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Title: A Tramp Abroad

Author: Mark Twain

Release date: June 19, 2004 [eBook #119]
Most recently updated: October 29, 2024

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/119

Credits: Produced by David Widger

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A TRAMP
ABROAD ***

A TRAMP ABROAD BY MARK TWAIN

A TRAMP ABROAD, Part 1

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

4. THE BLACK KNIGHT

5. OPENING HIS VIZIER

6. THE ENRAGED EMPEROR

7. THE PORTIER

8. ONE OF THOSE BOYS

9. SCHLOSS HOTEL

10. IN MY CAGE

11. HEIDELBERG CASTLE

12. HEIDELBERG CASTLE, RIVER FRONTAGE

13. THE RETREAT

14. JIM BAKER

15. "A BLUE FLUSH ABOUT IT"

16. COULD NOT SEE IT

17. THE BEER KING

18. THE LECTURER’S AUDIENCE

19. INDUSTRIOUS STUDENTS

20. IDLE STUDENT

21. COMPANIONABLE INTERCOURSE

22. AN IMPOSING SPECTACLE

23. AN ADVERTISEMENT

24. "UNDERSTANDS HIS BUSINESS"

25. THE OLD SURGEON

26. THE FIRST WOUND

27. THE CASTLE COURT

28. WOUNDED

29. FAVORITE STREET COSTUME

30. INEFFACEABLE SCARS

31. PIECE OF SWORD

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

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

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

178. EXCEEDINGLY COMFORTABLE

179. THE SUNRISE

180. THE RIGI-KULM

181. AN OPTICAL ILLUSION

182. TAIL PIECE

183. RAILWAY DOWN THE MOUNTAIN

184. SOURCE OF THE RHONE

185. A GLACIER TABLE

186. GLACIER OF GRINDELWALD

187. DAWN ON THE MOUNTAINS

188. TAIL PIECE

189. NEW AND OLD STYLE

190. ST NICHOLAS, AS A HERMIT

191. A LANDSLIDE

192. GOLDAU VALLEY BEFORE AND AFTER THE LANDSLIDE

193. THE WAY THEY DO IT

194. OUR GALLANT DRIVER

195. A MOUNTAIN PASS

196. "I’M OFUL DRY"

