A TRAMP ABROAD, Part 7. 

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 285.   STREET IN CHAMONIX 286.   THE PROUD GERMAN 287.   THE INDIGNANT TOURIST 288.   MUSIC OF SWITZERLAND 289.   ONLY A MISTAKE 290.   A BROAD VIEW 291.   PREPARING TO START 292.   ASCENT OF MONT BLANC 293.   "WE ALL RAISED A TREMENDOUS SHOUT" 294.   THE GRANDE MULETS 295.   CABIN ON THE GRANDE MULETS 296.   KEEPING WARM 297.   TAIL PIECE 298.   TAKE IT EASY 299.   THE MER DE GLACE (MONT BLANC) 300.   TAKING TOLL 301.   A DESCENDING TOURIST 302.   LEAVING BY DILIGENCE 303.   THE SATISFIED ENGLISHMAN 301.   HIGH PRESSURE 305.   NO APOLOGY 307.   A LIVELY STREET 308.   HAVING HER FULL RIGHTS 309.   HOW SHE FOOLED US 310.   "YOU'LL TAKE THAT OR NONE" 311.   ROBBING A BEGGAR 312.   DISHONEST ITALY 313.   STOCK IN TRADE 314.   STYLE 315.   SPECIMENS FROM OLD MASTERS 316.   AN OLD MASTER 317.   THE LION OF ST MARK 318.   OH TO BE AT RRST! 319.   THE WORLD'S MASTERPIECE 320.   TAIL PIECE 321.   AESTHETIC TASTES 322.   A PRIVATE FAMILY BREAKFAST 323.   EUROPEAN CARVING 323.   A TWENTY-FOUR HOUR FIGHT 325.   GREAT HEIDELBERG TUN 326.   BISMARCK IN PRISON 327.   TAIL PIECE 600 328.   A COMPLETE WORD

CONTENTS:

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

CHAPTER XLIV Looking at Mont Blanc--Telescopic Effect--A ProposedTrip--Determination and Courage--The Cost all counted----Ascent ofMont Blanc by Telescope--Safe and Rapid Return--Diplomas Asked for andRefused--Disaster of 1866--The Brave Brothers--Wonderful Endurance andPluck--Love Making on Mont Blanc--First Ascent of a Woman--SensibleAttire

CHAPTER XLV A Catastrophe which Cost Eleven Lives--Accident of 1870--AParty of Eleven--A Fearful Storm--Note-books of the Victims--Within FiveMinutes of Safety--Facing Death Resignedly

CHAPTER XLVI The Hotel des Pyramids--The Glacier des Bossons--One ofthe Shows--Premeditated Crime--Saved Again--Tourists Warned--Adviceto Tourists--The Two Empresses--The Glacier Toll Collector--PureIce Water--Death Rate of the World--Of Various Cities--A PleasureExcursionist--A Diligence Ride--A Satisfied Englishman

CHAPTER XLVII Geneva--Shops of Geneva--Elasticity of Prices--Persistencyof Shop-Women--The High Pressure System--How a Dandy was brought toGrief--American Manners--Gallantry--Col Baker of London--ArkansawJustice--Safety of Women in America--Town of Chambery--A LivelyPlace--At Turin--A Railroad Companion--An Insulted Woman--City ofTurin--Italian Honesty--A Small Mistake --Robbing a Beggar Woman

CHAPTER XLVIII In Milan--The Arcade--Incidents we Met With--ThePedlar--Children--The Honest Conductor--Heavy Stocks of Clothing--TheQuarrelsome Italians--Great Smoke and Little Fire--The Cathedral--Stylein Church--The Old Masters--Tintoretto's great Picture--EmotionalTourists--Basson's Famed Picture--The Hair Trunk

CHAPTER XLIX In Venice--St Mark's Cathedral--Discovery of anAntique--The Riches of St Mark's--A Church Robber--Trusting Secrets to aFriend --The Robber Hanged--A Private Dinner--European Food

CHAPTER L Why Some things Are--Art in Rome and Florence--The Fig LeafMania--Titian's Venus--Difference between Seeing and Describing A Realwork of Art--Titian's Moses--Home

APPENDIX

 A--The Portier analyzed B--Hiedelberg Castle Described C--The College Prison and Inmates D--The Awful German Language E--Legends of the Castle F--The Journals of Germany

CHAPTER XLIII

[My Poor Sick Friend Disappointed]

Everybody was out-of-doors; everybody was in the principal street of thevillage--not on the sidewalks, but all over the street; everybody waslounging, loafing, chatting, waiting, alert, expectant, interested--forit was train-time. That is to say, it was diligence-time--the half-dozenbig diligences would soon be arriving from Geneva, and the village wasinterested, in many ways, in knowing how many people were coming andwhat sort of folk they might be. It was altogether the livest-lookingstreet we had seen in any village on the continent. 

The hotel was by the side of a booming torrent, whose music was loudand strong; we could not see this torrent, for it was dark, now, butone could locate it without a light. There was a large enclosed yard infront of the hotel, and this was filled with groups of villagers waitingto see the diligences arrive, or to hire themselves to excursionists forthe morrow. A telescope stood in the yard, with its huge barrel cantedup toward the lustrous evening star. The long porch of the hotel waspopulous with tourists, who sat in shawls and wraps under the vastovershadowing bulk of Mont Blanc, and gossiped or meditated. 

Never did a mountain seem so close; its big sides seemed at one's veryelbow, and its majestic dome, and the lofty cluster of slender minaretsthat were its neighbors, seemed to be almost over one's head. It wasnight in the streets, and the lamps were sparkling everywhere; the broadbases and shoulders of the mountains were in a deep gloom, but theirsummits swam in a strange rich glow which was really daylight, and yethad a mellow something about it which was very different from the hardwhite glare of the kind of daylight I was used to. Its radiance wasstrong and clear, but at the same time it was singularly soft, andspiritual, and benignant. No, it was not our harsh, aggressive, realistic daylight; it seemed properer to an enchanted land--or toheaven. 

I had seen moonlight and daylight together before, but I had not seendaylight and black night elbow to elbow before. At least I had not seenthe daylight resting upon an object sufficiently close at hand, before, to make the contrast startling and at war with nature. 

The daylight passed away. Presently the moon rose up behind some ofthose sky-piercing fingers or pinnacles of bare rock of which I havespoken--they were a little to the left of the crest of Mont Blanc, and right over our heads--but she couldn't manage to climb high enoughtoward heaven to get entirely above them. She would show the glitteringarch of her upper third, occasionally, and scrape it along behind thecomblike row; sometimes a pinnacle stood straight up, like a statuetteof ebony, against that glittering white shield, then seemed to glide outof it by its own volition and power, and become a dim specter, while thenext pinnacle glided into its place and blotted the spotless disk withthe black exclamation-point of its presence. The top of one pinnacletook the shapely, clean-cut form of a rabbit's head, in the inkiestsilhouette, while it rested against the moon. The unillumined peaks andminarets, hovering vague and phantom-like above us while the otherswere painfully white and strong with snow and moonlight, made a peculiareffect. 

But when the moon, having passed the line of pinnacles, was hiddenbehind the stupendous white swell of Mont Blanc, the masterpiece of theevening was flung on the canvas. A rich greenish radiance sprang intothe sky from behind the mountain, and in this some airy shreds andribbons of vapor floated about, and being flushed with that strangetint, went waving to and fro like pale green flames. After a while, radiating bars--vast broadening fan-shaped shadows--grew up andstretched away to the zenith from behind the mountain. It was aspectacle to take one's breath, for the wonder of it, and the sublimity. 

Indeed, those mighty bars of alternate light and shadow streaming upfrom behind that dark and prodigious form and occupying the half of thedull and opaque heavens, was the most imposing and impressive marvel Ihad ever looked upon. There is no simile for it, for nothing is likeit. If a child had asked me what it was, I should have said, "Humbleyourself, in this presence, it is the glory flowing from the hidden headof the Creator. " One falls shorter of the truth than that, sometimes, intrying to explain mysteries to the little people. I could have foundout the cause of this awe-compelling miracle by inquiring, for it is notinfrequent at Mont Blanc, --but I did not wish to know. We have not thereverent feeling for the rainbow that a savage has, because we know howit is made. We have lost as much as we gained by prying into the matter. 

We took a walk down street, a block or two, and a place where fourstreets met and the principal shops were clustered, found the groupsof men in the roadway thicker than ever--for this was the Exchange ofChamonix. These men were in the costumes of guides and porters, and werethere to be hired. 

The office of that great personage, the Guide-in-Chief of the ChamonixGuild of Guides, was near by. This guild is a close corporation, and isgoverned by strict laws. There are many excursion routes, some dangerousand some not, some that can be made safely without a guide, and somethat cannot. The bureau determines these things. Where it decides that aguide is necessary, you are forbidden to go without one. Neither are youallowed to be a victim of extortion: the law states what you are to pay. The guides serve in rotation; you cannot select the man who is to takeyour life into his hands, you must take the worst in the lot, if it ishis turn. A guide's fee ranges all the way up from a half-dollar (forsome trifling excursion of a few rods) to twenty dollars, according tothe distance traversed and the nature of the ground. A guide's feefor taking a person to the summit of Mont Blanc and back, is twentydollars--and he earns it. The time employed is usually three days, andthere is enough early rising in it to make a man far more "healthy andwealthy and wise" than any one man has any right to be. The porter'sfee for the same trip is ten dollars. Several fools--no, I mean severaltourists--usually go together, and divide up the expense, and thus makeit light; for if only one f--tourist, I mean--went, he would have tohave several guides and porters, and that would make the matter costly. 

We went into the Chief's office. There were maps of mountains on thewalls; also one or two lithographs of celebrated guides, and a portraitof the scientist De Saussure. 

In glass cases were some labeled fragments of boots and batons, andother suggestive relics and remembrances of casualties on Mount Blanc. In a book was a record of all the ascents which have ever been made, beginning with Nos. 1 and 2--being those of Jacques Balmat and DeSaussure, in 1787, and ending with No. 685, which wasn't cold yet. Infact No. 685 was standing by the official table waiting to receive theprecious official diploma which should prove to his German household andto his descendants that he had once been indiscreet enough to climb tothe top of Mont Blanc. He looked very happy when he got his document; infact, he spoke up and said he WAS happy. 

I tried to buy a diploma for an invalid friend at home who had nevertraveled, and whose desire all his life has been to ascend Mont Blanc, but the Guide-in-Chief rather insolently refused to sell me one. I wasvery much offended. I said I did not propose to be discriminated againston the account of my nationality; that he had just sold a diploma tothis German gentleman, and my money was a good as his; I would see toit that he couldn't keep his shop for Germans and deny his produce toAmericans; I would have his license taken away from him at the droppingof a handkerchief; if France refused to break him, I would make aninternational matter of it and bring on a war; the soil should bedrenched with blood; and not only that, but I would set up an oppositionshow and sell diplomas at half price. 

For two cents I would have done these things, too; but nobody offered metwo cents. I tried to move that German's feelings, but it could not bedone; he would not give me his diploma, neither would he sell it to me. I TOLD him my friend was sick and could not come himself, but he saidhe did not care a VERDAMMTES PFENNIG, he wanted his diploma forhimself--did I suppose he was going to risk his neck for that thing andthen give it to a sick stranger? Indeed he wouldn't, so he wouldn't. Iresolved, then, that I would do all I could to injure Mont Blanc. 

In the record-book was a list of all the fatal accidents which happenedon the mountain. It began with the one in 1820 when the Russian Dr. Hamel's three guides were lost in a crevice of the glacier, and itrecorded the delivery of the remains in the valley by the slow-movingglacier forty-one years later. The latest catastrophe bore the date1877. 

We stepped out and roved about the village awhile. In front of thelittle church was a monument to the memory of the bold guide JacquesBalmat, the first man who ever stood upon the summit of Mont Blanc. Hemade that wild trip solitary and alone. He accomplished the ascenta number of times afterward. A stretch of nearly half a century laybetween his first ascent and his last one. At the ripe old age ofseventy-two he was climbing around a corner of a lofty precipice of thePic du Midi--nobody with him--when he slipped and fell. So he died inthe harness. 

He had grown very avaricious in his old age, and used to go offstealthily to hunt for non-existent and impossible gold among thoseperilous peaks and precipices. He was on a quest of that kind when helost his life. There was a statue to him, and another to De Saussure, inthe hall of our hotel, and a metal plate on the door of a room upstairsbore an inscription to the effect that that room had been occupiedby Albert Smith. Balmat and De Saussure discovered Mont Blanc--so tospeak--but it was Smith who made it a paying property. His articles inBLACKWOOD and his lectures on Mont Blanc in London advertised it andmade people as anxious to see it as if it owed them money. 

As we strolled along the road we looked up and saw a red signal-lightglowing in the darkness of the mountainside. It seemed but a triflingway up--perhaps a hundred yards, a climb of ten minutes. It was a luckypiece of sagacity in us that we concluded to stop a man whom we met andget a light for our pipes from him instead of continuing the climb tothat lantern to get a light, as had been our purpose. The man said thatthat lantern was on the Grands Mulets, some sixty-five hundred feetabove the valley! I know by our Riffelberg experience, that it wouldhave taken us a good part of a week to go up there. I would sooner notsmoke at all, than take all that trouble for a light. 

Even in the daytime the foreshadowing effect of this mountain's closeproximity creates curious deceptions. For instance, one sees with thenaked eye a cabin up there beside the glacier, and a little above andbeyond he sees the spot where that red light was located; he thinks hecould throw a stone from the one place to the other. But he couldn't, for the difference between the two altitudes is more than three thousandfeet. It looks impossible, from below, that this can be true, but it istrue, nevertheless. 

While strolling around, we kept the run of the moon all the time, and westill kept an eye on her after we got back to the hotel portico. I hada theory that the gravitation of refraction, being subsidiary toatmospheric compensation, the refrangibility of the earth's surfacewould emphasize this effect in regions where great mountain rangesoccur, and possibly so even-handed impact the odic and idyllic forcestogether, the one upon the other, as to prevent the moon from risinghigher than 12, 200 feet above sea-level. This daring theory had beenreceived with frantic scorn by some of my fellow-scientists, and withan eager silence by others. Among the former I may mention Prof. H----y;and among the latter Prof. T----l. Such is professional jealousy; ascientist will never show any kindness for a theory which he did notstart himself. There is no feeling of brotherhood among these people. Indeed, they always resent it when I call them brother. To show how fartheir ungenerosity can carry them, I will state that I offered to letProf. H----y publish my great theory as his own discovery; I even beggedhim to do it; I even proposed to print it myself as his theory. Insteadof thanking me, he said that if I tried to fasten that theory on him hewould sue me for slander. I was going to offer it to Mr. Darwin, whomI understood to be a man without prejudices, but it occurred to methat perhaps he would not be interested in it since it did not concernheraldry. 

But I am glad now, that I was forced to father my intrepid theorymyself, for, on the night of which I am writing, it was triumphantlyjustified and established. Mont Blanc is nearly sixteen thousand feethigh; he hid the moon utterly; near him is a peak which is 12, 216 feethigh; the moon slid along behind the pinnacles, and when she approachedthat one I watched her with intense interest, for my reputation as ascientist must stand or fall by its decision. I cannot describe theemotions which surged like tidal waves through my breast when I saw themoon glide behind that lofty needle and pass it by without exposing morethan two feet four inches of her upper rim above it; I was secure, then. I knew she could rise no higher, and I was right. She sailed behind allthe peaks and never succeeded in hoisting her disk above a single one ofthem. 

While the moon was behind one of those sharp fingers, its shadow wasflung athwart the vacant heavens--a long, slanting, clean-cut, darkray--with a streaming and energetic suggestion of FORCE about it, suchas the ascending jet of water from a powerful fire-engine affords. Itwas curious to see a good strong shadow of an earthly object cast uponso intangible a field as the atmosphere. 

