A TRAMP ABROAD.*
'MERE are several reasons why a book of this kind is difficult to criticise. For one thing, there is little in modern literature with which it can be compared outside the previous works of Mark Twain himself. He is the greatest writer living of travels con- taining an odd mixture of sober truth, droll exaggeration, and occasional buffoonery, all mixed up together in the most incongruous way imaginable. There are few books better worth reading than his Innocents at Home, with its vivid pictures of life among the Nevada miners, or on the west coast of America. And next to that book we may place the Innocents Abroad, although it lacks the vividness and fresh- ness of the first. Both are full of entertainment, and the first- named has not a dull page in it from the beginning to the end. Compared with these two books, A Tramp Abroad seems to us in nearly every respect inferior, and we shall presently set forth some of its more conspicuous blemishes. In the meantime, how- ever, even this relative condemnation must be qualified to some extent by the admission that the estimate of such books as these depends greatly on the mood in which they are read. There are times when one is in nowise disposed to criticise the texture And quality of a joke, so long as it moves to laughter, and it may be that we came across A Tramp Abroad at a time when this pleasant, easy-going mood was absent. At all events, we began early to quarrel with it, and by the time we reached the second volume found it often very hard reading indeed. Here and there the traces of Mark Twain's early skill and lightness of hand were visible enough, but as a rule, the process of manu- facturing the jocularity was so obvious that it spoilt the reader's enjoyment. There is a great irregularity in the book in other re- spects besides the quality of most of the fun, and it bears evidence of having been patched and pieced together from all sorts . of odd and old materials. The burlesque on the duel between M. Gambetta and M. de Fourtou, for example, was a very good skit at the time of its original appearance, but fits badly in with
• A Tramp Abroad. By Mark Twain. London: CUM° and Windt's.
a tolerably serious account of the student duels at the Uni- versity of Heidelberg. And we have seldom had to read any- thing poorer in any respect than the " official report " of Mark Twain's " agent " Harris, printed near the end of the first volume. It is meant to ridicule the vulgar habit which many have of interlarding their writings with foreign words, but it is a pitiful performance. This " agent," Harris, is made as much use of by Mark Twain as Mrs. Gamp made of her friend Mrs Harris. Indeed, it is quite possible that " Sairey's " friend was Mark Twain's agent's mother, although he does not state so. There is, however, no amusement in the " agent " himself, and the wit he causes in his master or "friend," is very dreary. They get up quarrels about nothing, and abuse each other in high burlesque, till we wish them both across the Atlantic. Sometimes we fancy that the author is borrowing from himself, as in that incident outside the Rigi-Kulm Hotel, which is thus described :—
" The night shut down, dark, and drizzly, and cold. About eight in the evening the fog lifted, and showed us a well worn path which led up a very steep rise to the left. We took it, and as soon as we had got far enough from the railway to render the finding it again an impossibility, the fog shut down on us dice more. We were in a bleak, unsheltered place now, and had to trudge right along in order to keep warm, though we rather expected to go over a precipice sooner or later. About nine o'clock we made an important discovery,—that we were not in any path. We groped around a while on our hands and knees, but could not find it ; so we sat down in the mud and the wet scant grass to wait. We were terrified into this by being suddenly confronted with a vast body, which showed itself vaguely for an instant, and in the next instant was smothered in the fog again. It was really the hotel we were after, monstrously magnified by the fog, but we took it for the face of a precipice, and decided not to try to claw up it. We sat there an hour, with chattering teeth and quivering bodies, and quarrelled over all sorts of trifles, but gave most of our attention to abusing each other for the stupidity of de- serting the railway track. We sat with our backs to that precipice, because what little wind there was came from that quarter. At some time or other the fog thinned a little.; we did not know when,. for we were facing the empty universe and the thinness could not show ; but at last Harris happened to look around, and there stood a huge, dim, spectral hotel where the precipice had been. One could faintly dis- cern the windows and chimneys, and a dull blur of lights. Our first emotion was deep, unutterable gratitude, our next was a foolish rage, born of the suspicion that possibly the hotel had been visible three- quarters of a hour while we sat there in those cold puddles quarrel- ling. Yes, it was the Rigi-Kulm Hotel,—the one that occupies the extreme summit, and whose remote little sparkle of lights we had often seen glinting high aloft among the stars from our balcony away down yonder in Lucerne."
This seems a sort of faint copy from that blood-curdling and exquisitely-told story in the Innocents at Home, of how Mark Twain, Ballow, and the Prussian 011endorff got lost in the snow on their way to Carson city, and lay down to die within a few yards of the overland mail station.
It would be unfair, however, to a writer of Mark Twain's eminence that we should confine ourselves to fault-finding alone, and it would be unfair to this work, which is, after all, in many places amusing and interesting. The descent of the Necker on a raft is not bad fooling in its way, and some of the " legends" with which the absurd narrative of perils by raft and river is broken are neatly told. Yet this comic episode also reminds one of the voyage on the Erie Canal, told by Mark Twain in the ballad called, " The Aged Pilot-Man," and printed many years ago in the Innocents at Home. The leading idea is precisely the same in both cases, and the incidents are frequently identical.