197. IT’S THE FASHION

198. WHAT WE EXPECTED

199. WE MISSED THE SCENERY

200. THE TOURISTS

201. THE YOUNG BRIDE

202. "IT WAS A FAMOUS VICTORY

203. PROMENADE IN INTERLAKEN

204. THE JUNGFRAU BY M.T.

205. STREET IN INTERLAKEN

206. WITHOUT A COURIER

207. TRAVELING WITH A COURIER

208. TAIL PIECE

209. GRAPE AND WHEY PATIENTS

210. SOCIABLE DRIVERS

211. A MOUNTAIN CASCADE

212. THE GASTERNTHAL

213. EXHILARATING SPORT

214. FALLS

215. WHAT MIGHT BE

216. AN ALPINE BOUQUET

217. THE END OF THE WORLD

218. THE FORGET-ME-NOT

219. A NEEDLE OF ICE

220. CLIMBING THE MOUNTAIN

221. SNOW CREVASSES

222. CUTTING STEPS

223. THE GUIDE

224. VIEW FROM THE CLIFF

225. GEMMI PASS AND LAKE DAUBENSEE

226. ALMOST A TRAGEDY

227. THE ALPINE LITTER

228. SOCIAL BATHERS

229. DEATH OF COUNTESS HERLINCOURT

230. THEY’VE GOT IT ALL

231. MODEL FOR AN EMPRESS

232. BATH HOUSES AT LEUKE

233. THE BATHERS AT LEUKE

234. RATTIER MIXED UP

235. TAIL PIECE

236. A SUNDAY MORNING’S DEMON

237. JUST SAVED

238. SCENE IN VALLEY OF ZERMATT

239. ARRIVAL AT ZERMATT

240. FITTED OUT

241. A FEARFUL FALL

242. TAIL PIECE

243. ALL READY

244. THE MARCH

245. THE CARAVAN

246. THE HOOK

247. THE DISABLED CHAPLAIN

248. TRYING EXPERIMENTS

249. SAVED! SAVED!

250. TWENTY MINUTES WORK

251. THE BLACK RAM

252. THE MIRACLE

253. THE NEW GUIDE

251. SCIENTIFIC RESEARCHES

255. MOUNTAIN CHALET

256. THE GRANDSON

257. OCCASIONLY MET WITH

258. SUMMIT OF THE GORNER GRAT

259. CHIEFS OF THE ADVANCE GUARD

260. MY PICTURE OF THE MATTERHORN

261. EVERYBODY HAD AN EXCUSE

262. SPRUNG A LEAK

263. A SCIENTIFIC QUESTION

264. A TERMINAL MORAINE

265. FRONT OF GLACIER

266. AN OLD MORAINE

267. GLACIER OF ZERMATT WITH LATERAL MORAINE

269. UNEXPECTED MEETING OF FRIENDS

269. VILLAGE OF CHAMONIX

270. THE MATTERHORN

271. ON THE SUMMIT

272. ACCIDENT ON THE MATTERHORN (1865)

273. ROPED TOGETHER

274. STORAGE OF ANCESTORS

275. FALLING OUT OF HIS FARM

276. CHILD LIFE IN SWITZERLAND

277. A SUNDAY PLAY

278. THE COMBINATION

279. CHILLON

280. THE TETE NOIR

281. MONT BLANC’S NEIGHBORS

282. AN EXQUISITE THING

283. A WILD RIDE

284. SWISS PEASANT GIRL

285. STREET IN CHAMONIX

286. THE PROUD GERMAN

287. THE INDIGNANT TOURIST

288. MUSIC OF SWITZERLAND

289. ONLY A MISTAKE

290. A BROAD VIEW

291. PREPARING TO START

292. ASCENT OF MONT BLANC

293. "WE ALL RAISED A TREMENDOUS SHOUT"

294. THE GRANDE MULETS

295. CABIN ON THE GRANDE MULETS

296. KEEPING WARM

297. TAIL PIECE

298. TAKE IT EASY

299. THE MER DE GLACE (MONT BLANC)

300. TAKING TOLL

301. A DESCENDING TOURIST

302. LEAVING BY DILIGENCE

303. THE SATISFIED ENGLISHMAN

301. HIGH PRESSURE

305. NO APOLOGY

307. A LIVELY STREET

308. HAVING HER FULL RIGHTS

309. HOW SHE FOOLED US

310. "YOU’LL TAKE THAT OR NONE"

311. ROBBING A BEGGAR

312. DISHONEST ITALY

313. STOCK IN TRADE

314. STYLE

315. SPECIMENS FROM OLD MASTERS

316. AN OLD MASTER

317. THE LION OF ST MARK

318. OH TO BE AT RRST!

319. THE WORLD’S MASTERPIECE

320. TAIL PIECE

321. AESTHETIC TASTES

322. A PRIVATE FAMILY BREAKFAST

323. EUROPEAN CARVING

323. A TWENTY-FOUR HOUR FIGHT

325. GREAT HEIDELBERG TUN

326. BISMARCK IN PRISON

327. TAIL PIECE 600

328. A COMPLETE WORD

CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
A Tramp over Europe—On the Holsatia—Hamburg—Frankfort-on-the-
Main—How it Won its Name—A Lesson in Political Economy—Neatness
in Dress—Rhine Legends—“The Knave of Bergen” The Famous Ball—The
Strange Knight—Dancing with the Queen—Removal of the Masks—The
Disclosure—Wrath of the Emperor—The Ending

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 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 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 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 XXIX
Everything Convenient—Looking for a Western Sunrise—Mutual
Recrimination—View from the Summit—Down the Mountain—
Railroading—Confidence Wanted and Acquired

CHAPTER XXX
A Trip by Proxy—A Visit to the Furka Regions—Deadman’s Lake—Source
of the Rhone—Glacier Tables—Storm in the Mountains—At Grindelwald
—Dawn on the Mountains—An Explanation Required—Dead Language—
Criticism of Harris’s Report