We went to bed, at last, and went quickly to sleep, but I woke up, after about three hours, with throbbing temples, and a head which wasphysically sore, outside and in. I was dazed, dreamy, wretched, seedy, unrefreshed. I recognized the occasion of all this: it was that torrent. In the mountain villages of Switzerland, and along the roads, one hasalways the roar of the torrent in his ears. He imagines it is music, andhe thinks poetic things about it; he lies in his comfortable bed and islulled to sleep by it. But by and by he begins to notice that hishead is very sore--he cannot account for it; in solitudes where theprofoundest silence reigns, he notices a sullen, distant, continuousroar in his ears, which is like what he would experience if he hadsea-shells pressed against them--he cannot account for it; he is drowsyand absent-minded; there is no tenacity to his mind, he cannot keep holdof a thought and follow it out; if he sits down to write, his vocabularyis empty, no suitable words will come, he forgets what he started to do, and remains there, pen in hand, head tilted up, eyes closed, listeningpainfully to the muffled roar of a distant train in his ears; in hissoundest sleep the strain continues, he goes on listening, alwayslistening intently, anxiously, and wakes at last, harassed, irritable, unrefreshed. He cannot manage to account for these things. 

Day after day he feels as if he had spent his nights in a sleeping-car. It actually takes him weeks to find out that it is those persecutingtorrents that have been making all the mischief. It is time for himto get out of Switzerland, then, for as soon as he has discovered thecause, the misery is magnified several fold. The roar of the torrent ismaddening, then, for his imagination is assisting; the physical painit inflicts is exquisite. When he finds he is approaching one of thosestreams, his dread is so lively that he is disposed to fly the track andavoid the implacable foe. 

Eight or nine months after the distress of the torrents had departedfrom me, the roar and thunder of the streets of Paris brought it allback again. I moved to the sixth story of the hotel to hunt for peace. About midnight the noises dulled away, and I was sinking to sleep, when I heard a new and curious sound; I listened: evidently some joyouslunatic was softly dancing a "double shuffle" in the room over my head. I had to wait for him to get through, of course. Five long, long minuteshe smoothly shuffled away--a pause followed, then something fell witha thump on the floor. I said to myself "There--he is pulling off hisboots--thank heavens he is done. " Another slight pause--he went toshuffling again! I said to myself, "Is he trying to see what he can dowith only one boot on?" Presently came another pause and another thumpon the floor. I said "Good, he has pulled off his other boot--NOW he isdone. " But he wasn't. The next moment he was shuffling again. I said, "Confound him, he is at it in his slippers!" After a little came thatsame old pause, and right after it that thump on the floor once more. Isaid, "Hang him, he had on TWO pair of boots!" For an hour that magicianwent on shuffling and pulling off boots till he had shed as many astwenty-five pair, and I was hovering on the verge of lunacy. I gotmy gun and stole up there. The fellow was in the midst of an acre ofsprawling boots, and he had a boot in his hand, shuffling it--no, I meanPOLISHING it. The mystery was explained. He hadn't been dancing. He wasthe "Boots" of the hotel, and was attending to business. 

CHAPTER XLIX

[I Scale Mont Blanc--by Telescope]

After breakfast, that next morning in Chamonix, we went out in the yardand watched the gangs of excursioning tourists arriving and departingwith their mules and guides and porters; then we took a look throughthe telescope at the snowy hump of Mont Blanc. It was brilliant withsunshine, and the vast smooth bulge seemed hardly five hundred yardsaway. With the naked eye we could dimly make out the house at the PierrePointue, which is located by the side of the great glacier, and is morethan three thousand feet above the level of the valley; but with thetelescope we could see all its details. While I looked, a woman rode bythe house on a mule, and I saw her with sharp distinctness; I could havedescribed her dress. I saw her nod to the people of the house, and reinup her mule, and put her hand up to shield her eyes from the sun. I wasnot used to telescopes; in fact, I had never looked through a good onebefore; it seemed incredible to me that this woman could be so far away. I was satisfied that I could see all these details with my nakedeye; but when I tried it, that mule and those vivid people had whollyvanished, and the house itself was become small and vague. I triedthe telescope again, and again everything was vivid. The strong blackshadows of the mule and the woman were flung against the side of thehouse, and I saw the mule's silhouette wave its ears. 

The telescopulist--or the telescopulariat--I do not know which isright--said a party were making a grand ascent, and would come in sighton the remote upper heights, presently; so we waited to observe thisperformance. Presently I had a superb idea. I wanted to stand with aparty on the summit of Mont Blanc, merely to be able to say I had doneit, and I believed the telescope could set me within seven feet of theuppermost man. The telescoper assured me that it could. I then asked himhow much I owed him for as far as I had got? He said, one franc. I askedhim how much it would cost to make the entire ascent? Three francs. I atonce determined to make the entire ascent. But first I inquired if therewas any danger? He said no--not by telescope; said he had taken a greatmany parties to the summit, and never lost a man. I asked what he wouldcharge to let my agent go with me, together with such guides and portersas might be necessary. He said he would let Harris go for two francs;and that unless we were unusually timid, he should consider guides andporters unnecessary; it was not customary to take them, when going bytelescope, for they were rather an encumbrance than a help. He said thatthe party now on the mountain were approaching the most difficult part, and if we hurried we should overtake them within ten minutes, and couldthen join them and have the benefit of their guides and porters withouttheir knowledge, and without expense to us. 

I then said we would start immediately. I believe I said it calmly, though I was conscious of a shudder and of a paling cheek, in view ofthe nature of the exploit I was so unreflectingly engaged in. But theold daredevil spirit was upon me, and I said that as I had committedmyself I would not back down; I would ascend Mont Blanc if it cost memy life. I told the man to slant his machine in the proper direction andlet us be off. 

Harris was afraid and did not want to go, but I heartened him up andsaid I would hold his hand all the way; so he gave his consent, thoughhe trembled a little at first. I took a last pathetic look upon thepleasant summer scene about me, then boldly put my eye to the glass andprepared to mount among the grim glaciers and the everlasting snows. 

We took our way carefully and cautiously across the great Glacier desBossons, over yawning and terrific crevices and among imposing cragsand buttresses of ice which were fringed with icicles of giganticproportions. The desert of ice that stretched far and wide about us waswild and desolate beyond description, and the perils which beset us wereso great that at times I was minded to turn back. But I pulled my plucktogether and pushed on. 

We passed the glacier safely and began to mount the steeps beyond, withgreat alacrity. When we were seven minutes out from the starting-point, we reached an altitude where the scene took a new aspect; an apparentlylimitless continent of gleaming snow was tilted heavenward before ourfaces. As my eye followed that awful acclivity far away up into theremote skies, it seemed to me that all I had ever seen before ofsublimity and magnitude was small and insignificant compared to this. 

We rested a moment, and then began to mount with speed. Within threeminutes we caught sight of the party ahead of us, and stopped to observethem. They were toiling up a long, slanting ridge of snow--twelvepersons, roped together some fifteen feet apart, marching in singlefile, and strongly marked against the clear blue sky. One was a woman. We could see them lift their feet and put them down; we saw them swingtheir alpenstocks forward in unison, like so many pendulums, and thenbear their weight upon them; we saw the lady wave her handkerchief. Theydragged themselves upward in a worn and weary way, for they had beenclimbing steadily from the Grand Mulets, on the Glacier des Bossons, since three in the morning, and it was eleven, now. We saw them sinkdown in the snow and rest, and drink something from a bottle. After awhile they moved on, and as they approached the final short dash of thehome-stretch we closed up on them and joined them. 

Presently we all stood together on the summit! What a view was spreadout below! Away off under the northwestern horizon rolled the silentbillows of the Farnese Oberland, their snowy crests glinting softly inthe subdued lights of distance; in the north rose the giant form of theWobblehorn, draped from peak to shoulder in sable thunder-clouds; beyondhim, to the right, stretched the grand processional summits of theCisalpine Cordillera, drowned in a sensuous haze; to the east loomed thecolossal masses of the Yodelhorn, the Fuddelhorn, and the Dinnerhorn, their cloudless summits flashing white and cold in the sun; beyondthem shimmered the faint far line of the Ghauts of Jubbelpore and theAiguilles des Alleghenies; in the south towered the smoking peakof Popocatapetl and the unapproachable altitudes of the peerlessScrabblehorn; in the west-south the stately range of the Himalayas laydreaming in a purple gloom; and thence all around the curving horizonthe eye roved over a troubled sea of sun-kissed Alps, and noted, here and there, the noble proportions and the soaring domes of theBottlehorn, and the Saddlehorn, and the Shovelhorn, and the Powderhorn, all bathed in the glory of noon and mottled with softly gliding blots, the shadows flung from drifting clouds. 

Overcome by the scene, we all raised a triumphant, tremendous shout, inunison. A startled man at my elbow said:

"Confound you, what do you yell like that for, right here in thestreet?"

That brought me down to Chamonix, like a flirt. I gave that man somespiritual advice and disposed of him, and then paid the telescope manhis full fee, and said that we were charmed with the trip and wouldremain down, and not reascend and require him to fetch us down bytelescope. This pleased him very much, for of course we could havestepped back to the summit and put him to the trouble of bringing ushome if we wanted to. 

I judged we could get diplomas, now, anyhow; so we went after them, butthe Chief Guide put us off, with one pretext or another, during all thetime we stayed in Chamonix, and we ended by never getting them at all. So much for his prejudice against people's nationality. However, weworried him enough to make him remember us and our ascent for sometime. He even said, once, that he wished there was a lunatic asylumin Chamonix. This shows that he really had fears that we were going todrive him mad. It was what we intended to do, but lack of time defeatedit. 

I cannot venture to advise the reader one way or the other, as toascending Mont Blanc. I say only this: if he is at all timid, theenjoyments of the trip will hardly make up for the hardships andsufferings he will have to endure. But, if he has good nerve, youth, health, and a bold, firm will, and could leave his family comfortablyprovided for in case the worst happened, he would find the ascent awonderful experience, and the view from the top a vision to dream about, and tell about, and recall with exultation all the days of his life. 

While I do not advise such a person to attempt the ascent, I do notadvise him against it. But if he elects to attempt it, let him be warilycareful of two things: chose a calm, clear day; and do not pay thetelescope man in advance. There are dark stories of his getting advancepayers on the summit and then leaving them there to rot. 

A frightful tragedy was once witnessed through the Chamonix telescopes. Think of questions and answers like these, on an inquest:

CORONER. You saw deceased lose his life?

WITNESS. I did. 

C. Where was he, at the time?

W. Close to the summit of Mont Blanc. 

C. Where were you?

W. In the main street of Chamonix. 

C. What was the distance between you?

W. A LITTLE OVER FIVE MILES, as the bird flies. 

This accident occurred in 1866, a year and a month after the disasteron the Matterhorn. Three adventurous English gentlemen, [1] of greatexperience in mountain-climbing, made up their minds to ascend MontBlanc without guides or porters. All endeavors to dissuade them fromtheir project failed. Powerful telescopes are numerous in Chamonix. These huge brass tubes, mounted on their scaffoldings and pointedskyward from every choice vantage-ground, have the formidable look ofartillery, and give the town the general aspect of getting readyto repel a charge of angels. The reader may easily believe that thetelescopes had plenty of custom on that August morning in 1866, foreverybody knew of the dangerous undertaking which was on foot, andall had fears that misfortune would result. All the morning the tubesremained directed toward the mountain heights, each with its anxiousgroup around it; but the white deserts were vacant. 

1. Sir George Young and his brothers James and Albert. 

At last, toward eleven o'clock, the people who were looking through thetelescopes cried out "There they are!"--and sure enough, far up, onthe loftiest terraces of the Grand Plateau, the three pygmies appeared, climbing with remarkable vigor and spirit. They disappeared in the"Corridor, " and were lost to sight during an hour. Then they reappeared, and were presently seen standing together upon the extreme summitof Mont Blanc. So, all was well. They remained a few minutes on thathighest point of land in Europe, a target for all the telescopes, andwere then seen to begin descent. Suddenly all three vanished. An instantafter, they appeared again, TWO THOUSAND FEET BELOW!

Evidently, they had tripped and been shot down an almost perpendicularslope of ice to a point where it joined the border of the upper glacier. Naturally, the distant witness supposed they were now looking upon threecorpses; so they could hardly believe their eyes when they presently sawtwo of the men rise to their feet and bend over the third. Duringtwo hours and a half they watched the two busying themselves over theextended form of their brother, who seemed entirely inert. Chamonix'saffairs stood still; everybody was in the street, all interest wascentered upon what was going on upon that lofty and isolated stagefive miles away. Finally the two--one of them walking with greatdifficulty--were seen to begin descent, abandoning the third, who was nodoubt lifeless. Their movements were followed, step by step, until theyreached the "Corridor" and disappeared behind its ridge. Before they hadhad time to traverse the "Corridor" and reappear, twilight was come, andthe power of the telescope was at an end. 

The survivors had a most perilous journey before them in the gatheringdarkness, for they must get down to the Grands Mulets before they wouldfind a safe stopping-place--a long and tedious descent, and perilousenough even in good daylight. The oldest guides expressed the opinionthat they could not succeed; that all the chances were that they wouldlose their lives. 

Yet those brave men did succeed. They reached the Grands Mulets insafety. Even the fearful shock which their nerves had sustained was notsufficient to overcome their coolness and courage. It would appear fromthe official account that they were threading their way down throughthose dangers from the closing in of twilight until two o'clock in themorning, or later, because the rescuing party from Chamonix reachedthe Grand Mulets about three in the morning and moved thence toward thescene of the disaster under the leadership of Sir George Young, "who hadonly just arrived. "

After having been on his feet twenty-four hours, in the exhausting workof mountain-climbing, Sir George began the reascent at the head of therelief party of six guides, to recover the corpse of his brother. Thiswas considered a new imprudence, as the number was too few for theservice required. Another relief party presently arrived at the cabinon the Grands Mulets and quartered themselves there to await events. Tenhours after Sir George's departure toward the summit, this new reliefwere still scanning the snowy altitudes above them from their own highperch among the ice deserts ten thousand feet above the level of thesea, but the whole forenoon had passed without a glimpse of any livingthing appearing up there. 

This was alarming. Half a dozen of their number set out, then early inthe afternoon, to seek and succor Sir George and his guides. The personsremaining at the cabin saw these disappear, and then ensued anotherdistressing wait. Four hours passed, without tidings. Then at fiveo'clock another relief, consisting of three guides, set forward fromthe cabin. They carried food and cordials for the refreshment of theirpredecessors; they took lanterns with them, too; night was coming on, and to make matters worse, a fine, cold rain had begun to fall. 

At the same hour that these three began their dangerous ascent, theofficial Guide-in-Chief of the Mont Blanc region undertook the dangerousdescent to Chamonix, all alone, to get reinforcements. However, a coupleof hours later, at 7 P. M. , the anxious solicitude came to an end, andhappily. A bugle note was heard, and a cluster of black specks wasdistinguishable against the snows of the upper heights. The watcherscounted these specks eagerly--fourteen--nobody was missing. An hour anda half later they were all safe under the roof of the cabin. They hadbrought the corpse with them. Sir George Young tarried there but a fewminutes, and then began the long and troublesome descent from the cabinto Chamonix. He probably reached there about two or three o'clock in themorning, after having been afoot among the rocks and glaciers during twodays and two nights. His endurance was equal to his daring. 

The cause of the unaccountable delay of Sir George and the reliefparties among the heights where the disaster had happened was a thickfog--or, partly that and partly the slow and difficult work of conveyingthe dead body down the perilous steeps. 

The corpse, upon being viewed at the inquest, showed no bruises, and itwas some time before the surgeons discovered that the neck was broken. One of the surviving brothers had sustained some unimportant injuries, but the other had suffered no hurt at all. How these men could fall twothousand feet, almost perpendicularly, and live afterward, is a moststrange and unaccountable thing. 

A great many women have made the ascent of Mont Blanc. An English girl, Miss Stratton, conceived the daring idea, two or three years ago, ofattempting the ascent in the middle of winter. She tried it--and shesucceeded. Moreover, she froze two of her fingers on the way up, shefell in love with her guide on the summit, and she married him when shegot to the bottom again. There is nothing in romance, in the way of astriking "situation, " which can beat this love scene in midheaven onan isolated ice-crest with the thermometer at zero and an Artic galeblowing. 

