But he shouldn't do that kind of imaginative touch. It
isn't in his line. And it might mislead people.
Think of a stranger getting into Nieuport after dark on a wet night,
with his mind all set on the three hotels Baedeker gives him a choice
of.
"All unpretending," he says.
Just the wrong word. Why, those hotels are brick dust. They're flat on
the ground. There isn't a room left. He means "demolished." He doesn't
use our language easily. I can see that. It is true they are
unpretending, but that isn't the first word you would use about them,
not if you were fluent.
Then he gives a detail that is unnecessary. He says you can sleep or eat
there for a "franc and a half." That exactitude is out of place. It is
labored. I ask you what a traveler would make of the "11/2 fr. _pour
diner_," when he came on that rubbish heap which is the Hotel of
Hope--"Hotel de l'Esperance." That is like Baedeker, all through his
volume. He will give a detail, like the precise cost of this dinner,
when there isn't any food in the neighborhood. It wouldn't be so bad if
he'd sketch things in general terms. That I could forgive. But it is too
much when he makes a word-picture of a Flemish table d'hote for a franc
and a half in a section of country where even the cats are starving.
His next statement is plain twisted. "Nieuport is noted for its
obstinate resistance to the French.
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