being like other people. He is the most striking figure
present ; there is no hiding from the multitudinous eyes.
It would be funny, if it were not such a cruel spectacle, to
see the hunted creature in his solemn sables scuffling
around in that sea of vivid colour, like a mislaid Presbyterian
in perdition. We are all aware that our representative s
dress should not compel too much attention ; for anybody
but an Indian chief knows that that is a vulgarity. I am
saying these things in the interest of our national pride and
dignity. Our representative is the flag. He is the Repub
lic. He is the United States of America. And when these



DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES 275

embodiments pass by, we do not want them scoffed at ; we
desire that people shall be obliged to concede that they are
worthily clothed, and politely.

Our Government is oddly inconsistent in this matter of
official dress. When its representative is a civilian who has
not been a soldier, it restricts him to the black swallow-tail
and white tie ; but if he is a civilian who has been a soldier,
it allows him to wear the uniform of his former rank as an
official dress. When General Sickles was minister to Spain,
he always wore, when on official duty, the dress uniform of
a major-general. When General Grant visited foreign
courts, he went handsomely and properly ablaze in the
uniform of a full general, and was introduced by diplomatic
Survivals of his own Presidential Administration. The
latter, by official necessity, went in the meek and lowly
swallow-tail a deliciously sarcastic contrast : the one dress
representing the honest and honourable dignity of the
nation ; the other, the cheap hypocrisy of the Republican
Simplicity tradition. In Paris our present representative
can perform his official functions reputably clothed ; for he
was an officer in the Civil War. In London our late
ambassador was similarly situated ; for he, also, was an
officer in the Civil War. But Mr. Choate must represent
the Great Republic even at official breakfasts at seven in
the morning in that same old funny swallow-tail.

Our Government s notions about proprieties of costume
are indeed very, very odd as suggested by that last fact.
The swallow-tail is recognised the world over as not wear
able in the daytime ; it is a night-dress, and a night-dress
only a night-shirt is not more so. Yet, when our repre
sentative makes an official visit in the morning, he is
obliged by his Government to go in that night-dress. It
makes the very cab-horses laugh.



276 DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES

The truth is, that for awhile during the present
century, and up to something short of forty years ago, we
had a lucid interval, and dropped the Republican Simplicity
sham, and dressed our foreign representatives in a handsome
and becoming official costume. This was discarded by-and-
by, and the swallow-tail substituted. I believe it is not now
known which statesman brought about this change ; but we
all know that, stupid as he was as to diplomatic proprieties
in dress, he would not have sent his daughter to a state ball
in a corn-shucking costume, nor to a corn-shucking in a
state-ball costume, to be harshly criticised as an ill-mannered
offender against the proprieties of custom in both places.
And we know another thing, viz. that he himself would
not have wounded the tastes and feelings of a family of
mourners by attending a funeral in their house in a costume
which was an offence against the dignities and decorum
prescribed by tradition and sanctified by custom. Yet that
man was so heedless as not to reflect that all the social
customs of civilised peoples are entitled to respectful
observance, and that no man with a right spirit of courtesy
in him ever has any disposition to transgress these customs.

There is still another argument for a rational diplomatic
dress a business argument. We are a trading nation ;
and our representative is our business agent. If he is
respected, esteemed, and liked where he is stationed, he can
exercise an influence which can extend our trade and for
ward our prosperity. A considerable number of his
business activities have their field in his social relations ;
and clothes which do not offend against local manners
and customs and prejudices are a valuable part of his
equipment in this matter would be, if Franklin had died
earlier.

I have not done with gratis suggestions yet. We made



DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES 277

a great and valuable advance when we instituted the office
of ambassador. That lofty rank endows its possessor with
several times as much influence, consideration, and effective
ness as the rank of minister bestows. For the sake of the
country s dignity and for the sake of her advantage
commercially, we should have ambassadors, not ministers, at
the great courts of the world.

