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.  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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.]
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.
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.  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.
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.
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. [Figure 5]
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.
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:
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."

"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.
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."
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.  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.  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.  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.
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.  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.
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:
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.
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!
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.  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.  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.  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.
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.

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.