A TRAMP ABROAD, Part 3. 

By Mark Twain

(Samuel L. Clemens)

First published in 1880

Illustrations taken from an 1880 First Edition

 * * * * * *

ILLUSTRATIONS:

 1.    PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR 2.    TITIAN'S MOSES 3.    THE AUTHOR'S MEMORIES 73.   A DEEP AND TRANQUIL ECSTACY 74.   "WHICH ANSWERED JUST AS WELL" 75.   LIFE ON A RAFT 76.   LADY GERTRUDE 77.   MOUTH OF THE CAVERN 78.   A FATAL MISTAKE 79.   TAIL PIECE 80.   RAFTING ON THE NECKAR 81.   THE LORELEI 82.   THE LOVER's FATE 84.   THE UNKNOWN KNIGHT 85.   THE EMBRACE 86.   PERILOUS POSTTION 87.   THE RAFT IN A STORM 88.   ALL SAFE ON SHORE 89.   "IT WAS THE CAT" 90.   TAILPIECE 91.   BREAKFAST IN THE GARDEN 162 92.   EASILY UNDERSTOOD 93.   EXPERIMENTING THROUGH HARRIS 94.   AT THE BALL ROOM DOOR 95.   THE TOWN OF DILSBERG 96.   OUR ADVANCE ON DILSBERG 97.   INSIDE THE TOWN 95.   THE OLD WELL 99.   SEND HITHER THE LORD ULRICH 100.   LEAD ME TO HER GRAVE 102.   AN EXCELLENT PILOT, ONCE 103.   SCATTERATION 104.   THE RIVER BATH 101.   ETRUSCAN TEAR JUG 106.   HENRI II. PLATE l07.   OLD BLUE CHINA 108.   A REAL ANTIQUE 109.   BRIC-A-BRAC SHOP 110.   "PUT IT THERE" 111.   THE PARSON CAPTURED 112.   TAIL PIECE 113.   A COMPREHENSIVE YAWN 114.   TESTING THE COIN 115.   BEAUTY AT THE BATH 116.   IN THE BATH 117.   JERSEY INDIANS 118.   NOT PARTICULARLY SOCIABLE

CONTENTS:

CHAPTER XV Down the River--German Women's Duties--Bathing as We Went--AHandsome Picture: Girls in the Willows--We Sight a Tug--Steamers on theNeckar--Dinner on Board--Legend "Cave of the Spectre "--Lady Gertrudethe Heiress--The Crusader--The Lady in the Cave--A Tragedy

CHAPTER XVI An Ancient Legend of the Rhine--"The Lorelei"--CountHermann--Falling in Love--A Sight of the Enchantress--Sad Effecton Count Hermann--An Evening visit--A Sad Mistake--Count HermannDrowned--The Song and Music--Different Trans lations--Curiosities inTitles

CHAPTER XVII Another Legend--The Unconquered Monster--The Unknown Knight--His Queer Shaped Knapsack--The Knight Pitied and Advised--He Attacksthe Monster--Victory for the Fire Extinguisher--The Knight rewarded--HisStrange Request----Spectacles Made Popular--Danger to the Raft--BlastingRocks--An Inglorious Death in View--Escaped--A Storm Overtakesus--GreatDanger--Man Overboard--Breakers Ahead--Springing a Leak--AshoreSafe--A General Embracing--A Tramp in the Dark--The Naturalist Tavern--ANight's Troubles--"It is the Cat"

CHAPTER XVIII Breakfast in a Garden--The Old Raven--Castle ofHirschhorn--Attempt to Hire a Boat--High Dutch--What You Can Find outby Enquiring--What I Found out about the Students--A good GermanCustom--Harris Practices It--AnEmbarrassing Position--A Nice Party--At aBall--Stopped at the Door--Assistance at Hand and Rendered--Worthy to bean Empress

CHAPTER XIX Arrive at Neckarsteinach--Castle of Dilsberg--A WalledTown--On a Hill--Exclusiveness of the People--A Queer Old Place--AnAncient Well--An Outlet Proved--Legend of Dilsberg Castle--TheHaunted Chamber--The Betrothed's request--The Knight's Slumbersand Awakening--Horror of the Lover--The Wicked Jest--The Lover aManiac--Under the Linden--Turning Pilot--Accident to the Raft--FearfulDisaster

CHAPTER XX Good News--"Slow Freight"--Keramics--My Collection of Bric-a-brac--My Tear Jug--Henri II. Plate--Specimen of Blue China--Indifferenceto the Laugh of the World--I Discover an Antique En-route toBaden--Baden--Meeting an Old Acquaintance--A young American--EmbryoHorse Doctor--An American, Sure--A Minister Captured

CHAPTER XXI Baden--Baden--Energetic Girls--A Comprehensive Yawn--ABeggar's Trick--Cool Impudence--The Bath Woman--Insolence of ShopKeepers--Taking a Bath--Early and Late Hours--Popular Belief RegardingIndians--An Old Cemetery--A Pious Hag--Curious Table Companions

CHAPTER XV

[Charming Waterside Pictures]

Men and women and cattle were at work in the dewy fields by this time. The people often stepped aboard the raft, as we glided along the grassyshores, and gossiped with us and with the crew for a hundred yards orso, then stepped ashore again, refreshed by the ride. 

Only the men did this; the women were too busy. The women do all kindsof work on the continent. They dig, they hoe, they reap, they sow, theybear monstrous burdens on their backs, they shove similar ones longdistances on wheelbarrows, they drag the cart when there is no dog orlean cow to drag it--and when there is, they assist the dog or cow. Ageis 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 ofeverything; but in the towns it is different, there she only doescertain things, the men do the rest. For instance, a hotel chambermaidhas nothing to do but make beds and fires in fifty or sixty rooms, bringtowels and candles, and fetch several tons of water up several flightsof stairs, a hundred pounds at a time, in prodigious metal pitchers. Shedoes not have to work more than eighteen or twenty hours a day, andshe can always get down on her knees and scrub the floors of halls andclosets when she is tired and needs a rest. 

As the morning advanced and the weather grew hot, we took off ouroutside clothing and sat in a row along the edge of the raft and enjoyedthe scenery, with our sun-umbrellas over our heads and our legs danglingin the water. 

Every now and then we plunged in and had a swim. Every projecting grassycape had its joyous group of naked children, the boys to themselves andthe girls to themselves, the latter usually in care of some motherlydame who sat in the shade of a tree with her knitting. The little boysswam out to us, sometimes, but the little maids stood knee-deep in thewater and stopped their splashing and frolicking to inspect the raftwith their innocent eyes as it drifted by. Once we turned a cornersuddenly and surprised a slender girl of twelve years or upward, juststepping into the water. She had not time to run, but she did whatanswered just as well; she promptly drew a lithe young willow boughathwart her white body with one hand, and then contemplated us with asimple and untroubled interest. Thus she stood while we glided by. Shewas a pretty creature, and she and her willow bough made a verypretty picture, and one which could not offend the modesty of the mostfastidious spectator. Her white skin had a low bank of fresh greenwillows for background and effective contrast--for she stood againstthem--and above and out of them projected the eager faces and whiteshoulders 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 theyhad 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 oftenwatched her from the hotel, and wondered how she propelled herself, forapparently she had no propeller or paddles. She came churning along, now, making a deal of noise of one kind or another, and aggravating itevery now and then by blowing a hoarse whistle. She had nine keel-boatshitched on behind and following after her in a long, slender rank. Wemet her in a narrow place, between dikes, and there was hardly room forus both in the cramped passage. As she went grinding and groaning by, weperceived the secret of her moving impulse. She did not drive herself upthe river with paddles or propeller, she pulled herself by hauling ona great chain. This chain is laid in the bed of the river and is onlyfastened at the two ends. It is seventy miles long. It comes in over theboat's bow, passes around a drum, and is payed out astern. She pullson that chain, and so drags herself up the river or down it. She hasneither bow or stern, strictly speaking, for she has a long-bladedrudder on each end and she never turns around. She uses both ruddersall the time, and they are powerful enough to enable her to turn tothe right or the left and steer around curves, in spite of the strongresistance of the chain. I would not have believed that that impossiblething could be done; but I saw it done, and therefore I know that thereis one impossible thing which CAN be done. What miracle will man attemptnext?

We met many big keel-boats on their way up, using sails, mule power, andprofanity--a tedious and laborious business. A wire rope led from theforetopmast 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 ofdrivers managed to get a speed of two or three miles an hour out of themules against the stiff current. The Neckar has always been used as acanal, 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 orso of coal, to take nine keel-boats farther up the river in one hourthan thirty men and thirty mules can do it in two, it is believedthat the old-fashioned towing industry is on its death-bed. A secondsteamboat began work in the Neckar three months after the first one wasput in service. [Figure 4]

At noon we stepped ashore and bought some bottled beer and got somechickens cooked, while the raft waited; then we immediately put to seaagain, 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 isgliding down the winding Neckar past green meadows and wooded hills, andslumbering villages, and craggy heights graced with crumbling towers andbattlements. 

In one place we saw a nicely dressed German gentleman without anyspectacles. Before I could come to anchor he had got underway. It was agreat pity. I so wanted to make a sketch of him. The captain comfortedme for my loss, however, by saying that the man was without any doubt afraud who had spectacles, but kept them in his pocket in order to makehimself conspicuous. 

Below Hassmersheim we passed Hornberg, Goetz von Berlichingen's oldcastle. It stands on a bold elevation two hundred feet above the surfaceof the river; it has high vine-clad walls enclosing trees, and a peakedtower about seventy-five feet high. The steep hillside, from the castleclear down to the water's edge, is terraced, and clothed thick withgrape vines. This is like farming a mansard roof. All the steeps alongthat part of the river which furnish the proper exposure, are givenup to the grape. That region is a great producer of Rhine wines. TheGermans are exceedingly fond of Rhine wines; they are put up in tall, slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage. One tells themfrom vinegar by the label. 