The drollest episode in the remarkable scientific expedition, called the ascent of the Riffelberg, is the attempt to get back per " glacier train." The travellers—Mark and his " agent " —had always great objections to needless exertion, so much so that " lifts " of all kinds were in constant request, and Mark never walked, however excellent his walking costume and get-up might be, when riding was possible. So, as the ascent of the mountain had cost him a week's arduous labour, not to speak of the loss of men, mules, cows, and scientific appliances, he con- cluded that the easiest way down again would be by riding on the glacier. The experiment was accordingly tried, with what success the following will show :—
" I waited and waited, but the glacier did not move. Night was coming on, the darkness began to gather—still we did not budge. It occurred to me then that there might be a time-table in Baedeker, it would be well to find out the hours of starting. I called for the book—it could not be found. Bradshaw would certainly contain a time-table, but no Bradshaw could be found. Very well, I must make the beat of the situation. So I pitched the tents, picketed the animals, milked the cows, bad supper, paregoricked the men, established the watch, and went to bed—with orders to call me as soon as we came in sight of Zermatt. I awoke about half- past ten next morning, and looked around. We hadn't budged a peg ! At first I could not understand it ; then it occurred to me that the old thing must be aground. So I cut down some trees and rigged a spar on the starboard and another on the port side, and fooled away upwards of three hours trying to spar her off. But it was no use. She was half a mile wide, and fifteen or twenty miles long, and there was no telling just whereabouts she was aground. The men began to show uneasiness too, and presently they came flying tome with ashy faces, saying she had sprung a leak. Nothing but my cool behaviour at this critical time saved us from another panic. I ordered them to show me the place. They led me to a spot where a huge boulder lay in a deep pool of clear and bril. liant water. It did look like a pretty bad leak, but I kept that to myself. I made a pump, and set the men to work to pump out the glacier. We made a success of it. I perceived then that it was not a leak at all. This boulder had descended from a precipice, and stopped on the ice in the middle of the glacier, and the sun had warmed it up every day, and consequently it had melted its way deeper and deeper into the ice, until at last it re- posed, as we had found it, in a deep pool of the clearest and coldest water. Presently Baedeker was found again, and I hunted eagerly for the time-table. There was none. The book simply said the glacier was moving all the time. This was satisfac- tory, so I shat up the book, and chose a good position to view the scenery as we passed along. I stood there some time enjoying the trip, but at last it occurred to me that we did not seem to be gaining any on the scenery. I said to myself, This confounded old thing's aground again, sure,'—and opened Baedeker to see if I could run across any remedy for these annoying interruptions. I soon found a sentence which threw a dazzling light upon the matter. It said, The Gornor Glacier travels at an average rate of a little less than an inch a day.' I have seldom felt so outraged. I have seldom had my confidence so wantonly betrayed. I made a small calculation : 1 inch a day, say 30 feet a year ; estimated distance to Zermatt, 31-18 miles. Time required to go by glacier, a little over five hundred years ! I said to myself, I can walk it quicker, and before I will patronise such a fraud as this, I will do it.' When I revealed to Harris the fact that the passenger part of this glacier—the central part—the lightning-express part, so to speak—was not due in Zermatt till the summer of 2,378, and that the baggage, coming along the slow edge, would not arrive until some generations later, he burst out with `That is European management all over ! An inch a day—think of that ; five hundred years to go a trifle over three miles! But I am not a bit surprised. It's a Catholic glacier. You can tell by the look of it. And the management !' I said no, I believed nothing but the extreme end of it was in a Catholic canton. Well, then it's a Government glacier,' said Harris. It's all the same. Over here the Government runs everything—so everything's slow ; slow and ill-managed. But with us, everything's done by private enterprise, and then there ain't much lolling around, you can depend on it. I wish Tom Scott could get his hands on this torpid old slab once—you'd see it take a:different gait from this.' I said I was sure he would increase the speed, if there was trade enough to justify it. He'd make trade,' said Harris. 'That's the difference between Govern- ments and individuals. Governments don't care, individuals do. Tom Scott would take all the trade ; in two years Gorner stock would go to 200, and inside of two more you would see all the other glaciers under the hammer for taxes.' After a reflective pause, Harris added, A little less than an inch a day ; a little less than an inch, mind you. Well, I am losing my reverence for glaciers.' "
This is a fair sample of the highest point reached in this book, but though we laugh at it, we feel that Mark Twain's hand has lost much of its cunning. But when the author takes to serious descriptive writing, he does it with a lightness of touch, a brightness and charm of style, that few possess. And there are always scattered through his pages those quaint, happy drolleries of expression which are characteristic of American humour. These enliven this book in many places, and in spite of its patchiness and occasional lapses into the merest drivel of would-be comic writing, will help to make it popular.
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