Class. 13^ B()(* k_^ ui:^i-:NTKb BY C M^iJ^t^ylyl^ TITIAN'S MOSES./ U, 8. DEPARTMENT OF LABC.l. A TRAMP ABROAD; ILLUSTKATEB BY W. FR. BROWN, TRUE WILLIAMS, B. DAT AND OTHER ARTISTS — WITH ALSO THREE OR POUR PICTURES MADE BT THE AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK, WITHOUT OUTSIDE HELP ; IN ALL THREE HUNDRED AND TWENTY-EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS. MARK TWAIN, (SAMUEL L. CLEMENS.) ( SOLD BY SUBSCRIPTION ONLY.) HARTFOED, CONIST. t AMERICAN PUBLISHING COMPACT. CHATTO & WINDUS, London. 1891. COPYRIGHT BY Samuel L. CLEMENa. 1879. P. D.CJom./iLab ILLUSTRATIONS. PAGB. 1. PoKTKATT OF THE Attthok, [Steel Engkaving] Feontispiecb 2. Titiak's Moses [I iTLL Page] " 3. Tub Atithor's Memories [Full Page] IT 4. The Black Knight 20 5. Opening HIS Vizieb . . 20 6. The Enraged Emperor . = 21 7. The POETIBR 23 8. One up THOSE Boys - 24 9. SoHLOss Hotel [Full Page] .... 26 10. In My Cage 28 11. Heidelberg Castle [Full Page] . 29 12. Heidelberg Castle, KiTEK Frontage [Full Page] . 33 13. The Retreat ... , 35 14. Jim Bakee 86 15. "A Blue Flush about It" 40 16. Could NOT See It [Tail Piece]. , 42 17. The Beer King , 44 18 The Lecturer's Audience . ,.,, , , 45 19. Industrious Students. 46 20. Idle Student . ,. 47 21. Companionable Intekcourse . ..,, 48 22. An Imposing Spectacle .. 48 ^ 23. An Advertisement .. 49 24. '-Understands His Business" .'i2 25. The old Surgeon ... 53 26 The First Wound 54 27. The Castle Court [Full Page] '. 59 28. Wounded .. 64 29. Favorite Street Costume 64 30 Ineffaceable Scars ... 65 31. Piece of Sword 68 32. French Calm ... 70 33. The Challenge Accepted ....... , 71 34. A Search 72 35 He Swooned Ponderously 73 36 I Rolled Him Over ... 74 37 The One I Hired 75 38. The March to the Field [Full Page] ., ., 78 39 TnE Post OF DANGER. ... — SO 40 The Reconciliation 81 41 An Object OF Admiration . S2 42. Wagner 84 43 Raging . .. 84 44. Roaring 85 45. Shrieking. . 85 46 A Customary Thing , 86 47 One of the ''Rest" 87 48. A Contribution Box ., 88 49. Conspicuous 89 50. Tailpiece 39 ILLUSTRATIONS. IV 91 9- !.!.!.!...!.. y* '.'..'. 96 9S 51. Only a Shkikk 52. "HkOxNltCkt" 53. l'atb Comees Cakbd For. ^^ 54. Evidently Dreaming. 55. "Turn on more iiain " ^^ 56. Harris Attending the Opera 57. Painting my Great Picture 58. Our Start. 104 59. AN Unknown Costume ^^. 60. The Tower j^^ 61. Slow but Sure ^^ 62. Tub Kobbeb Chief [Full Pagei ^^^ 63. An Honest Man 11 113 64. The Town by Night 65. Generations of Baeefeet ^^. 66. Our B kdroom ^^^ 67. Practicing ' ^jg 68. Pawing Around ^.-^^ 69. A Night's Work 70. Leaving Heilbronn ^f_ 71. The Cai'Tain ^^^ 73. "Waiting for the Train [Tail Piece] 127 73. A Deep and Tranquil Ecstacy 129 74. "Which Answered Just as Well" ^"^ 75. Life on a Kaft '■ "" 76. Lady Gertrude 133 77. Mouth of the Cavern [Full Page] 136 78. A Fatal Mistake 13' 79. Tail Piece. 138 80. Rafting on the Neckar [Full Page] 139 81. The Lorelei ^ I'll 82. The IjOver's Fate I'lS 83. Tail Piece 149 84. The Unknown Knight 151 85. The Embeac k '. 152 86. Perilous Position 154 87. The Raft in a Storm 157 88. All Safe on Shore 15S 89. " It was the Cat " 160 90. Tail Piece 160 91. Breakfast in thb Garden 162 92. EiSiLY Understood 164 93. Experimenting Through Harris 167 94. At the Ball Room Door 169 95. The Town of Dilsberg 171 96. OuK Adv.vnce on Dilsberg 172 97. Inside the Town 175 98. The Old Well 176 99. Send Hither thk Lord Ulrich ; 178 100. Le.id Mb to Her Grave 180 101. Under the Linden 181 102. An Excellent Pilot, Once 182 103. SCATTERA.TION 183 104. The River Bath [Tail Piece] • 183 lO'i. Etruscan Tear Jug 185 106. Henri II Plate 185 107. Old Blue China 1S6 liiS. A Real Antique 188 109. Brica-Brao Shop [Full Page] 1S9 110. " Put It There" W2 111. The PApaoN Captured 194 ILLUSTRATIONS. v 112. Taii. Piece ,....,... 195 113. A COMPEKHKNSITB YaWN 197 114. Testing the Coin 198 115. Beauty at the Bath 199 116. Isr THE Bath 201 117. Jebset Indians 203 118. Not Particularly Sociable... 206 119. Black Forest Grandee 208 120. The Grandee's Daughter. 209 121. Rich Old Huss 211 122. Gbbtchen 211 123. Paul Hoch 212 124. HvNS Schmidt 212 125. Elkcting a New Member 213 126. VERCOMING Obstacles 215 127. Friends 216 128. Peospeoting ... 218 %9. Tail Piece 220 130. A General Howl 223 131. Seeking a Situation 224 132. Standing Guard — 227 133. liESULT OF A Joke 228 134. Descending a Farm 229 135. A Greman Sabbath » 232 136. An Object of Sympathy 234 137. A Xon-Classtcal Style 236 133. The Traditional Chamois [Full Page] 239 139. Hunting Chamois the True Way ; 242 140. Chamois Hunter as Reported [Full Page] 243 141. Marking Alpenstocks 246 142. Is She Eighteen or Twenty? 247 143. I Knew I Wasn't Mistaken 249 144. Harris Astonished 255 145. Tail piece 257 146. The Lion op Lucerne. 259 147. He Liked Clocks 262 148. "I Will Tell Tou" 265 149. Couldn't Wait 266 150. Didn't Care FOB Style , , 266 151. A Pair Better Than Four 267 152. Two Wii.sN't Necessary 267 153. Just thb Trick 267 154 Going TO Make Them Stare 268 155. Not Thrown Away 268 156. What THE DocTOK Recommended 268 157. Wanted to Feel Safe ... 269 158. Preferred TO Tram" on Foot 269 159. Dern a Dog, Anyway , 270 160. Tail Piece 271 161. The Glacier Garden [Full Page] 272 162. Lake and Mountains (Mont Pilatus) 273 163. Mountain Paths 274 164. " You're an American— So Am I " 276 165. Enterprise 281 166. The Constant Searcher 281 167. The Mountain Boy 285 168. The Englishman 286 169. The Jodler 288 170. Another Vocalist 289 171. The Felsenthok , 290 VI ILLUSTRATIONS. 172. A View FROM THE Station 291 173. Lost in the Mist 293 174. The Ktgi-Kulm Hotel • 294 175. What Awakened Us 296 176. A Summit SuNKisE [Full Page] 297 177. Tail Piece 300 178. Exceedingly Comfortable 302 179. T HE Sunrise 303 18:). Thb Rigi-Kulm 305 181. An Optical Illusion 307 182. Tail Piece 308 183. Railway Down the Mountain [Full Page] 309 184. Source of the Rhone 313 185. A Glacier Table 314 186 Glacier OF Grindelwald 317 187. Dawn on the Mountains 319 188. Tail Piece 322 189. New and Old Style 325 190. St. Nicholas, as a Hermit 325 191. A Landslide 326 192. GoLDAU Valley before and after the Landslide 327 193. The Way They Do It 330 194. Our Gallant Driver 331 195. A Mountain Pass [Fiill Page] 332 196. "Pm Oful Dry " 333 197. It's the Fashion 334 198. What We Expecteo 335 199. We Missed the Scenery [Full Page] 33S 200. The Tourists [Tail Piece] '. 3;i9 201. The Young Bride 341 202. "It was a famous Victory " 342 203. Promenade in Interlakkn [Full Page] 343 204. The Junsfrau by M. T 346 205. street in iNTERLAKEN [FULL PaGK] 349 206. Without a Courier 851 207. Traveling WITH a Courier 352 208. Tail Piece 354 209. Grape and Whey Patients 357 210. Sociable Drivers 360 211. A Mountain Cascade 361 212. The Gasternthal 362 213. KXHILAKATING Spokt 363 214. Falls (Tail Piece] 364 215. What Might Be 366 216. An Alpine Bouquet 367 217. The End of the World 369 218. The Forget-me-not 371 219. A Needle op Ice [Full Page] 373 220. Climbing the Mountain 375 221. Snow Crevasses '. 376 222- Cutting Steps 379 223. The Guide [Tail Piece] 3S0 224. View FROM the Cliff 382 225. Gemmi Pass and Lake Daubensee 3P4 226. Almost a Tragedy 386 211. The Alpine Litter 387 228. Social Bathers 588 229. Death op Countess Herlincourt [Full Page] 389 230. They've Got It All 392 231. Model for an Empress 393 232. Bath Houses at Leuke '. 394 ILLUSTRATIONS. vii 233. The Bathers at Letjk3B [FrLL Page] 393 234. Kathek Mixed Up 399 235. Tail Piece 400 236. A Sunday Mokning's Demon 402 237. Just Saved 406 238. Scene in "Vallet of Zekmatt LPull Page] 406 239. Akkital at Zeematt [Full Page] 410 240. Fitted Out 413 241. A Feakfdl Fall [Full Page] 415 242. Tail Piece , 417 213. All Ready 421 244. The Makch.. 422 245. The Cakavan [Full Page] 424 246. The Hook 427 247. The Disabled Chaplain 428 248. Trying Experiments 428 24'... Saveb! Sated! 430 250. Twenty Minutes Work 431 251. The Black Kam 432 252. The MiPvACLE 433 253. The New Guide [Tail Piece] 434 254. Scientific Beseaeches — 436 255. Mountain Chalet 439 256. The Grandson 441 ^1. OcCASiONLY Met With 444 J5S. Summit OF The GoENER Grat - 446 "!59. Chiefs or the Advance Guard 447 260. My Picture of the Matteehoen 448 261. Everybody Had an Excuse 453 262 Sprung a Leak ^^^ 263. A Scientific Question 458 264. A Terminal Moraine 461 265. Front op Glacier • *''2 266. An Old Moraine [Full Page] 463 267. Glacier of Zermatt with Lateral Moraine 465 268. Unexpected Meeting of Fribnbs 469 269. Village OF Chamonix 472 270. The Matterhorn [Full Page] 475 271. On the Summit -"••• ^'^ 272. Accident on the Matterhorn (1865) [Full page] 480 273. Tailpiece, Eoped Together 482 274. Storage of Ancestors 484 275. Falling out of his Farm 485 276. Child Life in Switzerland ..• 48i 277. A Sunday Play ^^^ 278 The Combination *^^ 279. Chillon .••••• • • " *^^ 280. The Tete Noir ' • ^^^ 281. Mont Blanc's Neighbors [Full Page] 495 282. AN Exquisite Thing • *^^ 283. A Wild Kide ■ • • • ^^' 284. Swiss Peasant Girl [Tail Piece] • 498 885. Street in CHAMONixtFuLL Page] 501 286. The Proud German 287. The Indignant Tourist. 504 505 288. Music of Switzerland ••••• ^^'^ S9. Only a Mistake ■'^^ 290. A Broad View [Tail Piece] • • ••• 511 91. Pr'hparing to Start [Full Paget •••••• - ^13 292. Ascent of Mont Blanc [Full PageI..... • 517 293. " We All Raised a Tremendous Shout " , • 519 vui ILLUSTRATIONS. 294. The Gkands Mtjlets 523 295. Cabin on the Gkands Mulets , 524 296. Keeping Wakm 526 297. Tail Piece 529 298. TAkE IT East 531 299. The Mer DE Glaoe (Mont Blanc) [Full Page] 532 300. Taking Toll 535 301. A Descending Totjeist 538 302. Leaving by Diligence , 539 303. The Satisfied Englishman 540 304. High pressuke ~ 542 305. No Apology 544 306. None Asked .... 544 307. A Lively Street • 546 308. Having Her Full Eights 547 309. How She Fooled Us 549 310. "You'll Take That or None " 552 311. Robbing a Beggar [Tail Piece]. 554 312. Dishonest Italy 556 313. Stock in Trade •- 556 314. Style 558 315. Specimens from Old Masters 559 816. An Old Master 561 317. The Lion of St. Mark 562 318. Oh, To Be At Rest! 563 319. The World's Masterpiece 565 320. Tail Piece 566 321. Aesthetic Tastes 569 322. A Private Family Breakfast 571 323. European Carving 573 324. A Twenty-four hour Fight 585 325. Great Heidelberg Tun 592 326. Bismarck in Prison 597 327. Tail Piece 600 328. a compietb wobd „.,. 618 CO:P^TEI^Tg. CHAPTEE I. A Tramp over Europe — On the Holsatia — Hamburg — Frankfort-on-the- Main — How it Won its Name — A Lesson in Political Economy — Neatness in Dress — Rhine Legends — " Tlie Knave of Bergen" — The Famous Ball — The Strange Knight — Dancing with the Queen — Removal of the Masks — The Disclosure — Wrath of the Emperor —The Ending 17 CHAPTER II. At Heidelberg — Great Stir at a Hotel — ThePortier — Arrival of the Em- press — The Schloss Hotel — Location of Heidelberg — The River Neckar — New Feature in a Hotel — Heidelberg Castle — View from the Hotel — A Tramp in the Woods — Meeting a Raven — Can Ravens Talk ? — Laughed at and Vanquished — Language of Animals — Jim Baker — Blue- Jays 22 CHAPTER III. Baker's Blue- Jay Yarn — Jay Language — The Cabin — "Hello, I reckon • I've struck something" — A Knot Hole — Attemptto fill it — A Ton of Acorns — Friends Called In — A Great Mystery — More Jays Called — A Blue Flush — A Discovery — A Rich Joke — One that Couldn't See It 38 CHAPTER IV. Student Life— The Five Corps— The Beer King— A Free Life— Attend- ing Lectures — An Immense Audience— Industrious Students — Politeness of the Students — Intercourse with the Professors — Scenes at the Castle Garden — Abundance of Dogs — Symbol of Blighted Love — How the Ladies Advertise 43 CHAPTER V. The Students' Dueling Ground— The Dueling Room— The Sword Grinder — Frequency of the Duels — The Duelists — Protection against Injury — The Surgeon — Arrangements for the Duels — The First Duel— The First Wound— A Drawn Battle— The Second Duel — Cutting and Slashing — Interference of the Surgeon 51 CHAPTER VL The Third Duel — A Sickening Spectacle — Dinner between Fights — The Last Duel — Fighting in Earnest — Faces and Heads Mutilated — Great Nerve of the Duelists — Fatal Results not Unfrequent — The Worlds View of these Fights 57 X CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. Corps-laws and Usages — Volunteering to Fight — Coolness of the Wounded— Wounds Honorable — Newly bandaged Students around Heidelberg— Scarred Faces Abundant— A Badge of Honor — Prince Bismark as a Duelist — Statistics — Constant Sword Practice — Color of the Corps — 'Jorps Etiquette 63 CHAPTER VIII. The Great French Duel — Mistaken Notions — Outbreak in the French Assembly- — Calmness of M. Gambetta— I Volunteer as Second — Drawing up a Will— The Challenge and its Acceptance — Difficulty in Selection of Weapons— Deciding on Distance — M. Gambetta's Firmness — Arranging Details — Hiring Hearses — How it was Kept from the Press— March to the Field — The Post of Danger — The Duel — The Result — General Rejoicings — The only One Hurt — A Firm Resolution 69 CHAPTER IX. At the Theatre — German Ideal — At the Opera — The Orchestra — Howl- ings and Wailings — A Curious Play — One Season of Rest — The Wedding Chorus — Germans fond of the Opera — Funerals Needed — A R-ivate Party — What I Overheard — A Gentle Girl — A Contri- bution-box — Unpleasantly Conspicuous 83 CHAPTER X. Four Hours with Wagner — A Wonderful Singer, Once — "Only a Shriek" — An Ancient Vocalist — " He Only Cry " — Emotional Ger- mans — A Wise Custom — Late Comers Rebuked — Heard to the Last — No Interruptions Allowed — A Royal Audience — An Eccentric King — Real Rain and More of It — Immense Success — ''Encore ! Encore ! " — Magnanimity of the King 90 ■ CHAPTER XI. Lessons in Art — My Great Picture of Heidelberg Castle — Its Effect in the Exhibition — Mistaken for a Turner — A Studio — Waiting for Orders — A Tramp Decided On — The Start for Heilbronn — Our Walking Dress — "Pleasant march to you" — We Take the Rail — German People on Board — Not Understood — Speak only German and Eng- lish — Wimpfen — A Funny Tower — Dinner in the Garden — Vigorous Tramping — Ride in a Peasant's Cart — A Famous Room 100 CHAPTER XII. The Rathhaus — An Old Robber Knight, Gotz Von Berlichingen — His Famous Deeds— The Square Tower — A Curious old Church — A Gay Turn-out — A Legend — The Wives' Treasures — A Model Waiter^-A Miracle Performed — An Old Town — The Worn Stones. 107 CONTENTS. xi' CHAPTER XIII. fiarly to Bed— Lonesome — Nervous Excitement — The Room "We Occu- pied — Disturbed by a Mouse — Grow Desperate — The old Remedy — A Shoe Thrown — Result — Hopelessly Awake — An Attempt to Dress — A Cruise in the Dark — Crawling on the Floor — A General Smash- up — Forty-seven Miles' Travel 114 CHAPTER XIV. A Famous Turn-out— Raftsmen on the Neckar — The Log Rafts — The Neckar — A Sudden Idea — To Heidelberg on a Raft — Chartering a Raft — Gloomy Feelings and Conversation — Delicious Journeying — View of the Banks — Compared with Railroading ; . . . . 122 CHAPTER XV. Down the River — German Women's Duties— Bathing as. We Went — A Handsome Picture : Girls in the Willows — We Sight a Tug— Steam- ers on the Neckar — Dinner on Board— Legend "Cave of the Spectre" — Lady Gertrude the Heiress — The Crusader — The Lady in the Cave — A Tragedy 128 CHAPTER XVI. An Ancient Legend of the Rhine— "The Lorelei" — Count Hermann — Falling in Love — A Sight of the Enchantress — Sad Effect on Count Hermann — An Evening visit — A Sad Mistake — Count Hermann Drowned— The Song and Music — Different Translations — Curi- osities in Titles 140 CHAPTER XVII. Another Legend — The Unconquered Monster — The Unknown Knight — His Queer Shaped Knapsack — The Knight Pitied and Advised — He Attacks the Monster — Victory for the Fire Extinguisher — The Knight Rewarded — His Strange Request — Spectacles Made Popu- lar — Danger to the Raft — Blasting Rocks— An Inglorious Death in View— Escaped— A Storm Overtakes us— Great Danger — Man Over- board—Breakers Ahead — Springing a Leak — Ashore Safe — A General Embracing— A Tramp in the Dark — The Naturalist Tavern —A Night's Troubles— " It is the Cat" 150 CHAPTER XVin. Breakfast in a Garden— The Old Raven— Castle of Hirschhorn — Attempt to Hire a Boat — High Dutch — What You Can Find out by Enquir- ing — What I Found out about the Students — A good German Custom — Harris Practices It — An Embarrassing Position — A Nice Party — At a Ball — Stopped at the Door — Assistance at Hand and Rendered — Worthy to be an Empress 161 xii CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIX. Arrive at Neckarsteinach — Castle of Dilsberg— A "Walled Town— On a Hill — Exclusiveness of the People— A Queer Old Place— An An- cient Well — An Outlet Proved— Legend of Dilsberg Castle — The Haunted Chamber— The Betrothed's request— The Knight's Slum- bers and Awakening— Horror of the Lover — The Wicked Jest — The Lover a Maniac— Under the Linden — Turning Pilot — Accident to the Raft— Fearful Disaster 170 CHAPTER XX. Good News — "Slow Freight" — Keramics — My Collection of Bric-a- brac— My Tear Jug — Henri II Plate— Specimen of Blue China — Indifference to the Laugh of the World— I Discover an Antique — En-route to Baden-Baden — Meeting an Old Acquaintance — A young American — Embryo Horse Doctor — An /merican, Sure — A Minis- ter Captured 184 CHAPTER XXI. Baden-Baden —Energetic Girls — A Comprehensive Yawn — A Beggar's Trick — Cool Impudence— The Bath Woman — Insolence of Shop Keepers — Taking a Bath — Early and Late Hours — Popular Belief Regarding Indians — An Old Cemetery — A Pious Hag — Curious Table Companions ' 196 CHAPTER XXII. The Black Forest — A Grandee and his Family — The Wealthy Nabob — A New Standard of Wealth— Skeleton for a New Novel — Trying Situation — The Common Council — Choosing a New Member — Studying Natural History — The Ant a Fraud — Eccentricities of the Ant — His Deceit and Ignorance — A German Dish— Boiled Oran- ges 207 CHAPTER XXIII. Off for a Day's Tramp— Tramping and Talking — Story Telling — Den- tistry in Camp — Nicodemus Dodge — Seeking a Situation — A Butt for Jokes— Jimmy Finn's Skeleton — Descending a Farm— Unex- pected Notoriety 221 CHAPTER XXIV. Sunday on the Continent — A Day of Rest — An Incident at Church — An Object of Sympathy — Royalty at Church— Public Grounds Con- cert — Power and Grades of Music —Hiring a Courier ... 231 CHAPTER XXV. Lucerne -Beauty of its Lake— The Wild Chamois— A Great Error Exposed— Methods of Hunting the Chamois— Beauties of Lucerne — The Alpenstock — Marking Alpenstocks — Guessing at Nationali- ties — An American Party— An Unexpected Acquaintance — Getting MixVd Up -Following Blind Trails— A Happy Half-hour— Defeat and Revenge 241 CONTENTS. xiii CHAPTER XXVI. Commerce of Lucerne— Benefits of Martyrdom— A Bit of History — The Home of Cuckoo Clocks— A Satisfactory Revenge — The Man Wlio Put Up at Gadsby's— A Forgotten Story— Wanted to bo Postmaster A Tennessean at Washington— He Concluded to Stay a While — Application of the Story. ..„....= „ . . . » 258 CHAPTER XXVII. The Glacier Garden— Excursion on the Lake— Life on the Mountains —A Specimen Tourist—" jVhere 're you FromV "—An Advertising Dodge— A Righteous Verdict — The Guide-book Student—"! Believe that's All "... „ ,.... = . , = 272 CHAPTER XXVHL The Rigi-Kulm — Its Ascent — Stripping for Business — A Mountain Lad — An English Tourist — Rail-road up the Mountain — Villages and Mountain — The Jodlers — About Ice Water — The Felsenthor — Too Late — Lost in the Fog — The Rigi-Kulm Hotel — The Alpine Horn — Sunrise at Night ...... o ,„. = .. , o o ..... o 284 CHAPTER XXIX. Everything Convenient— Looking for a Western Sunrise — Mutual Re- crimination — View from the Summit — Down the Mountain — Rail- roading—Confidence Wanted and Acquired 301 CHAPTER XXX. A Trip by Proxy — A Visit to the Furka Regions^Deadman's Lake — Source of the Rhone — Glacier Tables — Storm in the Mountains — At Grindelwald — Dawn on the Mountains— An Explanation Requir- ed — Dead Language — Criticism of Harris's Report . 311 CHAPTER XXXI Preparations for a Tramp — From Lucerne to Interlaken — The Brtlnig Pass — Modern and Ancient Chalets — Death of Pontius Pilate — Hermit Home of St Nicholas— Landslides — Children Selling Re- freshments — How they Harness a Horse — A Great Man — Honors to a Hero— A Thirsty Bride — For Better or Worse — German Fash- ions — Anticipations — Solid Comfort — An Unsatisfactory Awaken- ing — What we had Lost— Our Surroundings 323 CHAPTER XXXII. The Jungfrau Hotel — A Whiskered Waitress — An Arkansas Bride — Perfection in Discord — A Famous Victory — A Look from a Window — About the Jungfrau . . o 340 xiTT CONTENTS. CHAPTER XXXIII. The Giesbach Falls— The Spirit of the Alps— Why People Visit Them —Whey and Grapes as Medicines — The Kursaal — A JFormidable Undertaking— From Interlaken to ZermattonFoot— We Concluded to take a Buggy — A Pair of Jolly Drivers— We meet with Com- panions — A Cheerful Hide — Kandersteg Valley — An Alpine Parlor — Exercise and Amusement — A Race with a Log. 355 CHAPTER XXXIV. An Old Guide — Possible Accidents — Dangerous Habitation — Mountain Flowers — Embryo Lions — Mountain Pigs — The End of uhe World — Ghastly Desolation — Proposed Adventure — Readingup Advent- ures — Ascent of Monte Rosa — Precipices and Crevasses — Among the Snows — Exciting Experiences — Ice Ridges — The Summit — Adventures Postponed. oo, , ,o . » .. o . .<. 365 ':!HAPTER XXXV. A New Interest — ^Magnificent Views — A Mule's Preferences — -Turuing Mountain Corners — Terror of a Horse — Lady Tourists — Death of r- young Countess— A Search for a Hat — AVhat We Did Find — Har- ris's Opinion of Chamois — A Disappointed Man — A Giantess — Model for an Empress — Baths at Leuk— Sport in the Water — The Gem- mi Precipices — A Palace for an Emperor — The Famous Ladders — Considerably Mixed Up — Sad ^light of a Minister „ 381 CHAPTER XXXVI. Sunday Church Bells — A Cause of Profanity — A Magnificent Glacier — Fault Finding by Harris — Almost an Accident — Selfishness of Har- ris — Approaching Zermatt — The Matterhorn — Zern^att — Home of Mountain Climbers — Fitted outfor Climbing — A Fearful Adventure — Never Satisfied 401 CHAPTER XXXVIT. A Calm Decision — " I Will Ascend the Riffelberg" — Preparations for the Trip — All Zermatt on the Alert — Schedule of Persons and Things — An Unprecedented Display — A General Turn-out — Ready tor a Start — The Post of Danger — The Advance Directed — Grand Display of Umbrellas— The First Camp — Almost a Panic— Sup- posed to be Lost — The First Accident — A Chaplain Disabled— An Experimenting Mule — Good Effects of a Blunder — Badly Lost — A Reconnoiter — Mystery and Doubt — Stern Measures Taken — A Black Ram — Saved by a Miracle — The Guide's Guide 418 CONTENTS. XV . CHAPTER XXXVIII. Our Expedition Continued— Experiments with the Barometer — Boil- ing Thermometer— Barometer Soup— An Interesting Scientific Dis- covery—Crippling a Latinist— A Chaplain Injured— Short of Bar- keepers—Digging a Mountain Cellar — A Young American Speci- men — Somebody's Grandson— Arrival at Eiffel berg Hotel — Ascent of Gorner Grat —Faith in Thermometers— The Matterhorn 435 CHAPTER XXXIX. Guide Books — Plans for the Return of the Expedition — A Glacier Train Parachute Descent from Gorner Grat — Proposed Honors to Harris Declined — All had an Excuse — A Magnificent Idea Abandoned — Descent to the Glacier— A Supposed Leak — A Slow Train — The Glacier Abandoned— Journey to Zermatt— A Scientific Question. . 450 CHAPTER XL. Glaciers — Glacier Perils — Moraines — Terminal Moraines — Lateral Mo- raines — Immense Size of Glacier — Traveling Glacier — General Movements of Glaciers — Ascent of Mont Blanc — Loss of Guides — Finding of Remains — Meeting of Old Friends — The Dead and Liv- ing— ^Proposed Museum — The Relics at Chamonix 459 CHAPTER XLL The Matterhorn Catastrophe of 1865— Mr. Whymper"s Narrative—Ascent of the Matterhorn — The Summit — The Matterhorn Conquered — The Descent Commenced — A Fearful Disaster — Death of Lord Douglas and Two Others — The Graves of the Two 473 CHAPTER XLII. Switzerland— Graveyard at Zermatt — Balloting for Marriage — Farmers as Heroes — Falling off a Farm — From St. Nicholas to Visp — Dan- gerous Traveling — Children's Play — The Parson's Children — A Landlord's Daughter— A Rare Combination — Chillon — Lost Sympa- thy — Mont Blanc and its Neighbors — Beauty of Soap Bubbles — A Wild Drive — The King of Drivers — Benefit of getting Drunk 483 CHAPTER XLIII. Chamonix — Contrasts — Magnificent Spectacle — The Guild of Guides — • The Guide-in-Chief — The Returned Tourist— Getting Diploma- Rigid Rules — Unsuccessful Efforts to Procure a Diploma — The Re- cord Book — The Conqueror of Mont Blanc— Professional Jealousy — Triumph of Truth— Mountain Music — Its Effect A Hunt for a Nuisance 499 CHAPTER XLIV. Looking at Mont Blanc — Telescopic Effect — A Proposed Trip — Deter- mination and Courage — The Cost all counted— Ascent of Mont Blanc by Telescope — Safe and Rapid Return^^Diplomas Asked for and Refused— Disaster of 1866 -The Brave Brothers — "Wonderful En- durance and Pluck — Love Making on Mont Blanc — First Ascent of a Woman — Sensible Attire. 612 xvi CONTENTS. CHAPTER XLV. A Catastrophe wMch Cost Eleven Lives — Accident of 1870 — A Party of Eleven — A Fearfiil Storm — Note-books of the Victims — Within Five Minutes of Safety — Facing Death Resignedly 527 CHAPTER XLVI. The Hotel des Pyramids — The Glacier des Bossons — One of the Shows — Premeditated Crime — Saved Again — Tourists Warned — Advice to Tourists — The Two Empresses — The Glacier Toll Collector — Pure Ice Water — Death Rate of the World — Of Various Cities — A Pleasure Excursionist — A Diligence Ride — A Satisfied Englishman. 530 CHAPTER XLVII. Geneva — Shops of Geneva — Elasticity of Prices — Persistency of Shop Women — The High Pressure System — How a Dandy was brought to Grief — American Manners — Gallantry — Col. Baker of London — . Arkansaw Justice — Safety of Women in America — Town of Cham- bery — A Lively Place — At Turin — A Railroad Companion — An In- sulted Woman — City of Turin — Italian Honesty — A Small Mistake — Robbing a Beggar Woman 541 CHAPTER XLVIH. In Milan— The Arcade— Incidents we Met With— The Pedlar— Child- ren — The Honest Conductor — Heavy Stocks of Clothing — The Quar- relsome Italians — Great Smoke and Little Fire — The Cathedral — Style in Church — The Old Masters — Tintoretto's great Picture — Emotional Tourists — Basson's Famed Picture — The Hair Trunk. . 555 CHAPTER XLIX. inVenice — St. Mark's Cathedral — Discovery of an Antique — The Rich- es of St. Mark's — A Church Robber — Trusting Secrets to a Friend — The Robber Hanged — A Private Dinner — European Food 567 CHAPTER L. Why Some things Are — Art in Rome and Florence — The Fig Leaf Ma- nia — ^Titian's Venus — Difference between Seeing and Describing — A Real work of Art — Titian's Moses — Home 577 APPENDIX. A.— The Portier analyzed 582 B. — Hiedelberg Castle Described 587 C— The College Prison and Inmates .' 594 D. — The Awful German Language 601 E.— Legends of the Castle.'. 620 F. — The Journals of Germany 626 THE AUTHOR'S MEMORIES. CHAPTEE I OTsTE day it occurred to me that it had been many years since the world had been afforded the spectacle of a man adventurous enough to undertake a journey through Europe on foot. After much thought, I decided that I was a person fitted to furnish to mankind this spectacle. So I determined to do it. This was in March, .1878. I looked about me for the right sort of person to accom- pany me in the capacity of agent, and finally hired a Mr. Harris for this service. It was also my purpose to study art while in Europe. Mr. Harris was in sympathy with me in this. He was as much, of an enthusiast in art as I waSj and not less anxious to learn^ to paint, I desired to learn the German language; so did; Harris. Toward the middle of April we sailed in the Ilolsatia,. Capt. Brandt, and had a very pleasant trip indeed. After a brief rest at Hamburg, we made preparations for a long pedestrian trip southward in the soft spring weather, but at the last moment we changed the program, for private reasons, and took the express train. We made a short halt at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and found' it an interesting city. I would have liked to visit tire birth--- place of Guttenberg, but it could not be done, as no memo- randum of the site of the house has been kept. So we spent' 17 18 FRANKFORT. an hour in tlie Goethe mansion instead. The city permits this house to belong to private parties, instead of gi acing and dignifying herself with the honor of posses-sing and piotect- ing it. Frankfort is one of the sixteen cities which have the distinc- tion of being the place where the following incident occurred. Charlemagne, while chasing the Saxons, (as he said,) or being chased by tliem, (as they said,) arrived at the lank of tl e river at dawn, in a fog. The enemy were either before him or behind him ; but in any case he wanted to get across, very badly. He would have given anything for a guide, but noi:e was to be had. Presently he saw a deer, followed by Ltr young, approach the water. lie watched hei', judging that she would seek a ford, and lie was right. She waded over, and the army followed. So a great Frankish victoiy or de- feat was gained or avoided; and in oi'der to comniemorate the episode, Ciiarlemagne commanded a city to be built there, which he named Frankfort, — the ford of the Franks. JNoiie of the other cities where tins event happened were named from it. This is good evidence that Frankfort was the fii'st place it occurred at. Frankfort has another distinction, — it is the biilhplace of the German alphabet : or at least of the German M'ord for alphabet, — Buchstahen. Tliey say that the first movable t3'pes were made on birch sticks, — Buchstabe^ — lience the name. I was taught a lesson in political economy in Frankfort. I had brought from home a box containing a thousand veiy cheap cigars. By way of experiment, I stepped into a little shop in a queer old back street, took four gaily decorated boxes of wax matches and three cigars, and laid down a silver piece M'orth 48 cents. The man gave me 43 cents change. In Frankfort everybody wears clean clothes, and I think we noticed that this strange thing was the case in Hamburg too, and in the villages along the road. Even in the narrow- est and poorest and most ancient quarters of Frankfort neat and clean clothes were the rule. The little children of both sexes were nearly always nice enough to take into a body's RHINE LEGENDS. 