The Hornberg hill is to be tunneled, and the new railway will pass underthe castle. THE CAVE OF THE SPECTER Two miles below Hornberg castle isa cave in a low cliff, which the captain of the raft said had once beenoccupied by a beautiful heiress of Hornberg--the Lady Gertrude--in theold times. It was seven hundred years ago. She had a number of rich andnoble lovers and one poor and obscure one, Sir Wendel Lobenfeld. Withthe native chuckleheadedness of the heroine of romance, she preferredthe 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 donjonkeep, or his oubliette, or his culverin, or some such place, andresolved that she should stay there until she selected a husband fromamong her rich and noble lovers. The latter visited her and persecutedher with their supplications, but without effect, for her heart wastrue to her poor despised Crusader, who was fighting in the Holy Land. Finally, she resolved that she would endure the attentions of the richlovers no longer; so one stormy night she escaped and went downthe river and hid herself in the cave on the other side. Her fatherransacked the country for her, but found not a trace of her. As thedays went by, and still no tidings of her came, his conscience began totorture him, and he caused proclamation to be made that if she were yetliving and would return, he would oppose her no longer, she might marrywhom she would. The months dragged on, all hope forsook the old man, heceased from his customary pursuits and pleasures, he devoted himself topious works, and longed for the deliverance of death. 

Now just at midnight, every night, the lost heiress stood in the mouthof her cave, arrayed in white robes, and sang a little love ballad whichher Crusader had made for her. She judged that if he came home alive thesuperstitious peasants would tell him about the ghost that sang in thecave, and that as soon as they described the ballad he would know thatnone but he and she knew that song, therefore he would suspect that shewas alive, and would come and find her. As time went on, the people ofthe region became sorely distressed about the Specter of the HauntedCave. It was said that ill luck of one kind or another always overtookany one who had the misfortune to hear that song. Eventually, everycalamity that happened thereabouts was laid at the door of that music. Consequently, no boatmen would consent to pass the cave at night; thepeasants shunned the place, even in the daytime. 

But the faithful girl sang on, night after night, month after month, andpatiently waited; her reward must come at last. Five years dragged by, and still, every night at midnight, the plaintive tones floated out overthe silent land, while the distant boatmen and peasants thrust theirfingers into their ears and shuddered out a prayer. 

And now came the Crusader home, bronzed and battle-scarred, but bringinga great and splendid fame to lay at the feet of his bride. The old lordof Hornberg received him as his son, and wanted him to stay by himand be the comfort and blessing of his age; but the tale of that younggirl's devotion to him and its pathetic consequences made a changedman of the knight. He could not enjoy his well-earned rest. He said hisheart was broken, he would give the remnant of his life to high deeds inthe cause of humanity, and so find a worthy death and a blessed reunionwith the brave true heart whose love had more honored him than all hisvictories in war. 

When the people heard this resolve of his, they came and told him therewas a pitiless dragon in human disguise in the Haunted Cave, a dreadcreature which no knight had yet been bold enough to face, and beggedhim 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, theysaid the memory of it was gone, for nobody had been hardy enough tolisten 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 thedim reflections of the crags and trees, with his intent eyes fixed uponthe low cliff which he was approaching. As he drew nearer, he discernedthe black mouth of the cave. Now--is that a white figure? Yes. Theplaintive song begins to well forth and float away over meadow andriver--the cross-bow is slowly raised to position, a steady aim istaken, the bolt flies straight to the mark--the figure sinks down, stillsinging, the knight takes the wool out of his ears, and recognizes theold 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 thespirit of the unfortunate girl sang nightly from the cave at midnight, but the music carried no curse with it; and although many listened forthe mysterious sounds, few were favored, since only those could hearthem who had never failed in a trust. It is believed that the singingstill continues, but it is known that nobody has heard it during thepresent century. 

CHAPTER XVI

An Ancient Legend of the Rhine [The Lorelei]

The last legend reminds one of the "Lorelei"--a legend of the Rhine. There is a song called "The Lorelei. "

Germany is rich in folk-songs, and the words and airs of several of themare peculiarly beautiful--but "The Lorelei" is the people's favorite. Icould 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 haveheard it there. The fact that I never heard it there, is evidence thatthere are others in my country who have fared likewise; therefore, forthe 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 theLorelei, too. I have it by me in the LEGENDS OF THE RHINE, done intoEnglish by the wildly gifted Garnham, Bachelor of Arts. I print thelegend partly to refresh my own memory, too, for I have never read itbefore. THE LEGEND Lore (two syllables) was a water nymph who used tosit 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 rapidwhich marred the channel at that spot. She so bewitched them with herplaintive songs and her wonderful beauty that they forgot everythingelse to gaze up at her, and so they presently drifted among the brokenreefs and were lost. 

In those old, old times, the Count Bruno lived in a great castle nearthere with his son, the Count Hermann, a youth of twenty. Hermann hadheard a great deal about the beautiful Lore, and had finally fallen verydeeply in love with her without having seen her. So he used to wander tothe neighborhood of the Lei, evenings, with his Zither and "Express hisLonging in low Singing, " as Garnham says. On one of these occasions, "suddenly there hovered around the top of the rock a brightness ofunequaled clearness and color, which, in increasingly smaller circlesthickened, 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 friendlymanner; indeed, if his ear did not deceive him, she called his name withunutterable sweet Whispers, proper to love. Beside himself with delightthe youth lost his Senses and sank senseless to the earth. "

After that he was a changed person. He went dreaming about, thinkingonly of his fairy and caring for naught else in the world. "The oldcount saw with affliction this changement in his son, " whose cause hecould not divine, and tried to divert his mind into cheerful channels, but to no purpose. Then the old count used authority. He commanded theyouth to betake himself to the camp. Obedience was promised. Garnhamsays:

"It was on the evening before his departure, as he wished still once tovisit the Lei and offer to the Nymph of the Rhine his Sighs, thetones of his Zither, and his Songs. He went, in his boat, this timeaccompanied by a faithful squire, down the stream. The moon shed hersilvery light over the whole country; the steep bank mountains appearedin the most fantastical shapes, and the high oaks on either side bowedtheir Branches on Hermann's passing. As soon as he approached theLei, and was aware of the surf-waves, his attendant was seized with aninexpressible Anxiety and he begged permission to land; but the Knightswept 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; thathe should have gone with such a song as that in his mouth was a mostserious mistake. The Lorelei did not "call his name in unutterablesweet Whispers" this time. No, that song naturally worked an instantand thorough "changement" in her; and not only that, but it stirred thebowels of the whole afflicted region around about there--for--

"Scarcely had these tones sounded, everywhere there began tumult andsound, 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 handclearly and urgently to the infatuated Knight, while with a staff inher left hand she called the waves to her service. They began to mountheavenward; the boat was upset, mocking every exertion; the waves roseto the gunwale, and splitting on the hard stones, the Boat broke intoPieces. The youth sank into the depths, but the squire was thrown onshore by a powerful wave. "

The bitterest things have been said about the Lorelei during manycenturies, but surely her conduct upon this occasion entitles her to ourrespect. One feels drawn tenderly toward her and is moved to forget hermany crimes and remember only the good deed that crowned and closed hercareer. 

"The Fairy was never more seen; but her enchanting tones have often beenheard. In the beautiful, refreshing, still nights of spring, when themoon pours her silver light over the Country, the listening shipperhears from the rushing of the waves, the echoing Clang of a wonderfullycharming voice, which sings a song from the crystal castle, and withsorrow and fear he thinks on the young Count Hermann, seduced by theNymph. "

Here is the music, and the German words by Heinrich Heine. This song hasbeen a favorite in Germany for forty years, and will remain a favoritealways, maybe. [Figure 5]

I have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign languageand add no translation. When I am the reader, and the author considersme able to do the translating myself, he pays me quite a nicecompliment--but if he would do the translating for me I would try to getalong without the compliment. 

If I were at home, no doubt I could get a translation of this poem, butI am abroad and can't; therefore I will make a translation myself. Itmay not be a good one, for poetry is out of my line, but it will servemy purpose--which is, to give the unGerman young girl a jingle of wordsto hang the tune on until she can get hold of a good version, made bysome one who is a poet and knows how to convey a poetical thought fromone language to another. 

 THE LORELEI

 I cannot divine what it meaneth, This haunting nameless pain: A tale of the bygone ages Keeps brooding through my brain:

 The faint air cools in the glooming, And peaceful flows the Rhine, The thirsty summits are drinking The sunset's flooding wine;

 The loveliest maiden is sitting High-throned in yon blue air, Her golden jewels are shining, She combs her golden hair;

 She combs with a comb that is golden, And sings a weird refrain That steeps in a deadly enchantment The list'ner's ravished brain:

 The doomed in his drifting shallop, Is tranced with the sad sweet tone, He sees not the yawning breakers, He sees but the maid alone:

 The pitiless billows engulf him!-- So perish sailor and bark; And this, with her baleful singing, Is the Lorelei's gruesome work. 

I have a translation by Garnham, Bachelor of Arts, in the LEGENDS OF THERHINE, but it would not answer the purpose I mentioned above, becausethe 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 oneruns out of words before he gets to the end of a bar. Still, Garnham'stranslation has high merits, and I am not dreaming of leaving it out ofmy book. I believe this poet is wholly unknown in America and England; Itake peculiar pleasure in bringing him forward because I consider that Idiscovered him:

 THE LORELEI

 Translated by L. W. Garnham, B. A. 

 I do not know what it signifies. That I am so sorrowful? A fable of old Times so terrifies, Leaves my heart so thoughtful. 

 The air is cool and it darkens, And calmly flows the Rhine; The summit of the mountain hearkens In evening sunshine line. 

 The most beautiful Maiden entrances Above wonderfully there, Her beautiful golden attire glances, She combs her golden hair. 

 With golden comb so lustrous, And thereby a song sings, It has a tone so wondrous, That powerful melody rings. 

