18 DOWN THE ROAD

When you travel carry your romance with you.
Let nothing dampen it. Let nobody badger it out
of you. Be strong-minded enough to keep it.
Bring that victory home with you, and so show
that you were not quite unworthy to walk where
the Cseser's chariot rolled, being something of a
conqueror yourself. Never mind if some prosy
person smiles at your enthusiasm. In Paris, the
pastor of the American Chapel, who was, like
Ulysses, a much-traveled man, told a certain
young man he would get over his romance when
he reached Italy. The fleas would take it out of
him if nothing else did. The young man resolved
on the spot that the Paris pastor should be a
false prophet, and so he proved. That young man
took the whole curriculum of fleas — lay in the
Villa di Koma at Naples while the fleeting hours
of the soft Italian night and other nimble things
skipped over him ; he tossed and squirmed, and at
last, tired out, fell into uneasy slumber and
dreamed that the poisoned shirt of Nessus had
been put on him ; he woke stung with a sense of
outrage all over his body, and, defenseless against
his foes as Macbeth against the ghost of Banquo,
he cried, "Come, O mine enemies, as the 'rugged
Eussian bear, the armed rhinoceros, or the
Hyrcan tiger,' take any shape that hath dimen-
sions and is big enough to hit and we will lay
you, heaps on heaps, as Samson did the Philis-
tines!" He sufPered all this, and many "moving
accidents by flood and field," without having one



PLEASURES AND PAINS OF FOREIGN TRAVEL 19

drop of romantic blood bled out of his veins.