CHAPTER XXXI
Preparations for a Tramp—From Lucerne to Interlaken—The Brunig Pass
—Modern and Ancient Chalets—Death of Pontius Pilate—Hermit Home of
St Nicholas—Landslides—Children Selling Refreshments—How they
Harness a Horse—A Great Man—Honors to a Hero—A Thirsty Bride—For
Better or Worse—German Fashions—Anticipations—Solid Comfort—An
Unsatisfactory \ Awakening—What we had Lost—Our Surroundings

CHAPTER XXXII
The Jungfrau Hotel—A Whiskered Waitress—An Arkansas Bride—
Perfection in Discord—A Famous Victory—A Look from a Window—
About the Jungfrau

CHAPTER XXXIII
The Giesbach Falls—The Spirit of the Alps—Why People Visit Them—
Whey and Grapes as Medicines—The Kursaal—A Formidable Undertaking
—From Interlaken to Zermatt on Foot—We Concluded to take a Buggy—A

Pair of Jolly Drivers—We meet with Companions—A Cheerful Ride—
Kandersteg Valley—An Alpine Parlor—Exercise and Amusement—A Race
with a Log

CHAPTER XXXIV
An Old Guide—Possible Accidents—Dangerous Habitation—Mountain
Flowers—Embryo Lions—Mountain Pigs—The End of The World—
Ghastly Desolation—Proposed Adventure—Reading-up Adventures—
Ascent of Monte Rosa—Precipices and Crevasses—Among the Snows—
Exciting Experiences—lee Ridges—The Summit—Adventures Postponed

CHAPTER XXXV
A New Interest—Magnificent Views—A Mule’s Prefereoces—Turning
Mountain Corners—Terror of a Horse—Lady Tourists—Death of a young
Countess—A Search for a Hat—What We Did Find—Harris’s Opinion of
Chamois—A Disappointed Man—A Giantess—Model for an Empress—
Baths at Leuk—Sport in the Water—The Gemmi Precipices—A Palace for
an Emperor—The Famous Ladders—Considerably Mixed Up—Sad Plight
of a Minister

CHAPTER XXXVI
Sunday Church Bells—A Cause of Profanity—A Magnificent Glacier—
Fault Finding by Harris—Almost an Accident—Selfishness of Harris—
Approaching Zermatt—The Matterhorn—Zermatt—Home of Mountain
Climbers—Fitted out for Climbing—A Fearful Adventure —Never
Satisfied

CHAPTER XXXVII
A Calm Decision—“I Will Ascend the Riffelberg”—Preparations for the
Trip—All Zermatt on the Alert—Schedule of Persons and Things—An
Unprecedented Display—A General Turn—out—Ready for a Start—The
Post of Danger—The Advance Directed—Grand Display of Umbrellas—
The First Camp—Almost a Panic—Supposed to be Lost—The First
Accident—A Chaplain Disabled—An Experimenting Mule—Good Effects
of a Blunder—Badly Lost—A Reconnoiter—Mystery and Doubt—Stern
Measures Taken—A Black Ram—Saved by a Miracle—The Guide’s Guide

CHAPTER XXXVIII
Our Expedition Continued—Experiments with the Barometer—Boiling
Thermometer—Barometer Soup—An Interesting Scientific Discovery—
Crippling a Latinist—A Chaplain Injured—Short of Barkeepers—Digging a
Mountain Cellar—A Young American Specimen—Somebody’s Grandson—
Arrival at Riffelberg Botel—Ascent of Gorner Grat—Faith in
Thermometers—The Matterhorn

CHAPTER XXXIX
Guide Books—Plans for the Return of the Expedition—A Glacier Train—
Parachute Descent from Gorner Grat—Proposed Honors to Harris Declined
—All had an Excuse—A Magnificent Idea Abandoned—Descent to the
Glacier—A Supposed Leak—A Slow Train—The Glacier Abandoned—
Journey to Zermatt—A Scientific Question

CHAPTER XL
Glaciers—Glacier Perils—Moraines—Terminal Moraines—Lateral
Moraines—Immense Size of Glacier—Traveling Glacier——General
Movements of Glaciers—Ascent of Mont Blacc—Loss of Guides—Finding
of Remains—Meeting of Old Friends—The Dead and Living—Proposed
Museum—The Relics at Chamonix