The first woman who ascended Mont Blanc was a girl agedtwenty-two--Mlle. Maria Paradis--1809. Nobody was with her but hersweetheart, and he was not a guide. The sex then took a rest for aboutthirty years, when a Mlle. D'Angeville made the ascent --1838. InChamonix I picked up a rude old lithograph of that day which picturedher "in the act. "

However, I value it less as a work of art than as a fashion-plate. Missd'Angeville put on a pair of men's pantaloons to climb it, which waswise; but she cramped their utility by adding her petticoat, which wasidiotic. 

One of the mournfulest calamities which men's disposition to climbdangerous mountains has resulted in, happened on Mont Blanc in September1870. M. D'Arve tells the story briefly in his HISTOIRE DU MONT BLANC. In the next chapter I will copy its chief features. 

CHAPTER XLV

A Catastrophe Which Cost Eleven Lives

On the 5th of September, 1870, a caravan of eleven persons departedfrom Chamonix to make the ascent of Mont Blanc. Three of the partywere tourists; Messrs. Randall and Bean, Americans, and Mr. GeorgeCorkindale, a Scotch gentleman; there were three guides and fiveporters. The cabin on the Grands Mulets was reached that day; the ascentwas resumed early the next morning, September 6th. The day was fineand clear, and the movements of the party were observed through thetelescopes of Chamonix; at two o'clock in the afternoon they were seento reach the summit. A few minutes later they were seen making the firststeps of the descent; then a cloud closed around them and hid them fromview. 

Eight hours passed, the cloud still remained, night came, no one hadreturned to the Grands Mulets. Sylvain Couttet, keeper of the cabinthere, suspected a misfortune, and sent down to the valley for help. Adetachment of guides went up, but by the time they had made the tedioustrip and reached the cabin, a raging storm had set in. They had to wait;nothing could be attempted in such a tempest. 

The wild storm lasted MORE THAN A WEEK, without ceasing; but on the17th, Couttet, with several guides, left the cabin and succeeded inmaking the ascent. In the snowy wastes near the summit they came uponfive bodies, lying upon their sides in a reposeful attitude whichsuggested that possibly they had fallen asleep there, while exhaustedwith fatigue and hunger and benumbed with cold, and never knew whendeath stole upon them. Couttet moved a few steps further and discoveredfive more bodies. The eleventh corpse--that of a porter--was not found, although diligent search was made for it. 

In the pocket of Mr. Bean, one of the Americans, was found a note-bookin which had been penciled some sentences which admit us, in flesh andspirit, as it were, to the presence of these men during their last hoursof life, and to the grisly horrors which their fading vision looked uponand their failing consciousness took cognizance of: TUESDAY, SEPT. 6. I have made the ascent of Mont Blanc, with tenpersons--eight guides, and Mr. Corkindale and Mr. Randall. We reachedthe summit at half past 2. Immediately after quitting it, we wereenveloped in clouds of snow. We passed the night in a grotto hollowed inthe snow, which afforded us but poor shelter, and I was ill all night. 

SEPT. 7--MORNING. The cold is excessive. The snow falls heavily andwithout interruption. The guides take no rest. 

EVENING. My Dear Hessie, we have been two days on Mont Blanc, in themidst of a terrible hurricane of snow, we have lost our way, and arein a hole scooped in the snow, at an altitude of 15, 000 feet. I have nolonger any hope of descending. 

They had wandered around, and around, in the blinding snow-storm, hopelessly lost, in a space only a hundred yards square; and when coldand fatigue vanquished them at last, they scooped their cave and laydown there to die by inches, UNAWARE THAT FIVE STEPS MORE WOULD HAVEBROUGHT THEM INTO THE TRUTH PATH. They were so near to life and safetyas that, and did not suspect it. The thought of this gives the sharpestpang that the tragic story conveys. 

The author of the HISTOIRE DU MONT BLANC introduced the closingsentences of Mr. Bean's pathetic record thus:

"Here the characters are large and unsteady; the hand which traces themis become chilled and torpid; but the spirit survives, and the faith andresignation of the dying man are expressed with a sublime simplicity. "

Perhaps this note-book will be found and sent to you. We have nothing toeat, my feet are already frozen, and I am exhausted; I have strength towrite only a few words more. I have left means for C's education; I knowyou will employ them wisely. I die with faith in God, and with lovingthoughts of you. Farewell to all. We shall meet again, in Heaven. ... Ithink of you always. 

It is the way of the Alps to deliver death to their victims with amerciful swiftness, but here the rule failed. These men sufferedthe bitterest death that has been recorded in the history of thosemountains, freighted as that history is with grisly tragedies. 

CHAPTER XLVI

[Meeting a Hog on a Precipice]

Mr. Harris and I took some guides and porters and ascended to the Hoteldes Pyramides, which is perched on the high moraine which borders theGlacier des Bossons. The road led sharply uphill, all the way, throughgrass and flowers and woods, and was a pleasant walk, barring thefatigue of the climb. 

From the hotel we could view the huge glacier at very close range. Aftera rest we followed down a path which had been made in the steep innerfrontage of the moraine, and stepped upon the glacier itself. One of theshows of the place was a tunnel-like cavern, which had been hewn in theglacier. The proprietor of this tunnel took candles and conducted usinto it. It was three or four feet wide and about six feet high. Itswalls of pure and solid ice emitted a soft and rich blue light thatproduced a lovely effect, and suggested enchanted caves, and that sortof thing. When we had proceeded some yards and were entering darkness, we turned about and had a dainty sunlit picture of distant woods andheights framed in the strong arch of the tunnel and seen through thetender blue radiance of the tunnel's atmosphere. 

The cavern was nearly a hundred yards long, and when we reached itsinner limit the proprietor stepped into a branch tunnel with his candlesand left us buried in the bowels of the glacier, and in pitch-darkness. We judged his purpose was murder and robbery; so we got out our matchesand prepared to sell our lives as dearly as possible by setting theglacier on fire if the worst came to the worst--but we soon perceivedthat this man had changed his mind; he began to sing, in a deep, melodious voice, and woke some curious and pleasing echoes. By and by hecame back and pretended that that was what he had gone behind there for. We believed as much of that as we wanted to. 

Thus our lives had been once more in imminent peril, but by the exerciseof the swift sagacity and cool courage which had saved us so often, wehad added another escape to the long list. The tourist should visit thatice-cavern, by all means, for it is well worth the trouble; but I wouldadvise him to go only with a strong and well-armed force. I do notconsider artillery necessary, yet it would not be unadvisable to takeit along, if convenient. The journey, going and coming, is about threemiles and a half, three of which are on level ground. We made it inless than a day, but I would counsel the unpracticed--if not pressedfor time--to allow themselves two. Nothing is gained in the Alps byover-exertion; nothing is gained by crowding two days' work into one forthe poor sake of being able to boast of the exploit afterward. It willbe found much better, in the long run, to do the thing in two days, andthen subtract one of them from the narrative. This saves fatigue, anddoes not injure the narrative. All the more thoughtful among the Alpinetourists do this. 

We now called upon the Guide-in-Chief, and asked for a squadron ofguides and porters for the ascent of the Montanvert. This idiot glaredat us, and said:

"You don't need guides and porters to go to the Montanvert. "

"What do we need, then?"

"Such as YOU?--an ambulance!"

I was so stung by this brutal remark that I took my custom elsewhere. 

Betimes, next morning, we had reached an altitude of five thousand feetabove the level of the sea. Here we camped and breakfasted. There wasa cabin there--the spot is called the Caillet--and a spring of ice-coldwater. On the door of the cabin was a sign, in French, to the effectthat "One may here see a living chamois for fifty centimes. " We did notinvest; what we wanted was to see a dead one. 

A little after noon we ended the ascent and arrived at the new hotel onthe Montanvert, and had a view of six miles, right up the great glacier, the famous Mer de Glace. At this point it is like a sea whose deepswales and long, rolling swells have been caught in mid-movement andfrozen solid; but further up it is broken up into wildly tossing billowsof ice. 

We descended a ticklish path in the steep side of the moraine, andinvaded the glacier. There were tourists of both sexes scattered far andwide over it, everywhere, and it had the festive look of a skating-rink. 

The Empress Josephine came this far, once. She ascended the Montanvertin 1810--but not alone; a small army of men preceded her to clear thepath--and carpet it, perhaps--and she followed, under the protection ofSIXTY-EIGHT guides. 

Her successor visited Chamonix later, but in far different style. 

It was seven weeks after the first fall of the Empire, and poor MarieLouise, ex-Empress was a fugitive. She came at night, and in a storm, with only two attendants, and stood before a peasant's hut, tired, bedraggled, soaked with rain, "the red print of her lost crown stillgirdling her brow, " and implored admittance--and was refused! A few daysbefore, the adulations and applauses of a nation were sounding in herears, and now she was come to this!

We crossed the Mer de Glace in safety, but we had misgivings. Thecrevices in the ice yawned deep and blue and mysterious, and it made onenervous to traverse them. The huge round waves of ice were slippery anddifficult to climb, and the chances of tripping and sliding down themand darting into a crevice were too many to be comfortable. 

In the bottom of a deep swale between two of the biggest of theice-waves, we found a fraud who pretended to be cutting steps to insurethe safety of tourists. He was "soldiering" when we came upon him, buthe hopped up and chipped out a couple of steps about big enough for acat, and charged us a franc or two for it. Then he sat down again, todoze till the next party should come along. 

He had collected blackmail from two or three hundred people already, that day, but had not chipped out ice enough to impair the glacierperceptibly. I have heard of a good many soft sinecures, but it seemsto me that keeping toll-bridge on a glacier is the softest one I haveencountered yet. 

That was a blazing hot day, and it brought a persistent and persecutingthirst with it. What an unspeakable luxury it was to slake that thirstwith the pure and limpid ice-water of the glacier! Down the sides ofevery great rib of pure ice poured limpid rills in gutters carved bytheir own attrition; better still, wherever a rock had lain, there wasnow a bowl-shaped hole, with smooth white sides and bottom of ice, andthis bowl was brimming with water of such absolute clearness that thecareless observer would not see it at all, but would think the bowl wasempty. These fountains had such an alluring look that I often stretchedmyself out when I was not thirsty and dipped my face in and drank tillmy teeth ached. Everywhere among the Swiss mountains we had at hand theblessing--not to be found in Europe EXCEPT in the mountains--of watercapable of quenching thirst. Everywhere in the Swiss highlands brilliantlittle rills of exquisitely cold water went dancing along by theroadsides, and my comrade and I were always drinking and alwaysdelivering our deep gratitude. 

But in Europe everywhere except in the mountains, the water is flat andinsipid beyond the power of words to describe. It is served lukewarm;but no matter, ice could not help it; it is incurably flat, incurablyinsipid. It is only good to wash with; I wonder it doesn't occur tothe average inhabitant to try it for that. In Europe the people saycontemptuously, "Nobody drinks water here. " Indeed, they have a soundand sufficient reason. In many places they even have what may be calledprohibitory reasons. In Paris and Munich, for instance, they say, "Don'tdrink the water, it is simply poison. "

Either America is healthier than Europe, notwithstanding her "deadly"indulgence in ice-water, or she does not keep the run of her death-rateas sharply as Europe does. I think we do keep up the death statisticsaccurately; and if we do, our cities are healthier than the cities ofEurope. Every month the German government tabulates the death-rate ofthe world and publishes it. I scrap-booked these reports during severalmonths, and it was curious to see how regular and persistently each cityrepeated its same death-rate month after month. The tables might as wellhave been stereotyped, they varied so little. These tables werebased upon weekly reports showing the average of deaths in each 1, 000population for a year. Munich was always present with her 33 deaths ineach 1, 000 of her population (yearly average), Chicago was as constantwith her 15 or 17, Dublin with her 48--and so on. 

Only a few American cities appear in these tables, but they arescattered so widely over the country that they furnish a good generalaverage of CITY health in the United States; and I think it will begranted that our towns and villages are healthier than our cities. 

Here is the average of the only American cities reported in the Germantables:

Chicago, deaths in 1, 000 population annually, 16; Philadelphia, 18; St. Louis, 18; San Francisco, 19; New York (the Dublin of America), 23. 

See how the figures jump up, as soon as one arrives at the transatlanticlist:

Paris, 27; Glasgow, 27; London, 28; Vienna, 28; Augsburg, 28;Braunschweig, 28; Königsberg, 29; Cologne, 29; Dresden, 29; Hamburg, 29;Berlin, 30; Bombay, 30; Warsaw, 31; Breslau, 31; Odessa, 32; Munich, 33;Strasburg, 33, Pesth, 35; Cassel, 35; Lisbon, 36; Liverpool, 36;Prague, 37; Madras, 37; Bucharest, 39; St. Petersburg, 40; Trieste, 40;Alexandria (Egypt), 43; Dublin, 48; Calcutta, 55. 

Edinburgh is as healthy as New York--23; but there is no CITY in theentire list which is healthier, except Frankfort-on-the-Main--20. ButFrankfort is not as healthy as Chicago, San Francisco, St. Louis, orPhiladelphia. 

Perhaps a strict average of the world might develop the fact that whereone in 1, 000 of America's population dies, two in 1, 000 of the otherpopulations of the earth succumb. 

I do not like to make insinuations, but I do think the above statisticsdarkly suggest that these people over here drink this detestable water"on the sly. "

We climbed the moraine on the opposite side of the glacier, and thencrept along its sharp ridge a hundred yards or so, in pretty constantdanger of a tumble to the glacier below. The fall would have been onlyone hundred feet, but it would have closed me out as effectually as onethousand, therefore I respected the distance accordingly, and wasglad when the trip was done. A moraine is an ugly thing to assaulthead-first. At a distance it looks like an endless grave of fine sand, accurately shaped and nicely smoothed; but close by, it is found to bemade mainly of rough boulders of all sizes, from that of a man's head tothat of a cottage. 

By and by we came to the Mauvais Pas, or the Villainous Road, totranslate it feelingly. It was a breakneck path around the face of aprecipice forty or fifty feet high, and nothing to hang on to but someiron railings. I got along, slowly, safely, and uncomfortably, andfinally reached the middle. My hopes began to rise a little, but theywere quickly blighted; for there I met a hog--a long-nosed, bristlyfellow, that held up his snout and worked his nostrils at meinquiringly. A hog on a pleasure excursion in Switzerland--think of it!It is striking and unusual; a body might write a poem about it. Hecould not retreat, if he had been disposed to do it. It would have beenfoolish to stand upon our dignity in a place where there was hardly roomto stand upon our feet, so we did nothing of the sort. There were twentyor thirty ladies and gentlemen behind us; we all turned about and wentback, and the hog followed behind. The creature did not seem set up bywhat he had done; he had probably done it before. 

We reached the restaurant on the height called the Chapeau at four inthe afternoon. It was a memento-factory, and the stock was large, cheap, and varied. I bought the usual paper-cutter to remember the place by, and had Mont Blanc, the Mauvais Pas, and the rest of the region brandedon my alpenstock; then we descended to the valley and walked homewithout being tied together. This was not dangerous, for the valley wasfive miles wide, and quite level. 

We reached the hotel before nine o'clock. Next morning we left forGeneva on top of the diligence, under shelter of a gay awning. If Iremember rightly, there were more than twenty people up there. It wasso high that the ascent was made by ladder. The huge vehicle was fulleverywhere, inside and out. Five other diligences left at the same time, all full. We had engaged our seats two days beforehand, to make sure, and paid the regulation price, five dollars each; but the rest of thecompany were wiser; they had trusted Baedeker, and waited; consequentlysome of them got their seats for one or two dollars. Baedeker knowsall about hotels, railway and diligence companies, and speaks his mindfreely. He is a trustworthy friend of the traveler. 

We never saw Mont Blanc at his best until we were many miles away; thenhe lifted his majestic proportions high into the heavens, all whiteand cold and solemn, and made the rest of the world seem little andplebeian, and cheap and trivial. 

As he passed out of sight at last, an old Englishman settled himself inhis seat and said:

"Well, I am satisfied, I have seen the principal features of Swissscenery--Mont Blanc and the goiter--now for home!"