But not at present salaries ! No ; if we are to maintain
present salaries, let us make no more ambassadors ; and let
us unmake those we have already made. The great position,
without the means of respectably maintaining it there could
be no wisdom in that. A foreign representative, to be valu
able to his country, must be on good terms with the officials of
the capital and with the rest of the influential folk. He
must mingle with this society ; he cannot sit at home it
is not business, it butters no commercial parsnips. He
must attend the dinners, banquets, suppers, balls, receptions,
and must return these hospitalities. He should return as
good as he gets, too, for the sake of the dignity of his
country, and for the sake of Business. Have we ever had
a minister or an ambassador who could do this on his
salary ? No not once, from Franklin s time to ours.
Other countries understand the commercial value of pro
perly lining the pockets of their representatives ; but
apparently our Government has not learned it. England is
the most successful trader of the several trading nations ;
and she takes good care of the watchmen who keep guard
in her commercial towers. It has been a long time, now,
since we needed to blush for our representatives abroad.
It has become custom to send our fittest. We send men
of distinction, cultivation, character our ablest, our
choicest, our best. Then we cripple their efficiency
through the meagreness of their pay. Here is a list of



278 DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES

salaries for English and American ministers and ambassa
dors :



City


Salaries


American


English






#45 ooo
40,000
40,000
40,000
39,000
35,000
32,500


Berlin . .

Vienna . . .
Constantinople


17,500
I2,OOO
10,000

17,500

12,000


Rome . .
Washington .



Sir Julian Pauncefote, the English ambassador at
Washington, has a very fine house besides at no damage
to his salary.

English ambassadors pay no house rent ; they live in
palaces owned by England. Our representatives pay
house-rent out of their salaries. You can judge by the
above figures what kind of houses the United States of
America has been used to living in abroad, and what sort
of return-entertaining she has done. There is not a salary
in our list which would properly house the representative
receiving it, and, in addition, pay $3,000 toward his family s
bacon and doughnuts the strange but economical and
customary fare of the American ambassador s household,
except on Sundays, when petrified Boston crackers are
added.

The ambassadors and ministers of foreign nations not
only have generous salaries, but their Governments provide
them with money wherewith to pay a considerable part of
their hospitality bills. I believe our Government pays no
hospitality bills except those incurred by the navy.
Through this concession to the navy, that arm is able to do



DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES 279

us credit in foreign parts ; and certainly that is well and
politic. But why the Government does not think it well
and politic that our diplomats should be able to do us like
credit abroad is one of those mysterious inconsistencies
which have been puzzling me ever since I stopped trying
to understand base-ball and took up statesmanship as a
pastime.

To return to the matter of house-rent. Good houses,
properly furnished, in European capitals, are not to be had
at small figures. Consequently, our foreign representatives
have been accustomed to live in garrets sometimes on the
roof. Being poor men, it has been the best they could do
on the salary which the Government has paid them. How
could they adequately return the hospitalities shown them ?
It was impossible. It would have exhausted the salary in
three months. Still, it was their official duty to entertain
the influential after some sort of fashion ; and they did the
best they could with their limited purse. In return for
champagne they furnished lemonade ; in return for game
they furnished ham ; in return for whale they furnished
sardines ; in return for liquors they furnished condensed
milk ; in return for the battalion of liveried and powdered
flunkeys they furnished the hired girl ; in return for the
fairy wilderness of sumptuous decorations they draped the
stove with the American flag ; in return for the orchestra
they furnished zither and ballads by the family ; in return
for the ball but they didn t return the ball, except in
cases where the United States lived on the roof and had
room.

Is this an exaggeration ? It can hardly be called that.
I saw nearly the equivalent of it once, a good many years
ago. A minister was trying to create influential friends for
a project which might be worth ten millions a year to the



280 DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES

agriculturists of the Republic ; and our Government had
furnished him ham and lemonade to persuade the opposition
with. The minister did not succeed. He might not have
succeeded if his salary had been what it ought to have been
$50,000 or $60,000 a year but his chances would have
been very greatly improved. And in any case, he and his
dinners and his country would not have been joked about
by the hard-hearted and pitied by the compassionate.

