Presently, Rosecrans came out into the antechamber. Looking harassed, he said, "Captain, I am convinced the telephone is an invention of the devil, inflicted upon us poor soldiers so politicians can harangue us at any hour of the day or night, without even the pause for thought sending a telegram affords." That off his chest, he deigned to notice Schlieffen. "Come in, Colonel, come in," he said, invitingly standing aside from the doorway. "Believe me, it will be a pleasure to talk with a man who knows what he's talking about. Have you got telephones in Germany, Colonel?"
"I believe we are beginning to use them, yes," Schlieffen said, eyeing with interest the wooden box and small attached speaking trumpet bolted to the wall by Rosecrans' desk.
"Invention of the devil," Rosecrans repeated. "Nothing but trouble." He waved his visitor to a chair, then asked, "And what can I do for you today besides complain about inventors who should have been strangled in the cradle? Bell 's a Canadian, which probably explains a good deal."
It explained nothing to Schlieffen. Since it didn't, he came straight to the point: "As I asked in Washington, General, I should like to get a close view of the fighting in this war. Perhaps you will be so kind as to authorize my travel for this purpose to the headquarters of one of your armies in the field."
"Very well, Colonel; 1 can do that." Rosecrans had made promises before. Schlieffen was about to ask him to be more specific when he did so unasked: "We are going to take Louisville away from the Rebs. How would you like to watch us while we're doing that?"
Schlieffen glanced at the map hanging by the telephone. "You will send me to the province of Indiana? The state, I should say-excuse me. You plan on crossing the Ohio River to make your assault? Yes, I should be most interested in seeing that." If France ever mounted an invasion of Germany, she would have to cross the Rhine. Seeing how the United States attempted a river crossing in the face of opposition would tell Schlieffen something of what the French might try; seeing how the Confederates defended the province-no, the state-of Kentucky would also be informative.
"Well, that's easy enough, isn't it?" Rosecrans reached into his desk for stationery and with his own hand wrote the authorization Schlieffen needed. "Nice to know something is easy, by thunder. The Rebs aren't-I'm finding that out. But you hang onto that sheet there, and I'll send a telegram letting 'em know you're on the way."
"Thank you very much," Schlieffen said, and then, sympathetically, "A pity your arms did not have better luck in Virginia."
Rosecrans flushed. "They have Stonewall, dammit," he muttered. He had an ugly expression on his face, to go with the ugly color he'd turned. Austrian generals- and Prussian generals, too- must have talked that way about Bonaparte. Austrian generals-and French generals, too- must have talked that way about Moltke.
Sympathetically still, Schlieffen said, "As you have said to me, your land is wide. General Jackson cannot be everywhere at once, cannot take charge of all the battles your two countries are fighting."
"Thank God for that," Rosecrans said. The telephone on the wall clanged, like a trolley using its bell to warn traffic at a corner. Rosecrans went over to it. He listened, then shouted, "Hello again, Mr. President." That hunted look came back onto his face. Schlieffen left before the general had to order him out. As he walked down the hall toward the stairs, he heard Rosecrans still shouting behind him. All at once, he hoped the General Staff back home in Berlin did without this newfangled invention.
"Come on!" Samuel Clemens fussed like a mother hen. "Come on, everyone. We've no time to waste, not a single, solitary minute."
Alexandra Clemens set her hands on her hips. "Sam, if you'll look around, you'll see that you're the only one here who isn't ready for the picnic."
"Well, what has that got to do with the price of persimmons?"
Sam demanded. "Pshaw! If you hadn't stolen my jacket, I'd have it on by now."
His wife didn't know anything about persimmons: she was that rarity, a native San Franciscan, having been born a little more than a year after the gold rush started Americans flooding into California. She did, however, know where his jacket was: "It's hanging on the chair behind you there, Sam, where you put it when you looked under the bed for your shoes."
"And I found them, too, didn't I?" Clemens said, as if in triumph. He put on the white linen jacket, jammed a hat down over his ears, and handed Alexandra a sunbonnet. "There! All ready. Now we'd better see what mischief the children have got into since you started hiding things from me."
Ignoring that sally, Alexandra Clemens said, "They are being quiet downstairs, aren't they?" She swept out of the bedroom in a rustle of skirts. "What are they doing?" Sam hurried after her.
The quiet broke even as they hurried-broke into shouts from both Orion and Ophelia, a growl from Sutro the dog, and a series of yowls and hisses from Virginia the cat. Virginia shot by at a speed that would have done credit to a Nevada jackrabbit, then vanished under the sofa in lieu of diving into a hole in the ground.
"She scratched me!" Ophelia said. "Bad kitty!"
Sam examined the damage, which was superficial. "The next question before the house, young lady, is why she scratched you."
Ophelia stood mute. Orion, either more naive or less sure of how much his parents had seen, said, "We weren't really trying to feed Ginny to Sutro, Pa. It just looked that way, honest Injun."
"Did it?" Sam said. Departure for the picnic was briefly delayed for reasons having nothing to do with missing clothes. When Orion and Ophelia climbed up into the family buggy, they took their seats with considerable caution. Above their heads, Sam and Alexandra looked into each other's eyes. That might have been a mistake. They both had all they could do to keep from laughing.
The horse went down a couple of blocks to Fulton, and then west to Golden Gate Park, a narrow rectangle of land south of the Richmond district. Much of it was sand dunes and scrubby grass. Here and there, where irrigation and better soil had been brought in, real grass grew and young, hopeful trees sprouted.
Sam tethered the horse to an oak that had advanced further beyond saplinghood than most. He gave it a long lead, so it could crop the grass and, thus distracted, not interfere with the family's enjoyment of a Sunday afternoon. Having explained this to his wife, he added, "Don't you wish we could do the same with the children?"
"Not more than half a dozen times a day," Alexandra answered. "Not usually, anyhow." She spread a blanket on the grass, then set the picnic hamper upon it. Ham sandwiches and fried shrimp from a Chinese cafe and hard-boiled eggs-not the elderly sort the Chinese esteemed-and a homemade peach pie and cream puffs from an Italian bakery and lemonade were enough to keep the children from running wild for a while, and gave them sufficient ballast once they were through to slow them down for a while.
"Ha! First match!" Sam said proudly once he got his cigar going. That proved what a fine, mild day it was. The wind blew off the Pacific, as it almost always did, but only gently. "It's not strong enough to lift sand today, let alone dogs, trees, houses, or one of Mayor Sutro's public proclamations," he added. "Of course, they call that kind of wind a cyclone."
"I call that kind of wind an editorial," Alexandra said, which made him mime being cut to the quick.