CHAPTER XLVII

[Queer European Manners]

We spent a few pleasant restful days at Geneva, that delightful citywhere accurate time-pieces are made for all the rest of the world, butwhose own clocks never give the correct time of day by any accident. 

Geneva is filled with pretty shops, and the shops are filled with themost enticing gimcrackery, but if one enters one of these places he isat once pounced upon, and followed up, and so persecuted to buy this, that, and the other thing, that he is very grateful to get out again, and is not at all apt to repeat his experiment. The shopkeepers of thesmaller sort, in Geneva, are as troublesome and persistent as arethe salesmen of that monster hive in Paris, the Grands Magasins duLouvre--an establishment where ill-mannered pestering, pursuing, andinsistence have been reduced to a science. 

In Geneva, prices in the smaller shops are very elastic--that is anotherbad feature. I was looking in at a window at a very pretty string ofbeads, suitable for a child. I was only admiring them; I had no use forthem; I hardly ever wear beads. The shopwoman came out and offered themto me for thirty-five francs. I said it was cheap, but I did not needthem. 

"Ah, but monsieur, they are so beautiful!"

I confessed it, but said they were not suitable for one of my age andsimplicity of character. She darted in and brought them out and tried toforce them into my hands, saying:

"Ah, but only see how lovely they are! Surely monsieur will take them;monsieur shall have them for thirty francs. There, I have said it--it isa loss, but one must live. "

I dropped my hands, and tried to move her to respect my unprotectedsituation. But no, she dangled the beads in the sun before my face, exclaiming, "Ah, monsieur CANNOT resist them!" She hung them on my coatbutton, folded her hand resignedly, and said: "Gone, --and for thirtyfrancs, the lovely things--it is incredible!--but the good God willsanctify the sacrifice to me. "

I removed them gently, returned them, and walked away, shaking my headand smiling a smile of silly embarrassment while the passers-by haltedto observe. The woman leaned out of her door, shook the beads, andscreamed after me:

"Monsieur shall have them for twenty-eight!"

I shook my head. 

"Twenty-seven! It is a cruel loss, it is ruin--but take them, only takethem. "

I still retreated, still wagging my head. 

"MON DIEU, they shall even go for twenty-six! There, I have said it. Come!"

I wagged another negative. A nurse and a little English girl had beennear me, and were following me, now. The shopwoman ran to the nurse, thrust the beads into her hands, and said:

"Monsieur shall have them for twenty-five! Take them to the hotel--heshall send me the money tomorrow--next day--when he likes. " Then to thechild: "When thy father sends me the money, come thou also, my angel, and thou shall have something oh so pretty!"

I was thus providentially saved. The nurse refused the beads squarelyand firmly, and that ended the matter. 

The "sights" of Geneva are not numerous. I made one attempt to hunt upthe houses once inhabited by those two disagreeable people, Rousseau andCalvin, but I had no success. Then I concluded to go home. I foundit was easier to propose to do that than to do it; for that town is abewildering place. I got lost in a tangle of narrow and crooked streets, and stayed lost for an hour or two. Finally I found a street whichlooked somewhat familiar, and said to myself, "Now I am at home, Ijudge. " But I was wrong; this was "HELL street. " Presently I foundanother place which had a familiar look, and said to myself, "Now I amat home, sure. " It was another error. This was "PURGATORY street. " Aftera little I said, "NOW I've got the right place, anyway ... No, this is'PARADISE street'; I'm further from home than I was in the beginning. "Those were queer names--Calvin was the author of them, likely. "Hell" and "Purgatory" fitted those two streets like a glove, but the"Paradise" appeared to be sarcastic. 

I came out on the lake-front, at last, and then I knew where I was. I was walking along before the glittering jewelry shops when I saw acurious performance. A lady passed by, and a trim dandy lounged acrossthe walk in such an apparently carefully timed way as to bring himselfexactly in front of her when she got to him; he made no offer to stepout of the way; he did not apologize; he did not even notice her. Shehad to stop still and let him lounge by. I wondered if he had done thatpiece of brutality purposely. He strolled to a chair and seated himselfat a small table; two or three other males were sitting at similartables sipping sweetened water. I waited; presently a youth came by, andthis fellow got up and served him the same trick. Still, it did not seempossible that any one could do such a thing deliberately. To satisfy mycuriosity I went around the block, and, sure enough, as I approached, ata good round speed, he got up and lounged lazily across my path, foulingmy course exactly at the right moment to receive all my weight. Thisproved that his previous performances had not been accidental, butintentional. 

I saw that dandy's curious game played afterward, in Paris, but notfor amusement; not with a motive of any sort, indeed, but simply from aselfish indifference to other people's comfort and rights. One does notsee it as frequently in Paris as he might expect to, for there the lawsays, in effect, "It is the business of the weak to get out of the wayof the strong. " We fine a cabman if he runs over a citizen; Paris finesthe citizen for being run over. At least so everybody says--but I sawsomething which caused me to doubt; I saw a horseman run over an oldwoman one day--the police arrested him and took him away. That looked asif they meant to punish him. 

It will not do for me to find merit in American manners--for are theynot the standing butt for the jests of critical and polished Europe?Still, I must venture to claim one little matter of superiority in ourmanners; a lady may traverse our streets all day, going and coming asshe chooses, and she will never be molested by any man; but if a lady, unattended, walks abroad in the streets of London, even at noonday, shewill be pretty likely to be accosted and insulted--and not by drunkensailors, but by men who carry the look and wear the dress of gentlemen. It is maintained that these people are not gentlemen, but are a lowersort, disguised as gentlemen. The case of Colonel Valentine Bakerobstructs that argument, for a man cannot become an officer in theBritish army except he hold the rank of gentleman. This person, findinghimself alone in a railway compartment with an unprotected girl--butit is an atrocious story, and doubtless the reader remembers it wellenough. London must have been more or less accustomed to Bakers, and theways of Bakers, else London would have been offended and excited. Bakerwas "imprisoned"--in a parlor; and he could not have been more visited, or more overwhelmed with attentions, if he had committed six murders andthen--while the gallows was preparing--"got religion"--after the mannerof the holy Charles Peace, of saintly memory. Arkansaw--it seems alittle indelicate to be trumpeting forth our own superiorities, andcomparisons are always odious, but still--Arkansaw would certainly havehanged Baker. I do not say she would have tried him first, but she wouldhave hanged him, anyway. 

Even the most degraded woman can walk our streets unmolested, her sexand her weakness being her sufficient protection. She will encounterless polish than she would in the old world, but she will run acrossenough humanity to make up for it. 

The music of a donkey awoke us early in the morning, and we rose up andmade ready for a pretty formidable walk--to Italy; but the road was solevel that we took the train.. We lost a good deal of time by this, butit was no matter, we were not in a hurry. We were four hours going toChamb`ery. The Swiss trains go upward of three miles an hour, in places, but they are quite safe. 

That aged French town of Chambèry was as quaint and crooked asHeilbronn. A drowsy reposeful quiet reigned in the back streets whichmade strolling through them very pleasant, barring the almost unbearableheat of the sun. In one of these streets, which was eight feet wide, gracefully curved, and built up with small antiquated houses, I sawthree fat hogs lying asleep, and a boy (also asleep) taking care ofthem. 

From queer old-fashioned windows along the curve projected boxes ofbright flowers, and over the edge of one of these boxes hung the headand shoulders of a cat--asleep. The five sleeping creatures were theonly living things visible in that street. There was not a sound;absolute stillness prevailed. It was Sunday; one is not used tosuch dreamy Sundays on the continent. In our part of the town it wasdifferent that night. A regiment of brown and battered soldiers hadarrived home from Algiers, and I judged they got thirsty on the way. They sang and drank till dawn, in the pleasant open air. 

We left for Turin at ten the next morning by a railway which wasprofusely decorated with tunnels. We forgot to take a lantern along, consequently we missed all the scenery. Our compartment was full. Aponderous tow-headed Swiss woman, who put on many fine-lady airs, butwas evidently more used to washing linen than wearing it, sat in acorner seat and put her legs across into the opposite one, propping themintermediately with her up-ended valise. In the seat thus pirated, sattwo Americans, greatly incommoded by that woman's majestic coffin-cladfeet. One of them begged, politely, to remove them. She opened her wideeyes and gave him a stare, but answered nothing. By and by he proferredhis request again, with great respectfulness. She said, in good English, and in a deeply offended tone, that she had paid her passage and was notgoing to be bullied out of her "rights" by ill-bred foreigners, even ifshe was alone and unprotected. 

"But I have rights, also, madam. My ticket entitles me to a seat, butyou are occupying half of it. "

"I will not talk with you, sir. What right have you to speak to me? Ido not know you. One would know you came from a land where there are nogentlemen. No GENTLEMAN would treat a lady as you have treated me. "

"I come from a region where a lady would hardly give me the sameprovocation. "

"You have insulted me, sir! You have intimated that I am not a lady--andI hope I am NOT one, after the pattern of your country. "

"I beg that you will give yourself no alarm on that head, madam; but atthe same time I must insist--always respectfully--that you let me havemy seat. "

Here the fragile laundress burst into tears and sobs. 

"I never was so insulted before! Never, never! It is shameful, it isbrutal, it is base, to bully and abuse an unprotected lady who haslost the use of her limbs and cannot put her feet to the floor withoutagony!"

"Good heavens, madam, why didn't you say that at first! I offer athousand pardons. And I offer them most sincerely. I did not know--ICOULD not know--anything was the matter. You are most welcome to theseat, and would have been from the first if I had only known. I am trulysorry it all happened, I do assure you. "

But he couldn't get a word of forgiveness out of her. She simply sobbedand sniffed in a subdued but wholly unappeasable way for two long hours, meantime crowding the man more than ever with her undertaker-furnitureand paying no sort of attention to his frequent and humble littleefforts to do something for her comfort. Then the train halted at theItalian line and she hopped up and marched out of the car with as firm aleg as any washerwoman of all her tribe! And how sick I was, to see howshe had fooled me. 

Turin is a very fine city. In the matter of roominess it transcendsanything that was ever dreamed of before, I fancy. It sits in the midstof a vast dead-level, and one is obliged to imagine that land may behad for the asking, and no taxes to pay, so lavishly do they use it. Thestreets are extravagantly wide, the paved squares are prodigious, thehouses are huge and handsome, and compacted into uniform blocks thatstretch away as straight as an arrow, into the distance. The sidewalksare about as wide as ordinary European STREETS, and are covered overwith a double arcade supported on great stone piers or columns. Onewalks from one end to the other of these spacious streets, under shelterall the time, and all his course is lined with the prettiest of shopsand the most inviting dining-houses. 

There is a wide and lengthy court, glittering with the most wickedlyenticing shops, which is roofed with glass, high aloft overhead, andpaved with soft-toned marbles laid in graceful figures; and at nightwhen the place is brilliant with gas and populous with a sauntering andchatting and laughing multitude of pleasure-seekers, it is a spectacleworth seeing. 

Everything is on a large scale; the public buildings, for instance--andthey are architecturally imposing, too, as well as large. The bigsquares have big bronze monuments in them. At the hotel they gave usrooms that were alarming, for size, and parlor to match. It was well theweather required no fire in the parlor, for I think one might as wellhave tried to warm a park. The place would have a warm look, though, inany weather, for the window-curtains were of red silk damask, and thewalls were covered with the same fire-hued goods--so, also, were thefour sofas and the brigade of chairs. The furniture, the ornaments, thechandeliers, the carpets, were all new and bright and costly. We did notneed a parlor at all, but they said it belonged to the two bedrooms andwe might use it if we chose. Since it was to cost nothing, we were notaverse to using it, of course. 

Turin must surely read a good deal, for it has more book-stores to thesquare rod than any other town I know of. And it has its own share ofmilitary folk. The Italian officers' uniforms are very much the mostbeautiful I have ever seen; and, as a general thing, the men in themwere as handsome as the clothes. They were not large men, but they hadfine forms, fine features, rich olive complexions, and lustrous blackeyes. 

For several weeks I had been culling all the information I could aboutItaly, from tourists. The tourists were all agreed upon one thing--onemust expect to be cheated at every turn by the Italians. I took anevening walk in Turin, and presently came across a little Punch and Judyshow in one of the great squares. Twelve or fifteen people constitutedthe audience. This miniature theater was not much bigger than a man'scoffin stood on end; the upper part was open and displayed atinseled parlor--a good-sized handkerchief would have answered for adrop-curtain; the footlights consisted of a couple of candle-ends aninch long; various manikins the size of dolls appeared on the stage andmade long speeches at each other, gesticulating a good deal, and theygenerally had a fight before they got through. They were worked bystrings from above, and the illusion was not perfect, for one saw notonly the strings but the brawny hand that manipulated them--and theactors and actresses all talked in the same voice, too. The audiencestood in front of the theater, and seemed to enjoy the performanceheartily. 

When the play was done, a youth in his shirt-sleeves started around witha small copper saucer to make a collection. I did not know how much toput in, but thought I would be guided by my predecessors. Unluckily, Ionly had two of these, and they did not help me much because they didnot put in anything. I had no Italian money, so I put in a small Swisscoin worth about ten cents. The youth finished his collection trip andemptied the result on the stage; he had some very animated talk withthe concealed manager, then he came working his way through the littlecrowd--seeking me, I thought. I had a mind to slip away, but concludedI wouldn't; I would stand my ground, and confront the villainy, whateverit was. The youth stood before me and held up that Swiss coin, sureenough, and said something. I did not understand him, but I judged hewas requiring Italian money of me. The crowd gathered close, to listen. I was irritated, and said--in English, of course:

"I know it's Swiss, but you'll take that or none. I haven't any other. "

He tried to put the coin in my hand, and spoke again. I drew my handaway, and said:

"NO, sir. I know all about you people. You can't play any of yourfraudful tricks on me. If there is a discount on that coin, I am sorry, but I am not going to make it good. I noticed that some of the audiencedidn't pay you anything at all. You let them go, without a word, but youcome after me because you think I'm a stranger and will put up withan extortion rather than have a scene. But you are mistaken thistime--you'll take that Swiss money or none. "

The youth stood there with the coin in his fingers, nonplused andbewildered; of course he had not understood a word. An English-speakingItalian spoke up, now, and said:

"You are misunderstanding the boy. He does not mean any harm. He didnot suppose you gave him so much money purposely, so he hurried back toreturn you the coin lest you might get away before you discovered yourmistake. Take it, and give him a penny--that will make everything smoothagain. "

I probably blushed, then, for there was occasion. Through theinterpreter I begged the boy's pardon, but I nobly refused to take backthe ten cents. I said I was accustomed to squandering large sums in thatway--it was the kind of person I was. Then I retired to make a note tothe effect that in Italy persons connected with the drama do not cheat. 

The episode with the showman reminds me of a dark chapter in my history. I once robbed an aged and blind beggar-woman of four dollars--in achurch. It happened this way. When I was out with the Innocents Abroad, the ship stopped in the Russian port of Odessa and I went ashore, withothers, to view the town. I got separated from the rest, and wanderedabout alone, until late in the afternoon, when I entered a Greek churchto see what it was like. When I was ready to leave, I observed twowrinkled old women standing stiffly upright against the inner wall, nearthe door, with their brown palms open to receive alms. I contributed tothe nearer one, and passed out. I had gone fifty yards, perhaps, when itoccurred to me that I must remain ashore all night, as I had heard thatthe ship's business would carry her away at four o'clock and keep heraway until morning. It was a little after four now. I had come ashorewith only two pieces of money, both about the same size, but differinglargely in value--one was a French gold piece worth four dollars, theother a Turkish coin worth two cents and a half. With a sudden andhorrified misgiving, I put my hand in my pocket, now, and sure enough, Ifetched out that Turkish penny!

Here was a situation. A hotel would require pay in advance --I must walkthe street all night, and perhaps be arrested as a suspicious character. There was but one way out of the difficulty--I flew back to the church, and softly entered. There stood the old woman yet, and in the palm ofthe nearest one still lay my gold piece. I was grateful. I creptclose, feeling unspeakably mean; I got my Turkish penny ready, and wasextending a trembling hand to make the nefarious exchange, when I hearda cough behind me. I jumped back as if I had been accused, and stoodquaking while a worshiper entered and passed up the aisle. 