Any experienced drummer will testify that, when
you want to do business, there is no economy in ham and
lemonade. The drummer takes his country customer to
the theatre, the opera, the circus ; dines him, wines him,
entertains him all the day and all the night in luxurious
style ; and plays upon his human nature in all seductive
ways. For he knows, by old experience, that this is the
best way to get a profitable order out of him. He has his
reward. All Governments except our own play the same
policy, with the same end in view ; and they, also, have
their reward. But ours refuses to do business by business
ways, and sticks to ham and lemonade. This is the most
expensive diet known to the diplomatic service of the
world.

Ours is the only country of first importance that pays
its foreign representatives trifling salaries. If we were poor,
we could not find great fault with these economies, perhaps
at least one could find a sort of plausible excuse for them.
But we are not poor ; and the excuse fails. As shown
above, some of our important diplomatic representatives
receive $I2,OOO ; others, $17,500. These salaries are all
ham and lemonade, and unworthy of the flag. When we
have a rich ambassador in London or Paris, he lives as the
ambassador of a country like ours ought to live, and it costs
him $100,000 a year to do it. But why should we allow



him to pay that out of his private pocket ? There is
nothing fair about it ; and the Republic is no proper
subject for any one s charity. In several cases our salaries
of $12,000 should be $50,000; and all of the salaries of
$17,500 ought to be $75,000 or $100,000, since we pay
no representative s house-rent. Our State Department
realises the mistake which we are making, and would like
to rectify it, but it has not the power.

When a young girl reaches eighteen she is recognised
as being a woman. She adds six inches to her skirt, she
unplaits her dangling braids and balls her hair on top of her
head, she stops sleeping with her little sister and has a room
to herself, and becomes in many ways a thundering
expense. But she is in society now ; and papa has to
stand it. There is no avoiding it. Very well. The Great
Republic lengthened her skirts last year, balled up her hair,
and entered the world s society. This means that, if she
would prosper and stand fair with society, she must put aside
some of her dearest and darlingest young ways and supersti
tions, and do as society does. Of course, she can decline
if she wants to ; but this would be unwise. She ought to
realise, now that she has come out, that this is a right and
proper time to change a part of her style. She is in
Rome ; and it has long been granted that when one is in
Rome it is good policy to do as Rome does. To advantage
Rome ? No to advantage herself.

O

If our Government has really paid representatives of
ours on the Paris Commission $100,000 apiece for six weeks
work, I feel sure that it is the best cash investment the
nation has made in many years. For it seems quite
impossible that, with that precedent on the books, the
Government will be able to find excuses for continuing its
diplomatic salaries at the present mean figure.



282 DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES

P.S. VIENNA, January 10. I see, by this morning s
telegraphic news, that I am not to be the new ambassador
here, after all. This well, I hardly know what to say.
I well, of course, I do not care anything about it ; but it
is at least a surprise. I have for many months been using
my influence at Washington to get this diplomatic see
expanded into an ambassadorship, with the idea, of course,
th But never mind. Let it go. It is of no con
sequence. I say it calmly ; for I am calm. But at the

same time However, the subject has no interest for me,

and never had. I never really intended to take the place,
anyway I made up my mind to it months and months
ago, nearly a year. But now, while I am calm, I would
like to say this that so long as I shall continue to possess
an American s proper pride in the honour and dignity of his
country, I will not take any ambassadorship in the gift of
the flag at a salary short of $75,000 a year. If I shall be
charged with wanting to live beyond my country s means,
I cannot help it. A country which cannot afford ambassa
dor s wages should be ashamed to have ambassadors.