19 lap. And as for the uniforms of the soldiers, they were newness and brightness carried to perfection. One could never detect a smirch or a grain of dust upon them. The street car conductors and drivers wore pretty uniforms which seemed to be just out of the bandbox, and their manners were as fine as their clothes. In one of the shops I had the luck to stumble upon a book which has charmed me nearly to death. It is entitled " The Legends of the Rhine from Basle to Rotterdam, by F. J. Kiefer ; Translated by L. W. Garnham, B. A." All tourists mention the Rhine legends, — in that sort of way which quietly pretends that the mentioner has been familiar with them all his life, and that the reader cannot possibly be ignorant of them, — but no tourist ever tells them. So this lit- tle book fed me in a very hungry place ; and I, in my turn, intend to feed my reader, with one or two little lunches from the same larder. I shall not mar Garnham's translation by meddling with its English ; for the most toothsome thing about it is its quaint fashion of building English sentences on the German plan, — and punctuating them according to no plan at all. In the chapter devoted to "Legends of Frankfort," I find the following : " THE KNAVE OF BERGEN." "In Frankfort at the Romer was a great mask-ball, at the coronation festival, and in the illuminated saloon, the clang- ing music invited to dance, and splendidly appeared the rich toilets and charms of the ladies, and the festively costumed Princes and Knights. All seemed pleasure, joy, and roguish gayety, only one of the numerous guests had a gloomy exte- rior; but exactly the black armor in which he walked about excited general attention, and his tall figure, as well as the noble propriety of his movera3nts, attracted especially the regards of the ladies. "Who the Knight was? Nobody could guess, for his Yizier was well closed, and nothing made him recognizable. Proud and yet modest he advanced to the Empress ; bowed on one knee before her seat, and begged 20 THE KNAVE OF BERGEN. for the favor of a waltz with the Queen of the festival. And she allowed his request. With light and graceful steps he danced through the long saloon, with the sovereign who thought never to have found a more dexterous and excellent dancer. But also by the grace of his niMnner, and line con- versation he knew to win the Queen, and she graciously accord- ed him a second dance for which he begged, a third, and a fourth, as well as others were not refused him. How all regarded the happy dancer, how many envied him the high favor; how increased curiosi ty, who the masked knight could be. Also the Emperor became more and more excited with curios- ity, and with great suspense one awaited the hour, when according to mask-law, each masked guest must make himself known. This moment came, but although all others had unmasked ; the secret knight still refused to allow his features to be seen, till at last the Queen driven by curiosity, and vexed at the obstinate refusal ; commanded him to open his Vizier. He THE BLACK KNIGHT. OPENING HIS VIZIEK. opened it, and none of the higli ladies and knights knew him. Bnt from the crowded spectators, 2 officials advanced, SUCCESS OF THE KNAVE. 21 who recognized the black dancer, and horror and terror spread in the saloon, as they said who the supposed knight was. It was the executioner of Bergen. But glowing with rasre, the Kinff commanded to seize the criminal and lead him to death, who had ventured to dance, with the queen ; so dis- graced the Empress, and in- sulted the crown. The culpa- ble threw himself at the feet of the Em|)eror, and said, — " ' Indeed I have heavily sinned against all noble gruests assembled here, but most heavily against you my sovereign and my queen. The Queen is insulted by my haughtiness equal to treason, but no punishment even blood, will not be able to wash out the disgrace, which you have suffered by me. Therefore oh Khig ! allow me to propose a remedy, to efface the shame, and to render it as if not done. Draw your sword and knight me, then I will throw down my gauntlet, to every one who dares to speak disrespectfully of my king. " The Emperor was surprised at this bold proposal, however it appeared the wisest to him ; " You are a knave he replied after a moment's consideration, however your advice is good, and displays prudence, as your offense shows adventurous courage. Well then, and gave him the knight-stroke, so I raise you to nobility, who begged for grace for your offence now kneels bafore me, rise as knight ; knavish you have acted, and Knave of Bergen shall 3^ou be called henceforth, and gladly the Black knight rose ; three cheers were given in honor of the Emperor, and loud cries of joy testified the approbation with which the Queen danced still once with the Knave of Bergen. THE ENKAGED EMPEROR. ~^ CHAPTER II. HEIDELBEBG. WE stopped at a hotel by the railway station. Next morning, as we sat in my room waiting for breakfast to come up, we got a good deal interested in something which was going on over the way, in front of another hotel. First, the personage who is called the ^ortier, (who is not the porter, bnt is a sort of first-mate of a hotel,) * appeared at the door in a spick and span new blue cloth uniform, decorated with shining brass buttons, and with bands of gold lace around his cap and wristbands ; and lie wore white gloves, too. He shed an official glance upon the situation, and then began to give orders. Two women servants came out with pails and -brooms and brushes, and gave the side- walk a thorough scrubbing ; meanwhile two others scrubbed the four marble steps which led up to the door ; beyond these we could see some men-servants taking up the carpet of the grand staircase. This carpet was carried away and the last grain of dust beaten and banged and swept out of it ; then brought back and put down again. The brass stair rods received an exhaustive polishing and were returned to their places. Kow a troop of servants brought pots and tubs of blooming plants and formed them into a beautiful jungle about the door and the base of the staircase. Other servants **See Appendix A. oo GREAT PREPARATIONS. 23 adorned all the balconies of the various stories with flow- ers and biniiers ; others ascended to the roof and hoisted a great flag on a staff there. Now carae some more chamber- maids and retouched tlie sidewalk, and afterwards wiped the marble steps with damp cloths and flnished by dusting them off' with feather brushes. Isow a broad black carpet was brought out and laid down the marble steps and out across the sidewalk to the curbstone. Tiie portier cast his eye along it, and found it was not abso- lutely straight; he commanded it to be straightened ; the ser- vants made the effort, — made several efforts, in fact,— but the jjortier was not satisfied. He finally had it taken up, and then he put it down himself and got it right. At this stage of the proceed- ings, a narrow bright red carpet was unrolled and stretched from (l! the top of the marble steps to the curbstone, along the center of the black carpet. This red path cost the portier more trouble than even the black one had done. But he patiently fixed and re-fixed it until it was exactly right and lay precisely in tlie middle of the black carpet. In New York these per- formances would have gathered a mighty crowd of curious and intensely interested spectators; but here it only captured an audience" of half-a-dozen little boys, who stood in a row across the pavement, some with their school knapsacks on their backs and their hands in their pockets, others with arms full of bundles, and all absorbed in the show. Occasionally THT PORTIEK. 24 LANDING A MONARCH. one of tlieni skipped irreverently over the carpet and took up a position on the other side. This always visibly annoyed the portier. Now came a waiting interval. The landlord, in plain clothes, and bareheaded, placed him- self on the bottom mar- ble step, abreast the portier, who stood on the other end of the ■ -c ever struck. He never y stopped to take a look any \ more — he just hove ' era. in and went for more Well at last he could hardly flop his wings, he was so tuckered out. He comes a-drooping down, once more, sweating like an ice-pitcher, drops his acorn in and says, ' Novo I guess I've got the bulge on you by this time!' So he bent down for a look. If you'll believe me, when his head come up again he was just pale with rage. He says, ' I've shoveled acorns enough i n there t o keep the family thirty years, and if I can see a sign of one of 'em I wish I may land in a museum with a belly full of sawdust ,^^^ " in two minutes ! ' /? r^^==i- "He just had strength - =r^A enough to crawl up on to the comb and lean his back « a blue flush about it." a;rin the chimbly, and then he collected his inii^n-essions and begun to free his mind. I see in a second that what I had mistook for profanity in the mines was only just the rudi- ments, as you may say. "Another jay Avas going by, and heard him doing his de- votions, and stops to inquire what was up. The sufferer told HOW IT ALL HAPPENED. 4X him the whole circumstance, and says, 'Kow yonder's the hole, and if you don't believe me, go and look for yourself.' So this fellow went and looked, and comes back and says, ' Plow many did you say you put in there? ' 'Not any less than two tons, ' says the sufferer. The other jay went and looked again. He couldn't seem to make it out, so he raised a yell, and three more Jays come. They all examined the hole, they all made the sufferer tell it over again, then they all discussed it, and got oif as many leather-headed opinions about it as an average crowd of humans could have done. " They called in more jays ; then more and more, till pretty soon this whole region 'peared to have a blue flush about it. There must have been five thousand of them; and such another jawing arid disputing and ripping and cussing, you ne\ cr heard. Every jay in the whole lot put his eye to the hole and delivered a more chuckle-headed opinion about the mystery than the jay that went there before him. They examined the house all over, too. The door was standing half open, and at last one old jay happened to 2:0 and light on it and look in. Of course that knocked the mystery galley- werit in a second. There lay the acorns, scattered all over the floor. He flopped his wings and raised a whoop. ' Come here ! ' he says, ' Come here, everybody ; hang'd if this fool hasn't been trying to fill up a house with acorns ! ' They all came a-swooping down like a blue cloud, and as each fellow lit on the door and took a glance, the whole absurdity of the contract that that first jay had tackled hit him home and he fell over backwards suffocating with laughter, and the next jay took his place and done the same. "Well, sir, they roosted around here on the house-top and the trees for an hour, and gufi'awed over that thing like human beings. It ain't any use to tell me a blue-jay hasn't got a sense of humor, because I know better. And memory ^ too. They brought jays here from all over the United S*'ates to look down that hole, every summer for three years Ot?.er 42 ONE COULDN'T SEE THE POINT. birds too. And thej conld all see the point, except an owl that cotne from JSTova iScotia to visit the Yo Semite, and he took this thing in on his way back. He Si^^id he couldn't see anything funny in it. But then he wafe -^ My^^ ^^'^^ disap- pointed about Yo Semite, too." CHAPTER IV. STUDENT LIFE. THE summer semester was in full tide ; consequently the most frequent figure in and about Heidelberg was the student. Most of the students were Germans, of course, but the representatives of foreign lands were very numerous. They hailed from every corner of the globe, — for instruction is cheap in Heidelberg, and so is living, too. The Anglo- American Club, composed of British and American students, had twenty-five members, and there was still much material left to draw from. Nine-tenths of the Heidelberg students wore no badge or uniform ; the other tenth wore caps of various colors, and belonged to social organizations called " corps." There were- five corps, each with a color of its own ; there were white caps, blue caps, and red, yellow, and green ones. The famous duel-fighting is confined to the "corps" boys. The ^'^kneip " seems to be a specialty of theirs, too. Kneips are held, now and then, to celebrate great occasions, — like the election of a beer king, for instance. The solemnity is simple ; the five corps assemble at night, and at a signal they all fall loading themselves with beer, out of pint-mugs-, as fast as possible, and each man keeps his own count, — usually by laying aside a lucifer match for each mug he empties. The election is soon decided. When the candidates can hold no more, a count is instituted and the one who has drank the 43 44 THE "KNEIP." g^reatest nnmber of pints is proclaimed king. I was told that the last beer king elected by the corps, — or by his own capa- bilities, — emptied his nmg seventy-live times. No stomach THE BEER KING. could hold all that qnantity at one time, of conrse, — bnt there are ways of freqnently creating a vacuum, which those who have been much at sea will understand. One sees so many students abroad at all hours, that he presently begins to wonder if they ever have any working hours. Some of them have, some of them haven't. Each can choose for himself whether he will work or play ; for Gernum university life is a very free life ; it seems to have no restraints. The student does not live in the college build- ings, but hires his own lodgings, in any locality he prefers, and he takes his meals when and where he pleases. He goes to bed when it suits him, and does not get up at all un- less he wants to. He is not entered at the university for any particular length of time ; so he is likely to change about. He passes no examination upon entering college. He merely pays a trifling fee of five or ten dollars, receives a card entitling him to the privileges of the university, and that ATTENDING LECTURES. 45 is the end of it. He is now ready for business, — or play, as he shall prefer. If he elects to work, he finds a large list of lectures to choose from. He selects the subjects which he will study, and enters his name for these studies ; but he can skip attendance. The result of this system is, that lecture-courses upon specialties ot an unusual nature are often deliverd to very slim audiences, while those upon more practical and every-day matters of education are delivered to very large ones. I THE lecturer's AUDIENCE. heard of one case where, day after day, the lecturer's audience consisted of three students,— and always the same three. But one day two of them remained away. The lecturer be- gan as usual, — "Gentlemen," — — then, without a smile, he corrected himself, saying, — " Sir/'— — and went on with his discourse. It is said that the vast majority of the Heidelberg students 46 IMPROVING OPPORTUNITIES. are hard workers, and make the most of their opportunities ; that they have no surplus means to spend in dissipation, and no time to spare for frolicking. One lecture follows right on the heels of another, with very little time for the student to get out of one hall and into the next ; but the industrious INDUSTKIOUS STUDENTS. ones manage it by going ou a trot. The professors assist them in the saving of their time by being promptly in their little boxed-up pulpits when the hours strike, and as promptly out again when the hour finishes. I entered an empty lecture i-oom one day just before the clock struck. The place had sim- ple, un painted pine desks and benches for about 2oo persons. About a minute before the clock struck, a hundred and fifty students swarmed in, rushed to their seats, imme- diately spread open their note-books and dipped their pens in the ink. When the clock began to strike, a burly profes- sor entered, was received with a round of applause, moved swiftly down the center aisle, said " Gentlemen," and began to talk as he climbed his pulpit steps; and by the time he iiad arrived in his box and faced his audience, his lecture was well under w^ay and all the pens were going. He had no notes, he talked with prodigious rapidity and energy for an hour, — then the students began to remind him in certain well understood ways that his time was up ; he seized his hat, still talking, proceeded swiftly down his pulpit steps, got out the last word of his discourse as he struck tlie floor; everybody rose respectfully, and he swept rapidly, down the CORPS-ETIQUETTE. 17 aisle and disappeared. An instant rush for some other lecture room followed, and in a minute I was alone with tlje empty benches once more. Yes, without doubt, idle students are not the rule. Out of eight hundred in the tow^n, I knew the faces of only about fifty ; but these I saw everywhere, and daily. They walked about the streets and the wooded hills, they drove in cabs, they boated on the river, they sipped beer and coffee, after- ; '^ noons, in the Schloss gardens. A good many of them wore the colored caps of the corps. They were finely and fashionably dressed, their manners were quite superb, and they led an easy, care- less, comfortable life. If a dozen of them sat together, and a lady or a gentleman passed whom one of them knew and saluted, they all rose to their feet and took off their caps. The members of a corps always received a fellow-member in this way, too ; but they paid no attention to members of other corps; they did not seem to see them. This was not a discourtesy ; it was only a part of the elaborate and rigid corps-etiquette. There seems to be no chilly distance existing between the German students and the professor ; but on the contrary, a companionable intercourse, the opposite of chilliness and reserve. When the professor enters a beer hall in the eve- ning where students are gathered together, these rise up and take off their caps, and invite the old gentleman to sit with them and partake. He accepts, and the pleasant talk and IDLE STUDENT. 48 ABOUT DOGS. the beer flow for an hour or two, and by and by the profes- sor, properly charged and comfortable, gives acord'al good night, while the stu- dents stand bowing and uncovered ; and then he moves on his happy way home- ward with all his vast cargo of learn- ing afloat in his hold. Nobody finds fault or feels outraged; no harm has been done. It seemed to be a part of corps-etiquette to keep a dog or so, too. I mean a corpe-dog, — the common property of the organization, like the corps-steward or head servant; then there are other dogs, owned by individuals. On a summer afternoon in the Castle gardens, I have seen six students march solemnly into the grounds, in single file, each carrying a bright Chinese paras(;l and leading a pro- digious dog by a string. It was a very imposing spectacle. Sometimes there would be about as many dogs around the COMPANIONABLE INTERCOURSE. AN IMPOSING SPECTACLE. pavilion as students ; and of all breeds and of all degrees of beauty and ugliness. These dogs had a rather dry time of it; for t!iey were tied to the benches and had no amusement MORE ABOUT DOGS, 49 for an honr or two at a time except what tliey could get out of pawing at the guats, or trying to sleep and not succeeding. However, tliey got a lump of sugar occasionally — tliey were fond of that. It seemed right and proper that students should indulge in dogs; but every body else had them, too, — old men and young ones, old women and nice young ladies. If there is one spectacle that is unpleasanter than another, it is that of an elegantly dressed young lady towing a dog by a string. It is said to be the sign and symbol o f blighted love. It seems to me that some other way of adver- tisinoj it miffht be devised, which would be just as con- spicuous and yet not so try- ing to the pro- prieties. It would be a mistake to suppose that the easy-going pleasure- s e e k - ing student carries an emp- ty head. Just the contrary. an advektisment. He has spent nine years in the Gymnasium, under a system 50 THE GERMAN STUDENT. wliicli allowed him no freedom, but vigorously compelled him to work like a slave. Consequently he has left the gym- nasium with an education which is so extensive and complete, that the most a university can do for it is to perfect some of its prof ounder specialties. It is said that when a pupil leaves the gymnasium, he not only has a comprehensive education, but he knows what he knows, — it is not befogged with uncer- tainty, it is burnt into him so that it will stay. For instance, he does not merely read and write Greek, but speaks it; the same with the Latin. Foreign youth steer clear of the gymnasium ; its rules are too severe. They go to the uni- versity to put a mansard roof on their whole general educa- tion ; but the German student already has his mansard roof, so he goes there to add a steeple in the nature of some spec- ialty, such as a particular branch of law, or medicine, or philology — like international law, or diseases of the eye, or special study of the ancient Gothic tongues. So this German attends only the lectures which belong to the chosen branch, and drinks his beer and tows his dog around and has a general good time the rest of the day. He has been in rigid bondage so long that the large liberty of university life is just what he needs and likes and thoroughly appre- ciates; and as it cannot last forever, he makes the most of it while it does last, and so lays up a good rest against the day that must see him put on the chains once more and enter the slavery of official or professional life. CHAPTER Y. AT THE students' DUELING GKOUND. ONE day in the interest of science my agent obtained permission to bring me to the students' dueling place. We crossed the river and drove up the bank a few hundred yards, then turned to the left, entered a narrow alley, fol- lowed it a hundred yards and arrived at a two-story public house; we were acquainted with its outside aspect, for it was visible from the hotel. We went up stairs and passed into a large whitewashed apartment which was perhaps fifty feet long, by thirty feet wide and twenty or twenty-five high. It was a well lighted place. There was no carpet. Across one end and down both sides of the room extended a row of tables, and at these tables some fifty or seventy-five students* were sitting. Some of them were sijDping wine, others were playing cards, others chess, other groups were chatting together, and many were smoking cigarettes while they waited for the com- ing duels. Nearly all of them wore colored caps ; there M-ere white caps, green caps, blue caps, red caps, and bright yel- low ones ; so, all the five corps were present in strong force. In the windows at the vacant end of the room stood six or eight long, narrow-bladed swords with large protecting guards for the hand, and outside was a man at work sharpening * See Appendix C. ol 52 DUELING CUSTOMS. others on a grindstone. He understood his business ; for when a sword left his hand one could shave himself with it. It was observ^able that the young gentlemen neither bowed to nor spoke with students whose caps differed in color from their own. This did not mean hostility, but only an armed neutralitj'. It was considered that a person could strike harder in the duel, and with a more earnest in- terest, if he had never been in a condition of comradeship with his ^ antagonist ; therefore, comradeship between the corps was not per- mitted. At- intervals the presidents of the five corps have a cold official intercourse with each other, but nothing further. For example when the regular duel, ing day of one of the corps approaches, its president calls for volunteers from among the membership to offer battle; three or more respond,— but there must not be less than three ; the pi'esident lays their names before the other presidents, with the request that they furnish antagonists for these challengers from among their corps. This is promptly done. It chanced that the present occa- sion was the battle day of the Red Cap Corps. They were the challengers, and certain caps of other colors had volun- teered to meet them. The students fight duels in the room which I have described, two days in every weeh during seven and a half or eight months in every year. This custom has continued in Germany two hundred and fifty years. To return to my narrative. A student in a white cap met us and introduced us to six or eight friends of his who also " UNDEESTANDS HIS BUSINESS." THE COMBATANTS. 53 wore white caps, and wliile we stood conversing, two strange looking figures were led in from another room. They were students panoplied for the duel. They were bare-headed • their eyes were protected by iron goggles which projected an inch or more, the leather straps of which bound their ears flat against their heads; their necks were wound around and around with thick wrappings which a sword could not cut through ; from chin to ankle they were padded thoroughly against injury; their arms were bandaged and re-bandaged, layer upon layer, until they looked like solid black logs. These weird apparitions had been handsome youths, clad in fashionable attire, fifteen minutes before, but now they did not resemble any beings one ever sees unless in night- mares. They strode along, with their arms projecting straight out from their bodies; they did not hold them out tiieinselves, but fel- low students walked beside them and gave the needed support. There was a rush for the vacant end of the room, novr? and we followed and got good places. The combatants were placed face to face, each with several members of his own corps about him to assist ; two seconds, well padded, and with swords in their hands, took near stations; a student belonging to neither of the opposing corps placed himself in a good position to umpire the com- bat ; another student stood by with a watch and a memoran- dum-book to keep record of the time an'd the number and nature of tlie wounds ; a gray haired surgeon was present THE OLD SURGEON. 54 THE FIRST DUEL. with his lint, his bandages and his instruments. After a moment's pause the duelists saluted the umpire respect- ful])', then one after another the several officials stepped for- ward, gracefully removed their caps and saluted him also, and returned to their places. Everything was ready, now; students stood crowded together in the foreground, and others stood behind them on chairs and tables. Every face was turned toward the center of attraction. The combatants were watching each other with alert eyes; THE FIRST WOUND. a perfect stillness, a breathless interest reigned. I felt that I was going to see some wary work. But not so. The instant the word was given, the two apparitions sprang forward and began to rain blows down upon each other with such lightning rapidity that 1 could not quite tell whether I saw the swords or only the flashes they made in the air ; the rattling din of these blows, as they struck steel or paddings was something wonderfully stirring, and they were struck with such terrif- ic force that I could not understand why the opposing sword was not beaten down under the assanlt. Presently, in the midst of the sword-flashes, I saw a handful of hair skip into the air as if it had lain loose on the victim's head and a breath of wind had pufi'ed it suddenly away. A DRAWN BATTLE. 