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From Ponkapog to Pesth ; And, An Old Town by the Sea
From Ponkapog to Pesth And An Old Town by the Sea Author:Thomas Bailey Aldrich Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Ill BEGGARS, PROFESSIONAL AND AMATEUR There is one thing that sometimes comes near taking the joy out of the heart of foreign travel. It is one of those tr... more »ifles which frequently prove a severer test to philosophy than calamities. In the East this thing is called bakhshish, in Germany trinkgeld, in Italy bu- onamano, in France pourboire, in England — I do not know how it is called in England, but it is called for pretty often. In whatever soft, insidious syllable it may wrap itself, it is nothing but hateful. A piece of money which is not earned by honest service, but is extracted from you as a matter of course by any vagabond who may start out of the bowels of the earth, like a gnome or a kobold, at the sound of your footfall, is a shameless coin : it debases him that gives and him that takes. Everywhere on the Continent the tourist is looked upon as a bird to be plucked, and presently the bird himself feebly comes to regard plucking as his proper destiny, and abjectlyholds out his wing so long as there is a feather left on it. I say everywhere on the Continent; but, indeed, a man of ordinary agility might walk over the greater part of Europe on outstretched palms. Russians and Americans have the costly reputation of being lavish of money on their travels — the latter are pictured by the fervid Italian imagination as residing in gold-mines located in California and various parts of the State of New York — and are consequently favorites. The Frenchman is too artful and the Briton too brusque to cut up well as victims. The Italian rarely ventures far from his accustomed flea, but when he does, like the German (who, on the other hand, is fond of travelling), he voyages on a most economical basis. He carries off the unburnt candle-end, and his gratuities are homoeopathic. In ...« less