Think of a Seventeen-thousand-five-hundred-dollar
ambassador ! Particularly for America. Why it is the
most ludicrous spectacle, the most inconsistent and incon
gruous spectacle, contrivable by even the most diseased
imagination. It is a billionaire in a paper collar, a king in
a breechclout, an archangel in a tin halo. And, for pure
sham and hypocrisy, the salary is just the match of the
ambassador s official clothes that boastful advertisement of
a Republican Simplicity which manifests itself at home in
Fifty-thousand-dollar salaries to insurance presidents and
railway lawyers, and in domestic palaces whose fittings and
furnishings often transcend in costly display and splendour
and richness the fittings and furnishings of the palaces of the



DIPLOMATIC PAY AND CLOTHES 283

sceptred masters of Europe ; and which has invented and
exported to the Old World the palace-car, the sleeping-car,
the tram-car, the electric trolley, the best bicycles, the best
motor-cars, the steam-heater, the best and smartest systems
of electric calls and telephonic aids to laziness and comfort,
the elevator, the private bath-room (hot and cold water on
tap), the palace-hotel, with its multifarious conveniences,
comforts, shows, and luxuries, the oh, the list is intermin
able ! In a word, Republican Simplicity found Europe
with one shirt on her back, so to speak, as far as real
luxuries, conveniences, and the comforts of life go, and
has clothed her to the chin with the latter. We are the
lavishes! and showiest and most luxury-loving people on the
earth ; and at our masthead we fly one true and honest
symbol, the gaudiest flao- the world has ever seen. Oh,

J J O O 7

Republican Simplicity, there are many, many humbugs in
the world, but none to which you need take off your hat !



284 LUCK



LUCK

IT was at a banquet in London in honour or one of the
two or three conspicuously illustrious English military
names of this generation. For reasons which will presently
appear, I will withhold his real name and titles, and call
him Lieutenant-General Lord Arthur Scoresby, V.C.,
K.C.B., etc., etc., etc. What a fascination there is in a
renowned name ! There sat the man, in actual flesh,
whom I had heard of so many thousands of times since
that day, thirty years before, when his name shot suddenly
to the zenith from a Crimean battle-field, to remain for ever
celebrated. It was food and drink to me to look, and look,
and look at that demigod ; scanning, searching, noting :
the quietness, the reserve, the noble gravity of his counte
nance ; the simple honesty that expressed itself all over
him ; the sweet unconsciousness of his greatness uncon
sciousness of the hundreds of admiring eyes fastened upon
him, unconsciousness of the deep, loving, sincere worship
welling out of the breasts of those people and flowing
toward him.

The clergyman at my left was an old acquaintance of
mine clergyman now, but had spent the first half of his

[NOTE. This is not a fancy sketch. I got it from a clergyman who
was an instructor at Woolwich forty years ago, and who vouched for its
truth. M.T.]



LUCK 285

life in the camp and field, and as an instructor in the
military school at Woolwich. Just at the moment I have
been talking about, a veiled and singular light glimmered
in his eyes, and he leaned down and muttered confidentially
to me indicating the hero of the banquet with a ges
ture,

1 Privately his glory is an accident just a product of
incredible luck.

This verdict was a great surprise to me. If its subject
had been Napoleon, or Socrates, or Solomon, my astonish
ment could not have been greater.

Some days later came the explanation of this strange
remark, and this is what the Reverend told me.

About forty years ago I was an instructor in the military
academy at Woolwich. I was present in one of the sections
when young Scoresby underwent his preliminary examina
tion. I was touched to the quick with pity ; for the rest
of the class answered up brightly and handsomely, while
he why, dear me, he didn t know anything^ so to speak.
He was evidently good, and sweet, and lovable, and guile
less ; and so it was exceedingly painful to see him stand
there, as serene as a graven image, and deliver himself of
answers which were veritably miraculous for stupidity and
ignorance. All the compassion in me was aroused in his
behalf. I said to myself, when he comes to be examined
again, he will be flung over, of course ; so it will be simply
a harmless act of charity to ease his fall as much as I can.

I took him aside, and found that he knew a little of
Caesar s history ; and as he didn t know anything else, I
went to work and drilled him like a galley-slave on a
certain line of stock questions concerning Caesar which I
knew would be used. If you ll believe me, he went



286 LUCK

through with flying colours on examination day ! He went
through on that purely superficial * cram, and got compli
ments too, while others, who knew a thousand times more
than he, got plucked. By some strangely lucky accident
an accident not likely to happen twice in a century
he was asked no question outside of the narrow limits of
his drill.

It was stupefying. Well, all through his course I
stood by him, with something of the sentiment which a
mother feels for a crippled child ; and he always saved him
self just by miracle, apparently.