55 The seconds cried " Halt !" and knocked up the combatant's swords with their own. The duelists sat down ; a student- official stepped forward, examined the- wounded head and touched the place with a sponge once 6r twice ; the surgeon came and turned back tlie hair from the wound — and re- vealed a crimson gash two or three inches long, and pro- ceeded to bind an oval piece of leather and a bunch of lint over it; the tally-keeper stepped up and tallied one for the opposition in his book. Then the duelists took position again ; a small stream of blood was flowing down the side of the injured man's head, and over his shoulder and down liis body to the floor, but he did not seem to mind this. The word was given, and thej plunged at each other as fiercely as before ; once more the blows rained and rattled and flashed ; every few moments the quick-eyed seconds would notice that a sword was bent — then they called " Halt ! " struck up the contending weapons, and an assisting student straightened the bent one. Tiie wonderful turmoil went on — presently a bright spark sprung from a blade, and that bhide, broken in several pieces,, sent one of its fragments flying to the ceiling. A new swordi was provided, and the flght proceeded. The exercise was- tremendous, of course, and in time the fighters began tO' show great fatigue. They were allowed to rest a moment,, every little while ; they got other rests by wounding each, other, for then they could sit down while the doctor applied: the lint and bandages. The law is that the battle must con- tinue fifteen minutes if tlie men can hold out ; and as the pauses do not count, this duel was protracted to twenty on thirty minutes, I judged. At last it was'decided that the men were too much wearied to do battle longer. They were led: away drenched with crimson from head to foot. That M-as a good fight, but it could not count, partly because- it did nob last the lawful fifteen minutes, (of actual fighting,) and partly because neither man was disabled by his wounds. It was a* drawn battle, and corps-law requires that drawn battles shalli be re-fought as soon as the adversaries aie well of their hurts-* 56 A SHORT CONFLICT. During the conflict, I liad talked a little, now and then, with a jonng gentleman of the white cap corps and he had mentioned that he was to fight next, — and had also pointed out his challenger, a young gentleman who was leaning against the opposite wall smoking a cigarette and restfully observing the duel then in progress. My acquaintanceship with a party to the coming contest had the effect of giving me a kind of personal interest in it ; I naturally wished he might win, and it was the reverse of pleasant to learn that he probably would not, because al- though he was a notable swordsman, the challenger was held to be his superior. The duel presently began and in the same furious way which had marked the pi'cvious one. I stood close by, but could not tell which blows told and which did not, they fell and vanished so like flashes of light. They all seemed to tell ; the swords always bent over the opponents' heads, from the forehead back over the crown, and seemed to touch, all the May ; but it was not so, — a protecting blade, invisible to me, Avas always interposed between. At the end of ten seconds each man had struck twelve or fifteen blows, and warded oflf twelve or fifteen, and no harm done; then a sword became disabled, and a short rest followed whilst a new one was brought. Early in the next round the Mdiite corps student got an ugly wound on the side of his head and gave his opponent one like it. In the third round the latter re- ceived another bad wound in the liead, and the former had his under-lip divided. After that, the white corps student gave many severe wounds, but got none of consequence in return. At the end of five minutes from the beginning of the duel the surgeon stopped it ; the challenging party had suffered such injuries that any addition to them might be dangerous. These injuries were a fearful spectacle, but are better left undescribed. So, against expectation, my acquaintance was the victor. CHAPTER VI. THE third duel was brief and bloody. The surgeon stop- ped it when he saw that one of the nien had received such bad wounds that he could not fight longer without endangering liis life. The fourth duel was a tremendous encounter ; but at the end of five or six minutes the surgeon interfered once more: another man so severely hurt as to render it unsafe to add to his harms. I watched this engagement as I had watched the others, — with rapt interest and strong excitement, and with a shrink and a shudder for every blow that laid open a cheek or a forehead ; and a conscious paling of my face when 1 occasionally saw a wound of a yet more shocking nature inflicted. My eyes were upon the loser of this duel when he got his last and vanquishing wound, — it was in his face and it carried away his — but no matter, I must not enter into details. I had but a glance, and then turned quickly away, but 1 would not have been looking at all if I had known what was coming. No, that is probably not true ; one thinks he would not look if he knew what was coming, but the interest and the excitement are so powerful that they would doubtless conquer all other feelings ; and so, under the fierce exhilaration of the clashing steel, he would yield and look, after all. Sometimes spectators of these duels faint, — and it does seem a very reasonable thing to do, too. 57 58 REPAIRING DAMAGES. Both parties to this fourth duel were badly hurt ; so much so that the surgeon was at work upon them nearly or quite an hour, — a fact which is suggestive. But this waiting in- terval was not wasted in idleness by the assembled students. It was past noon; therefore they ordered their landlord, down stairs, to send up hot beefsteaks, chickens, and such things, and these they ate, sitting comfortably at the several tables, whilst they chatted, disputed and laughed. The door to the surgeon's room stood open, meantime, but the cutting, sewing, splicing and bandaging going on in there in plain view, did not seem to disturb any one's appetite. I went in and saw the surgeon labor a while, but could not enjoy it ; it was much less trying, to see the wounds given and received than to see them mended ; the stir and turmoil, and the music of the steel, were wanting, here, — one's nerves were wrung by this grisly spectacle, whilst the duel's compensating pleasurable thrill was lacking. Finally the doctor finished, and the men who were to fight the closing battle of the day came forth. A good many dinners were not completed, yet, but no matter, they could be eaten cold, after the battle ; therefore everybody crowded forward to see. This was not a love duel, but a " satisfac- tion "affair. These two students had quarreled, and were here to settle it. They did not belong to any of the corps, but they were furnished with weapons and armor, and permitted to fight here by the five corps as a courtesy. Evi- dently these two young men were unfamiliar with the dueling ceremonies, though they were not unfamiliar M^th the sword. When they were placed in position they thought it was time to begin, — and they did begin, too, and with a most impetu- ous energy, without waiting for anybody to give the word. This vastly amused the spectators, and even broke down their studied and courtly gravity and surprised them into laughter. Of course the seconds struck up the swords and started the duel over again. At the word, the deluge of blows began, but before long the surgeon once more interfered, — for the only reason which ever permits him to interfere, — and the WHAT I SAW. 61 day's war was over. It was now two in the afternoon, and 1 had been present since half past nine in the morning. The field of battle was indeed a red one by this time ; but some sawdust soon righted that. There had been one duel before I arrived. In it one of the men received many injuries, while the other one escaped without a scratch. I had seen the heads and faces of ten youths gashed in every direction by the keen two-edged blades, and yet had not seen a victim wince, nor heard a moan, or detected any fleeting expression M'hich confessed the sharp pain the hurts were inflicting. This was good fortitude, indeed. Such endurance is to be expected in savages and prize-fighters, for they are born and educated to it ; but to find it in such per- fection in these gently bred and kindly natured young fellows is matter for surprise. It was not merely under the excite- ment of the sword-play that this fortitude was shown ; it was shown in the surgeon's room where an uninspiring quiet reigned, and where there was no audience. The doctor's manipulations brought out neither grimaces nor moans. And in the fights it was observable that these lads hacked and slashed with the same tremendous spirit, after they were covered with streaming wounds, which they had shown in the beginning. The world in general looks upon the college duels as very farcical affairs: true, but considering that the college duel is fought by boys ; that the swords are real swords ; and that the head and face are exposed, it seems to me that it is a farce which has quite a grave side to it. People laugh at it mainly because they think the student is so covered up with armor that he cannot be hurt. But it is not so; his eyes and ears are protected, but the rest of his face and head are bare, lie can not only be badly wounded, but his life is in danger ; and he would sometimes lose it but for the interference of the surgeon. It is not intended that his life shall be endan- gered. Fatal accidents are possible, however. For in- stance, the student's sword may break, and the end of it fly up behind his antagonist's ear and cut an artery which could 62 RESULTS OF COLLEGE DUELS. not be reached if the sword remained whole. This has liappened, sometimes, and death has resulted on the spot. Formerly the student's armpits were not protected, — and at that time the swords were pointed, whereas they aie blunt, now ; so an artery in the armpit was sometimes cut, and death followed. Then in the days of shaip-pointed swords, a spectator was an occasional victim, — the end of a broken sword flew five or ten feet and buried itself in his neck or his heart, and death ensued instantly. The student duels in Germany occasion two or three deaths every jcar, now, but this arises only from the carelessness of the wounded men ; they eat or drink imprudently, or commit excesses in the way of over-exertion ; inflammation sets in and gets such a headway that it cannot I'c arrested. Indeed there is blood and pain and danger enough about the college duel to entitle it to a considerable degree of respect. , All the customs, all the laws, all the details, pertaining to the student duel are quaint and naive. Tlie grave, precise, and coui'tly cerenjony with \Ahifh the thing is conducted, invests it with a sort of antique charm. This dignity, and these knightly graces suggest the tourna- ment, not the prize fight. The laws are as curious as they are strict. For instance, the duelitt may step forward from the line he is placed upon, if he chooses, but never back of it. If he steps back of it, or even leans back, it is considered that he did it to avoid a blow or contrive an advantage ; so he is dismissed fi'om his corps in disgrace. It would seem but natural to step from under a descending sword uncon- sciously, and against one's M'ill and intent, — ^-et this uncon- sciousness is not allowed. Again: if under the sudden anguish of a wound the receiver of it makes a grimace, he falls some degrees in the estimation of liis fellows; his corps are ashamed of him ; they call him " hare foot," which is the German equivalent for chicken-hearted. CHAPTEE yil. IN addition to tlie corps laws, there are some corps-usages which have the force of laws. Perhaps the president of a corps notices that one of the . membership who is no longer an exempt, — that is a fresh- man, — has remained a sophomore some little time without volunteering to fight ; some day, the president, instead of calling for volunteers, will ajpjpoint this sophomore to meas- ure swords with a student of another corps ; he is free to decline — everybody says so, — there is no compulsion. This is all true, — but I have not heard of any student who did decline. He wotild naturally rather retire from the corps than decline ; to decline, and still remain in the corps would make him unpleasantly conspicuous, and properly so, since he knew, when he joined, that his main business, as a mem- ber, would be to fight. No, there is no law against declin- ing, — except the law of custom, which is confessedly sti'ong- er than written law, everywhere. The ten men whose duels I had witnessed did not go away when their hurts were dressed, as I had supposed they would, but came back, one after another, as soon as they were free of the surgeon, and mingled with the assemblage in I ho dueling room. The white-cap student who won the second fight witnessed the remaining three, and talked M-ith ns during the intermissions. He could not talk very well, because his opponent's sword had cut his under lip in two, 64 THE WOUNDED. and then the surgeon had sewed it together and overlaid it with a profusion of white plaister patches ; neither conld he eat easily, still he contriv- ed to accomplish a slow and troublesome luncheon while the last duel was preparing. The man who was the worst hurt of all, played chess while waiting to see this engagement. A good part of his face was covered with patches and ~lJJaMr)a[f.i__ bandages, and all the rest of his head was covered and concealed by them. It is said that the student likes to appear on the street and in other public places in this kind of array, and that this predilec-, tion often keeps him out when exposure to rain or sun is a positive danger for him. IMewly bandaged students are a very common specta- cle in the public gai-dens of Heidelberg. It is also said that the student is glad to get wounds in the face, because the scars io) they leave will show so ,well there; and it is also "^"^ said that these face- wounds are so prized that youths have even been known to pull them apart from time to time and put red wine in them to make them heal badly and leave as ugly a scar as possible. It does not look reasonable, but it is roundly asserted and maintained, nevertheless; I am sure of one thing, — scars are plenty enough in Germany, among the young men; and very grim ones they are, too. They criss-cross the face in angry red welts, and are permanent FAVORITE STREET COSTUME. A BADGE OF HONOR. 65 and ineffaceable. Some of these scars are of a very strange and dreadful aspect ; and the effect is striking when several such accent the milder ones, which form a city map on a man's face ; they suggest the " burned district " then. We had often noticed that many of the students wore a colored silk band or ribbon diagonally across their breasts. It transpired that this sig- nifies that the wearer has fought three duels in which a decision was reached — duels in which he either whipped or was whipped , — f o r ineffaceable soaks. drawn battles do not count* After a student has received his ribbon, he is " free ; " he can cease from fighting, with- out reproach, — except some one insult him ; his president cannot appoint him to fight ; he can volunteer if he wants to, or remain quiescent if he prefers to do so. Statistics show that he does not prefer to remain quiescent. They show that the duel has a singular fascination about it some- where, for these free men, so far from resting upon the priv- ilege of the badge, are always volunteering. A corps student told me it was of record tliat Prince Bismarck fought thirty- two of these duels in a single summer term when he was in * From mt Diary. — Dined in a hotel a few miles up the Neckar, in a room whose walls were hung all over with framed portrait-gnmps of the Five Corps ; some were recent, but many antedated photography, and were pic- tured in lithography — the dates ranged back to forty or fifty years ago. Nearly every individual wore the ribbon across his breast. In one portrait- group representing (as each of these pictures did) an entire Corps, I took pains to count the ribbons : there were twenty-seven members, and twenty^ one of them wore that significant badge. 66 A LITTLE STATISTICAL. college. So he fought twenty-nine after his badge had given him the right to retire from the field. Tlie statistics may be found to possess interest in several particulars. Two days in every Meek are devoted to dueling. The rule is rigid that there must be three duels on each of these days; there are generally more, but there cannot be fewer. There were six the day I was present ; sometimes there are seven or eight. It is insisted that eight duels a week, — four for each of the two days, — is too low an average to draw a calculation from, but I will reckon from that basis, preferring an under-statement to an over-statement of the case. This requires about four hundred and eighty or five hundred duelists in a year, — for in summer the college term is about three and a half months, and in winter it is four months and sometimes longer. Of the seven hundred and fifty students in the university at the time I am writing of, only eighty belonged to the five corps, and it is only these corps that do the dueling ; occasionally other students borrow the arms and battle-ground of the five corps in order to settle a quarrel, but this does not happen every dueling day.* Consequently eighty youths furnish the material for some two hundred and fifty duels a year. This average gives six fights a year to each of the eighty. This large work could not be accomplished if the badge-holders stood upon their privilege and ceased to volunteer. Of course where there is so much fighting, the students make it a point to keep themselves in constant practice wilh the foil. One often sees them, at the tables in the Castle grounds, using their wliips or canes to illustrate some new sw»»rd trick which they have heard about; and between tlie duels, on the day whose history I have been writing, the swords were not always idle; every now and then we heard a succession of the keen hissing sounds which the sword mal es *They have to borrow the arms because they couM not get them else- where or otherwise. As I understand it, the public authorities, all over Germany, allow the five corps to keep swords, hxit do not allow them to use them. This law is rigid ; it is only the execution of it that is lax. CONSTANT SWORD PRACTICE. ' 67 when it is being put tlirougli its paces in the air, and this informed us that a student was practicing. Necessarily this unceasing attention to the art develops an expert occasion- ally. He becomes famous in his own university, his renown spreads to other universities. Pie is invited to Gottingen, to fight with a Gottingen expert ; if he is victorious, he will be invited to other colleges, or those colleges will send their experts to him. Americans and Englishmen often join one or another of the five corps. A year or two ago, the princi- pal Heidelberg expert was a big Kentuckian ; he was invited to the various universities and left a wake of victory behind him all about Germany ; but at last a little student in Stras- burg defeated him. There was formerly a student in Heidelberg who had picked up somewhere and mastered a peculiar trick of cutting up under instead of cleaving down from above. While the trick lasted he won in sixteen suc- cessive duels in his own university ; but by that time observers had discovered what his charm was, and how to break it, therefore his championship ceased. The rule which forbids social intercourse between memt bers of different corps is strict. In the dueling house, in the parks, on the street, and anywhere and everywhere that students go, caps of a color group themselves together. li all the tables in a public garden were crowded but one, and that one had two red-cap students at it and ten vacant places, the yellow caps, the blue caps, the white caps and the green caps, seeking seats, would go by that table and not seem to see it, nor seem to be aware that there was such a table in the grounds. The student by whose courtesy we had been enabled to visit the dueling place, wore the white cap, — ■ Prussian Corps. He introduced us to many white caps but to none of another color. The corps etiquette extended even to us, who were strangers, and required us to group with the white corps only, and speak only with the white corps, while we were their guests, and keep aloof from caps of the other colors. Once I wished to examine some of the swords, but an American student said, " It would not be quite polite ; these now in the windows all have red hilts or 68 CORPS ETIQUETTE. blue ; they will bring in some with white hilts presently, and those jou can handle freely." When a sword was broken in the first duel, I wanted a piece of it ; but its hilt was the wrong color, so it was considered best and politest to await a properer season. It was brought to me after the room was cleared, and I will now make a "life-size" sketch of it by tracing a line around it with my pen, to show the width of the weapon. The length of these swords is about three feet, and they are quite heavy. One's disposition to cheer, during the course of the duels or at their close, was naturally strong, but corps etiquette forbade any demonstrations of this sort. However brilliant a contest or a victory might be, no sign or sound be- trayed that any one was moved. A dignified grav- ity and repression were maintained at all times, AVhen the dueling was finished and we were ready to go, iahe gentlemen of the Prussian Corps to whom we had been introduced took off their caps in the courteous German way, and also shook hands ; their brethren of the same order took off their caps and ^^ bowed, but without shaking hands; the gentlemen of the other corps treated us just as they would have treated white caps, — they fell apart, appar- ently unconsciously, and left us an unobstructed pathway, but did not seem to see us or know we were there. If we had gone thither the following week as guests of another corps, the white caps, without meaning any offense would have observed the etiquette of their order and ignored our presence. [How strangely are comedy and tragedy blended in this life ! I had not been home a full half hour, after witnessing those playful sham-duels, when circumstances made it necessary for me to get ready immediately to assist personally at a real one — a duel with no effeminate limitations in the matter of results, but a battle to the death. An account of it, in the next chapter, will show the reader that duels between boys, for fun^ and duels between men in earnest, are very different affairs.] PrECE OP SWORD. CHAPTER Vm. THE GKEAT FRENCH DUEL. MUCH as the modern French duel is ridiculed by certain smart people, it is in reality one of the most dangerous institutions of our day. Since it is always fought in the open air the combatants are nearly sure to catch cold. M. Paul de Cassagnac, the most inveterate of the French duelists, has suffered so often in this way that he is at last a confirmed invalid; and the best physician in Paris has expressed the opinion that if he goes on dueling for fifteen or twenty years more, — unless he forms the habit of fighting in a comfortable room where damps and draughts cannot intrude, — he will ev^entually endanger his life. This ought to moderate the talk of those people who are so stubborn in maintaining that the French duel is the most health-giving of recreations because of the open-air exercise it aflfords. And it ought also to moderate that foolish talk about French duelists and socialist-hated monarchs being the only people who are immortal. ^ But it is time to get at my subject. As soon as I heard of the late fiery outbreak between M. Gambetta and M. Four- tou in the French Assembly, I knew that trouble must fol- low. I knew it because a long perponal friendship with M. Gambetta had revealed to me the desperate and implacable nature of the man. Yast as are his physical proportions, I knew that the thirst for revenge would penetrate to the re- motest frontiers of his person. 69 70 MAKING PREPARATIONS. I did not wait for him to call on me, but went at once to him. As I expected, I found the brave fellow steeped in a profound French calm. I say French calm, because Fi-ench calmness and Engflisli c;ilmness have points of difference. He was moving swiftly back and forth among the debris of his furniture, now and then staving chance frtig- ments of it across the room with his foot ; grinding a constant grist of curses through liis set teeth ; and halting every little while to deposit another liandful of his hair on the pile which he had been building of it on the table. He threw his arms around . FRENCH CALM. my ueck, bent me over liis stomach to his breast, kissed me on both cheeks, hugged me four or five times, and then placed me in his own arm-chair. As soon as I had got well again, we began business ^t once. I said I supposed he would wish me to act as his second, and he said, " Of course." I said I must be allowed to act under a French name, so that I might be shielded from obloquy in my country, in case of fatal results. He winced here, probably at the suggestion that dueling was not regard- ed with respect in America. However, he agreed to my re- quirement. This accounts for the fact that in all the news- paper reports M. Gambetta's second was apparently a Frenchman. First, M^e drew up my principal's will. I insisted upon this, and stuck to my point. I said I had never heard of a man in his right mind going out to light a duel without first making his will. He said he had never heard of a man in his right mind doing anything of the kind. When he had finished the will, he wished to proceed to a choice of THE CHALLENGE. 71 his "last words." He wanted to know how the following words, as a dying exclamation, struck me : — " I die for my God, for my country, for freedom of speech, for progress, and the universal brotherhood of man ! " I objected that this would require too lingering a death ; it was a good speech for a consumptive, but not suited to the exigencies of the held of lionor. We wrangled over a good many ante-mortem outbursts, but I finally got him to cut his obituary down to this, which he copied into his memoran- dum book, pui'posing to get it by heart: — " I DIE THAT FRANCE MAY LIVE." I said that this remark seemed to lack relevancy ; but he said relevancy was a matter of no consequence in last w^ords, what you wanted was thrill. The next thing in order was the choice of weapons. My principal said he was not feeling well, and would leave that and theother details of the proposed meeting to me. There- fore I wrote the following note and carried it to M. Fourtou's friend : — " Sm: M. Gambetta accepts M. Fourtou's challenge, and authorizes me to propo^^e Plessis-Piquet as the place of meet- ing; to-morrow morning at daybreak as the time; and axes as the weapons. I am, sir, w^ith great respect, Mark Twain." M. Fourtou's friend read this note, and shuddered. Then lie turned to me, and said, with a suggestion of severity in his tone : — "Have you considered, sir, what would be the inevitable result of such a meeting as this ? '' "Well, for instance, what fi] would it be ? " " Bloodshed ! " "That's about the size of it,"'I '^^' said. "Now, if it is a ffiir the chali knge .AcrEPTED. qaestion, what \\a< your side proposing lo &hed ?" 72 CHOOSING WEAPONS. I had him, there. He saw he had made a blunder, so he hastened to explain it away. He said he had spoken jesting- ly. Then he added that he and his principal would enjoy axes, and indeed prefer them, but such weapons were barred " by the French code,- and so I must change my proposal. I walked the floor, turning the thing over in my mind, and finally it occurred to me that Gatling guns at fifteen paces would be a likely way to get a verdict on the field of honor. So I framed tliis idea into a proposition. But it was not accepted. The code was in the M'ay again. I proposed rifles; then double-barreled shot-guns; then, Colt's navy revolvers. These being all rejected, I reflected a while, and sarcastically suggested brick-bats at three quar- ters of a mile. I always hate to fool away a humorous thing on a person who has no perception of humor ; and it filled me with bitterness when this man went soberly away to submit the last proposition to his principal. He came back presently and said his principal M'as charmed with the idea of brick-bats at three quarters of a mile, but must decline on account of the danger to disinterested parties passing between. Then I said : — " Well, I am at the end of my string, now. Perhaps yoit would be good enough to suggest a weapon ? Perhaps you have even had one in your mind all the time ? " His countenance brightened, and he said with alacrity, — "Oh, without doubt, monsieur!" So he fell to hunting in his pockets,— pocket after pocket, and he had plenty of them,— muttering all the while, " Now, what could I have done with them % " At last he was successful. He fished out of his vest pocket a couple of little things which I carried to the light and ascertamed to be pistols. They were single-barreled and silver-mounted, and very dainty and pretty. I was not able to speak for emotion. I silently hnng one of them on my watch chain, and returned A SEARCH. DECIDING ON DISTANCE. 73 the other. My companion in crime now unrolled a postage- stamp containing several cartridges, and gave me one of them. I asked if he meant to signify by this that our men were to be allowed but one shot apiece. He replied that the French code permitted no more. I then begged him to go on and suggest a distance, for my mind was growing weak and confused under the strain which had been put upon it. He named sixty-five yards. I nearly lost my patience. I said, — "Sixty-five yards, with these instruments? Squirt-o-uns would be deadlier at fifty. Consider, my friend, j'^ouand I are banded together to destroy fife, not make it eternal." But with all my persuasions, all my arguments, I was only able to get him to reduce the distance to thirty-five yards ; and even this concession he made with reluctance, and said with a sigh, — " I wash my hands of this slaughter; on your head be it." There w^as nothing for me but to go home to my old lion- heart and tell my humiliating story. When I entered, ]\I. Gambetta was laying his last lock of liair upon the altar. He sprang toward m e , exclaiming, " You have made Wf B HE. SWOONED PONDEROUSLY. the fatal arrangements, — I see it in your eye ! " " I have." His face paled a trifle, and he leaned upon the table for support. He breathed thick and heavily for a moment or two, so tumultuous were his feelings; then he hoarsely whispered, — " The weapon, the weapon ! Quick ! what is the weapon ?'" " This! " and I displayed that silver-mounted thing. He cast but one glance at it, then swooned ponderously to the floor. u WONDERFUL CALMNESS. When he came to, he said mournfully, — " The unnatural calm to which I have subjected myself has told upon my nerves. But away with weakness ! 1 will confront my fate like a man and a Frenchman." He rose to his feet, and assumed an attitude which for sublimity has never been approached b}^ man, and has sel- dom been surpassed by statues. Then he said, in his deep bass tones, — " Behold, I am calm, I am ready ; reveal to me the distance." " Thirty-five yards." I could not lift him up, of course ; but I rolled him over, and poured water down his back. He presently came to, and said, — " Thirty-five yards, — without a rest? I ROLLED HIM OVER. But why ask ? Since murder was that man's intention, why should he palter with small details? But mark you one thing: in my fall the world shall see how the chivalry of France meets death." After a long silence he asked, — " Was nothing said about that man's family standing up with him, as an offset to my bulk ? But no matter ; I would no^ stoop to make such a suggestion ; if he is not noble enough to suggest it himself, he is welcome to this advan- tao-e, which no honorable man would take." "ke now sank into a sort of stupor of reflection, which lasted some minutes; after which he broke silence with,— " The hour,— what is the hour fixed for the collision ? " " Dawn, to-morrow." He seemed greatly surprised, and immediately said, — "Insanity! I never heard of such a thing. Nobody is abroad at such an hour." " That is the reason I named it. Do you mean to say you want an audience ? " ARRANGING IMPORTANT DETAILS. 75 "It is no time to bandy words. I am astonished that M. Fourtou should ever have agreed to so strange an innovation. Go at once and require a later hour." I ran down stairs, threw open the front door, and almost plunged into the arms of M. Fourton's second. He said, — '• I have the honor to say that my principal strenuously ob- jects to the hour chosen, and begs you will consent to change it to half past nine." "Any courtesy, sir, which it is in our power to extend is at the service of your excellent principal. We agree to the proposed change of time." " I beg you to accept the thanks of my client." Then he turned to a person behind him, and said, "You hear M. ]^oir, the hour is altered to half past nine." Whereupon M. Noir bowed, expressed his thanks, and went away. My accomplice continued: — "If agreeable to you, your chief surgeons and ours shall proceed to the field in the same carriage, as is customary." " It is entirel}' agreeable to me, and I am obliged to you for mentioning the surgeons, for I am afraid I should not have thought of them. How many shall I want ? I suppose two or three will be enough ? " "Two is the customary number for each party. I refer to 'chief surgeons; but considering the exalted positions occupied by our clients, it will be well and decorous that each of us appoint several consulting surgeons, from among the highest in the profession. These will come in their own private carriages. Have 3'ou engaged a hearse ? " "Bless my stupidity, I never thought of it! I will attend to it right away. I must seem very ignorant to you ; but you must try to overlook that, because I have never had any experience of such a swell duel as this before THE ONE I HIRED. 