I was there a year trying to steal that money; that is, it seemed ayear, though, of course, it must have been much less. The worshiperswent and came; there were hardly ever three in the church at once, butthere was always one or more. Every time I tried to commit my crimesomebody came in or somebody started out, and I was prevented; but atlast my opportunity came; for one moment there was nobody in the churchbut the two beggar-women and me. I whipped the gold piece out of thepoor old pauper's palm and dropped my Turkish penny in its place. Poorold thing, she murmured her thanks--they smote me to the heart. Then Isped away in a guilty hurry, and even when I was a mile from the churchI was still glancing back, every moment, to see if I was being pursued. 

That experience has been of priceless value and benefit to me; for Iresolved then, that as long as I lived I would never again rob a blindbeggar-woman in a church; and I have always kept my word. The mostpermanent lessons in morals are those which come, not of booky teaching, but of experience. 

CHAPTER XLVIII

[Beauty of Women--and of Old Masters]

In Milan we spent most of our time in the vast and beautiful Arcade orGallery, or whatever it is called. Blocks of tall new buildings of themost sumptuous sort, rich with decoration and graced with statues, thestreets between these blocks roofed over with glass at a great height, the pavements all of smooth and variegated marble, arranged in tastefulpatterns--little tables all over these marble streets, people sittingat them, eating, drinking, or smoking--crowds of other people strollingby--such is the Arcade. I should like to live in it all the time. Thewindows of the sumptuous restaurants stand open, and one breakfaststhere and enjoys the passing show. 

We wandered all over the town, enjoying whatever was going on in thestreets. We took one omnibus ride, and as I did not speak Italian andcould not ask the price, I held out some copper coins to the conductor, and he took two. Then he went and got his tariff card and showed methat he had taken only the right sum. So I made a note--Italian omnibusconductors do not cheat. 

Near the Cathedral I saw another instance of probity. An old man waspeddling dolls and toy fans. Two small American children bought fans, and one gave the old man a franc and three copper coins, and bothstarted away; but they were called back, and the franc and one of thecoppers were restored to them. Hence it is plain that in Italy, partiesconnected with the drama and the omnibus and the toy interests do notcheat. 

The stocks of goods in the shops were not extensive, generally. In thevestibule of what seemed to be a clothing store, we saw eight or tenwooden dummies grouped together, clothed in woolen business suits andeach marked with its price. One suit was marked forty-five francs--ninedollars. Harris stepped in and said he wanted a suit like that. Nothingeasier: the old merchant dragged in the dummy, brushed him off with abroom, stripped him, and shipped the clothes to the hotel. He said hedid not keep two suits of the same kind in stock, but manufactured asecond when it was needed to reclothe the dummy. 

In another quarter we found six Italians engaged in a violent quarrel. They danced fiercely about, gesticulating with their heads, their arms, their legs, their whole bodies; they would rush forward occasionallywith a sudden access of passion and shake their fists in each other'svery faces. We lost half an hour there, waiting to help cord up thedead, but they finally embraced each other affectionately, and thetrouble was over. The episode was interesting, but we could not haveafforded all the time to it if we had known nothing was going to come ofit but a reconciliation. Note made--in Italy, people who quarrel cheatthe spectator. 

We had another disappointment afterward. We approached a deeplyinterested crowd, and in the midst of it found a fellow wildlychattering and gesticulating over a box on the ground which was coveredwith a piece of old blanket. Every little while he would bend downand take hold of the edge of the blanket with the extreme tips of hisfingertips, as if to show there was no deception--chattering away allthe while--but always, just as I was expecting to see a wonder feat oflegerdemain, he would let go the blanket and rise to explain further. However, at last he uncovered the box and got out a spoon with a liquidin it, and held it fair and frankly around, for people to see that itwas all right and he was taking no advantage--his chatter became moreexcited than ever. I supposed he was going to set fire to the liquidand swallow it, so I was greatly wrought up and interested. I got a centready in one hand and a florin in the other, intending to give him theformer if he survived and the latter if he killed himself--for his losswould be my gain in a literary way, and I was willing to pay a fairprice for the item --but this impostor ended his intensely movingperformance by simply adding some powder to the liquid and polishingthe spoon! Then he held it aloft, and he could not have shown a wilderexultation if he had achieved an immortal miracle. The crowd applaudedin a gratified way, and it seemed to me that history speaks the truthwhen it says these children of the south are easily entertained. 

We spent an impressive hour in the noble cathedral, where long shaftsof tinted light were cleaving through the solemn dimness from the loftywindows and falling on a pillar here, a picture there, and a kneelingworshiper yonder. The organ was muttering, censers were swinging, candles were glinting on the distant altar and robed priests were filingsilently past them; the scene was one to sweep all frivolous thoughtsaway and steep the soul in a holy calm. A trim young American ladypaused a yard or two from me, fixed her eyes on the mellow sparksflecking the far-off altar, bent her head reverently a moment, thenstraightened up, kicked her train into the air with her heel, caught itdeftly in her hand, and marched briskly out. 

We visited the picture-galleries and the other regulation "sights" ofMilan--not because I wanted to write about them again, but to see ifI had learned anything in twelve years. I afterward visited the greatgalleries of Rome and Florence for the same purpose. I found I hadlearned one thing. When I wrote about the Old Masters before, I saidthe copies were better than the originals. That was a mistake of largedimensions. The Old Masters were still unpleasing to me, but they weretruly divine contrasted with the copies. The copy is to the original asthe pallid, smart, inane new wax-work group is to the vigorous, earnest, dignified group of living men and women whom it professes to duplicate. There is a mellow richness, a subdued color, in the old pictures, whichis to the eye what muffled and mellowed sound is to the ear. That is themerit which is most loudly praised in the old picture, and is the onewhich the copy most conspicuously lacks, and which the copyist must nothope to compass. It was generally conceded by the artists with whom Italked, that that subdued splendor, that mellow richness, is impartedto the picture by AGE. Then why should we worship the Old Master for it, who didn't impart it, instead of worshiping Old Time, who did? Perhapsthe picture was a clanging bell, until Time muffled it and sweetened it. 

In conversation with an artist in Venice, I asked: "What is it thatpeople see in the Old Masters? I have been in the Doge's palace and Isaw several acres of very bad drawing, very bad perspective, and veryincorrect proportions. Paul Veronese's dogs to not resemble dogs; allthe horses look like bladders on legs; one man had a RIGHT leg onthe left side of his body; in the large picture where the Emperor(Barbarossa?) is prostrate before the Pope, there are three men in theforeground who are over thirty feet high, if one may judge by the sizeof a kneeling little boy in the center of the foreground; and accordingto the same scale, the Pope is seven feet high and the Doge is ashriveled dwarf of four feet. "

The artist said:

"Yes, the Old Masters often drew badly; they did not care much for truthand exactness in minor details; but after all, in spite of bad drawing, bad perspective, bad proportions, and a choice of subjects which nolonger appeal to people as strongly as they did three hundred years ago, there is a SOMETHING about their pictures which is divine--a somethingwhich is above and beyond the art of any epoch since--a something whichwould be the despair of artists but that they never hope or expect toattain it, and therefore do not worry about it. "

That is what he said--and he said what he believed; and not onlybelieved, but felt. 

Reasoning--especially reasoning, without technical knowledge--must beput aside, in cases of this kind. It cannot assist the inquirer. Itwill lead him, in the most logical progression, to what, in the eyes ofartists, would be a most illogical conclusion. Thus: bad drawing, badproportion, bad perspective, indifference to truthful detail, colorwhich gets its merit from time, and not from the artist--these thingsconstitute the Old Master; conclusion, the Old Master was a bad painter, the Old Master was not an Old Master at all, but an Old Apprentice. Yourfriend the artist will grant your premises, but deny your conclusion;he will maintain that notwithstanding this formidable list of confesseddefects, there is still a something that is divine and unapproachableabout the Old Master, and that there is no arguing the fact away by anysystem of reasoning whatsoever. 

I can believe that. There are women who have an indefinable charm intheir faces which makes them beautiful to their intimates, but a coldstranger who tried to reason the matter out and find this beauty wouldfail. He would say of one of these women: This chin is too short, thisnose is too long, this forehead is too high, this hair is too red, thiscomplexion is too pallid, the perspective of the entire compositionis incorrect; conclusion, the woman is not beautiful. But her nearestfriend might say, and say truly, "Your premises are right, your logicis faultless, but your conclusion is wrong, nevertheless; she is an OldMaster--she is beautiful, but only to such as know her; it is a beautywhich cannot be formulated, but it is there, just the same. "

I found more pleasure in contemplating the Old Masters this time thanI did when I was in Europe in former years, but still it was a calmpleasure; there was nothing overheated about it. When I was in Venicebefore, I think I found no picture which stirred me much, but this timethere were two which enticed me to the Doge's palace day after day, andkept me there hours at a time. One of these was Tintoretto's three-acrepicture in the Great Council Chamber. When I saw it twelve years agoI was not strongly attracted to it--the guide told me it was aninsurrection in heaven--but this was an error. 

The movement of this great work is very fine. There are ten thousandfigures, and they are all doing something. There is a wonderful "go"to the whole composition. Some of the figures are driving headlongdownward, with clasped hands, others are swimming through thecloud-shoals--some on their faces, some on their backs--greatprocessions of bishops, martyrs, and angels are pouring swiftlycenterward from various outlying directions--everywhere is enthusiasticjoy, there is rushing movement everywhere. There are fifteen or twentyfigures scattered here and there, with books, but they cannot keep theirattention on their reading--they offer the books to others, but no onewishes to read, now. The Lion of St. Mark is there with his book; St. Mark is there with his pen uplifted; he and the Lion are lookingeach other earnestly in the face, disputing about the way to spell aword--the Lion looks up in rapt admiration while St. Mark spells. Thisis wonderfully interpreted by the artist. It is the master-stroke ofthis imcomparable painting. 

I visited the place daily, and never grew tired of looking at thatgrand picture. As I have intimated, the movement is almost unimaginablyvigorous; the figures are singing, hosannahing, and many are blowingtrumpets. So vividly is noise suggested, that spectators who becomeabsorbed in the picture almost always fall to shouting comments in eachother's ears, making ear-trumpets of their curved hands, fearing theymay not otherwise be heard. One often sees a tourist, with the eloquenttears pouring down his cheeks, funnel his hands at his wife's ear, andhears him roar through them, "OH, TO BE THERE AND AT REST!"

None but the supremely great in art can produce effects like these withthe silent brush. 

Twelve years ago I could not have appreciated this picture. One year agoI could not have appreciated it. My study of Art in Heidelberg has beena noble education to me. All that I am today in Art, I owe to that. 

The other great work which fascinated me was Bassano's immortal HairTrunk. This is in the Chamber of the Council of Ten. It is in one ofthe three forty-foot pictures which decorate the walls of the room. The composition of this picture is beyond praise. The Hair Trunk is nothurled at the stranger's head--so to speak--as the chief feature of animmortal work so often is; no, it is carefully guarded from prominence, it is subordinated, it is restrained, it is most deftly and cleverlyheld in reserve, it is most cautiously and ingeniously led up to, by themaster, and consequently when the spectator reaches it at last, heis taken unawares, he is unprepared, and it bursts upon him with astupefying surprise. 

One is lost in wonder at all the thought and care which this elaborateplanning must have cost. A general glance at the picture could neversuggest that there was a hair trunk in it; the Hair Trunk is notmentioned in the title even--which is, "Pope Alexander III. And the DogeZiani, the Conqueror of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa"; you see, the title is actually utilized to help divert attention from the Trunk;thus, as I say, nothing suggests the presence of the Trunk, by any hint, yet everything studiedly leads up to it, step by step. Let us examineinto this, and observe the exquisitely artful artlessness of the plan. 

At the extreme left end of the picture are a couple of women, one ofthem with a child looking over her shoulder at a wounded man sittingwith bandaged head on the ground. These people seem needless, but no, they are there for a purpose; one cannot look at them without seeingthe gorgeous procession of grandees, bishops, halberdiers, andbanner-bearers which is passing along behind them; one cannot see theprocession without feeling the curiosity to follow it and learn whitherit is going; it leads him to the Pope, in the center of the picture, whois talking with the bonnetless Doge--talking tranquilly, too, althoughwithin twelve feet of them a man is beating a drum, and not far from thedrummer two persons are blowing horns, and many horsemen are plungingand rioting about--indeed, twenty-two feet of this great work is all adeep and happy holiday serenity and Sunday-school procession, and thenwe come suddenly upon eleven and one-half feet of turmoil and racket andinsubordination. This latter state of things is not an accident, it hasits purpose. But for it, one would linger upon the Pope and the Doge, thinking them to be the motive and supreme feature of the picture;whereas one is drawn along, almost unconsciously, to see what thetrouble is about. Now at the very END of this riot, within four feet ofthe end of the picture, and full thirty-six feet from the beginningof it, the Hair Trunk bursts with an electrifying suddenness upon thespectator, in all its matchless perfection, and the great master'striumph is sweeping and complete. From that moment no other thing inthose forty feet of canvas has any charm; one sees the Hair Trunk, andthe Hair Trunk only--and to see it is to worship it. Bassano even placedobjects in the immediate vicinity of the Supreme Feature whose pretendedpurpose was to divert attention from it yet a little longer and thusdelay and augment the surprise; for instance, to the right of it he hasplaced a stooping man with a cap so red that it is sure to hold the eyefor a moment--to the left of it, some six feet away, he has placed ared-coated man on an inflated horse, and that coat plucks your eyeto that locality the next moment--then, between the Trunk and the redhorseman he has intruded a man, naked to his waist, who is carryinga fancy flour-sack on the middle of his back instead of on hisshoulder--this admirable feat interests you, of course--keeps you atbay a little longer, like a sock or a jacket thrown to the pursuingwolf--but at last, in spite of all distractions and detentions, the eyeof even the most dull and heedless spectator is sure to fall upon theWorld's Masterpiece, and in that moment he totters to his chair or leansupon his guide for support. 

Descriptions of such a work as this must necessarily be imperfect, yetthey are of value. The top of the Trunk is arched; the arch is a perfecthalf-circle, in the Roman style of architecture, for in the thenrapid decadence of Greek art, the rising influence of Rome was alreadybeginning to be felt in the art of the Republic. The Trunk is bound orbordered with leather all around where the lid joins the main body. Manycritics consider this leather too cold in tone; but I consider this itshighest merit, since it was evidently made so to emphasize by contrastthe impassioned fervor of the hasp. The highlights in this part of thework are cleverly managed, the MOTIF is admirably subordinated to theground tints, and the technique is very fine. The brass nail-heads arein the purest style of the early Renaissance. The strokes, here, arevery firm and bold--every nail-head is a portrait. The handle on theend of the Trunk has evidently been retouched--I think, with a piece ofchalk--but one can still see the inspiration of the Old Master in thetranquil, almost too tranquil, hang of it. The hair of this Trunk isREAL hair--so to speak--white in patches, brown in patches. The detailsare finely worked out; the repose proper to hair in a recumbent andinactive attitude is charmingly expressed. There is a feeling about thispart of the work which lifts it to the highest altitudes of art; thesense of sordid realism vanishes away--one recognizes that there is SOULhere. 

View this Trunk as you will, it is a gem, it is a marvel, it is amiracle. Some of the effects are very daring, approaching even tothe boldest flights of the rococo, the sirocco, and the Byzantineschools--yet the master's hand never falters--it moves on, calm, majestic, confident--and, with that art which conceals art, it finallycasts over the TOUT ENSEMBLE, by mysterious methods of its own, a subtlesomething which refines, subdues, etherealizes the arid components andendures them with the deep charm and gracious witchery of poesy. 

Among the art-treasures of Europe there are pictures which approach theHair Trunk--there are two which may be said to equal it, possibly--butthere is none that surpasses it. So perfect is the Hair Trunk that itmoves even persons who ordinarily have no feeling for art. When an Eriebaggagemaster saw it two years ago, he could hardly keep from checkingit; and once when a customs inspector was brought into its presence, he gazed upon it in silent rapture for some moments, then slowly andunconsciously placed one hand behind him with the palm uppermost, andgot out his chalk with the other. These facts speak for themselves. 