Now of course the thing that would expose him and
kill him at last was mathematics. I resolved to make his
death as easy as I could ; so I drilled him and crammed
him, and crammed him and drilled him, just on the line of
questions which the examiner would be most likely to use,
and then launched him on his fate. Well, sir, try to
conceive of the result : to my consternation, he took the
first prize ! And with it he got a perfect ovation in the
way of compliments.

Sleep ! There was no more sleep for me for a week.
My conscience tortured me day and night. What I had
done I had done purely through charity, and only to ease
the poor youth s fall I never had dreamed of any such
preposterous result as the thing that had happened. I felt
as guilty and miserable as the creator of Frankenstein.
Here was a wooden-head whom I had put in the way of
glittering promotions and prodigious responsibilities, and
but one thing could happen : he and his responsibilities
would all go to ruin together at the first opportunity.

The Crimean war had just broken out. Of course
there had to be a war, I said to myself : we couldn t have
peace and give this donkey a chance to die before he is



LUCK 287

found out. I waited for the earthquake. It came. And
it made me reel when it did come. He was actually
gazetted to a captaincy in a marching regiment ! Better
men grow old and gray in the service before they climb to
a sublimity like that. And who could ever have foreseen
that they would go and put such a load of responsibility on
such green and inadequate shoulders ? I could just barely
have stood it if they had made him a cornet ; but a captain
think of it ! I thought my hair would turn white.

Consider what I did I who so loved repose and inaction.
I said to myself, I am responsible to the country for this,
and I must go along with him and protect the country
against him as far as I can. So I took my poor little capital
that I had saved up through years of work and grinding
economy, and went with a sigh and bought a cornetcy in
his regiment, and away we went to the field.

And there oh dear, it was awful. Blunders ? why, he
never did anything but blunder. But, you see, nobody was
in the fellow s secret everybody had him focussed wrong,
and necessarily misinterpreted his performance every time
consequently they took his idiotic blunders for inspirations
of genius ; they did honestly ! His mildest blunders were
enough to make a man in his right mind cry ; and
they did make me cry -and rage and rave too, privately.
And the thing that kept me always in a sweat of apprehen
sion was the fact that every fresh blunder he made increased
the lustre of his reputation ! I kept saying to myself, he ll
get so high that when discovery does finally come it
will be like the sun falling out of the sky.

Pie went right along up, from grade to grade, over the
dead bodies of his superiors, until at last, in the hottest
moment of the battle of , . down went our colonel, and
my heart jumped into my mouth, for Scoresby was next in



288 LUCK

rank ! Now for it, said I ; we ll all land in Sheol in ten
minutes, sure.

The battle was awfully hot ; the allies were steadily
giving way all over the field. Our regiment occupied a
position that was vital ; a blunder now must be destruction.
At this critical moment, what does this immortal fool do but
detach the regiment from its place and order a charge over
a neighbouring hill where there wasn t a suggestion of an
enemy ! * There you go ! I said to myself ; this is the
end at last.

And away we did go, and were over the shoulder of the
hill before the insane movement could be discovered and
stopped. And what did we find ? An entire and un
suspected Russian army in reserve ! And what happened ?
We were eaten up ? That is necessarily what would have
happened in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred. But no ;
those Russians argued that no single regiment would come
browsing around there at such a time. It must be the
entire English army, and that the sly Russian game was
detected and blocked ; so they turned tail, and away they
went, pell-mell, over the hill and down into the field, in
wild confusion, and we after them ; they themselves broke
the solid Russian centre in the field, and tore through, and in
no time there was the most tremendous rout you ever saw,
and the defeat of the allies was turned into a sweeping and
splendid victory ! Marshal Canrobert looked on, dizzy
with astonishment, admiration, and delight ; and sent right
off for Scoresby, and hugged him, and decorated him on the
field in presence of all the armies !

And what was Scoresby s blunder that time ? Merely
the mistaking his right hand for his left that was all.
An order had come to him to fall back and support our
right ; and instead he fell forward and went over the hill to