CHAPTER XLI
The Matterhorn Catastrophe of 1563—Mr Whymper’s Narrative—Ascent
of the Matterhorn—The Summit—The Matterhorn Conquered—The
Descent Commenced—A Fearful Disaster—Death of Lord Douglas and
Two Others—The Graves of the Two

CHAPTER XLII
Switzerland—Graveyard at Zermatt—Balloting for Marriage—Farmers as
Heroes—Falling off a Farm—From St Nicholas to Visp—Dangerous
Traveling—Children’s Play—The Parson’s Children—A Landlord’s
Daughter—A Rare Combination—Ch iIIon—Lost Sympathy—Mont Blanc
and its Neighbors—Beauty of Soap Bubbles—A Wild Drive—The King of
Drivers—Benefit of getting Drunk

CHAPTER XLIII

Chamonix—Contrasts—Magnificent Spectacle—The Guild of Guides—
The Guide—in—Chief—The Returned Tourist—Getting Diploma—Rigid
Rules—Unsuccessful Efforts to Procure a Diploma—The Record-Book—
The Conqueror of Mont Blanc—Professional Jealousy —Triumph of Truth
—Mountain Music—Its Effect—A Hunt for a Nuisance

CHAPTER XLIV
Looking at Mont Blanc—Telescopic Effect—A Proposed Trip—
Determination and Courage—The Cost all counted——Ascent of Mont
Blanc by Telescope—Safe and Rapid Return—Diplomas Asked for and
Refused—Disaster of 1866—The Brave Brothers—Wonderful Endurance
and Pluck—Love Making on Mont Blanc—First Ascent of a Woman—
Sensible Attire

CHAPTER XLV
A Catastrophe which Cost Eleven Lives—Accident of 1870—A Party of
Eleven—A Fearful Storm—Note-books of the Victims—Within Five
Minutes of Safety—Facing Death Resignedly

CHAPTER XLVI
The Hotel des Pyramids—The Glacier des Bossons—One of the Shows—
Premeditated Crime—Saved Again—Tourists Warned—Advice to Tourists
—The Two Empresses—The Glacier Toll Collector—Pure Ice Water—
Death Rate of the World—Of Various Cities—A Pleasure Excursionist—A
Diligence Ride—A Satisfied Englishman

CHAPTER XLVII
Geneva—Shops of Geneva—Elasticity of Prices—Persistency of Shop-
Women—The High Pressure System—How a Dandy was brought to Grief
—American Manners—Gallantry—Col Baker of London—Arkansaw
Justice—Safety of Women in America—Town of Chambery—A Lively
Place—At Turin—A Railroad Companion—An Insulted Woman—City of
Turin—Italian Honesty—A Small Mistake —Robbing a Beggar Woman

CHAPTER XLVIII
In Milan—The Arcade—Incidents we Met With—The Pedlar—Children—
The Honest Conductor—Heavy Stocks of Clothing—The Quarrelsome

Italians—Great Smoke and Little Fire—The Cathedral—Style in Church—
The Old Masters—Tintoretto’s great Picture—Emotional Tourists—
Basson’s Famed Picture—The Hair Trunk

CHAPTER XLIX
In Venice—St Mark’s Cathedral—Discovery of an Antique—The Riches of
St Mark’s—A Church Robber—Trusting Secrets to a Friend —The Robber
Hanged—A Private Dinner—European Food

CHAPTER L
Why Some things Are—Art in Rome and Florence—The Fig Leaf Mania—
Titian’s Venus—Difference between Seeing and Describing A Real work of
Art—Titian’s Moses—Home

APPENDIX

A—The Portier analyzed

B—Hiedelberg Castle Described

C—The College Prison and Inmates

D—The Awful German Language

E—Legends of the Castle

F—The Journals of Germany

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.]

[Transcriber’s Note for edition 12: on the advice of two German-
speaking volunteers, the German letters a, o, and u with umlauts have been
rendered as ae, oe, and ue instead of as, variously, :a, a”, :o, o” and :u, u” as
in previous editions.]

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.

