A TRAMP ABROAD By Mark Twain

bullied out of her “rights” by ill-bred foreigners,

even if she was alone and unprotected.

“But I have rights, also, madam. My ticket entitles me

to a seat, but you are occupying half of it.”

“I will not talk with you, sir. What right have you

to speak to me? I do not know you. One would know

you came from a land where there are no gentlemen.

No GENTLEMAN would treat a lady as you have treated me.”

“I come from a region where a lady would hardly give me

the same provocation.”

“You have insulted me, sir! You have intimated that I am

not a lady–and I hope I am NOT one, after the pattern

of your country.”

“I beg that you will give yourself no alarm on that head,

madam; but at the same time I must insist–always

respectfully–that you let me have my seat.”

Here the fragile laundress burst into tears and sobs.

“I never was so insulted before! Never, never! It

is shameful, it is brutal, it is base, to bully and abuse

an unprotected lady who has lost the use of her limbs

and cannot put her feet to the floor without agony!”

“Good heavens, madam, why didn’t you say that at first! I

offer a thousand pardons. And I offer them most sincerely.

I did not know–I COULD not know–anything was the matter.

You are most welcome to the seat, and would have been

from the first if I had only known. I am truly sorry it

all happened, I do assure you.”

But he couldn’t get a word of forgiveness out of her.

She simply sobbed and sniffed in a subdued but wholly

unappeasable way for two long hours, meantime crowding

the man more than ever with her undertaker-furniture

and paying no sort of attention to his frequent and

humble little efforts to do something for her comfort.

Then the train halted at the Italian line and she hopped

up and marched out of the car with as firm a leg as any

washerwoman of all her tribe! And how sick I was, to see

how she had fooled me.

Turin is a very fine city. In the matter of roominess

it transcends anything that was ever dreamed of before,

I fancy. It sits in the midst of a vast dead-level, and one

is obliged to imagine that land may be had for the asking,

and no taxes to pay, so lavishly do they use it.

The streets are extravagantly wide, the paved squares

are prodigious, the houses are huge and handsome,

and compacted into uniform blocks that stretch away as

straight as an arrow, into the distance. The sidewalks

are about as wide as ordinary European STREETS, and are

covered over with a double arcade supported on great stone

piers or columns. One walks from one end to the other

of these spacious streets, under shelter all the time,

and all his course is lined with the prettiest of shops

and the most inviting dining-houses.

There is a wide and lengthy court, glittering with the

most wickedly enticing shops, which is roofed with glass,

high aloft overhead, and paved with soft-toned marbles

laid in graceful figures; and at night when the place

is brilliant with gas and populous with a sauntering

and chatting and laughing multitude of pleasure-seekers,

it is a spectacle worth seeing.

Everything is on a large scale; the public buildings,

for instance–and they are architecturally imposing,

too, as well as large. The big squares have big bronze

monuments in them. At the hotel they gave us rooms

that were alarming, for size, and parlor to match.

It was well the weather required no fire in the parlor,

for I think one might as well have tried to warm a park.

The place would have a warm look, though, in any weather,

for the window-curtains were of red silk damask,

and the walls were covered with the same fire-hued

goods–so, also, were the four sofas and the brigade

of chairs. The furniture, the ornaments, the chandeliers,

the carpets, were all new and bright and costly.

We did not need a parlor at all, but they said it belonged

to the two bedrooms and we might use it if we chose.