CHAPTER XLIX

[Hanged with a Golden Rope]

One lingers about the Cathedral a good deal, in Venice. There is astrong fascination about it--partly because it is so old, and partlybecause it is so ugly. Too many of the world's famous buildings fail ofone chief virtue--harmony; they are made up of a methodless mixtureof the ugly and the beautiful; this is bad; it is confusing, it isunrestful. One has a sense of uneasiness, of distress, without knowingwhy. But one is calm before St. Mark's, one is calm within it, onewould be calm on top of it, calm in the cellar; for its details aremasterfully ugly, no misplaced and impertinent beauties are intrudedanywhere; and the consequent result is a grand harmonious whole, ofsoothing, entrancing, tranquilizing, soul-satisfying ugliness. One'sadmiration of a perfect thing always grows, never declines; and this isthe surest evidence to him that it IS perfect. St. Mark's is perfect. Tome it soon grew to be so nobly, so augustly ugly, that it was difficultto stay away from it, even for a little while. Every time its squatdomes disappeared from my view, I had a despondent feeling; wheneverthey reappeared, I felt an honest rapture--I have not known any happierhours than those I daily spent in front of Florian's, looking across theGreat Square at it. Propped on its long row of low thick-legged columns, its back knobbed with domes, it seemed like a vast warty bug taking ameditative walk. 

St. Mark's is not the oldest building in the world, of course, but itseems the oldest, and looks the oldest--especially inside. 

When the ancient mosaics in its walls become damaged, they are repairedbut not altered; the grotesque old pattern is preserved. Antiquity hasa charm of its own, and to smarten it up would only damage it. One dayI was sitting on a red marble bench in the vestibule looking up at anancient piece of apprentice-work, in mosaic, illustrative of the commandto "multiply and replenish the earth. " The Cathedral itself had seemedvery old; but this picture was illustrating a period in history whichmade the building seem young by comparison. But I presently found anantique which was older than either the battered Cathedral or the dateassigned to the piece of history; it was a spiral-shaped fossil as largeas the crown of a hat; it was embedded in the marble bench, and hadbeen sat upon by tourists until it was worn smooth. Contrasted with theinconceivable antiquity of this modest fossil, those other things wereflippantly modern--jejune--mere matters of day-before-yesterday. Thesense of the oldness of the Cathedral vanished away under the influenceof this truly venerable presence. 

St. Mark's is monumental; it is an imperishable remembrancer of theprofound and simple piety of the Middle Ages. Whoever could ravish acolumn from a pagan temple, did it and contributed his swag to thisChristian one. So this fane is upheld by several hundred acquisitionsprocured in that peculiar way. In our day it would be immoral to go onthe highway to get bricks for a church, but it was no sin in the oldtimes. St. Mark's was itself the victim of a curious robbery once. Thething is set down in the history of Venice, but it might be smuggledinto the Arabian Nights and not seem out of place there:

Nearly four hundred and fifty years ago, a Candian named Stammato, inthe suite of a prince of the house of Este, was allowed to view theriches of St. Mark's. His sinful eye was dazzled and he hid himselfbehind an altar, with an evil purpose in his heart, but a priestdiscovered him and turned him out. Afterward he got in again--by falsekeys, this time. He went there, night after night, and worked hard andpatiently, all alone, overcoming difficulty after difficulty with histoil, and at last succeeded in removing a great brick of the marblepaneling which walled the lower part of the treasury; this block hefixed so that he could take it out and put it in at will. Afterthat, for weeks, he spent all his midnights in his magnificent mine, inspecting it in security, gloating over its marvels at his leisure, andalways slipping back to his obscure lodgings before dawn, with aduke's ransom under his cloak. He did not need to grab, haphazard, andrun--there was no hurry. He could make deliberate and well-consideredselections; he could consult his esthetic tastes. One comprehends howundisturbed he was, and how safe from any danger of interruption, when it is stated that he even carried off a unicorn's horn--a merecuriosity--which would not pass through the egress entire, but had tobe sawn in two--a bit of work which cost him hours of tedious labor. Hecontinued to store up his treasures at home until his occupation lostthe charm of novelty and became monotonous; then he ceased from it, contented. Well he might be; for his collection, raised to modernvalues, represented nearly fifty million dollars!

He could have gone home much the richest citizen of his country, andit might have been years before the plunder was missed; but he washuman--he could not enjoy his delight alone, he must have somebody totalk about it with. So he exacted a solemn oath from a Candian noblenamed Crioni, then led him to his lodgings and nearly took his breathaway with a sight of his glittering hoard. He detected a look in hisfriend's face which excited his suspicion, and was about to slip astiletto into him when Crioni saved himself by explaining that that lookwas only an expression of supreme and happy astonishment. Stammatomade Crioni a present of one of the state's principal jewels--a hugecarbuncle, which afterward figured in the Ducal cap of state--and thepair parted. Crioni went at once to the palace, denounced the criminal, and handed over the carbuncle as evidence. Stammato was arrested, tried, and condemned, with the old-time Venetian promptness. He was hangedbetween the two great columns in the Piazza--with a gilded rope, out ofcompliment to his love of gold, perhaps. He got no good of his booty atall--it was ALL recovered. 

In Venice we had a luxury which very seldom fell to our lot on thecontinent--a home dinner with a private family. If one could always stopwith private families, when traveling, Europe would have a charm whichit now lacks. As it is, one must live in the hotels, of course, and thatis a sorrowful business. A man accustomed to American food and Americandomestic cookery would not starve to death suddenly in Europe; but Ithink he would gradually waste away, and eventually die. 

He would have to do without his accustomed morning meal. That is tooformidable a change altogether; he would necessarily suffer from it. Hecould get the shadow, the sham, the base counterfeit of that meal; butit would do him no good, and money could not buy the reality. 

To particularize: the average American's simplest and commonest form ofbreakfast consists of coffee and beefsteak; well, in Europe, coffee isan unknown beverage. You can get what the European hotel-keeper thinksis coffee, but it resembles the real thing as hypocrisy resemblesholiness. It is a feeble, characterless, uninspiring sort of stuff, andalmost as undrinkable as if it had been made in an American hotel. Themilk used for it is what the French call "Christian" milk--milk whichhas been baptized. 

After a few months' acquaintance with European "coffee, " one's mindweakens, and his faith with it, and he begins to wonder if the richbeverage of home, with its clotted layer of yellow cream on top of it, is not a mere dream, after all, and a thing which never existed. 

Next comes the European bread--fair enough, good enough, after afashion, but cold; cold and tough, and unsympathetic; and never anychange, never any variety--always the same tiresome thing. 

Next, the butter--the sham and tasteless butter; no salt in it, and madeof goodness knows what. 

Then there is the beefsteak. They have it in Europe, but they don't knowhow to cook it. Neither will they cut it right. It comes on the table ina small, round pewter platter. It lies in the center of this platter, in a bordering bed of grease-soaked potatoes; it is the size, shape, andthickness of a man's hand with the thumb and fingers cut off. It is alittle overdone, is rather dry, it tastes pretty insipidly, it rouses noenthusiasm. 

Imagine a poor exile contemplating that inert thing; and imagine anangel suddenly sweeping down out of a better land and setting before hima mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputteringfrom the griddle; dusted with a fragrant pepper; enriched withlittle melting bits of butter of the most unimpeachable freshness andgenuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joiningthe gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township or two of tender, yellowish fat gracing an outlying district of this ample county ofbeefsteak; the long white bone which divides the sirloin from thetenderloin still in its place; and imagine that the angel also adds agreat cup of American home-made coffee, with a cream a-froth on top, some real butter, firm and yellow and fresh, some smoking hot-biscuits, a plate of hot buckwheat cakes, with transparent syrup--could wordsdescribe the gratitude of this exile?

The European dinner is better than the European breakfast, but it hasits faults and inferiorities; it does not satisfy. He comes to the tableeager and hungry; he swallows his soup--there is an undefinablelack about it somewhere; thinks the fish is going to be the thing hewants--eats it and isn't sure; thinks the next dish is perhaps the onethat will hit the hungry place--tries it, and is conscious that therewas a something wanting about it, also. And thus he goes on, from dishto dish, like a boy after a butterfly which just misses getting caughtevery time it alights, but somehow doesn't get caught after all; and atthe end the exile and the boy have fared about alike; the one is full, but grievously unsatisfied, the other has had plenty of exercise, plentyof interest, and a fine lot of hopes, but he hasn't got any butterfly. There is here and there an American who will say he can remember risingfrom a European table d'hôte perfectly satisfied; but we must notoverlook the fact that there is also here and there an American who willlie. 

The number of dishes is sufficient; but then it is such a monotonousvariety of UNSTRIKING dishes. It is an inane dead-level of"fair-to-middling. " There is nothing to ACCENT it. Perhaps if the roastof mutton or of beef--a big, generous one--were brought on the table andcarved in full view of the client, that might give the right sense ofearnestness and reality to the thing; but they don't do that, they passthe sliced meat around on a dish, and so you are perfectly calm, it doesnot stir you in the least. Now a vast roast turkey, stretched on thebroad of his back, with his heels in the air and the rich juices oozingfrom his fat sides ... But I may as well stop there, for they would notknow how to cook him. They can't even cook a chicken respectably; and asfor carving it, they do that with a hatchet. 

This is about the customary table d'hôte bill in summer:

 Soup (characterless). 

 Fish--sole, salmon, or whiting--usually tolerably good. 

 Roast--mutton or beef--tasteless--and some last year's potatoes. 

 A pate, or some other made dish--usually good--"considering. "

 One vegetable--brought on in state, and all alone--usually insipid lentils, or string-beans, or indifferent asparagus. 

 Roast chicken, as tasteless as paper. 

 Lettuce-salad--tolerably good. 

 Decayed strawberries or cherries. 

 Sometimes the apricots and figs are fresh, but this is no advantage, as these fruits are of no account anyway. 

 The grapes are generally good, and sometimes there is a tolerably good peach, by mistake. 

The variations of the above bill are trifling. After a fortnight onediscovers that the variations are only apparent, not real; in the thirdweek you get what you had the first, and in the fourth the week you getwhat you had the second. Three or four months of this weary samenesswill kill the robustest appetite. 

It has now been many months, at the present writing, since I have hada nourishing meal, but I shall soon have one--a modest, private affair, all to myself. I have selected a few dishes, and made out a little billof fare, which will go home in the steamer that precedes me, and be hotwhen I arrive--as follows:

 Radishes. Baked apples, with cream Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs. American coffee, with real cream. American butter. Fried chicken, Southern style. Porter-house steak. Saratoga potatoes. Broiled chicken, American style. Hot biscuits, Southern style. Hot wheat-bread, Southern style. Hot buckwheat cakes. American toast. Clear maple syrup. Virginia bacon, broiled. Blue points, on the half shell. Cherry-stone clams. San Francisco mussels, steamed. Oyster soup. Clam Soup. Philadelphia Terapin soup. Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style. Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad. Baltimore perch. Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas. Lake trout, from Tahoe. Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans. Black bass from the Mississippi. American roast beef. Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style. Cranberry sauce. Celery. Roast wild turkey. Woodcock. Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore. Prairie liens, from Illinois. Missouri partridges, broiled. 'Possum. Coon. Boston bacon and beans. Bacon and greens, Southern style. Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips. Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus. Butter beans. Sweet potatoes. Lettuce. Succotash. String beans. Mashed potatoes. Catsup. Boiled potatoes, in their skins. New potatoes, minus the skins. Early rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot. Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar. Stewed tomatoes. Green corn, cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper. Green corn, on the ear. Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, Southern style. Hot hoe-cake, Southern style. Hot egg-bread, Southern style. Hot light-bread, Southern style. Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk. Apple dumplings, with real cream. Apple pie. Apple fritters. Apple puffs, Southern style. Peach cobbler, Southern style Peach pie. American mince pie. Pumpkin pie. Squash pie. All sorts of American pastry. 

Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries which arenot to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way. Ice-water--not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincereand capable refrigerator. 

Americans intending to spend a year or so in European hotels willdo well to copy this bill and carry it along. They will find it anexcellent thing to get up an appetite with, in the dispiriting presenceof the squalid table d'hôte. 

Foreigners cannot enjoy our food, I suppose, any more than we canenjoy theirs. It is not strange; for tastes are made, not born. I mightglorify my bill of fare until I was tired; but after all, the Scotchmanwould shake his head and say, "Where's your haggis?" and the Fijianwould sigh and say, "Where's your missionary?"

I have a neat talent in matters pertaining to nourishment. This hasmet with professional recognition. I have often furnished recipes forcook-books. Here are some designs for pies and things, which I recentlyprepared for a friend's projected cook-book, but as I forgot to furnishdiagrams and perspectives, they had to be left out, of course. 

RECIPE FOR AN ASH-CAKE Take a lot of water and add to it a lot of coarseIndian-meal and about a quarter of a lot of salt. Mix well together, knead into the form of a "pone, " and let the pone stand awhile--not onits edge, but the other way. Rake away a place among the embers, lay itthere, and cover it an inch deep with hot ashes. When it is done, removeit; blow off all the ashes but one layer; butter that one and eat. 

N. B. --No household should ever be without this talisman. It has beennoticed that tramps never return for another ash-cake. ----------

RECIPE FOR NEW ENGLISH PIE To make this excellent breakfast dish, proceed as follows: Take a sufficiency of water and a sufficiency offlour, and construct a bullet-proof dough. Work this into the form ofa disk, with the edges turned up some three-fourths of an inch. Toughenand kiln-dry in a couple days in a mild but unvarying temperature. Construct a cover for this redoubt in the same way and of the samematerial. Fill with stewed dried apples; aggravate with cloves, lemon-peel, and slabs of citron; add two portions of New Orleans sugars, then solder on the lid and set in a safe place till it petrifies. Servecold at breakfast and invite your enemy. ----------

RECIPE FOR GERMAN COFFEE Take a barrel of water and bring it to a boil;rub a chicory berry against a coffee berry, then convey the former intothe water. Continue the boiling and evaporation until the intensity ofthe flavor and aroma of the coffee and chicory has been diminished toa proper degree; then set aside to cool. Now unharness the remains of aonce cow from the plow, insert them in a hydraulic press, and when youshall have acquired a teaspoon of that pale-blue juice which a Germansuperstition regards as milk, modify the malignity of its strength in abucket of tepid water and ring up the breakfast. Mix the beverage in acold cup, partake with moderation, and keep a wet rag around your headto guard against over-excitement. 

TO CARVE FOWLS IN THE GERMAN FASHION Use a club, and avoid the joints. 

CHAPTER L

[Titian Bad and Titian Good]

I wonder why some things are? For instance, Art is allowed as muchindecent license today as in earlier times--but the privileges ofLiterature in this respect have been sharply curtailed within thepast eighty or ninety years. Fielding and Smollett could portray thebeastliness of their day in the beastliest language; we have plentyof foul subjects to deal with in our day, but we are not allowed toapproach them very near, even with nice and guarded forms of speech. But not so with Art. The brush may still deal freely with any subject, however revolting or indelicate. It makes a body ooze sarcasm at everypore, to go about Rome and Florence and see what this last generationhas been doing with the statues. These works, which had stood ininnocent nakedness for ages, are all fig-leaved now. Yes, every one ofthem. Nobody noticed their nakedness before, perhaps; nobody can helpnoticing it now, the fig-leaf makes it so conspicuous. But the comicalthing about it all, is, that the fig-leaf is confined to cold and pallidmarble, which would be still cold and unsuggestive without this sham andostentatious symbol of modesty, whereas warm-blood paintings which doreally need it have in no case been furnished with it. 