[Transcriber’s Note for edition 12: on the advice of two German-
speaking volunteers, the German letters a, o, and u with umlauts have been
rendered as ae, oe, and ue instead of as, variously, :a, a”, :o, o” and :u, u” as
in previous editions.]

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.

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? 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’Ecu 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.

CHAPTER XXIX
[Looking West for Sunrise]

He kept his word. We heard his horn and instantly got up. It was dark and
cold and wretched. As I fumbled around for the matches, knocking things
down with my quaking hands, I wished the sun would rise in the middle of
the day, when it was warm and bright and cheerful, and one wasn’t sleepy.
We proceeded to dress by the gloom of a couple sickly candles, but we
could hardly button anything, our hands shook so. I thought of how many
happy people there were in Europe, Asia, and America, and everywhere,
who were sleeping peacefully in their beds, and did not have to get up and
see the Rigi sunrise—people who did not appreciate their advantage, as like
as not, but would get up in the morning wanting more boons of Providence.
While thinking these thoughts I yawned, in a rather ample way, and my
upper teeth got hitched on a nail over the door, and while I was mounting a
chair to free myself, Harris drew the window-curtain, and said:
“Oh, this is luck! We shan’t have to go out at all—yonder are the
mountains, in full view."

That was glad news, indeed. It made us cheerful right away. One could
see the grand Alpine masses dimly outlined against the black firmament,
and one or two faint stars blinking through rifts in the night. Fully clothed,
and wrapped in blankets, and huddled ourselves up, by the window, with
lighted pipes, and fell into chat, while we waited in exceeding comfort to

see how an Alpine sunrise was going to look by candlelight. By and by a
delicate, spiritual sort of effulgence spread itself by imperceptible degrees
over the loftiest altitudes of the snowy wastes—but there the effort seemed
to stop. I said, presently:
“There is a hitch about this sunrise somewhere. It doesn’t seem to go.
What do you reckon is the matter with it?”
“I don’t know. It appears to hang fire somewhere. I never saw a sunrise
act like that before. Can it be that the hotel is playing anything on us?”
“Of course not. The hotel merely has a property interest in the sun, it has
nothing to do with the management of it. It is a precarious kind of property,
too; a succession of total eclipses would probably ruin this tavern. Now
what can be the matter with this sunrise?”
Harris jumped up and said:
“I’ve got it! I know what’s the matter with it! We’ve been looking at the
place where the sun set last night!”
“It is perfectly true! Why couldn’t you have thought of that sooner? Now
we’ve lost another one! And all through your blundering. It was exactly like
you to light a pipe and sit down to wait for the sun to rise in the west.”
“It was exactly like me to find out the mistake, too. You never would
have found it out. I find out all the mistakes.”
“You make them all, too, else your most valuable faculty would be
wasted on you. But don’t stop to quarrel, now—maybe we are not too late
yet.”
But we were. The sun was well up when we got to the exhibition-ground.

On our way up we met the crowd returning—men and women dressed in
all sorts of queer costumes, and exhibiting all degrees of cold and
wretchedness in their gaits and countenances. A dozen still remained on the
ground when we reached there, huddled together about the scaffold with
their backs to the bitter wind. They had their red guide-books open at the
diagram of the view, and were painfully picking out the several mountains
and trying to impress their names and positions on their memories. It was
one of the saddest sights I ever saw.
Two sides of this place were guarded by railings, to keep people from
being blown over the precipices. The view, looking sheer down into the
broad valley, eastward, from this great elevation—almost a perpendicular
mile—was very quaint and curious. Counties, towns, hilly ribs and ridges,
wide stretches of green meadow, great forest tracts, winding streams, a
dozen blue lakes, a block of busy steamboats—we saw all this little world