 The shipper in the little ship It effects with woe sad might; He does not see the rocky slip, He only regards dreaded height. 

 I believe the turbulent waves Swallow the last shipper and boat; She with her singing craves All to visit hermagic moat. 

No translation could be closer. He has got in all the facts; and intheir regular order, too. There is not a statistic wanting. It is assuccinct as an invoice. That is what a translation ought to be; itshould 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 exacttranslation of DORT OBEN WUNDERBAR--fits it like a blister. Mr. Garnham's reproduction has other merits--a hundred of them--but it isnot necessary to point them out. They will be detected. 

No one with a specialty can hope to have a monopoly of it. Even Garnhamhas a rival. Mr. X had a small pamphlet with him which he had boughtwhile on a visit to Munich. It was entitled A CATALOGUE OF PICTURES INTHE OLD PINACOTEK, and was written in a peculiar kind of English. Hereare a few extracts:

"It is not permitted to make use of the work in question to apublication of the same contents as well as to the pirated edition ofit. "

"An evening landscape. In the foreground near a pond and a group ofwhite beeches is leading a footpath animated by travelers. "

"A learned man in a cynical and torn dress holding an open book in hishand. "

"St. Bartholomew and the Executioner with the knife to fulfil themartyr. "

"Portrait of a young man. A long while this picture was thought to beBindi Altoviti's portrait; now somebody will again have it to be theself-portrait of Raphael. "

"Susan bathing, surprised by the two old man. In the background thelapidation of the condemned. "

("Lapidation" is good; it is much more elegant than "stoning. ")

"St. Rochus sitting in a landscape with an angel who looks at hisplague-sore, whilst the dog the bread in his mouth attents him. "

"Spring. The Goddess Flora, sitting. Behind her a fertile valleyperfused by a river. "

"A beautiful bouquet animated by May-bugs, etc. "

"A warrior in armor with a gypseous pipe in his hand leans against atable and blows the smoke far away of himself. "

"A Dutch landscape along a navigable river which perfuses it till to thebackground. "

"Some peasants singing in a cottage. A woman lets drink a child out of acup. "

"St. John's head as a boy--painted in fresco on a brick. " (Meaning atile. )

"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 thesignation is false. "

"The Virgin holding the Infant. It is very painted in the manner ofSassoferrato. "

"A Larder with greens and dead game animated by a cook-maid and twokitchen-boys. "

However, the English of this catalogue is at least as happy as thatwhich distinguishes an inscription upon a certain picture in Rome--towit:

"Revelations-View. St. John in Patterson's Island. "

But meanwhile the raft is moving on. 

CHAPTER XVII

[Why Germans Wear Spectacles]

A mile or two above Eberbach we saw a peculiar ruin projecting above thefoliage which clothed the peak of a high and very steep hill. This ruinconsisted of merely a couple of crumbling masses of masonry which borea rude resemblance to human faces; they leaned forward and touchedforeheads, and had the look of being absorbed in conversation. Thisruin had nothing very imposing or picturesque about it, and there was nogreat deal of it, yet it was called the "Spectacular Ruin. "

LEGEND OF THE "SPECTACULAR RUIN" The captain of the raft, who was asfull of history as he could stick, said that in the Middle Ages a mostprodigious fire-breathing dragon used to live in that region, and mademore trouble than a tax-collector. He was as long as a railway-train, and had the customary impenetrable green scales all over him. His breathbred pestilence and conflagration, and his appetite bred famine. He atemen and cattle impartially, and was exceedingly unpopular. The Germanemperor of that day made the usual offer: he would grant to thedestroyer of the dragon, any one solitary thing he might ask for; for hehad a surplusage of daughters, and it was customary for dragon-killersto take a daughter for pay. 

So the most renowned knights came from the four corners of the earth andretired down the dragon's throat one after the other. A panic arose andspread. Heroes grew cautious. The procession ceased. The dragon becamemore destructive than ever. The people lost all hope of succor, and fledto the mountains for refuge. 

At last Sir Wissenschaft, a poor and obscure knight, out of a farcountry, arrived to do battle with the monster. A pitiable object hewas, with his armor hanging in rags about him, and his strange-shapedknapsack strapped upon his back. Everybody turned up their noses at him, and some openly jeered him. But he was calm. He simply inquired ifthe emperor's offer was still in force. The emperor said it was--butcharitably advised him to go and hunt hares and not endanger so preciousa life as his in an attempt which had brought death to so many of theworld'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 littlein 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 themorning. Out of compassion, then, a decent spear was offered him, buthe declined, and said, "spears were useless to men of science. " Theyallowed him to sup in the servants' hall, and gave him a bed in thestables. 

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 volumesof sulphurous smoke and lurid blasts of flame. The ragged knightstole warily to a good position, then he unslung his cylindricalknapsack--which was simply the common fire-extinguisher known to moderntimes--and the first chance he got he turned on his hose and shot thedragon square in the center of his cavernous mouth. Out went the firesin an instant, and the dragon curled up and died. 

This man had brought brains to his aid. He had reared dragons from theegg, in his laboratory, he had watched over them like a mother, andpatiently studied them and experimented upon them while they grew. Thushe had found out that fire was the life principle of a dragon; put outthe dragon's fires and it could make steam no longer, and must die. He could not put out a fire with a spear, therefore he invented theextinguisher. The dragon being dead, the emperor fell on the hero's neckand said:

"Deliverer, name your request, " at the same time beckoning out behindwith his heel for a detachment of his daughters to form and advance. Butthe tramp gave them no observance. He simply said:

"My request is, that upon me be conferred the monopoly of themanufacture and sale of spectacles in Germany. "

The emperor sprang aside and exclaimed:

"This transcends all the impudence I ever heard! A modest demand, by myhalidome! Why didn't you ask for the imperial revenues at once, and bedone with it?"

But the monarch had given his word, and he kept it. To everybody'ssurprise, the unselfish monopolist immediately reduced the price ofspectacles to such a degree that a great and crushing burden was removedfrom the nation. The emperor, to commemorate this generous act, and totestify his appreciation of it, issued a decree commanding everybody tobuy this benefactor's spectacles and wear them, whether they needed themor 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 legendof 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, wepassed by a noble pile of castellated buildings overlooking the waterfrom the crest of a lofty elevation. A stretch of two hundred yards ofthe high front wall was heavily draped with ivy, and out of the massof buildings within rose three picturesque old towers. The place was infine order, and was inhabited by a family of princely rank. This castlehad its legend, too, but I should not feel justified in repeating itbecause I doubted the truth of some of its minor details. 

Along in this region a multitude of Italian laborers were blasting awaythe frontage of the hills to make room for the new railway. They werefifty or a hundred feet above the river. As we turned a sharp cornerthey began to wave signals and shout warnings to us to look out for theexplosions. It was all very well to warn us, but what could WE do? Youcan't back a raft upstream, you can't hurry it downstream, you can'tscatter out to one side when you haven't any room to speak of, you won'ttake to the perpendicular cliffs on the other shore when they appear tobe blasting there, too. Your resources are limited, you see. There issimply nothing for it but to watch and pray. 

For some hours we had been making three and a half or four miles an hourand we were still making that. We had been dancing right along untilthose men began to shout; then for the next ten minutes it seemed to methat I had never seen a raft go so slowly. When the first blast wentoff we raised our sun-umbrellas and waited for the result. No harmdone; none of the stones fell in the water. Another blast followed, andanother and another. Some of the rubbish fell in the water just asternof us. 

We ran that whole battery of nine blasts in a row, and it was certainlyone of the most exciting and uncomfortable weeks I ever spent, eitheraship or ashore. Of course we frequently manned the poles and shovedearnestly for a second or so, but every time one of those spurts of dustand debris shot aloft every man dropped his pole and looked up to getthe bearings of his share of it. It was very busy times along there fora while. It appeared certain that we must perish, but even that wasnot the bitterest thought; no, the abjectly unheroic nature of thedeath--that was the sting--that and the bizarre wording of the resultingobituary: "SHOT WITH A ROCK, ON A RAFT. " There would be no poetrywritten 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. Ishould be distinguished as the only "distinguished dead" who went downto the grave unsonneted, in 1878. 

But we escaped, and I have never regretted it. The last blast was apeculiarly strong one, and after the small rubbish was done rainingaround us and we were just going to shake hands over our deliverance, alater and larger stone came down amongst our little group of pedestriansand wrecked an umbrella. It did no other harm, but we took to the waterjust the same. 

It seems that the heavy work in the quarries and the new railwaygradings is done mainly by Italians. That was a revelation. We havethe notion in our country that Italians never do heavy work at all, butconfine themselves to the lighter arts, like organ-grinding, operaticsinging, and assassination. We have blundered, that is plain. 

All along the river, near every village, we saw little station-housesfor the future railway. They were finished and waiting for the rails andbusiness. They were as trim and snug and pretty as they could be. Theywere always of brick or stone; they were of graceful shape, they hadvines and flowers about them already, and around them the grass wasbright and green, and showed that it was carefully looked after. Theywere a decoration to the beautiful landscape, not an offense. Whereverone saw a pile of gravel or a pile of broken stone, it was always heapedas trimly and exactly as a new grave or a stack of cannon-balls; nothingabout those stations or along the railroad or the wagon-road wasallowed to look shabby or be unornamental. The keeping a country in suchbeautiful order as Germany exhibits, has a wise practical side toit, too, for it keeps thousands of people in work and bread who wouldotherwise be idle and mischievous. 

As the night shut down, the captain wanted to tie up, but I thoughtmaybe we might make Hirschhorn, so we went on. Presently the sky becameovercast, and the captain came aft looking uneasy. He cast his eyealoft, then shook his head, and said it was coming on to blow. My partywanted to land at once--therefore I wanted to go on. The captain said weought to shorten sail anyway, out of common prudence. Consequently, thelarboard 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 ofthe trees, and swept our decks in fitful gusts. Things were taking on anugly look. The captain shouted to the steersman on the forward log:

"How's she landing?"