At the door of the Uffizzi, in Florence, one is confronted by statuesof a man and a woman, noseless, battered, black with accumulatedgrime--they hardly suggest human beings--yet these ridiculous creatureshave been thoughtfully and conscientiously fig-leaved by this fastidiousgeneration. You enter, and proceed to that most-visited little gallerythat exists in the world--the Tribune--and there, against the wall, without obstructing rag or leaf, you may look your fill upon thefoulest, the vilest, the obscenest picture the world possesses--Titian'sVenus. It isn't that she is naked and stretched out on a bed--no, it isthe attitude of one of her arms and hand. If I ventured to describethat attitude, there would be a fine howl--but there the Venus lies, foranybody to gloat over that wants to--and there she has a right to lie, for she is a work of art, and Art has its privileges. I saw younggirls stealing furtive glances at her; I saw young men gaze long andabsorbedly at her; I saw aged, infirm men hang upon her charms with apathetic interest. How I should like to describe her--just to see whata holy indignation I could stir up in the world--just to hear theunreflecting average man deliver himself about my grossness andcoarseness, and all that. The world says that no worded description ofa moving spectacle is a hundredth part as moving as the same spectacleseen with one's own eyes--yet the world is willing to let its sonand its daughter and itself look at Titian's beast, but won't standa description of it in words. Which shows that the world is not asconsistent as it might be. 

There are pictures of nude women which suggest no impure thought--Iam well aware of that. I am not railing at such. What I am trying toemphasize is the fact that Titian's Venus is very far from being one ofthat sort. Without any question it was painted for a bagnio and it wasprobably refused because it was a trifle too strong. In truth, it is toostrong for any place but a public Art Gallery. Titian has two Venuses inthe Tribune; persons who have seen them will easily remember which one Iam referring to. 

In every gallery in Europe there are hideous pictures of blood, carnage, oozing brains, putrefaction--pictures portraying intolerablesuffering--pictures alive with every conceivable horror, wrought out indreadful detail--and similar pictures are being put on the canvas everyday and publicly exhibited--without a growl from anybody--for theyare innocent, they are inoffensive, being works of art. But supposea literary artist ventured to go into a painstaking and elaboratedescription of one of these grisly things--the critics would skin himalive. Well, let it go, it cannot be helped; Art retains her privileges, Literature has lost hers. Somebody else may cipher out the whys and thewherefores and the consistencies of it--I haven't got time. 

Titian's Venus defiles and disgraces the Tribune, there is no softeningthat fact, but his "Moses" glorifies it. The simple truthfulness ofits noble work wins the heart and the applause of every visitor, be helearned or ignorant. After wearying one's self with the acres of stuffy, sappy, expressionless babies that populate the canvases of the OldMasters of Italy, it is refreshing to stand before this peerless childand feel that thrill which tells you you are at last in the presence ofthe real thing. This is a human child, this is genuine. You have seenhim a thousand times--you have seen him just as he is here--and youconfess, without reserve, that Titian WAS a Master. The doll-faces ofother painted babes may mean one thing, they may mean another, butwith the "Moses" the case is different. The most famous of all theart-critics has said, "There is no room for doubt, here--plainly thischild is in trouble. "

I consider that the "Moses" has no equal among the works of the OldMasters, except it be the divine Hair Trunk of Bassano. I feel sure thatif all the other Old Masters were lost and only these two preserved, theworld would be the gainer by it. 

My sole purpose in going to Florence was to see this immortal "Moses, "and by good fortune I was just in time, for they were already preparingto remove it to a more private and better-protected place because afashion of robbing the great galleries was prevailing in Europe at thetime. 

I got a capable artist to copy the picture; Pannemaker, the engraver ofDoré's books, engraved it for me, and I have the pleasure of laying itbefore the reader in this volume. 

We took a turn to Rome and some other Italian cities--then to Munich, and thence to Paris--partly for exercise, but mainly because thesethings were in our projected program, and it was only right that weshould be faithful to it. 

From Paris I branched out and walked through Holland and Belgium, procuring an occasional lift by rail or canal when tired, and I hada tolerably good time of it "by and large. " I worked Spain and otherregions through agents to save time and shoe-leather. 

We crossed to England, and then made the homeward passage in theCunarder GALLIA, a very fine ship. I was glad to get home--immeasurablyglad; so glad, in fact, that it did not seem possible that anythingcould ever get me out of the country again. I had not enjoyed a pleasureabroad which seemed to me to compare with the pleasure I felt in seeingNew York harbor again. Europe has many advantages which we have not, butthey do not compensate for a good many still more valuable ones whichexist nowhere but in our own country. Then we are such a homeless lotwhen we are over there! So are Europeans themselves, for that matter. They live in dark and chilly vast tombs--costly enough, maybe, butwithout conveniences. To be condemned to live as the average Europeanfamily lives would make life a pretty heavy burden to the averageAmerican family. 

On the whole, I think that short visits to Europe are better for us thanlong ones. The former preserve us from becoming Europeanized; they keepour pride of country intact, and at the same time they intensify ouraffection for our country and our people; whereas long visits have theeffect of dulling those feelings--at least in the majority of cases. Ithink that one who mixes much with Americans long resident abroad mustarrive at this conclusion. 

APPENDIX Nothing gives such weight and dignity to a book as an Appendix. --HERODOTUS

APPENDIX A. 

The Portier

Omar Khay'am, the poet-prophet of Persia, writing more than eighthundred years ago, has said:

"In the four parts of the earth are many that are able to write learnedbooks, many that are able to lead armies, and many also that are able togovern kingdoms and empires; but few there be that can keep a hotel. "

A word about the European hotel PORTIER. He is a most admirableinvention, a most valuable convenience. He always wears a conspicuousuniform; he can always be found when he is wanted, for he sticks closelyto his post at the front door; he is as polite as a duke; he speaksfrom four to ten languages; he is your surest help and refuge in time oftrouble or perplexity. He is not the clerk, he is not the landlord; heranks above the clerk, and represents the landlord, who is seldom seen. Instead of going to the clerk for information, as we do at home, yougo to the portier. It is the pride of our average hotel clerk to knownothing whatever; it is the pride of the portier to know everything. Youask the portier at what hours the trains leave--he tells you instantly;or you ask him who is the best physician in town; or what is the hacktariff; or how many children the mayor has; or what days the galleriesare open, and whether a permit is required, and where you are to get it, and what you must pay for it; or when the theaters open and close, whatthe plays are to be, and the price of seats; or what is the newest thingin hats; or how the bills of mortality average; or "who struck BillyPatterson. " It does not matter what you ask him: in nine cases out often he knows, and in the tenth case he will find out for you before youcan turn around three times. There is nothing he will not put his handto. Suppose you tell him you wish to go from Hamburg to Peking by theway of Jericho, and are ignorant of routes and prices--the next morninghe will hand you a piece of paper with the whole thing worked out on itto the last detail. Before you have been long on European soil, you findyourself still SAYING you are relying on Providence, but when you cometo look closer you will see that in reality you are relying on theportier. He discovers what is puzzling you, or what is troubling you, or what your need is, before you can get the half of it out, and hepromptly says, "Leave that to me. " Consequently, you easily drift intothe habit of leaving everything to him. There is a certain embarrassmentabout applying to the average American hotel clerk, a certain hesitancy, a sense of insecurity against rebuff; but you feel no embarrassment inyour intercourse with the portier; he receives your propositions with anenthusiasm which cheers, and plunges into their accomplishment with analacrity which almost inebriates. The more requirements you can pileupon him, the better he likes it. Of course the result is that you ceasefrom doing anything for yourself. He calls a hack when you want one;puts you into it; tells the driver whither to take you; receives youlike a long-lost child when you return; sends you about your business, does all the quarreling with the hackman himself, and pays him his moneyout of his own pocket. He sends for your theater tickets, and pays forthem; he sends for any possible article you can require, be it a doctor, an elephant, or a postage stamp; and when you leave, at last, you willfind a subordinate seated with the cab-driver who will put you in yourrailway compartment, buy your tickets, have your baggage weighed, bringyou the printed tags, and tell you everything is in your bill and paidfor. At home you get such elaborate, excellent, and willing service asthis only in the best hotels of our large cities; but in Europe you getit in the mere back country-towns just as well. 

What is the secret of the portier's devotion? It is very simple: he getsFEES, AND NO SALARY. His fee is pretty closely regulated, too. If youstay a week, you give him five marks--a dollar and a quarter, or abouteighteen cents a day. If you stay a month, you reduce this averagesomewhat. If you stay two or three months or longer, you cut it downhalf, or even more than half. If you stay only one day, you give theportier a mark. 

The head waiter's fee is a shade less than the portier's; the Boots, whonot only blacks your boots and brushes your clothes, but is usually theporter and handles your baggage, gets a somewhat smaller fee than thehead waiter; the chambermaid's fee ranks below that of the Boots. Youfee only these four, and no one else. A German gentleman told me thatwhen he remained a week in a hotel, he gave the portier five marks, thehead waiter four, the Boots three, and the chambermaid two; and if hestayed three months he divided ninety marks among them, in about theabove proportions. Ninety marks make $22. 50. 

None of these fees are ever paid until you leave the hotel, though itbe a year--except one of these four servants should go away in the meantime; in that case he will be sure to come and bid you good-by andgive you the opportunity to pay him what is fairly coming to him. Itis considered very bad policy to fee a servant while you are still toremain longer in the hotel, because if you gave him too little he mightneglect you afterward, and if you gave him too much he might neglectsomebody else to attend to you. It is considered best to keep hisexpectations "on a string" until your stay is concluded. 

I do not know whether hotel servants in New York get any wages or not, but I do know that in some of the hotels there the feeing system invogue is a heavy burden. The waiter expects a quarter at breakfast--andgets it. You have a different waiter at luncheon, and so he gets aquarter. Your waiter at dinner is another stranger--consequently he getsa quarter. The boy who carries your satchel to your room and lights yourgas fumbles around and hangs around significantly, and you fee him toget rid of him. Now you may ring for ice-water; and ten minutes laterfor a lemonade; and ten minutes afterward, for a cigar; and by and byfor a newspaper--and what is the result? Why, a new boy has appearedevery time and fooled and fumbled around until you have paid himsomething. Suppose you boldly put your foot down, and say it is thehotel's business to pay its servants? You will have to ring your bellten or fifteen times before you get a servant there; and when he goesoff to fill your order you will grow old and infirm before you see himagain. You may struggle nobly for twenty-four hours, maybe, if you arean adamantine sort of person, but in the mean time you will have beenso wretchedly served, and so insolently, that you will haul down yourcolors, and go to impoverishing yourself with fees. 

It seems to me that it would be a happy idea to import the Europeanfeeing system into America. I believe it would result in getting eventhe bells of the Philadelphia hotels answered, and cheerful servicerendered. 

The greatest American hotels keep a number of clerks and a cashier, andpay them salaries which mount up to a considerable total in the courseof a year. The great continental hotels keep a cashier on a triflingsalary, and a portier WHO PAYS THE HOTEL A SALARY. By the latter systemboth the hotel and the public save money and are better served than byour system. One of our consuls told me that a portier of a great Berlinhotel paid five thousand dollars a year for his position, and yetcleared six thousand dollars for himself. The position of portier in thechief hotels of Saratoga, Long Branch, New York, and similar centers ofresort, would be one which the holder could afford to pay even more thanfive thousand dollars for, perhaps. 

When we borrowed the feeing fashion from Europe a dozen years ago, thesalary system ought to have been discontinued, of course. We might makethis correction now, I should think. And we might add the portier, too. Since I first began to study the portier, I have had opportunities toobserve him in the chief cities of Germany, Switzerland, and Italy;and the more I have seen of him the more I have wished that he might beadopted in America, and become there, as he is in Europe, the stranger'sguardian angel. 

Yes, what was true eight hundred years ago, is just as true today: "Fewthere be that can keep a hotel. " Perhaps it is because the landlords andtheir subordinates have in too many cases taken up their trade withoutfirst learning it. In Europe the trade of hotel-keeper is taught. Theapprentice begins at the bottom of the ladder and masters the severalgrades one after the other. Just as in our country printing-offices theapprentice first learns how to sweep out and bring water; then learnsto "roll"; then to sort "pi"; then to set type; and finally roundsand completes his education with job-work and press-work; so thelandlord-apprentice serves as call-boy; then as under-waiter; then asa parlor waiter; then as head waiter, in which position he often has tomake out all the bills; then as clerk or cashier; then as portier. Histrade is learned now, and by and by he will assume the style and dignityof landlord, and be found conducting a hotel of his own. 

Now in Europe, the same as in America, when a man has kept a hotelso thoroughly well during a number of years as to give it a greatreputation, he has his reward. He can live prosperously on thatreputation. He can let his hotel run down to the last degree ofshabbiness and yet have it full of people all the time. For instance, there is the Hotel de Ville, in Milan. It swarms with mice and fleas, and if the rest of the world were destroyed it could furnish dirt enoughto start another one with. The food would create an insurrection in apoorhouse; and yet if you go outside to get your meals that hotel makesup its loss by overcharging you on all sorts of trifles--and withoutmaking any denials or excuses about it, either. But the Hotel de Ville'sold excellent reputation still keeps its dreary rooms crowded withtravelers who would be elsewhere if they had only some wise friend towarn them. 

APPENDIX B. 

Heidelberg Castle Heidelberg Castle must have been very beautiful beforethe French battered and bruised and scorched it two hundred years ago. The stone is brown, with a pinkish tint, and does not seem to staineasily. The dainty and elaborate ornamentation upon its two chief frontsis as delicately carved as if it had been intended for the interior ofa drawing-room rather than for the outside of a house. Many fruit andflower clusters, human heads and grim projecting lions' heads are stillas perfect in every detail as if they were new. But the statues whichare ranked between the windows have suffered. These are life-sizestatues of old-time emperors, electors, and similar grandees, clad inmail and bearing ponderous swords. Some have lost an arm, some a head, and one poor fellow is chopped off at the middle. There is a saying thatif a stranger will pass over the drawbridge and walk across the court tothe castle front without saying anything, he can make a wish and it willbe fulfilled. But they say that the truth of this thing has never hada chance to be proved, for the reason that before any stranger can walkfrom the drawbridge to the appointed place, the beauty of the palacefront will extort an exclamation of delight from him. 

A ruin must be rightly situated, to be effective. This one could nothave been better placed. It stands upon a commanding elevation, it isburied in green woods, there is no level ground about it, but, on thecontrary, there are wooded terraces upon terraces, and one looks downthrough shining leaves into profound chasms and abysses where twilightreigns and the sun cannot intrude. Nature knows how to garnish a ruin toget the best effect. One of these old towers is split down the middle, and one half has tumbled aside. It tumbled in such a way as to establishitself in a picturesque attitude. Then all it lacked was a fittingdrapery, and Nature has furnished that; she has robed the rugged mass inflowers and verdure, and made it a charm to the eye. The standing halfexposes its arched and cavernous rooms to you, like open, toothlessmouths; there, too, the vines and flowers have done their work of grace. The rear portion of the tower has not been neglected, either, but isclothed with a clinging garment of polished ivy which hides the woundsand stains of time. Even the top is not left bare, but is crowned with aflourishing group of trees and shrubs. Misfortune has done for this oldtower what it has done for the human character sometimes--improved it. 

A gentleman remarked, one day, that it might have been fine to live inthe castle in the day of its prime, but that we had one advantage whichits vanished inhabitants lacked--the advantage of having a charming ruinto visit and muse over. But that was a hasty idea. Those people had theadvantage of US. They had the fine castle to live in, and they couldcross the Rhine valley and muse over the stately ruin of Trifelsbesides. The Trifels people, in their day, five hundred years ago, couldgo and muse over majestic ruins that have vanished, now, to the laststone. There have always been ruins, no doubt; and there have alwaysbeen pensive people to sigh over them, and asses to scratch upon themtheir names and the important date of their visit. Within a hundredyears after Adam left Eden, the guide probably gave the usual generalflourish with his hand and said: "Place where the animals were named, ladies and gentlemen; place where the tree of the forbidden fruit stood;exact spot where Adam and Eve first met; and here, ladies and gentlemen, adorned and hallowed by the names and addresses of three generations oftourists, we have the crumbling remains of Cain's altar--fine old ruin!"Then, no doubt, he taxed them a shekel apiece and let them go. 

An illumination of Heidelberg Castle is one of the sights of Europe. The Castle's picturesque shape; its commanding situation, midway up thesteep and wooded mountainside; its vast size--these features combine tomake an illumination a most effective spectacle. It is necessarily anexpensive show, and consequently rather infrequent. Therefore wheneverone of these exhibitions is to take place, the news goes about in thepapers and Heidelberg is sure to be full of people on that night. I andmy agent had one of these opportunities, and improved it. 