76 TO THE FIELD. I have liad a good deal to do with duels on the Pacific coast, but 1 see now that thej were crude affairs. A heaise, — sho ! we used to leave the elected Ijing around loose, and let anybody cord them up and cart them off that Manted to. Have you anything further to suggest ? " "Nothing, except that the head undertakers shall ride to- gether, as is usual. The subordinates and mutes will go on foot, as is also usual. I will see you at eight o'clock in the morning, and we will then arrange the order of the procession. I have the honor to bid you a good day." 1 returned to my client, who said, " Very well ; at what hour is the engagement to begin ? " " Half past nine." " Very good indeed. Have you sent the fact to the newspapers ? " ^^ Sir ! If after our long and intimate friendship you can for a moment deem me capable of so base a treachery " — ''Tut, tut! What words are these, my dear friend? Havel wounded you? Ah, forgive me; I am overloading you with labor. Therefore go on with the other details, and drop this one from your list. The bloody-minded Four- ton will be sure to attend to it. Or I myself — yes, to make certain, I will drop a note to my journalistic friend, M. Noir "— " Oh, come to think, you may save yourself the trouble ; that other second has informed M. Noir." "H'm! I might have known it. It is just like that Fourtou, who always wants to make a display." At half past nine in the morning the procession approached tlie field of Plessis-Piquet in the following order: first came our carriage, — nobody in it but M. Gambetta and myself; then a carriage containing M. Fourtou and his second ; then a carriage containing two poet-orators who did not believe in God, and these had MS. funeral orations projecting from their breast pockets ; then a carriage containing the head surgeons and their cases of instruments; then eight private carriages containing consulting surgeons; then a hack con- THE MARCH TO THE FIELD. ON THE BATTLE GROUND. 79 taining a coroner ; then the two hearses ; then a carriage cuntaining the head undertakers ; then a train of assistants and mutes on foot; and after these came plodding through the fog a long procession of camp followers, police, and citizens generally. It was a noble turn-out, and would have made a tine display if we had had thinner weather. There was no conversation. I spoke several times to my principal, but I judge he was not aware of it, for he always referred to his note-book and muttered absently, " 1 die that France may live." Arrived on the field, mj' fellow-second and I paced off the thirty-tive yards, and then drew lots for choice of position. This latter was but an ornamental ceremony, for all choices were alike in such weather. These preliminaries being ended, I went to my principal and asked him if he was ready. He spread himself out to his full width, and said in a stern voice, " Ready ! Let the batteries be charged." The loading was done in the presence of duly constituted witnesses. We considered it best to perform this delicate service with the assistance of a lantern, on account of the state of the weather. "VVe now placed our men. At this point the police noticed that the public had massed themselves together on the right and left of the field ; they therefore begged a delay, while they should put these poor people in a place of safety. The request was granted. The police having ordered the two multitudes to take positions behind the duelists, we were once more ready. The weather growing still more opaque, it was agreed be- tween my?elf and the other second that before giving the fatal signal we should each deliver a loud whoop to enable the combatants to ascertain each other's whereabouts. I now returned to my principal, and wa^^ distressed to ob- serve that he had lost a good deal of his spirit. I tried my best to hearten him. I said, "Indeed, sir, things are not as bad as they seem. Considering the character of the weap- ons, the limited number of shots allowed, the generous dis- tance, the impenetrable solidity of the fog, and the added 80 THE DUEL. fact that one of the combatants is one-eyed and the other cross-ejed and near-sighted, it seems to me that this conflict need not necessarily be fatah There are chances that both of you may survive. Therefore, cheer up ; do not be down- hearted." This speech had so good an effect tliat my principal imme- diately stretched forth his hand and said, "I am myself again ; give me the vi'eapon." I laid it, all lonely and forlorn, in the centre of the vast solitude of his palm. lie gazed at it and shuddered. And still mournfully contempla- ting it, he murmured, in a broken voice, — "Alas, it is not death I dread but mutilation." 1 heartened him once more, and with such success that he presently said, "Let the tragedy begin. Stand at my back ; do not desert me in this solemn hour, my friend." I gave him my promise. 1 now assisted him to point his pistol toward the spot where 1 judged his adversary to be standing, and cautioned him to listen well and further guide himself by my fellow second's whoop. Then I propped myself against M. Gambetta's back, and raised a rousing " Whoopee !" This was answered from out the far distances of the fog, and I immediately shouted, — " One, — two, — three, — -fire ! " Two little sounds like spit ' sint ! broke upon my ear, and in the same instant I was crushed to the earth under a mountain of flesh. Bruised as 1 was, 1 was still able to catch a faint accent from above, to this effect, — - " I die for . . . for . . . perdition take it, what is it I die for % . , . oh, yes, — ^Feance ! I die that France may live ! " The surgeons swarmed around w-ith their probes in their hands, and applied their microscopes to the whole area of JVl. v/f -P- Vv- THE POST OF DANGER. ^'0 BLOODSHED, 81 Gambetta's person, with the happy result of finding nothing in the nature of a wouud. Then a scene ensued which was in every way gratifying and inspiriting. The two gladiators fell upon each other's necks, with floods of proud and happy tears ; that other second embraced me ; the surgeons, the orators, the undertakers, the police, every- THE RECONCILIATION. body embraced, everybody congratulated, everybody cried, and the whole atmosphere was tilled with praise and with joy unspeakable. "^It seemed to me then that I would rather be a hero of a French duel than a crowned and sceptred monarch. When the commotion had somewhat subsided, the body of surgeons held a consultation, and after a good deal of debate decided that with proper care and nursing there was reason to believe that I would survive my injuries. My internal hurts were deemed the most serious, since it was apparent that a broken rib had penetrated my left lung, and that many of my organs had been pressed out so far to one side or tlie other of where they belonged, that it was doubtful if they would ever learn to perform their functions in such re- mote and unaccustomed localities. They then set my left 82 THE ONLY ONE INJURED. arm in two places, pulled mj right liip iuto its socket again, and re-elevated my nose. I was an object of great interest, and even admiration ; and many sincere and warm-hearted persons liad themselves introduced to me, and said they were proud to know the only man who had been hurt in a French duel in forty years. I was placed in an ambulance at the very head of the pro- cession ; and thus with gratifying eclat I was marched into I- AN OBJECT OF ADMIRATION. Paris, the most conspicuous figure in that great spectacle, and deposited at the hospital. The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred npon me. However, few escape that distinction. Such is the true version of the most memorable private conflict of the age. I have no complaints to make against any one. I acted for myself, and I can stand the consequences. Without boast- ing, I think I may pay I am not afraid to stand before a modern Fronch duelist, but as long as I keep in my right mind I will never consent to stand behind one again. CHAPTER IX. ONE day we took the train and went down to Mannheim to see King Lear played in German. It was a mistake. We sat in our seats three whole hours and never understood anything but the thunder and lightning ; and even that was reversed to suit German ideas, for the thunder came lirst and the lightning followed after. The behavior of the audience was perfect. There were no rustlings, or whisperings, or other little disturbances ; each act was listened to in silence, and the applauding was done after the curtain was down. Tlie doors opened at half past four, the play began promptly at half past five, and within two minutes afterward all who were coming were in their seats, and quiet reigned. A German gentleman in the train had said that a Shaksperian play was an appreciated treat in Germany and that we should find the house filled. It was true ; all the six tiers were filled, and remained so to the end, — which suggested that it is not only balcon^^ people who like Shakspeare in Germany, but those of the pit and tlie gallery, too. Another time, we went to Mannheim and attended a shiv- aree, — otherwise an opera, — the one called Lohengrin. The banging and slamming and boommo; and crashing were some- thing beyond belief. The racking and pitiless pain of ic remains stored up in my memory alongside the memory of 83 84 THE OUCUESTRA. the time that I had my teeth fixed. There were circum- Btances which made it necessary for me to stay through tlie four hours to the 6nd, and I staid ; but the recollection of that long, dragging, re- lentless season of sufi'ering is indestructible. To have to endure it in silence, and sitting still, made it all the harder. I was in a railed compartment with eicrht or ten strangers, of the two sexes, and this compelled repression , yet at times the pain was so exquisite that I could \VAGNER. hardly keep the tears back. At those times, as the bowlings and wailings and shriekings of the singers, and the ragings and roarings and explosions of the vast orchestra rose higher and higher, and wilder and wilder, and fiercer and fiercer, I could have cried if I had been alone. Those strangers would not have been surprised to see a nuin do such a thing who was being gradually skinned, but they would have mar- veled at it here, and made remarks about it no doubt, wdiereas there was nothing in the present case which was an advantage over being skinned. There was a wait of half an hour at the end of the first act, and I could have gone out and rested during that time, but I could not trust myself to do it, for I felt that I should desert and stay out. There was another wait of half an hour toward nine o'clock, but 1 had gone through so much by that time that I had no spirit left, and so had no desire but to be let alone. A CURIOUS PLAY 85 I do not wish to suggest that the rest of the people there were like me, for indeed they were not. Whether it was that they naturally liked that noise, or whether it was that they had learned to like it by getting used to it, I did not at that time know ; but they did like it, — this was plain enough. While it was going on they sat and looked as rapt and grateful a^cats do when one strokes their backs ; and whenever the curtain fell they rose to their feet, in one solid mighty multitude, and the air was snowed thick with waving handkerchiefs, and koaring. hurricanes of applause swept the place. This was not com- prehensible to me. Of course there were many people there who were not under compulsion to stay ; yet the tiers were as full at the close as they had been at the beo^innino;. This showed that the people liked it. It was a curious sort of a play. In the matter of costumes and scenery it was tine and showy enough ; but there was not much action. Tliat is to say, there was not much really done, it was only talked about ; and always violently. It was what one might call a narrative play. Everybody had a narrative and a grievance, and none were reasonable an offensive and ungovernable state. There was little of that sort of customary thing where the tenor and the soprano stand down by the footlights, warb- ling, with blended voices, and keep holding out their arms SHRIEKING. about it but all in 86 THE OPERA. toward each other and drawing them back and spreading both hands over first one breast and then the other with a shake and a pressure, — no it was, evcvj rioter for himself and no blending. Each sang his in- dictive narrative in turn, accompanied bj the whole or- chestra of sixty in- s t r u m e n t s , and when this had con- tinued for some time, and one was hoping they might come to an under- standing and modify the noise, a great e h o r u s composed entirely of maniacs would suddenly break forth, and then during two minutes, and some- times three, I lived over again all that I had suffered the time the orphan asylum burned down. We only had one brief little season of heaven and heaven's sweet ecstasy and peace during all this long and diligent and acrimonious reproduction of the other place. This was while a gorgeous procession of people marched around and around, in the third act, and sang the Wedding Chorus. To my untutored ear that was music, — almost divine music. While my seared soul was steeped in the healing balm of those gracious sounds, it seemed to me that I could almost re-suifer the torments which had gone before, in order to be so healed again. There is where the deep ingenuity of the operatic idea is betrayed. It deals so largely in pain tiiat its scattered A CUSTOMARY THING. AN ENCHANTING STUDY, 87 deliglits are prodigiously augmented by the contrasts. A pretty air in an opera is prettier there than it could be anj'- where else, I suppose, just as an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere. I have since found out that there is nothing the Germans like so much as an opera. They like it, not in a mild and moderate way, but with their whole hearts. This is a legiti- mate result of habit and education. Our nation will like the opera, too, by and by, no doubt. One in fifty of those who attend our operas likes it already, perhaps, but I think a good many of the other forty-nine go in order to learn to like it, and the rest in order to be able to talk knowingly about it. The latter nsually hum the airs while they are being sung, so that their neighbors may perceive that they have been to operas before. The fnne- rals of these do not occur often enough. A gentle, old-maidish, person and a sweet young girl of seventeen sat right in front of us that night at the Mannheim opera. These people talked, between the "^z acts, and I understood them, though I understood nothing one of the rest. that was uttered on the distant stage. At first they were guarded in their talk, but after they had heard my agent and me conversing in English they dropped their reserve and I picked up many of their little confidences ; no, I mean many of her little confidences, — meaning the elder party, — for the young girl only listened, and gave assenting nods, but never said a word. How pretty she M^as, and how sweet she was ! I wished she would speak. But evidently she was absorbed in her own thoughts, her own young-girl dreams, and found a dearer pleasure in silence. But she was not MORE THAN AN AVERAGE. dreaming sleepy dreams, — no, she was awake, alive, alert, she could not sit still a moment. She was an enchanting study. Her gown was of a soft white silky stuff that clung to her round young hgure like a iish's skin, and it was rip- pled over with the gracefullest little fringy films of lace; she had deep, tender eyes, with long, curved lashes ; and she had peachy cheeks, and a dimpled chin, and such a dear little dewy rosebud of a mouth ; and she was so dove-like, so pure, and so gracious, so sweet and bewitching. For long hours I did mightily wish she would speak. And at last she did ; the red lips parted, and out leaped her thought, — and with such a guileless and pretty enthusiasm, too: '• Auntie, I just know I've got five hundred fleas on me !" That was probably over the average. Yes, it must have been very much over the average. The average at that time in the Grand Duchy of Baden was forty-five to a young per- son, (when alone,) ac- cording to the ofiicial estimate of the Home Secretary f or that year; the avernge for older people wasi^hifty and indeterminable, for whenever a whole- some young girl came into the presence of her elders she immedi- ately lowered their av- erage and raised her own. She became a sort of contribution box. This dear young thing in the theatre had been sitting there un A CONTRIBUTION BOX. cousclously takiug up a coUecrion. Many a skinny old being in our neighborhood was the happier and the restf uller for her coming. UNPLEASANTLY CONSPICUOUS 89 II l^ill 111 tliat large audience, that mglit, there were eight very- conspicuous people. These were ladies who had their hats or bonnets on. What a blessed thing it M'ould be if a lady could make herself conspicuous in our theatres by wearing her hat. It is not usual in Eu rope to allow ladies and gentle men to take bonnets, hats, over coats, canes or umbrellas into the auditorium, but in Mannlieim this rule was not enforced be- cause the audiences were large- ly made up of people from a distance, and among these were always a few timid ladies who were afraid that if they had to go into an ante-room to get their things when the play was over, they would miss their train. But the great mass of those who came from a distance always ran the risk and rook the chances, preferi'ing the loss of the train to a breach of good manners and the discomfort of being unpleasantly conspicuous during a stretch of three or four hours. CONSPICUOUS. CHAPTER X. THREE or four hours. That is a long time to sit in onp place, whether one be conspicuous or not, jet some of Wagner's operas bang along for six whole hours on a stretch ! But the people sit there and enjoy it all, and wish it would last longer. A German lady in Munich told me that a person could not like Wagner's music at first, but must go through the deliberate process of learning to like it, — then lie would have his sure reward ; for when he had learned to like it he would hunger for it and never be able to get enough of it. She said that six hours of Wagner was by no means too much. She said that this composer had made a complete revolution in music and was burying the old masters one by one. And she said that Wagner's operas differed from all others in one notable respect, and that was that they were not merely spotted with music here and there, but were all music, from the first strain to the last. This surprised me. I said I had attended one of his insurrections, and found hardly any music in it except the Wedding Chorus. She said Lohengrin was noisier than Wagner's other operas, but that if I would keep on going to see it I would find by and by that it was all music, and therefore would then enjoy it. 1 could have said, " But would you advise a person to delib- erately practice having the toothache in the pit of his stom- 90 A WONDERFUL SINGER— ONCE. 91 ach for a conple of years in order tliat he might then come to enjoy it?" But I reserved that remark. This lady was full of the praises of the head-tenor who had performed in a Wagner opera the night before, and went on to enlarge upon his old and prodigious fame, and how many honors had been lavished upon him by the princely houses of Germany. Here was another surprise. I had attended that very opera, in the person of my agent, and had made close and a'?curate observations. So I said : — " Why madam, my experience warrants me in stating that that tenor's voice is not a voice at all, but only a shriek, — the shriek of a hyena." " That is very true," she said ; " he cannot sing now ; it is already many years that he has lost his voice, but in other times he sang, yes, divinely ! So whenever he comes, now, you shall see, yes, that the theatre will not hold the people. Jawohl hei Gott! his voice is wunderschon in that past time." I said she was discovering to me a kindly trait in the Germans which was worth emulating. I said that over the water we were not quite so generous; that with us, when a singer had lost his voice and a jumper had lost his legs, these parties ceased to draw. I said I / / v / had been to the opera in Hanover, once, oi^lt a shriek. and in Mannheim once, and in Munich, (through my author- ized agent,) once, and this large experience had nearly ])er- suaded me that the Qevmaxis, preferred singers M'^ho couldn't sing. This was not such a very extravagant speech, either, for that burly Mannheim tenor's praises had been the talk of all Heidelberg for a week before his performance took place, — yet his voice was like the distressing noise which a nail makes when you screech it across a window pane. I said so to Heidelberg friends the next day, and they said, in 6 92 THE SUPERANNUATED TENOR. the calmest and simplest way, that that was very true, but that in earlier times his voice had been wonderfully line. And the tenor in Hanover was just another example of tliis sort. The English-speaking German gentleman who went with me to the opera there was brimming with enthusiasm over that tenor. He said : — " Ach Goit ! a great man ! You shall see him. He is so celebrate in all Germany, — and he has a pension, yes, from the government. He not obliged to sing, now, only twice every year; but if he not sing twice each year they take him his pension away." Yery well, we went. When the renowned old tenor ap- peai-ed, I got a nudge and an excited whisper : — " Now you see him ! " ■ But the "celebrate" was an astonishing disappointment to me. \i he had been behind a screen I should have sup- posed they were performing a surgical operation on him. I looked at my friend, — to my great surprise he seemed intoxicated with pleasure, his eyes M'ere dancing with eager delight. When the curtain at last fell, he burst into the stornjiest applause, and kept it up, — as did the whole house, — until the afflictive tenor had come three times before the curtain to make his bow. While the glowing enthusiast was swabbing the perspiration from his face, I said : — " I don't mean the least harm, but really, now, do you think he can sing? " "Him ? No ! Gott im Himmcl, aber, how he has l)een able to sing twenty-five years ago ? " [Then pensively.] " Ach, no, 710W he not sing any more, he only cry. When he think lie sing, now, he not ring at all, no, he only make like a eat which is unwell." Where and how did we get the idea that the Germans ' HE ONLY CRY. EMOTIONAL GERMANS. 93 are a stolid, phlegmatic race ? In trutli tliey are widely removed from that. Thej are warm-hearted, emotional, impulsive, enthusiastic, their tears come at the mildest touch, and it is not hard to move them to laughter. They are the very children ot impulse, t^e are cold and self-contained, compared to the Germans. They hug and kiss and cry and shout and dance and sing; and where we use one loving, petting expression they pour out a score. Their language is full of endearing diminutives; nothing that they love es- capes the application of a petting diminutive, — neither the house, nor the dog, nor the horse, nor the grandmother, nor any other creature, animate or inanimate. In the theatres at Hanover, Hamburg, and Mannheim, they had a wise custom. The moment the curtain went up, the lights in the body of the house went down. The audience sat in the cool gloom of a deep twilight, which greatly en- hanced the glowing splendors of the stage. It saved gas, too, and people were not sweated to death. When I saw King Lear played, nobody was allowed to see a scene shifted ; if there was nothing to be done but slide a forest out of the way and expose a temple beyond, one did not see that forest split itself in the middle and go shrieking away, with the accompanying disenchanting spectacle of the hands and heels of the impelling impulse, — no, the curtain was always dropped for an instant, — one heard not the least movement behind it, — but when it went up, the next instant, the forest was gone. Even when the stage was being entire!}' re-set, one heard no noise. During the whole time that King Lear was playing, the curtain was never down two min- utes at anj' one time. The orchestra played until the curtain was ready to go up for the first time, then they departed for the evening. Where the stage- waits never reach two minute^ there is no occasion for music. I had never seen this Lwo- minute business between acts but once before, and that was when the " Shaughran" was played at Wallack's. I was at a concert in Munich one night, the people were 94 liATE COxMERS REBUKED. streaming in, the clock-hand pointed to seven, the mnsic struck up, and instantly all movement in the body of the house ceased, — nobody was standing, or walking up the aisles or fumbling with a seat, the stream of incomers had suddenly dried up at its source. I listened undisturbed to a piece of music that was fifteen minutes long, — always expecting some tardy ticket-holders to come crowding past my knees, and being continuously and pleasantly disappointed, — but when the last note was struck, here came the stream again. You see, they had made those late comers M^ait in the comfortable waiting-parlor from the time the music had begun until it was ended. It was the first time I had ever seen this sort of crimi- nals denied the privilege of destroying the comfort of a house full of their betters. Some of these -were pretty fine birds, but no matter, they had to tarry outside in the LATE COMERS CARED FOR. long parlor under the inspection of a double rank of liver- ied footmen and waiting-maids who supported the two walls CUSTOMS AT THE OPERA. 95 with their backs and held the wraps and traps of their masters and mistresses on their arms. We had no footmen to hold our things, and it was not permissible to take them into the concert room ; but there were some men and women to take charge of them for us. Thej gave us checks for them and chaiged a fixed price, payable in advance, — five cents. In Germany they always hear one thing at an opera which has never 3-et been heard in America, perhaps, — I mean the closing strain of a fine solo or duet. We always smash into it with an earthquake of applause. The result is that we rob ourselves of the sweetest part of the treat ; we get the whisky, but we don't get the sugar in the bottom of the glass. Our way of scattering applause along through an act seems to me to be better than the Mannheim way of saving it all up till the act is ended. I do not see how an actor can for- get himself and portray hot passion before a cold still audience. I should think he would feel foolish. It is a pain to me to this day, to remember how that old German Lear raged and wept and howled around the stage, with never a response from that hushed house, never a single outburst till the act was ended. To me there was something unspeakably un- comfortable in the solemn dead silences that always lollowed this old person's tremendous outpourings of his feelings. I could not help putting myself in his place, — I thought I knew how sick and flat he felt during those silences, because I remembered a case which came under my observation once, and which, — but I will tell the incident : One evening on board a Mississippi steamboat, a boy of ten years lay asleep in a berth, — a long, slim-legged boy, he was, encased in quite a short shirt ; it was the first time he had ever made a trip on a steamboat, and so he was troubled, and scared, and had gone to bed with his head filled with impending snaggings, and explosions, and conflagrations, and sudden death. About ten o'clock some twenty ladies were 96 A Ml!SSlS;3lPPl KlVEll STOKY. sitting around about the ladies' saloon, quietly reading, sew- ing, embroidering, and so on, and among tlienj sat a sweet, benignant old dame with round spectacles on her nose and her busy knitting-needles in her hands. Now all of a sudden, into the midst of this peaceful scene burst that slim-shanked boy in the brief shirt, wild-eyed, erect-haired, and shouting, EVIDENTLY DKEAMINQ. " Fire, fire ! jump and ru7i, the hoafs afire and there ainH a minute to lose ! " All those ladies looked sweetly up and smiled, nobody stirred, the old lady pulled her spectacles down, looked over them, and said, gently,— "But you mustn't catch cold, child. Run and put on your breast-pin, and then come and tell us all about it." It was a crnel chill to give to a poor little devil's gush- ing vehemence. He was expecting to be a sort of hero — the creator of a wild panic — and here everybody sat and smiled a mocking smile, and an old woman made fun of his bugbear. I turned and crept humbly away — for I was that boy — and never even cared to discover whether I had dreamed the fire or actually seen it. I am told that in a German concert or opera, they hardly ever encore a song; that though they may be dying to hefir it again, their good bi-eeding usually preserves them against requiring the repetition. AN ECCENTRIC KING. 97 Kings may encore ; that is quite another matter ; it delights everybody to see that the king is pleased ; and as to the ac- tor encored, his pride and gratification are simply bonndless. Still, there are circumstances in which even a royal encore — But it is better to illustrate. The King of Bavaria is a poet, and has a poet's eccentricities — with the advantage over all other poets of being able to gratify them, no matter what form they may take. He is fond of the opera, but not fond of sitting in the presence of an audience ; therefore, it has sometimes occurred, in Munich, that when an opera has been concluded and the players were getting off their paint and finery, a command has come to them to get their paint and finery on again. Presently the king would arrive, solitary and alone, and the plaj^ers would begin at the beginning and do the entire opera over again with only that one indi- vidual in the vast solemn theatre for audience. Once he took an odd freak into his head. High up and out of sight, over the prodigious stage of the court theatre is a maze of inter- lacing water-pipes, so pierced that in case of fire, innumer- able little thread-like streams of water can be caused to de- scend ; and in case of need, this discharge can be augmented to a pouring flood. American managers might make a note of that. The King was sole audience. The opera pro- ceeded, it was a piece with a storm in it ; the mimic thunder began to mutter, the mimic wind began to wail and songh, and the mimic rain to patter. The King's interest rose higher and higher ; it developed into enthusiasm. He cried out, — " It is good, very good indeed ! But I will have real rain ! Turn on the water ! " The manager pleaded for a reversal of the command ; said it would ruin the costly scenery and the si)lendid costumes, but the king cried,- — "!No matter, no matter, I will have real rain! Turn on the water?" ( So the real rain was turned on and began to descend in gossamer lances to the mimic flower beds and gravel walks 98 "ENCORE! DO IT AGAIN!" of the stage. The richly-dressed actresses and actors tripped "turn on more rain." about singing bravely and pretending not to mind it. The King was delighted, — his enthusiasm grew higher. He cried out. — " Bravo, bravo ! More thunder ! more lightning ! turn on more rain ! " The thunder boomed, the lightning glared, the storm- winds raged, the deluge poured down. The mimic royalty on the stage, with their soaked satins clinging to their bodies, slopped aronnd ankle deep in water, warbling their sweetest and best, the fiddlers under the eaves of the stage sawed awaj' for dear life, with the cold overflow sponting down the backs of their necks, and the dry and happy King sat in his lofty box and wore his gloves to ribbons applauding. " More yet I" cried the King ; "more yet, —let loose all the thunder, turn on all the water ! I will hang the man that raises an umbrella ! " When this most tremendous and effective storm that had ever been produced in any theatre was at last over, the Kingj's approbation was measureless. He cried, — ''Magnificent, magnificent! JEncorel Do it again!" MAGNANIMITY OF THE KING. 99 . But the manager succeeded in persuading him to recall the encore, and said the company would feel sufficiently rew arded and complimented in the mere fact that the encore was desir- ed by his Majesty, without fatiguing him with a repetition to gratify their own vanity. During the remainder of the act the lucky performers were those whose parts required changes of dress ; the others were a soaked, bedraggled and uncomfortable lot, but in the last degree picturesque. The stage scenery was ruined, trap-doors were s c swollen that the} wouldn't work for a week afterward, t h ( fi n e costumes were spoiled, and no end of minor damages were done by that remark- able storm. It was a roy al idea — that storm — and royal- ly carried out. But observ^e the moderation of the king: he did not insist upon his encore. harris Ar^JiNl>l^G iHi; utt^HA. If he had been a gladsome, unreflecting American opera-audi- ence, he probably would have had his storm repeated and repeated until he drowned all those people. L.ofC. CHAPTEK XI. TEIE summer days passed pleasantly in Heidelberg. "We had a skilled trainer, and under his instructions we were getting our legs in the right condition for the contemplated pedestrian tours ; we were well satisfied with the progress which we had made in the German language*, and more than satisfied with what we had accomplished in Art. We had had the best instructors in drawing and painting in Germany. — Hiimmerling, Yogel, Miiller, Dietz and Schu- mann. Hiimnierling taught us landscape painting, Vogel taught us figure di'awing, Miiller taught us to do still-life, and Dietz and Schumann gave us a finishing course in two specialties, — battle-pieces and shipwrecks. "Whatever I am in Art I owe to these men. I have something of the manner of each and all of them ; but they all said that I had also a niHuner of my own, and that it was conspicuous. They said there was a marked individuality about my style, — insomuch that if I ever painted the commonest type of a dog, I should be sure to tlirow a something into the aspect of that dog which would keep him from being mistaken 'for the creation of any other artist. Secretly I wanted to believe all thefe kind sayings, but I could not ; I was afraid that my masters' partiality for me, and pride in me, biased their judgment. So I resolved to make a test. Privately, and unknown to any one, I painted ray great picture, " Heidelberg Castle * See Appendix D for information concerning this fearful tongue. 100 OUR STUDIO. 101 Illuminated," — my first really important work in oils, — and had it hung up in the midst of a wilderness of oil pictures in the Art Exhibition, with no name attached to it. To my great gratification it was instantly recognized as mine. All the town flocked to see it, and people even came from neigh- boring localities to visit it. It made more stir than any other work in the Exhibition. But the most gratifying thing of PAINTING MY GREAT PICTURE. all, was, that chance strangers, passing through, who had not heard of my picture, were not only drawn to it, as by a lode- stone, the moment they entered the gallery, but always took it for a " Turner." Mr. Harris was graduated in Art about the same time with myself, and we took a studio together. We waited awhile for some orders; then as time began to drag a little, we 102 A PROPOSED PEDESTRIAN TOUR. concluded to make a pedestrian tour. • After much considera^ tion, we determined on a trip up the shores of the beautiful ISTeckar to Heilbronn. Apparently nobody had ever done that. There were ruined castles on the overhanging cliffs and crags all the way ; these were said to have their legends, like those on the Rhine, and what was better still, they had never been in print. There was nothing in the books about that lovely region ; it had been neglected by the tourist, it was virgin soil for the literary pioneer. Meantime the knapsacks, the rough walking suits and the stout walking shoes which we had ordered, were finished and brought to us. A Mr. X. and a young Mr. Z. had agreed to go with us. We went around, one evening and bade good-bye to our friends, and afterwards had a little farev^ell banquet at the hotel. We got to bed early, for we wanted to make an early start, so as to take advantage of the cool of the morning. We were out of bed at break of day, feeling fresh and vigorous, and took a hearty breakfast, then plunged down through the leafy arcades of the Castle grounds, toward the town. What a glorious summer morning it was, and how the flowers did pour out their fragrance, and how the birds did sing! It was just the time for a tramp through the woods and mountains. We were all dressed alike : broad slouch hats, to keep the sun off; gray knapsacks; blue army shirts; blue overalls; leathern gaiters buttoned tight from knee down to ankle ; high-quarter coarse shoes snugly laced. Each man had an opera glass, a canteen, and a guide-book case slung over his shoulder, and carried an alpen-stock in one hand and a sun umbrella in the other. Around our hats were wound many folds of soft white muslin, with the ends hanging and flapping down our backs, — an idea brouglit from the Orient and used by tourists all over Europe. Harris carried the little watch- like machine called a " pedometer," whose office is to keep count of a man's steps and tell how far he has walked. Every- body stopped to admire our costumes and give us a hearty: ENGLISH INVARIABLY SPOKEN. lOS " Pleasant march to you ! " When we got down town I found that we could go by rail to within five miles of Heilbronn. The train was just starting, so we jumped aboard and went tearing away in splendid spirits. It was agreed all around that we had done wisely, because it would be just as enjoyable to walk down the Neckar as up it, and it could not be needful t o walk both ways. There were some nice German people in<^ our compartment. I ^~\^^^^^T'^^s^ got to talking some ^ \ ^^ pretty private matters OUU START, (by HARKIS.) presently, and Harris became nervous ; so he nudged me and said, — " Speak in German, — these Germans may understand English." I did so, and it was well I did ; for it turned out that there was not a German in that party who did not under- stand English perfectl} . It is curious how wide-spread our language is in Germany. After a while some of those folks got out and a German gentleman and his two young daugh- ters got in. I spoke in German to one of the latter several times, but without result. Finally she said, — 'Ich verstehe nur Deutch und Englische," — or words to that efi'ect. That is, " I don't understand any language but German and English." And sure enough, not only she but her father and sister spoke English. So after that we had all the talk we wanted ; and we wanted a good deal, for they were very agreeable lOi A QUEER TOWER. people. They were greatly interested in our costumes ; es- pecially the alpenstocks, for they had not seen any before. They said that the Neckar road was per- fectly level, so we must b-e going to Switzerland or some other rugged country; and asked us if we did not find the walking pretty fatiguing in such warm weather But we said no. We reached Wimp- fen, — I think it was Wimpfen, — in about three hours, and got out, not the least tired; found a good hotel and ordered beer and dinner, — then took an unknown costume. a stroll through the venerable old village. It was very picturesque and tumble-doMm, and dirty and interesting. It had queer houses five hundred years old, in it and a military tower, 115 feet high, which had stood there more than ten centuries. I made a little sketch of it. I kept a copy, but gave the original to the Burgomaster. I think the original was better than the copy, because it had more windows in it and the grass stood up better and had a brisker look, Thci-e was none around tlie tower though ; I composed the grass myseF, from studies I made in a field by Heidelberg in Tlam- rrierliiig's time. The man on top, looking at the view, is apparently too large, but I found he could not be made smaller, conveniently. I wanted him there, and I wanted him visible, so I thought out a way to manage it ; I com- posed the picture from two points of view ; the spectator is to observe the man from about where that flag is, and he must A SLOW BUT SURE TEAM. 105 observe the tower itself from the ground. This harmonizes the seeming discrepancy. Near an old Cathedral, under a shed, were three crosses of stone, — mouldy and damaged things, bearing life- size stone figures. The two thieves were dressed in the fanciful court costumes of the middle of the sixteenth cen- tury, while the Savior was nude, with the exception of a cloth around the loins. We had dinner under the green trees in a garden belonorino; to the hotel and overlooking the Neckar; the towbr. then, after a smoke, we went to bed. We had a refreshing nap, then got up about three in the afternoon and put on our panoply. As we tramped gaily out at the gate of the town, we overtook a peasant's cart, partly laden with odds and ends of cabbages and similar vegetable rubbish, and drawn by a SLOW BUT SURE. small cow and a smaller donkey yoked together. Ttwasa pretty slow concern, but it got us into Heilbronn before dark, — five miles, or possibly it was seven. 106 A FAMOUS ROOM. We stopped at the ver}^ same inn which the famous old robber knight and rough fighter, Gotz von Berlichingen, abode in after he got out of captivity in the Square Tower of Heilbronn between three hundred and iiftj and four hun- dred years ago. Harris and I occupied the same room which he had occupied and the same paper had not all peeled off the walls yet. The furniture was quaint old carved stnff, tiill four hundred years old, and some of the smells were over a thousand. There was a hook in the wall, which the landlord said the terrilic old Gotz used to hang his iron hand on when he took it off to go to bed. This room was very large, — it might be called immense, — and it was on the first floor; which means it was in the second stor^^, for in Europe the houses are so high that they do not count tlie first story, else they would get tired climbing before they got to the top. The wall paper was a fiery red, with huge "•old figures in it, well smirclied by time, and it covered all the doors. These doors fitted so snugly and continued the figures of the paper so unbrokenly, that when they were closed one had to go feeling and searching along the wall to find them. There was a stove in the corner, — one of those tall, square, stately white porcelain things that looks like a monument and keeps you thinking of death when you ought to be enjoying your travels. The windows looked out on a little alley, and over that into a stable and some poultry and pig yards in the rear of some tenement houses. There were the customary two beds in the room, one in one end of it, the other in the other, about an old-fashioned brass- mounted, single-barreled pistol-shot apart. They were fully as narrow as the usual German bed, too, and had the Ger- man bed's ineradicable habit of spilling the blankets on the floor every time you forgot yourself and went to sleep. A round-table as large as King Arthur's stood in the cen- tre of the room ; while the M-aiters were getting ready to serve our dinner on it we all went out to see the renowned clock on the front of the municipal buildings. CHAPTER Xn. THE Hathhaus, or municipal building, is of the quaintest and most picturesque Middle- Age architecture. It has a massive portico and steps, before it, heavily balustraded, and adorned with life-size rusty iron knights in complete armor. The clock-face on the front of the building is very large and of curious pattern. Ordinarily a gilded angel strikes the hour on a big bell with a hammer ; as the striking ceases, a life-size figure of Time raises its hour-glass and turn doultUs- just on the ver^' point of becoming a solid, blessed, dreamless stupor, when, — what was that ? My dulled faculties drag- ged themselves partly back to life and took a receptive attitude. Now out of an immense, a limitless dis- tance, came a something which grew and grew, and approached, and presently was recognizable as a sound, — it had rather seemed to be a feeling, before. This sound was a mile away, now — perhaps it wasthemurnrirof a storm ; and now it was nearer, — not a quarter of a miie away ; was OUR BEDROOM. Xl^ AN OLD REMEDY. it the muffled rasping and grinding of distant machiner}' ? No, it came still nearer; was it the measured tramp of a marching troop? But it came nearer still, and still nearer, — and at last it was right in the room : it was merely a mout-e gnawing the wood-work. So 1 had held my breath all that time for such a trifle. Well, what was done could not be helped ; I would go to sleep at once and make up the lost time. That was a thoughtless thought. Without intending it, — hardly know- ing it, — I fell to listening intently to that sound, and even unconsciously counting the strokes of the mouse's nutmeg- grater. Presently 1 was deriving exquisite suffering from this employment, yet maybe I could have endured it if the mouse had attended steadily to his work ; but he did not do that ; he stopped every now and then, and I suffered more while waiting and listening for him to begin again than I did while he was gnawing. Along at first I was mentally offering a rcM'ard of five, — six, — seven, — ten — dollars for that mouse ; but toward the last I was offering rewards which were entirely beyond my means. I close- reefed my ears, — that is to say, I bent the flaps of them down and furled them into five or six folds, and pressed them against the hearing-orifice, — but it did no good : the faculty was so sharpened by nervous excitement that it was become a microphone and could hear through the overlays without trouble. My anger grew to a frenzy. I finally did M'hat all persons before me have done, clear back to Adam, — resolved to throw something. I reached down and got my w^alking shoes, then sat up in bed and listened, in order to exactly locate the noise. But I couldn't do it; it was as unlocatable as a cricket's noise ; and where one thinks that that is, is always the very place where it isn't. So I presently hurled a shoe at random, and with a vicious vigor. It struck the w^all over Harris's head and fell down on him ; I had not ima sorry. He soon went to sleep agiiin, which pleased me ; but straight- way the mouse began again, which roused my temper once more. I did not want to wake Har- ris a second time, bat the gnawing continued until I was Compelled to throw the other shoe. This time I broke a mirror, — there w^ere two in the room, — I got the largest one, of r^ course. H a r r i woke again, but did ,- not complain, and I was sorrier than practicing. ever. I resolved that I would sulfer all possible torture before I would disturb him a third time. The mouse eventually retirc'd, and by and by I was sink- ing to sleep, when a clock began to strike ; I counted, till it was done, and M-as about to drowse again when another clock began ; 1 counted ; then the two great Hatlihaus clock angels began to send forth soft, rich, melodious blasts from their long trumpets. I had never heard anything that was so lovely, or weird, or mysterious, — but when they got to blow- ing the quarter-hours, they seemed to me to be overdoing the thing. Every time I dropped off for a moment, a new noise woke me. Each time I woke I missed my coverlet, and had to reach down to the floor and get it again. At last all sleepiness forsook me. I I'ecognized the fact that I was hopelessly and permanently wide awake. Wide awake, and feverish and 'thirsty. Wlien I had lain tossing there as long as I could endure it, it occurred to me that it 118 A NIGHT EXCUESION. would be a good idea to dress and go out in the great square and take a refreshing wash in the fountain, and smoke and reflect there until the remnant of the night was gone. . I believed I could dress in the dark without waking Harris. I had banished my shoes after the mouse, but my slippers would do for a summer night. So I rose softly, and grad- ually got on everything, — down to one sock. I couldn't seem to get on the track of that sock, any way I could fix it. But I had to have it; so I went down on my hands and knees, with one slipper on and the other in my hand, and PAWING AROUND. began to paw gently around and rake the floor, but with no success. I enlarged my circh, and went on pawing and raking. With every pressure of my knee, how the floor creaked! and every time I chanced to rake against any arti- cle, it seemed to give out thirty-five or thirty-six times more noise than it would have done in the day time. In those cases I always stopped and held my breath till I was sure Harris had not awakened, — then' I crept along again. I moved on and on, but I could not find the sock ; I could not seem to find anything but furniture. I could not remember GROWING DESPERATE. 119 that there was much furniture in the room when I went to bed, but the place was alive with it now, — especially chairs, ^chairs everywhere, — liad a couple of families moved in, in the meantime? And I never could seem U) glance on one of those chairs, but always struck it full and square with my head. My temper rose, by steady and sure degrees, and as I pawed on and on, I fell to making vicious comments under my breath. Finally, with a venomous access of irritation, 1 said I would leave without the sock ; so I rose up and made straight for the door, — as I supposed, — and suddenly confronted my dim spectral image in the unbroken miiTor. It startled the breath out of me, for an instant; it also showed nip that I was lost, and had no sort of idea where I was. When I realized this, I was so angry that I had to sit down on the floor and take liold of something to keep from lifting the roof off with an explosion of opinion. If there liad been only one mirror, it might possibly have helped to locate me ; but there were two, and two were as bad as a thousand ; besides these were on opposite sides of the room. I could see the dim blur of the windows, but in my turned-around condition they were exactly where the}'^ ought not to be, and so they only confused me instead of helping me- I started to get up, and knocked down an umbrella ; it made a noise like a pistol-shot when it struck that hard, slick carpetless floor ; I grated my teeth and held my breath, — Harris did not stir. I set the umbrella slowly and care- fully on end against the wall, but as soon as I took my hand away, its heel slipped from under it, and down it came again with another bang. I shrunk together and listened a mo- ment in silent fury, — no harm done, everything quiet. With the most painstaking care and nicety I stood the umbrella up once more, took my hand away, and down it came again. I have been strictly reared, but if it had not been so dark and solemn and awful there in that lonely vast room, I do believe I should have said something then which could not 120 ^ FRESH START. be put into a Sunday School book without injuring the sale of it. If mj reasoning powers liad not been already sapped dry by my harassnients, I would have known better than to try to set an umbrella on end on one of those glassy Ger- man floors in the dark ; it can't be done in the daytime with- out four failures to one success. I had one comfort, though, — Harris was yet stiJl and silent, ^he had not stirred. The umbrella could not locate me, — there were four stand- ing around the room, and all alike. I thought 1 would feel along the wall and find the door in that way. I rose up and began this operation, bflt I'aked down a picture. It was not a large one, but it made noise enough for a panorama. Harris gave out no sound, but I felt that if I experimented any further with the pictures I should be sure to wake him. Better give up trying to get out. Yes, I would And King Arthur's Round Table once more, — I had already found it several times, — and use it for a base of departure on an ex- ploring tour for my bed ; if I could find my bed I could then find my water pitcher; I would quench my raging thirst and turn in. So I started on my hands and knees, because I could go faster that way, and with more confi- dence, too, and not knock down things. By and by I found the table, — with my head, — rubbed the bruise a little, then rose up and started, with hands abroad and fingers sju'ead, to balance myself. I found a chair ; then the Avail ; then another chair; then a sofa; then an alpenstock, then an- other sofa ; this confounded me, for I had thought there was only one sofa. I hunted up the table again and took a fresh start ; found some more chairs. It occurred to me, now, as it ought to have done before, that as the talde was round, it was therefore of no value as a base to aim from ; so I moved off once more, and at random among tlie wilderness of chairs and sofas, — wander- ed off into unfamiliar regions, and presently knocked a candlestick off a mantel-piece; grabbed at the candle- stick and knocked off a lamp; grabbed at the lamp and BROUGHT TO A CRISIS. 121 knocked off a water-pitcher witli a rattling cr;isli, and thoiio-lit to myself, " I've found jou at last, — I judged I was close i poii you." Harris shouted "murder," and " thieves," and Unish- ed with " I'm abso- lutely drowned.'' The crash had roused the house. Mr. X. pranced in, in his long night garment, with a candle, young Z. after him with another can- d 1 e ; a procession swept in at another door, with candles and lantern s, — ■ landlord and two German guests in their nightgowns, and a chamber- maid in hers. I looked around ; I was at Harris's bed, a Sabbath day's journey from my own. There a night's wokk. was only one sofa ; it was against the wall ; there was only one chair where a body could get at it, — I had been revolving around it like a planet, and colliding wnth i like a comet half the niglit. I explained how I had been employing mj'self, and why. Then the landlord's party left, and the rest of us set about our preparations for breakfast, for the dawn was ready to break. I glanced furtively at my pedometer, and found I had made 47 miles. But I did not care, for I had come out for a pedestrian tour anyway. CHAPTER XTV. WHEN the landlord learned that I and my agent were artists, our party rose perceptibly in his esteem ; we rose still higher when he learned that we were making a pedestrian tour of Europe. He told us all about the Heidelberg road, and which were the best places to avoid and which the best ones to tarry at ; he charged me less than cost for the things 1 broke in the night ; he put up a fine luncheon for us and added to it a quantity of great light-green plums, the pleasaiitest fruit in Germany ; he was so anxious to do us honor that he would not allow us to walk out of Heilbronn, but called up Gotz von Berlichingen's horse and cab and made us ride. I made a sketch of the turn-out. It is not a Work, it is only what artists call a '' study " — a thing to make a finished picture from. This sketch has several blemishes in it; for instance, the wagon is not traveling as fast as the horse is. This is wrong. Again, the person trying to get out of the way is too small ; he is out of perspective, as we say. The two upper lines are not the horse's back, they are the reins ; — there seems to be a wheel missing — this would be correct- ed in a finished Work, of course. That thing flying out be- hind is not a flag, it is a curtain. That other thing up there is the sun, but I didn't get enough distance on it. I do not 122 OUR TURN-OUT. 123 remember, now, wliat that thing is that is in front of the man who is running, but I think it is a haystack or a woman. This study was exhibited in the Paris Salon of 1879, but did not take any medal; they do not give 'medals for studies. We discharged the cairiage at the bridge. The river was full of logs, — long, slender, barkless pine logs, — a n d we leaned on the rails of the bridge and watched the men put them together into rafts. These rafts were of a shape and construction t o suit the crookedness and extreme narrowness of the N ec k a r . They were from 50 to 10 yards long, and they gradually tapered from a 9-log breadth at their sterns, to a 3-1 og breadth at their bow-ends. The main part of the steering is done at the bow, with a pole; the 3-log breadth there furnishes room for only the steersman, for these little logs are not larger around than an iverage young lady's waist. The connections of the several sections of the raft are slack and pliant, so that the raft may be readily bent into any sort of curve required by the shajje of the river. The Neckar is in many plaocs so narrow that a perron can 124 THE NECKAR. throw a dog across it, if lie has one ; when it is also sharplj curved in such places, the raftsman has to do some pretty nice snng piloting to make the turns. The river is not always allowed to spread over its whole bed, — which is as much as^ 30, and sometimes 40, yards wide, — but is split into three equal bodies of water, by stone dikes which throw the main volume, depth, and' current, into the central one. In low water these neat narrow-edged dikes project four or five inches above the surface, like the comb of a submerged roof, but in high water they are overflowed. A hatful of rain makes high water in the iN'eckar, and a basketful produces an overflow. There are dikes abreast the Schloss Hotel, and the current is violently swift at that point. I used to sit for hours in my glass cage, watching the long, narrow rafts slip along through the central channel, grazing the right-bank dike and aiming carefully for the middle arch of the stone bridge below ; I watched them in this way, and lost all this time hoping to see one of them hit the bridge-pier and wreck itself some- time or other, but was always disappointed. One was smash- ed there one morning, but 1 had just stepped into my room a moment to light a pipe, so I lost it. While I was looking down upon the rafts that morning in Heilbronn, the dare-devil spirit of adventure came suddenly upon me, and I said to my comrades, — " / am going to Heidelberg on a raft. "Will you venture with me ? " Their faces paled a little, but they aspented with as good a grace as they could. Harris wanted to cable his mother, — thought it his duty to do that, as he was all she had in this world, — so, M'hile he attended to this, I went down to the longest and finest raft and hailed the captain with a hearty " xVhoy, shipmate!" which put us upon pleasant terms at once, and we entered upon business. I said we were on a pedestrian tour to Heidelberg, and would like to take passage with him. I said this partly through young Z, who spoke German very well, and partly through Mr. X, who spoke it CHARTERING A RAFT. 125 peculiarly. I can understand German as well as the maniac that invented it, but I talk it best through an interpreter. The captain hitched up his trowsers, then shifted his quid thoughtfully. Presently he said just what I was expecting he would say, — that he had no license to carry passengers, THE CAPTAIN. and therefore was afraid the law would be after him in case the matter got noised about or any accident happened. So T chartered the raft and the crew and took all the responsi- bilities on myself. 126 VOYAGING ON A RAFT. "With a rattling song the starboard watch bent to their work and hove the cable short, then got the anchor home, and our bark moved off with a stately stride, and soon was bowling along at about two knots an hour. Our party were grouped amidships. At first the talk was a little gloomy, and ran mainly upon the shortness of life, the uncertainty of it, the perils which beset it, and the need and wisdom of being always prepared for the worst ; this shaded off into low-voiced references to the dangers of the deep, and kindred matters ; but as the gray east began to red- den and the mysterious solemnity and silence of the dawn ta give place to the joy-songs of the birds, the talk took a cheerier tone, and our spirits began to rise steadily. Germany, in the summer, is the perfection of the beauti- ful, but nobody has understood, and realized, and enjoyed the utmost possibilities of this soft and peaceful beauty un- less he has voyaged down the ISTeckar on a raft. The motion of a raft is the needful motion ; it is gentle, and gliding, and smooth, andnoiseless; it calms down all feverish activities, it soothes to sleep all nervous hurry and impatience ; under its restful influence all the troubles and vexations and sorrows that harass the mind vanish away, and existence becomes a dream, a charm, a deep and tranquil ecstasy. How it con- trasts with hot and perspiring pedestrianism, and dusty and deafening railroad rush, and tedious jolting behind tired horses over blinding white roads ! We went slipping silently along, between the green and fragrant banks, with a sense of pleasure and contentment that grew, and grew, all the time. Sometimes the banks were over-hung with thick masses of willows that wholly hid the ground behind ; sometimes we had noble hills on one hand, clothed densely with foliage totlieir tops, and on the other hand open levels blazing with poppies, or clothed in the rich blue of the corn-flower; sometimes we drifted in the shadow of forests, and sometimes along the margin of long stretches of velvety grass, fresh and green and bright, a tireless charm to the eye. And the birds ! — they were PLEASURES OF RAFTING. 127 everywhere ; tliej swept back and forth across the river con- stantly, and their jubilant music was never stilled. It was a deep and satisfying pleasure to see the sun create the new morning, and gradually, patiently, lovingly, clothe it on with splendor after splendor, and glory aftei- glory, till the miracle was complete. How different is this marvel observed from a raft, from what it is when one observes it through the dingy windows of a railway station in some wretched village while he munches a petrified sandwich and waits for the train. CHAPTER. XV. DOWN THE EIVEE. MEN and women and cattle were at work in the dewy fields by tins time. The people often stepped aboard the raft, as we glided along the grassy shores, and gossiped with ns and with the crew for a hundred yards or so, then stepped ashore again, refreshed by the ride. Only the men did this ; the women were too busy. The women do all kinds of work on the continent. They dig, they hoe, they reap, they sow, they bear monstrous burdens on their bacjvs, they shove similar ones long distances on wheelbarrows, they drag the cart when there is no dog or lean cow to drag it, — and Mdien there is, they assist the dog or cow. Age is no matter, — the older the woman, the strong- er she is, apparently. On the farm a woman's duties are not defined, — she does a little of everything ; but in the towns it is different, there she only does certain things, the men do the rest. For instance, a hotel chambermaid has nothing to do but make beds and fires in fifty or sixty rooms, bring • towels, and candles, and fetch several tons of water up sev- eral flights of stairs, a hundred pounds at a time, in prodi- gious metal pitchers. She does not have to work more than eighteen or twenty hours a day, and she can always get down on her knees and scrub the floors of halls and closets when she is tired and needs a rest. 12S PLEASURES OF RAFTING. 129 As the morning advanced and the weather grew hot, we took off our outside clothing and sat in a row along the edge of the raft and enjoyed the scenery, with our sun nmhrellas over our heads and our legs dangling in the water. Every Vc^vtI^o^ "a deep and tranquil ecstasy." now and then we plunged in and had a swim. Every pro- jecting grassy cape had its joyous group of naked children, the boys to themselves and the girls to themselves, the latter usually in ^are of some motherly dame who sat in the shade of a tree with her knitting. The little boys swam out to us, sometimes, but the little maids stood knee deep in the water and stopped their splashing and frolicking to inspect the raft with their innocent eyes as it drifted by. Once we turned a corner suddenly and surprised a slender girl of twelve yeai's or upwards, just stepping into the water. She had not time to run, but she did what answered just as well ; slie promptly drew a lithe young willow bough athwart her white body with one hand, and then contemplated us with a simple and untroubled interest. Thus she stood while we glided by. She was a pretty creature, and she and her willow bough made a very pretty picture, and one which could not offend the modesty of the most fastidious spectator. Her M'hite skin had a low bank of fresh screen willows for background 130 A CURIOUS STEAMER. and effective contrast,— for slie stood against them,— and " WHICH ANSWERED JUST AS WELL. above and out of them projected the eager faces and vv^hite shoulders of two smaller girls. Towards noon we heard the inspiriting cry, — " Sail ho ! " "Where away?" shouted the captain. " Three points oif the weather bow ! " We ran forward to see the vessel. It proved to be a steamboat, — for they had begun to rim a steamer up the Neckar, for the first time in May. She wag a tug, and one of very peculiar build and aspect. I had often watched her from the hotel, and wondered how she propelled herself, for apparently she had no propeller or paddles. She came churning along, now, making a deal of noise of one kind and another, and aggravating it every now and then by blowing a hoarse whistle. She had nine keel-boats hitched on behind A COMBINATION OF POWER. 13 i and following after her in a long, slender rank. We met her in a narrow place, between dikes, and there was hardly room for us both in the cramped passage. As she went grinding and groaning by, we perceived the secret of her moving impulse. She did not drive herself up the river with paddles or propeller, she pulled herself by hauling on a great chain. This chain is laid in the bed of the river and is only fastened at the two ends. It is seventy miles long. It comes in over the boat's bow, passes around a drum, and is payed out astern. She pulls on that chain, and so drags her- self up the river or down it. She has neither bow nor stern, strictly speaking, for she has a long-bladed rudder on each end and she never turns around. She uses loth rudders all the time, and they are powerful enough to enable her to turn to the right or the left and steer around curves, in spite of the strong resistance of the chain. I would not have believed that that impossible thing could be done ; but I saw it done, and therefore I know that there is one impossible thing which caTi be done. What miracle will man attempt next? We met many big keel boats on their w^ay up, using sails, mule power, and profanity — a tedious and laborious business. A wire rope led from the foretop mast to the file of mules on the tow-path a liundred yards ahead, and by dint of much banging and swearing and urging, the detach- ment of drivers managed to get a speed of two or three miles an hour out of the mules against the stiff current. The Neckar has always been used as a canal, and thuahas given employment to a great many men and animals; but now that this steamboat is able, with a small crew and a Imshel or so of coal, to take nine keel boats farther up the riv^r in one hour than thirty men and thirty mules can do it in two, it is believed that the old-fashioned towing industry is on its death-bed. A pecqnd steamboat began w^ork in the ISTeckar three months after the first one was put in service. At noon we stepped ashore and bought some bottled beer and got some chickens cooked, while the raft waited ; then 132 DINNER ON BOARD. we immediately put to sea again, and had our dinner while the beer was cold and the chickens hot. There is no pleas- anter place for such a meal than a raft that is gliding down the winding Neckar past green meadows and wooded hills, and slumbering villages, and craggy heights graced with crumbling towers and battlements. In one place we saw a nicely dressed German gentleman s ^^' 'i. ,■'; t //" - '-^ jj gfife^ * -Jf* -• ~-^'' " ?3ift * "'".^ > A ^^ *» <^^m^ .m gj? It \ ^^^ V M >«"" i«j ^y^\\. k "* «#J6 V*- '■ft ^ ^^ ^ Wc^S5te^#^^^ ^ r5! i^m ii&^ SgvTJ^^Bi^^^SMaM^* ^BSMf**!** i^,*-"^ ^ >MB^^ ^ EranmB[ 'h*-«irNG ON THE NECKAR. CHAPTER XVI. AN ANCIENT LEGEND OF THE RHINE. THE last legend reminds one of the "Lorelei " — a legend of the Rhine. There is a song called " The Lorelei." Germany is rich in folk-songs, and the words and airs of several of them are peculiarly beautiful, — but " The Lore- lei" is the people's favorite. I could not endure it at first but by and by it began to take hold of me, and now there is no tune which I like so well. It is not possible that it is much known in America, else I should have heard it there. The fact that I never heard it there, is evidence that there are others in my country who liave fared likewise ; therefore, for the sake of these, 1 mean to print the words and the music in this chapter. And I will refresh the reader's memory by printing the legend of the Lorelei too. I have it by me in the " Legends of the Rhine," done into English by the wildly gifted Garnham, Bachelor of Arts. I print the legend partly to refresh my own memory, too, for I have never read it before. THE LEGEND. Loi'e, (two syllables,) was a water nymph who used to sit on a high rock called Ley or Lei (pronounced like our word lie) in the Rhine, and lure boatmen to destruction in a furious rapid which marred the channel at that spot. She so be- witched them with her plaintive songs and her wonderful beauty that they forgot everything else to gaze up at her, 140 LOVE OF COUNT HERMANN. 141 and so they presently drifted among the broken reefs and were lost. In those old, old times, the count Bruno lived in a great castle near there with his son the count Hermann, a youth of twenty. Hermann had heard a great deal about the beauti- ful Lore, and had finally fallen very deeply in love with her without having yet seen her. So he used to wander to the neighborhood of the Lei, evenings, with his Zither and " Express his Longing in low Singing," as Garnham says. On one of these occasions, "suddenly there hovered around the top of the rock a brightness of unsqualed clear- ness and color, which, in in- creasingly smaller circles thickened, was the enchanting figure of the beautiful Lore. " An unintentional cry of Joy escaped the Youth, he let his Zither fall, and with extend- ed arms he called out the name of the enigmatical Being, who seemed to stoop lovingly to him and beckon to him in a friendly manner ; indeed, if his ear did not deceive him, she called his name with unutterable sweet Whispers, proper to love. Beside himself with delight the youth lost his Senses and sank senseless to the earth." After that he was a changed person. He went dreaming about, thinking only of his fairy and caring for naught else in the world. " The old count saw with affliction this change- ment in his son," whose cause he could not divine, and tried to divert his mind into cheerful channels, but to no purpose. Then the old count used authority. He commanded the 9 THE LOKELEI. 142 A SERIOUS MISTAKE. youth to betake himself to the camp. Obedience was prom- ised. Gam ham says : " It was on the evening before his departure, as he wished still once to visit the Lei and offer to the Nymph of the Rhine his Sighs, the tones of his Zither, and his Songs. He went, in his boat, this time accompanied by a faithful squire, down the stream. The moon shed her silvery light over the whole Country ; the steep bank mountains appeared in the most fantastical shapes, and the high oaks on either side bowed their Branches on Hermann's passing. As soon as he ap- proached the Lei, and was aware of the surf-waves, his attendant was seized with an inexpressible Anxiety and he begged permission to land ; but the Knight swept the strings of his Guitar and sang: ♦' Once I saw thee in dark night, In supernatural Beauty bright; Of Light-rays, was the Figure wove, To share its light, locked-hair -strove. •'Thy Garment color wave-dove. By thy hand the sign of love, Thy eyes sweet enchantment, Raying to me, oh ! entranccment. " O, wert thou but my sweetheart, How willingly thy love to part ! With delight I should be bound To thy rocky house in deep ground.** That Hermann shonld have gone to that place at all, was not wise ; that he should have gone with such a song as that in his mouth was a most serious mistake. The Lorelei did not ''call his name in unutterable sweet Whispers" this time. No, that song naturally worked an instant and thorough "changement" in her; and not only that, but it stirred the bowels of the whole afflicted region round about there, — for, — "Scarcely had these tones sounded, everywhere there be- gan tumult and sound, as if voices above and below the water. On the Lei rose flames, the Fairy stood above, as THE LORELEI. 143 that time, and beckoned with her right hand clearly and uro-ently to the infatuated Knight, while with a staff in her left she called the waves to her service. They began to mount heavenward; the boat was upset, mocking every ex- ertion ; the waves rose to the gunwale, and splitting on the hard stones, the Boat ^ broke into Pieces. The youth sank into the depths, but the squire was thrown on shore by a powerful wave." The bitterest things have been said about t h e Lorelei daring many centuries, but surely her conduct upon this occasion entitles her to our re- spect. One feels drawn ten- derly toward her and is moved to forget her many crimes and remember only the good deed that crowned and closed her career. " The Fairy was never more seen ; but her enchanting tones the lover's fate. have often been heard. Iti the beautiful, refreshing, still nights of spring, wdien the moon pours her silver light over the Country, the listening shipper hears from the rushing of the waves, the echoing Clang of a wonderfully charming voice, which sings a song from the crystal castle, and with sorrow and fear he thinks on the young Count Hermann, seduced by the N3^mph." Here is the music, and the German words by Heiiirich Heine. This song has been a favorite in Germany for forty years, and will remain a favorite always, maybe : fli a; rs a; & •k ' i 1 1 -W -■ t -- / S5 b :§ 1 -%' ^. ^ > -^^ I.. .t t\ 1 ^ . 1 :;:) - "S *'. '•:^la r ''\ ' - 1=^ , s ^ -.\ -- f-J -- -i tm O on T" 1 . n N-4 r:^ « |-s| '■-rW ' ^- ^ 1 00 ::^^ ■f ~ f ili j- 'V ^^ • _J-5- CD -g 1 ^ -. k> r2 O S •- Q p < - -< :: QD -4 CM o6 5: :d ;; Tj ^i- S? : P 1^ \l'^ J> s 146 TRANSLATION OF THE WORDS. I have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language and add no ti'anslation. When I am the reader, and the author considers nie able to do the translating myself, he pays me quite a nice compliment, — but if he would do the translating for me I would try to get along without the compliment. If I were at home, no doubt I could get a translation of tliis poem, but I am abroad and can't ; therefore I will make a translation myself. It may not be a good one, for poetry is out of my line, but it will serve my purpose, — which is, to give the un-German young girl a jingle of words to hang the tune on until she can get hold of a good version, made by some one who is a poet and knows how to convey a poet- ical thought from one language to another. THE LOKELEI. I cannot divine what it meaneth, This haunting nameless pain : A tale of the bygone ages Keeps brooding through my brain : The faint air cools in the gloaming, And peaceful flows the Rhine, The thirsty summits are drinking The sunset's flooding wine; The loveliest maiden is sitting High-throned in yon blue air, Her golden jewels are shining, She combs her golden hair; She combs with a comb that is golden, And sings a weird refrain That steeps in a deadly enchantment The list'ner's ravished brain : The doomed in his drifting shallop, Is tranced with the sad sweet tone, He sees not the yawning breakers, He sees but the maid alone : The pitiless billows engulf him ! — So perish sailor and bark ; And this, with her baleful singing, Is the Lorelei's grewsome work. GARNHAM'S TRANSLATION. 147 I have a translation by Garnliam, Bachelor of Arts, in the " Legends of the Khine," but it would not answer the pur- pose I mentioned above, because the measure is too nobly irregular; it don't fit the tune snugly enough; in places it hangs over at the ends too far, and in other places one runs out of words before he gets to the end of a bar. Still, Garn- ham's translation has high merits, and I am not dreaming of leaving it out of my book. I believe this poet is wholly unknown in America and England ; I take peculiar pleasure in bringing him forward because I consider that I discovered him : THE LORELEI. Translated by L. W. Garnliam^ B. A. I do not known what it signifies. That I am so sorrowful? A fable of old Times so terrifies, Leaves ray heart so thoughtful. The air is cool and it darkens, And calmly flows the Rhine ; The summit of the mountain hearkens In evening sunshine line. The most beautiful Maiden entrances Above wonderfully there, Her beauti'ul golden attire glances, She combs her golden hair. With golden comb so lustrous, And thereby a song sings, It has a tone so wondrous. That powerful melody rings. The shipper in the little ship It effects with woes sad might ; He does not see the rocky clip. He only regards dreaded height. I believe the turbulent waves Swallow at last shipper and boat; She with her singing craves All to visit her magic moat. No translation could be closer. He has got in all the facts : 148 CATALOGUE OF PICTURES. and in their regular order too. Thei-e is not a statistic want ing. It is as succinct as an invoice. That is what a transla- tion ought to be ; it should exactly reflect the thought of the original. You can't sing " Above wonderfully there," because it simply won't go to the tune, without damaging the singer ; but it is a most clinginglj^ exact translation of Dort ohen wun- derhar, — fits it like a blister. Mr. Garnham's reproduction has other merits, — a hundred of them, — but it is not necessary to point them out. They wnll be detected. No one with a specialty can hope to have a monopoly of it. Even Garnham has a rival. Mr. X. had a small pamphlet with him which he had bought while on a visit to Munich. It was entitled "A Catalogue of Pictures in the Old Pin- acotek," and was written in a peculiar kind of English. Here are a few extracts: " It is not permitted to make use of the work in question to a publication of the same contents as well as to the pirated edition of it." " An evening landscape. In the foreground near a pond and a group of white beeches is leading a footpath animated I)y travelers." " A learned man in a cynical and torn dress holding an open book in his hand." "St. Bartholomew and the Executioner with the knife to fulfill the martyr." "Portrait of a young man. A long while this picture was thought to be Bindi Altoviti's portrait ; now somebody will again have it to be the self-portrait of Paphael." "Susan bathing, surprised by the two old man. In the background the lapidation of the condemned." (" Lapidation " is good ; it is much more elegant than " stoning.") " St. Kochus sitting in a landscape with an angel who looks at his plague-sore, whilst the dog the bread in his mouth attents him " " Spring. The Goddess Elora, sitting. Behind her a fertile valley perfused by a river." CATALOGUE CONTINUED. 149 "A beautiful bouquet animated bj May-bugs, etc." "A warrior in armor with a gypseous pipe in his hand leans against a table and blows the smoke far away of himself." "A Dutch landscape along a navigable river which perfuses it till to the background." " Some peasants singing in a cottage. A woman lets drink a child out of a cup." " St. John's head as a boy, — painted in fresco on a brick." (Meaning a tile.) "A young man of the Riccio family, his hair cut off right at the end, dressed in black with the same cap. Attributed to Raphael, but the signation is false." " The Yirgin holding the Infant. Is very painted in the manner of Sassoferrato." "A Larder with greens and dead game animated by a cook-maid and two kitchen-boys." However, the English of this catalogue is at least as happy as that which distinguishes an inscription upon a certain picture in Rome, — to wit : " Revelations- View. St. John in Patterson's Island." Bat meantime the raft is moving on. CHAPTER XVIL A MILE or two above Eberbacli we saw a peculiar ruin - projecting above the foliage which clothed the peak of a high and very steep hill. This ruin consisted of merely a couple of criiaibling masses of masonry which bore a rude resemblance to human faces ; they leaned forward and touched foreheads, and had the look of being absorbed in conversation. This ruin had nothing very imposing or picturesque about it, and there was no great deal of it, yet it was called the " Spec- tacular Ruin." LEGEND OF THE " SPECTACULAR RUIN." The captain of the raft, who was as full of history as he could stick, said that in the Middle Ages a most pro- digious lire-breathing dragon used to live in that region, and made more trouble than a tax collector. He was as long as a railway train, and had the customary impenetrable green scales all over him. His breath bred pestilence and con- flagration, and his appetite bred famine. He ate men and cattle impartially, and was exceedingly unpopular. Tlie German emperor of that day made the usual offer : he would grant to the destroyer of the dragon, any one solitary thing he might ask for; for he had a surplusage of daughters, and it was customary for dragon-killers to take a daughter for pay. So the most renowned knights came from the four corners of the earth and retired down the dragon's throat one after 150 A SCIENTIFIC TRAMP. 151 the other. A panic arose and spread. Heroes grew cau- tious. Tlie procession ceased. The dragon became more destructive than ever. The people lost all hope of succor, and fled to the mountains for refuge. At last Sir Wissenschaft, a poor and obscure tnight, out of a far countiy, arrived to do battle with the monster. A pitiable object, he was, with his armor hanging in rags about him, and his strange shaped knapsack strapped upon his back. Every- body turned up their noses at him, and some openly jeered him. But he was calm. He simply enquir- ed if the emperor's offer was still in force. The ^-^ emperor said it was, — but y — -^ charitably advised him to \ go and hunt hares and not ^!yrC endanger so precious a life """'^ as his in an attempt which had brought death to so many of the world's most THE TJNKNowN KNIGHT. illustnous licroes. But this tramp only asked, — "Were any of these heroes men of science?" This raised a lau^h, of course, for science was despised in those days. But the tramp was not in the least ruffled. He said he might be a little in advance of his age, but no matter, — science would come to be honored, some time or other. He said he would march against the dragon in the morning. Out of compassion, then, a decent spear was offered him. but he declined, and said, "spears were useless to men of science." They allowed him to sup in the servants' hall, and gave him a bed in the stables. 152 THE POWEE OF SCIENCE ILLUSTEATED. When he started forth in the morning, thousands were gathered to see. The emperor said, — " Do not be rash, take a spear, and leave off your knap- sack." But the tramp said, — " It is not a knapsack," and moved straight on. Tiie dragon was waiting and ready. He was breathing forth vast vulumes of sulphurous smoke and lurid blasts of flame. The ragged knight stole warily to a good position, then he unslnng his cylindrical knapsack, — which was simply the common fire-extinguisher known to modern times, — and the first chance he got he turned on his hose and shot the dragon square in the center of his cavernous mouth. Out went the fires in an instant, and the dragon curled up and died. This man had brought brains to his aid. He had reared dragons from the egg, in his laboratory, he had watched over them like a mother, and patiently studied them and experi- mented upon them while they grew. Thus he had found out that fire was the life principle of a dragon; put out the dragon's fires and it could make steam no longer, and must die. He could not put out a fire with a spear, therefore he invented the extinguisher. The dragon being dead, the emperor fell on the hero's neck and said, — •' Deliverer, name your request," at the same time beckoning out behind with ^^7" his heel for a detachment of his daughters to form and advance. But the tramp gave them no observance. He simply said, — My request is, that upon me be conferred the monopoly of the manufacture and sale of spectacles in Germany." The emperor sprang aside and exclaimed, — "This transcends all the impudence I ever heard! A THE EMBKACB. WHY SPECTACLES WERE WORN. 153 modest demand, by my lialidome ! Why didn't you ask for the imperial revenues at once, and be done with it ? " But the monarch had given his word, and he kept it. To everybody's surprise, the unselfish monopolist immedi- ately reduced the price of spectacles to such a degree that a great and crushing burden was removed from the nation. The emperor, to commemorate this generous act, and to testify his appreciation of it, issued a decree commanding everybody to buy this benefactor's spectacles and wear them, whether they needed them or not. So originated the wide-spread custom of wearing specta- cles in Germany ; and as a custom once established in these old lands is imperishable, this one remains universal in the Empire to this day. Such is the legend of the monopolist's once stately and sumptuous castle, now called the " Spectacu- lar Ruin." On the right bank, two or three miles below the Spectac- ular Ruin, we passed by a noble pile of castellated buildings overlooking the water from the crest of a lofty elevation. A stretch of two hundred yards of the high front wall was heavily draped with iv^y, and out of the mass of buildings within rose three picturesque old towers. The place was in fine order, and was inhabited by a family of princely rank. This castle had its legend, too, but I should not feel justified in repeating it because I doubted the truth of some of its minor details. Along in this region a multitude of Italian laborers were blasting away the frontage of the hills to make room for the new railway. They were fifty or a hundred feet above the river. As we turned a sharp corner they began to wave signals and shout warnings to us to look out for the explo- sions. It was all very well to warn us, but what could we do ? You can't back a raft up stream, you can't hurry it down stream, you can't scatter out to one side when you haven't any room to speak of, you won't take to the perpendicular cliffs on the other shore when they appear to be blasting there 154 ENCOUNTERING DANGER. too. Yonr resources are limited, you see. There is simply nothing for it but to watch and pray. For some hours we had been making three and a half or four miles an hour and we were still making that. We had been dancing right along until those men began to shout ; then for the next ten minutes it seemed to me that I had never seen a raft go so slowly. When the first blast went off we raised our sun-umbrellas and waited for the result. PERILOUS POSITION. No harm done; none of the stones fell in the M^ater. An- other blast followed, and another and another. Some of the rubbish fell in the water just astern of us. We ran that whole battery of nine blasts in a row, and it was certainly one of the most exciting and uncomfortable weeks 1 ever spent, either aship or ashore. Of course we fre- quently manned the poles and shoved earnestly for a second or so, but every time one of those spurts of dust and debris shot aloft every man dropped his pole and looked up to get tlie bearings of his share of it. It was very busy times along there for a while. It appeared certain that we must perish, but even that was not the bitterest thought ; no, the ITALIANS AS LABORERS. 155 abjectly unheroic nature of the death, — that was the stiiig, — that ai]d the bizarre wording of the resulting obituary : " Shot with a rock, on a raftP There would be no poetry written about it. None could be written about it. Example : Not by war's shock, or war's shaft, — Shot, with a rock, on a raft. No poet who valued his reputation would touch such a theme as that. I should be distinguished as the only " dis- tinguished dead" who went down to the grave unsonneted, in 1878. But we escaped, and I have never regretted it. The last blast was a peculiarly strong one, and after the small rubbish was done raining around us and we were just going to shake hands over our deliverance, a later and larger stone came down amongst our little group of pedestrians and wrecked an umbrella. It did no other harm, but we took to the water just the same. It seems that the heavy work in the quarries and the new railway gradings is done mainly by Italians. That was a revelation. We have the notion in our country that Italians never do heavy work at all, but confine themselves to the lighter arts, like organ-grinding, operatic singing, and assassi- nation. We have bhmdered, that is plain. All along the river, near every village, we saw little sta- tion houses for the future railway. They were finished and waiting for the rails and business. They were as trim and snug and pretty as they could be. They were always of Drick or stone ; they were of graceful shape, they had vines and flowers about them already, and around them the grass was bright and green, and showed that it was carefully looked after. They were a decoration to the beautiful land- scape, not an offense. Wherever one saw a pile of gravel, or a pile of broken stone, it was always heaped as trimly and exactly as a new grave or a stack of cannon balls ; nothing about those stations, or along the railroad or the wagon road was allowed to look shabby or be unornamental. The keeping 156 A GALE AT SEA. a country in such beautiful order as Germany exhibits, has a wise practical side to it, too, for it keeps thousands of people in work and bread who would otherwise be idle and mis- chievous. As the night shut down, the captain wanted to tie up, but I thought maybe we might make Hirschhorn, so we went on. Presently the sky became overcast, and the captain came aft looking uneasy. He cast his eye aloft, then shook his head, and said it was coming on to blow. My party wanted to land at once, — therefore 1 wanted to go on. The captain said we ought to shorten sail, anyway, out of com- mon prudence. Consequently the larboard watch was or- dered to lay in his pole. It grew quite dark, now, and the wind began to rise. It wailed through the swaying branches of the trees, and swept our decks in fitful gusts. Things were taking on an ugly look. The captain shouted to the steersman on the forward log, — " How's she heading ? " The answer came faint and hoarse from far forward : " Nor'-east-and-by-nor', -east by-east, half-east, sir." " Let her go off a point ! " "Ay-aye, sir!" " What water have you got ? " " Shoal, sir. Two foot large, on the stabboard, two and a Imlf scant on the labboard ! " '• Let her go off another point ! " "Ay-aye, sir ! " " Forward, men, all of you! Lively, now! Stand by to crowd her round the weather corner!" "Ay-aye, sir ! " Then followed a wild running and trampling and hoarse shouting, but the forms of the men were lost in the darkness and the sounds were distorted and confused by the roaring of the wind through the shingle-bundles. By this time the sea was running inches high, and threatening every moment to engulf the frail bark. Now came the mate hurrying aft^ and said, close to the captain's ear, in a low, agitated voice, — IMMINENT DANGER. 157 " Prepare for the worst, sir, — we have sprung a leak !" " Heavens ! where ? " '• E-igat aft the second row of logs." *' Nothing but a miracle can save us ! Don't let the men know, or there will be a panic and mutiny ! Lay liur m shore and stand by to juujp with the stern-line the moment sl,.i touches. Gentlemen, I ujust look to you to second my en- deavors in this lioiir of peril. You have hats, — go forrard and bail for your lives ! " Down swept another mighty blast of wind, clothed in spray and thick darkness. At such a moment as this, came from THE RAFT IN A STORM. away forward that most appalling of all cries that are ever heard at sea, — " Man overhoard ! " The captain shouted. — "Hard a-port ! Never mind the man! Let him climb aboard or wade ashore ! " Another cry came down the wind, — " Breakers ahead ! " " Where away ? " " Not a log's leno^th oflT her po-t forp-f.^nf ! " We had groped' our slippery way forward, and were now 10 158 THE CRISIS PASSED. bailing with the frenzj of despair, when we heard the n^ate's terrilied cry, from far aft, — " Stop that dashed bailing, or we shall be aground ! " But this was immediately followed by the glad shout, — '■ Land aboard the starboard transom ! " "Saved!" cried the captain. "Jump ashore and take a tui-u around a tree and pass the bight aboard ! " The next moment we were all on shore weeping and em- bracing for joy, while the rain poured down in torrents. The captain said he had been a mariner for forty years on the Neckar, and in that time had seen storms to make a man's ALL SAFE ON SHORE. cheek blanch and his pulses srop, but he had never, never ppen a storm that even appronched this one. How familiar that sounded ! For I liave been at ?ea a good deal and have lieard that remark from captains with a fi-equency accord- ing! v. We framed in our minds tlie usual resolution of thanks and admirntion and gratitude, and took the first opportunity to vote it, and put it in writinij^ and present it to the captain, with the customary speech. W"e tramped through the darkness and the drenching A RICH LANDLORD. 159 summer rain full three miles, and readied '' The Naturalist Tavern " in the village of Hirschhorn just an hour before midnight, almost exhausted from hardship, fatigue and terror. I can never forget that night. The landlord was rich, and therefore could afford to be crusty and disobliging ; lie did not at all like being turned out of his warm bed to open his house for us." But no mat- ter, his household got up and cooked a quick supper for us, and we brewed a hot punch for ourselves, to keep off con- sumption. After supper arid*puncli we had an hour's sooth- ing smoke while we fought the naval battle over again and voted the resolutions; then we retired to 'exceedingly neat and pretty chambers up stairs that had clean, comfortable beds in them with heir-loom pillow-cases most elaborately and tastefully embroidered by hand. Such rooms and beds and embroidered linen are as frequent in German village inns as they are rare in ours. Our villages are superior to German villages in more merits, excellencies, conveniences and privileges than I can enumerate, but the hotels do not belong in the list. " The Naturalist Tavern " was not a meaningless name ; for all the halls and all the rooms were lined with large glass cases which were filled with all sorts of birds and animals, glass-eyed, ably stuffed, and set up in the most natural and eloquent and dramatic attitudes. The moment we were abed, the rain cleared away and the moon came out. I dozed off to sleep while contemplating a great white stuffed owl which was looking intently down on me from a high perch with the air of a person who thought he had met me before but could not make out for certain. But young Z. did not get off so easily. He said that as he was sinking deliciously to sleep, the moon lifted away the shadows and developed a huge cat, on a bracket, dead and stuffed, but crouching, with every muscle tense, for a spring, and with its glittering glass eyes aimed straight at him. It made Z. uncomfortable. He tried closing his own eyes, but 160 NERVOUS SYMPTOMS. that did not answer, for a natural instinct kept making him open them again to see if the cat was still getting i-eady to launch at him, — which she alwajs was. lie tried turning "it was the cat/' his back, but that was a failure ; he knew the sinister eyes were on him still. So at last he had to get up, after an hour or two of worry and experiment, and set the cat out in the hall. So he won, that time. CHAPTER XVIII. IN the morning we took breakfast in the garden, under the trees, in the delightful German summer fashioUo The Hir was filled with the fragrance of flowers and wild animals ; the living portion of the menagerie of the " JS'aturalist Tav- ern " was all about us. There were great cages populous with fluttering and chattering foreign birds, and other great cages and greater wire pens, populous with quadrupeds, both native and foreign. There were some free creatures, too, and quite sociable ones they were. White rabbits went lo- ping about the place, and occasionally came and sniffed at our shoes and shins ; a fawn, with a red ribbon on its neck, walked up and examined us fearlessly ; rare breeds of chick- ens and doves begged for crumbs, and a poor old tailless raven hopped about with a humble, shame-faced mien which said, "Please do not notice my exposure, — think how you would feel in my circumstances, and be charitable." If he was observed too much, he would retire behind something and stay there until he judged the party's interest had found another object. I never have seen another dumb creature that was so morbidly sensitive. Bayard Taylor, who could interpret the dim reasonings of animals, and understood their moral natures better than most men, would have found some 161 162 SIGHT-SEEING. way to make this poor old chap forget his troubles fur a while. ~4^r^^^ ^ BREAKFAST IN THE GARDEN. but we had not his kindly art, aiid so had to leave the raven to his s^rief s. After breakfast we climbed the hill and visited the ancient castle of Hirschhorn, and the mined church near it. There were some cnrions old bas-reliefs leanins; against the inner walls of the church, — sculptured lords of Hirschhorn in com- plete armor, and ladies of Hirschhorn in the picturesque court costumes of the Middle Ages. These things are suf- fering damage and passing to decay, for the last Hirschhorn has been dead two hundred years, and there is nobody now who cares to preserve the family relics. In the chancel was a twisted stone column, and the captain told us a legend about it, of course, for in the matter of legends he could not seem to restrain himself; but I do not repeat his tale because there was nothing plausible about it except that the Hero wrenched this column into its present screw-shape with his hands, — just one single wrench. All the rest of the legend was doubtful. But Hirschhorn is best seen from a distance, down the river. Then the clustered brown towers perched on the SPEAKING IX man German, 163 green hilltop, and the old battlemented stone wall stretching lip and over the grassy ridge and disappearing in the leafj sea beyond, make a picture whose grace and beauty entirely satisfy the eye. We descended from the church by steep stone stairways which curved tliis w;iy and that down narrow alleys between the packed and dirty tenements of the village. It was a quarter well stocked with deformed, leering, unkempt and uucombed idiots, who held out hands or caps and begged piteously. Tlie people of the quarter were not all idiots, of course, but all that begged seemed to be, and were said to be. I M^-as thinking of going by skiif to the next town, Neckar- steinach ; so 1 ran to the riverside in advance of the party and asked a man there if he had a boat to hire. I suppose I must have spoken High-German, — Court German, — I intended it for that, anyway, — so he did not understand me. I turned and twisted my question around and about, trying to strike that man's average, but failed. He could not make out what I wanted. Now Mr. X. arrived, faced this same man, looked him in the eye, and emptied this sentence on him, in the most glib, and confident way: " Can man boat get here ? " The mariner promptly understood and promptly answered. I can comprehend why he was able to understand that par- ticular sentence, because by mere accident all the words in it except "get " have the same sound and the same meaning in German that they have in English ; but how lie managed to understand Mr, X.'s next remark puzzled me. I will inssrt it, presently. X. turned away a moment, and I asked the mariner if he could not find a board, and so construct an additional seat. I spoke in the purest German, but I might as well have spoken in the purest Choctaw for all the good it did. The man tried his best to understand me; he tried,, and kept on trying, harder and harder, until I saw it was really of no use, and said, — 164 PLATT-DEUTCH. " There, don't strain yourself,— it is of no consequence." Then X. turned to him and crisply said, — " Machen Sie a flat board." I wish my epi- taph may tell the truth about me if the man did not answer up at once, and say lie would go anu borrow a boa 1x1 as soon as he had lit the pipe which he was filling. We changed our mind about taking EASILY UNDERSTOOD. a boat, SO wc did not have to go. L have given Mr. X.'s two remarks just as he made them. Four of the five words in the first one were English, and that they were also German was only accidental, not intentional ; three ont of the five words in the second re- mMi'k were English, and English only, and the two German ones did not mean anything in particular, in such a con- nection. X. always spoke English, to Germans, but his plan was to turn the sentence wrong end first and upside down, according to German construction, and sprinkle in a German word with- out any essential meaning to it, here and there, by way of flavor. Yet he always made himself understood. He could make those dialect-speaking raftsmen understand him, some- times, when even young Z. had failed with them ; and young Z. was a pretty good German scholar. For one thing, X. a.ways spoke with such confidence, — perhaps that helped. A STOCK OF MISINFORMATION. 165 And possibly the raftsmen's dialect was what is called ^Za^^- Deutch, and so they found his English more familiar to their ears than another man's German. Quite indifferent students of German can read Fritz Renter's charming platt-Deutcli tales with some little facility because many of the words are English. I suppose this is the tongue which our Saxon 'ancestors carried to England with them. By and by 1 will inquire of some other philologist. However, in the meantime it had transpired that the men employed to caulk the raft had found that the leak was not a leak at all, but only a crack between the logs, — a crack which belonged there, and was not dangerous, but had been mag- nified into a leak by the disordered imagination of the mate. Therefore we went aboard again with a good degree of con- fidence, and presently got to sea without accident. As M^e jwam smoothly along between the enchanting shores, we fell to swapping notes about manners and customs in Ger- many and elsewhere. As I write, now, many months later, I perceive that each of us, by observing and noting and inquiring, diligently and day by day, had managed to lay in a most varied and opu- lent stock of misinformation. But this is not surprising; it is very difficult to get accurate details in any country. For example,,! had the idea, once, in Heidelberg, to find out all about those five student-corps. I started with the White-cap corps. I began to inquire of tliis and that and the other citizen, and here is what T found out: 1. It is called the Prussian Corps, because none but Prus- sians are admitted to it. 2. It is called the Prussian Corps for no particular rea- son. It has simply pleased each corps to name itself after some German State. 3. It is not named the Prussian Corps at all, but only the White Ctip Cory)s. 4. Any student can belong to it who is a German by birth. IQQ AT HEAD QUARTERS. 5. Any student can belong to it who is European hy birth. 6. Any European-born student can belong to it, except he be a Frenchman. 7. Any stadent can belong to it, no matter where he was born. 8. No student can belong to it who is not of noble blood. 9. No student can belong to it who cannot show tliree full generations of noble descent. 10. Nobility is not a necessary qualification. 11. No mone^dess student can belong to it. 12. Money qualification is nonsense — such a thing has never been thought of. I srot some of this information from students themselves, — students who did not belong to the corps. I finally went to headquarters, — to the White Caps, — where I would have gone in the first place if I had been acquainted. But even at headquarters I found difficulties ; I perceived that there were things about the White Cap Corps which one member knew and another one didn't. It was natur^d ; for very few members of any organization know all that can be known about it. I doubt if there is a man or a woman in Heidel- berg who would not answer promptly and confidently three out of every five questions about the White Cap Corps which a stranger might ask ; yet it is a very safe bet that two of tlie three answers would be incorrect every time. There is one German custom which is universal, — the bow- ing courteously to strangers when sitting down at table or rising up from it. This bow startles a stranger out of bis self-possession, the first time it occurs, and he is likely to fall over a chair or something, in his embarrassment, but it pleases liim nevertheless. One soon learns to expect this bow and be on the lookout and ready to return it; but to learn to lead off and make the initial bow one's self is a difficult matter for a diflfident man. One thinks, " If I rise to go, and tender my bow and these ladies and gentlemen take it into their hends to ignore the custom of their nation, and not return it, how EMBARRASSING TO STRANGERS. 167 shall I feel, in case I survive to feel anything." Therefore he is afraid to venture. He sits out the dinner, and makes the strangers rise first and originate the bowing. A table d'hote dinner is a tedious affair for a man who seldom touches anything after the three first courses ; therefore I used to do some pretty dreary waiting because of my fears. It took me months to assure myself that those fears were groundless, but 1 did assure myself at last by experimenting diligently through my agent. I made Harris get up and bow and leave; invariably his bow was returned, then I got up and bowed myself and retired. Thus my educa- tion proceeded easily and comfortably for me, but not for Har- ris. Three courses of a table d'hote d i n - ner were enough for me, but Harris pre- ferred thirteen. Even after I had acquired full confi- dence, and no longer I needed the agent's Shell) I sometimes encountered difficul- ties. Once at Baden Baden I nearly ExPERiMKNTmG THROUGH HARRIS. lost a train^ bccausc I could not be sure that three young ladies opposite me at table, were Germans, since I had not heard them speak ; they might be American, they might be English, it was not safe to venture a bow; but just as I had got that far witb my thought, one of them began a German remark, to my great relief and gratitude ; and before she had got out her third word, our bows had been delivered and graciously returned, and we were off. 168 FRIENDLINESS OF THE GERMANS. There is a friendly something about the German character which is very winning. When Harris and I -were making a pedestrian tour through the Black Forest, we stopped at a little country inn for dinner one day ; two young ladies and a young gentleman entered and sat down opposite us. They were pedestrians, too. Our knapsacks were strapped upon our backs, but they had a sturdy youth along to carry theirs for them. All parties were hungry, so there was no talking. By and by the usual bows were exchanged, and we separated. As we sat at a late breakfast in the hotel at Allerheiligen, next morning, these young people entered and took places near us without observing us ; but presently they saw us and at once bowed and smiled; not ceremoniously, but with the gratified look of people who have found acquaintances where they were expecting strangers. Then they spoke of the weather and the roads. We also spoke of the weather and the roads. Kext, they said they had had an enjoyable walk, notwithstanding the weather. We said that that had been our case, too. Then they said they had walked thirty Eng- lish miles the day before, and asked how many we had walked. I could not lie, so I told Harris to do it. Harris told them we had made thirty English miles, too. That was true ; vje had " made " them, though we had had a little assistance here and there. After breakfast they found us trying to blast some infor- mation out of the dumb hotel clerk about routes, and observ, ing that we were not succeeding pretty well, they went and ffot their maps and things, and pointed out and explained our course so clearly that even a New York detective could have followed it. And when we started they spoke out a hearty good-bye and wished us a pleasant journey. Perhaps they were more generous with us than they might have been with native wayfarers because we were a forlorn lot and in a strange land ; I don't know ; I only know it was lovely to be treated so. Very well, T took an American young lady to one of the TIMELY ASSISTANCE. ica fine balls in Baden-Baden, one night, and at the entrance- door up stairs we were halted by an official, — something about Miss Jones's dress was not according to rule ; I don't remem- ber what it was, now; something was wanting, — her back hair, or a shawl, or a fan, or a shovel, or something. The official was ever so polite, and ever so sorry, but the rule was strict, and he could not let us in. It was very embarrassing. AT THE BALL-ROOM DOOR. for many eyes were on us. But now a richly dressed girl stepped out of the ball-room, inquired into the trouble, and said she could fix it in a moment. She took Miss Jones to the robing-room, and soon brought her back in regulation trim, and then we entered the ball-room with this benefactress unchallenged. Being safe, now, I began to puzzle through my sincere but ungrararaatical thanks, when there was a sudden m-itual recognition, — the benefactress and I had met at Allerheiligen. Two weeks had not altered her good face, and plainly her heart was in the right place yet, but there was such a differ- ence between these clothes and the clothes I had seen her in before, when she was walking thirty miles a day in the Black 170 EEAL POLITENESS. Forest, that it was quite natural that I liad failed to recog- nize lier sooner. I bad on my other suit, too, but my Ger- man would betray me to a person who had heard it once, anyway. She brought her brother and sister, and they made our way smooth for that evening. Well, — months afterward, I was driving through the streets of Munich in a cab with a German lady, one day, when she said, — " There that is Prince Ludwig and his wife, w^alking a- long there." Everybody was bowing to them, — cabmen, little children, and everybody else, — and they were returning all the bows and overlooking nobody, when a young lady met them and made a deep curtsy. " That is probably one of the ladies of the court," said my German friend. I said, — '' She is an honor to it, then. I know her. I don't know her name, but I know her. I have known her at Allerheili- gen and Baden-Baden. She ought to be an Empress, but she may be only a Duchess ; it is the way things go in this world.'' If one asks a German a civil question, he will be quite sure to get a civil answer. If you stop a German in the street and ask him to direct you to a certain place, he shows no sign of feeling offended. If the place be difficult to find, ten to one the man will drop his own matters and go with you and show you. In London, too, many a time, strangers have walked several blocks with me to show me my w^ay. There is something very real about this sort of politeness. Quite often, in Germany, shopkeepers who could not furnish me the article I wanted, have sent one of their employes with me to show me a place where it could be had. CHAPTER XIX. HOWEVEK, I wander from the rafi. We made the port of Neckarsteinach in good season, and went to the hotel and ordered a trout dinner, the same to be ready against our return from a two-hour pedestrian excursion to the vil- lage and castle of Dilsberg, a mile distant, on the other side of the river, I do not mean that we proposed to be two hours making two miles, — no, we meant to employ most of the time in inspecting Dilsberg. For Dilsberg is a quaint place. It is most quaintly and picturesquely situated, too. Imagine the beauiiful river be- fore you ; then a few rods of brilliant green sward on its opposite shore ; then a sudden hill, — no preparatory gently- rising slopes, but a sort of instantaneous hill, — a hill two hundred and fifty or three hundred feet high, as round as a bowl, with the same taper upward that an inverted bowl has, and with about the same relation of height to diameter that distinoruishes a bowl of good honest depth, — a hill which is thickly clothed with green bushes, — a comely, shapely hill, rising abruptly out of the dead level of the surrounding green plains, visible from a great distance down the bends of the river, and with just exactly room on the top of its head for its steepled and turreted and roof-clustered cap of archi- tecture, which same is tightly jammed and compacted with in the perfectly round hoop of the ancient village wall. 171 172 A QUAINT OLD PLACE. There is no house outside the wall on the whole hill, or an J vestige of a foriuer house; all the houses are inside the wall, but there isn't room for another one. It is really a finished town, and has been finished a verj lung time. There is no space betwee.. the wall and the first circle of buildings ; no. the village wall is itself the rear wall of the \A first circle of buildings, and the roofs jut a little over the wall and thus furnish it with \ \\ \ > eaves. The general level of the massed '^^ ruots is gracefully broken and relieved by DiLSBERG. the dominating towers of the ruined castle and the tall spires of a couple of church 30, from a distance Dilsber^ more the look of a king' than a cap. That lol eminence and its quaint cornet form quite a strik- ing picture, you may be sure, in the flush of the evening sun. We crossed a boat and ascent by a narrow, steep path which plung- ed us at once into the leafy deeps of the bushes. But they were not cool deeps by any means, for the sun's rays were weltering hot and there* was little or no breeze to temper them. As we pan- ted up the sharp ascent, we met brown, bareheaded and over m began the OCR ADVANCE ON DILSBERG. MARRYING OF RELATIVES. 173 barefooted boys and girls, occasionally, and sometimes men; they came upon us without warning, they gave us good-day^ flashed out of sight in the bushes, and were gone as sud- denly and mysteriously as they had come. They were bound for the other side of the river to work. This path liad been traveled by ujany generations of tliese people. The}- have always gone down to the valley to earn their bread, but they liave always climbed their hill again to eat it, and to sleep in their snug town. It is said that the Dilsbergers do not emigrate much ; they find that living up there above the world, in their peaceful nest, is pleasanter than living down in the troublous world. The seven hundred inhabitants are all blood-kin to each other, too; they have always been blood-kin to each other for fifteen hundred years ; they are simply one large family, and they like the home folks better than they like strangei-f , hence they persistently stay at home. It has been said that for ages Dilsberg has been merely a thriving and diligent idiot-factory. I saw no idiots there, but the captain said, " Because of late years the government lias taken to lugging them off to asylums and otherwheres ; and government wants to crip])le the factory, too, and is ti-ying to get these Dilsbergers to marry out of the family, but they don't like to." The captain probably imagined all this, as modern science denies that tlie intermarrying of relatives deteriorates the stock. Arrived within the wall, we found the usual village sights and life. We moved along a narrow, crooked lane which had been paved in the Middle Ages. A strapping, ruddy girl was beating flax or some such stuff in a little bit of a goods-box of a barn, and she swung her flail with a will, — if it was a flail ; I was not farmer enough to know what she was at; a frowsy, barelegged girl was herding half a dozen, geese with a stick, — driving tliem along the lane and' keeping them out of the dwellings ; a cooper was at work 174 THE TOWN OF DILSBERG. in a shop which 1 know he did not make so large a thing as a hogshead in, for there was not room. In the front rooms of dwellings girls and women were cooking or spin- ning, and ducks and chickens were waddling in and out, over the threshold, picking up chance crumbs and holding INSIDE THE TOWN. pleasant converse ; a very old and M'rinkled man sat asleep before his door, with his chin npon his breast and his extin- guished pipe in his lap ; soiled children were playing in the dirt everyw'here along the lane, unmindful of the sun. Except the sleeping old man, everybody was at work, but the place was very still and peaceful, nevertheless ; so still that the distant cackle of the successful hen smote upon the ear but little dulled by intervening sounds. That common- est of village sights was lacking here, — the public pump, with its great stone tank or trough of limpid water, and its group of gossiping pitchei'-bearers ; for there is no well or fountain or spring on this tall hill ; cisterns of rain water are used. Our alpenstocks and muslin tails compelled attention, and as we moved through the village we gathered a considerable procession of little boys and girls, and so went in some state to the castle. It proved to be an extensive pile of crumbling THE ANCIENT WELL. 175 walls, arches and towers, massive, properly grouped for pic- turesque effect, weedy, grass-grown, and satisfactory. The children acted as guides ; they walked us along the top of the highest wall, then took us up into a high tower and showed us a wide and beautiful landscape, made up of wavy dis- tances of woody hills, and a nearer prospect of undulating expanses of green lowlands, on the one hand, and castle- graced crags and ridges on the other, with the shining curves of the iNTeckar flowing between. But the principal show, the chief pride of the children, was the ancient and empty well in the grass-grown court of the castle. Its massive stone curb stands up three or four feet above ground, and is whole and uninjured. The children said that in the Middle Ages this well was four hundred feet deep, and furnished all the village with an abundant supply of water, in war and peace. They said that in that old day its bottom was below the level of the Keckar, hence the water supply was inex- haustible. But there were some who believed it had never been a well at all, and was never deeper than it is now, — eighty feet ; that at that depth a subterranean passage branched from it and descended gradually to a remote place in the valley, where it opened into somebody's cellar or other hid- den recess, and that the secret of this locality is now lost. Those who hold this belief say that herein lies the expla- nation that Dilsberg, besieged by Tilly and many a soldier before him, was never taken: after the longest and closest sieges the besiegers were astonished to perceive that the be- sieged were as fat and hearty as ever, and as well furnished with munitions of war, — therefore it must be that the Dils- bergers had been bringing these things in through the subterranean passage all the time. The children said that there was in truth a subterranean outlet down there, and they would prove it. So they set a great truss of straw on fire and threw it down the well, while we leaned on the curb and watched the glowing mass 176 A RELIC OF THE PAST. descend. It struck bottom and gradually burned out. No smoke came up. T h e children clapped their hands and said, — '* Yo u see ! Nothing makes so much smoke as burning straw — now wheredidthe smoke go to, if there is no subter- ranean outlet? " THE OLD WELL. So it secmcd quite evident that the subterranean outlet indeed existed. But the finest thingwithin the ruin's limits was a noble lin- den, which the children said was four hundred j^ears old, and no doubt it was. It had a mighty trunk and a mighty spread of limb and foliage. The limbs near the ground were nearly the thickness of a barrel. That tree had witnessed the assaults of men in mail, — how remote such a time seems, and how ungraspable is the fact that real men ever did figlit in real armor ! — and it had seen the time when these broken arches and crumbling bat- tlements were a trim and strong and stately fortress, flutter- ing its gay banners in the sun,. and peopled with vigorous humanity, — how impossibly loug ago that seems ! — and here it stands yet, and possibl}^ may still be standing here, sun- ning itself and dreaming its historical dreams, when to-day shall have been joined to the days called " ancient." Well, we sat down under the tree to smoke, and the cap- tain delivered himself of his legend : THE LEGEND OF MLSBEEG CASTLE. It was to this effect. In the old times there M'as once a great company assembled at the castle, and festivity ran high. Of course there was a haunted chamber in the castle, and LEGEND OF DILSBERG CASTLE. lYT one day the talk fell upon that. It was said that whoever slept in it would not wake again for fifty years. ISTow when a young knight named Conrad von Geisberg heard this, he said that if the castle were his he would destroy that cham- ber, so that no foolish person might have the chance to briug so dreadful a misfortune upon himself and afflict such as loved him with the memory of it. Straightway the company privately laid their heads together to contrive some way to get this superstitious young man to sleep in that chamber. And they succeeded — in this way. They persuaded his be- trothed, a lovely mischievous young creature, niece of the lord of the castle, to help them in their plot. She presently took him aside and had speech with him. She used all her persuasions, but could not shake him ; he said his belief was firm that if he should sleep there he would wake no more for fifty years, and it made him shudder to think of it. Catharina began to weep. This was a better argument ; Conrad could not hold out against it. He yielded and said she should have her wish if she would only smile and be happy again. She flung her arms about his neck, and the kisses she gave him showed that her thankfulness and her pleasure were very real. Then she flew to tell the company her success, and the ap- plause she received made her glad and proud she had under- taken her mission, since all alone she had accomplished what the multitude had failed in. At midnight, that night, after the usual feasting, Conrad was taken to the haunted chamber and left