The answer came faint and hoarse from far forward:

"Nor'-east-and-by-nor'--east-by-east, half-east, sir. "

"Let her go off a point!"

"Aye-aye, sir!"

"What water have you got?"

"Shoal, sir. Two foot large, on the stabboard, two and a half scant onthe labboard!"

"Let her go off another point!"

"Aye-aye, sir!"

"Forward, men, all of you! Lively, now! Stand by to crowd her round theweather corner!"

"Aye-aye, sir!"

Then followed a wild running and trampling and hoarse shouting, but theforms of the men were lost in the darkness and the sounds were distortedand confused by the roaring of the wind through the shingle-bundles. Bythis time the sea was running inches high, and threatening every momentto 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 therewill be a panic and mutiny! Lay her in shore and stand by to jump withthe stern-line the moment she touches. Gentlemen, I must look to you tosecond my endeavors in this hour of peril. You have hats--go forward andbail for your lives!"

Down swept another mighty blast of wind, clothed in spray and thickdarkness. At such a moment as this, came from away forward that mostappalling 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 thefrenzy 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 treeand 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 amariner for forty years on the Neckar, and in that time had seen stormsto 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 thatsounded! For I have been at sea a good deal and have heard that remarkfrom captains with a frequency accordingly. 

We framed in our minds the usual resolution of thanks and admirationand gratitude, and took the first opportunity to vote it, and put itin writing and present it to the captain, with the customary speech. Wetramped through the darkness and the drenching summer rain full threemiles, and reached "The Naturalist Tavern" in the village of Hirschhornjust 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 anddisobliging; he did not at all like being turned out of his warm bed toopen his house for us. But no matter, his household got up and cookeda quick supper for us, and we brewed a hot punch for ourselves, to keepoff consumption. After supper and punch we had an hour's soothing smokewhile we fought the naval battle over again and voted the resolutions;then we retired to exceedingly neat and pretty chambers upstairs thathad clean, comfortable beds in them with heirloom pillowcases mostelaborately and tastefully embroidered by hand. 

Such rooms and beds and embroidered linen are as frequent in Germanvillage inns as they are rare in ours. Our villages are superiorto German villages in more merits, excellences, conveniences, andprivileges than I can enumerate, but the hotels do not belong in thelist. 

"The Naturalist Tavern" was not a meaningless name; for all the hallsand all the rooms were lined with large glass cases which were filledwith all sorts of birds and animals, glass-eyed, ably stuffed, and setup in the most natural eloquent and dramatic attitudes. The moment wewere abed, the rain cleared away and the moon came out. I dozed off tosleep while contemplating a great white stuffed owl which was lookingintently down on me from a high perch with the air of a person whothought 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 sinkingdeliciously to sleep, the moon lifted away the shadows and developeda huge cat, on a bracket, dead and stuffed, but crouching, with everymuscle tense, for a spring, and with its glittering glass eyes aimedstraight at him. It made Z uncomfortable. He tried closing his own eyes, but that did not answer, for a natural instinct kept making him openthem again to see if the cat was still getting ready to launch athim--which she always was. He tried turning his back, but that was afailure; he knew the sinister eyes were on him still. So at last he hadto get up, after an hour or two of worry and experiment, and set the catout in the hall. So he won, that time. 

CHAPTER XVIII

[The Kindly Courtesy of Germans]

In the morning we took breakfast in the garden, under the trees, in thedelightful German summer fashion. The air was filled with the fragranceof flowers and wild animals; the living portion of the menagerie of the"Naturalist Tavern" was all about us. There were great cages populouswith fluttering and chattering foreign birds, and other great cages andgreater 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 andsniffed 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 dovesbegged for crumbs, and a poor old tailless raven hopped about witha humble, shamefaced mein which said, "Please do not notice myexposure--think how you would feel in my circumstances, and becharitable. " If he was observed too much, he would retire behindsomething and stay there until he judged the party's interest had foundanother object. I never have seen another dumb creature that wasso morbidly sensitive. Bayard Taylor, who could interpret the dimreasonings of animals, and understood their moral natures better thanmost men, would have found some way to make this poor old chap forgethis troubles for a while, but we have not his kindly art, and so had toleave the raven to his griefs. 

After breakfast we climbed the hill and visited the ancient castle ofHirschhorn, and the ruined church near it. There were some curious oldbas-reliefs leaning against the inner walls of the church--sculpturedlords of Hirschhorn in complete armor, and ladies of Hirschhorn inthe picturesque court costumes of the Middle Ages. These things aresuffering damage and passing to decay, for the last Hirschhorn has beendead two hundred years, and there is nobody now who cares to preservethe family relics. In the chancel was a twisted stone column, and thecaptain told us a legend about it, of course, for in the matter oflegends he could not seem to restrain himself; but I do not repeat histale because there was nothing plausible about it except that the Herowrenched this column into its present screw-shape with his hands --justone single wrench. All the rest of the legend was doubtful. 

But Hirschhorn is best seen from a distance, down the river. Thenthe clustered brown towers perched on the green hilltop, and the oldbattlemented stone wall, stretching up and over the grassy ridge anddisappearing in the leafy sea beyond, make a picture whose grace andbeauty entirely satisfy the eye. 

We descended from the church by steep stone stairways which curved thisway and that down narrow alleys between the packed and dirty tenementsof the village. It was a quarter well stocked with deformed, leering, unkempt and uncombed idiots, who held out hands or caps and beggedpiteously. The people of the quarter were not all idiots, of course, butall that begged seemed to be, and were said to be. 

I was thinking of going by skiff to the next town, Necharsteinach; so Iran to the riverside in advance of the party and asked a man there ifhe had a boat to hire. I suppose I must have spoken High German--CourtGerman--I intended it for that, anyway--so he did not understand me. Iturned and twisted my question around and about, trying to strike thatman'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 thissentence on him, in the most glib and confident way: "Can man boat gethere?"

The mariner promptly understood and promptly answered. I can comprehendwhy he was able to understand that particular sentence, because by mereaccident all the words in it except "get" have the same sound and thesame meaning in German that they have in English; but how he managed tounderstand 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 finda board, and so construct an additional seat. I spoke in the purestGerman, but I might as well have spoken in the purest Choctaw for allthe good it did. The man tried his best to understand me; he tried, andkept 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 answerup at once, and say he would go and borrow a board as soon as he had litthe pipe which he was filling. 

We changed our mind about taking a boat, so we did not have to go. Ihave given Mr. X's two remarks just as he made them. Four of the fivewords in the first one were English, and that they were also German wasonly accidental, not intentional; three out of the five words in thesecond remark were English, and English only, and the two German onesdid not mean anything in particular, in such a connection. 

X always spoke English to Germans, but his plan was to turn the sentencewrong end first and upside down, according to German construction, andsprinkle in a German word without any essential meaning to it, here andthere, by way of flavor. Yet he always made himself understood. He couldmake those dialect-speaking raftsmen understand him, sometimes, wheneven young Z had failed with them; and young Z was a pretty good Germanscholar. For one thing, X always spoke with such confidence--perhapsthat helped. And possibly the raftsmen's dialect was what is calledPLATT-DEUTSCH, and so they found his English more familiar to their earsthan another man's German. Quite indifferent students of German can readFritz Reuter's charming platt-Deutch tales with some little facilitybecause many of the words are English. I suppose this is the tonguewhich our Saxon ancestors carried to England with them. By and by I willinquire of some other philologist. 

However, in the mean time it had transpired that the men employed tocalk the raft had found that the leak was not a leak at all, but onlya crack between the logs--a crack that belonged there, and was notdangerous, but had been magnified into a leak by the disorderedimagination of the mate. Therefore we went aboard again with a gooddegree of confidence, and presently got to sea without accident. As weswam smoothly along between the enchanting shores, we fell to swappingnotes about manners and customs in Germany and elsewhere. 

As I write, now, many months later, I perceive that each of us, byobserving and noting and inquiring, diligently and day by day, hadmanaged to lay in a most varied and opulent stock of misinformation. Butthis is not surprising; it is very difficult to get accurate details inany country. For example, I had the idea once, in Heidelberg, to findout all about those five student-corps. I started with the White Capcorps. I began to inquire of this and that and the other citizen, andhere is what I found out:

1. It is called the Prussian Corps, because none but Prussians areadmitted to it. 

2. It is called the Prussian Corps for no particular reason. It hassimply pleased each corps to name itself after some German state. 

3. It is not named the Prussian Corps at all, but only the White CapCorps. 

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 ofnoble 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 thoughtof. 

I got some of this information from students themselves--students whodid not belong to the corps. 

I finally went to headquarters--to the White Caps--where I wouldhave gone in the first place if I had been acquainted. But even atheadquarters I found difficulties; I perceived that there were thingsabout 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 thatcan be known about it. I doubt there is a man or a woman in Heidelbergwho would not answer promptly and confidently three out of every fivequestions about the White Cap Corps which a stranger might ask; yetit is a very safe bet that two of the three answers would be incorrectevery time. 

There is one German custom which is universal--the bowing courteouslyto strangers when sitting down at table or rising up from it. Thisbow startles a stranger out of his self-possession, the first timeit occurs, and he is likely to fall over a chair or something, in hisembarrassment, but it pleases him, nevertheless. One soon learns toexpect this bow and be on the lookout and ready to return it; but tolearn to lead off and make the initial bow one's self is a difficultmatter for a diffident man. One thinks, "If I rise to go, and tender mybow, and these ladies and gentlemen take it into their heads to ignorethe custom of their nation, and not return it, how shall I feel, in caseI survive to feel anything. " Therefore he is afraid to venture. He sitsout the dinner, and makes the strangers rise first and originate thebowing. A table d'hôte dinner is a tedious affair for a man who seldomtouches anything after the three first courses; therefore I used to dosome pretty dreary waiting because of my fears. It took me months toassure myself that those fears were groundless, but I did assure myselfat last by experimenting diligently through my agent. I made Harris getup and bow and leave; invariably his bow was returned, then I got up andbowed myself and retired. 

Thus my education proceeded easily and comfortably for me, but not forHarris. Three courses of a table d'hôte dinner were enough for me, butHarris preferred thirteen. 

Even after I had acquired full confidence, and no longer needed theagent's help, I sometimes encountered difficulties. Once at Baden-BadenI nearly lost a train because I could not be sure that three youngladies opposite me at table were Germans, since I had not heard themspeak; they might be American, they might be English, it was not safeto venture a bow; but just as I had got that far with my thought, one ofthem began a German remark, to my great relief and gratitude; and beforeshe got out her third word, our bows had been delivered and graciouslyreturned, and we were off. 

There is a friendly something about the German character which is verywinning. When Harris and I were making a pedestrian tour through theBlack 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 partieswere hungry, so there was no talking. By and by the usual bows wereexchanged, and we separated. 

As we sat at a late breakfast in the hotel at Allerheiligen, nextmorning, these young people entered and took places near us withoutobserving us; but presently they saw us and at once bowed and smiled;not ceremoniously, but with the gratified look of people who have foundacquaintances where they were expecting strangers. Then they spoke ofthe weather and the roads. We also spoke of the weather and the roads. Next, they said they had had an enjoyable walk, notwithstanding theweather. We said that that had been our case, too. Then they said theyhad walked thirty English miles the day before, and asked how many wehad walked. I could not lie, so I told Harris to do it. Harris toldthem 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 outof the dumb hotel clerk about routes, and observing that we were notsucceeding pretty well, they went and got their maps and things, andpointed out and explained our course so clearly that even a New Yorkdetective could have followed it. And when we started they spoke out ahearty good-by and wished us a pleasant journey. Perhaps they were moregenerous with us than they might have been with native wayfarers becausewe were a forlorn lot and in a strange land; I don't know; I only knowit was lovely to be treated so. 

Very well, I took an American young lady to one of the fine balls inBaden-Baden, one night, and at the entrance-door upstairs we were haltedby an official--something about Miss Jones's dress was not according torule; I don't remember what it was, now; something was wanting--her backhair, or a shawl, or a fan, or a shovel, or something. The official wasever so polite, and ever so sorry, but the rule was strict, and he couldnot let us in. It was very embarrassing, for many eyes were on us. Butnow a richly dressed girl stepped out of the ballroom, inquired into thetrouble, and said she could fix it in a moment. She took Miss Jones tothe robing-room, and soon brought her back in regulation trim, and thenwe entered the ballroom with this benefactress unchallenged. 

Being safe, now, I began to puzzle through my sincere but ungrammaticalthanks, when there was a sudden mutual recognition --the benefactressand 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 sucha difference between these clothes and the clothes I had seen her inbefore, 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. Ihad on MY other suit, too, but my German would betray me to a person whohad heard it once, anyway. She brought her brother and sister, and theymade our way smooth for that evening. 

Well--months afterward, I was driving through the streets of Munich in acab 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 everybodyelse--and they were returning all the bows and overlooking nobody, whena young lady met them and made a deep courtesy. 

"That is probably one of the ladies of the court, " said my Germanfriend. 

I said:

"She is an honor to it, then. I know her. I don't know her name, but Iknow HER. I have known her at Allerheiligen and Baden-Baden. She oughtto be an Empress, but she may be only a Duchess; it is the way things goin this way. "

If one asks a German a civil question, he will be quite sure to get acivil answer. If you stop a German in the street and ask him to directyou to a certain place, he shows no sign of feeling offended. If theplace be difficult to find, ten to one the man will drop his own mattersand go with you and show you. 

In London, too, many a time, strangers have walked several blocks withme 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 wantedhave sent one of their employees with me to show me a place where itcould be had. 

CHAPTER XIX

[The Deadly Jest of Dilsberg]

However, I wander from the raft. We made the port of Necharsteinach ingood season, and went to the hotel and ordered a trout dinner, the sameto be ready against our return from a two-hour pedestrian excursion tothe village and castle of Dilsberg, a mile distant, on the other sideof the river. I do not mean that we proposed to be two hours making twomiles--no, we meant to employ most of the time in inspecting Dilsberg. 

For Dilsberg is a quaint place. It is most quaintly and picturesquelysituated, too. Imagine the beautiful river before you; then a few rodsof brilliant green sward on its opposite shore; then a sudden hill--nopreparatory gently rising slopes, but a sort of instantaneous hill--ahill two hundred and fifty or three hundred feet high, as round as abowl, with the same taper upward that an inverted bowl has, and withabout the same relation of height to diameter that distinguishes abowl of good honest depth--a hill which is thickly clothed with greenbushes--a comely, shapely hill, rising abruptly out of the dead levelof the surrounding green plains, visible from a great distance down thebends of the river, and with just exactly room on the top of its headfor its steepled and turreted and roof-clustered cap of architecture, which same is tightly jammed and compacted within the perfectly roundhoop of the ancient village wall. 

There is no house outside the wall on the whole hill, or any vestige ofa former house; all the houses are inside the wall, but there isn't roomfor another one. It is really a finished town, and has been finished avery long time. There is no space between the wall and the first circleof buildings; no, the village wall is itself the rear wall of the firstcircle of buildings, and the roofs jut a little over the wall andthus furnish it with eaves. The general level of the massed roofs isgracefully broken and relieved by the dominating towers of the ruinedcastle and the tall spires of a couple of churches; so, from a distanceDilsberg has rather more the look of a king's crown than a cap. Thatlofty green eminence and its quaint coronet form quite a strikingpicture, 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 pathwhich plunged us at once into the leafy deeps of the bushes. But theywere not cool deeps by any means, for the sun's rays were weltering hotand there was little or no breeze to temper them. As we panted up thesharp ascent, we met brown, bareheaded and barefooted boys and girls, occasionally, and sometimes men; they came upon us without warning, theygave us good day, flashed out of sight in the bushes, and were goneas suddenly and mysteriously as they had come. They were bound for theother side of the river to work. This path had been traveled by manygenerations of these people. They have always gone down to the valley toearn their bread, but they have always climbed their hill again to eatit, and to sleep in their snug town. 

It is said that the Dilsbergers do not emigrate much; they find thatliving up there above the world, in their peaceful nest, is pleasanterthan living down in the troublous world. The seven hundred inhabitantsare all blood-kin to each other, too; they have always been blood-kin toeach other for fifteen hundred years; they are simply one large family, and they like the home folks better than they like strangers, hence theypersistently stay at home. It has been said that for ages Dilsberghas been merely a thriving and diligent idiot-factory. I saw no idiotsthere, but the captain said, "Because of late years the government hastaken to lugging them off to asylums and otherwheres; and governmentwants to cripple the factory, too, and is trying to get theseDilsbergers to marry out of the family, but they don't like to. "

The captain probably imagined all this, as modern science denies thatthe intermarrying of relatives deteriorates the stock. 

Arrived within the wall, we found the usual village sights and life. Wemoved along a narrow, crooked lane which had been paved in the MiddleAges. A strapping, ruddy girl was beating flax or some such stuff ina little bit of a good-box of a barn, and she swung her flail with awill--if it was a flail; I was not farmer enough to know what she wasat; a frowsy, barelegged girl was herding half a dozen geese witha stick--driving them along the lane and keeping them out of thedwellings; a cooper was at work in a shop which I know he did not makeso large a thing as a hogshead in, for there was not room. In the frontrooms of dwellings girls and women were cooking or spinning, and ducksand chickens were waddling in and out, over the threshold, picking upchance crumbs and holding pleasant converse; a very old and wrinkledman sat asleep before his door, with his chin upon his breast and hisextinguished pipe in his lap; soiled children were playing in the dirteverywhere along the lane, unmindful of the sun. 

Except the sleeping old man, everybody was at work, but the place wasvery still and peaceful, nevertheless; so still that the distantcackle of the successful hen smote upon the ear but little dulledby intervening sounds. That commonest of village sights was lackinghere--the public pump, with its great stone tank or trough of limpidwater, and its group of gossiping pitcher-bearers; for there is no wellor fountain or spring on this tall hill; cisterns of rain-water areused. 

Our alpenstocks and muslin tails compelled attention, and as we movedthrough the village we gathered a considerable procession of little boysand girls, and so went in some state to the castle. It proved to be anextensive pile of crumbling walls, arches, and towers, massive, properlygrouped for picturesque effect, weedy, grass-grown, and satisfactory. The children acted as guides; they walked us along the top of thehighest walls, then took us up into a high tower and showed us a wideand beautiful landscape, made up of wavy distances of woody hills, anda nearer prospect of undulating expanses of green lowlands, on the onehand, and castle-graced crags and ridges on the other, with the shiningcurves of the Neckar flowing between. But the principal show, the chiefpride of the children, was the ancient and empty well in the grass-growncourt of the castle. Its massive stone curb stands up three or four feetabove-ground, and is whole and uninjured. The children said that in theMiddle Ages this well was four hundred feet deep, and furnished all thevillage with an abundant supply of water, in war and peace. They saidthat in the old day its bottom was below the level of the Neckar, hencethe water-supply was inexhaustible. 

But there were some who believed it had never been a well at all, andwas never deeper than it is now--eighty feet; that at that depth asubterranean passage branched from it and descended gradually to aremote place in the valley, where it opened into somebody's cellar orother hidden recess, and that the secret of this locality is now lost. Those who hold this belief say that herein lies the explanation thatDilsberg, besieged by Tilly and many a soldier before him, wasnever taken: after the longest and closest sieges the besiegers wereastonished to perceive that the besieged were as fat and hearty as ever, and were well furnished with munitions of war--therefore it must bethat the Dilsbergers had been bringing these things in through thesubterranean passage all the time. 

