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The Berlin man as he passes mutters the word Englanderin as though it were a curse, or says into one's ear they seem fond of saying or rather hissing this, and seem to think it both crushing and funny, "Ros bif," and the women stare at one all over and also say to each other Englanderin. You never told me Germans were rude; or is it only in Berlin that they are, I wonder.
He told her that it was "Pip-RR." And she said back, "Paeper." Then they argued and never once did either one of them get it "Pepper." "Paeper." "Pip-RR." "Paeper." "Pip-RR." One day I heard him laying down the law to a woman who had dared question his price of "Rust Bif." He told her what he had to pay for it in "Cash Mawney" and asked her if she could do so, to explain.
That also got over and his comrades realized that he was a polyglot. Then in a joyous spirit of over-confidence, he waved the oriflamme of speech in our faces. "Is, my papa he live-a in Brooklyn. He keepa da butcha shop and is maka da roast bif. Is, my papa's brodder he live-a in Brooklyn too. He keepa da saloon and is maka da jag!" Then we shook hands as fellow Americans.
"Miss Mary," says I, for my heart yurned to the poor gal, as she came sobbing and miserable down stairs: "Miss Mary," says I, "if I might make so bold, here's master's room empty, and I know where the cold bif and pickles is." "Oh, Charles!" said she, nodding her head sadly, "I'm too retched to have any happytite." And she flung herself on a chair, and began to cry fit to bust.
Beside him, elbow jogging elbow, was a surly-faced man in overalls. The old German waiters shuffled about and bawled, "Zwei bif stew, ein cheese-cake." Dishes clattered incessantly. The sicky-sweet scent of old pastry, of coffee-rings with stony raisins and buns smeared with dried cocoanut fibers, seemed to permeate even the bitter coffee.
And there we were, the only Americans in the house, with just enough French to order "des oeufs" and coffee "au lait" and "ros bif and jambon and pain" and to ask how much and then make them say it slowly and stick the sum up on their fingers. We were having engine trouble. And our car was groaning and coughing and muttering in the gloomy little court of the inn.
M. Felix Pyat gives the following account of Christmas in England: "Christmas is the great English fête the Protestant Carnival an Anglo-Saxon gala a gross, pagan, monstrous orgie a Roman feast, in which the vomitorium is not wanting. And the eaters of 'bif' laugh at us for eating frogs!
Whyre you holding him out on me?" "Scientists don't like to be disturbed in their researches," I temporized. "No more does a man in a whorehouse," he retorted vulgarly. "Story's no good without him." That was what I thought and I'm afraid my satisfaction appeared on my face. "Now leely man no try a hold up da press. Whatsa matter, you aready had da beer and da roasta bif sanawich?"
There was us in Europe all at sixes and sevens with our silly flags and our silly newspapers raggin' us up against each other and keepin' us apart, and there was China, solid as a cheese, with millions and millions of men only wantin' a bit of science and a bit of enterprise to be as good as all of us. You thought they couldn't get at you. And then they got flying-machines. And bif! 'ere we are.
Excep for the sake of love, which is above being mersnary, fourteen shillings a wick was a LITTLE too strong for two such rat-holes as he lived in. But that wasn't my business. I saw him grin, sometimes, when I laid down the cold bif of a morning, to see how little was left of yesterday's sirline; but he never said a syllabub: for true love don't mind a pound of meat or so hextra.
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