our Government
commands our ambassadors to wear abroad an official dress which is an
offence against foreign manners and customs; and the discredit of it
falls upon the nation.
We did not dress our public functionaries in undistinguished raiment
before Franklin's time; and the change would not have come if he had
been an obscurity. But he was such a colossal figure in the world that
whatever he did of an unusual nature attracted the world's attention,
and became a precedent. In the case of clothes, the next representative
after him, and the next, had to imitate it. After that, the thing was
custom; and custom is a petrifaction: nothing but dynamite can dislodge
it for a century. We imagine that our queer official costumery was
deliberately devised to symbolise our Republican Simplicity--a quality
which we have never possessed, and are too old to acquire now, if we
had any use for it or any leaning toward it. But it is not so; there was
nothing deliberate about it; it grew naturally and heedlessly out of the
precedent set by Franklin.
If it had been an intentional thing, and based upon a principle, it
would not have stopped where it did: we should have applied it further.
Instead of clothing our admirals and generals, for courts-martial and
other public functions, in superb dress uniforms blazing with colour and
gold, the Government would put them in swallow-tails and white cravats,
and make them look like ambassadors and lackeys. If I am wrong in making
Franklin the father of our curious official clothes, it is no matter--he
will be able to stand it.
It is my opinion--and I make no charge for the suggestion--that,
whenever we appoint an ambassador or a minister, we ought to confer upon
him the temporary rank of admiral or general, and allow him to wear the
corresponding uniform at public functions in foreign countries. I would
recommend this for the reason that it is not consonant with the dignity
of the United States of America that her representative should
appear upon occasions of state in a dress which makes him glaringly
conspicuous; and that is what his present undertaker-outfit does when
it appears, with its dismal smudge, in the midst of the butterfly
splendours of a Continental court. It is a most trying position for a
shy man, a modest man, a man accustomed to being like other people.
He is the most striking figure present; there is no hiding from the
multitudinous eyes. It would be funny, if it were not such a cruel
spectacle, to see the hunted creature in his solemn sables scuffling
around in that sea of vivid colour, like a mislaid Presbyterian in
perdition. We are all aware that our representative's dress should not
compel too much attention; for anybody but an Indian chief knows that
that is a vulgarity. I am saying these things in the interest of our
national pride and dignity. Our representative is the flag. He is the
Republic. He is the United States of America. And when these embodiments
pass by, we do not want them scoffed at; we desire that people shall be
obliged to concede that they are worthily clothed, and politely.
Our Government is oddly inconsistent in this matter of official dress.
When its representative is a civilian who has not been a solider, it
restricts him to the black swallow-tail and white tie; but if he is a
civilian who has been a solider, it allows him to wear the uniform of
his former rank as an official dress. When General Sickles was minister
to Spain, he always wore, when on official duty, the dress uniform of
a major-general. When General Grant visited foreign courts, he went
handsomely and properly ablaze in the uniform of a full general, and