The children said that there was in truth a subterranean outlet downthere, and they would prove it. So they set a great truss of straw onfire and threw it down the well, while we leaned on the curb and watchedthe glowing mass descend. It struck bottom and gradually burned out. Nosmoke came up. The children clapped their hands and said:

"You see! Nothing makes so much smoke as burning straw--now where didthe 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, whichthe children said was four hundred years old, and no doubt it was. Ithad a mighty trunk and a mighty spread of limb and foliage. The limbsnear the ground were nearly the thickness of a barrel. 

That tree had witnessed the assaults of men in mail--how remote such atime seems, and how ungraspable is the fact that real men ever did fightin real armor!--and it had seen the time when these broken arches andcrumbling battlements were a trim and strong and stately fortress, fluttering its gay banners in the sun, and peopled with vigoroushumanity--how impossibly long ago that seems!--and here it stands yet, and possibly may still be standing here, sunning itself and dreaming itshistorical dreams, when today shall have been joined to the days called"ancient. "

Well, we sat down under the tree to smoke, and the captain deliveredhimself of his legend: THE LEGEND OF DILSBERG CASTLE It was to thiseffect. In the old times there was once a great company assembled at thecastle, and festivity ran high. Of course there was a haunted chamberin the castle, and one day the talk fell upon that. It was said thatwhoever slept in it would not wake again for fifty years. Now when ayoung knight named Conrad von Geisberg heard this, he said that if thecastle were his he would destroy that chamber, so that no foolish personmight have the chance to bring so dreadful a misfortune upon himselfand afflict such as loved him with the memory of it. Straightway, thecompany privately laid their heads together to contrive some way to getthis superstitious young man to sleep in that chamber. 

And they succeeded--in this way. They persuaded his betrothed, a lovelymischievous young creature, niece of the lord of the castle, to helpthem in their plot. She presently took him aside and had speech withhim. She used all her persuasions, but could not shake him; he said hisbelief was firm, that if he should sleep there he would wake no more forfifty years, and it made him shudder to think of it. Catharina began toweep. 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 andbe happy again. She flung her arms about his neck, and the kisses shegave him showed that her thankfulness and her pleasure were very real. Then she flew to tell the company her success, and the applause shereceived made her glad and proud she had undertaken her mission, sinceall alone she had accomplished what the multitude had failed in. 

At midnight, that night, after the usual feasting, Conrad was taken tothe haunted chamber and left there. He fell asleep, by and by. 

When he awoke again and looked about him, his heart stood still withhorror! The whole aspect of the chamber was changed. The walls weremoldy and hung with ancient cobwebs; the curtains and beddings wererotten; the furniture was rickety and ready to fall to pieces. He sprangout of bed, but his quaking knees sunk under him and he fell to thefloor. 

"This is the weakness of age, " he said. 

He rose and sought his clothing. It was clothing no longer. The colorswere gone, the garments gave way in many places while he was puttingthem on. He fled, shuddering, into the corridor, and along it tothe great hall. Here he was met by a middle-aged stranger of a kindcountenance, 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 thestranger 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 theformer said:

"I am the lord of the castle. "

"Since when, sir?"

"Since the death of my father, the good lord Ulrich more than fortyyears ago. "

Conrad sank upon a bench and covered his face with his hands while herocked his body to and fro and moaned. The stranger said in a low voiceto the servant:

"I fear me this poor old creature is mad. Call some one. "

In a moment several people came, and grouped themselves about, talkingin 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 theworld. They are dead and gone these many years that cared for me. Butsure, some of these aged ones I see about me can tell me some littleword or two concerning them. "

Several bent and tottering men and women came nearer and answered hisquestions about each former friend as he mentioned the names. This onethey said had been dead ten years, that one twenty, another thirty. Eachsucceeding 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, andshe died of sorrow nearly fifty years ago. She lieth under the lindentree 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 inall the little summer of her life. Her loving debt shall be repaid--forI will die of grief for her. "

His head drooped upon his breast. In the moment there was a wild burstof joyous laughter, a pair of round young arms were flung about Conrad'sneck and a sweet voice cried:

"There, Conrad mine, thy kind words kill me--the farce shall go nofurther! Look up, and laugh with us--'twas all a jest!"

And he did look up, and gazed, in a dazed wonderment--for the disguiseswere stripped away, and the aged men and women were bright and young andgay again. Catharina's happy tongue ran on:

"'Twas a marvelous jest, and bravely carried out. They gave you a heavysleeping-draught before you went to bed, and in the night they bore youto a ruined chamber where all had fallen to decay, and placed these ragsof 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 seeand hear, you may be sure. Ah, 'twas a gallant jest! Come, now, and makethee ready for the pleasures of the day. How real was thy misery for themoment, thou poor lad! Look up and have thy laugh, now!"

He looked up, searched the merry faces about him in a dreamy way, thensighed 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 theground in a swoon. 

All day the people went about the castle with troubled faces, andcommuned together in undertones. A painful hush pervaded the place whichhad lately been so full of cheery life. Each in his turn tried to arouseConrad out of his hallucination and bring him to himself; but all theanswer 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 andforlorn in the world--prithee lead me to her grave. "

During two years Conrad spent his days, from the early morning till thenight, under the linden tree, mourning over the imaginary grave of hisCatharina. Catharina was the only company of the harmless madman. He wasvery friendly toward her because, as he said, in some ways she remindedhim 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 whenyou think I am not looking, you cry. "

When Conrad died, they buried him under the linden, according to hisdirections, so that he might rest "near his poor Catharina. " ThenCatharina sat under the linden alone, every day and all day long, agreat many years, speaking to no one, and never smiling; and at last herlong repentance was rewarded with death, and she was buried by Conrad'sside. 

Harris pleased the captain by saying it was good legend; and pleased himfurther by adding:

"Now that I have seen this mighty tree, vigorous with its four hundredyears, I feel a desire to believe the legend for ITS sake; so I willhumor the desire, and consider that the tree really watches over thosepoor hearts and feels a sort of human tenderness for them. "

We returned to Necharsteinach, plunged our hot heads into the trough atthe town pump, and then went to the hotel and ate our trout dinner inleisurely comfort, in the garden, with the beautiful Neckar flowing atour feet, the quaint Dilsberg looming beyond, and the graceful towersand battlements of a couple of medieval castles (called the "Swallow'sNest" [1] and "The Brothers. ") assisting the rugged scenery of a bendof the river down to our right. We got to sea in season to make theeight-mile run to Heidelberg before the night shut down. We sailed bythe hotel in the mellow glow of sunset, and came slashing down withthe mad current into the narrow passage between the dikes. I believed Icould shoot the bridge myself, and I went to the forward triplet of logsand 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 thedelicate duties of my office very well indeed for a first attempt;but perceiving, presently, that I really was going to shoot the bridgeitself instead of the archway under it, I judiciously stepped ashore. The next moment I had my long-coveted desire: I saw a raft wrecked. Ithit the pier in the center and went all to smash and scatteration like abox of matches struck by lightning. 

I was the only one of our party who saw this grand sight; the otherswere attitudinizing, for the benefit of the long rank of young ladieswho were promenading on the bank, and so they lost it. But I helped tofish them out of the river, down below the bridge, and then described itto them as well as I could. 

They were not interested, though. They said they were wet and feltridiculous and did not care anything for descriptions of scenery. Theyoung ladies, and other people, crowded around and showed a great dealof sympathy, but that did not help matters; for my friends said they didnot want sympathy, they wanted a back alley and solitude. 

CHAPTER XX

[My Precious, Priceless Tear-Jug]

Next morning brought good news--our trunks had arrived from Hamburgat last. Let this be a warning to the reader. The Germans are veryconscientious, and this trait makes them very particular. Therefore ifyou tell a German you want a thing done immediately, he takes youat your word; he thinks you mean what you say; so he does that thingimmediately--according to his idea of immediately--which is about aweek; 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. Verywell; 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 youcannot imagine how long you will go on enlarging your admiration of theexpressiveness of that phrase in the German tongue, before you get thattrunk. The hair on my trunk was soft and thick and youthful, when Igot it ready for shipment in Hamburg; it was baldheaded when it reachedHeidelberg. However, it was still sound, that was a comfort, it wasnot battered in the least; the baggagemen seemed to be conscientiouslycareful, in Germany, of the baggage entrusted to their hands. Therewas nothing now in the way of our departure, therefore we set about ourpreparations. 

Naturally my chief solicitude was about my collection of Ceramics. Ofcourse I could not take it with me, that would be inconvenient, anddangerous besides. I took advice, but the best brick-a-brackers weredivided as to the wisest course to pursue; some said pack the collectionand warehouse it; others said try to get it into the Grand Ducal Museumat Mannheim for safe keeping. So I divided the collection, and followedthe advice of both parties. I set aside, for the Museum, those articleswhich were the most frail and precious. 

Among these was my Etruscan tear-jug. I have made a little sketch ofit 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 andfifty dollars. It is very rare. The man said the Etruscans used to keeptears or something in these things, and that it was very hard to gethold of a broken one, now. 

I also set aside my Henri II. Plate. See sketch from my pencil; it isin the main correct, though I think I have foreshortened one end of ita little too much, perhaps. This is very fine and rare; the shape isexceedingly beautiful and unusual. It has wonderful decorations on it, but I am not able to reproduce them. It cost more than the tear-jug, asthe dealer said there was not another plate just like it in theworld. He said there was much false Henri II ware around, but that thegenuineness of this piece was unquestionable. 

He showed me its pedigree, or its history, if you please; it was adocument which traced this plate's movements all the way down from itsbirth--showed who bought it, from whom, and what he paid for it--fromthe first buyer down to me, whereby I saw that it had gone steadily upfrom thirty-five cents to seven hundred dollars. He said that the wholeCeramic world would be informed that it was now in my possession andwould 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 coursethe main preciousness of this piece lies in its color; it is that oldsensuous, pervading, ramifying, interpolating, transboreal blue which isthe despair of modern art. The little sketch which I have made of thisgem cannot and does not do it justice, since I have been obliged toleave out the color. But I've got the expression, though. 

However, I must not be frittering away the reader's time with thesedetails. I did not intend to go into any detail at all, at first, butit is the failing of the true ceramiker, or the true devotee in anydepartment of brick-a-brackery, that once he gets his tongue or his penstarted on his darling theme, he cannot well stop until he drops fromexhaustion. He has no more sense of the flight of time than has anyother lover when talking of his sweetheart. The very "marks" on thebottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibberingecstasy; and I could forsake a drowning relative to help dispute aboutwhether the stopple of a departed Buon Retiro scent-bottle was genuineor spurious. 

Many people say that for a male person, bric-a-brac hunting is about asrobust a business as making doll-clothes, or decorating Japanese potswith decalcomania butterflies would be, and these people fling mud atthe elegant Englishman, Byng, who wrote a book called THE BRIC-A-BRACHUNTER, and make fun of him for chasing around after what they choose tocall "his despicable trifles"; and for "gushing" over these trifles;and for exhibiting his "deep infantile delight" in what they call his"tuppenny collection of beggarly trivialities"; and for beginning hisbook with a picture of himself seated, in a "sappy, self-complacentattitude, in the midst of his poor little ridiculous bric-a-brac junkshop. "

It is easy to say these things; it is easy to revile us, easy to despiseus; therefore, let these people rail on; they cannot feel as Byng andI feel--it is their loss, not ours. For my part I am content to be abrick-a-bracker and a ceramiker--more, I am proud to be so named. I amproud to know that I lose my reason as immediately in the presence of arare jug with an illustrious mark on the bottom of it, as if I hadjust emptied that jug. Very well; I packed and stored a part of mycollection, and the rest of it I placed in the care of the Grand DucalMuseum in Mannheim, by permission. My Old Blue China Cat remains thereyet. I presented it to that excellent institution. 

I had but one misfortune with my things. An egg which I had kept backfrom 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 saidit was an antique. We spent a day or two in farewell visits, and thenleft for Baden-Baden. We had a pleasant trip to it, for the Rhine valleyis always lovely. The only trouble was that the trip was too short. IfI remember rightly it only occupied a couple of hours, therefore I judgethat the distance was very little, if any, over fifty miles. Wequitted the train at Oos, and walked the entire remaining distance toBaden-Baden, with the exception of a lift of less than an hour whichwe got on a passing wagon, the weather being exhaustingly warm. We cameinto 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 hiscompany and companionship are a genuine refreshment. We knew he had beenin 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 emptyone ready and thirsting to receive what you have got; we will sit uptill midnight and have a good satisfying interchange, for I leave hereearly in the morning. " We agreed to that, of course. 

I had been vaguely conscious, for a while, of a person who was walkingin the street abreast of us; I had glanced furtively at him once ortwice, and noticed that he was a fine, large, vigorous young fellow, with an open, independent countenance, faintly shaded with a pale andeven almost imperceptible crop of early down, and that he was clothedfrom head to heel in cool and enviable snow-white linen. I thought I hadalso noticed that his head had a sort of listening tilt to it. Now aboutthis 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 thesidewalk alongside him, fetched him a cordial slap on the shoulder withhis 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 itthere!"

He held out his Sahara of his palm, and the Reverend laid his diminutivehand in it, and got so cordial a shake that we heard his glove burstunder 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 beenover here long?"

"About four months. Have you been over long?"

"LONG? Well, I should say so! Going on two YEARS, by geeminy! Say, areyou 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, ratherby instinct than otherwise, that he was throwing out signals of distressto us; but we did not interfere or try to succor him, for we were quitehappy. 

The young fellow hooked his arm into the Reverend's, now, with theconfiding 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 accentsof the mother-tongue--and then he limbered up the muscles of his mouthand turned himself loose--and with such a relish! Some of his words werenot 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'sall. And when I heard you fellows gassing away in the good old Americanlanguage, I'm ------ if it wasn't all I could do to keep from huggingyou! 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'sawful good to lay it over a Christian word once more and kind of let theold 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 tobe a horse-doctor! I LIKE that part of it, you know, but ------thesepeople, they won't learn a fellow in his own language, they make himlearn in German; so before I could tackle the horse-doctoring I had totackle this miserable language. 

"First off, I thought it would certainly give me the botts, but I don'tmind 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 tellyou what! the difference between school-teaching over yonder andschool-teaching over here--sho! WE don't know anything about it! Hereyou've got to peg and peg and peg and there just ain't any let-up--andwhat you learn here, you've got to KNOW, dontchuknow --or else you'llhave one of these ------ spavined, spectacles, ring-boned, knock-kneedold professors in your hair. I've been here long ENOUGH, and I'm gettingblessed tired of it, mind I TELL you. The old man wrote me that he wascoming over in June, and said he'd take me home in August, whether I wasdone with my education or not, but durn him, he didn't come; never saidwhy; just sent me a hamper of Sunday-school books, and told me tobe 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 READthem, anyway, because whatever the old man tells me to do, that's thething that I'm a-going to DO, or tear something, you know. I buckledin and read all those books, because he wanted me to; but that kind ofthing 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 therag and give the word--yes, SIR, right here in this ------ countryI've got to linger till the old man says COME!--and you bet your bottomdollar, 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, andthen he straightway dived into his narrative again for "Johnny's"benefit, beginning, "Well, ------it ain't any use talking, some of thoseold American words DO have a kind of a bully swing to them; a mancan 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 theReverend, he showed so much sorrow, and begged so hard and so earnestlythat the Reverend's heart was not hard enough to hold out against thepleadings--so he went away with the parent-honoring student, like aright Christian, and took supper with him in his lodgings, and sat inthe surf-beat of his slang and profanity till near midnight, and thenleft him--left him pretty well talked out, but grateful "clear downto his frogs, " as he expressed it. The Reverend said it had transpiredduring the interview that "Cholley" Adams's father was an extensivedealer in horses in western New York; this accounted for Cholley'schoice of a profession. The Reverend brought away a pretty high opinionof Cholley as a manly young fellow, with stuff in him for a usefulcitizen; he considered him rather a rough gem, but a gem, nevertheless. 

CHAPTER XXI

[Insolent Shopkeepers and Gabbling Americans]

Baden-Baden sits in the lap of the hills, and the natural and artificialbeauties of the surroundings are combined effectively and charmingly. The level strip of ground which stretches through and beyond the town islaid out in handsome pleasure grounds, shaded by noble trees and adornedat intervals with lofty and sparkling fountain-jets. Thrice a day a fineband makes music in the public promenade before the ConversationHouse, and in the afternoon and evening that locality is populous withfashionably dressed people of both sexes, who march back and forth pastthe great music-stand and look very much bored, though they make ashow of feeling otherwise. It seems like a rather aimless and stupidexistence. A good many of these people are there for a real purpose, however; they are racked with rheumatism, and they are there to stew itout in the hot baths. These invalids looked melancholy enough, limpingabout on their canes and crutches, and apparently brooding over allsorts of cheerless things. People say that Germany, with her damp stonehouses, is the home of rheumatism. If that is so, Providence must haveforeseen that it would be so, and therefore filled the land with thehealing baths. Perhaps no other country is so generously supplied withmedicinal springs as Germany. Some of these baths are good for oneailment, some for another; and again, peculiar ailments are conqueredby combining the individual virtues of several different baths. Forinstance, for some forms of disease, the patient drinks the native hotwater of Baden-Baden, with a spoonful of salt from the Carlsbad springsdissolved in it. That is not a dose to be forgotten right away. 

They don't SELL this hot water; no, you go into the great Trinkhalle, and stand around, first on one foot and then on the other, while two orthree young girls sit pottering at some sort of ladylike sewing-workin your neighborhood and can't seem to see you --polite as three-dollarclerks in government offices. 

By and by one of these rises painfully, and "stretches"--stretches fistsand body heavenward till she raises her heels from the floor, at thesame time refreshing herself with a yawn of such comprehensiveness thatthe bulk of her face disappears behind her upper lip and one is able tosee how she is constructed inside--then she slowly closes hercavern, brings down her fists and her heels, comes languidly forward, contemplates you contemptuously, draws you a glass of hot water and setsit down where you can get it by reaching for it. You take it and say:

"How much?"--and she returns you, with elaborate indifference, abeggar's answer:

"NACH BELIEBE" (what you please. )

This thing of using the common beggar's trick and the common beggar'sshibboleth to put you on your liberality when you were expecting asimple straightforward commercial transaction, adds a little to yourprospering sense of irritation. You ignore her reply, and ask again:

"How much?"

--and she calmly, indifferently, repeats:

"NACH BELIEBE. "

You are getting angry, but you are trying not to show it; you resolveto keep on asking your question till she changes her answer, or at leasther annoyingly indifferent manner. Therefore, if your case be like mine, you two fools stand there, and without perceptible emotion of any kind, or any emphasis on any syllable, you look blandly into each other'seyes, and hold the following idiotic conversation:

"How much?"

"NACH BELIEBE. "

"How much?"

"NACH BELIEBE. "

"How much?"

"NACH BELIEBE. "

"How much?"

"NACH BELIEBE. "

"How much?"

"NACH BELIEBE. "

"How much?"

"NACH BELIEBE. "

I do not know what another person would have done, but at this point Igave up; that cast-iron indifference, that tranquil contemptuousness, conquered me, and I struck my colors. Now I knew she was used toreceiving about a penny from manly people who care nothing about theopinions of scullery-maids, and about tuppence from moral cowards; butI laid a silver twenty-five cent piece within her reach and tried toshrivel her up with this sarcastic speech:

"If it isn't enough, will you stoop sufficiently from your officialdignity to say so?"

She did not shrivel. Without deigning to look at me at all, shelanguidly lifted the coin and bit it!--to see if it was good. Then sheturned her back and placidly waddled to her former roost again, tossingthe money into an open till as she went along. She was victor to thelast, you see. 

I have enlarged upon the ways of this girl because they are typical;her manners are the manners of a goodly number of the Baden-Badenshopkeepers. The shopkeeper there swindles you if he can, and insultsyou whether he succeeds in swindling you or not. The keepers of bathsalso take great and patient pains to insult you. The frowsy woman whosat at the desk in the lobby of the great Friederichsbad and sold bathtickets, not only insulted me twice every day, with rigid fidelityto her great trust, but she took trouble enough to cheat me out of ashilling, one day, to have fairly entitled her to ten. Baden-Baden'ssplendid gamblers are gone, only her microscopic knaves remain. 

An English gentleman who had been living there several years, said:

"If you could disguise your nationality, you would not find anyinsolence here. These shopkeepers detest the English and despise theAmericans; they are rude to both, more especially to ladies of yournationality and mine. If these go shopping without a gentleman ora man-servant, they are tolerably sure to be subjected to pettyinsolences--insolences of manner and tone, rather than word, thoughwords that are hard to bear are not always wanting. I know of aninstance where a shopkeeper tossed a coin back to an American lady withthe remark, snappishly uttered, 'We don't take French money here. ' AndI know of a case where an English lady said to one of these shopkeepers, 'Don't you think you ask too much for this article?' and he replied withthe question, 'Do you think you are obliged to buy it?' However, thesepeople are not impolite to Russians or Germans. And as to rank, theyworship that, for they have long been used to generals and nobles. Ifyou wish to see what abysses servility can descend, present yourselfbefore a Baden-Baden shopkeeper in the character of a Russian prince. "

It is an inane town, filled with sham, and petty fraud, and snobbery, but the baths are good. I spoke with many people, and they were allagreed in that. I had the twinges of rheumatism unceasingly during threeyears, but the last one departed after a fortnight's bathing there, and I have never had one since. I fully believe I left my rheumatism inBaden-Baden. Baden-Baden is welcome to it. It was little, but it wasall I had to give. I would have preferred to leave something that wascatching, but it was not in my power. 

There are several hot springs there, and during two thousand years theyhave poured forth a never-diminishing abundance of the healing water. This water is conducted in pipe to the numerous bath-houses, and isreduced to an endurable temperature by the addition of cold water. Thenew Friederichsbad is a very large and beautiful building, and in it onemay have any sort of bath that has ever been invented, and with allthe additions of herbs and drugs that his ailment may need or that thephysician of the establishment may consider a useful thing to put intothe water. You go there, enter the great door, get a bow graduated toyour style and clothes from the gorgeous portier, and a bath ticket andan insult from the frowsy woman for a quarter; she strikes a bell anda serving-man conducts you down a long hall and shuts you into acommodious room which has a washstand, a mirror, a bootjack, and a sofain it, and there you undress at your leisure. 

The room is divided by a great curtain; you draw this curtain aside, andfind a large white marble bathtub, with its rim sunk to the level of thefloor, and with three white marble steps leading down to it. This tubis full of water which is as clear as crystal, and is tempered to 28degrees Re'aumur (about 95 degrees Fahrenheit). Sunk into the floor, bythe tub, is a covered copper box which contains some warm towels and asheet. You look fully as white as an angel when you are stretched outin that limpid bath. You remain in it ten minutes, the first time, and afterward increase the duration from day to day, till you reachtwenty-five or thirty minutes. There you stop. The appointments of theplace are so luxurious, the benefit so marked, the price so moderate, and the insults so sure, that you very soon find yourself adoring theFriederichsbad and infesting it. 

We had a plain, simple, unpretending, good hotel, in Baden-Baden--theHôtel de France--and alongside my room I had a giggling, cackling, chattering family who always went to bed just two hours after me andalways got up two hours ahead of me. But this is common in Germanhotels; the people generally go to bed long after eleven and get uplong before eight. The partitions convey sound like a drum-head, andeverybody knows it; but no matter, a German family who are all kindnessand consideration in the daytime make apparently no effort to moderatetheir noises for your benefit at night. They will sing, laugh, and talkloudly, and bang furniture around in a most pitiless way. If you knockon your wall appealingly, they will quiet down and discuss the mattersoftly among themselves for a moment--then, like the mice, they fall topersecuting you again, and as vigorously as before. They keep cruellylate and early hours, for such noisy folk. 

Of course, when one begins to find fault with foreign people's ways, heis very likely to get a reminder to look nearer home, before he gets farwith it. I open my note-book to see if I can find some more informationof a valuable nature about Baden-Baden, and the first thing I fall uponis this:

"BADEN-BADEN (no date). Lot of vociferous Americans at breakfastthis morning. Talking AT everybody, while pretending to talk amongthemselves. On their first travels, manifestly. Showing off. The usualsigns--airy, easy-going references to grand distances and foreignplaces. 'Well GOOD-by, old fellow--if I don't run across you in Italy, you hunt me up in London before you sail. '"

The next item which I find in my note-book is this one:

"The fact that a band of 6, 000 Indians are now murdering ourfrontiersmen at their impudent leisure, and that we are only ableto send 1, 200 soldiers against them, is utilized here to discourageemigration to America. The common people think the Indians are in NewJersey. "

This is a new and peculiar argument against keeping our army down to aridiculous figure in the matter of numbers. It is rather a strikingone, too. I have not distorted the truth in saying that the facts inthe above item, about the army and the Indians, are made use of todiscourage emigration to America. That the common people should berather foggy in their geography, and foggy as to the location of theIndians, is a matter for amusement, maybe, but not of surprise. 

There is an interesting old cemetery in Baden-Baden, and we spentseveral pleasant hours in wandering through it and spelling out theinscriptions on the aged tombstones. Apparently after a man has laidthere a century or two, and has had a good many people buried on topof him, it is considered that his tombstone is not needed by him anylonger. I judge so from the fact that hundreds of old gravestones havebeen removed from the graves and placed against the inner walls of thecemetery. What artists they had in the old times! They chiseled angelsand cherubs and devils and skeletons on the tombstones in the mostlavish and generous way--as to supply--but curiously grotesque andoutlandish as to form. It is not always easy to tell which of thefigures belong among the blest and which of them among the oppositeparty. But there was an inscription, in French, on one of those oldstones, which was quaint and pretty, and was plainly not the work of anyother than a poet. It was to this effect:

Here Reposes in God, Caroline de Clery, a Religieuse of St. Denis aged83 years--and blind. The light was restored to her in Baden the 5th ofJanuary, 1839

We made several excursions on foot to the neighboring villages, overwinding and beautiful roads and through enchanting woodland scenery. The woods and roads were similar to those at Heidelberg, but notso bewitching. I suppose that roads and woods which are up to theHeidelberg mark are rare in the world. 

Once we wandered clear away to La Favorita Palace, which is severalmiles from Baden-Baden. The grounds about the palace were fine; thepalace was a curiosity. It was built by a Margravine in 1725, andremains as she left it at her death. We wandered through a great manyof its rooms, and they all had striking peculiarities of decoration. For instance, the walls of one room were pretty completely coveredwith small pictures of the Margravine in all conceivable varieties offanciful costumes, some of them male. 

The walls of another room were covered with grotesquely and elaboratelyfigured hand-wrought tapestry. The musty ancient beds remained in thechambers, and their quilts and curtains and canopies were decorated withcurious handwork, and the walls and ceilings frescoed with historicaland mythological scenes in glaring colors. There was enough crazy androtten rubbish in the building to make a true brick-a-bracker green withenvy. A painting in the dining-hall verged upon the indelicate--but thenthe Margravine was herself a trifle indelicate. 

It is in every way a wildly and picturesquely decorated house, andbrimful of interest as a reflection of the character and tastes of thatrude bygone time. 

In the grounds, a few rods from the palace, stands the Margravine'schapel, just as she left it--a coarse wooden structure, wholly barrenof ornament. It is said that the Margravine would give herself up todebauchery and exceedingly fast living for several months at a time, and then retire to this miserable wooden den and spend a few months inrepenting and getting ready for another good time. She was a devotedCatholic, and was perhaps quite a model sort of a Christian asChristians went then, in high life. 

Tradition says she spent the last two years of her life in the strangeden I have been speaking of, after having indulged herself in one final, triumphant, and satisfying spree. She shut herself up there, withoutcompany, and without even a servant, and so abjured and forsook theworld. In her little bit of a kitchen she did her own cooking; she worea hair shirt next the skin, and castigated herself with whips--theseaids to grace are exhibited there yet. She prayed and told her beads, in another little room, before a waxen Virgin niched in a little boxagainst the wall; she bedded herself like a slave. 

In another small room is an unpainted wooden table, and behind it sithalf-life-size waxen figures of the Holy Family, made by the very worstartist that ever lived, perhaps, and clothed in gaudy, flimsy drapery. [1] The margravine used to bring her meals to this table and DINE WITHTHE HOLY FAMILY. What an idea that was! What a grisly spectacle it musthave been! Imagine it: Those rigid, shock-headed figures, with corpsycomplexions and fish glass eyes, occupying one side of the table in theconstrained attitudes and dead fixedness that distinguish all men thatare born of wax, and this wrinkled, smoldering old fire-eater occupyingthe other side, mumbling her prayers and munching her sausages in theghostly stillness and shadowy indistinctness of a winter twilight. Itmakes one feel crawly even to think of it. 

 [1] The Savior was represented as a lad of about fifteen years of age. This figure had lost one eye. 

In this sordid place, and clothed, bedded, and fed like a pauper, thisstrange princess lived and worshiped during two years, and in it shedied. Two or three hundred years ago, this would have made the poor denholy ground; and the church would have set up a miracle-factory thereand made plenty of money out of it. The den could be moved into someportions of France and made a good property even now.