Part 5 (1/2)
”I think not, do you know who I am?”
”No, monsieur.”
”Then don't say a word about anything being closed until you find out.
I am an American. Here is my pa.s.sport. Fling open the doors!”
At which the gendarme would prostrate himself and the American would pa.s.s in, while a large body of English, French and German tourists would stand outside and envy him.
Alas, it was a day-dream. Every palace that was closed seemed to be really closed, and when we did find the gendarme who was to be humiliated, we discovered that we couldn't speak his language, and, besides, we felt so humble in his presence that we wouldn't have ventured to talk to him under any circ.u.mstances.
We travelled in England, Ireland, Holland, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and France, crossing and recrossing frontiers, and we never encountered a man, woman or child who would consent to look at our pa.s.sports.
On the other hand, the cable code is something that no tourist should be without. Whenever he is feeling blue or downcast he can open the code book and get a few hearty laughs. Suppose he wishes to send a message to his brother in Toledo. The code permits him to concentrate his message into the tabloid form and put a long newsy letter into two or three words. He opens the blue book and finds that he can send any of the following tidings to Toledo:
_Adjunctio_--Apartments required are engaged and will be ready for occupation on Wednesday.
_Amalior_--Bills of lading have not been endorsed.
_Animatio_--Twins, boy and girl, all well.
_Collaria_--Received invitation to dinner and theatre, _Illaqueo_--Have a fly at the station to meet train arriving at eight o'clock.
_Napina_--Machinery out of order. Delay will be great.
_Remissus_--Can you obtain good security?
And so on, page after page. Theoretically, this vest pocket volume is a valuable helpmate, but when Mr. Peasley wanted to cable Iowa to have his Masonic dues paid and let Bill Levison take the river farm for another year and try to collect the money from Joe Spillers, the code book did not seem to have the proper equivalents.
We had with us on the boat an American who carried a very elaborate code book. All the way up from Plymouth to London he was working on a cablegram to his wife. When he turned it over to the operator, this is the joyous message that went singing through the water back to New York:
”LIZCAM, New York. Hobgoblin buckwheat explosion manifold cranberry suspicious.
”JAMES.”
He showed us a copy and seemed to be very proud of it.
”That's what you save by having a code,” he explained.
”What will Lizcam think when he receives that?”
”He? That's my wife's registered cable address. 'Liz' for Lizzie and 'Cam' for Campbell. Her maiden name was Lizzie Campbell.”
”Well, what does that mean about a buckwheat hobgoblin having a suspicious explosion?”
”Oh, those words are selected arbitrarily to represent full sentences in the code. When my wife gets that cable she will look up those words one after the other and elaborate the message so that it will read like this:
He showed us the following: