A Tramp Abroad

CHAPTER II At Heidelberg--Great Stir at a Hotel--The Portier--Arrival

of the Empress--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

CHAPTER III Baker's Blue-Jay Yarn--Jay Language--The Cabin--“Hello, I

reckon I've struck something”--A Knot Hole--Attempt to 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

CHAPTER IV Student Life--The Five Corps--The Beet King--A Free

Life--Attending 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

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

CHAPTER VI 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

Infrequent--The World's View of these Fights

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--Corps Etiquette

CHAPTER I

[The Knighted Knave of Bergen]

One 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 accompany 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 was, 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 HOLSATIA, Captain 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 the birthplace of

Gutenburg, but it could not be done, as no memorandum of the site of the

house has been kept. So we spent an hour in the Goethe mansion instead.

The city permits this house to belong to private parties, instead

of gracing and dignifying herself with the honor of possessing and

protecting it.

Frankfort is one of the sixteen cities which have the distinction of

being the place where the following incident occurred. Charlemagne,

while chasing the Saxons (as HE said), or being chased by them (as THEY

said), arrived at the bank of the 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 none

was to be had. Presently he saw a deer, followed by her young, approach

the water. He watched her, judging that she would seek a ford, and he

was right. She waded over, and the army followed. So a great Frankish

victory or defeat was gained or avoided; and in order to commemorate the

episode, Charlemagne commanded a city to be built there, which he named

Frankfort--the ford of the Franks. None of the other cities where this

event happened were named for it. This is good evidence that Frankfort

was the first place it occurred at.

Frankfort has another distinction--it is the birthplace of the German

alphabet; or at least of the German word for alphabet --BUCHSTABEN.

They say that the first movable types were made on birch

sticks--BUCHSTABE--hence the name.

I was taught a lesson in political economy in Frankfort. I had brought

from home a box containing a thousand very 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 worth 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 narrowest 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 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 little 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 accordingly 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 clanging

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 gaiety, only one of the numerous

guests had a gloomy exterior; 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 movements, attracted especially the regards

of the ladies.

Who the Knight was? Nobody could guess, for his Vizier 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 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 manner, and fine

conversation he knew to win the Queen, and she graciously accorded 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 curiosity, who the masked

knight could be.

“Also the Emperor became more and more excited with curiosity, 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

other 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 opened it, and none of the high ladies and knights knew him. But from

the crowded spectators, 2 officials advanced, 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

rage, the King commanded to seize the criminal and lead him to death,

who had ventured to dance, with the queen; so disgraced the Empress,

and insulted the crown. The culpable threw himself at the Emperor, and

said--

“'Indeed I have heavily sinned against all noble guests 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 King! 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 everyone 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

offense now kneels before me, rise as knight; knavish you have acted,

and Knave of Bergen shall you 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.”

CHAPTER II

Heidelberg

[Landing a Monarch at Heidelberg]

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 PORTIER (who is not the PORTER,

but is a sort of first-mate of a hotel) [1. See Appendix A] 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 he 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 sidewalk 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. Now 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 adorned all the balconies of the

various stories with flowers and banners; others ascended to the

roof and hoisted a great flag on a staff there. Now came some more

chamber-maids and retouched the sidewalk, and afterward wiped the marble

steps with damp cloths and finished by dusting them off with feather

brushes. Now a broad black carpet was brought out and laid down the

marble steps and out across the sidewalk to the curbstone. The PORTIER

cast his eye along it, and found it was not absolutely straight; he

commanded it to be straightened; the servants made the effort--made

several efforts, in fact--but the PORTIER 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 proceedings, a narrow bright red carpet was

unrolled and stretched from 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 refixed it until it was exactly right and lay precisely in the

middle of the black carpet. In New York these performances 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 one of them 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 himself on the bottom marble step, abreast the

PORTIER, who stood on the other end of the same steps; six or eight

waiters, gloved, bareheaded, and wearing their whitest linen, their

whitest cravats, and their finest swallow-tails, grouped themselves

about these chiefs, but leaving the carpetway clear. Nobody moved or

spoke any more but only waited.

In a short time the shrill piping of a coming train was heard, and

immediately groups of people began to gather in the street. Two or three

open carriages arrived, and deposited some maids of honor and some male

officials at the hotel. Presently another open carriage brought the

Grand Duke of Baden, a stately man in uniform, who wore the handsome

brass-mounted, steel-spiked helmet of the army on his head. Last came

the Empress of Germany and the Grand Duchess of Baden in a closed

carriage; these passed through the low-bowing groups of servants and

disappeared in the hotel, exhibiting to us only the backs of their

heads, and then the show was over.

It appears to be as difficult to land a monarch as it is to launch a

ship.

But as to Heidelberg. The weather was growing pretty warm,--very warm,

in fact. So we left the valley and took quarters at the Schloss Hotel,

on the hill, above the Castle.

Heidelberg lies at the mouth of a narrow gorge--a gorge the shape of

a shepherd's crook; if one looks up it he perceives that it is about

straight, for a mile and a half, then makes a sharp curve to the

right and disappears. This gorge--along whose bottom pours the swift

Neckar--is confined between (or cloven through) a couple of long, steep

ridges, a thousand feet high and densely wooded clear to their summits,

with the exception of one section which has been shaved and put under

cultivation. These ridges are chopped off at the mouth of the gorge

and form two bold and conspicuous headlands, with Heidelberg nestling

between them; from their bases spreads away the vast dim expanse of the

Rhine valley, and into this expanse the Neckar goes wandering in shining

curves and is presently lost to view.

Now if one turns and looks up the gorge once more, he will see the

Schloss Hotel on the right perched on a precipice overlooking the

Neckar--a precipice which is so sumptuously cushioned and draped with

foliage that no glimpse of the rock appears. The building seems very

airily situated. It has the appearance of being on a shelf half-way

up the wooded mountainside; and as it is remote and isolated, and very

white, it makes a strong mark against the lofty leafy rampart at its

back.

This hotel had a feature which was a decided novelty, and one which

might be adopted with advantage by any house which is perched in a

commanding situation. This feature may be described as a series of

glass-enclosed parlors CLINGING TO THE OUTSIDE OF THE HOUSE, one against

each and every bed-chamber and drawing-room. They are like long, narrow,

high-ceiled bird-cages hung against the building. My room was a corner

room, and had two of these things, a north one and a west one.

From the north cage one looks up the Neckar gorge; from the west one he

looks down it. This last affords the most extensive view, and it is one

of the loveliest that can be imagined, too. Out of a billowy upheaval

of vivid green foliage, a rifle-shot removed, rises the huge ruin

of Heidelberg Castle, [2. See Appendix B] with empty window arches,

ivy-mailed battlements, moldering towers--the Lear of inanimate

nature--deserted, discrowned, beaten by the storms, but royal still,

and beautiful. It is a fine sight to see the evening sunlight suddenly

strike the leafy declivity at the Castle's base and dash up it and

drench it as with a luminous spray, while the adjacent groves are in

deep shadow.

Behind the Castle swells a great dome-shaped hill, forest-clad, and

beyond that a nobler and loftier one. The Castle looks down upon the

compact brown-roofed town; and from the town two picturesque old bridges

span the river. Now the view broadens; through the gateway of the

sentinel headlands you gaze out over the wide Rhine plain, which

stretches away, softly and richly tinted, grows gradually and dreamily

indistinct, and finally melts imperceptibly into the remote horizon.

I have never enjoyed a view which had such a serene and satisfying charm

about it as this one gives.

The first night we were there, we went to bed and to sleep early; but

I awoke at the end of two or three hours, and lay a comfortable while

listening to the soothing patter of the rain against the balcony

windows. I took it to be rain, but it turned out to be only the murmur

of the restless Neckar, tumbling over her dikes and dams far below, in

the gorge. I got up and went into the west balcony and saw a wonderful

sight. Away down on the level under the black mass of the Castle, the

town lay, stretched along the river, its intricate cobweb of streets

jeweled with twinkling lights; there were rows of lights on the bridges;

these flung lances of light upon the water, in the black shadows of the

arches; and away at the extremity of all this fairy spectacle blinked

and glowed a massed multitude of gas-jets which seemed to cover acres of

ground; it was as if all the diamonds in the world had been spread

out there. I did not know before, that a half-mile of sextuple

railway-tracks could be made such an adornment.

One thinks Heidelberg by day--with its surroundings--is the last

possibility of the beautiful; but when he sees Heidelberg by night, a

fallen Milky Way, with that glittering railway constellation pinned to

the border, he requires time to consider upon the verdict.

One never tires of poking about in the dense woods that clothe all

these lofty Neckar hills to their tops. The great deeps of a boundless

forest have a beguiling and impressive charm in any country; but German

legends and fairy tales have given these an added charm. They have

peopled all that region with gnomes, and dwarfs, and all sorts of

mysterious and uncanny creatures. At the time I am writing of, I had

been reading so much of this literature that sometimes I was not sure

but I was beginning to believe in the gnomes and fairies as realities.

One afternoon I got lost in the woods about a mile from the hotel, and

presently fell into a train of dreamy thought about animals which talk,

and kobolds, and enchanted folk, and the rest of the pleasant legendary

stuff; and so, by stimulating my fancy, I finally got to imagining I

glimpsed small flitting shapes here and there down the columned

aisles of the forest. It was a place which was peculiarly meet for the

occasion. It was a pine wood, with so thick and soft a carpet of brown

needles that one's footfall made no more sound than if he were treading

on wool; the tree-trunks were as round and straight and smooth as

pillars, and stood close together; they were bare of branches to a point

about twenty-five feet above-ground, and from there upward so thick with

boughs that not a ray of sunlight could pierce through. The world was

bright with sunshine outside, but a deep and mellow twilight reigned in

there, and also a deep silence so profound that I seemed to hear my own

breathings.

When I had stood ten minutes, thinking and imagining, and getting

my spirit in tune with the place, and in the right mood to enjoy the

supernatural, a raven suddenly uttered a horse croak over my head. It

made me start; and then I was angry because I started. I looked up, and

the creature was sitting on a limb right over me, looking down at me.

I felt something of the same sense of humiliation and injury which

one feels when he finds that a human stranger has been clandestinely

inspecting him in his privacy and mentally commenting upon him. I eyed

the raven, and the raven eyed me. Nothing was said during some seconds.

Then the bird stepped a little way along his limb to get a better point

of observation, lifted his wings, stuck his head far down below his

shoulders toward me and croaked again--a croak with a distinctly

insulting expression about it. If he had spoken in English he could not

have said any more plainly than he did say in raven, “Well, what do YOU

want here?” I felt as foolish as if I had been caught in some mean act

by a responsible being, and reproved for it. However, I made no reply;

I would not bandy words with a raven. The adversary waited a while, with

his shoulders still lifted, his head thrust down between them, and

his keen bright eye fixed on me; then he threw out two or three more

insults, which I could not understand, further than that I knew a

portion of them consisted of language not used in church.

I still made no reply. Now the adversary raised his head and

called. There was an answering croak from a little distance in the

wood--evidently a croak of inquiry. The adversary explained with

enthusiasm, and the other raven dropped everything and came. The two sat

side by side on the limb and discussed me as freely and offensively as

two great naturalists might discuss a new kind of bug. The thing became

more and more embarrassing. They called in another friend. This was too

much. I saw that they had the advantage of me, and so I concluded to get

out of the scrape by walking out of it. They enjoyed my defeat as much

as any low white people could have done. They craned their necks and

laughed at me (for a raven CAN laugh, just like a man), they squalled

insulting remarks after me as long as they could see me. They were

nothing but ravens--I knew that--what they thought of me could be a

matter of no consequence--and yet when even a raven shouts after you,

“What a hat!” “Oh, pull down your vest!” and that sort of thing, it

hurts you and humiliates you, and there is no getting around it with

fine reasoning and pretty arguments.

Animals talk to each other, of course. There can be no question about

that; but I suppose there are very few people who can understand them.

I never knew but one man who could. I knew he could, however, because he

told me so himself. He was a middle-aged, simple-hearted miner who had

lived in a lonely corner of California, among the woods and mountains,

a good many years, and had studied the ways of his only neighbors, the

beasts and the birds, until he believed he could accurately translate

any remark which they made. This was Jim Baker. According to Jim Baker,

some animals have only a limited education, and some use only simple

words, and scarcely ever a comparison or a flowery figure; whereas,

certain other animals have a large vocabulary, a fine command of

language and a ready and fluent delivery; consequently these latter talk

a great deal; they like it; they are so conscious of their talent,

and they enjoy “showing off.” Baker said, that after long and careful

observation, he had come to the conclusion that the bluejays were the

best talkers he had found among birds and beasts. Said he:

“There's more TO a bluejay than any other creature. He has got more

moods, and more different kinds of feelings than other creatures; and,

mind you, whatever a bluejay feels, he can put into language. And

no mere commonplace language, either, but rattling, out-and-out

book-talk--and bristling with metaphor, too--just bristling! And as for

command of language--why YOU never see a bluejay get stuck for a word.

No man ever did. They just boil out of him! And another thing: I've

noticed a good deal, and there's no bird, or cow, or anything that uses

as good grammar as a bluejay. You may say a cat uses good grammar. Well,

a cat does--but you let a cat get excited once; you let a cat get to

pulling fur with another cat on a shed, nights, and you'll hear grammar

that will give you the lockjaw. Ignorant people think it's the NOISE

which fighting cats make that is so aggravating, but it ain't so; it's

the sickening grammar they use. Now I've never heard a jay use bad

grammar but very seldom; and when they do, they are as ashamed as a

human; they shut right down and leave.

“You may call a jay a bird. Well, so he is, in a measure--but he's got

feathers on him, and don't belong to no church, perhaps; but otherwise

he is just as much human as you be. And I'll tell you for why. A jay's

gifts, and instincts, and feelings, and interests, cover the whole

ground. A jay hasn't got any more principle than a Congressman. A jay

will lie, a jay will steal, a jay will deceive, a jay will betray; and

four times out of five, a jay will go back on his solemnest promise. The

sacredness of an obligation is such a thing which you can't cram into

no bluejay's head. Now, on top of all this, there's another thing; a

jay can out-swear any gentleman in the mines. You think a cat can swear.

Well, a cat can; but you give a bluejay a subject that calls for his

reserve-powers, and where is your cat? Don't talk to ME--I know too much

about this thing; in the one little particular of scolding--just good,

clean, out-and-out scolding--a bluejay can lay over anything, human or

divine. Yes, sir, a jay is everything that a man is. A jay can cry,

a jay can laugh, a jay can feel shame, a jay can reason and plan and

discuss, a jay likes gossip and scandal, a jay has got a sense of humor,

a jay knows when he is an ass just as well as you do--maybe better. If

a jay ain't human, he better take in his sign, that's all. Now I'm going

to tell you a perfectly true fact about some bluejays.”

CHAPTER III

Baker's Bluejay Yarn

[What Stumped the Blue Jays]

“When I first begun to understand jay language correctly, there was a

little incident happened here. Seven years ago, the last man in this

region but me moved away. There stands his house--been empty ever since;

a log house, with a plank roof--just one big room, and no more; no

ceiling--nothing between the rafters and the floor. Well, one Sunday

morning I was sitting out here in front of my cabin, with my cat, taking

the sun, and looking at the blue hills, and listening to the leaves

rustling so lonely in the trees, and thinking of the home away yonder in

the states, that I hadn't heard from in thirteen years, when a bluejay

lit on that house, with an acorn in his mouth, and says, 'Hello, I

reckon I've struck something.' When he spoke, the acorn dropped out of

his mouth and rolled down the roof, of course, but he didn't care; his

mind was all on the thing he had struck. It was a knot-hole in the roof.

He cocked his head to one side, shut one eye and put the other one to

the hole, like a possum looking down a jug; then he glanced up with

his bright eyes, gave a wink or two with his wings--which signifies

gratification, you understand--and says, 'It looks like a hole, it's

located like a hole--blamed if I don't believe it IS a hole!'

“Then he cocked his head down and took another look; he glances up

perfectly joyful, this time; winks his wings and his tail both, and

says, 'Oh, no, this ain't no fat thing, I reckon! If I ain't in luck!

--Why it's a perfectly elegant hole!' So he flew down and got that

acorn, and fetched it up and dropped it in, and was just tilting his

head back, with the heavenliest smile on his face, when all of a

sudden he was paralyzed into a listening attitude and that smile faded

gradually out of his countenance like breath off'n a razor, and the

queerest look of surprise took its place. Then he says, 'Why, I didn't

hear it fall!' He cocked his eye at the hole again, and took a long

look; raised up and shook his head; stepped around to the other side of

the hole and took another look from that side; shook his head again. He

studied a while, then he just went into the Details--walked round and

round the hole and spied into it from every point of the compass.

No use. Now he took a thinking attitude on the comb of the roof and

scratched the back of his head with his right foot a minute, and finally

says, 'Well, it's too many for ME, that's certain; must be a mighty long

hole; however, I ain't got no time to fool around here, I got to “tend

to business”; I reckon it's all right--chance it, anyway.'

“So he flew off and fetched another acorn and dropped it in, and tried

to flirt his eye to the hole quick enough to see what become of it,

but he was too late. He held his eye there as much as a minute; then he

raised up and sighed, and says, 'Confound it, I don't seem to understand

this thing, no way; however, I'll tackle her again.' He fetched

another acorn, and done his level best to see what become of it, but he

couldn't. He says, 'Well, I never struck no such a hole as this before;

I'm of the opinion it's a totally new kind of a hole.' Then he begun

to get mad. He held in for a spell, walking up and down the comb of the

roof and shaking his head and muttering to himself; but his feelings got

the upper hand of him, presently, and he broke loose and cussed himself

black in the face. I never see a bird take on so about a little thing.

When he got through he walks to the hole and looks in again for half a

minute; then he says, 'Well, you're a long hole, and a deep hole, and

a mighty singular hole altogether--but I've started in to fill you, and

I'm damned if I DON'T fill you, if it takes a hundred years!'

“And with that, away he went. You never see a bird work so since you was

born. He laid into his work like a nigger, and the way he hove acorns

into that hole for about two hours and a half was one of the most

exciting and astonishing spectacles I ever struck. He never stopped to

take a look anymore--he just hove 'em in and went for more. Well, at

last he could hardly flop his wings, he was so tuckered out. He comes

a-dropping down, once more, sweating like an ice-pitcher, dropped his

acorn in and says, 'NOW 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

in there to 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!'

“He just had strength enough to crawl up on to the comb and lean his

back agin the chimbly, and then he collected his impressions 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 rudiments, as you may say.

“Another jay was going by, and heard him doing his devotions, and stops

to inquire what was up. The sufferer told him the whole circumstance,

and says, 'Now 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, 'How 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 off 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 and disputing and ripping

and cussing, you never 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 go and light on it and look in. Of course, that knocked the

mystery galley-west 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 backward suffocating with laughter, and the next

jay took his place and done the same.

“Well, sir, they roosted around here on the housetop and the trees for

an hour, and guffawed over that thing like human beings. It ain't any

use to tell me a bluejay hasn't got a sense of humor, because I know

better. And memory, too. They brought jays here from all over the United

States to look down that hole, every summer for three years. Other

birds, too. And they could all see the point except an owl that come

from Nova Scotia to visit the Yo Semite, and he took this thing in on

his way back. He said he couldn't see anything funny in it. But then he

was a good deal disappointed about Yo Semite, too.”

CHAPTER IV

Student Life

[The Laborious Beer King]

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 greatest number of

pints is proclaimed king. I was told that the last beer king elected

by the corps--or by his own capabilities--emptied his mug seventy-five

times. No stomach could hold all that quantity at one time, of

course--but there are ways of frequently 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 German university life is a very free life; it seems to have

no restraints. The student does not live in the college buildings, 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 unless 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 examinations 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 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

of an unusual nature are often delivered to very slim audiences,

while those upon more practical and every-day matters of education are

delivered to very large ones. I 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 began 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 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 ones manage it by going on 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-room one day just

before the clock struck. The place had simple, unpainted pine desks and

benches for about two hundred persons.

About a minute before the clock struck, a hundred and fifty students

swarmed in, rushed to their seats, immediately spread open their

notebooks and dipped their pens in ink. When the clock began to strike,

a burly professor 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 had arrived in his box and

faced his audience, his lecture was well under way 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 the floor; everybody rose respectfully,

and he swept rapidly down the aisle and disappeared. An instant rush for

some other lecture-room followed, and in a minute I was alone with the

empty benches once more.

Yes, without doubt, idle students are not the rule. Out of eight hundred

in the town, 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, afternoons, in the Schloss gardens. A good many of them wore

colored caps of the corps. They were finely and fashionably dressed,

their manners were quite superb, and they led an easy, careless,

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 evening 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 the

beer flow for an hour or two, and by and by the professor, properly

charged and comfortable, gives a cordial good night, while the students

stand bowing and uncovered; and then he moves on his happy way homeward

with all his vast cargo of learning 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 corps 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 parasol and leading a prodigious dog by a string. It was a very

imposing spectacle. Sometimes there would be as many dogs around the

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 they were tied

to the benches and had no amusement for an hour or two at a time except

what they could get out of pawing at the gnats, or trying to sleep and

not succeeding. However, they got a lump of sugar occasionally--they

were fond of that.

It seemed right and proper that students should indulge in dogs; but

everybody 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 of blighted love. It seems

to me that some other way of advertising it might be devised, which

would be just as conspicuous and yet not so trying to the proprieties.

It would be a mistake to suppose that the easy-going pleasure-seeking

student carries an empty head. Just the contrary. He has spent nine

years in the gymnasium, under a system which allowed him no freedom, but

vigorously compelled him to work like a slave. Consequently, he has left

the gymnasium with an education which is so extensive and complete, that

the most a university can do for it is to perfect some of its profounder

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 uncertainty, 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 university to put a mansard

roof on their whole general education; but the German student already

has his mansard roof, so he goes there to add a steeple in the nature of

some specialty, such as a particular branch of 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 the university life is just what he needs and likes and thoroughly

appreciates; 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 V

At the Students' Dueling-Ground

[Dueling by Wholesale]

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, followed 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 upstairs 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 [1. See

Appendix C] were sitting.

Some of them were sipping wine, others were playing cards, others chess,

other groups were chatting together, and many were smoking cigarettes

while they waited for the coming duels. Nearly all of them wore colored

caps; there were white caps, green caps, blue caps, red caps, and

bright-yellow 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,

narrow-bladed swords with large protecting guards for the hand, and

outside was a man at work sharpening others on a grindstone.

He understood his business; for when a sword left his hand one could

shave himself with it.

It was observable 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 neutrality. It was considered that

a person could strike harder in the duel, and with a more earnest

interest, if he had never been in a condition of comradeship with his

antagonist; therefore, comradeship between the corps was not permitted.

At intervals the presidents of the five corps have a cold official

intercourse with each other, but nothing further. For example, when the

regular dueling-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 president 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 occasion was the battle-day

of the Red Cap Corps. They were the challengers, and certain caps of

other colors had volunteered to meet them. The students fight duels in

the room which I have described, TWO DAYS IN EVERY WEEK DURING SEVEN

AND A HALF OR EIGHT MONTHS IN EVERY YEAR. This custom had 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 wore white caps,

and while we stood conversing, two strange-looking figures were led in

from another room. They were students panoplied for the duel. They were

bareheaded; 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 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 rebandaged,

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 nightmares. They strode along, with their arms

projecting straight out from their bodies; they did not hold them out

themselves, but fellow-students walked beside them and gave the needed

support.

There was a rush for the vacant end of the room, now, 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 their stations; a student

belonging to neither of the opposing corps placed himself in a good

position to umpire the combat; another student stood by with a watch and

a memorandum-book to keep record of the time and the number and nature

of the wounds; a gray-haired surgeon was present with his lint, his

bandages, and his instruments.

After a moment's pause the duelists saluted the umpire respectfully,

then one after another the several officials stepped forward, 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; 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 I could not quite tell whether I saw

the swords or only 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 terrific force that I could not

understand why the opposing sword was not beaten down under the assault.

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 puffed it suddenly away.

The seconds cried “Halt!” and knocked up the combatants' 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 or

twice; the surgeon came and turned back the hair from the wound--and

revealed a crimson gash two or three inches long, and proceeded 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 his body to the floor, but he did not seem to mind this. The

word was given, and they 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.

The wonderful turmoil went on--presently a bright spark sprung from

a blade, and that blade broken in several pieces, sent one of its

fragments flying to the ceiling. A new sword was provided and the fight

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 continue fifteen minutes if

the men can hold out; and as the pauses do not count, this duel was

protracted to twenty or 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 was a good fight, but

it could not count, partly because it did not last the lawful fifteen

minutes (of actual fighting), and partly because neither man was

disabled by his wound. It was a drawn battle, and corps law requires

that drawn battles shall be refought as soon as the adversaries are well

of their hurts.

During the conflict, I had talked a little, now and then, with a young

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, although 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 previous 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

way; but it was not so--a protecting blade, invisible to me, was always

interposed between. At the end of ten seconds each man had struck twelve

or fifteen blows, and warded off 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 White 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 received another bad wound in the head, and the

former had his under-lip divided. After that, the White Corps student

gave many severe wounds, but got none of the 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

[A Sport that Sometimes Kills]

The third duel was brief and bloody. The surgeon stopped it when he saw

that one of the men had received such bad wounds that he could not fight

longer without endangering his 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 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 I

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, but I 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.

Both parties to this fourth duel were badly hurt so much that the

surgeon was at work upon them nearly or quite an hour--a fact which is

suggestive. But this waiting interval was not wasted in idleness by

the assembled students. It was past noon, therefore they ordered their

landlord, downstairs, to send up hot beefsteaks, chickens, and such

things, and these they ate, sitting comfortable 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

anyone's appetite. I went in and saw the surgeon labor awhile, but could

not enjoy; 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 forth to see. This was not a love duel, but

a “satisfaction” 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. Evidently these two young men were unfamiliar

with the dueling ceremonies, though they were not unfamiliar with the

sword. When they were placed in position they thought it was time

to begin--and then did begin, too, and with a most impetuous 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 day's war was over. It was

now two in the afternoon, and I 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 which 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 perfection in these

gently bred and kindly natured young fellows is matter for surprise.

It was not merely under the excitement 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 had 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. He

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 endangered. Fatal accidents are

possible, however. For instance, the student's sword may break, and the

end of it fly up behind his antagonist's ear and cut an artery which

could not be reached if the sword remained whole. This has happened,

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 are blunt, now; so an artery in the armpit was sometimes

cut, and death followed. Then in the days of sharp-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 year, now, but this arises only from the carelessness of the

wounded men; they eat or drink imprudently, or commit excesses in the

way of overexertion; inflammation sets in and gets such a headway that

it cannot be 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. The grave, precise, and courtly

ceremony with which the thing is conducted, invests it with a sort of

antique charm.

This dignity and these knightly graces suggest the tournament, not the

prize-fight. The laws are as curious as they are strict. For instance,

the duelist 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 from his corps in disgrace. It would seem

natural to step from under a descending sword unconsciously, and against

one's will and intent--yet this unconsciousness 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 his fellows; his

corps are ashamed of him: they call him “hare foot,” which is the German

equivalent for chicken-hearted.

CHAPTER VII

[How Bismark Fought]

In addition to the 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 freshman--has remained a sophomore

some little time without volunteering to fight; some day, the president,

instead of calling for volunteers, will APPOINT this sophomore

to measure 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; 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 member, would be to fight. No, there is no law against

declining--except the law of custom, which is confessedly stronger 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 the dueling-room. The white-cap student who won the second

fight witnessed the remaining three, and talked with us during the

intermissions. He could not talk very well, because his opponent's sword

had cut his under-lip in two, and then the surgeon had sewed it together

and overlaid it with a profusion of white plaster patches; neither could

he eat easily, still he contrived 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 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 predilection often

keeps him out when exposure to rain or sun is a positive danger for

him. Newly bandaged students are a very common spectacle in the public

gardens of Heidelberg. It is also said that the student is glad to

get wounds in the face, because the scars 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 crisscross the face in angry red welts, and are permanent 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

signifies that the wearer has fought three duels in which a decision

was reached--duels in which he either whipped or was whipped--for drawn

battles do not count. [1] After a student has received his ribbon, he

is “free”; he can cease from fighting, without 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 somewhere, for these free

men, so far from resting upon the privilege of the badge, are always

volunteering. A corps student told me it was of record that Prince

Bismarck fought thirty-two of these duels in a single summer term when

he was in college. So he fought twenty-nine after his badge had given

him the right to retire from the field.

1. FROM MY DIARY.--Dined in a hotel a few miles up the Neckar, in a room

whose walls were hung all over with framed portrait-groups of the Five

Corps; some were recent, but many antedated photography, and were

pictured 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.

The statistics may be found to possess interest in several particulars.

Two days in every week 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

understatement to an overstatement of the case. This requires about four

hundred and eighty or five hundred duelists 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 battleground of the five corps in

order to settle a quarrel, but this does not happen every dueling-day.

[2] 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.

2. They have to borrow the arms because they could not get them

elsewhere or otherwise. As I understand it, the public authorities, all

over Germany, allow the five Corps to keep swords, but DO NOT ALLOW THEM

TO USE THEM. This is law is rigid; it is only the execution of it that

is lax.

Of course, where there is so much fighting, the students make it a point

to keep themselves in constant practice with the foil. One often sees

them, at the tables in the Castle grounds, using their whips or canes to

illustrate some new sword trick which they have heard about; and between

the 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 makes when it is being put through its

paces in the air, and this informed us that a student was practicing.

Necessarily, this unceasing attention to the art develops an expert

occasionally. He becomes famous in his own university, his renown

spreads to other universities. He is invited to Goettingen, to fight

with a Goettingen 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 principal 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 Strasburg

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

successive duels in his university; but by that time observers had

discovered what his charm was, and how to break it, therefore his

championship ceased.

A rule which forbids social intercourse between members of different

corps is strict. In the dueling-house, in the parks, on the street,

and anywhere and everywhere that the students go, caps of a color group

themselves together. If 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 the 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 blue; they will

bring in some with white hilts presently, and those you 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. [Figure 1] 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 betrayed

that any one was moved. A dignified gravity and repression were

maintained at all times.

When the dueling was finished and we were ready to go, the 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, apparently 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 limitation 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.]

A TRAMP ABROAD, Part 2

By Mark Twain

(Samuel L. Clemens)

First published in 1880

Illustrations taken from an 1880 First Edition

* * * * * *

ILLUSTRATIONS:

1.   PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR

2.   TITIAN'S MOSES

3.   THE AUTHOR'S MEMORIES

32.  FRENCH CALM

33.  THE CHALLENGE ACCEPTED

34.  A SEARCH

35.  HE SWOONED PONDEROUSLY

36.  I ROLLED HIM OVER

37.  THE ONE I HIRED

36.  THE MARCH TO THE FIELD

39.  THE POST OF DANGER

40.  THE RECONCILIATION

41.  AN OBJECT OF ADMIRATION

42.  WAGNER

43.  RAGING

44.  ROARING

45.  SHRIEKING

46.  A CUSTOMARY THING

47.  ONE OF THE “REST”

48.  A CONTRIBUTION BOX

49.  CONSPICUOUS

50.  TAIL PIECE

51.  ONLY A SHRIEK

52.  “HE ONLY CRY”

53.  LATE COMERS CARED FOR

54.  EVIDENTLY DREAMING

55.  “TURN ON MORE RAIN”

56.  HARRIS ATTENDING THE OPERA

57.  PAINTING MY GREAT PICTURE

58.  OUR START

59.  AN UNKNOWN COSTUME

60.  THE TOWER

61.  SLOW BUT SURE

62.  THE ROBBER CHIEF

63.  AN HONEST MAN

64.  THE TOWN BY NIGHT

65.  GENERATIONS OF BAREFEET

66.  OUR BEDROOM

67.  PRACTICING

68.  PAWING AROUND

69.  A NIGHT'S WORK

70.  LEAVING HEILBRONN

71.  THE CAPTAIN

72.  WAITING FOR THE TRAIN

CONTENTS:

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

CHAPTER IX At the Theatre--German Ideal--At the Opera--The

Orchestra--Howlings and Wailings--A Curious Play--One Season of

Rest--The Wedding Chorus--Germans fond of the Opera--Funerals Needed

--A Private Party--What I Overheard--A Gentle Girl--A

Contribution--box--Unpleasantly Conspicuous

CHAPTER X Four Hours with Wagner--A Wonderful Singer, Once--” Only a

Shriek”--An Ancient Vocalist--“He Only Cry”--Emotional Germans--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

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 English--Wimpfen--A Funny

Tower--Dinner in the Garden--Vigorous Tramping--Ride in a Peasant's

Cart--A Famous Room

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

CHAPTER XIII Early to Bed--Lonesome--Nervous Excitement--The Room We

Occupied--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

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

CHAPTER VIII

The Great French Duel

[I Second Gambetta in a Terrific 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, had 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 eventually 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 affords. 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. Fourtou in the French

Assembly, I knew that trouble must follow. I knew it because a long

personal friendship with M. Gambetta revealed to me the desperate and

implacable nature of the man. Vast as are his physical proportions,

I knew that the thirst for revenge would penetrate to the remotest

frontiers of his person.

I did not wait for him to call on me, but went at once to him. As I had

expected, I found the brave fellow steeped in a profound French calm.

I say French calm, because French calmness and English calmness have

points of difference.

He was moving swiftly back and forth among the debris of his furniture,

now and then staving chance fragments of it across the room with his

foot; grinding a constant grist of curses through his set teeth; and

halting every little while to deposit another handful of his hair on the

pile which he had been building of it on the table.

He threw his arms around my neck, bent me over his 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 at 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

regarded with respect in America. However, he agreed to my requirement.

This accounts for the fact that in all the newspaper reports M.

Gambetta's second was apparently a Frenchman.

First, we 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 fight 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 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 field

of honor. 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 memorandum-book, purposing to get it by heart:

“I DIE THAT FRANCE MIGHT LIVE.”

I said that this remark seemed to lack relevancy; but he said relevancy

was a matter of no consequence in last words, 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 the other details of the

proposed meeting to me. Therefore I wrote the following note and carried

it to M. Fourtou's friend:

Sir: M. Gambetta accepts M. Fourtou's challenge, and authorizes me to

propose Plessis-Piquet as the place of meeting; tomorrow morning at

daybreak as the time; and axes as the weapons.

I am, sir, with great respect,

Mark Twain.

M. Fourtou's friend read this note, and shuddered. Then he 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 WOULD it be?”

“Bloodshed!”

“That's about the size of it,” I said. “Now, if it is a fair question,

what was your side proposing to shed?”

I had him there. He saw he had made a blunder, so he hastened to explain

it away. He said he had spoken jestingly. 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 this idea into a

proposition.

But it was not accepted. The code was in the way again. I proposed

rifles; then double-barreled shotguns; then Colt's navy revolvers. These

being all rejected, I reflected awhile, and sarcastically suggested

brickbats at three-quarters 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 was charmed with the idea

of brickbats at three-quarters of a mile, but must decline on account of

the danger to disinterested parties passing between them. Then I said:

“Well, I am at the end of my string, now. Perhaps YOU 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 ascertained 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 hung one of

them on my watch-chain, and returned 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 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-guns would be deadlier

at fifty. Consider, my friend, you and I are banded together to destroy

life, 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 was nothing for me but to go home to my old lion-heart and tell my

humiliating story. When I entered, M. Gambetta was laying his last lock

of hair upon the altar. He sprang toward me, exclaiming:

“You have made 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.

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! I 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 by man, and has seldom 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? 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 not stoop to make such

a suggestion; if he is not noble enough to suggest it himself, he is

welcome to this advantage, which no honorable man would take.”

He 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, tomorrow.”

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?”

“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 downstairs, threw open the front door, and almost plunged into the

arms of M. Fourtou's second. He said:

“I have the honor to say that my principal strenuously objects 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. Noir, 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 entirely 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 supposed 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 you 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. I have had a good deal to do with duels on the Pacific

coast, but I see now that they were crude affairs. A hearse--sho! we

used to leave the elected lying around loose, and let anybody cord

them up and cart them off that wanted to. Have you anything further to

suggest?”

“Nothing, except that the head undertakers shall ride together, 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.”

I 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? Have I 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

Fourtou 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 of it, 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 the 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 containing a coroner; then the two hearses; then a

carriage containing 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 turnout, and would have made a fine 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, “I die that France might live.”

Arrived on the field, my fellow-second and I paced off the thirty-five

yards, and then drew lots for choice of position. This latter was but

an ornamental ceremony, for all the 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 process 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. We

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 between myself 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 was distressed to observe 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 weapons, the limited number of shots allowed, the

generous distance, the impenetrable solidity of the fog, and the added

fact that one of the combatants is one-eyed and the other cross-eyed and

near-sighted, it seems to me that this conflict need not necessarily be

fatal. There are chances that both of you may survive. Therefore, cheer

up; do not be downhearted.”

This speech had so good an effect that my principal immediately

stretched forth his hand and said, “I am myself again; give me the

weapon.”

I laid it, all lonely and forlorn, in the center of the vast solitude

of his palm. He gazed at it and shuddered. And still mournfully

contemplating it, he murmured in a broken voice:

“Alas, it is not death I dread, but mutilation.”

I 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. I now assisted him to point his pistol toward the

spot where I 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

“Whoop-ee!” This was answered from out the far distances of the fog, and

I immediately shouted:

“One--two--three--FIRE!”

Two little sounds like SPIT! SPIT! broke upon my ear, and in the same

instant I was crushed to the earth under a mountain of flesh. Bruised

as I was, I 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--FRANCE! I die that France may live!”

The surgeons swarmed around with their probes in their hands, and

applied their microscopes to the whole area of M. Gambetta's person,

with the happy result of finding nothing in the nature of a wound. Then

a scene ensued which was in every way gratifying and inspiriting.

The two gladiators fell upon each other's neck, with floods of proud and

happy tears; that other second embraced me; the surgeons, the

orators, the undertakers, the police, everybody embraced, everybody

congratulated, everybody cried, and the whole atmosphere was filled with

praise and with joy unspeakable.

It seems to me then that I would rather be a hero of a French duel than

a crowned and sceptered 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 the other of where

they belonged, that it was doubtful if they would ever learn to perform

their functions in such remote and unaccustomed localities. They then

set my left arm in two places, pulled my right hip into 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 had

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 procession;

and thus with gratifying 'ECLAT I was marched into Paris, the most

conspicuous figure in that great spectacle, and deposited at the

hospital.

The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred upon 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 boasting, I think I may say I am not afraid to stand before a

modern French duelist, but as long as I keep in my right mind I will

never consent to stand behind one again.

CHAPTER IX

[What the Beautiful Maiden Said]

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 first

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. The

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 Shakespearian 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

balcony people who like Shakespeare in Germany, but those of the pit and

gallery, too.

Another time, we went to Mannheim and attended a shivaree--otherwise an

opera--the one called “Lohengrin.” The banging and slamming and booming

and crashing were something beyond belief. The racking and pitiless pain

of it remains stored up in my memory alongside the memory of the time

that I had my teeth fixed.

There were circumstances which made it necessary for me to stay through

the four hours to the end, and I stayed; but the recollection of that

long, dragging, relentless season of suffering is indestructible. To

have to endure it in silence, and sitting still, made it all the harder.

I was in a railed compartment with eight or ten strangers, of the two

sexes, and this compelled repression; yet at times the pain was so

exquisite that I could hardly keep the tears back.

At those times, as the howlings and wailings and shrieking 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 man do such a thing who was being

gradually skinned, but they would have marveled at it here, and made

remarks about it no doubt, whereas 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 to stay out. There was

another wait of half an hour toward nine o'clock, but I had gone through

so much by that time that I had no spirit left, and so had no desire but

to be let alone.

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 the time know; but they did like

it--this was plain enough. While it was going on they sat and looked as

rapt and grateful as 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 hurricanes

of applause swept the place. This was not comprehensible 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

beginning. This showed that the people liked it.

It was a curious sort of a play. In the manner of costumes and scenery

it was fine and showy enough; but there was not much action. That 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 about it, but

all in 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, warbling, with blended voices, and keep holding out

their arms 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 every rioter for himself and no blending. Each sang

his indictive narrative in turn, accompanied by the whole orchestra of

sixty instruments, and when this had continued for some time, and one

was hoping they might come to an understanding and modify the noise, a

great chorus composed entirely of maniacs would suddenly break forth,

and then during two minutes, and sometimes three, I lived over again all

that I 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 resuffer 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

that its scattered delights are prodigiously augmented by the contrasts.

A pretty air in an opera is prettier there than it could be anywhere

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 legitimate 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

usually hum the airs while they are being sung, so that their neighbors

may perceive that they have been to operas before. The funerals 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 acts, and I understood them, though I understood

nothing 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 was,

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 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 figure like a fish's skin, and it was rippled over

with the gracefulest 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 rosebud of a mouth; and she was so

dovelike, so pure, and so gracious, so sweet and so bewitching. For long

hours I did mightily wish she would speak. And at last she did; the red

lips parted, and out leaps 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 person (when alone), according to the official

estimate of the home secretary for that year; the average for older

people was shifty and indeterminable, for whenever a wholesome young

girl came into the presence of her elders she immediately lowered their

average and raised her own. She became a sort of contribution-box.

This dear young thing in the theater had been sitting there

unconsciously taking up a collection. Many a skinny old being in our

neighborhood was the happier and the restfuler for her coming.

In that large audience, that night, there were eight very conspicuous

people. These were ladies who had their hats or bonnets on. What a

blessed thing it would be if a lady could make herself conspicuous in

our theaters by wearing her hat.

It is not usual in Europe to allow ladies and gentlemen to take bonnets,

hats, overcoats, canes, or umbrellas into the auditorium, but in

Mannheim this rule was not enforced because the audiences were largely

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 anteroom 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 took the chances, preferring the loss of a train to a breach of good

manners and the discomfort of being unpleasantly conspicuous during a

stretch of three or four hours.

CHAPTER X

[How Wagner Operas Bang Along]

Three or four hours. That is a long time to sit in one place, whether

one be conspicuous or not, yet 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 he 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. I COULD have said, “But would you advise

a person to deliberately practice having a toothache in the pit of his

stomach for a couple of years in order that 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

accurate 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 theater

will not hold the people. JAWOHL BEI GOTT! his voice is WUNDERSCHOEN 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 had been to

the opera in Hanover, once, and in Mannheim once, and in Munich

(through my authorized agent) once, and this large experience had nearly

persuaded me that the Germans PREFERRED singers who 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 the calmest and

simplest way, that that was very true, but that in earlier times his

voice HAD been wonderfully fine. And the tenor in Hanover was just

another example of this sort. The English-speaking German gentleman who

went with me to the opera there was brimming with enthusiasm over that

tenor. He said:

“ACH GOTT! 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.”

Very well, we went. When the renowned old tenor appeared, I got a nudge

and an excited whisper:

“Now you see him!”

But the “celebrate” was an astonishing disappointment to me. If he

had been behind a screen I should have supposed they were performing a

surgical operation on him. I looked at my friend--to my great surprise

he seemed intoxicated with pleasure, his eyes were dancing with eager

delight. When the curtain at last fell, he burst into the stormiest

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 HIMMEL, ABER, how he has been able to sing twenty-five

years ago?” [Then pensively.] “ACH, no, NOW he not sing any more, he

only cry. When he think he sing, now, he not sing at all, no, he only

make like a cat which is unwell.”

Where and how did we get the idea that the Germans are a stolid,

phlegmatic race? In truth, they are widely removed from that. They 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 of impulse. We 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

escapes 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 theaters at Hanover, Hamburg, and Mannheim, they had a wise

custom. The moment the curtain went up, the light in the body of the

house went down. The audience sat in the cool gloom of a deep twilight,

which greatly enhanced 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 entirely reset, one heard no

noise. During the whole time that “King Lear” was playing the curtain

was never down two minutes at any 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 minutes there is

no occasion for music. I had never seen this two-minute business between

acts but once before, and that was when the “Shaughraun” was played at

Wallack's.

I was at a concert in Munich one night, the people were streaming in,

the clock-hand pointed to seven, the music 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 wait 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 criminals 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 long parlor under the inspection of a double rank of

liveried footmen and waiting-maids who supported the two walls 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. They gave us checks for them and charged a fixed

price, payable in advance--five cents.

In Germany they always hear one thing at an opera which has never yet

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 whiskey, 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 forget 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 uncomfortable in the solemn dead

silences that always followed 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 sitting around about the ladies' saloon, quietly reading, sewing,

embroidering, and so on, and among them 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, “Fire, fire! JUMP AND RUN, THE BOAT'S AFIRE AND THERE AIN'T 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 breastpin, and

then come and tell us all about it.”

It was a cruel chill to give to a poor little devil's gushing 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 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 hear it again, their good

breeding usually preserves them against requiring the repetition.

Kings may encore; that is quite another matter; it delights everybody to

see that the King is pleased; and as to the actor encored, his pride and

gratification are simply boundless. 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 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 players

would begin at the beginning and do the entire opera over again with

only that one individual in the vast solemn theater for audience. Once

he took an odd freak into his head. High up and out of sight, over

the prodigious stage of the court theater is a maze of interlacing

water-pipes, so pierced that in case of fire, innumerable little

thread-like streams of water can be caused to descend; and in case

of need, this discharge can be augmented to a pouring flood. American

managers might want to make a note of that. The King was sole audience.

The opera proceeded, it was a piece with a storm in it; the mimic

thunder began to mutter, the mimic wind began to wail and sough, and

the mimic rain to patter. The King's interest rose higher and higher; it

developed into enthusiasm. He cried out:

“It is very, 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 splendid 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 of the stage. The richly

dressed actresses and actors tripped 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 about ankle-deep in water,

warbling their sweetest and best, the fiddlers under the eaves of the

stage sawed away for dear life, with the cold overflow spouting 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!” 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 theater was at last over, the King's approbation was

measureless. He cried:

“Magnificent, magnificent! ENCORE! Do it again!”

But the manager succeeded in persuading him to recall the encore, and

said the company would feel sufficiently rewarded and complimented

in the mere fact that the encore was desired 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 so swollen that they wouldn't work

for a week afterward, the fine costumes were spoiled, and no end of

minor damages were done by that remarkable storm.

It was a royal idea--that storm--and royally carried out. But observe

the moderation of the King; he did not insist upon his encore. If he had

been a gladsome, unreflecting American opera-audience, he probably would

have had his storm repeated and repeated until he drowned all those

people.

CHAPTER XI

[I Paint a “Turner”]

The 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,

[1. See Appendix D for information concerning this fearful tongue.] and

more than satisfied with what we had accomplished in art. We had had the

best instructors in drawing and painting in Germany--Haemmerling, Vogel,

Mueller, Dietz, and Schumann. Haemmerling taught us landscape-painting.

Vogel taught us figure-drawing, Mueller 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 manner 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 throw 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 these 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 my great picture, “Heidelberg Castle 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

neighboring localities to visit it. It made more stir than any other

work in the Exhibition. But the most gratifying thing of all was, that

chance strangers, passing through, who had not heard of my picture, were

not only drawn to it, as by a lodestone, the moment they entered the

gallery, but always took it for a “Turner.”

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-by to our friends, and afterward had a little

farewell 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 alpenstock 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

brought 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.

Everybody stopped to admire our costumes and give us a hearty “Pleasant

march to you!”

When we got downtown 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 to walk both ways. There

were some nice German people in our compartment. I got to talking some

pretty private matters presently, and Harris became nervous; so he

nudged me and said:

“Speak in German--these Germans may understand English.”

I did so, it was well I did; for it turned out that there was not a

German in that party who did not understand English perfectly. It is

curious how widespread our language is in Germany. After a while some of

those folks got out and a German gentleman and his two young daughters

got in. I spoke in German of one of the latter several times, but

without result. Finally she said:

“ICH VERSTEHE NUR DEUTCH UND ENGLISHE,”--or words to that effect. 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 agreeable people. They were greatly interested in our

customs; especially the alpenstocks, for they had not seen any before.

They said that the Neckar road was perfectly level, so we must be 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 Wimpfen--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 a stroll through the venerable old village. It was

very picturesque and tumble-down, 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.

There was none around the tower, though; I composed the grass myself,

from studies I made in a field by Heidelberg in Haemmerling'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 composed the

picture from two points of view; the spectator is to observe the man

from bout where that flag is, and he must observe the tower itself from

the ground. This harmonizes the seeming discrepancy. [Figure 2]

Near an old cathedral, under a shed, were three crosses of stone--moldy

and damaged things, bearing life-size stone figures. The two thieves

were dressed in the fanciful court costumes of the middle of the

sixteenth century, while the Saviour was nude, with the exception of a

cloth around the loins.

We had dinner under the green trees in a garden belonging to the hotel

and overlooking the Neckar; 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 small cow and a smaller

donkey yoked together. It was a pretty slow concern, but it got us into

Heilbronn before dark--five miles, or possibly it was seven.

We stopped at the very same inn which the famous old robber-knight

and rough fighter Goetz von Berlichingen, abode in after he got out of

captivity in the Square Tower of Heilbronn between three hundred and

fifty and four hundred years ago. Harris and I occupied the same room

which he had occupied and the same paper had not quite peeled off the

walls yet. The furniture was quaint old carved stuff, full 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 terrific old Goetz 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 story, for in Europe the houses are so

high that they do not count the first story, else they would get tired

climbing before they got to the top. The wallpaper was a fiery red, with

huge gold figures in it, well smirched 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, 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 German 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 center of the room;

while the waiters 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 XII

[What the Wives Saved]

The RATHHAUS, 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-sized 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-sized figure of Time raises its hour-glass and turns it; two golden

rams advance and butt each other; a gilded cock lifts its wings; but the

main features are two great angels, who stand on each side of the dial

with long horns at their lips; it was said that they blew melodious

blasts on these horns every hour--but they did not do it for us. We were

told, later, that they blew only at night, when the town was still.

Within the RATHHAUS were a number of huge wild boars' heads, preserved,

and mounted on brackets along the wall; they bore inscriptions telling

who killed them and how many hundred years ago it was done. One room in

the building was devoted to the preservation of ancient archives. There

they showed us no end of aged documents; some were signed by Popes,

some by Tilly and other great generals, and one was a letter written and

subscribed by Goetz von Berlichingen in Heilbronn in 1519 just after his

release from the Square Tower.

This fine old robber-knight was a devoutly and sincerely religious

man, hospitable, charitable to the poor, fearless in fight, active,

enterprising, and possessed of a large and generous nature. He had in

him a quality of being able to overlook moderate injuries, and being

able to forgive and forget mortal ones as soon as he had soundly

trounced the authors of them. He was prompt to take up any poor devil's

quarrel and risk his neck to right him. The common folk held him dear,

and his memory is still green in ballad and tradition. He used to go on

the highway and rob rich wayfarers; and other times he would swoop down

from his high castle on the hills of the Neckar and capture passing

cargoes of merchandise. In his memoirs he piously thanks the Giver of

all Good for remembering him in his needs and delivering sundry such

cargoes into his hands at times when only special providences could have

relieved him. He was a doughty warrior and found a deep joy in battle.

In an assault upon a stronghold in Bavaria when he was only twenty-three

years old, his right hand was shot away, but he was so interested in the

fight that he did not observe it for a while. He said that the iron hand

which was made for him afterward, and which he wore for more than half a

century, was nearly as clever a member as the fleshy one had been. I was

glad to get a facsimile of the letter written by this fine old German

Robin Hood, though I was not able to read it. He was a better artist

with his sword than with his pen.

We went down by the river and saw the Square Tower. It was a very

venerable structure, very strong, and very ornamental. There was no

opening near the ground. They had to use a ladder to get into it, no

doubt.

We visited the principal church, also--a curious old structure, with a

towerlike spire adorned with all sorts of grotesque images. The inner

walls of the church were placarded with large mural tablets of copper,

bearing engraved inscriptions celebrating the merits of old Heilbronn

worthies of two or three centuries ago, and also bearing rudely painted

effigies of themselves and their families tricked out in the queer

costumes of those days. The head of the family sat in the foreground,

and beyond him extended a sharply receding and diminishing row of

sons; facing him sat his wife, and beyond her extended a low row of

diminishing daughters. The family was usually large, but the perspective

bad.

Then we hired the hack and the horse which Goetz von Berlichingen used

to use, and drove several miles into the country to visit the place

called WEIBERTREU--Wife's Fidelity I suppose it means. It was a feudal

castle of the Middle Ages. When we reached its neighborhood we found

it was beautifully situated, but on top of a mound, or hill, round and

tolerably steep, and about two hundred feet high. Therefore, as the sun

was blazing hot, we did not climb up there, but took the place on trust,

and observed it from a distance while the horse leaned up against a

fence and rested. The place has no interest except that which is lent it

by its legend, which is a very pretty one--to this effect:

THE LEGEND

In the Middle Ages, a couple of young dukes, brothers, took opposite

sides in one of the wars, the one fighting for the Emperor, the other

against him. One of them owned the castle and village on top of the

mound which I have been speaking of, and in his absence his brother

came with his knights and soldiers and began a siege. It was a long and

tedious business, for the people made a stubborn and faithful defense.

But at last their supplies ran out and starvation began its work;

more fell by hunger than by the missiles of the enemy. They by and

by surrendered, and begged for charitable terms. But the beleaguering

prince was so incensed against them for their long resistance that he

said he would spare none but the women and children--all men should be

put to the sword without exception, and all their goods destroyed. Then

the women came and fell on their knees and begged for the lives of their

husbands.

“No,” said the prince, “not a man of them shall escape alive; you

yourselves shall go with your children into houseless and friendless

banishment; but that you may not starve I grant you this one grace,

that each woman may bear with her from this place as much of her most

valuable property as she is able to carry.”

Very well, presently the gates swung open and out filed those women

carrying their HUSBANDS on their shoulders. The besiegers, furious at

the trick, rushed forward to slaughter the men, but the Duke stepped

between and said:

“No, put up your swords--a prince's word is inviolable.”

When we got back to the hotel, King Arthur's Round Table was ready for

us in its white drapery, and the head waiter and his first assistant, in

swallow-tails and white cravats, brought in the soup and the hot plates

at once.

Mr. X had ordered the dinner, and when the wine came on, he picked up

a bottle, glanced at the label, and then turned to the grave, the

melancholy, the sepulchral head waiter and said it was not the sort of

wine he had asked for. The head waiter picked up the bottle, cast his

undertaker-eye on it and said:

“It is true; I beg pardon.” Then he turned on his subordinate and calmly

said, “Bring another label.”

At the same time he slid the present label off with his hand and laid it

aside; it had been newly put on, its paste was still wet. When the new

label came, he put it on; our French wine being now turned into German

wine, according to desire, the head waiter went blandly about his other

duties, as if the working of this sort of miracle was a common and easy

thing to him.

Mr. X said he had not known, before, that there were people honest

enough to do this miracle in public, but he was aware that thousands

upon thousands of labels were imported into America from Europe every

year, to enable dealers to furnish to their customers in a quiet and

inexpensive way all the different kinds of foreign wines they might

require.

We took a turn around the town, after dinner, and found it fully as

interesting in the moonlight as it had been in the daytime. The streets

were narrow and roughly paved, and there was not a sidewalk or a

street-lamp anywhere. The dwellings were centuries old, and vast enough

for hotels. They widened all the way up; the stories projected further

and further forward and aside as they ascended, and the long rows

of lighted windows, filled with little bits of panes, curtained with

figured white muslin and adorned outside with boxes of flowers, made a

pretty effect.

The moon was bright, and the light and shadow very strong; and nothing

could be more picturesque than those curving streets, with their rows

of huge high gables leaning far over toward each other in a friendly

gossiping way, and the crowds below drifting through the alternating

blots of gloom and mellow bars of moonlight. Nearly everybody was

abroad, chatting, singing, romping, or massed in lazy comfortable

attitudes in the doorways.

In one place there was a public building which was fenced about with a

thick, rusty chain, which sagged from post to post in a succession of

low swings. The pavement, here, was made of heavy blocks of stone. In

the glare of the moon a party of barefooted children were swinging on

those chains and having a noisy good time. They were not the first ones

who have done that; even their great-great-grandfathers had not been the

first to do it when they were children. The strokes of the bare feet

had worn grooves inches deep in the stone flags; it had taken many

generations of swinging children to accomplish that.

Everywhere in the town were the mold and decay that go with antiquity,

and evidence of it; but I do not know that anything else gave us so

vivid a sense of the old age of Heilbronn as those footworn grooves in

the paving-stones.

CHAPTER XIII

[My Long Crawl in the Dark]

When we got back to the hotel I wound and set the pedometer and put

it in my pocket, for I was to carry it next day and keep record of the

miles we made. The work which we had given the instrument to do during

the day which had just closed had not fatigued it perceptibly.

We were in bed by ten, for we wanted to be up and away on our tramp

homeward with the dawn. I hung fire, but Harris went to sleep at once.

I hate a man who goes to sleep at once; there is a sort of indefinable

something about it which is not exactly an insult, and yet is an

insolence; and one which is hard to bear, too. I lay there fretting

over this injury, and trying to go to sleep; but the harder I tried, the

wider awake I grew. I got to feeling very lonely in the dark, with no

company but an undigested dinner. My mind got a start by and by, and

began to consider the beginning of every subject which has ever been

thought of; but it never went further than the beginning; it was touch

and go; it fled from topic to topic with a frantic speed. At the end of

an hour my head was in a perfect whirl and I was dead tired, fagged out.

The fatigue was so great that it presently began to make some head

against the nervous excitement; while imagining myself wide awake, I

would really doze into momentary unconsciousness, and come suddenly out

of it with a physical jerk which nearly wrenched my joints apart--the

delusion of the instant being that I was tumbling backward over a

precipice. After I had fallen over eight or nine precipices and thus

found out that one half of my brain had been asleep eight or nine times

without the wide-awake, hard-working other half suspecting it, the

periodical unconsciousnesses began to extend their spell gradually over

more of my brain-territory, and at last I sank into a drowse which grew

deeper and deeper and was doubtless just on the very point of being a

solid, blessed dreamless stupor, when--what was that?

My dulled faculties dragged themselves partly back to life and took a

receptive attitude. Now out of an immense, a limitless distance, 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 was the murmur of a storm;

and now it was nearer--not a quarter of a mile away; was it the muffled

rasping and grinding of distant machinery? 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 mouse gnawing the woodwork. So I 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 knowing it--I fell to listening intently to that sound, and

even unconsciously counting the strokes of the mouse's nutmeg-grater.

Presently I 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

reward 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 what all persons before me have

done, clear back to Adam,--resolved to throw something. I reached down

and got my walking-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 wall over Harris's head and fell down on

him; I had not imagined I could throw so far. It woke Harris, and I was

glad of it until I found he was not angry; then I was sorry. He soon

went to sleep again, which pleased me; but straightway the mouse began

again, which roused my temper once more. I did not want to wake Harris

a second time, but the gnawing continued until I was compelled to throw

the other shoe.

This time I broke a mirror--there were two in the room--I got the

largest one, of course. Harris woke again, but did not complain, and

I was sorrier than ever. I resolved that I would suffer all possible

torture before I would disturb him a third time.

The mouse eventually retired, and by and by I was sinking to sleep, when

a clock began to strike; I counted till it was done, and was about to

drowse again when another clock began; I counted; then the two great

RATHHAUS 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 blowing the quarter-hours,

they seemed to me to be overdoing the thing. Every time I dropped

off for the 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 recognized the fact that I was

hopelessly and permanently wide awake. Wide awake, and feverish and

thirsty. When I had lain tossing there as long as I could endure it, it

occurred to me that it 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 gradually 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 began to paw gently around

and rake the floor, but with no success. I enlarged my circle, 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 article, it seemed

to give out thirty-five or thirty-six times more noise than it would

have done in the daytime. 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 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--had a couple of

families moved in, in the mean time? And I never could seem to 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, I 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

mirror. It startled the breath out of me, for an instant; it also showed

me 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 hold

of something to keep from lifting the roof off with an explosion of

opinion. If there had 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 they 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 carefully 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 moment 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 be put into a Sunday-school book

without injuring the sale of it. If my reasoning powers had not been

already sapped dry by my harassments, I would have known better than to

try to set an umbrella on end on one of those glassy German floors in

the dark; it can't be done in the daytime without four failures to one

success. I had one comfort, though--Harris was yet still and silent--he

had not stirred.

The umbrella could not locate me--there were four standing around the

room, and all alike. I thought I would feel along the wall and find the

door in that way. I rose up and began this operation, but raked 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 find King Arthur's Round Table once

more--I had already found it several times--and use it for a base of

departure on an exploring 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 confidence, 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 spread, to balance

myself. I found a chair; then a wall; then another chair; then a sofa;

then an alpenstock, then another 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

table was round, it was therefore of no value as a base to aim from; so

I moved off once more, and at random among the wilderness of chairs and

sofas--wandering off into unfamiliar regions, and presently knocked a

candlestick and knocked off a lamp, grabbed at the lamp and knocked

off a water pitcher with a rattling crash, and thought to myself,

“I've found you at last--I judged I was close upon you.” Harris shouted

“murder,” and “thieves,” and finished with “I'm absolutely 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 candle; a

procession swept in at another door, with candles and lanterns--landlord

and two German guests in their nightgowns and a chambermaid in hers.

I looked around; I was at Harris's bed, a Sabbath-day's journey from my

own. There 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 with it like a comet half the night.

I explained how I had been employing myself, 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 XIV

[Rafting Down the Neckar]

When the landlord learned that I and my agents 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 I broke in the night; he put up a fine luncheon

for us and added to it a quantity of great light-green plums, the

pleasantest 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 Goetz von

Berlichingen's horse and cab and made us ride.

I made a sketch of the turnout. 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

reigns; there seems to be a wheel missing--this would be corrected in a

finished Work, of course. This thing flying out behind 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 remember, now, what 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 carriage at the bridge. The river was full of

logs--long, slender, barkless pine logs--and 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 to suit the crookedness and

extreme narrowness of the Neckar. They were from fifty to one hundred

yards long, and they gradually tapered from a nine-log breadth at their

sterns, to a three-log breadth at their bow-ends. The main part of the

steering is done at the bow, with a pole; the three-log breadth there

furnishes room for only the steersman, for these little logs are not

larger around than an average 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 shape of the

river.

The Neckar is in many places so narrow that a person can throw a dog

across it, if he has one; when it is also sharply curved in such places,

the raftsman has to do some pretty nice snug piloting to make the turns.

The river is not always allowed to spread over its whole bed--which is

as much as thirty, and sometimes forty 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 Neckar, 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 sometime

or other, but was always disappointed. One was smashed there one

morning, but I 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

daredevil spirit of adventure came suddenly upon me, and I said to my

comrades:

“I am going to Heidelberg on a raft. Will you venture with me?”

Their faces paled a little, but they assented 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, while he attended to

this, I went down to the longest and finest raft and hailed the captain

with a hearty “Ahoy, 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 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 trousers, then shifted his quid thoughtfully.

Presently he said just what I was expecting he would say--that he had no

license to carry passengers, and therefore was afraid the law would be

after him in case the matter got noised about or any accident happened.

So I CHARTERED the raft and the crew and took all the responsibilities

on myself.

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 redden

and the mysterious solemnity and silence of the dawn to 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 beautiful, but nobody

has understood, and realized, and enjoyed the utmost possibilities of

this soft and peaceful beauty unless he has voyaged down the Neckar on

a raft. The motion of a raft is the needful motion; it is gentle,

and gliding, and smooth, and noiseless; 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 contrasts 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 overhung with thick masses of willows

that wholly hid the ground behind; sometimes we had noble hills on one

hand, clothed densely with foliage to their 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

everywhere; they swept back and forth across the river constantly, 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 after 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.

A TRAMP ABROAD, Part 3.

By Mark Twain

(Samuel L. Clemens)

First published in 1880

Illustrations taken from an 1880 First Edition

* * * * * *

ILLUSTRATIONS:

1.   PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR

2.   TITIAN'S MOSES

3.   THE AUTHOR'S MEMORIES

73.  A DEEP AND TRANQUIL ECSTACY

74.  “WHICH ANSWERED JUST AS WELL”

75.  LIFE ON A RAFT

76.  LADY GERTRUDE

77.  MOUTH OF THE CAVERN

78.  A FATAL MISTAKE

79.  TAIL PIECE

80.  RAFTING ON THE NECKAR

81.  THE LORELEI

82.  THE LOVER's FATE

84.  THE UNKNOWN KNIGHT

85.  THE EMBRACE

86.  PERILOUS POSTTION

87.  THE RAFT IN A STORM

88.  ALL SAFE ON SHORE

89.  “IT WAS THE CAT”

90.  TAILPIECE

91.  BREAKFAST IN THE GARDEN 162

92.  EASILY UNDERSTOOD

93.  EXPERIMENTING THROUGH HARRIS

94.  AT THE BALL ROOM DOOR

95.  THE TOWN OF DILSBERG

96.  OUR ADVANCE ON DILSBERG

97.  INSIDE THE TOWN

95.  THE OLD WELL

99.  SEND HITHER THE LORD ULRICH

100.  LEAD ME TO HER GRAVE

102.  AN EXCELLENT PILOT, ONCE

103.  SCATTERATION

104.  THE RIVER BATH

101.  ETRUSCAN TEAR JUG

106.  HENRI II. PLATE

l07.  OLD BLUE CHINA

108.  A REAL ANTIQUE

109.  BRIC-A-BRAC SHOP

110.  “PUT IT THERE”

111.  THE PARSON CAPTURED

112.  TAIL PIECE

113.  A COMPREHENSIVE YAWN

114.  TESTING THE COIN

115.  BEAUTY AT THE BATH

116.  IN THE BATH

117.  JERSEY INDIANS

118.  NOT PARTICULARLY SOCIABLE

CONTENTS:

CHAPTER XV Down the River--German Women's Duties--Bathing as We Went--A

Handsome Picture: Girls in the Willows--We Sight a Tug--Steamers on the

Neckar--Dinner on Board--Legend “Cave of the Spectre “--Lady Gertrude

the Heiress--The Crusader--The Lady in the Cave--A Tragedy

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 Trans lations--Curiosities in

Titles

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 Popular--Danger to the Raft--Blasting

Rocks--An Inglorious Death in View--Escaped--A Storm Overtakes

us--GreatDanger--Man Overboard--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”

CHAPTER XVIII Breakfast in a Garden--The Old Raven--Castle of

Hirschhorn--Attempt to Hire a Boat--High Dutch--What You Can Find out

by Enquiring--What I Found out about the Students--A good German

Custom--Harris Practices It--AnEmbarrassing Position--A Nice Party--At a

Ball--Stopped at the Door--Assistance at Hand and Rendered--Worthy to be

an Empress

CHAPTER XIX Arrive at Neckarsteinach--Castle of Dilsberg--A Walled

Town--On a Hill--Exclusiveness of the People--A Queer Old Place--An

Ancient Well--An Outlet Proved--Legend of Dilsberg Castle--The

Haunted Chamber--The Betrothed's request--The Knight's Slumbers

and Awakening--Horror of the Lover--The Wicked Jest--The Lover a

Maniac--Under the Linden--Turning Pilot--Accident to the Raft--Fearful

Disaster

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 American, Sure--A Minister Captured

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

CHAPTER XV

[Charming Waterside Pictures]

Men and women and cattle were at work in the dewy fields by this time.

The people often stepped aboard the raft, as we glided along the grassy

shores, and gossiped with us 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 backs, they shove similar ones long

distances on wheelbarrows, they drag the cart when there is no dog or

lean cow to drag it--and when there is, they assist the dog or cow. Age

is no matter--the older the woman the stronger 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 several flights

of stairs, a hundred pounds at a time, in prodigious 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.

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-umbrellas over our heads and our legs dangling

in the water.

Every now and then we plunged in and had a swim. Every projecting grassy

cape had its joyous group of naked children, the boys to themselves and

the girls to themselves, the latter usually in care 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 years or upward, just

stepping into the water. She had not time to run, but she did what

answered just as well; she 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 white skin had a low bank of fresh green

willows for background and effective contrast--for she stood against

them--and above and out of them projected the eager faces and white

shoulders of two smaller girls.

Toward noon we heard the inspiriting cry,--

“Sail ho!”

“Where away?” shouted the captain.

“Three points off the weather bow!”

We ran forward to see the vessel. It proved to be a steamboat--for they

had begun to run a steamer up the Neckar, for the first time in May.

She was a tug, and one of a 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 or another, and aggravating it

every now and then by blowing a hoarse whistle. She had nine keel-boats

hitched on behind 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 herself up the river or down it. She has

neither bow or stern, strictly speaking, for she has a long-bladed

rudder on each end and she never turns around. She uses both 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 CAN be done. What miracle will man attempt

next?

We met many big keel-boats on their way up, using sails, mule power, and

profanity--a tedious and laborious business. A wire rope led from the

foretopmast to the file of mules on the tow-path a hundred yards ahead,

and by dint of much banging and swearing and urging, the detachment 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 thus has given employment to a great many men and animals;

but now that this steamboat is able, with a small crew and a bushel or

so of coal, to take nine keel-boats farther up the river 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 second

steamboat began work in the Neckar three months after the first one was

put in service. [Figure 4]

At noon we stepped ashore and bought some bottled beer and got some

chickens cooked, while the raft waited; then we immediately put to sea

again, and had our dinner while the beer was cold and the chickens hot.

There is no pleasanter 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 without any

spectacles. Before I could come to anchor he had got underway. It was a

great pity. I so wanted to make a sketch of him. The captain comforted

me for my loss, however, by saying that the man was without any doubt a

fraud who had spectacles, but kept them in his pocket in order to make

himself conspicuous.

Below Hassmersheim we passed Hornberg, Goetz von Berlichingen's old

castle. It stands on a bold elevation two hundred feet above the surface

of the river; it has high vine-clad walls enclosing trees, and a peaked

tower about seventy-five feet high. The steep hillside, from the castle

clear down to the water's edge, is terraced, and clothed thick with

grape vines. This is like farming a mansard roof. All the steeps along

that part of the river which furnish the proper exposure, are given

up to the grape. That region is a great producer of Rhine wines. The

Germans are exceedingly fond of Rhine wines; they are put up in tall,

slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage. One tells them

from vinegar by the label.

The Hornberg hill is to be tunneled, and the new railway will pass under

the castle. THE CAVE OF THE SPECTER Two miles below Hornberg castle is

a cave in a low cliff, which the captain of the raft said had once been

occupied by a beautiful heiress of Hornberg--the Lady Gertrude--in the

old times. It was seven hundred years ago. She had a number of rich and

noble lovers and one poor and obscure one, Sir Wendel Lobenfeld. With

the native chuckleheadedness of the heroine of romance, she preferred

the poor and obscure lover.

With the native sound judgment of the father of a heroine of romance,

the von Berlichingen of that day shut his daughter up in his donjon

keep, or his oubliette, or his culverin, or some such place, and

resolved that she should stay there until she selected a husband from

among her rich and noble lovers. The latter visited her and persecuted

her with their supplications, but without effect, for her heart was

true to her poor despised Crusader, who was fighting in the Holy Land.

Finally, she resolved that she would endure the attentions of the rich

lovers no longer; so one stormy night she escaped and went down

the river and hid herself in the cave on the other side. Her father

ransacked the country for her, but found not a trace of her. As the

days went by, and still no tidings of her came, his conscience began to

torture him, and he caused proclamation to be made that if she were yet

living and would return, he would oppose her no longer, she might marry

whom she would. The months dragged on, all hope forsook the old man, he

ceased from his customary pursuits and pleasures, he devoted himself to

pious works, and longed for the deliverance of death.

Now just at midnight, every night, the lost heiress stood in the mouth

of her cave, arrayed in white robes, and sang a little love ballad which

her Crusader had made for her. She judged that if he came home alive the

superstitious peasants would tell him about the ghost that sang in the

cave, and that as soon as they described the ballad he would know that

none but he and she knew that song, therefore he would suspect that she

was alive, and would come and find her. As time went on, the people of

the region became sorely distressed about the Specter of the Haunted

Cave. It was said that ill luck of one kind or another always overtook

any one who had the misfortune to hear that song. Eventually, every

calamity that happened thereabouts was laid at the door of that music.

Consequently, no boatmen would consent to pass the cave at night; the

peasants shunned the place, even in the daytime.

But the faithful girl sang on, night after night, month after month, and

patiently waited; her reward must come at last. Five years dragged by,

and still, every night at midnight, the plaintive tones floated out over

the silent land, while the distant boatmen and peasants thrust their

fingers into their ears and shuddered out a prayer.

And now came the Crusader home, bronzed and battle-scarred, but bringing

a great and splendid fame to lay at the feet of his bride. The old lord

of Hornberg received him as his son, and wanted him to stay by him

and be the comfort and blessing of his age; but the tale of that young

girl's devotion to him and its pathetic consequences made a changed

man of the knight. He could not enjoy his well-earned rest. He said his

heart was broken, he would give the remnant of his life to high deeds in

the cause of humanity, and so find a worthy death and a blessed reunion

with the brave true heart whose love had more honored him than all his

victories in war.

When the people heard this resolve of his, they came and told him there

was a pitiless dragon in human disguise in the Haunted Cave, a dread

creature which no knight had yet been bold enough to face, and begged

him to rid the land of its desolating presence. He said he would do it.

They told him about the song, and when he asked what song it was, they

said the memory of it was gone, for nobody had been hardy enough to

listen to it for the past four years and more.

Toward midnight the Crusader came floating down the river in a boat,

with his trusty cross-bow in his hands. He drifted silently through the

dim reflections of the crags and trees, with his intent eyes fixed upon

the low cliff which he was approaching. As he drew nearer, he discerned

the black mouth of the cave. Now--is that a white figure? Yes. The

plaintive song begins to well forth and float away over meadow and

river--the cross-bow is slowly raised to position, a steady aim is

taken, the bolt flies straight to the mark--the figure sinks down, still

singing, the knight takes the wool out of his ears, and recognizes the

old ballad--too late! Ah, if he had only not put the wool in his ears!

The Crusader went away to the wars again, and presently fell in battle,

fighting for the Cross. Tradition says that during several centuries the

spirit of the unfortunate girl sang nightly from the cave at midnight,

but the music carried no curse with it; and although many listened for

the mysterious sounds, few were favored, since only those could hear

them who had never failed in a trust. It is believed that the singing

still continues, but it is known that nobody has heard it during the

present century.

CHAPTER XVI

An Ancient Legend of the Rhine [The Lorelei]

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 Lorelei” 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 have fared likewise; therefore, for

the sake of these, I mean to print the words and 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 Lore (two syllables) was a water nymph who used to

sit on a high rock called the 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 bewitched them with her

plaintive songs and her wonderful beauty that they forgot everything

else to gaze up at her, 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 beautiful Lore, and had finally fallen very

deeply in love with her without having 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

unequaled clearness and color, which, in increasingly 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 extended 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 changement 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

youth to betake himself to the camp. Obedience was promised. Garnham

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 approached 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! enchantment.

“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 should 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 around about there--for--

“Scarcely had these tones sounded, everywhere there began tumult and

sound, as if voices above and below the water. On the Lei rose flames,

the Fairy stood above, at that time, and beckoned with her right hand

clearly and urgently to the infatuated Knight, while with a staff in

her left hand she called the waves to her service. They began to mount

heavenward; the boat was upset, mocking every exertion; 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 the Lorelei during many

centuries, but surely her conduct upon this occasion entitles her to our

respect. One feels drawn tenderly 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 have often been

heard. In the beautiful, refreshing, still nights of spring, when 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

Nymph.”

Here is the music, and the German words by Heinrich Heine. This song has

been a favorite in Germany for forty years, and will remain a favorite

always, maybe.

I have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language

and add no translation. When I am the reader, and the author considers

me 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 this 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 unGerman 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 poetical thought from

one language to another.

THE LORELEI

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 glooming,

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 gruesome work.

I have a translation by Garnham, Bachelor of Arts, in the LEGENDS OF THE

RHINE, but it would not answer the purpose 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, Garnham'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. Garnham, B.A.

I do not know what it signifies.

That I am so sorrowful?

A fable of old Times so terrifies,

Leaves my 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 beautiful 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 woe sad might;

He does not see the rocky slip,

He only regards dreaded height.

I believe the turbulent waves

Swallow the last shipper and boat;

She with her singing craves

All to visit hermagic moat.

No translation could be closer. He has got in all the facts; and in

their regular order, too. There is not a statistic wanting. It is as

succinct as an invoice. That is what a translation 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 clingingly exact

translation of DORT OBEN WUNDERBAR--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 will 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 PINACOTEK, 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 by 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 fulfil 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 Raphael.”

“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. Rochus 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 Flora, sitting. Behind her a fertile valley

perfused by a river.”

“A beautiful bouquet animated by 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 Virgin holding the Infant. It 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.”

But meanwhile the raft is moving on.

CHAPTER XVII

[Why Germans Wear Spectacles]

A mile or two above Eberbach 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 crumbling 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 “Spectacular 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

prodigious fire-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 conflagration, and his appetite bred famine. He ate

men and cattle impartially, and was exceedingly unpopular. The 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 the other. A panic arose and

spread. Heroes grew cautious. The 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 knight, out of a far

country, 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. Everybody turned up their noses at him,

and some openly jeered him. But he was calm. He simply inquired if

the emperor's offer was still in force. The emperor said it was--but

charitably advised him to go and hunt hares and not endanger so precious

a life as his in an attempt which had brought death to so many of the

world's most illustrious heroes.

But this tramp only asked--“Were any of these heroes men of science?”

This raised a laugh, 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.

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 knapsack.”

But the tramp said:

“It is not a knapsack,” and moved straight on.

The dragon was waiting and ready. He was breathing forth vast volumes

of sulphurous smoke and lurid blasts of flame. The ragged knight

stole warily to a good position, then he unslung 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 experimented 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 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 modest demand, by my

halidome! 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 immediately 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 spectacles 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

“Spectacular Ruin.”

On the right bank, two or three miles below the Spectacular 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 ivy, 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

explosions. It was all very well to warn us, but what could WE do? You

can't back a raft upstream, you can't hurry it downstream, 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, too. Your 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. No harm

done; none of the stones fell in the water. Another 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 I ever spent, either

aship or ashore. Of course we frequently 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

the 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 abjectly unheroic nature of the

death--that was the sting--that and the bizarre wording of the resulting

obituary: “SHOT WITH A ROCK, ON A RAFT.” 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 “distinguished 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 assassination. We have blundered, that is plain.

All along the river, near every village, we saw little station-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 brick 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 landscape, 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 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 mischievous.

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 I wanted to go on. The captain said we

ought to shorten sail anyway, out of common prudence. Consequently, the

larboard watch was ordered 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 landing?”

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!”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

“What water have you got?”

“Shoal, sir. Two foot large, on the stabboard, two and a half scant on

the labboard!”

“Let her go off another point!”

“Aye-aye, sir!”

“Forward, men, all of you! Lively, now! Stand by to crowd her round the

weather corner!”

“Aye-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:

“Prepare for the worst, sir--we have sprung a leak!”

“Heavens! where?”

“Right 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 her in shore and stand by to jump with

the stern-line the moment she touches. Gentlemen, I must look to you to

second my endeavors in this hour of peril. You have hats--go forward 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 away forward that most

appalling of all cries that are ever heard at sea:

“MAN OVERBOARD!”

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 length off her port fore-foot!”

We had groped our slippery way forward, and were now bailing with the

frenzy of despair, when we heard the mate's terrified 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 turn around a tree

and pass the bight aboard!”

The next moment we were all on shore weeping and embracing 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 cheek blanch and his pulses stop, but he had never,

never seen a storm that even approached this one. How familiar that

sounded! For I have been at sea a good deal and have heard that remark

from captains with a frequency accordingly.

We framed in our minds the usual resolution of thanks and admiration

and gratitude, and took the first opportunity to vote it, and put it

in writing and present it to the captain, with the customary speech. We

tramped through the darkness and the drenching summer rain full three

miles, and reached “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; he did not at all like being turned out of his warm bed to

open his house for us. But no matter, his household got up and cooked

a quick supper for us, and we brewed a hot punch for ourselves, to keep

off consumption. After supper and punch we had an hour's soothing smoke

while we fought the naval battle over again and voted the resolutions;

then we retired to exceedingly neat and pretty chambers upstairs that

had clean, comfortable beds in them with heirloom pillowcases 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, excellences, 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 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 that did not answer, for a natural instinct kept making him open

them again to see if the cat was still getting ready to launch at

him--which she always was. He tried turning 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

[The Kindly Courtesy of Germans]

In the morning we took breakfast in the garden, under the trees, in the

delightful German summer fashion. The air was filled with the fragrance

of flowers and wild animals; the living portion of the menagerie of the

“Naturalist Tavern” 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 loping 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 chickens and doves

begged for crumbs, and a poor old tailless raven hopped about with

a humble, shamefaced mein 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 way to make this poor old chap forget

his troubles for a while, but we have not his kindly art, and so had to

leave the raven to his griefs.

After breakfast we climbed the hill and visited the ancient castle of

Hirschhorn, and the ruined church near it. There were some curious old

bas-reliefs leaning against the inner walls of the church--sculptured

lords of Hirschhorn in complete armor, and ladies of Hirschhorn in

the picturesque court costumes of the Middle Ages. These things are

suffering 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 green hilltop, and the old

battlemented stone wall, stretching up and over the grassy ridge and

disappearing in the leafy sea beyond, make a picture whose grace and

beauty entirely satisfy the eye.

We descended from the church by steep stone stairways which curved this

way 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 uncombed idiots, who held out hands or caps and begged

piteously. The people of the quarter were not all idiots, of course, but

all that begged seemed to be, and were said to be.

I was thinking of going by skiff to the next town, Necharsteinach; so I

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 particular 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 he managed to

understand Mr. X's next remark puzzled me. I will insert 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:

“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 epitaph may tell the truth about me if the man did not answer

up at once, and say he would go and borrow a board as soon as he had lit

the pipe which he was filling.

We changed our mind about taking a boat, so we did not have to go. I

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 out of the five words in the

second remark were English, and English only, and the two German ones

did not mean anything in particular, in such a connection.

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 without 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, sometimes, when

even young Z had failed with them; and young Z was a pretty good German

scholar. For one thing, X always spoke with such confidence--perhaps

that helped. And possibly the raftsmen's dialect was what is called

PLATT-DEUTSCH, and so they found his English more familiar to their ears

than another man's German. Quite indifferent students of German can read

Fritz Reuter's charming platt-Deutch 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 I will

inquire of some other philologist.

However, in the mean time it had transpired that the men employed to

calk the raft had found that the leak was not a leak at all, but only

a crack between the logs--a crack that belonged there, and was not

dangerous, but had been magnified into a leak by the disordered

imagination of the mate. Therefore we went aboard again with a good

degree of confidence, and presently got to sea without accident. As we

swam smoothly along between the enchanting shores, we fell to swapping

notes about manners and customs in Germany 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 opulent stock of misinformation. But

this is not surprising; it is very difficult to get accurate details in

any country. For example, I 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 this and that and the other citizen, and

here is what I found out:

1. It is called the Prussian Corps, because none but Prussians are

admitted to it.

2. It is called the Prussian Corps for no particular reason. 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 Cap

Corps.

4. Any student can belong to it who is a German by birth.

5. Any student can belong to it who is European by birth.

6. Any European-born student can belong to it, except he be a Frenchman.

7. Any student 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 three full generations of

noble descent.

10. Nobility is not a necessary qualification.

11. No moneyless student can belong to it.

12. Money qualification is nonsense--such a thing has never been thought

of.

I got 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 natural; for very few members of any organization know ALL that

can be known about it. I doubt there is a man or a woman in Heidelberg

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 the three answers would be incorrect

every time.

There is one German custom which is universal--the bowing courteously

to strangers when sitting down at table or rising up from it. This

bow startles a stranger out of his self-possession, the first time

it occurs, and he is likely to fall over a chair or something, in his

embarrassment, but it pleases him, 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 diffident man. One thinks, “If I rise to go, and tender my

bow, and these ladies and gentlemen take it into their heads to ignore

the custom of their nation, and not return it, how 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'hôte 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 I 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 education proceeded easily and comfortably for me, but not for

Harris. Three courses of a table d'hôte dinner were enough for me, but

Harris preferred thirteen.

Even after I had acquired full confidence, and no longer needed the

agent's help, I sometimes encountered difficulties. Once at Baden-Baden

I nearly lost a train because 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 with my thought, one of

them began a German remark, to my great relief and gratitude; and before

she got out her third word, our bows had been delivered and graciously

returned, and we were off.

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.

Next, 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 English 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; we had “made”

them, though we had had a little assistance here and there.

After breakfast they found us trying to blast some information out

of the dumb hotel clerk about routes, and observing that we were not

succeeding pretty well, they went and got 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-by 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, I took an American young lady to one of the fine balls in

Baden-Baden, one night, and at the entrance-door upstairs we were halted

by an official--something about Miss Jones's dress was not according to

rule; I don't remember 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, for many eyes were on us. But

now a richly dressed girl stepped out of the ballroom, 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 ballroom with this benefactress unchallenged.

Being safe, now, I began to puzzle through my sincere but ungrammatical

thanks, when there was a sudden mutual 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 difference between these clothes and the clothes I had seen her in

before, when she was walking thirty miles a day in the Black Forest,

that it was quite natural that I had failed to recognize her sooner. I

had on MY other suit, too, but my German 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, walking along 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 courtesy.

“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 Allerheiligen and Baden-Baden. She ought

to be an Empress, but she may be only a Duchess; it is the way things go

in this way.”

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 way.

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 employees with me to show me a place where it

could be had.

CHAPTER XIX

[The Deadly Jest of Dilsberg]

However, I wander from the raft. We made the port of Necharsteinach 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 village 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 beautiful river before 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 distinguishes 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 architecture,

which same is tightly jammed and compacted within the perfectly round

hoop of the ancient village wall.

There is no house outside the wall on the whole hill, or any vestige of

a former 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

very long time. There is no space between the wall and the first circle

of buildings; no, the village wall is itself the rear wall of the 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 roofs is

gracefully broken and relieved by the dominating towers of the ruined

castle and the tall spires of a couple of churches; so, from a distance

Dilsberg has rather more the look of a king's crown than a cap. That

lofty green eminence and its quaint coronet form quite a striking

picture, you may be sure, in the flush of the evening sun.

We crossed over in a boat and began the ascent by a narrow, steep path

which plunged 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 panted up the

sharp ascent, we met brown, bareheaded and 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 suddenly and mysteriously as they had come. They were bound for the

other side of the river to work. This path had been traveled by many

generations of these people. They have always gone down to the valley to

earn their bread, but they have 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 strangers, 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 has

taken to lugging them off to asylums and otherwheres; and government

wants to cripple the factory, too, and is trying 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

the 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 good-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 them along the lane and keeping them out of the

dwellings; a cooper was at work in a shop which I 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 spinning, and ducks

and chickens were waddling in and out, over the threshold, picking up

chance crumbs and holding pleasant converse; a very old and wrinkled

man sat asleep before his door, with his chin upon his breast and his

extinguished pipe in his lap; soiled children were playing in the dirt

everywhere 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 commonest of village sights was lacking

here--the public pump, with its great stone tank or trough of limpid

water, and its group of gossiping pitcher-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 walls, arches, and towers, massive, properly

grouped for picturesque effect, weedy, grass-grown, and satisfactory.

The children acted as guides; they walked us along the top of the

highest walls, then took us up into a high tower and showed us a wide

and beautiful landscape, made up of wavy distances 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 Neckar 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 the old day its bottom was below the level of the Neckar, hence

the water-supply was inexhaustible.

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 hidden recess, and that the secret of this locality is now lost.

Those who hold this belief say that herein lies the explanation 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 besieged were as fat and hearty as ever,

and were well furnished with munitions of war--therefore it must be

that the Dilsbergers 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 descend. It struck bottom and gradually burned out. No

smoke came up. The children clapped their hands and said:

“You see! Nothing makes so much smoke as burning straw--now where did

the smoke go to, if there is no subterranean outlet?”

So it seemed quite evident that the subterranean outlet indeed existed.

But the finest thing within the ruin's limits was a noble linden, which

the children said was four hundred years 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 fight

in real armor!--and it had seen the time when these broken arches and

crumbling battlements were a trim and strong and stately fortress,

fluttering its gay banners in the sun, and peopled with vigorous

humanity--how impossibly long ago that seems!--and here it stands yet,

and possibly may still be standing here, sunning itself and dreaming its

historical dreams, when today shall have been joined to the days called

“ancient.”

Well, we sat down under the tree to smoke, and the captain delivered

himself of his legend: THE LEGEND OF DILSBERG CASTLE It was to this

effect. In the old times there was once a great company assembled at the

castle, and festivity ran high. Of course there was a haunted chamber

in the castle, and one day the talk fell upon that. It was said that

whoever slept in it would not wake again for fifty years. Now when a

young knight named Conrad von Geisberg heard this, he said that if the

castle were his he would destroy that chamber, so that no foolish person

might have the chance to bring 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 betrothed, 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 applause she

received made her glad and proud she had undertaken 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

moldy and hung with ancient cobwebs; the curtains and beddings were

rotten; the furniture was rickety and ready to fall to pieces. He sprang

out of bed, but his quaking knees sunk under him and he fell to the

floor.

“This is the weakness of age,” he said.

He rose and sought his clothing. It was clothing no longer. The colors

were gone, the garments gave way in many places while he was putting

them on. He fled, shuddering, into the corridor, and along it to

the great hall. Here he was met by a middle-aged stranger of a kind

countenance, who stopped and gazed at him with surprise. Conrad said:

“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 glances. 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.”

In a moment several people came, and grouped themselves about, talking

in whispers. Conrad looked up and scanned 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 concerning 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 sufferer 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 wittingly 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 the moment there was a wild burst

of joyous laughter, a pair of round young arms were flung about Conrad's

neck and a sweet voice cried:

“There, Conrad mine, thy kind words 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 and women were bright and young and

gay again. Catharina's happy tongue ran on:

“'Twas a marvelous jest, and bravely carried out. They gave you a heavy

sleeping-draught before you went to bed, and in the night they bore you

to a ruined chamber where 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 a gallant jest! Come, now, and make

thee ready for the pleasures of the day. How real was thy misery for the

moment, 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 grave.”

All the smile vanished away, every cheek blanched, Catharina 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 hallucination and bring him to himself; but all the

answer any got was a meek, bewildered stare, and then the words:

“Good stranger, I 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 Conrad spent his days, from the early morning till the

night, under the linden tree, mourning over the imaginary grave of his

Catharina. Catharina was the only company of the harmless madman. He was

very friendly toward her because, as he said, in some ways she reminded

him of his Catharina whom he had lost “fifty years ago.” He often said:

“She was so gay, so happy-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 good legend; and pleased him

further by adding:

“Now that I have seen this mighty tree, vigorous with its four hundred

years, I 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.”

We returned to Necharsteinach, plunged our hot heads into the trough at

the town pump, and then went to the hotel and ate our 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” [1] and “The Brothers.”) assisting the rugged scenery of a bend

of the river down to our right. We got to sea in season to make the

eight-mile run to Heidelberg before the night shut down. We sailed by

the hotel in the mellow glow of sunset, and came slashing down with

the mad current into the narrow passage between the dikes. I believed I

could shoot the bridge myself, and I went to the forward triplet of logs

and relieved the pilot of his pole and his responsibility.

1. The seeker after information is referred to Appendix E

for our captain's legend of the “Swallow's Nest” and

“The Brothers.”

We went tearing along in a most exhilarating way, and I performed the

delicate duties of my office 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 had my long-coveted desire: I saw a raft wrecked. It

hit the pier in the center and went all to smash and scatteration like a

box of matches struck by lightning.

I was the only one of our party who saw this grand sight; the others

were attitudinizing, for the benefit of the long rank of young ladies

who were promenading 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 of scenery. The

young ladies, and other people, crowded around and showed a great deal

of sympathy, but that did not help matters; for my friends said they did

not want sympathy, they wanted a back alley and solitude.

CHAPTER XX

[My Precious, Priceless Tear-Jug]

Next morning brought good news--our trunks had arrived 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 immediately--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. Very

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 German 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 entrusted 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 Ceramics. Of

course I could not take it with me, that would be inconvenient, and

dangerous besides. I took advice, but the best brick-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 dollars. 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 foreshortened 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 the tear-jug, as

the dealer said there was not another 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

Ceramic world would be informed that it was now in my possession and

would make a note of it, with the price paid. [Figure 8]

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, interpolating, transboreal blue which is

the despair of modern art. The little sketch which I have made of this

gem cannot 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 ceramiker, 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 departed Buon Retiro 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 decorating Japanese pots

with decalcomania butterflies would be, and these people fling mud at

the elegant Englishman, Byng, who wrote 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 cannot 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 ceramiker--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 with my things. An egg which I had kept back

from breakfast that morning, was broken in packing. It was a great pity.

I had shown it to the best connoisseurs in Heidelberg, and they all said

it was an antique. We spent a day or two in farewell visits, and then

left for Baden-Baden. We had a pleasant trip to it, for the Rhine valley

is always lovely. The only trouble was that the trip was too short. If

I remember rightly it only occupied a couple of hours, therefore 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 exception of a lift of less than an hour which

we got on a passing wagon, the weather being exhaustingly warm. We came

into town on foot.

One of the first persons we encountered, as we walked up the street,

was the Rev. Mr. ------, an old friend from America--a lucky encounter,

indeed, for his is a most gentle, refined, and sensitive nature, and his

company and companionship are a genuine refreshment. We knew he had been

in Europe some time, but were not at all expecting to run across him.

Both parties burst forth into loving enthusiasms, and Rev. Mr. ------

said:

“I have got a brimful 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 satisfying 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 furtively 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 listening tilt to it. Now about

this time the Rev. Mr. ------ said:

“The sidewalk 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

sidewalk 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 _I_ am, every time! Put it

there!”

He held out his Sahara of his palm, and the Reverend laid his diminutive

hand in it, and got so cordial a shake that we heard his glove burst

under it.

“Say, didn't I put you up right?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Sho! I spotted you for MY kind the minute I heard your clack. You been

over here long?”

“About four months. Have you been over long?”

“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?”

“Oh, HELL, yes!” This with immense enthusiasm.

The Reverend shrunk a little, in his clothes, and we were aware, rather

by instinct than otherwise, that he was throwing out signals of distress

to us; but we did not interfere or try to succor him, for we were quite

happy.

The young 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 _I_ ain't an American there AIN'T any Americans, that's

all. And when I heard you fellows gassing away in the good old American

language, I'm ------ if it wasn't all I could do to keep from hugging

you! My 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 it. 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 German; so before I could tackle the horse-doctoring I had to

tackle this miserable language.

“First off, I thought it would certainly give me the botts, but I don't

mind 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 _I_

calculate to do when I get through, is to just sit down and forget it.

'Twon't 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--sho! 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, spectacles, 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 my education or not, but durn him, he didn't come; never said

why; just sent me a hamper of Sunday-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 those books, because he 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 give 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 easy as it is for a cat to have twins!”

At the end of this profane and cordial explosion he 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 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 Reverend 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.

CHAPTER XXI

[Insolent Shopkeepers and Gabbling Americans]

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 afternoon and evening 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 rather aimless and stupid

existence. A good many of these people are there for a real purpose,

however; they are racked with rheumatism, and they are there to stew it

out in the hot baths. These invalids looked melancholy enough, limping

about on their canes and crutches, and apparently brooding over all

sorts of cheerless things. People say that Germany, with her 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 the

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, peculiar ailments are conquered

by combining the individual virtues of several different baths. For

instance, for some forms of disease, the patient drinks the native hot

water 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 this 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 ladylike sewing-work

in your neighborhood and can't seem to see you --polite as three-dollar

clerks in government offices.

By and by one of these rises painfully, and “stretches”--stretches fists

and body heavenward till she raises her heels from the floor, at the

same time refreshing herself with a yawn of such comprehensiveness that

the bulk of her face disappears behind her upper lip and one is able to

see how she is constructed inside--then she slowly closes her

cavern, brings down her fists and her heels, comes languidly forward,

contemplates you contemptuously, 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 indifference, 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 straightforward commercial transaction, adds a little to your

prospering sense of irritation. You ignore her reply, and ask again:

“How much?”

--and she calmly, indifferently, repeats:

“NACH BELIEBE.”

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?”

“NACH BELIEBE.”

“How much?”

“NACH BELIEBE.”

“How much?”

“NACH BELIEBE.”

I do not know what another person would have done, but at this point I

gave up; that cast-iron indifference, that tranquil contemptuousness,

conquered me, and I struck my colors. Now I knew she was used to

receiving about a penny from manly people who care nothing about the

opinions 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 enough, 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 placidly waddled to her former roost again, tossing

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 manners of a goodly number of the Baden-Baden

shopkeepers. The shopkeeper there swindles you if he can, 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 only 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 disguise your nationality, you would not find any

insolence here. These shopkeepers detest the English and despise the

Americans; they are rude to both, more especially to ladies of your

nationality and mine. If these go shopping without a gentleman or

a man-servant, they are tolerably sure to be subjected to petty

insolences--insolences of manner and tone, rather than word, though

words that are hard to bear are not always wanting. I know of an

instance where a shopkeeper 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 shopkeepers,

'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 Russians or Germans. And as to rank, they

worship that, for they have long been used to generals and nobles. If

you wish to see what abysses servility can descend, present yourself

before a Baden-Baden shopkeeper 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 the 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.

There are several hot springs there, and during two thousand years they

have poured forth a never-diminishing abundance of the healing water.

This water is conducted in pipe to the numerous bath-houses, and is

reduced to an 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 establishment 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 bath 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 bathtub, with its rim sunk to the level of the

floor, and with three white marble steps leading down to it. This tub

is full of water which is as clear as crystal, and is tempered to 28

degrees Re'aumur (about 95 degrees Fahrenheit). Sunk into the floor, by

the tub, is a covered copper box which contains some warm towels and a

sheet. You look fully as white as an angel when you are stretched out

in that limpid bath. You remain in it ten minutes, the first time,

and afterward increase the duration from day to day, till you reach

twenty-five or thirty minutes. There you stop. The appointments of the

place are so luxurious, the benefit so marked, the price so moderate,

and the insults so sure, that you very soon find yourself adoring the

Friederichsbad and infesting it.

We had a plain, simple, unpretending, good hotel, in Baden-Baden--the

Hôtel de France--and alongside my room I had a giggling, cackling,

chattering family who always went to bed just two hours after me and

always got up two hours ahead of me. But this is common in German

hotels; the people generally go to bed long after eleven and get up

long before eight. The partitions convey sound like a drum-head, and

everybody knows it; but no matter, a German family who are all kindness

and consideration in the daytime make apparently no effort to moderate

their noises for your benefit at night. They will sing, laugh, and talk

loudly, and bang furniture around in a most pitiless way. If you knock

on your wall appealingly, they will quiet down and discuss the matter

softly among themselves for a moment--then, like the mice, they fall to

persecuting you again, and as vigorously as before. They keep cruelly

late and early hours, for such noisy folk.

Of course, when one begins to find fault with foreign people's ways, he

is very likely to get a reminder to look nearer home, before he gets far

with it. I open my note-book to see if I can find some more information

of a valuable nature about Baden-Baden, and the first thing I fall upon

is this:

“BADEN-BADEN (no date). Lot of vociferous Americans at breakfast

this morning. Talking AT everybody, while pretending to talk among

themselves. On their first travels, manifestly. Showing off. The usual

signs--airy, easy-going references to grand distances and foreign

places. 'Well GOOD-by, old fellow--if I don't run across you in Italy,

you hunt me up in London before you sail.'”

The next item which I find in my note-book is this one:

“The fact that a band of 6,000 Indians are now murdering our

frontiersmen at their impudent leisure, and that we are only able

to send 1,200 soldiers against them, is utilized here to discourage

emigration to America. The common people think the Indians are in New

Jersey.”

This is a new and peculiar argument against keeping our army down to a

ridiculous figure in the matter of numbers. It is rather a striking

one, too. I have not distorted the truth in saying that the facts in

the above item, about the army and the Indians, are made use of to

discourage emigration to America. That the common people should be

rather foggy in their geography, and foggy as to the location of the

Indians, is a matter for amusement, maybe, but not of surprise.

There is an interesting old cemetery in Baden-Baden, and we spent

several pleasant hours in wandering through it and spelling out the

inscriptions on the aged tombstones. Apparently after a man has laid

there a century or two, and has had a good many people buried on top

of him, it is considered that his tombstone is not needed by him any

longer. I judge so from the fact that hundreds of old gravestones have

been removed from the graves and placed against the inner walls of the

cemetery. What artists they had in the old times! They chiseled angels

and cherubs and devils and skeletons on the tombstones in the most

lavish and generous way--as to supply--but curiously grotesque and

outlandish as to form. It is not always easy to tell which of the

figures belong among the blest and which of them among the opposite

party. But there was an inscription, in French, on one of those old

stones, which was quaint and pretty, and was plainly not the work of any

other than a poet. It was to this effect:

Here Reposes in God, Caroline de Clery, a Religieuse of St. Denis aged

83 years--and blind. The light was restored to her in Baden the 5th of

January, 1839

We made several excursions on foot to the neighboring villages, over

winding and beautiful roads and through enchanting woodland scenery.

The woods and roads were similar to those at Heidelberg, but not

so bewitching. I suppose that roads and woods which are up to the

Heidelberg mark are rare in the world.

Once we wandered clear away to La Favorita Palace, which is several

miles from Baden-Baden. The grounds about the palace were fine; the

palace was a curiosity. It was built by a Margravine in 1725, and

remains as she left it at her death. We wandered through a great many

of its rooms, and they all had striking peculiarities of decoration.

For instance, the walls of one room were pretty completely covered

with small pictures of the Margravine in all conceivable varieties of

fanciful costumes, some of them male.

The walls of another room were covered with grotesquely and elaborately

figured hand-wrought tapestry. The musty ancient beds remained in the

chambers, and their quilts and curtains and canopies were decorated with

curious handwork, and the walls and ceilings frescoed with historical

and mythological scenes in glaring colors. There was enough crazy and

rotten rubbish in the building to make a true brick-a-bracker green with

envy. A painting in the dining-hall verged upon the indelicate--but then

the Margravine was herself a trifle indelicate.

It is in every way a wildly and picturesquely decorated house, and

brimful of interest as a reflection of the character and tastes of that

rude bygone time.

In the grounds, a few rods from the palace, stands the Margravine's

chapel, just as she left it--a coarse wooden structure, wholly barren

of ornament. It is said that the Margravine would give herself up to

debauchery and exceedingly fast living for several months at a time,

and then retire to this miserable wooden den and spend a few months in

repenting and getting ready for another good time. She was a devoted

Catholic, and was perhaps quite a model sort of a Christian as

Christians went then, in high life.

Tradition says she spent the last two years of her life in the strange

den I have been speaking of, after having indulged herself in one final,

triumphant, and satisfying spree. She shut herself up there, without

company, and without even a servant, and so abjured and forsook the

world. In her little bit of a kitchen she did her own cooking; she wore

a hair shirt next the skin, and castigated herself with whips--these

aids to grace are exhibited there yet. She prayed and told her beads,

in another little room, before a waxen Virgin niched in a little box

against the wall; she bedded herself like a slave.

In another small room is an unpainted wooden table, and behind it sit

half-life-size waxen figures of the Holy Family, made by the very worst

artist that ever lived, perhaps, and clothed in gaudy, flimsy drapery.

[1] The margravine used to bring her meals to this table and DINE WITH

THE HOLY FAMILY. What an idea that was! What a grisly spectacle it must

have been! Imagine it: Those rigid, shock-headed figures, with corpsy

complexions and fish glass eyes, occupying one side of the table in the

constrained attitudes and dead fixedness that distinguish all men that

are born of wax, and this wrinkled, smoldering old fire-eater occupying

the other side, mumbling her prayers and munching her sausages in the

ghostly stillness and shadowy indistinctness of a winter twilight. It

makes one feel crawly even to think of it.

[1] The Savior was represented as a lad of about fifteen

years of age. This figure had lost one eye.

In this sordid place, and clothed, bedded, and fed like a pauper, this

strange princess lived and worshiped during two years, and in it she

died. Two or three hundred years ago, this would have made the poor den

holy ground; and the church would have set up a miracle-factory there

and made plenty of money out of it. The den could be moved into some

portions of France and made a good property even now.

A TRAMP ABROAD, Part 4.

By Mark Twain

(Samuel L. Clemens)

First published in 1880

Illustrations taken from an 1880 First Edition

* * * * * *

ILLUSTRATIONS:

1.    PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR

2.    TITIAN'S MOSES

3.    THE AUTHOR'S MEMORIES

119.  BLACK FOREST GRANDEE

120.  THE GRANDEE'S DAUGHTER

121.  RICH OLD HUSS

122.  GRETCHEN

123.  PAUL HOCH

124.  HANS SCHMIDT

125.  ELECTING A NEW MEMBER

126.  OVERCOMING OBSTACLES

127.  FRIENDS

128.  PROSPECTING

129.  TAIL PIECE

130.  A GENERAL HOWL

131.  SEEKING A SITUATION

132.  STANDING GUARD

133.  RESULT OF A JOKE

134.  DESCENDING A FARM

155.  A GERMAN SABBATH

136.  AN OBJECT OF SYMPATHY

137.  A NON-CLASSICAL STYLE

138.  THE TRADITIONAL CHAMOIS

139.  HUNTING CHAMOIS THE TRUE WAY

140.  CHAMOIS HUNTER AS REPORTED

141.  MARKING ALPENSTOCKS

142.  IS SHE EIGHTEEN OR TWENTY

143.  I KNEW I WASN'T MISTAKEN

144.  HARRIS ASTONISHED

145.  TAIL PIECE

146.  THE LION OF LUCERNE

147.  HE LIKED CLOCKS

148.  “I WILL TELL YOU”

149.  COULDN'T WAIT

150.  DIDN'T CARE FOR STYLE

151.  A PAIR BETTER THAN FOUR

152.  TWO WASN'T NECESSARY

153.  JUST THE TRICK

154.  GOING TO MAKE THEM STARE

155.  NOT THROWN AWAY

156.  WHAT THE DOCTOR RECOMMENDED

157.  WANTED TO FEEL SAFE

158.  PREFERRED TO TRAMP ON FOOT

159.  DERN A DOG, ANYWAY

160.  TAIL PIECE

161.  THE GLACIER GARDEN

162.  LAKE AND MOUNTAINS (MONT PILATUS)

163.  MOUNTAIN PATHS

164.  “YOU'RE AN AMERICAN--SO AM I”

165.  ENTERPRISE

166.  THE CONSTANT SEARCHER

167.  THE MOUNTAIN BOY

168.  THE ENGLISHMAN

169.  THE JODLER

170.  ANOTHER VOCALIST

171.  THE FELSENTHOR

172.  A VIEW FROM THE STATION

173.  LOST IN THE MIST

174.  THE RIGI-KULM HOTEL

175.  WHAT AWAKENED US

176.  A SUMMIT SUNRISE

177.  TAIL PIECE

CONTENTS:

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 Oranges

CHAPTER XXIII Off for a Day's Tramp--Tramping and Talking--Story

Telling--Dentistry in Camp--Nicodemus Dodge--Seeking a Situation--A

Butt for Jokes--Jimmy Finn's Skeleton--Descending a Farm--Unexpected

Notoriety

CHAPTER XXIV Sunday on the Continent--A Day of Rest--An Incident

at Church--An Object of Sympathy--Royalty at Church--Public Grounds

Concert--Power and Grades of Music--Hiring a Courier

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 Nationalities--An American

Party--An Unexpected Acquaintance--Getting Mixed Up--Following Blind

Trails--A Happy Half--hour--Defeat and Revenge

CHAPTER XXVI Commerce of Lucerne--Benefits of Martyrdom--A Bit of

History--The Home of Cuckoo Clocks--A Satisfactory Revenge--The Alan

Who Put Up at Gadsby's--A Forgotten Story--Wanted to be Postmaster--A

Tennessean at Washington--He Concluded to Stay A While--Application of

the Story

CHAPTER XXVII The Glacier Garden--Excursion on the Lake--Life on the

Mountains--A Specimen Tourist--“Where're you From?”--An Advertising

Dodge--A Righteous Verdict--The Guide-book Student--I Believe that's All

CHAPTER XXVIII The Rigi-Kulm--Its Ascent--Stripping for Business--A

Mountain Lad--An English Tourist--Railroad 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

CHAPTER XXII

[The Black Forest and Its Treasures]

From Baden-Baden we made the customary trip into the Black Forest. We

were on foot most of the time. One cannot describe those noble woods,

nor the feeling with which they inspire him. A feature of the feeling,

however, is a deep sense of contentment; another feature of it is a

buoyant, boyish gladness; and a third and very conspicuous feature of

it is one's sense of the remoteness of the work-day world and his entire

emancipation from it and its affairs.

Those woods stretch unbroken over a vast region; and everywhere they are

such dense woods, and so still, and so piney and fragrant. The stems of

the trees are trim and straight, and in many places all the ground is

hidden for miles under a thick cushion of moss of a vivid green color,

with not a decayed or ragged spot in its surface, and not a fallen leaf

or twig to mar its immaculate tidiness. A rich cathedral gloom pervades

the pillared aisles; so the stray flecks of sunlight that strike a trunk

here and a bough yonder are strongly accented, and when they strike the

moss they fairly seem to burn. But the weirdest effect, and the most

enchanting is that produced by the diffused light of the low afternoon

sun; no single ray is able to pierce its way in, then, but the diffused

light takes color from moss and foliage, and pervades the place like

a faint, green-tinted mist, the theatrical fire of fairyland. The

suggestion of mystery and the supernatural which haunts the forest at

all times is intensified by this unearthly glow.

We found the Black Forest farmhouses and villages all that the Black

Forest stories have pictured them. The first genuine specimen which

we came upon was the mansion of a rich farmer and member of the Common

Council of the parish or district. He was an important personage in the

land and so was his wife also, of course.

His daughter was the “catch” of the region, and she may be already

entering into immortality as the heroine of one of Auerbach's novels,

for all I know. We shall see, for if he puts her in I shall recognize

her by her Black Forest clothes, and her burned complexion, her plump

figure, her fat hands, her dull expression, her gentle spirit,

her generous feet, her bonnetless head, and the plaited tails of

hemp-colored hair hanging down her back.

The house was big enough for a hotel; it was a hundred feet long and

fifty wide, and ten feet high, from ground to eaves; but from the eaves

to the comb of the mighty roof was as much as forty feet, or maybe even

more. This roof was of ancient mud-colored straw thatch a foot thick,

and was covered all over, except in a few trifling spots, with a

thriving and luxurious growth of green vegetation, mainly moss. The

mossless spots were places where repairs had been made by the insertion

of bright new masses of yellow straw. The eaves projected far down, like

sheltering, hospitable wings. Across the gable that fronted the road,

and about ten feet above the ground, ran a narrow porch, with a wooden

railing; a row of small windows filled with very small panes looked upon

the porch. Above were two or three other little windows, one clear up

under the sharp apex of the roof. Before the ground-floor door was a

huge pile of manure. The door of the second-story room on the side of

the house was open, and occupied by the rear elevation of a cow. Was

this probably the drawing-room? All of the front half of the house from

the ground up seemed to be occupied by the people, the cows, and the

chickens, and all the rear half by draught-animals and hay. But the

chief feature, all around this house, was the big heaps of manure.

We became very familiar with the fertilizer in the Forest. We fell

unconsciously into the habit of judging of a man's station in life

by this outward and eloquent sign. Sometimes we said, “Here is a poor

devil, this is manifest.” When we saw a stately accumulation, we said,

“Here is a banker.” When we encountered a country-seat surrounded by an

Alpine pomp of manure, we said, “Doubtless a duke lives here.”

The importance of this feature has not been properly magnified in the

Black Forest stories. Manure is evidently the Black-Forester's main

treasure--his coin, his jewel, his pride, his Old Master, his ceramics,

his bric-a-brac, his darling, his title to public consideration, envy,

veneration, and his first solicitude when he gets ready to make his

will. The true Black Forest novel, if it is ever written, will be

skeletoned somewhat in this way:

SKELETON FOR A BLACK FOREST NOVEL

Rich old farmer, named Huss.

Has inherited great wealth of manure, and by diligence has added to it.

It is double-starred in Baedeker. [1] The Black forest artist paints

it--his masterpiece. The king comes to see it. Gretchen Huss,

daughter and heiress. Paul Hoch, young neighbor, suitor for Gretchen's

hand--ostensibly; he really wants the manure.

Hoch has a good many cart-loads of the Black Forest currency himself,

and therefore is a good catch; but he is sordid, mean, and without

sentiment, whereas Gretchen is all sentiment and poetry. Hans Schmidt,

young neighbor, full of sentiment, full of poetry, loves Gretchen,

Gretchen loves him. But he has no manure. Old Huss forbids him in the

house. His heart breaks, he goes away to die in the woods, far from the

cruel world--for he says, bitterly, “What is man, without manure?”

1. When Baedeker's guide-books mention a thing and put two stars (**)

after it, it means well worth visiting. M.T.

[Interval of six months.]

Paul Hoch comes to old Huss and says, “I am at last as rich as you

required--come and view the pile.” Old Huss views it and says, “It is

sufficient--take her and be happy,”--meaning Gretchen.

[Interval of two weeks.]

Wedding party assembled in old Huss's drawing-room. Hoch placid and

content, Gretchen weeping over her hard fate. Enter old Huss's head

bookkeeper. Huss says fiercely, “I gave you three weeks to find out why

your books don't balance, and to prove that you are not a defaulter;

the time is up--find me the missing property or you go to prison as

a thief.” Bookkeeper: “I have found it.” “Where?” Bookkeeper

(sternly--tragically): “In the bridegroom's pile!--behold the thief--see

him blench and tremble!” [Sensation.] Paul Hoch: “Lost, lost!”--falls

over the cow in a swoon and is handcuffed. Gretchen: “Saved!” Falls over

the calf in a swoon of joy, but is caught in the arms of Hans Schmidt,

who springs in at that moment. Old Huss: “What, you here, varlet? Unhand

the maid and quit the place.” Hans (still supporting the insensible

girl): “Never! Cruel old man, know that I come with claims which even

you cannot despise.”

Huss: “What, YOU? name them.”

Hans: “Listen then. The world has forsaken me, I forsook the world, I

wandered in the solitude of the forest, longing for death but finding

none. I fed upon roots, and in my bitterness I dug for the bitterest,

loathing the sweeter kind. Digging, three days agone, I struck a manure

mine!--a Golconda, a limitless Bonanza, of solid manure! I can buy you

ALL, and have mountain ranges of manure left! Ha-ha, NOW thou smilest a

smile!” [Immense sensation.] Exhibition of specimens from the mine. Old

Huss (enthusiastically): “Wake her up, shake her up, noble young man,

she is yours!” Wedding takes place on the spot; bookkeeper restored to

his office and emoluments; Paul Hoch led off to jail. The Bonanza king

of the Black Forest lives to a good old age, blessed with the love of

his wife and of his twenty-seven children, and the still sweeter envy of

everybody around.

We took our noon meal of fried trout one day at the Plow Inn, in a very

pretty village (Ottenhoefen), and then went into the public room to rest

and smoke. There we found nine or ten Black Forest grandees assembled

around a table. They were the Common Council of the parish. They had

gathered there at eight o'clock that morning to elect a new member, and

they had now been drinking beer four hours at the new member's expense.

They were men of fifty or sixty years of age, with grave good-natured

faces, and were all dressed in the costume made familiar to us by the

Black Forest stories; broad, round-topped black felt hats with the brims

curled up all round; long red waistcoats with large metal buttons, black

alpaca coats with the waists up between the shoulders. There were no

speeches, there was but little talk, there were no frivolities; the

Council filled themselves gradually, steadily, but surely, with beer,

and conducted themselves with sedate decorum, as became men of position,

men of influence, men of manure.

We had a hot afternoon tramp up the valley, along the grassy bank of a

rushing stream of clear water, past farmhouses, water-mills, and no end

of wayside crucifixes and saints and Virgins. These crucifixes, etc.,

are set up in memory of departed friends, by survivors, and are almost

as frequent as telegraph-poles are in other lands.

We followed the carriage-road, and had our usual luck; we traveled under

a beating sun, and always saw the shade leave the shady places before we

could get to them. In all our wanderings we seldom managed to strike

a piece of road at its time for being shady. We had a particularly hot

time of it on that particular afternoon, and with no comfort but what we

could get out of the fact that the peasants at work away up on the steep

mountainsides above our heads were even worse off than we were. By and

by it became impossible to endure the intolerable glare and heat

any longer; so we struck across the ravine and entered the deep cool

twilight of the forest, to hunt for what the guide-book called the “old

road.”

We found an old road, and it proved eventually to be the right one,

though we followed it at the time with the conviction that it was the

wrong one. If it was the wrong one there could be no use in hurrying;

therefore we did not hurry, but sat down frequently on the soft moss and

enjoyed the restful quiet and shade of the forest solitudes. There

had been distractions in the carriage-road--school-children, peasants,

wagons, troops of pedestrianizing students from all over Germany--but we

had the old road to ourselves.

Now and then, while we rested, we watched the laborious ant at his work.

I found nothing new in him--certainly nothing to change my opinion of

him. It seems to me that in the matter of intellect the ant must be a

strangely overrated bird. During many summers, now, I have watched him,

when I ought to have been in better business, and I have not yet come

across a living ant that seemed to have any more sense than a dead one.

I refer to the ordinary ant, of course; I have had no experience of

those wonderful Swiss and African ones which vote, keep drilled armies,

hold slaves, and dispute about religion. Those particular ants may be

all that the naturalist paints them, but I am persuaded that the

average ant is a sham. I admit his industry, of course; he is the

hardest-working creature in the world--when anybody is looking--but

his leather-headedness is the point I make against him. He goes out

foraging, he makes a capture, and then what does he do? Go home? No--he

goes anywhere but home. He doesn't know where home is. His home may be

only three feet away--no matter, he can't find it. He makes his capture,

as I have said; it is generally something which can be of no sort of

use to himself or anybody else; it is usually seven times bigger than

it ought to be; he hunts out the awkwardest place to take hold of it;

he lifts it bodily up in the air by main force, and starts; not toward

home, but in the opposite direction; not calmly and wisely, but with a

frantic haste which is wasteful of his strength; he fetches up against

a pebble, and instead of going around it, he climbs over it backward

dragging his booty after him, tumbles down on the other side, jumps up

in a passion, kicks the dust off his clothes, moistens his hands, grabs

his property viciously, yanks it this way, then that, shoves it ahead

of him a moment, turns tail and lugs it after him another moment,

gets madder and madder, then presently hoists it into the air and goes

tearing away in an entirely new direction; comes to a weed; it never

occurs to him to go around it; no, he must climb it; and he does climb

it, dragging his worthless property to the top--which is as bright

a thing to do as it would be for me to carry a sack of flour from

Heidelberg to Paris by way of Strasburg steeple; when he gets up there

he finds that that is not the place; takes a cursory glance at the

scenery and either climbs down again or tumbles down, and starts off

once more--as usual, in a new direction. At the end of half an hour, he

fetches up within six inches of the place he started from and lays his

burden down; meantime he has been over all the ground for two yards

around, and climbed all the weeds and pebbles he came across. Now he

wipes the sweat from his brow, strokes his limbs, and then marches

aimlessly off, in as violently a hurry as ever. He does not remember to

have ever seen it before; he looks around to see which is not the way

home, grabs his bundle and starts; he goes through the same adventures

he had before; finally stops to rest, and a friend comes along.

Evidently the friend remarks that a last year's grasshopper leg is a

very noble acquisition, and inquires where he got it.

Evidently the proprietor does not remember exactly where he did get

it, but thinks he got it “around here somewhere.” Evidently the friend

contracts to help him freight it home. Then, with a judgment peculiarly

antic (pun not intended), they take hold of opposite ends of that

grasshopper leg and begin to tug with all their might in opposite

directions. Presently they take a rest and confer together. They decide

that something is wrong, they can't make out what. Then they go at

it again, just as before. Same result. Mutual recriminations follow.

Evidently each accuses the other of being an obstructionist. They lock

themselves together and chew each other's jaws for a while; then they

roll and tumble on the ground till one loses a horn or a leg and has to

haul off for repairs. They make up and go to work again in the same old

insane way, but the crippled ant is at a disadvantage; tug as he may,

the other one drags off the booty and him at the end of it. Instead

of giving up, he hangs on, and gets his shins bruised against every

obstruction that comes in the way. By and by, when that grasshopper leg

has been dragged all over the same old ground once more, it is finally

dumped at about the spot where it originally lay, the two perspiring

ants inspect it thoughtfully and decide that dried grasshopper legs

are a poor sort of property after all, and then each starts off in a

different direction to see if he can't find an old nail or something

else that is heavy enough to afford entertainment and at the same time

valueless enough to make an ant want to own it.

There in the Black Forest, on the mountainside, I saw an ant go through

with such a performance as this with a dead spider of fully ten times

his own weight. The spider was not quite dead, but too far gone to

resist. He had a round body the size of a pea. The little ant--observing

that I was noticing--turned him on his back, sunk his fangs into his

throat, lifted him into the air and started vigorously off with him,

stumbling over little pebbles, stepping on the spider's legs and

tripping himself up, dragging him backward, shoving him bodily ahead,

dragging him up stones six inches high instead of going around them,

climbing weeds twenty times his own height and jumping from their

summits--and finally leaving him in the middle of the road to be

confiscated by any other fool of an ant that wanted him. I measured the

ground which this ass traversed, and arrived at the conclusion that what

he had accomplished inside of twenty minutes would constitute some

such job as this--relatively speaking--for a man; to wit: to strap two

eight-hundred-pound horses together, carry them eighteen hundred feet,

mainly over (not around) boulders averaging six feet high, and in the

course of the journey climb up and jump from the top of one precipice

like Niagara, and three steeples, each a hundred and twenty feet high;

and then put the horses down, in an exposed place, without anybody to

watch them, and go off to indulge in some other idiotic miracle for

vanity's sake.

Science has recently discovered that the ant does not lay up anything

for winter use. This will knock him out of literature, to some extent.

He does not work, except when people are looking, and only then when the

observer has a green, naturalistic look, and seems to be taking notes.

This amounts to deception, and will injure him for the Sunday-schools.

He has not judgment enough to know what is good to eat from what isn't.

This amounts to ignorance, and will impair the world's respect for

him. He cannot stroll around a stump and find his way home again. This

amounts to idiocy, and once the damaging fact is established, thoughtful

people will cease to look up to him, the sentimental will cease to

fondle him. His vaunted industry is but a vanity and of no effect, since

he never gets home with anything he starts with. This disposes of the

last remnant of his reputation and wholly destroys his main usefulness

as a moral agent, since it will make the sluggard hesitate to go to him

any more. It is strange, beyond comprehension, that so manifest a humbug

as the ant has been able to fool so many nations and keep it up so many

ages without being found out.

The ant is strong, but we saw another strong thing, where we had not

suspected the presence of much muscular power before. A toadstool--that

vegetable which springs to full growth in a single night--had torn loose

and lifted a matted mass of pine needles and dirt of twice its own bulk

into the air, and supported it there, like a column supporting a shed.

Ten thousand toadstools, with the right purchase, could lift a man, I

suppose. But what good would it do?

All our afternoon's progress had been uphill. About five or half past we

reached the summit, and all of a sudden the dense curtain of the forest

parted and we looked down into a deep and beautiful gorge and out over a

wide panorama of wooded mountains with their summits shining in the sun

and their glade-furrowed sides dimmed with purple shade. The gorge under

our feet--called Allerheiligen--afforded room in the grassy level at its

head for a cozy and delightful human nest, shut away from the world and

its botherations, and consequently the monks of the old times had not

failed to spy it out; and here were the brown and comely ruins of their

church and convent to prove that priests had as fine an instinct seven

hundred years ago in ferreting out the choicest nooks and corners in a

land as priests have today.

A big hotel crowds the ruins a little, now, and drives a brisk trade

with summer tourists. We descended into the gorge and had a supper which

would have been very satisfactory if the trout had not been boiled.

The Germans are pretty sure to boil a trout or anything else if left to

their own devices. This is an argument of some value in support of the

theory that they were the original colonists of the wild islands of the

coast of Scotland. A schooner laden with oranges was wrecked upon one

of those islands a few years ago, and the gentle savages rendered the

captain such willing assistance that he gave them as many oranges as

they wanted. Next day he asked them how they liked them. They shook

their heads and said:

“Baked, they were tough; and even boiled, they warn't things for a

hungry man to hanker after.”

We went down the glen after supper. It is beautiful--a mixture of sylvan

loveliness and craggy wildness. A limpid torrent goes whistling down

the glen, and toward the foot of it winds through a narrow cleft between

lofty precipices and hurls itself over a succession of falls. After one

passes the last of these he has a backward glimpse at the falls which

is very pleasing--they rise in a seven-stepped stairway of foamy and

glittering cascades, and make a picture which is as charming as it is

unusual.

CHAPTER XXIII

[Nicodemus Dodge and the Skeleton]

We were satisfied that we could walk to Oppenau in one day, now that

we were in practice; so we set out the next morning after breakfast

determined to do it. It was all the way downhill, and we had the

loveliest summer weather for it. So we set the pedometer and then

stretched away on an easy, regular stride, down through the cloven

forest, drawing in the fragrant breath of the morning in deep refreshing

draughts, and wishing we might never have anything to do forever but

walk to Oppenau and keep on doing it and then doing it over again.

Now, the true charm of pedestrianism does not lie in the walking, or

in the scenery, but in the talking. The walking is good to time the

movement of the tongue by, and to keep the blood and the brain stirred

up and active; the scenery and the woodsy smells are good to bear in

upon a man an unconscious and unobtrusive charm and solace to eye and

soul and sense; but the supreme pleasure comes from the talk. It is no

matter whether one talks wisdom or nonsense, the case is the same, the

bulk of the enjoyment lies in the wagging of the gladsome jaw and the

flapping of the sympathetic ear.

And what motley variety of subjects a couple of people will casually

rake over in the course of a day's tramp! There being no constraint,

a change of subject is always in order, and so a body is not likely to

keep pegging at a single topic until it grows tiresome. We discussed

everything we knew, during the first fifteen or twenty minutes, that

morning, and then branched out into the glad, free, boundless realm of

the things we were not certain about.

Harris said that if the best writer in the world once got the slovenly

habit of doubling up his “haves” he could never get rid of it while he

lived. That is to say, if a man gets the habit of saying “I should

have liked to have known more about it” instead of saying simply and

sensibly, “I should have liked to know more about it,” that man's

disease is incurable. Harris said that his sort of lapse is to be found

in every copy of every newspaper that has ever been printed in English,

and in almost all of our books. He said he had observed it in Kirkham's

grammar and in Macaulay. Harris believed that milk-teeth are commoner in

men's mouths than those “doubled-up haves.”

I do not know that there have not been moments in the course of the

present session when I should have been very glad to have accepted the

proposal of my noble friend, and to have exchanged parts in some of our

evenings of work.--[From a Speech of the English Chancellor of the

Exchequer, August, 1879.]

That changed the subject to dentistry. I said I believed the average

man dreaded tooth-pulling more than amputation, and that he would yell

quicker under the former operation than he would under the latter. The

philosopher Harris said that the average man would not yell in either

case if he had an audience. Then he continued:

“When our brigade first went into camp on the Potomac, we used to be

brought up standing, occasionally, by an ear-splitting howl of anguish.

That meant that a soldier was getting a tooth pulled in a tent. But the

surgeons soon changed that; they instituted open-air dentistry. There

never was a howl afterward--that is, from the man who was having the

tooth pulled. At the daily dental hour there would always be about five

hundred soldiers gathered together in the neighborhood of that dental

chair waiting to see the performance--and help; and the moment the

surgeon took a grip on the candidate's tooth and began to lift, every

one of those five hundred rascals would clap his hand to his jaw and

begin to hop around on one leg and howl with all the lungs he had!

It was enough to raise your hair to hear that variegated and enormous

unanimous caterwaul burst out!

With so big and so derisive an audience as that, a sufferer wouldn't

emit a sound though you pulled his head off. The surgeons said that

pretty often a patient was compelled to laugh, in the midst of his

pangs, but that they had never caught one crying out, after the open-air

exhibition was instituted.”

Dental surgeons suggested doctors, doctors suggested death, death

suggested skeletons--and so, by a logical process the conversation

melted out of one of these subjects and into the next, until the topic

of skeletons raised up Nicodemus Dodge out of the deep grave in my

memory where he had lain buried and forgotten for twenty-five years.

When I was a boy in a printing-office in Missouri, a loose-jointed,

long-legged, tow-headed, jeans-clad countrified cub of about sixteen

lounged in one day, and without removing his hands from the depths of

his trousers pockets or taking off his faded ruin of a slouch hat, whose

broken rim hung limp and ragged about his eyes and ears like a bug-eaten

cabbage leaf, stared indifferently around, then leaned his hip against

the editor's table, crossed his mighty brogans, aimed at a distant

fly from a crevice in his upper teeth, laid him low, and said with

composure:

“Whar's the boss?”

“I am the boss,” said the editor, following this curious bit of

architecture wonderingly along up to its clock-face with his eye.

“Don't want anybody fur to learn the business, 'tain't likely?”

“Well, I don't know. Would you like to learn it?”

“Pap's so po' he cain't run me no mo', so I want to git a show somers if

I kin, 'taint no diffunce what--I'm strong and hearty, and I don't turn

my back on no kind of work, hard nur soft.”

“Do you think you would like to learn the printing business?”

“Well, I don't re'ly k'yer a durn what I DO learn, so's I git a chance

fur to make my way. I'd jist as soon learn print'n's anything.”

“Can you read?”

“Yes--middlin'.”

“Write?”

“Well, I've seed people could lay over me thar.”

“Cipher?”

“Not good enough to keep store, I don't reckon, but up as fur as

twelve-times-twelve I ain't no slouch. 'Tother side of that is what gits

me.”

“Where is your home?”

“I'm f'm old Shelby.”

“What's your father's religious denomination?”

“Him? Oh, he's a blacksmith.”

“No, no--I don't mean his trade. What's his RELIGIOUS DENOMINATION?”

“OH--I didn't understand you befo'. He's a Freemason.”

“No, no, you don't get my meaning yet. What I mean is, does he belong to

any CHURCH?”

“NOW you're talkin'! Couldn't make out what you was a-tryin' to git

through yo' head no way. B'long to a CHURCH! Why, boss, he's ben the

pizenest kind of Free-will Babtis' for forty year. They ain't no pizener

ones 'n what HE is. Mighty good man, pap is. Everybody says that. If

they said any diffrunt they wouldn't say it whar I wuz--not MUCH they

wouldn't.”

“What is your own religion?”

“Well, boss, you've kind o' got me, there--and yit you hain't got me so

mighty much, nuther. I think 't if a feller he'ps another feller when

he's in trouble, and don't cuss, and don't do no mean things, nur

noth'n' he ain' no business to do, and don't spell the Saviour's name

with a little g, he ain't runnin' no resks--he's about as saift as he

b'longed to a church.”

“But suppose he did spell it with a little g--what then?”

“Well, if he done it a-purpose, I reckon he wouldn't stand no chance--he

OUGHTN'T to have no chance, anyway, I'm most rotten certain 'bout that.”

“What is your name?”

“Nicodemus Dodge.”

“I think maybe you'll do, Nicodemus. We'll give you a trial, anyway.”

“All right.”

“When would you like to begin?”

“Now.”

So, within ten minutes after we had first glimpsed this nondescript he

was one of us, and with his coat off and hard at it.

Beyond that end of our establishment which was furthest from the street,

was a deserted garden, pathless, and thickly grown with the bloomy and

villainous “jimpson” weed and its common friend the stately sunflower.

In the midst of this mournful spot was a decayed and aged little “frame”

house with but one room, one window, and no ceiling--it had been a

smoke-house a generation before. Nicodemus was given this lonely and

ghostly den as a bedchamber.

The village smarties recognized a treasure in Nicodemus, right away--a

butt to play jokes on. It was easy to see that he was inconceivably

green and confiding. George Jones had the glory of perpetrating the

first joke on him; he gave him a cigar with a firecracker in it and

winked to the crowd to come; the thing exploded presently and swept away

the bulk of Nicodemus's eyebrows and eyelashes. He simply said:

“I consider them kind of seeg'yars dangersome,”--and seemed to suspect

nothing. The next evening Nicodemus waylaid George and poured a bucket

of ice-water over him.

One day, while Nicodemus was in swimming, Tom McElroy “tied” his

clothes. Nicodemus made a bonfire of Tom's by way of retaliation.

A third joke was played upon Nicodemus a day or two later--he walked

up the middle aisle of the village church, Sunday night, with a staring

handbill pinned between his shoulders. The joker spent the remainder

of the night, after church, in the cellar of a deserted house, and

Nicodemus sat on the cellar door till toward breakfast-time to make

sure that the prisoner remembered that if any noise was made, some rough

treatment would be the consequence. The cellar had two feet of stagnant

water in it, and was bottomed with six inches of soft mud.

But I wander from the point. It was the subject of skeletons that

brought this boy back to my recollection. Before a very long time

had elapsed, the village smarties began to feel an uncomfortable

consciousness of not having made a very shining success out of their

attempts on the simpleton from “old Shelby.” Experimenters grew scarce

and chary. Now the young doctor came to the rescue. There was delight

and applause when he proposed to scare Nicodemus to death, and explained

how he was going to do it. He had a noble new skeleton--the skeleton of

the late and only local celebrity, Jimmy Finn, the village drunkard--a

grisly piece of property which he had bought of Jimmy Finn himself, at

auction, for fifty dollars, under great competition, when Jimmy lay very

sick in the tan-yard a fortnight before his death. The fifty dollars had

gone promptly for whiskey and had considerably hurried up the change of

ownership in the skeleton. The doctor would put Jimmy Finn's skeleton in

Nicodemus's bed!

This was done--about half past ten in the evening. About Nicodemus's

usual bedtime--midnight--the village jokers came creeping stealthily

through the jimpson weeds and sunflowers toward the lonely frame den.

They reached the window and peeped in. There sat the long-legged pauper,

on his bed, in a very short shirt, and nothing more; he was dangling

his legs contentedly back and forth, and wheezing the music of “Camptown

Races” out of a paper-overlaid comb which he was pressing against his

mouth; by him lay a new jewsharp, a new top, and solid india-rubber

ball, a handful of painted marbles, five pounds of “store” candy, and

a well-gnawed slab of gingerbread as big and as thick as a volume of

sheet-music. He had sold the skeleton to a traveling quack for three

dollars and was enjoying the result!

Just as we had finished talking about skeletons and were drifting into

the subject of fossils, Harris and I heard a shout, and glanced up the

steep hillside. We saw men and women standing away up there looking

frightened, and there was a bulky object tumbling and floundering down

the steep slope toward us. We got out of the way, and when the object

landed in the road it proved to be a boy. He had tripped and fallen, and

there was nothing for him to do but trust to luck and take what might

come.

When one starts to roll down a place like that, there is no stopping

till the bottom is reached. Think of people FARMING on a slant which is

so steep that the best you can say of it--if you want to be fastidiously

accurate--is, that it is a little steeper than a ladder and not quite

so steep as a mansard roof. But that is what they do. Some of the little

farms on the hillside opposite Heidelberg were stood up “edgeways.”

The boy was wonderfully jolted up, and his head was bleeding, from cuts

which it had got from small stones on the way.

Harris and I gathered him up and set him on a stone, and by that time

the men and women had scampered down and brought his cap.

Men, women, and children flocked out from neighboring cottages

and joined the crowd; the pale boy was petted, and stared at, and

commiserated, and water was brought for him to drink and bathe his

bruises in. And such another clatter of tongues! All who had seen the

catastrophe were describing it at once, and each trying to talk louder

than his neighbor; and one youth of a superior genius ran a little way

up the hill, called attention, tripped, fell, rolled down among us, and

thus triumphantly showed exactly how the thing had been done.

Harris and I were included in all the descriptions; how we were coming

along; how Hans Gross shouted; how we looked up startled; how we saw

Peter coming like a cannon-shot; how judiciously we got out of the way,

and let him come; and with what presence of mind we picked him up and

brushed him off and set him on a rock when the performance was over.

We were as much heroes as anybody else, except Peter, and were so

recognized; we were taken with Peter and the populace to Peter's

mother's cottage, and there we ate bread and cheese, and drank milk and

beer with everybody, and had a most sociable good time; and when we left

we had a handshake all around, and were receiving and shouting back LEB'

WOHL's until a turn in the road separated us from our cordial and kindly

new friends forever.

We accomplished our undertaking. At half past eight in the evening

we stepped into Oppenau, just eleven hours and a half out of

Allerheiligen--one hundred and forty-six miles. This is the distance by

pedometer; the guide-book and the Imperial Ordinance maps make it only

ten and a quarter--a surprising blunder, for these two authorities are

usually singularly accurate in the matter of distances.

CHAPTER XXIV

[I Protect the Empress of Germany]

That was a thoroughly satisfactory walk--and the only one we were ever

to have which was all the way downhill. We took the train next morning

and returned to Baden-Baden through fearful fogs of dust. Every seat was

crowded, too; for it was Sunday, and consequently everybody was taking

a “pleasure” excursion. Hot! the sky was an oven--and a sound one,

too, with no cracks in it to let in any air. An odd time for a pleasure

excursion, certainly!

Sunday is the great day on the continent--the free day, the happy day.

One can break the Sabbath in a hundred ways without committing any sin.

We do not work on Sunday, because the commandment forbids it; the

Germans do not work on Sunday, because the commandment forbids it. We

rest on Sunday, because the commandment requires it; the Germans rest on

Sunday because the commandment requires it. But in the definition of

the word “rest” lies all the difference. With us, its Sunday meaning

is, stay in the house and keep still; with the Germans its Sunday and

week-day meanings seem to be the same--rest the TIRED PART, and never

mind the other parts of the frame; rest the tired part, and use the

means best calculated to rest that particular part. Thus: If one's

duties have kept him in the house all the week, it will rest him to

be out on Sunday; if his duties have required him to read weighty and

serious matter all the week, it will rest him to read light matter on

Sunday; if his occupation has busied him with death and funerals all the

week, it will rest him to go to the theater Sunday night and put in two

or three hours laughing at a comedy; if he is tired with digging ditches

or felling trees all the week, it will rest him to lie quiet in the

house on Sunday; if the hand, the arm, the brain, the tongue, or any

other member, is fatigued with inanition, it is not to be rested by

addeding a day's inanition; but if a member is fatigued with exertion,

inanition is the right rest for it. Such is the way in which the Germans

seem to define the word “rest”; that is to say, they rest a member by

recreating, recuperating, restoring its forces. But our definition is

less broad. We all rest alike on Sunday--by secluding ourselves and

keeping still, whether that is the surest way to rest the most of us or

not. The Germans make the actors, the preachers, etc., work on Sunday.

We encourage the preachers, the editors, the printers, etc., to work on

Sunday, and imagine that none of the sin of it falls upon us; but I do

not know how we are going to get around the fact that if it is wrong for

the printer to work at his trade on Sunday it must be equally wrong for

the preacher to work at his, since the commandment has made no exception

in his favor. We buy Monday morning's paper and read it, and thus

encourage Sunday printing. But I shall never do it again.

The Germans remember the Sabbath-day to keep it holy, by abstaining

from work, as commanded; we keep it holy by abstaining from work, as

commanded, and by also abstaining from play, which is not commanded.

Perhaps we constructively BREAK the command to rest, because the resting

we do is in most cases only a name, and not a fact.

These reasonings have sufficed, in a measure, to mend the rent in my

conscience which I made by traveling to Baden-Baden that Sunday. We

arrived in time to furbish up and get to the English church before

services began. We arrived in considerable style, too, for the landlord

had ordered the first carriage that could be found, since there was no

time to lose, and our coachman was so splendidly liveried that we were

probably mistaken for a brace of stray dukes; why else were we honored

with a pew all to ourselves, away up among the very elect at the left of

the chancel? That was my first thought. In the pew directly in front of

us sat an elderly lady, plainly and cheaply dressed; at her side sat

a young lady with a very sweet face, and she also was quite simply

dressed; but around us and about us were clothes and jewels which it

would do anybody's heart good to worship in.

I thought it was pretty manifest that the elderly lady was embarrassed

at finding herself in such a conspicuous place arrayed in such cheap

apparel; I began to feel sorry for her and troubled about her. She

tried to seem very busy with her prayer-book and her responses, and

unconscious that she was out of place, but I said to myself, “She is

not succeeding--there is a distressed tremulousness in her voice which

betrays increasing embarrassment.” Presently the Savior's name was

mentioned, and in her flurry she lost her head completely, and rose and

courtesied, instead of making a slight nod as everybody else did. The

sympathetic blood surged to my temples and I turned and gave those fine

birds what I intended to be a beseeching look, but my feelings got the

better of me and changed it into a look which said, “If any of you pets

of fortune laugh at this poor soul, you will deserve to be flayed for

it.” Things went from bad to worse, and I shortly found myself mentally

taking the unfriended lady under my protection. My mind was wholly upon

her. I forgot all about the sermon. Her embarrassment took stronger

and stronger hold upon her; she got to snapping the lid of her

smelling-bottle--it made a loud, sharp sound, but in her trouble she

snapped and snapped away, unconscious of what she was doing. The last

extremity was reached when the collection-plate began its rounds; the

moderate people threw in pennies, the nobles and the rich contributed

silver, but she laid a twenty-mark gold piece upon the book-rest before

her with a sounding slap! I said to myself, “She has parted with all her

little hoard to buy the consideration of these unpitying people--it is a

sorrowful spectacle.” I did not venture to look around this time; but

as the service closed, I said to myself, “Let them laugh, it is their

opportunity; but at the door of this church they shall see her step into

our fine carriage with us, and our gaudy coachman shall drive her home.”

Then she rose--and all the congregation stood while she walked down the

aisle. She was the Empress of Germany!

No--she had not been so much embarrassed as I had supposed. My

imagination had got started on the wrong scent, and that is always

hopeless; one is sure, then, to go straight on misinterpreting

everything, clear through to the end. The young lady with her imperial

Majesty was a maid of honor--and I had been taking her for one of her

boarders, all the time.

This is the only time I have ever had an Empress under my personal

protection; and considering my inexperience, I wonder I got through

with it so well. I should have been a little embarrassed myself if I had

known earlier what sort of a contract I had on my hands.

We found that the Empress had been in Baden-Baden several days. It is

said that she never attends any but the English form of church service.

I lay abed and read and rested from my journey's fatigues the remainder

of that Sunday, but I sent my agent to represent me at the afternoon

service, for I never allow anything to interfere with my habit of

attending church twice every Sunday.

There was a vast crowd in the public grounds that night to hear the band

play the “Fremersberg.” This piece tells one of the old legends of the

region; how a great noble of the Middle Ages got lost in the mountains,

and wandered about with his dogs in a violent storm, until at last

the faint tones of a monastery bell, calling the monks to a midnight

service, caught his ear, and he followed the direction the sounds came

from and was saved. A beautiful air ran through the music, without

ceasing, sometimes loud and strong, sometimes so soft that it could

hardly be distinguished--but it was always there; it swung grandly along

through the shrill whistling of the storm-wind, the rattling patter of

the rain, and the boom and crash of the thunder; it wound soft and low

through the lesser sounds, the distant ones, such as the throbbing

of the convent bell, the melodious winding of the hunter's horn, the

distressed bayings of his dogs, and the solemn chanting of the monks;

it rose again, with a jubilant ring, and mingled itself with the country

songs and dances of the peasants assembled in the convent hall to

cheer up the rescued huntsman while he ate his supper. The instruments

imitated all these sounds with a marvelous exactness. More than one man

started to raise his umbrella when the storm burst forth and the sheets

of mimic rain came driving by; it was hardly possible to keep from

putting your hand to your hat when the fierce wind began to rage and

shriek; and it was NOT possible to refrain from starting when those

sudden and charmingly real thunder-crashes were let loose.

I suppose the “Fremersberg” is a very low-grade music; I know, indeed,

that it MUST be low-grade music, because it delighted me, warmed me,

moved me, stirred me, uplifted me, enraptured me, that I was full of

cry all the time, and mad with enthusiasm. My soul had never had such a

scouring out since I was born. The solemn and majestic chanting of the

monks was not done by instruments, but by men's voices; and it rose

and fell, and rose again in that rich confusion of warring sounds, and

pulsing bells, and the stately swing of that ever-present enchanting

air, and it seemed to me that nothing but the very lowest of low-grade

music COULD be so divinely beautiful. The great crowd which the

“Fremersberg” had called out was another evidence that it was low-grade

music; for only the few are educated up to a point where high-grade

music gives pleasure. I have never heard enough classic music to be able

to enjoy it. I dislike the opera because I want to love it and can't.

I suppose there are two kinds of music--one kind which one feels, just

as an oyster might, and another sort which requires a higher faculty,

a faculty which must be assisted and developed by teaching. Yet if base

music gives certain of us wings, why should we want any other? But we

do. We want it because the higher and better like it. We want it without

giving it the necessary time and trouble; so we climb into that upper

tier, that dress-circle, by a lie; we PRETEND we like it. I know several

of that sort of people--and I propose to be one of them myself when I

get home with my fine European education.

And then there is painting. What a red rag is to a bull, Turner's “Slave

Ship” was to me, before I studied art. Mr. Ruskin is educated in art

up to a point where that picture throws him into as mad an ecstasy of

pleasure as it used to throw me into one of rage, last year, when I was

ignorant. His cultivation enables him--and me, now--to see water in that

glaring yellow mud, and natural effects in those lurid explosions

of mixed smoke and flame, and crimson sunset glories; it reconciles

him--and me, now--to the floating of iron cable-chains and other

unfloatable things; it reconciles us to fishes swimming around on top

of the mud--I mean the water. The most of the picture is a manifest

impossibility--that is to say, a lie; and only rigid cultivation can

enable a man to find truth in a lie. But it enabled Mr. Ruskin to do

it, and it has enabled me to do it, and I am thankful for it. A Boston

newspaper reporter went and took a look at the Slave Ship floundering

about in that fierce conflagration of reds and yellows, and said it

reminded him of a tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a platter

of tomatoes. In my then uneducated state, that went home to my

non-cultivation, and I thought here is a man with an unobstructed eye.

Mr. Ruskin would have said: This person is an ass. That is what I would

say, now.

Months after this was written, I happened into the National Gallery in

London, and soon became so fascinated with the Turner pictures that I

could hardly get away from the place. I went there often, afterward,

meaning to see the rest of the gallery, but the Turner spell was too

strong; it could not be shaken off. However, the Turners which attracted

me most did not remind me of the Slave Ship.

However, our business in Baden-Baden this time, was to join our courier.

I had thought it best to hire one, as we should be in Italy, by and by,

and we did not know the language. Neither did he. We found him at the

hotel, ready to take charge of us. I asked him if he was “all fixed.” He

said he was. That was very true. He had a trunk, two small satchels,

and an umbrella. I was to pay him fifty-five dollars a month and railway

fares. On the continent the railway fare on a trunk is about the same

it is on a man. Couriers do not have to pay any board and lodging. This

seems a great saving to the tourist--at first. It does not occur to the

tourist that SOMEBODY pays that man's board and lodging. It occurs to

him by and by, however, in one of his lucid moments.

CHAPTER XXV

[Hunted by the Little Chamois]

Next morning we left in the train for Switzerland, and reached Lucerne

about ten o'clock at night. The first discovery I made was that the

beauty of the lake had not been exaggerated. Within a day or two I made

another discovery. This was, that the lauded chamois is not a wild goat;

that it is not a horned animal; that it is not shy; that it does not

avoid human society; and that there is no peril in hunting it.

The chamois is a black or brown creature no bigger than a mustard seed;

you do not have to go after it, it comes after you; it arrives in vast

herds and skips and scampers all over your body, inside your clothes;

thus it is not shy, but extremely sociable; it is not afraid of man, on

the contrary, it will attack him; its bite is not dangerous, but neither

is it pleasant; its activity has not been overstated --if you try to put

your finger on it, it will skip a thousand times its own length at one

jump, and no eye is sharp enough to see where it lights. A great deal

of romantic nonsense has been written about the Swiss chamois and the

perils of hunting it, whereas the truth is that even women and children

hunt it, and fearlessly; indeed, everybody hunts it; the hunting is

going on all the time, day and night, in bed and out of it. It is poetic

foolishness to hunt it with a gun; very few people do that; there is

not one man in a million who can hit it with a gun. It is much easier to

catch it than it is to shoot it, and only the experienced chamois-hunter

can do either. Another common piece of exaggeration is that about the

“scarcity” of the chamois. It is the reverse of scarce. Droves of one

hundred million chamois are not unusual in the Swiss hotels. Indeed,

they are so numerous as to be a great pest. The romancers always dress

up the chamois-hunter in a fanciful and picturesque costume, whereas the

best way to hunt this game is to do it without any costume at all.

The article of commerce called chamois-skin is another fraud; nobody

could skin a chamois, it is too small. The creature is a humbug in

every way, and everything which has been written about it is sentimental

exaggeration. It was no pleasure to me to find the chamois out, for he

had been one of my pet illusions; all my life it had been my dream to

see him in his native wilds some day, and engage in the adventurous

sport of chasing him from cliff to cliff. It is no pleasure to me to

expose him, now, and destroy the reader's delight in him and respect for

him, but still it must be done, for when an honest writer discovers an

imposition it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from

its place of honor, no matter who suffers by it; any other course would

render him unworthy of the public confidence.

Lucerne is a charming place. It begins at the water's edge, with a

fringe of hotels, and scrambles up and spreads itself over two or three

sharp hills in a crowded, disorderly, but picturesque way, offering

to the eye a heaped-up confusion of red roofs, quaint gables, dormer

windows, toothpick steeples, with here and there a bit of ancient

embattled wall bending itself over the ridges, worm-fashion, and here

and there an old square tower of heavy masonry. And also here and there

a town clock with only one hand--a hand which stretches across the dial

and has no joint in it; such a clock helps out the picture, but you

cannot tell the time of day by it. Between the curving line of hotels

and the lake is a broad avenue with lamps and a double rank of low shade

trees. The lake-front is walled with masonry like a pier, and has

a railing, to keep people from walking overboard. All day long the

vehicles dash along the avenue, and nurses, children, and tourists sit

in the shade of the trees, or lean on the railing and watch the schools

of fishes darting about in the clear water, or gaze out over the lake

at the stately border of snow-hooded mountain peaks. Little pleasure

steamers, black with people, are coming and going all the time; and

everywhere one sees young girls and young men paddling about in fanciful

rowboats, or skimming along by the help of sails when there is any wind.

The front rooms of the hotels have little railed balconies, where one

may take his private luncheon in calm, cool comfort and look down upon

this busy and pretty scene and enjoy it without having to do any of the

work connected with it.

Most of the people, both male and female, are in walking costume, and

carry alpenstocks. Evidently, it is not considered safe to go about in

Switzerland, even in town, without an alpenstock. If the tourist forgets

and comes down to breakfast without his alpenstock he goes back and gets

it, and stands it up in the corner. When his touring in Switzerland is

finished, he does not throw that broomstick away, but lugs it home

with him, to the far corners of the earth, although this costs him

more trouble and bother than a baby or a courier could. You see, the

alpenstock is his trophy; his name is burned upon it; and if he has

climbed a hill, or jumped a brook, or traversed a brickyard with it, he

has the names of those places burned upon it, too.

Thus it is his regimental flag, so to speak, and bears the record of his

achievements. It is worth three francs when he buys it, but a bonanza

could not purchase it after his great deeds have been inscribed upon it.

There are artisans all about Switzerland whose trade it is to burn

these things upon the alpenstock of the tourist. And observe, a man is

respected in Switzerland according to his alpenstock. I found I could

get no attention there, while I carried an unbranded one. However,

branding is not expected, so I soon remedied that. The effect upon

the next detachment of tourists was very marked. I felt repaid for my

trouble.

Half of the summer horde in Switzerland is made up of English people;

the other half is made up of many nationalities, the Germans leading and

the Americans coming next. The Americans were not as numerous as I had

expected they would be.

The seven-thirty table d'hôte at the great Schweitzerhof furnished

a mighty array and variety of nationalities, but it offered a better

opportunity to observe costumes than people, for the multitude sat

at immensely long tables, and therefore the faces were mainly seen in

perspective; but the breakfasts were served at small round tables,

and then if one had the fortune to get a table in the midst of the

assemblage he could have as many faces to study as he could desire.

We used to try to guess out the nationalities, and generally succeeded

tolerably well. Sometimes we tried to guess people's names; but that

was a failure; that is a thing which probably requires a good deal of

practice. We presently dropped it and gave our efforts to less difficult

particulars. One morning I said:

“There is an American party.”

Harris said:

“Yes--but name the state.”

I named one state, Harris named another. We agreed upon one thing,

however--that the young girl with the party was very beautiful, and

very tastefully dressed. But we disagreed as to her age. I said she was

eighteen, Harris said she was twenty. The dispute between us waxed warm,

and I finally said, with a pretense of being in earnest:

“Well, there is one way to settle the matter--I will go and ask her.”

Harris said, sarcastically, “Certainly, that is the thing to do. All you

need to do is to use the common formula over here: go and say, 'I'm an

American!' Of course she will be glad to see you.”

Then he hinted that perhaps there was no great danger of my venturing to

speak to her.

I said, “I was only talking--I didn't intend to approach her, but I see

that you do not know what an intrepid person I am. I am not afraid of

any woman that walks. I will go and speak to this young girl.”

The thing I had in my mind was not difficult. I meant to address her

in the most respectful way and ask her to pardon me if her strong

resemblance to a former acquaintance of mine was deceiving me; and when

she should reply that the name I mentioned was not the name she bore, I

meant to beg pardon again, most respectfully, and retire. There would be

no harm done. I walked to her table, bowed to the gentleman, then turned

to her and was about to begin my little speech when she exclaimed:

“I KNEW I wasn't mistaken--I told John it was you! John said it probably

wasn't, but I knew I was right. I said you would recognize me presently

and come over; and I'm glad you did, for I shouldn't have felt much

flattered if you had gone out of this room without recognizing me.

Sit down, sit down--how odd it is--you are the last person I was ever

expecting to see again.”

This was a stupefying surprise. It took my wits clear away, for an

instant. However, we shook hands cordially all around, and I sat down.

But truly this was the tightest place I ever was in. I seemed to vaguely

remember the girl's face, now, but I had no idea where I had seen it

before, or what name belonged with it. I immediately tried to get up a

diversion about Swiss scenery, to keep her from launching into topics

that might betray that I did not know her, but it was of no use, she

went right along upon matters which interested her more:

“Oh dear, what a night that was, when the sea washed the forward boats

away--do you remember it?”

“Oh, DON'T I!” said I--but I didn't. I wished the sea had washed the

rudder and the smoke-stack and the captain away--then I could have

located this questioner.

“And don't you remember how frightened poor Mary was, and how she

cried?”

“Indeed I do!” said I. “Dear me, how it all comes back!”

I fervently wished it WOULD come back--but my memory was a blank. The

wise way would have been to frankly own up; but I could not bring myself

to do that, after the young girl had praised me so for recognizing her;

so I went on, deeper and deeper into the mire, hoping for a chance clue

but never getting one. The Unrecognizable continued, with vivacity:

“Do you know, George married Mary, after all?”

“Why, no! Did he?”

“Indeed he did. He said he did not believe she was half as much to blame

as her father was, and I thought he was right. Didn't you?”

“Of course he was. It was a perfectly plain case. I always said so.”

“Why, no you didn't!--at least that summer.”

“Oh, no, not that summer. No, you are perfectly right about that. It was

the following winter that I said it.”

“Well, as it turned out, Mary was not in the least to blame --it was all

her father's fault--at least his and old Darley's.”

It was necessary to say something--so I said:

“I always regarded Darley as a troublesome old thing.”

“So he was, but then they always had a great affection for him, although

he had so many eccentricities. You remember that when the weather was

the least cold, he would try to come into the house.”

I was rather afraid to proceed. Evidently Darley was not a man--he

must be some other kind of animal--possibly a dog, maybe an elephant.

However, tails are common to all animals, so I ventured to say:

“And what a tail he had!”

“ONE! He had a thousand!”

This was bewildering. I did not quite know what to say, so I only said:

“Yes, he WAS rather well fixed in the matter of tails.”

“For a negro, and a crazy one at that, I should say he was,” said she.

It was getting pretty sultry for me. I said to myself, “Is it possible

she is going to stop there, and wait for me to speak? If she does, the

conversation is blocked. A negro with a thousand tails is a topic which

a person cannot talk upon fluently and instructively without more or

less preparation. As to diving rashly into such a vast subject--”

But here, to my gratitude, she interrupted my thoughts by saying:

“Yes, when it came to tales of his crazy woes, there was simply no

end to them if anybody would listen. His own quarters were comfortable

enough, but when the weather was cold, the family were sure to have his

company--nothing could keep him out of the house. But they always bore

it kindly because he had saved Tom's life, years before. You remember

Tom?

“Oh, perfectly. Fine fellow he was, too.”

“Yes he was. And what a pretty little thing his child was!”

“You may well say that. I never saw a prettier child.”

“I used to delight to pet it and dandle it and play with it.”

“So did I.”

“You named it. What WAS that name? I can't call it to mind.”

It appeared to me that the ice was getting pretty thin, here. I would

have given something to know what the child's was. However, I had the

good luck to think of a name that would fit either sex--so I brought it

out:

“I named it Frances.”

“From a relative, I suppose? But you named the one that died, too--one

that I never saw. What did you call that one?”

I was out of neutral names, but as the child was dead and she had

never seen it, I thought I might risk a name for it and trust to luck.

Therefore I said:

“I called that one Thomas Henry.”

She said, musingly:

“That is very singular ... very singular.”

I sat still and let the cold sweat run down. I was in a good deal of

trouble, but I believed I could worry through if she wouldn't ask me

to name any more children. I wondered where the lightning was going to

strike next. She was still ruminating over that last child's title, but

presently she said:

“I have always been sorry you were away at the time--I would have had

you name my child.”

“YOUR child! Are you married?”

“I have been married thirteen years.”

“Christened, you mean.”

“No, married. The youth by your side is my son.”

“It seems incredible--even impossible. I do not mean any harm by it, but

would you mind telling me if you are any over eighteen?--that is to say,

will you tell me how old you are?”

“I was just nineteen the day of the storm we were talking about. That

was my birthday.”

That did not help matters, much, as I did not know the date of the

storm. I tried to think of some non-committal thing to say, to keep up

my end of the talk, and render my poverty in the matter of reminiscences

as little noticeable as possible, but I seemed to be about out of

non-committal things. I was about to say, “You haven't changed a bit

since then”--but that was risky. I thought of saying, “You have improved

ever so much since then”--but that wouldn't answer, of course. I was

about to try a shy at the weather, for a saving change, when the girl

slipped in ahead of me and said:

“How I have enjoyed this talk over those happy old times--haven't you?”

“I never have spent such a half-hour in all my life before!” said I,

with emotion; and I could have added, with a near approach to truth,

“and I would rather be scalped than spend another one like it.” I was

holily grateful to be through with the ordeal, and was about to make my

good-bys and get out, when the girl said:

“But there is one thing that is ever so puzzling to me.”

“Why, what is that?”

“That dead child's name. What did you say it was?”

Here was another balmy place to be in: I had forgotten the child's name;

I hadn't imagined it would be needed again. However, I had to pretend to

know, anyway, so I said:

“Joseph William.”

The youth at my side corrected me, and said:

“No, Thomas Henry.”

I thanked him--in words--and said, with trepidation:

“O yes--I was thinking of another child that I named--I have named

a great many, and I get them confused--this one was named Henry

Thompson--”

“Thomas Henry,” calmly interposed the boy.

I thanked him again--strictly in words--and stammered out:

“Thomas Henry--yes, Thomas Henry was the poor child's name. I named

him for Thomas--er--Thomas Carlyle, the great author, you know--and

Henry--er--er--Henry the Eighth. The parents were very grateful to have

a child named Thomas Henry.”

“That makes it more singular than ever,” murmured my beautiful friend.

“Does it? Why?”

“Because when the parents speak of that child now, they always call it

Susan Amelia.”

That spiked my gun. I could not say anything. I was entirely out of

verbal obliquities; to go further would be to lie, and that I would not

do; so I simply sat still and suffered--sat mutely and resignedly there,

and sizzled--for I was being slowly fried to death in my own blushes.

Presently the enemy laughed a happy laugh and said:

“I HAVE enjoyed this talk over old times, but you have not. I saw very

soon that you were only pretending to know me, and so as I had wasted a

compliment on you in the beginning, I made up my mind to punish you. And

I have succeeded pretty well. I was glad to see that you knew George and

Tom and Darley, for I had never heard of them before and therefore could

not be sure that you had; and I was glad to learn the names of those

imaginary children, too. One can get quite a fund of information out

of you if one goes at it cleverly. Mary and the storm, and the sweeping

away of the forward boats, were facts--all the rest was fiction. Mary

was my sister; her full name was Mary ------. NOW do you remember me?”

“Yes,” I said, “I do remember you now; and you are as hard-headed as you

were thirteen years ago in that ship, else you wouldn't have punished me

so. You haven't changed your nature nor your person, in any way at all;

you look as young as you did then, you are just as beautiful as you were

then, and you have transmitted a deal of your comeliness to this fine

boy. There--if that speech moves you any, let's fly the flag of truce,

with the understanding that I am conquered and confess it.”

All of which was agreed to and accomplished, on the spot. When I went

back to Harris, I said:

“Now you see what a person with talent and address can do.”

“Excuse me, I see what a person of colossal ignorance and simplicity can

do. The idea of your going and intruding on a party of strangers, that

way, and talking for half an hour; why I never heard of a man in his

right mind doing such a thing before. What did you say to them?”

“I never said any harm. I merely asked the girl what her name was.”

“I don't doubt it. Upon my word I don't. I think you were capable of it.

It was stupid in me to let you go over there and make such an exhibition

of yourself. But you know I couldn't really believe you would do such an

inexcusable thing. What will those people think of us? But how did you

say it?--I mean the manner of it. I hope you were not abrupt.”

“No, I was careful about that. I said, 'My friend and I would like to

know what your name is, if you don't mind.'”

“No, that was not abrupt. There is a polish about it that does you

infinite credit. And I am glad you put me in; that was a delicate

attention which I appreciate at its full value. What did she do?”

“She didn't do anything in particular. She told me her name.”

“Simply told you her name. Do you mean to say she did not show any

surprise?”

“Well, now I come to think, she did show something; maybe it was

surprise; I hadn't thought of that--I took it for gratification.”

“Oh, undoubtedly you were right; it must have been gratification; it

could not be otherwise than gratifying to be assaulted by a stranger

with such a question as that. Then what did you do?”

“I offered my hand and the party gave me a shake.”

“I saw it! I did not believe my own eyes, at the time. Did the gentleman

say anything about cutting your throat?”

“No, they all seemed glad to see me, as far as I could judge.”

“And do you know, I believe they were. I think they said to themselves,

'Doubtless this curiosity has got away from his keeper--let us amuse

ourselves with him.' There is no other way of accounting for their

facile docility. You sat down. Did they ASK you to sit down?”

“No, they did not ask me, but I suppose they did not think of it.”

“You have an unerring instinct. What else did you do? What did you talk

about?”

“Well, I asked the girl how old she was.”

“UNdoubtedly. Your delicacy is beyond praise. Go on, go on--don't mind

my apparent misery--I always look so when I am steeped in a profound and

reverent joy. Go on--she told you her age?”

“Yes, she told me her age, and all about her mother, and her

grandmother, and her other relations, and all about herself.”

“Did she volunteer these statistics?”

“No, not exactly that. I asked the questions and she answered them.”

“This is divine. Go on--it is not possible that you forgot to inquire

into her politics?”

“No, I thought of that. She is a democrat, her husband is a republican,

and both of them are Baptists.”

“Her husband? Is that child married?”

“She is not a child. She is married, and that is her husband who is

there with her.”

“Has she any children.”

“Yes--seven and a half.”

“That is impossible.”

“No, she has them. She told me herself.”

“Well, but seven and a HALF? How do you make out the half? Where does

the half come in?”

“There is a child which she had by another husband--not this one

but another one--so it is a stepchild, and they do not count in full

measure.”

“Another husband? Has she another husband?”

“Yes, four. This one is number four.”

“I don't believe a word of it. It is impossible, upon its face. Is that

boy there her brother?”

“No, that is her son. He is her youngest. He is not as old as he looked;

he is only eleven and a half.”

“These things are all manifestly impossible. This is a wretched

business. It is a plain case: they simply took your measure, and

concluded to fill you up. They seem to have succeeded. I am glad I am

not in the mess; they may at least be charitable enough to think there

ain't a pair of us. Are they going to stay here long?”

“No, they leave before noon.”

“There is one man who is deeply grateful for that. How did you find out?

You asked, I suppose?”

“No, along at first I inquired into their plans, in a general way, and

they said they were going to be here a week, and make trips round about;

but toward the end of the interview, when I said you and I would tour

around with them with pleasure, and offered to bring you over and

introduce you, they hesitated a little, and asked if you were from the

same establishment that I was. I said you were, and then they said they

had changed their mind and considered it necessary to start at once and

visit a sick relative in Siberia.”

“Ah, me, you struck the summit! You struck the loftiest altitude of

stupidity that human effort has ever reached. You shall have a monument

of jackasses' skulls as high as the Strasburg spire if you die before

I do. They wanted to know I was from the same 'establishment' that you

hailed from, did they? What did they mean by 'establishment'?”

“I don't know; it never occurred to me to ask.”

“Well I know. They meant an asylum--an IDIOT asylum, do you understand?

So they DO think there's a pair of us, after all. Now what do you think

of yourself?”

“Well, I don't know. I didn't know I was doing any harm; I didn't MEAN

to do any harm. They were very nice people, and they seemed to like me.”

Harris made some rude remarks and left for his bedroom--to break some

furniture, he said. He was a singularly irascible man; any little thing

would disturb his temper.

I had been well scorched by the young woman, but no matter, I took it

out on Harris. One should always “get even” in some way, else the sore

place will go on hurting.

CHAPTER XXVI

[The Nest of the Cuckoo-clock]

The Hofkirche is celebrated for its organ concerts. All summer long the

tourists flock to that church about six o'clock in the evening, and pay

their franc, and listen to the noise. They don't stay to hear all of

it, but get up and tramp out over the sounding stone floor, meeting late

comers who tramp in in a sounding and vigorous way. This tramping

back and forth is kept up nearly all the time, and is accented by

the continuous slamming of the door, and the coughing and barking and

sneezing of the crowd. Meantime, the big organ is booming and crashing

and thundering away, doing its best to prove that it is the biggest and

best organ in Europe, and that a tight little box of a church is the

most favorable place to average and appreciate its powers in. It is

true, there were some soft and merciful passages occasionally, but the

tramp-tramp of the tourists only allowed one to get fitful glimpses of

them, so to speak. Then right away the organist would let go another

avalanche.

The commerce of Lucerne consists mainly in gimcrackery of the souvenir

sort; the shops are packed with Alpine crystals, photographs of

scenery, and wooden and ivory carvings. I will not conceal the fact that

miniature figures of the Lion of Lucerne are to be had in them. Millions

of them. But they are libels upon him, every one of them. There is a

subtle something about the majestic pathos of the original which the

copyist cannot get. Even the sun fails to get it; both the photographer

and the carver give you a dying lion, and that is all. The shape is

right, the attitude is right, the proportions are right, but that

indescribable something which makes the Lion of Lucerne the most

mournful and moving piece of stone in the world, is wanting.

The Lion lies in his lair in the perpendicular face of a low cliff--for

he is carved from the living rock of the cliff. His size is colossal,

his attitude is noble. His head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking

in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France.

Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream

trickles from above and empties into a pond at the base, and in the

smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water-lilies.

Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a sheltered,

reposeful woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion--and

all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite

pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The Lion of

Lucerne would be impressive anywhere, but nowhere so impressive as where

he is.

Martyrdom is the luckiest fate that can befall some people. Louis XVI

did not die in his bed, consequently history is very gentle with him;

she is charitable toward his failings, and she finds in him high virtues

which are not usually considered to be virtues when they are lodged in

kings. She makes him out to be a person with a meek and modest spirit,

the heart of a female saint, and a wrong head. None of these qualities

are kingly but the last. Taken together they make a character which

would have fared harshly at the hands of history if its owner had had

the ill luck to miss martyrdom. With the best intentions to do the right

thing, he always managed to do the wrong one. Moreover, nothing could

get the female saint out of him. He knew, well enough, that in national

emergencies he must not consider how he ought to act, as a man, but how

he ought to act as a king; so he honestly tried to sink the man and be

the king--but it was a failure, he only succeeded in being the female

saint. He was not instant in season, but out of season. He could not be

persuaded to do a thing while it could do any good--he was iron, he was

adamant in his stubbornness then--but as soon as the thing had reached a

point where it would be positively harmful to do it, do it he would, and

nothing could stop him. He did not do it because it would be harmful,

but because he hoped it was not yet too late to achieve by it the good

which it would have done if applied earlier. His comprehension was

always a train or two behindhand. If a national toe required amputating,

he could not see that it needed anything more than poulticing; when

others saw that the mortification had reached the knee, he first

perceived that the toe needed cutting off--so he cut it off; and he

severed the leg at the knee when others saw that the disease had reached

the thigh. He was good, and honest, and well meaning, in the matter of

chasing national diseases, but he never could overtake one. As a private

man, he would have been lovable; but viewed as a king, he was strictly

contemptible.

His was a most unroyal career, but the most pitiable spectacle in it was

his sentimental treachery to his Swiss guard on that memorable 10th of

August, when he allowed those heroes to be massacred in his cause, and

forbade them to shed the “sacred French blood” purporting to be flowing

in the veins of the red-capped mob of miscreants that was raging around

the palace. He meant to be kingly, but he was only the female saint once

more. Some of his biographers think that upon this occasion the spirit

of Saint Louis had descended upon him. It must have found pretty cramped

quarters. If Napoleon the First had stood in the shoes of Louis XVI that

day, instead of being merely a casual and unknown looker-on, there would

be no Lion of Lucerne, now, but there would be a well-stocked Communist

graveyard in Paris which would answer just as well to remember the 10th

of August by.

Martyrdom made a saint of Mary Queen of Scots three hundred years ago,

and she has hardly lost all of her saintship yet. Martyrdom made a saint

of the trivial and foolish Marie Antoinette, and her biographers

still keep her fragrant with the odor of sanctity to this day, while

unconsciously proving upon almost every page they write that the only

calamitous instinct which her husband lacked, she supplied--the instinct

to root out and get rid of an honest, able, and loyal official, wherever

she found him. The hideous but beneficent French Revolution would have

been deferred, or would have fallen short of completeness, or even

might not have happened at all, if Marie Antoinette had made the unwise

mistake of not being born. The world owes a great deal to the French

Revolution, and consequently to its two chief promoters, Louis the Poor

in Spirit and his queen.

We did not buy any wooden images of the Lion, nor any ivory or ebony

or marble or chalk or sugar or chocolate ones, or even any photographic

slanders of him. The truth is, these copies were so common, so

universal, in the shops and everywhere, that they presently became as

intolerable to the wearied eye as the latest popular melody usually

becomes to the harassed ear. In Lucerne, too, the wood carvings of

other sorts, which had been so pleasant to look upon when one saw them

occasionally at home, soon began to fatigue us. We grew very tired

of seeing wooden quails and chickens picking and strutting around

clock-faces, and still more tired of seeing wooden images of the alleged

chamois skipping about wooden rocks, or lying upon them in family

groups, or peering alertly up from behind them. The first day, I would

have bought a hundred and fifty of these clocks if I had the money--and

I did buy three--but on the third day the disease had run its course,

I had convalesced, and was in the market once more--trying to sell.

However, I had no luck; which was just as well, for the things will be

pretty enough, no doubt, when I get them home.

For years my pet aversion had been the cuckoo clock; now here I was, at

last, right in the creature's home; so wherever I went that distressing

“HOO'hoo! HOO'hoo! HOO'hoo!” was always in my ears. For a nervous man,

this was a fine state of things. Some sounds are hatefuler than others,

but no sound is quite so inane, and silly, and aggravating as the

“HOO'hoo” of a cuckoo clock, I think. I bought one, and am carrying it

home to a certain person; for I have always said that if the opportunity

ever happened, I would do that man an ill turn.

What I meant, was, that I would break one of his legs, or something of

that sort; but in Lucerne I instantly saw that I could impair his mind.

That would be more lasting, and more satisfactory every way. So I bought

the cuckoo clock; and if I ever get home with it, he is “my meat,” as

they say in the mines. I thought of another candidate--a book-reviewer

whom I could name if I wanted to--but after thinking it over, I didn't

buy him a clock. I couldn't injure his mind.

We visited the two long, covered wooden bridges which span the green and

brilliant Reuss just below where it goes plunging and hurrahing out

of the lake. These rambling, sway-backed tunnels are very attractive

things, with their alcoved outlooks upon the lovely and inspiriting

water. They contain two or three hundred queer old pictures, by old

Swiss masters--old boss sign-painters, who flourished before the

decadence of art.

The lake is alive with fishes, plainly visible to the eye, for the water

is very clear. The parapets in front of the hotels were usually fringed

with fishers of all ages. One day I thought I would stop and see a

fish caught. The result brought back to my mind, very forcibly, a

circumstance which I had not thought of before for twelve years. This

one:

THE MAN WHO PUT UP AT GADSBY'S

When my odd friend Riley and I were newspaper correspondents in

Washington, in the winter of '67, we were coming down Pennsylvania

Avenue one night, near midnight, in a driving storm of snow, when the

flash of a street-lamp fell upon a man who was eagerly tearing along in

the opposite direction. “This is lucky! You are Mr. Riley, ain't you?”

Riley was the most self-possessed and solemnly deliberate person in the

republic. He stopped, looked his man over from head to foot, and finally

said:

“I am Mr. Riley. Did you happen to be looking for me?”

“That's just what I was doing,” said the man, joyously, “and it's the

biggest luck in the world that I've found you. My name is Lykins. I'm

one of the teachers of the high school--San Francisco. As soon as I

heard the San Francisco postmastership was vacant, I made up my mind to

get it--and here I am.”

“Yes,” said Riley, slowly, “as you have remarked ... Mr. Lykins ... here

you are. And have you got it?”

“Well, not exactly GOT it, but the next thing to it. I've brought a

petition, signed by the Superintendent of Public Instruction, and all

the teachers, and by more than two hundred other people. Now I want you,

if you'll be so good, to go around with me to the Pacific delegation,

for I want to rush this thing through and get along home.”

“If the matter is so pressing, you will prefer that we visit the

delegation tonight,” said Riley, in a voice which had nothing mocking in

it--to an unaccustomed ear.

“Oh, tonight, by all means! I haven't got any time to fool around. I

want their promise before I go to bed--I ain't the talking kind, I'm the

DOING kind!”

“Yes ... you've come to the right place for that. When did you arrive?”

“Just an hour ago.”

“When are you intending to leave?”

“For New York tomorrow evening--for San Francisco next morning.”

“Just so.... What are you going to do tomorrow?”

“DO! Why, I've got to go to the President with the petition and the

delegation, and get the appointment, haven't I?”

“Yes ... very true ... that is correct. And then what?”

“Executive session of the Senate at 2 P.M.--got to get the appointment

confirmed--I reckon you'll grant that?”

“Yes ... yes,” said Riley, meditatively, “you are right again. Then

you take the train for New York in the evening, and the steamer for San

Francisco next morning?”

“That's it--that's the way I map it out!”

Riley considered a while, and then said:

“You couldn't stay ... a day ... well, say two days longer?”

“Bless your soul, no! It's not my style. I ain't a man to go fooling

around--I'm a man that DOES things, I tell you.”

The storm was raging, the thick snow blowing in gusts. Riley stood

silent, apparently deep in a reverie, during a minute or more, then he

looked up and said:

“Have you ever heard about that man who put up at Gadsby's, once? ...

But I see you haven't.”

He backed Mr. Lykins against an iron fence, buttonholed him, fastened

him with his eye, like the Ancient Mariner, and proceeded to unfold

his narrative as placidly and peacefully as if we were all stretched

comfortably in a blossomy summer meadow instead of being persecuted by a

wintry midnight tempest:

“I will tell you about that man. It was in Jackson's time. Gadsby's was

the principal hotel, then. Well, this man arrived from Tennessee

about nine o'clock, one morning, with a black coachman and a splendid

four-horse carriage and an elegant dog, which he was evidently fond

of and proud of; he drove up before Gadsby's, and the clerk and the

landlord and everybody rushed out to take charge of him, but he said,

'Never mind,' and jumped out and told the coachman to wait--

said he hadn't time to take anything to eat, he only had a little claim

against the government to collect, would run across the way, to

the Treasury, and fetch the money, and then get right along back to

Tennessee, for he was in considerable of a hurry.

“Well, about eleven o'clock that night he came back and ordered a bed

and told them to put the horses up--said he would collect the claim in

the morning. This was in January, you understand--January, 1834--the 3d

of January--Wednesday.

“Well, on the 5th of February, he sold the fine carriage, and bought

a cheap second-hand one--said it would answer just as well to take the

money home in, and he didn't care for style.

“On the 11th of August he sold a pair of the fine horses--said he'd

often thought a pair was better than four, to go over the rough mountain

roads with where a body had to be careful about his driving--and there

wasn't so much of his claim but he could lug the money home with a pair

easy enough.

“On the 13th of December he sold another horse--said two warn't

necessary to drag that old light vehicle with--in fact, one could snatch

it along faster than was absolutely necessary, now that it was good

solid winter weather and the roads in splendid condition.

“On the 17th of February, 1835, he sold the old carriage and bought a

cheap second-hand buggy--said a buggy was just the trick to skim along

mushy, slushy early spring roads with, and he had always wanted to try a

buggy on those mountain roads, anyway.

“On the 1st August he sold the buggy and bought the remains of an old

sulky--said he just wanted to see those green Tennesseans stare and gawk

when they saw him come a-ripping along in a sulky--didn't believe they'd

ever heard of a sulky in their lives.

“Well, on the 29th of August he sold his colored coachman--said he

didn't need a coachman for a sulky--wouldn't be room enough for two in

it anyway--and, besides, it wasn't every day that Providence sent a man

a fool who was willing to pay nine hundred dollars for such a third-rate

negro as that--been wanting to get rid of the creature for years, but

didn't like to THROW him away.

“Eighteen months later--that is to say, on the 15th of February,

1837--he sold the sulky and bought a saddle--said horseback-riding was

what the doctor had always recommended HIM to take, and dog'd if he

wanted to risk HIS neck going over those mountain roads on wheels in the

dead of winter, not if he knew himself.

“On the 9th of April he sold the saddle--said he wasn't going to risk

HIS life with any perishable saddle-girth that ever was made, over a

rainy, miry April road, while he could ride bareback and know and feel

he was safe--always HAD despised to ride on a saddle, anyway.

“On the 24th of April he sold his horse--said 'I'm just fifty-seven

today, hale and hearty--it would be a PRETTY howdy-do for me to be

wasting such a trip as that and such weather as this, on a horse, when

there ain't anything in the world so splendid as a tramp on foot through

the fresh spring woods and over the cheery mountains, to a man that IS

a man--and I can make my dog carry my claim in a little bundle, anyway,

when it's collected. So tomorrow I'll be up bright and early, make my

little old collection, and mosey off to Tennessee, on my own hind legs,

with a rousing good-by to Gadsby's.'

“On the 22d of June he sold his dog--said 'Dern a dog, anyway, where

you're just starting off on a rattling bully pleasure tramp through the

summer woods and hills--perfect nuisance--chases the squirrels, barks

at everything, goes a-capering and splattering around in the fords--man

can't get any chance to reflect and enjoy nature--and I'd a blamed sight

ruther carry the claim myself, it's a mighty sight safer; a dog's

mighty uncertain in a financial way--always noticed it--well, GOOD-by,

boys--last call--I'm off for Tennessee with a good leg and a gay heart,

early in the morning.'”

There was a pause and a silence--except the noise of the wind and the

pelting snow. Mr. Lykins said, impatiently:

“Well?”

Riley said:

“Well,--that was thirty years ago.”

“Very well, very well--what of it?”

“I'm great friends with that old patriarch. He comes every evening to

tell me good-by. I saw him an hour ago--he's off for Tennessee early

tomorrow morning--as usual; said he calculated to get his claim through

and be off before night-owls like me have turned out of bed. The tears

were in his eyes, he was so glad he was going to see his old Tennessee

and his friends once more.”

Another silent pause. The stranger broke it:

“Is that all?”

“That is all.”

“Well, for the TIME of night, and the KIND of night, it seems to me the

story was full long enough. But what's it all FOR?”

“Oh, nothing in particular.”

“Well, where's the point of it?”

“Oh, there isn't any particular point to it. Only, if you are not in

TOO much of a hurry to rush off to San Francisco with that post-office

appointment, Mr. Lykins, I'd advise you to 'PUT UP AT GADSBY'S' for a

spell, and take it easy. Good-by. GOD bless you!”

So saying, Riley blandly turned on his heel and left the astonished

school-teacher standing there, a musing and motionless snow image

shining in the broad glow of the street-lamp.

He never got that post-office.

To go back to Lucerne and its fishers, I concluded, after about

nine hours' waiting, that the man who proposes to tarry till he sees

something hook one of those well-fed and experienced fishes will find

it wisdom to “put up at Gadsby's” and take it easy. It is likely that

a fish has not been caught on that lake pier for forty years; but no

matter, the patient fisher watches his cork there all the day long, just

the same, and seems to enjoy it. One may see the fisher-loafers just as

thick and contented and happy and patient all along the Seine at Paris,

but tradition says that the only thing ever caught there in modern times

is a thing they don't fish for at all--the recent dog and the translated

cat.

CHAPTER XXVII

[I Spare an Awful Bore]

Close by the Lion of Lucerne is what they call the “Glacier Garden”--and

it is the only one in the world. It is on high ground. Four or five

years ago, some workmen who were digging foundations for a house came

upon this interesting relic of a long-departed age. Scientific men

perceived in it a confirmation of their theories concerning the glacial

period; so through their persuasions the little tract of ground was

bought and permanently protected against being built upon. The soil was

removed, and there lay the rasped and guttered track which the ancient

glacier had made as it moved along upon its slow and tedious journey.

This track was perforated by huge pot-shaped holes in the bed-rock,

formed by the furious washing-around in them of boulders by the

turbulent torrent which flows beneath all glaciers. These huge round

boulders still remain in the holes; they and the walls of the holes are

worn smooth by the long-continued chafing which they gave each other in

those old days.

It took a mighty force to churn these big lumps of stone around in that

vigorous way. The neighboring country had a very different shape, at

that time--the valleys have risen up and become hills, since, and the

hills have become valleys. The boulders discovered in the pots had

traveled a great distance, for there is no rock like them nearer than

the distant Rhone Glacier.

For some days we were content to enjoy looking at the blue lake

Lucerne and at the piled-up masses of snow-mountains that border it all

around--an enticing spectacle, this last, for there is a strange and

fascinating beauty and charm about a majestic snow-peak with the sun

blazing upon it or the moonlight softly enriching it--but finally we

concluded to try a bit of excursioning around on a steamboat, and a dash

on foot at the Rigi. Very well, we had a delightful trip to Fluelen, on

a breezy, sunny day. Everybody sat on the upper deck, on benches, under

an awning; everybody talked, laughed, and exclaimed at the wonderful

scenery; in truth, a trip on that lake is almost the perfection of

pleasuring.

The mountains were a never-ceasing marvel. Sometimes they rose straight

up out of the lake, and towered aloft and overshadowed our pygmy steamer

with their prodigious bulk in the most impressive way. Not snow-clad

mountains, these, yet they climbed high enough toward the sky to meet

the clouds and veil their foreheads in them. They were not barren and

repulsive, but clothed in green, and restful and pleasant to the eye.

And they were so almost straight-up-and-down, sometimes, that one could

not imagine a man being able to keep his footing upon such a surface,

yet there are paths, and the Swiss people go up and down them every day.

Sometimes one of these monster precipices had the slight inclination of

the huge ship-houses in dockyards--then high aloft, toward the sky, it

took a little stronger inclination, like that of a mansard roof--and

perched on this dizzy mansard one's eye detected little things like

martin boxes, and presently perceived that these were the dwellings of

peasants--an airy place for a home, truly. And suppose a peasant should

walk in his sleep, or his child should fall out of the front

yard?--the friends would have a tedious long journey down out of those

cloud-heights before they found the remains. And yet those far-away

homes looked ever so seductive, they were so remote from the troubled

world, they dozed in such an atmosphere of peace and dreams--surely no

one who has learned to live up there would ever want to live on a meaner

level.

We swept through the prettiest little curving arms of the lake, among

these colossal green walls, enjoying new delights, always, as the

stately panorama unfolded itself before us and rerolled and hid itself

behind us; and now and then we had the thrilling surprise of bursting

suddenly upon a tremendous white mass like the distant and dominating

Jungfrau, or some kindred giant, looming head and shoulders above a

tumbled waste of lesser Alps.

Once, while I was hungrily taking in one of these surprises, and doing

my best to get all I possibly could of it while it should last, I was

interrupted by a young and care-free voice:

“You're an American, I think--so'm I.”

He was about eighteen, or possibly nineteen; slender and of medium

height; open, frank, happy face; a restless but independent eye; a snub

nose, which had the air of drawing back with a decent reserve from

the silky new-born mustache below it until it should be introduced; a

loosely hung jaw, calculated to work easily in the sockets. He wore a

low-crowned, narrow-brimmed straw hat, with a broad blue ribbon

around it which had a white anchor embroidered on it in front; nobby

short-tailed coat, pantaloons, vest, all trim and neat and up with the

fashion; red-striped stockings, very low-quarter patent-leather shoes,

tied with black ribbon; blue ribbon around his neck, wide-open collar;

tiny diamond studs; wrinkleless kids; projecting cuffs, fastened with

large oxidized silver sleeve-buttons, bearing the device of a dog's

face--English pug. He carried a slim cane, surmounted with an English

pug's head with red glass eyes. Under his arm he carried a German

grammar--Otto's. His hair was short, straight, and smooth, and presently

when he turned his head a moment, I saw that it was nicely parted

behind. He took a cigarette out of a dainty box, stuck it into a

meerschaum holder which he carried in a morocco case, and reached for my

cigar. While he was lighting, I said:

“Yes--I am an American.”

“I knew it--I can always tell them. What ship did you come over in?”

“HOLSATIA.”

“We came in the BATAVIA--Cunard, you know. What kind of passage did you

have?”

“Tolerably rough.”

“So did we. Captain said he'd hardly ever seen it rougher. Where are you

from?”

“New England.”

“So'm I. I'm from New Bloomfield. Anybody with you?”

“Yes--a friend.”

“Our whole family's along. It's awful slow, going around alone--don't

you think so?”

“Rather slow.”

“Ever been over here before?”

“Yes.”

“I haven't. My first trip. But we've been all around--Paris and

everywhere. I'm to enter Harvard next year. Studying German all the

time, now. Can't enter till I know German. I know considerable French--I

get along pretty well in Paris, or anywhere where they speak French.

What hotel are you stopping at?”

“Schweitzerhof.”

“No! is that so? I never see you in the reception-room. I go to

the reception-room a good deal of the time, because there's so many

Americans there. I make lots of acquaintances. I know an American as

soon as I see him--and so I speak to him and make his acquaintance. I

like to be always making acquaintances--don't you?”

“Lord, yes!”

“You see it breaks up a trip like this, first rate. I never got bored on

a trip like this, if I can make acquaintances and have somebody to

talk to. But I think a trip like this would be an awful bore, if a body

couldn't find anybody to get acquainted with and talk to on a trip like

this. I'm fond of talking, ain't you?

“Passionately.”

“Have you felt bored, on this trip?”

“Not all the time, part of it.”

“That's it!--you see you ought to go around and get acquainted, and

talk. That's my way. That's the way I always do--I just go 'round,

'round, 'round and talk, talk, talk--I never get bored. You been up the

Rigi yet?”

“No.”

“Going?”

“I think so.”

“What hotel you going to stop at?”

“I don't know. Is there more than one?”

“Three. You stop at the Schreiber--you'll find it full of Americans.

What ship did you say you came over in?”

“CITY OF ANTWERP.”

“German, I guess. You going to Geneva?”

“Yes.”

“What hotel you going to stop at?”

“Hôtel de l'Écu de Génève.”

“Don't you do it! No Americans there! You stop at one of those big

hotels over the bridge--they're packed full of Americans.”

“But I want to practice my Arabic.”

“Good gracious, do you speak Arabic?”

“Yes--well enough to get along.”

“Why, hang it, you won't get along in Geneva--THEY don't speak Arabic,

they speak French. What hotel are you stopping at here?”

“Hotel Pension-Beaurivage.”

“Sho, you ought to stop at the Schweitzerhof. Didn't you know the

Schweitzerhof was the best hotel in Switzerland?-- look at your

Baedeker.”

“Yes, I know--but I had an idea there warn't any Americans there.”

“No Americans! Why, bless your soul, it's just alive with them! I'm in

the great reception-room most all the time. I make lots of acquaintances

there. Not as many as I did at first, because now only the new ones stop

in there--the others go right along through. Where are you from?”

“Arkansaw.”

“Is that so? I'm from New England--New Bloomfield's my town when I'm at

home. I'm having a mighty good time today, ain't you?”

“Divine.”

“That's what I call it. I like this knocking around, loose and easy, and

making acquaintances and talking. I know an American, soon as I see him;

so I go and speak to him and make his acquaintance. I ain't ever bored,

on a trip like this, if I can make new acquaintances and talk. I'm awful

fond of talking when I can get hold of the right kind of a person, ain't

you?”

“I prefer it to any other dissipation.”

“That's my notion, too. Now some people like to take a book and sit

down and read, and read, and read, or moon around yawping at the lake or

these mountains and things, but that ain't my way; no, sir, if they like

it, let 'em do it, I don't object; but as for me, talking's what I like.

You been up the Rigi?”

“Yes.”

“What hotel did you stop at?”

“Schreiber.”

“That's the place!--I stopped there too. FULL of Americans, WASN'T it?

It always is--always is. That's what they say. Everybody says that. What

ship did you come over in?”

“VILLE DE PARIS.”

“French, I reckon. What kind of a passage did ... excuse me a minute,

there's some Americans I haven't seen before.”

And away he went. He went uninjured, too--I had the murderous impulse to

harpoon him in the back with my alpenstock, but as I raised the weapon

the disposition left me; I found I hadn't the heart to kill him, he was

such a joyous, innocent, good-natured numbskull.

Half an hour later I was sitting on a bench inspecting, with strong

interest, a noble monolith which we were skimming by--a monolith not

shaped by man, but by Nature's free great hand--a massy pyramidal rock

eighty feet high, devised by Nature ten million years ago against the

day when a man worthy of it should need it for his monument. The time

came at last, and now this grand remembrancer bears Schiller's name in

huge letters upon its face. Curiously enough, this rock was not degraded

or defiled in any way. It is said that two years ago a stranger let

himself down from the top of it with ropes and pulleys, and painted all

over it, in blue letters bigger than those in Schiller's name, these

words: “Try Sozodont;” “Buy Sun Stove Polish;” “Helmbold's Buchu;” “Try

Benzaline for the Blood.” He was captured and it turned out that he was

an American. Upon his trial the judge said to him:

“You are from a land where any insolent that wants to is privileged

to profane and insult Nature, and, through her, Nature's God, if by

so doing he can put a sordid penny in his pocket. But here the case is

different. Because you are a foreigner and ignorant, I will make your

sentence light; if you were a native I would deal strenuously with

you. Hear and obey: --You will immediately remove every trace of

your offensive work from the Schiller monument; you pay a fine of ten

thousand francs; you will suffer two years' imprisonment at hard labor;

you will then be horsewhipped, tarred and feathered, deprived of your

ears, ridden on a rail to the confines of the canton, and banished

forever. The severest penalties are omitted in your case--not as a grace

to you, but to that great republic which had the misfortune to give you

birth.”

The steamer's benches were ranged back to back across the deck. My back

hair was mingling innocently with the back hair of a couple of

ladies. Presently they were addressed by some one and I overheard this

conversation:

“You are Americans, I think? So'm I.”

“Yes--we are Americans.”

“I knew it--I can always tell them. What ship did you come over in?”

“CITY OF CHESTER.”

“Oh, yes--Inman line. We came in the BATAVIA--Cunard you know. What kind

of a passage did you have?”

“Pretty fair.”

“That was luck. We had it awful rough. Captain said he'd hardly seen it

rougher. Where are you from?”

“New Jersey.”

“So'm I. No--I didn't mean that; I'm from New England. New Bloomfield's

my place. These your children?--belong to both of you?”

“Only to one of us; they are mine; my friend is not married.”

“Single, I reckon? So'm I. Are you two ladies traveling alone?”

“No--my husband is with us.”

“Our whole family's along. It's awful slow, going around alone--don't

you think so?”

“I suppose it must be.”

“Hi, there's Mount Pilatus coming in sight again. Named after Pontius

Pilate, you know, that shot the apple off of William Tell's head.

Guide-book tells all about it, they say. I didn't read it--an American

told me. I don't read when I'm knocking around like this, having a good

time. Did you ever see the chapel where William Tell used to preach?”

“I did not know he ever preached there.”

“Oh, yes, he did. That American told me so. He don't ever shut up

his guide-book. He knows more about this lake than the fishes in it.

Besides, they CALL it 'Tell's Chapel'--you know that yourself. You ever

been over here before?”

“Yes.”

“I haven't. It's my first trip. But we've been all around--Paris and

everywhere. I'm to enter Harvard next year. Studying German all the time

now. Can't enter till I know German. This book's Otto's grammar. It's a

mighty good book to get the ICH HABE GEHABT HABEN's out of. But I don't

really study when I'm knocking around this way. If the notion takes me,

I just run over my little old ICH HABE GEHABT, DU HAST GEHABT, ER HAT

GEHABT, WIR HABEN GEHABT, IHR HABEN GEHABT, SIE HABEN GEHABT--kind of

'Now-I-lay-me-down-to-sleep' fashion, you know, and after that, maybe

I don't buckle to it for three days. It's awful undermining to the

intellect, German is; you want to take it in small doses, or first you

know your brains all run together, and you feel them sloshing around in

your head same as so much drawn butter. But French is different; FRENCH

ain't anything. I ain't any more afraid of French than a tramp's afraid

of pie; I can rattle off my little J'AI, TU AS, IL A, and the rest of

it, just as easy as a-b-c. I get along pretty well in Paris, or anywhere

where they speak French. What hotel are you stopping at?”

“The Schweitzerhof.”

“No! is that so? I never see you in the big reception-room. I go in

there a good deal of the time, because there's so many Americans there.

I make lots of acquaintances. You been up the Rigi yet?”

“No.”

“Going?”

“We think of it.”

“What hotel you going to stop at?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, then you stop at the Schreiber--it's full of Americans. What ship

did you come over in?”

“CITY OF CHESTER.”

“Oh, yes, I remember I asked you that before. But I always ask everybody

what ship they came over in, and so sometimes I forget and ask again.

You going to Geneva?”

“Yes.”

“What hotel you going to stop at?”

“We expect to stop in a pension.”

“I don't hardly believe you'll like that; there's very few Americans in

the pensions. What hotel are you stopping at here?”

“The Schweitzerhof.”

“Oh, yes. I asked you that before, too. But I always ask everybody what

hotel they're stopping at, and so I've got my head all mixed up with

hotels. But it makes talk, and I love to talk. It refreshes me up

so--don't it you--on a trip like this?”

“Yes--sometimes.”

“Well, it does me, too. As long as I'm talking I never feel bored--ain't

that the way with you?”

“Yes--generally. But there are exception to the rule.”

“Oh, of course. I don't care to talk to everybody, MYSELF. If a person

starts in to jabber-jabber-jabber about scenery, and history, and

pictures, and all sorts of tiresome things, I get the fan-tods mighty

soon. I say 'Well, I must be going now--hope I'll see you again'--and

then I take a walk. Where you from?”

“New Jersey.”

“Why, bother it all, I asked you THAT before, too. Have you seen the

Lion of Lucerne?”

“Not yet.”

“Nor I, either. But the man who told me about Mount Pilatus says it's

one of the things to see. It's twenty-eight feet long. It don't seem

reasonable, but he said so, anyway. He saw it yesterday; said it was

dying, then, so I reckon it's dead by this time. But that ain't any

matter, of course they'll stuff it. Did you say the children are

yours--or HERS?”

“Mine.”

“Oh, so you did. Are you going up the ... no, I asked you that. What

ship ... no, I asked you that, too. What hotel are you ... no, you told

me that. Let me see ... um .... Oh, what kind of voy ... no, we've

been over that ground, too. Um ... um ... well, I believe that is all.

BONJOUR--I am very glad to have made your acquaintance, ladies. GUTEN

TAG.”

CHAPTER XXVIII

[The Jodel and Its Native Wilds]

The Rigi-Kulm is an imposing Alpine mass, six thousand feet high, which

stands by itself, and commands a mighty prospect of blue lakes, green

valleys, and snowy mountains--a compact and magnificent picture

three hundred miles in circumference. The ascent is made by rail, or

horseback, or on foot, as one may prefer. I and my agent panoplied

ourselves in walking-costume, one bright morning, and started down

the lake on the steamboat; we got ashore at the village of Waeggis;

three-quarters of an hour distant from Lucerne. This village is at the

foot of the mountain.

We were soon tramping leisurely up the leafy mule-path, and then the

talk began to flow, as usual. It was twelve o'clock noon, and a breezy,

cloudless day; the ascent was gradual, and the glimpses, from under

the curtaining boughs, of blue water, and tiny sailboats, and beetling

cliffs, were as charming as glimpses of dreamland. All the circumstances

were perfect--and the anticipations, too, for we should soon be

enjoying, for the first time, that wonderful spectacle, an Alpine

sunrise--the object of our journey. There was (apparently) no real need

for hurry, for the guide-book made the walking-distance from Waeggis to

the summit only three hours and a quarter. I say “apparently,” because

the guide-book had already fooled us once--about the distance from

Allerheiligen to Oppenau--and for aught I knew it might be getting

ready to fool us again. We were only certain as to the altitudes--we

calculated to find out for ourselves how many hours it is from the

bottom to the top. The summit is six thousand feet above the sea, but

only forty-five hundred feet above the lake. When we had walked half an

hour, we were fairly into the swing and humor of the undertaking, so we

cleared for action; that is to say, we got a boy whom we met to carry

our alpenstocks and satchels and overcoats and things for us; that left

us free for business. I suppose we must have stopped oftener to stretch

out on the grass in the shade and take a bit of a smoke than this boy

was used to, for presently he asked if it had been our idea to hire him

by the job, or by the year? We told him he could move along if he was

in a hurry. He said he wasn't in such a very particular hurry, but he

wanted to get to the top while he was young.

We told him to clear out, then, and leave the things at the uppermost

hotel and say we should be along presently. He said he would secure us a

hotel if he could, but if they were all full he would ask them to build

another one and hurry up and get the paint and plaster dry against we

arrived. Still gently chaffing us, he pushed ahead, up the trail, and

soon disappeared. By six o'clock we were pretty high up in the air,

and the view of lake and mountains had greatly grown in breadth and

interest. We halted awhile at a little public house, where we had bread

and cheese and a quart or two of fresh milk, out on the porch, with the

big panorama all before us--and then moved on again.

Ten minutes afterward we met a hot, red-faced man plunging down the

mountain, making mighty strides, swinging his alpenstock ahead of him,

and taking a grip on the ground with its iron point to support these

big strides. He stopped, fanned himself with his hat, swabbed the

perspiration from his face and neck with a red handkerchief, panted

a moment or two, and asked how far to Waeggis. I said three hours. He

looked surprised, and said:

“Why, it seems as if I could toss a biscuit into the lake from here,

it's so close by. Is that an inn, there?”

I said it was.

“Well,” said he, “I can't stand another three hours, I've had enough

today; I'll take a bed there.”

I asked:

“Are we nearly to the top?”

“Nearly to the TOP? Why, bless your soul, you haven't really started,

yet.”

I said we would put up at the inn, too. So we turned back and ordered a

hot supper, and had quite a jolly evening of it with this Englishman.

The German landlady gave us neat rooms and nice beds, and when I and my

agent turned in, it was with the resolution to be up early and make the

utmost of our first Alpine sunrise. But of course we were dead tired,

and slept like policemen; so when we awoke in the morning and ran to the

window it was already too late, because it was half past eleven. It

was a sharp disappointment. However, we ordered breakfast and told the

landlady to call the Englishman, but she said he was already up and off

at daybreak--and swearing like mad about something or other. We could

not find out what the matter was. He had asked the landlady the altitude

of her place above the level of the lake, and she told him fourteen

hundred and ninety-five feet. That was all that was said; then he lost

his temper. He said that between ------fools and guide-books, a man

could acquire ignorance enough in twenty-four hours in a country like

this to last him a year. Harris believed our boy had been loading him

up with misinformation; and this was probably the case, for his epithet

described that boy to a dot.

We got under way about the turn of noon, and pulled out for the summit

again, with a fresh and vigorous step. When we had gone about two

hundred yards, and stopped to rest, I glanced to the left while I was

lighting my pipe, and in the distance detected a long worm of black

smoke crawling lazily up the steep mountain. Of course that was the

locomotive. We propped ourselves on our elbows at once, to gaze, for we

had never seen a mountain railway yet. Presently we could make out the

train. It seemed incredible that that thing should creep straight up a

sharp slant like the roof of a house--but there it was, and it was doing

that very miracle.

In the course of a couple hours we reached a fine breezy altitude where

the little shepherd huts had big stones all over their roofs to hold

them down to the earth when the great storms rage. The country was wild

and rocky about here, but there were plenty of trees, plenty of moss,

and grass.

Away off on the opposite shore of the lake we could see some villages,

and now for the first time we could observe the real difference between

their proportions and those of the giant mountains at whose feet they

slept. When one is in one of those villages it seems spacious, and

its houses seem high and not out of proportion to the mountain that

overhangs them--but from our altitude, what a change! The mountains were

bigger and grander than ever, as they stood there thinking their solemn

thoughts with their heads in the drifting clouds, but the villages

at their feet--when the painstaking eye could trace them up and find

them--were so reduced, almost invisible, and lay so flat against the

ground, that the exactest simile I can devise is to compare them to

ant-deposits of granulated dirt overshadowed by the huge bulk of a

cathedral. The steamboats skimming along under the stupendous precipices

were diminished by distance to the daintiest little toys, the sailboats

and rowboats to shallops proper for fairies that keep house in the cups

of lilies and ride to court on the backs of bumblebees.

Presently we came upon half a dozen sheep nibbling grass in the spray

of a stream of clear water that sprang from a rock wall a hundred feet

high, and all at once our ears were startled with a melodious “Lul ...

l ... l l l llul-lul-LAhee-o-o-o!” pealing joyously from a near but

invisible source, and recognized that we were hearing for the first

time the famous Alpine JODEL in its own native wilds. And we recognized,

also, that it was that sort of quaint commingling of baritone and

falsetto which at home we call “Tyrolese warbling.”

The jodeling (pronounced yOdling--emphasis on the O) continued, and

was very pleasant and inspiriting to hear. Now the jodeler appeared--a

shepherd boy of sixteen--and in our gladness and gratitude we gave him

a franc to jodel some more. So he jodeled and we listened. We moved

on, presently, and he generously jodeled us out of sight. After about

fifteen minutes we came across another shepherd boy who was jodeling,

and gave him half a franc to keep it up. He also jodeled us out of

sight. After that, we found a jodeler every ten minutes; we gave the

first one eight cents, the second one six cents, the third one four, the

fourth one a penny, contributed nothing to Nos. 5, 6, and 7, and during

the remainder of the day hired the rest of the jodelers, at a franc

apiece, not to jodel any more. There is somewhat too much of the

jodeling in the Alps.

About the middle of the afternoon we passed through a prodigious natural

gateway called the Felsenthor, formed by two enormous upright rocks,

with a third lying across the top. There was a very attractive little

hotel close by, but our energies were not conquered yet, so we went on.

Three hours afterward we came to the railway-track. It was planted

straight up the mountain with the slant of a ladder that leans against a

house, and it seemed to us that man would need good nerves who proposed

to travel up it or down it either.

During the latter part of the afternoon we cooled our roasting interiors

with ice-cold water from clear streams, the only really satisfying water

we had tasted since we left home, for at the hotels on the continent

they merely give you a tumbler of ice to soak your water in, and that

only modifies its hotness, doesn't make it cold. Water can only be made

cold enough for summer comfort by being prepared in a refrigerator or

a closed ice-pitcher. Europeans say ice-water impairs digestion. How do

they know?--they never drink any.

At ten minutes past six we reached the Kaltbad station, where there is

a spacious hotel with great verandas which command a majestic expanse of

lake and mountain scenery. We were pretty well fagged out, now, but as

we did not wish to miss the Alpine sunrise, we got through our dinner

as quickly as possible and hurried off to bed. It was unspeakably

comfortable to stretch our weary limbs between the cool, damp sheets.

And how we did sleep!--for there is no opiate like Alpine pedestrianism.

In the morning we both awoke and leaped out of bed at the same instant

and ran and stripped aside the window-curtains; but we suffered a bitter

disappointment again: it was already half past three in the afternoon.

We dressed sullenly and in ill spirits, each accusing the other of

oversleeping. Harris said if we had brought the courier along, as we

ought to have done, we should not have missed these sunrises. I said he

knew very well that one of us would have to sit up and wake the

courier; and I added that we were having trouble enough to take care

of ourselves, on this climb, without having to take care of a courier

besides.

During breakfast our spirits came up a little, since we found by this

guide-book that in the hotels on the summit the tourist is not left to

trust to luck for his sunrise, but is roused betimes by a man who goes

through the halls with a great Alpine horn, blowing blasts that would

raise the dead. And there was another consoling thing: the guide-book

said that up there on the summit the guests did not wait to dress much,

but seized a red bed blanket and sailed out arrayed like an Indian. This

was good; this would be romantic; two hundred and fifty people grouped

on the windy summit, with their hair flying and their red blankets

flapping, in the solemn presence of the coming sun, would be a striking

and memorable spectacle. So it was good luck, not ill luck, that we had

missed those other sunrises.

We were informed by the guide-book that we were now 3,228 feet above

the level of the lake--therefore full two-thirds of our journey had been

accomplished. We got away at a quarter past four P.M.; a hundred yards

above the hotel the railway divided; one track went straight up the

steep hill, the other one turned square off to the right, with a very

slight grade. We took the latter, and followed it more than a mile,

turned a rocky corner, and came in sight of a handsome new hotel. If we

had gone on, we should have arrived at the summit, but Harris

preferred to ask a lot of questions--as usual, of a man who didn't know

anything--and he told us to go back and follow the other route. We did

so. We could ill afford this loss of time.

We climbed and climbed; and we kept on climbing; we reached about forty

summits, but there was always another one just ahead. It came on to

rain, and it rained in dead earnest. We were soaked through and it

was bitter cold. Next a smoky fog of clouds covered the whole region

densely, and we took to the railway-ties to keep from getting lost.

Sometimes we slopped along in a narrow path on the left-hand side of the

track, but by and by when the fog blew aside a little and we saw that we

were treading the rampart of a precipice and that our left elbows were

projecting over a perfectly boundless and bottomless vacancy, we gasped,

and jumped for the ties again.

The night shut down, dark and drizzly and cold. About eight in the

evening the fog lifted and showed us a well-worn path which led up a

very steep rise to the left. We took it, and as soon as we had got far

enough from the railway to render the finding it again an impossibility,

the fog shut down on us once more.

We were in a bleak, unsheltered place, now, and had to trudge right

along, in order to keep warm, though we rather expected to go over a

precipice, sooner or later. About nine o'clock we made an important

discovery--that we were not in any path. We groped around a while on our

hands and knees, but we could not find it; so we sat down in the mud and

the wet scant grass to wait.

We were terrified into this by being suddenly confronted with a vast

body which showed itself vaguely for an instant and in the next instant

was smothered in the fog again. It was really the hotel we were after,

monstrously magnified by the fog, but we took it for the face of a

precipice, and decided not to try to claw up it.

We sat there an hour, with chattering teeth and quivering bodies, and

quarreled over all sorts of trifles, but gave most of our attention to

abusing each other for the stupidity of deserting the railway-track. We

sat with our backs to the precipice, because what little wind there was

came from that quarter. At some time or other the fog thinned a little;

we did not know when, for we were facing the empty universe and the

thinness could not show; but at last Harris happened to look around, and

there stood a huge, dim, spectral hotel where the precipice had been.

One could faintly discern the windows and chimneys, and a dull blur of

lights. Our first emotion was deep, unutterable gratitude, our next was

a foolish rage, born of the suspicion that possibly the hotel had been

visible three-quarters of an hour while we sat there in those cold

puddles quarreling.

Yes, it was the Rigi-Kulm hotel--the one that occupies the extreme

summit, and whose remote little sparkle of lights we had often seen

glinting high aloft among the stars from our balcony away down yonder

in Lucerne. The crusty portier and the crusty clerks gave us the

surly reception which their kind deal out in prosperous times, but by

mollifying them with an extra display of obsequiousness and servility

we finally got them to show us to the room which our boy had engaged for

us.

We got into some dry clothing, and while our supper was preparing we

loafed forsakenly through a couple of vast cavernous drawing-rooms,

one of which had a stove in it. This stove was in a corner, and densely

walled around with people. We could not get near the fire, so we moved

at large in the artic spaces, among a multitude of people who sat

silent, smileless, forlorn, and shivering--thinking what fools they were

to come, perhaps. There were some Americans and some Germans, but one

could see that the great majority were English.

We lounged into an apartment where there was a great crowd, to see

what was going on. It was a memento-magazine. The tourists were eagerly

buying all sorts and styles of paper-cutters, marked “Souvenir of the

Rigi,” with handles made of the little curved horn of the ostensible

chamois; there were all manner of wooden goblets and such things,

similarly marked. I was going to buy a paper-cutter, but I believed

I could remember the cold comfort of the Rigi-Kulm without it, so I

smothered the impulse.

Supper warmed us, and we went immediately to bed--but first, as Mr.

Baedeker requests all tourists to call his attention to any errors which

they may find in his guide-books, I dropped him a line to inform him he

missed it by just about three days. I had previously informed him of his

mistake about the distance from Allerheiligen to Oppenau, and had also

informed the Ordnance Depart of the German government of the same error

in the imperial maps. I will add, here, that I never got any answer to

those letters, or any thanks from either of those sources; and, what is

still more discourteous, these corrections have not been made, either in

the maps or the guide-books. But I will write again when I get time, for

my letters may have miscarried.

We curled up in the clammy beds, and went to sleep without rocking. We

were so sodden with fatigue that we never stirred nor turned over till

the blooming blasts of the Alpine horn aroused us.

It may well be imagined that we did not lose any time. We snatched on

a few odds and ends of clothing, cocooned ourselves in the proper red

blankets, and plunged along the halls and out into the whistling wind

bareheaded. We saw a tall wooden scaffolding on the very peak of the

summit, a hundred yards away, and made for it. We rushed up the stairs

to the top of this scaffolding, and stood there, above the vast outlying

world, with hair flying and ruddy blankets waving and cracking in the

fierce breeze.

“Fifteen minutes too late, at last!” said Harris, in a vexed voice. “The

sun is clear above the horizon.”

“No matter,” I said, “it is a most magnificent spectacle, and we will

see it do the rest of its rising anyway.”

In a moment we were deeply absorbed in the marvel before us, and dead to

everything else. The great cloud-barred disk of the sun stood just above

a limitless expanse of tossing white-caps--so to speak--a billowy chaos

of massy mountain domes and peaks draped in imperishable snow, and

flooded with an opaline glory of changing and dissolving splendors,

while through rifts in a black cloud-bank above the sun, radiating

lances of diamond dust shot to the zenith. The cloven valleys of the

lower world swam in a tinted mist which veiled the ruggedness of their

crags and ribs and ragged forests, and turned all the forbidding region

into a soft and rich and sensuous paradise.

We could not speak. We could hardly breathe. We could only gaze in

drunken ecstasy and drink in it. Presently Harris exclaimed:

“Why--nation, it's going DOWN!”

Perfectly true. We had missed the MORNING hornblow, and slept all day.

This was stupefying.

Harris said:

“Look here, the sun isn't the spectacle--it's US--stacked up here on top

of this gallows, in these idiotic blankets, and two hundred and fifty

well-dressed men and women down here gawking up at us and not caring

a straw whether the sun rises or sets, as long as they've got such a

ridiculous spectacle as this to set down in their memorandum-books. They

seem to be laughing their ribs loose, and there's one girl there that

appears to be going all to pieces. I never saw such a man as you before.

I think you are the very last possibility in the way of an ass.”

“What have I done?” I answered, with heat.

“What have you done? You've got up at half past seven o'clock in the

evening to see the sun rise, that's what you've done.”

“And have you done any better, I'd like to know? I've always used to

get up with the lark, till I came under the petrifying influence of your

turgid intellect.”

“YOU used to get up with the lark--Oh, no doubt--you'll get up with the

hangman one of these days. But you ought to be ashamed to be jawing

here like this, in a red blanket, on a forty-foot scaffold on top of the

Alps. And no end of people down here to boot; this isn't any place for

an exhibition of temper.”

And so the customary quarrel went on. When the sun was fairly down, we

slipped back to the hotel in the charitable gloaming, and went to bed

again. We had encountered the horn-blower on the way, and he had tried

to collect compensation, not only for announcing the sunset, which we

did see, but for the sunrise, which we had totally missed; but we said

no, we only took our solar rations on the “European plan”--pay for what

you get. He promised to make us hear his horn in the morning, if we were

alive.