there. He fell asleep, by and by. When he awoke again and looked about him, his heart stood still with horror! The whole aspect of the chamber was changed. The walls were mouldy and hung with ancient cobwebs; the curtains and beddings were rotten; the furni- ture was rickety and ready to fall to pieces. He spi-ang out of bed, but his quaking knees sunk under him and he fell to the floor. " This is the weakness of age," he said. 178 THE LOVER'S AWAKENING. He rose and sought his clothing. It was clothing no lon- ger. The colors were gone, the garments gave way in many places while he was put ting them on. He lied shuddering, into the corridor, and along it to the great hall. Here he was met by a middle- aged stranger of a k ind countenance, who stop- ped and gazed at him with surprise. Conrad •' SEND HITHER THH LORD ULEICH." SaiCl '. " Good sir, will you send hither the lord Ulrich ?" The stranger looked puzzled a moment, then said, — " The lord Ulrich ? " " Yes, — if you will be so good." The stranger called, — "Wilhelm!" A young serving man came, and the stranger said to him, — " Is there a lord Ulrich among the guests ? " " I know none of the name, so please your honor." Conrad said, hesitatingly, — " I did not mean a guest, but the lord of the castle, sir. The stranger and the servant exchanged wondering glan- ces. Then the former said, — " I am the lord of the castle." "Since when, sir?" " Since the death of my father, the good lord Ulrich, more than forty years ago." Conrad sank upon a bench and covered his face with his hands while he rocked his body to and fro and moaned. The stranger said in a low voice to the servant, — " i fear me this poor old creature is mad. Call some one." 5n B moment several people came, and grouped themselves about, talking in whispers. Conrad looked up and sjaimer* GONE, ALL GONE. X79 the faces about him wistfully „ Then he shook his head and said, in a grieved voice, — " No, there is none among ye that I know. I am old and alone in the world. They are dead and gone these many years that cared for me. But sure, some of these aged ones I see about me can tell me some little word or two concern- ing them." Several bent and tottering men and women came nearer and answered his questions about each former friend as he mentioned the names. This one they said had been dead ten years,, that one twenty, another thirty. Each succeeding blow struck heavier and heavier. At last the suiferer said, — " There is one more, but I have not the courage to, — O, my lost Catharina ! " One of the old dames said, — "Ah, I knew her well, poor soul. A misfortune overtook her lover, and she died of sorrow nearly fifty years ago. She lieth under the linden tree without the court." Conrad bowed his head and said — " Ah why did I ever wake! And so she died of grief for me, poor child. So young, so sweet, so good ! She never wittinglj' did a hurtful thing in all the little summer of her life. Her loving debt shall be repaid — for I will die of grief for her." His head drooped upon his breast. In a moment there was a wild burst of joyous laughter, a pair of round young arms were flung about Conrad's neck and a ^weet voice cried, — "There, Conrad mine, thy kind M'ords kill me,^the farce shall go no further ! Look up, and laugh with us, — 'twas all a jest ! " And he did look up, and gazed, in a dazed wonderment, — for the disguises were stripped away, and the aged men nnd women were bright and young and gay again. Catharina's happy tongue ran on, — "' Twas a marvelous jest, and bravely carried out. They 180 A MARVELOUS JEST. gave you a heavy sleeping draught before you went to Led, and in the night they bore you to a ruined chamber Mhere all had fallen to decay, and placed these rags of clothing by you. And when your sleep was spent and you came forth, two strangers, well instructed in their parts, were here to meet you; and all we, your friends, in our disguises, were close at hand, to see and hear, you may be sure. Ah, ' twas "lead me to her grave." a gallant jest ! Come, now, and make thee ready for the pleasures of the day. How real was thy misery for the mo- ment, thou poor lad ! Look up and have thy laugh, now ! " He looked up, searched the merry faces about him in a dreamy way, then sighed and said, — "I am aweary, good strangers, I pray you lead me to her ffrave. o All the smiles vanished away, every cheek blanched, Cath- arina sunk to the ground in a swoon. All day the people went about the castle with troubled faces, and communed together in undertones. A painful hush pervaded the place which had lately been so full of cheery life. Each in his turn tried to arouse Conrad out of his hal- lucination and bring him to himself ; but all the answer any got was a meek, bewildered stare, and then the words, — THE END OF THE JOKE. 181 " Good stranger, 1 have no friends, all are at rest these many years; ye speak me fair, ye mean me well, but I know ye not ; I am alone and forlorn in the world, — prithee lead me to her grave." During two years Con- rad spent his days, from the early morning till the night, under the linden tree, mourning over the imaginary grave of his Catharina. Catliarina was the only company of the harmless madman. He was very friendly toM^ard her because, as he said, in some ways she reminded him of his Catharina whom he had lost "fifty years ago.-' He often said, — under the linden, " She was so gay, so happj^-hearted, — but you never smile ; and always when you think I am not looking, you cry." When Conrad died, they buried him under the linden, according to his directions, so that he might rest "near his poor Catharina." Then Catharina sat under the linden alone, every day and all day long, a great many years, speaking to no one, and never smiling; and at last her long repentance was rewarded with death, and she was buried by Conrad's side. Harris pleased the captain by saying it was a good legend ; and pleased him further by adding, — " Now that I have seen this mighty tree, vigorous with its four hundred years, 1 feel a desire to believe the legend for its sake ; so I will humor the desire, and consider that the tree really watches over those poor hearts and feels a sort of human tenderness for them." 18:^ ASSUMING RESPONSIBILITIES. We returned to Neckarsteinacli, plunged our hot Lead into the trough at the town pump, and then went to the hotel and ate onr trout dinner, in leisurely comfort, in the garden, with the beautiful Neckar flowing at our feet, the quaint Dilsberg looming beyond, and the> graceful towers and battlements of a couple of medieval castles (called the "Swallow's Nest"* and "The Brothers") assisting the ragged scenery uf a bend of the river down to our right. We got to sea in season to make the eight-mile run t o Heidelberg be- fore the night shut down. We sailed by the hotel i n the mellow glow of sunset, and came slashing down with the mad current into the narrow pass- age between the dikes. I believed I could shoot the bridge myself, so I went to the for- ^; ward triplet o f logs and relieved the pilot of his pole and his AN EXCELLENT PILOT — ONCE ! rCSpOUSl DlJlty . We went tearing along in a most exhilarating way, and 1 performed the delicate duties of my ofiice very well indeed for a first attempt ; but perceiving presently, that I really was going to shoot the bridge itself instead of the archway under it, I judiciously stepped ashore. The next moment I *The seeker after information is referred to Appendix E for our Captain's TiBgend of the " Swallow's Nest " and " Tlie Brothers." A FEARFUL DISASTER. 183 had my long coveted desire : I saw a raft wrecked. It Lit tlie pier in the center and went all to smash and scatteration Hie a box of matches struck by lightning. I was the only one of our party who saw this grand eight ; the others were attitudin- izing, for the benefit of the long rank of young ladies who were prome- nading on the bank, and so they lost it. But I helped to fish them out of the river, down below the bridge, and then described it to them as well as I could. They were not interested, though. They said they were wet and felt ridiculous and did not care anything for descriptions ol scenery. The young ladies, and other people, crowded around and showed a great deal of sympathy, but that did not help matters ; for my fi'iends said they did not want sympathy, they wanted a back alley and solitude. SCA'l lEliAXloN CHAPTER XX. "VTEXT morning brought good news, — our trunks had ar- ±\ rived from Hamburg at last. Let this be a warning to the reader. The Germans are very conscientious, and this trait makes them very particular. Therefore if you tell a German you want a thing done immediately, he takes you at your word ; he thinks you mean what you say ; so he does that thing immediately — according to his idea of immedi- ately — which is about a week ; that is, it is a week if it refers to the building of a garment, or it is an hour and a half if it refers to the cooking of a trout. Yery well ; if you tell a German to send your trunk to you by " slow freight," he takes you at your word; he sends it by "slow freight," and you cannot imagine how long you will go on enlarging your admiration of the expressiveness of that phrase in the Ger- man tongue, before you get that trunk. The hair on my trunk was soft and thick and youthful, when I got it ready for shipment in Hamburg; it was baldheaded when it reached Heidelberg. However, it was still sound, that was a comfort, it was not battered in the least ; the baggagemen seemed to be conscientiously careful, in Germany, of the baggage intrusted to their hands. There was nothing now in the way of our departure, therefore we set about our preparations. Naturally my chief solicitude was about my collection of Keramics. Of course I could not take it with me, that would 184 COLLECTION OF KERAMICS. 185 ETEUSCAN TEAE-JUG. be inconvenient, and dangerous besides. I took advice, but the best bric-a-brackers were divided as to the wisest course to pursue ; some said pack the collection and warehouse it ; others said try to get it into the Grand Ducal Museum at Mannheim for safe keeping. So I divided the collection, and followed the advice of both parties. I set aside, for the Museum, those articles which were the most frail and precious. Among these was my Etruscan tear-jug. I have made a little sketch of it here ; that thing creeping up the side is not a bug, it is a hole. I bought this tear- jug of a dealer in antiquities for four hundred and fifty dol- lars. It is very rare. The man said the Etruscans used to keep tears or something in these things, and that it was very hard to get hold of a broken one, now. I also set aside my Henri II plate. See sketch from my pencil ; it is in the main correct, though I think I have f oreghoi"tened one end of it a little too much, perhaps. This is very fine and rare ; the shape is exceedingly beautiful and unusual. It has wonderful decorations on it, but I am not able to reproduce them. It cost more than tlie tear-jug, as the dealer said there was not an- other plate just like it in the world. He said there was much false Henri II ware around, but that the genuineness of this piece was unquestionable. He showed me its pedigree, or its history if you please ; it was a document which traced this plate's movements all the way down from its birth, — showed who bought it, from whom, and what he paid for it — -from the first buyer down to me, whereby I saw that it had gone steadily up from thirty-five cents to seven hundred dollars. He said that the whole Keramic world would be informed that it was now in my possession and would make a note of it, with the price paid. HENRI II PLATE. 186 A RARE RELIC. I CO RIDICULING KERAMIKERS, 187 There were Masters in those days, but alas, it is not so now. Of course the main preciousness of this piece lies in its color; it is that old sensuous, pervading, ramifying, in- terpolating, transboreal bhie which is the despair of modern art. The little sketch which I have made of this gem can- not and does not do it justice, since I have been obliged to leave out the color. But I've got the expression though. However, I must not be frittering away the reader's time with these details, I did not intend to go into any detail at all, at first, but it is the failing of the true keramiker, or the true devotee in any department of brick-a-brackery, that once he gets his tongue or his pen started on his darling theme, he cannot well stop until he drops from exhaustion. He has no more sense of the flight of time than has any other lover when talking of his sweetheart. The very "marks" on the bottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibbering ecstasy ; and I could forsake a drowning relative to help dispute about whether the stopple of a de- parted Buon Hetiro scent-bottle was genuine or spurious. Many people say that for a male person, bric-a-brac hunting is about as robust a business as making doll-clothes, or deco- rating Japanese pots with decalcomanie butterflies would be. and these people fling mud at that elegant Englishman, Byng, who wi-ote a book called " The Bric-a-Brac Hunter," and make fun of him for chasing around after what they choose to call "his despicable trifles;" and for "gushing" over these trifles ; and for exhibiting his " deep infantile delight " in what they call his " tuppenny collection of beggarly trivialities ; " and for beginning his book with a picture of himself, seated, in a "sappy, self-complacent attitude, in the midst of his poor little ridiculous bric-a-brac junk shop." It is easy to say these things ; it is easy to revile us, easy to despise us; therefore, let these people rail on ; they can- not feel as Byng and I feel, — it is their loss, not ours. For my part I am content to be a brick-a-bracker and a keramiker. 188 A GREAT MISFORTUNE. — more, I am proud to be so named. I am proud to know that I lose my reason as immediately in the presence of a rare jug with an illustrious mark on the bottom of it, as if I had just emptied that jug. Very well ; I packed and stored a part of my collection, and the rest of it I placed in the care of the Grand Ducal Museum in Mannheim, by permission. My Old Blue China Cat remains there yet. I presented it to that excellent institution. I had but one misfortune w i t h m y things. A n egg which I had kept back from breakfast that morning, w as broken in packing. It was a great pity. I had shown it to the best connois- seurs in Heidel- berg, and ^ley all said it was'wh an- tique. W& spent a day or two in farewell visits, and then left for Baden-Badtn. We had a pleasant trip of it, for the Ehine valley is always lovely. The only trouble was that the trip was too short. If I re- member rightly it only occupied a couple of hours, there- fore I judge that the distance was very little, if any, over fifty miles. We quitted the train at Oos, and walked the entire remaining distance to Baden-Baden, with the except- ion of a lift of less than an hour wliich we got on a passing wagon, the weather being exhaustingly warm. We came into town on foot. A KEAL ANTIQUE. BRIC-A-BRAC SHOP. MEETING AN AMERICAN. 191 One of the first persons we encountered, as we walked up the street, was the E,ev. Mr. , an old friend from Ameri- ca, — a lucky encounter, indeed, for his is a most gentle, refin- ed and sensitive nature, and his company and companionship are a genuine refreshment. We knew he had been in Europe sometime, but were not at all expecting to run across him. Both p irties burst forth into loving enthusiasms, and Rev. Mr. said, — " I have got a brim-full reservoir of talk to pour out on you, and an empty one ready and thirsting to receive what you have got ; we will sit up till midnight and have a good satis- fying interchange, for I leave here early in the morning." We agreed to that, of course. I had been vaguely conscious, for a while, of a person who was walking in the street abreast of us ; I had glanced fur- tively at him once or twice, and noticed that he was a fine, large, vigorous young fellow, with an open, independent countenance, faintly shaded with a pale and even almost imperceptible crop of early down, and that he was clothed from head to heel in cool and enviable snow-white linen. I thought I had also noticed, that his head had a sort of listen- ing tilt to it. Now about this time the Rev. Mr. said, — " The side-walk is hardly wide enough for three, so I will walk behind ; but keep the talk going, keep the talk going, there's no time to lose, and you may be sure I will do my share." He ranged himself behind us, and straightway that stately snow-white young fellow closed up to the side-walk alongside him, fetched him a cordial slap on the shoulder with his broad palm, and sung out with a hearty cheeriness, — " Americans, for two-and-a-half and the money up ! Hey ? " The Reverend winced, but said mildly, — " Yes, — we are Americans." " Lord love you, you can just bet that's what Zam, every time! Put it there!" He held out his Sahara of a palm, and the Reverend laid his diminutive hand in it, and got so cordial a shake that we heard his glove burst under it. 12 192 THE ASTONISHED PARSON. " Say, didn't I put you up right ? " " O, yes." " Slio ! I spotted 3^ou for my kind the minute I heard your clack. You been over here long?" " About four months. Have you been over long ? " "put I'i' THERE." " Long\ Well I should say so ! Going on two years, by geeminy ! Say, are you homesick ? " '•'No, I can't say that I am. Are you ? " " O, hell yes!" This with immense enthusiasm. The Reverend shrunk a little, in his clothes, and we were aware, rather by instinct than otherwise, tliathe was throwing out signals of distress to us ; but we did not interfere or try to succor him, for we were quite happy. The 3^oung fellow hooked his arm into the Reverend's, now, with the confiding and grateful air of a waif who has been longing for a friend, and a sympathetic ear, and a chance to lisp once more the sweet accents of the mother tongue, — and then he limbered up the muscles of his mouth and turned himself loose, — and with such a relish ! Some of his words were not Sunday school words, so I am obliged to put blanks where they occur. " Yes indeedy ! If / ain't an American there ainH any Americans, that's all. And when I heard you fellows gassing away in the good old American language, I'm if it CHOLLEY ADAMS. 193 wasn't all I could do to keep from hugging joii ! Mj tongue's all warped with trying to curl it around these -forsaken wind-galled nine-jointed German words here ; now I tell you it's awful good to lay it over a Christian word once more and kind of let the old taste soak in. I'm from western New York. My name is Cholley Adams. I'm a student, you know. Been here going on two years. I'm learning to be a horse-doctor. I like that part of it, you know, but these people, they won't learn a fellow in his own language, they make him learn in Ger- man ; so before I could tackle the horse-doctoring I had to tackle this miserable language. "First-oif, I thought it would certainly give me the botts, but I don't mind it now. I've got it where the hair's short, I think ; and dontchuknow, they made me learn Latin, too. Now between you and me, I wouldn't give a for all the^ Latin that was ever jabbered ; and the first thing 1 calculate to do when I get through, is to just sit down and forget il?.. 'Twont take me long, and I don't mind the time, anyway.. And I tell you what ! the difference between school-teaching over yonder and school-teaching over here, — slio ! We don't know anything about it ! Here you've got to peg and peg and peg and there just ain't any let-up, — and what you learn here, you've got to know, dontchuknow, — or else you'll have one of these spavined, spectacled, ring-boned', knock-kneed old professors in your hair. I've been here long enough, and I'm getting blessed tired of it, mind I tell you. The old man wrote me that he was coming over in June, and said he'd take me home in August, whether I was done with ray education or not, butdurn him, he didn't come; never said why; just sent me a hamper of Snn- day school books, and told me to be good, and hold on a while. I don't take to Sunday school books, dontchuknow, — I don't hanker after them when I can get pie, — but I read them, anyway, because whatever the old man tells me to do, that's the thing that I'm a-going to do, or tear something you know. I buckled in and read all of those books, because he 194 THE HOMESICK AMERICAN. wanted me to ; but that kind of thing don't excite me, I like something hearty. But I'm awful homesick, I'm homesick from ear-socket to crupper, and from crupper to hock joint ; but it ain't any use, I've got to stay here, till the old man drops the rag and gives the word, — yes, sir, right here in this country I've got to linger till the old man says Come ! — and you bet your bottom dollar, Johnny, it ain't just as ea^y as it is for a cat to have twins ! " At the end of this profane and cordial explosion he THE PARSON CAPTURED. fetched a prodigious " Whoosh!'''' to relieve his lungs and make recognition of the heat, and then he straightway dived into his narrative again for "Johnny's" benefit, beginning, ""Well '■ it ain't any use talking, some of those old American words do have a kind of a bully swing to them ; a man can express himself with 'em, — a man can get at what he wants to say, dontchuknow." When we reached our hotel and it seemed that he was about to lose the Reverend, he showed so much sorrow, and begged so hard and so earnestly that the Reverend's heart was not hard enough to hold out against the pleadings, — so he went away with the parent-honoring student, like a right Christian, and took supper with him in his lodgings and sat NOT A BAD FELLOW. 195 in the surf-beat of his slang and profanity till near midnight, and then left him, — left him pretty well talked out, but grateful " clear down to his frogs," as he expressed it. The Reverend said it had transpired during the interview that " Cholley " Adams's father was an extensive dealer in horses in western New York ; this accounted for Cholley's choice of a profession. The Heverend brought away a pretty high opinion of Cholley as a manly young fellow, with stuff in him for a useful citizen ; he considered him rather a rough gem, but a gem, nevertheless. CHAPTEE XXI. BADEN-BADEN sits in the lap of the hills, and the natural and artificial beauties of the surroundings are combined effectively and charmingly. The level strip of ground which stretches through and beyond the town is laid out in handsome pleasure grounds, shaded by noble trees and adorned at intervals with lofty and sparkling fountain- jets. Thrice a day a fine band makes music in the public promenade before the Conversation-House, and in the after- noon and evenings that locality is populous with fashionably dressed people of both sexes, who march back and forth past the great music stand and look very much bored, though they make a show of feeling otherwise. It seems like a ratlier aimless and stupid existence. A good many of these people are there for a real purpose, liowever ; they aie racked with rheumatism, and they are there to stew it out in the hot baths. These invalids looked melancholy enough, h'mping about on their canes and crutches, and apparently brooding over all sorts of cheerless things. People say that Germany, with lier damp stone houses, is the home of rheumatism. If that is so. Providence must have foreseen that it would be so, and therefore filled the land with these healing baths. Perhaps no other country is so generously supplied with medicinal springs as Germany. Some of these baths are good for one ailment, some for another; and again, ENERGETIC GIRLS. 197 peculiar ailments are conquered by combining the individual virtues of several diiFerent baths. For instance, for some forms of disease, the patient drinks the native hot v^ater of Baden-Baden, with a spoonful of salt from the Carlsbad springs dissolved in it. That is not a dose to be forgotten right away. They don't sell thte hot water ; no, you go into the great Trinkhalle, and stand around, first on one foot and then on the other, while two or three young girls sit pottering at some sort of lady-like sewing work in your neighborh ood and can't seem to see y o u, — polite as three- dollar clerks in govern m e n t offices. By and by one of these rises painfully, and " stretches ; " — stretches lists and body =^ heavenward till she raises her heels from the A COMPREHENSIVE YAWN. floor, at the Same time refreshing herself with a yawn of such comprehensive- ness that the bulk of her face disappears behind her upper 198 A BEGGARS TRICK. lip and one is able to see liow she is constructed inside, — then she slowlj closes her cavern, brings down her lists and her heels, comes languidly forward, contemplates you con- temptuously, draws you a glass of hot water and sets it down where you can get it by reaching for it. You take it and say,— "How much?" — and she returns you, with elaborate in- difference, a beggar's answer, — " Nach Beliebe^ (what you please.) This thing of using the common beggar's trick and the common beggar's shibboleth to put you on your liberality when you were expecting a simple straight-forward commer- cial transaction, adds a little to your prospering sense of irritation. You ignore her reply, and ask again, — "How much? " — and she calmly, indifferently, repeats, — "iVacA BelieleP You are getting angry, but you are trying not to show it ; you resolve to keep on asking your question till she changes her answer, or at least her annoyingly indifferent manner. Therefore, if your case be like mine, you two fools stand there, and without perceptible emotion of any kind, or any emphasis on any syllable, you look blandly into each other's eyes, and hold the following idiotic conversation, — " How much ? " " Nach Beliebe." " How much ? " " Nach Beliebe." " How much ? " " Nach Beliebe." "How much ? '* " N;ich Beliebe." " How much % " " Nach Beliebe." " How much ? " TESTING THE COIN. COOL IMPUDENCE. 199 " Nach Beliebe." 1 do not know what another person would have done, but at this point I gave it up ; that cast-iron indifference, that tranquil contemptuousness, conquered me, and I struck my colors. J^ow I knew she was used to receiving about a penny from manly people who care notliing about the opin- ions of scullery maids, and about tuppence from moral cowards; but I laid a silver twenty-five cent piece within her reach and tried to shrivel her up with this sarcastic speech, — " If it isn't enougli, will you stoop sufficiently from your official dignity to say so?" She did not shrivel. Without deigning to look at me at all, she languidly lifted the coin and bit it ! — to see if it was good. Then she turned her back and ])hicidly waddled to her former roost again, toss- ing the money into an open till as she went along. She was victor to the last, you see. I have enlarged upon the ways of this girl because they are typical ; her manners are the man- ners of a goodly number of the Baden-Baden shop keepers. The shop keeper there swindles you if he cnn, and insults you whether he succeeds in swindling you or not. The keepers of baths also take great and patient pains to insult you. The frowsy woman who sat at the desk in the lobby of the great Friederichsbad and sold bath tickets, not onlj BEAUTY AT THE BATH. 200 INSOLENCE OF SHOP-KEEPERS. insulted me twice every day, with rigid fidelity to her great trust, but she took trouble enough to cheat me out of a shilling, one day, to have fairly entitled her to ten. Baden-Baden's splendid gamblers are gone, only her microscopic knaves remain. An English gentleman who had been living there several years, said, — " If you could disgui&e your nationality, you would not find any insolence here. These shop-keepers detest the Eng- lish and despise the Americans; they are rude to both, more especially to ladies of your nationality and mine. If these go siiopping without a gentleman or a man servant, they are tolerably sure to be subjected to petty insolences, — inso- lences of manner and tone, rather than word, though words that are hard to bear are not alwa^^s wanting. I know of an instance where a shop-keeper tossed a coin back to an American lady with the remark, snappishly uttered, 'We don't take French money here.' — And I know of a case where an English lady said to one of these shop-keepers, ' Don't you think you ask too much for this article?' and he replied with the question, ' Do you think you are obliged to buy it?' However, these people are not impolite to Russ- ians or Germans. And as to rank, they worship that, for they have long been used to generals and nobles. If you wish to see to what abysses servility can descend, present yourself before a Baden-Baden shop-keeper in the character of a Russian prince." It is an inane town, filled with sham, and petty fraud, and snobbery, but the baths are good. I spoke with many people, and they were all agreed in that. I had had twinges of rheumatism unceasingly during three years, but the last one departed after a fortnight's bathing there, and I have never had one since. I fully believe I left my rheumatism in Baden-Baden. Baden-Baden is welcome to it. It was little, but it was all I had to give. I would have preferred to leave something that was catching, but it was not in my power. TAKING A BATH. 201 There are several hot springs there, and dr.ring two thousand years they liave poured forth a never diminishing abundance of the healing water. This water is conducted in pipes to the numerous bath houses, and is reduced to aii endurable temperature by the addition of cold water. The new Friederichsbad is a very large and beautiful building, and in it one may have any sort of bath that has ever been invented, and with all the additions of herbs and drugs that his ailment may need or that the physician of the establish- ment may consider a useful thing to put into the water. You go there, enter the great door, get a bow graduated to your style and clothes from the gorgeous portier, and a batli ticket and an insult from the frowsy woman for a quarter, she strikes a bell and a serving man conducts you down a long hall and shuts you into a commodious room which has a washstand, a mirror, a bootjack and a sofa in it, and there you undress at your leisure. The room is divided by a great curtain; you draw this curtain aside, and find a large white marble bath-tub, with its rim sunk to the level of the floor, and with three white marble steps leading down into it. This tub is full of water which is as clear as crystal, and is tempered to 28° Reaumur, (about 95" Fahrenheit.) Sunk into the floor, by the tub, is IN THK BATH. a covered copper box which contains some warm towels and a sheet. You look fully as white as an angel when you