in unique circumstantiality of detail—saw it just as the birds see it—and all
reduced to the smallest of scales and as sharply worked out and finished as
a steel engraving. The numerous toy villages, with tiny spires projecting out
of them, were just as the children might have left them when done with play
the day before; the forest tracts were diminished to cushions of moss; one or
two big lakes were dwarfed to ponds, the smaller ones to puddles—though
they did not look like puddles, but like blue teardrops which had fallen and
lodged in slight depressions, conformable to their shapes, among the moss-
beds and the smooth levels of dainty green farm-land; the microscopic
steamboats glided along, as in a city reservoir, taking a mighty time to cover
the distance between ports which seemed only a yard apart; and the isthmus
which separated two lakes looked as if one might stretch out on it and lie
with both elbows in the water, yet we knew invisible wagons were toiling
across it and finding the distance a tedious one. This beautiful miniature
world had exactly the appearance of those “relief maps” which reproduce
nature precisely, with the heights and depressions and other details
graduated to a reduced scale, and with the rocks, trees, lakes, etc., colored
after nature.

I believed we could walk down to Waeggis or Vitznau in a day, but I
knew we could go down by rail in about an hour, so I chose the latter
method. I wanted to see what it was like, anyway. The train came along
about the middle of the afternoon, and an odd thing it was. The locomotive-
boiler stood on end, and it and the whole locomotive were tilted sharply

backward. There were two passenger-cars, roofed, but wide open all
around. These cars were not tilted back, but the seats were; this enables the
passenger to sit level while going down a steep incline.
There are three railway-tracks; the central one is cogged; the “lantern
wheel” of the engine grips its way along these cogs, and pulls the train up
the hill or retards its motion on the down trip. About the same speed—three
miles an hour—is maintained both ways. Whether going up or down, the
locomotive is always at the lower end of the train. It pushes in the one case,
braces back in the other. The passenger rides backward going up, and faces
forward going down.
We got front seats, and while the train moved along about fifty yards on
level ground, I was not the least frightened; but now it started abruptly
downstairs, and I caught my breath. And I, like my neighbors,
unconsciously held back all I could, and threw my weight to the rear, but, of
course, that did no particular good. I had slidden down the balusters when I
was a boy, and thought nothing of it, but to slide down the balusters in a
railway-train is a thing to make one’s flesh creep. Sometimes we had as
much as ten yards of almost level ground, and this gave us a few full
breaths in comfort; but straightway we would turn a corner and see a long
steep line of rails stretching down below us, and the comfort was at an end.
One expected to see the locomotive pause, or slack up a little, and approach
this plunge cautiously, but it did nothing of the kind; it went calmly on, and
went it reached the jumping-off place it made a sudden bow, and went
gliding smoothly downstairs, untroubled by the circumstances.
It was wildly exhilarating to slide along the edge of the precipices, after
this grisly fashion, and look straight down upon that far-off valley which I
was describing a while ago.
There was no level ground at the Kaltbad station; the railbed was as steep
as a roof; I was curious to see how the stop was going to be managed. But it
was very simple; the train came sliding down, and when it reached the right
spot it just stopped—that was all there was “to it”—stopped on the steep
incline, and when the exchange of passengers and baggage had been made,
it moved off and went sliding down again. The train can be stopped
anywhere, at a moment’s notice.
There was one curious effect, which I need not take the trouble to
describe—because I can scissor a description of it out of the railway

company’s advertising pamphlet, and save my ink:

“On the whole tour, particularly at the Descent, we undergo an optical
illusion which often seems to be incredible. All the shrubs, fir trees, stables,
houses, etc., seem to be bent in a slanting direction, as by an immense
pressure of air. They are all standing awry, so much awry that the chalets
and cottages of the peasants seem to be tumbling down. It is the
consequence of the steep inclination of the line. Those who are seated in the
carriage do not observe that they are going down a declivity of twenty to
twenty-five degrees (their seats being adapted to this course of proceeding
and being bent down at their backs). They mistake their carriage and its
horizontal lines for a proper measure of the normal plain, and therefore all
the objects outside which really are in a horizontal position must show a
disproportion of twenty to twenty-five degrees declivity, in regard to the
mountain.”
By the time one reaches Kaltbad, he has acquired confidence in the
railway, and he now ceases to try to ease the locomotive by holding back.
Thenceforth he smokes his pipe in serenity, and gazes out upon the
magnificent picture below and about him with unfettered enjoyment. There

is nothing to interrupt the view or the breeze; it is like inspecting the world
on the wing. However—to be exact—there is one place where the serenity
lapses for a while; this is while one is crossing the Schnurrtobel Bridge, a
frail structure which swings its gossamer frame down through the dizzy air,
over a gorge, like a vagrant spider-strand.
One has no difficulty in remembering his sins while the train is creeping
down this bridge; and he repents of them, too; though he sees, when he gets
to Vitznau, that he need not have done it, the bridge was perfectly safe.
So ends the eventual trip which we made to the Rigi-Kulm to see an
Alpine sunrise.

CHAPTER XXX
[Harris Climbs Mountains for Me]

An hour’s sail brought us to Lucerne again. I judged it best to go to bed
and rest several days, for I knew that the man who undertakes to make the
tour of Europe on foot must take care of himself.
Thinking over my plans, as mapped out, I perceived that they did not take
in the Furka Pass, the Rhone Glacier, the Finsteraarhorn, the Wetterhorn,
etc. I immediately examined the guide-book to see if these were important,
and found they were; in fact, a pedestrian tour of Europe could not be
complete without them. Of course that decided me at once to see them, for I
never allow myself to do things by halves, or in a slurring, slipshod way.
I called in my agent and instructed him to go without delay and make a
careful examination of these noted places, on foot, and bring me back a
written report of the result, for insertion in my book. I instructed him to go
to Hospenthal as quickly as possible, and make his grand start from there;
to extend his foot expedition as far as the Giesbach fall, and return to me
from thence by diligence or mule. I told him to take the courier with him.
He objected to the courier, and with some show of reason, since he was
about to venture upon new and untried ground; but I thought he might as
well learn how to take care of the courier now as later, therefore I enforced
my point. I said that the trouble, delay, and inconvenience of traveling with
a courier were balanced by the deep respect which a courier’s presence
commands, and I must insist that as much style be thrown into my journeys
as possible.
So the two assumed complete mountaineering costumes and departed. A
week later they returned, pretty well used up, and my agent handed me the
following:
Official Report
OF A VISIT TO THE FURKA REGION.

By H. Harris, Agent
About seven o’clock in the morning, with perfectly fine weather, we
started from Hospenthal, and arrived at the maison on the Furka in a little
under quatre hours. The want of variety in the scenery from Hospenthal
made the Kahkahponeeka wearisome; but let none be discouraged; no one
can fail to be completely r’ecompens’ee for his fatigue, when he sees, for
the first time, the monarch of the Oberland, the tremendous Finsteraarhorn.
A moment before all was dullness, but a pas further has placed us on the
summit of the Furka; and exactly in front of us, at a hopow of only fifteen
miles, this magnificent mountain lifts its snow-wreathed precipices into the
deep blue sky. The inferior mountains on each side of the pass form a sort
of frame for the picture of their dread lord, and close in the view so
completely that no other prominent feature in the Oberland is visible from
this bong-a-bong; nothing withdraws the attention from the solitary
grandeur of the Finsteraarhorn and the dependent spurs which form the
abutments of the central peak.

With the addition of some others, who were also bound for the Grimsel,
we formed a large xhvloj as we descended the steg which winds round the
shoulder of a mountain toward the Rhone Glacier. We soon left the path and
took to the ice; and after wandering amongst the crevices un peu, to admire
the wonders of these deep blue caverns, and hear the rushing of waters
through their subglacial channels, we struck out a course toward l’autre
cravasse and crossed the glacier successfully, a little above the cave from
which the infant Rhone takes its first bound from under the grand precipice
of ice. Half a mile below this we began to climb the flowery side of the
Meienwand. One of our party started before the rest, but the hitze was so
great, that we found ihm quite exhausted, and lying at full length in the
shade of a large gestein. We sat down with him for a time, for all felt the
heat exceedingly in the climb up this very steep bolwoggoly, and then we
set out again together, and arrived at last near the Dead Man’s Lake, at the
foot of the Sidelhorn. This lonely spot, once used for an extempore burying-
place, after a sanguinary battue between the French and Austrians, is the
perfection of desolation; there is nothing in sight to mark the hand of man,
except the line of weather-beaten whitened posts, set up to indicate the
direction of the pass in the owdawakk of winter. Near this point the footpath
joins the wider track, which connects the Grimsel with the head of the
Rhone schnawp; this has been carefully constructed, and leads with a
tortuous course among and over les pierres, down to the bank of the gloomy
little swosh-swosh, which almost washes against the walls of the Grimsel
Hospice. We arrived a little before four o’clock at the end of our day’s
journey, hot enough to justify the step, taking by most of the partie, of
plunging into the crystal water of the snow-fed lake.

