A Tramp Abroad

One would think that after the world had become so speedily and so fully acquainted with fools and fooleries, there could not be much left to surprise a man; but he is constantly being surprised by his own countrymen.

On my first arrival in Germany I was in danger of being gulled by a person who represented himself as an architect and who wished to engage me as assistant on a job of work which he had on hand. He wanted a traveller — to go along and make measurements. He made it plain that I must be willing to travel, and to sleep in all sorts of public accommodations; and, when I asked him the pay for the job, he said, with an air of generous frankness, that it was not to be a business arrangement at all, but simply a friendship — a long, affectionate, confidential friendship — which should last forever; and that the only money to be expected would be a little for travelling expenses now and then, if we happened to meet with a locomotive.

I do not know whether I should have accepted the situation if I had believed the man to be an honest fool; but finding him to be an artful one, and smelling a trap somewhere, I made my escape and saved my pocket-money. It was well I did, too; for he afterwards came straight down on a gentleman who had the misfortune to be his neighbour, and who believed him to be an honest man, and took him at his word.

I will not give you the trick; it is not worth the trouble, and I do not care to be the means of intimating how cheap a fellow can, if he likes, make himself appear to be in company with such people as pickpockets and confidence-men. Besides, I am not sure that it is worth while to publish these things; if one does, the other fellows get the notion and practise the trick, and it becomes so well known that no one can be taken in by it any more.

In Switzerland I learned one solid truth — that human nature remains the same under all skies. Men who steal in America steal in Germany, and men who are generous in England are generous in France. To be a man one must be a man any place; and the qualities that make a gentleman are cosmopolitan.