The next afternoon we started for a walk up the Unteraar glacier, with the
intention of, at all events, getting as far as the Hutte which is used as a
sleeping-place by most of those who cross the Strahleck Pass to
Grindelwald. We got over the tedious collection of stones and débris which
covers the pied of the gletcher, and had walked nearly three hours from the
Grimsel, when, just as we were thinking of crossing over to the right, to
climb the cliffs at the foot of the hut, the clouds, which had for some time
assumed a threatening appearance, suddenly dropped, and a huge mass of
them, driving toward us from the Finsteraarhorn, poured down a deluge of
haboolong and hail. Fortunately, we were not far from a very large glacier-
table; it was a huge rock balanced on a pedestal of ice high enough to admit
of our all creeping under it for gowkarak. A stream of puckittypukk had
furrowed a course for itself in the ice at its base, and we were obliged to
stand with one fuss on each side of this, and endeavor to keep ourselves
chaud by cutting steps in the steep bank of the pedestal, so as to get a higher
place for standing on, as the wasser rose rapidly in its trench. A very cold
bzzzzzzzzeee accompanied the storm, and made our position far from
pleasant; and presently came a flash of blitzen, apparently in the middle of
our little party, with an instantaneous clap of yokky, sounding like a large
gun fired close to our ears; the effect was startling; but in a few seconds our
attention was fixed by the roaring echoes of the thunder against the
tremendous mountains which completely surrounded us. This was followed
by many more bursts, none of welche, however, was so dangerously near;

and after waiting a long demi-hour in our icy prison, we sallied out to talk
through a haboolong which, though not so heavy as before, was quite
enough to give us a thorough soaking before our arrival at the Hospice.
The Grimsel is certainement a wonderful place; situated at the bottom of
a sort of huge crater, the sides of which are utterly savage gebirge,
composed of barren rocks which cannot even support a single pine arbre,
and afford only scanty food for a herd of gmwkwllolp, it looks as if it must
be completely begraben in the winter snows. Enormous avalanches fall
against it every spring, sometimes covering everything to the depth of thirty
or forty feet; and, in spite of walls four feet thick, and furnished with
outside shutters, the two men who stay here when the voyageurs are snugly
quartered in their distant homes can tell you that the snow sometimes
shakes the house to its foundations.
Next morning the hogglebumgullup still continued bad, but we made up
our minds to go on, and make the best of it. Half an hour after we started,
the regen thickened unpleasantly, and we attempted to get shelter under a
projecting rock, but being far to nass already to make standing at all
agréable, we pushed on for the Handeck, consoling ourselves with the
reflection that from the furious rushing of the river Aar at our side, we
should at all events see the celebrated wasserfall in grande perfection. Nor
were we nappersocket in our expectation; the water was roaring down its
leap of two hundred and fifty feet in a most magnificent frenzy, while the
trees which cling to its rocky sides swayed to and fro in the violence of the
hurricane which it brought down with it; even the stream, which falls into
the main cascade at right angles, and toutefois forms a beautiful feature in
the scene, was now swollen into a raging torrent; and the violence of this
“meeting of the waters,” about fifty feet below the frail bridge where we
stood, was fearfully grand. While we were looking at it, gléecklicheweise a
gleam of sunshine came out, and instantly a beautiful rainbow was formed
by the spray, and hung in mid-air suspended over the awful gorge.
On going into the chalet above the fall, we were informed that a bruecke
had broken down near Guttanen, and that it would be impossible to proceed
for some time; accordingly we were kept in our drenched condition for ein
stunde, when some voyageurs arrived from Meiringen, and told us that
there had been a trifling accident, aber that we could now cross. On arriving
at the spot, I was much inclined to suspect that the whole story was a ruse to