About half past seven on the appointed evening we crossed the lowerbridge, with some American students, in a pouring rain, and started upthe road which borders the Neunheim side of the river. This roadway wasdensely packed with carriages and foot-passengers; the former of allages, and the latter of all ages and both sexes. This black and solidmass was struggling painfully onward, through the slop, the darkness, and the deluge. We waded along for three-quarters of a mile, and finallytook up a position in an unsheltered beer-garden directly oppositethe Castle. We could not SEE the Castle--or anything else, for thatmatter--but we could dimly discern the outlines of the mountain over theway, through the pervading blackness, and knew whereabouts the Castlewas located. We stood on one of the hundred benches in the garden, underour umbrellas; the other ninety-nine were occupied by standing men andwomen, and they also had umbrellas. All the region round about, and upand down the river-road, was a dense wilderness of humanity hiddenunder an unbroken pavement of carriage tops and umbrellas. Thus we stoodduring two drenching hours. No rain fell on my head, but the convergingwhalebone points of a dozen neighboring umbrellas poured little coolingsteams of water down my neck, and sometimes into my ears, and thus keptme from getting hot and impatient. I had the rheumatism, too, andhad heard that this was good for it. Afterward, however, I was led tobelieve that the water treatment is NOT good for rheumatism. There wereeven little girls in that dreadful place. A man held one in his arms, just in front of me, for as much as an hour, with umbrella-drippingssoaking into her clothing all the time. 

In the circumstances, two hours was a good while for us to have to wait, but when the illumination did at last come, we felt repaid. It cameunexpectedly, of course--things always do, that have been long lookedand longed for. With a perfectly breath-taking suddenness several mastsheaves of varicolored rockets were vomited skyward out of the blackthroats of the Castle towers, accompanied by a thundering crash ofsound, and instantly every detail of the prodigious ruin stood revealedagainst the mountainside and glowing with an almost intolerable splendorof fire and color. For some little time the whole building was ablinding crimson mass, the towers continued to spout thick columns ofrockets aloft, and overhead the sky was radiant with arrowy bolts whichclove their way to the zenith, paused, curved gracefully downward, thenburst into brilliant fountain-sprays of richly colored sparks. The redfires died slowly down, within the Castle, and presently the shell grewnearly black outside; the angry glare that shone out through the brokenarches and innumerable sashless windows, now, reproduced the aspectwhich the Castle must have borne in the old time when the Frenchspoilers saw the monster bonfire which they had made there fading andspoiling toward extinction. 

While we still gazed and enjoyed, the ruin was suddenly enveloped inrolling and rumbling volumes of vaporous green fire; then in dazzlingpurple ones; then a mixture of many colors followed, then drowned thegreat fabric in its blended splendors. Meantime the nearest bridge hadbeen illuminated, and from several rafts anchored in the river, meteorshowers of rockets, Roman candles, bombs, serpents, and Catharine wheelswere being discharged in wasteful profusion into the sky--a marveloussight indeed to a person as little used to such spectacles as I was. Fora while the whole region about us seemed as bright as day, and yet therain was falling in torrents all the time. The evening's entertainmentpresently closed, and we joined the innumerable caravan of half-drownedstrangers, and waded home again. 

The Castle grounds are very ample and very beautiful; and as they joinedthe Hotel grounds, with no fences to climb, but only some nobly shadedstone stairways to descend, we spent a part of nearly every day inidling through their smooth walks and leafy groves. There was anattractive spot among the trees where were a great many wooden tablesand benches; and there one could sit in the shade and pretend to sip athis foamy beaker of beer while he inspected the crowd. I say pretend, because I only pretended to sip, without really sipping. That is thepolite way; but when you are ready to go, you empty the beaker at adraught. There was a brass band, and it furnished excellent music everyafternoon. Sometimes so many people came that every seat was occupied, every table filled. And never a rough in the assemblage--all nicelydressed fathers and mothers, young gentlemen and ladies and children;and plenty of university students and glittering officers; with here andthere a gray professor, or a peaceful old lady with her knitting; andalways a sprinkling of gawky foreigners. Everybody had his glass ofbeer before him, or his cup of coffee, or his bottle of wine, or hishot cutlet and potatoes; young ladies chatted, or fanned themselves, orwrought at their crocheting or embroidering; the students fed sugar totheir dogs, or discussed duels, or illustrated new fencing trickswith their little canes; and everywhere was comfort and enjoyment, andeverywhere peace and good-will to men. The trees were jubilant withbirds, and the paths with rollicking children. One could have a seat inthat place and plenty of music, any afternoon, for about eight cents, ora family ticket for the season for two dollars. 

For a change, when you wanted one, you could stroll to the Castle, andburrow among its dungeons, or climb about its ruined towers, or visitits interior shows--the great Heidelberg Tun, for instance. Everybodyhas heard of the great Heidelberg Tun, and most people have seen it, nodoubt. It is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some traditions sayit holds eighteen thousand bottles, and other traditions say it holdseighteen hundred million barrels. I think it likely that one of thesestatements is a mistake, and the other is a lie. However, the merematter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence, since the caskis empty, and indeed has always been empty, history says. An empty caskthe size of a cathedral could excite but little emotion in me. 

I do not see any wisdom in building a monster cask to hoard up emptinessin, when you can get a better quality, outside, any day, free ofexpense. What could this cask have been built for? The more one studiesover that, the more uncertain and unhappy he becomes. Some historianssay that thirty couples, some say thirty thousand couples, can dance onthe head of this cask at the same time. Even this does not seem to meto account for the building of it. It does not even throw light on it. Aprofound and scholarly Englishman--a specialist--who had made the greatHeidelberg Tun his sole study for fifteen years, told me he had at lastsatisfied himself that the ancients built it to make German cream in. He said that the average German cow yielded from one to two and halfteaspoons of milk, when she was not worked in the plow or the hay-wagonmore than eighteen or nineteen hours a day. This milk was very sweet andgood, and a beautiful transparent bluish tint; but in order to get creamfrom it in the most economical way, a peculiar process was necessary. Now he believed that the habit of the ancients was to collect severalmilkings in a teacup, pour it into the Great Tun, fill up with water, and then skim off the cream from time to time as the needs of the GermanEmpire demanded. 

This began to look reasonable. It certainly began to account for theGerman cream which I had encountered and marveled over in so many hotelsand restaurants. But a thought struck me--

"Why did not each ancient dairyman take his own teacup of milk and hisown cask of water, and mix them, without making a government matter ofit?'

"Where could he get a cask large enough to contain the right proportionof water?"

Very true. It was plain that the Englishman had studied the matter fromall sides. Still I thought I might catch him on one point; so I askedhim why the modern empire did not make the nation's cream in theHeidelberg Tun, instead of leaving it to rot away unused. But heanswered as one prepared--

"A patient and diligent examination of the modern German cream hadsatisfied me that they do not use the Great Tun now, because they havegot a BIGGER one hid away somewhere. Either that is the case or theyempty the spring milkings into the mountain torrents and then skim theRhine all summer. "

There is a museum of antiquities in the Castle, and among its mosttreasured relics are ancient manuscripts connected with German history. There are hundreds of these, and their dates stretch back through manycenturies. One of them is a decree signed and sealed by the hand of asuccessor of Charlemagne, in the year 896. A signature made by a handwhich vanished out of this life near a thousand years ago, is a moreimpressive thing than even a ruined castle. Luther's wedding-ring wasshown me; also a fork belonging to a time anterior to our era, and anearly bootjack. And there was a plaster cast of the head of a man whowas assassinated about sixty years ago. The stab-wounds in the facewere duplicated with unpleasant fidelity. One or two real hairs stillremained sticking in the eyebrows of the cast. That trifle seemed toalmost change the counterfeit into a corpse. 

There are many aged portraits--some valuable, some worthless; some ofgreat interest, some of none at all. I bought a couple--one a gorgeousduke of the olden time, and the other a comely blue-eyed damsel, a princess, maybe. I bought them to start a portrait-gallery of myancestors with. I paid a dollar and a half for the duke and a half forthe princess. One can lay in ancestors at even cheaper rates than these, in Europe, if he will mouse among old picture shops and look out forchances. 

APPENDIX C. 

The College Prison It seems that the student may break a good many ofthe public laws without having to answer to the public authorities. His case must come before the University for trial and punishment. If apoliceman catches him in an unlawful act and proceeds to arrest him, the offender proclaims that he is a student, and perhaps shows hismatriculation card, whereupon the officer asks for his address, thengoes his way, and reports the matter at headquarters. If the offense isone over which the city has no jurisdiction, the authorities reportthe case officially to the University, and give themselves no furtherconcern about it. The University court send for the student, listen tothe evidence, and pronounce judgment. The punishment usually inflictedis imprisonment in the University prison. As I understand it, astudent's case is often tried without his being present at all. Then something like this happens: A constable in the service of theUniversity visits the lodgings of the said student, knocks, is invitedto come in, does so, and says politely--

"If you please, I am here to conduct you to prison. "

"Ah, " says the student, "I was not expecting it. What have I beendoing?"

"Two weeks ago the public peace had the honor to be disturbed by you. "

"It is true; I had forgotten it. Very well: I have been complained of, tried, and found guilty--is that it?"

"Exactly. You are sentenced to two days' solitary confinement in theCollege prison, and I am sent to fetch you. "

STUDENT. "O, I can't go today. "

OFFICER. "If you please--why?"

STUDENT. "Because I've got an engagement. "

OFFICER. "Tomorrow, then, perhaps?"

STUDENT. "No, I am going to the opera, tomorrow. "

OFFICER. "Could you come Friday?"

STUDENT. (Reflectively. ) "Let me see--Friday--Friday. I don't seem tohave anything on hand Friday. "

OFFICER. "Then, if you please, I will expect you on Friday. "

STUDENT. "All right, I'll come around Friday. "

OFFICER. "Thank you. Good day, sir. "

STUDENT. "Good day. "

So on Friday the student goes to the prison of his own accord, and isadmitted. 

It is questionable if the world's criminal history can show a custommore odd than this. Nobody knows, now, how it originated. There havealways been many noblemen among the students, and it is presumed thatall students are gentlemen; in the old times it was usual to mar theconvenience of such folk as little as possible; perhaps this indulgentcustom owes its origin to this. 

One day I was listening to some conversation upon this subject when anAmerican student said that for some time he had been under sentencefor a slight breach of the peace and had promised the constable that hewould presently find an unoccupied day and betake himself to prison. Iasked the young gentleman to do me the kindness to go to jail as soonas he conveniently could, so that I might try to get in there and visithim, and see what college captivity was like. He said he would appointthe very first day he could spare. 

His confinement was to endure twenty-four hours. He shortly chosehis day, and sent me word. I started immediately. When I reached theUniversity Place, I saw two gentlemen talking together, and, as theyhad portfolios under their arms, I judged they were tutors or elderlystudents; so I asked them in English to show me the college jail. Ihad learned to take it for granted that anybody in Germany who knowsanything, knows English, so I had stopped afflicting people with myGerman. These gentlemen seemed a trifle amused--and a trifle confused, too--but one of them said he would walk around the corner with me andshow me the place. He asked me why I wanted to get in there, and I saidto see a friend--and for curiosity. He doubted if I would be admitted, but volunteered to put in a word or two for me with the custodian. 

He rang the bell, a door opened, and we stepped into a paved way andthen up into a small living-room, where we were received by a heartyand good-natured German woman of fifty. She threw up her hands with asurprised "ACH GOTT, HERR PROFESSOR!" and exhibited a mighty deferencefor my new acquaintance. By the sparkle in her eye I judged she was agood deal amused, too. The "Herr Professor" talked to her in German, andI understood enough of it to know that he was bringing very plausiblereasons to bear for admitting me. They were successful. So the HerrProfessor received my earnest thanks and departed. The old dame got herkeys, took me up two or three flights of stairs, unlocked a door, andwe stood in the presence of the criminal. Then she went into a jolly andeager description of all that had occurred downstairs, and what the HerrProfessor had said, and so forth and so on. Plainly, she regarded it asquite a superior joke that I had waylaid a Professor and employed himin so odd a service. But I wouldn't have done it if I had known he was aProfessor; therefore my conscience was not disturbed. 

Now the dame left us to ourselves. The cell was not a roomy one; stillit was a little larger than an ordinary prison cell. It had a windowof good size, iron-grated; a small stove; two wooden chairs; two oakentables, very old and most elaborately carved with names, mottoes, faces, armorial bearings, etc. --the work of several generations of imprisonedstudents; and a narrow wooden bedstead with a villainous straw mattress, but no sheets, pillows, blankets, or coverlets--for these the studentmust furnish at his own cost if he wants them. There was no carpet, ofcourse. 

The ceiling was completely covered with names, dates, and monograms, done with candle-smoke. The walls were thickly covered with pictures andportraits (in profile), some done with ink, some with soot, some with apencil, and some with red, blue, and green chalks; and whenever an inchor two of space had remained between the pictures, the captives hadwritten plaintive verses, or names and dates. I do not think I was everin a more elaborately frescoed apartment. 

Against the wall hung a placard containing the prison laws. I made anote of one or two of these. For instance: The prisoner must pay, forthe "privilege" of entering, a sum equivalent to 20 cents of our money;for the privilege of leaving, when his term had expired, 20 cents; forevery day spent in the prison, 12 cents; for fire and light, 12 cents aday. The jailer furnishes coffee, mornings, for a small sum; dinners andsuppers may be ordered from outside if the prisoner chooses--and he isallowed to pay for them, too. 

Here and there, on the walls, appeared the names of American students, and in one place the American arms and motto were displayed in coloredchalks. 

With the help of my friend I translated many of the inscriptions. 

Some of them were cheerful, others the reverse. I will give the reader afew specimens:

"In my tenth semester (my best one), I am cast here through thecomplaints of others. Let those who follow me take warning. "

"III TAGE OHNE GRUND ANGEBLICH AUS NEUGIERDE. " Which is to say, he had acuriosity to know what prison life was like; so he made a breach in somelaw and got three days for it. It is more than likely that he never hadthe same curiosity again. 

(TRANSLATION. ) "E. Glinicke, four days for being too eager a spectatorof a row. "

"F. Graf Bismarck--27-29, II, '74. " Which means that Count Bismarck, sonof the great statesman, was a prisoner two days in 1874. 

(TRANSLATION. ) "R. Diergandt--for Love--4 days. " Many people in thisworld have caught it heavier than for the same indiscretion. 

This one is terse. I translate:

"Four weeks for MISINTERPRETED GALLANTRY. " I wish the sufferer hadexplained a little more fully. A four-week term is a rather seriousmatter. 

There were many uncomplimentary references, on the walls, to a certainunpopular dignitary. One sufferer had got three days for not salutinghim. Another had "here two days slept and three nights lain awake, "on account of this same "Dr. K. " In one place was a picture of Dr. K. Hanging on a gallows. 

Here and there, lonesome prisoners had eased the heavy time by alteringthe records left by predecessors. Leaving the name standing, and thedate and length of the captivity, they had erased the description of themisdemeanor, and written in its place, in staring capitals, "FOR THEFT!"or "FOR MURDER!" or some other gaudy crime. In one place, all by itself, stood this blood-curdling word:

"Rache!" [1]

1. "Revenge!"

There was no name signed, and no date. It was an inscription wellcalculated to pique curiosity. One would greatly like to know the natureof the wrong that had been done, and what sort of vengeance was wanted, and whether the prisoner ever achieved it or not. But there was no wayof finding out these things. 

Occasionally, a name was followed simply by the remark, "II days, fordisturbing the peace, " and without comment upon the justice or injusticeof the sentence. 

In one place was a hilarious picture of a student of the green capcorps with a bottle of champagne in each hand; and below was the legend:"These make an evil fate endurable. "

There were two prison cells, and neither had space left on walls orceiling for another name or portrait or picture. The inside surfaces ofthe two doors were completely covered with CARTES DE VISITE of formerprisoners, ingeniously let into the wood and protected from dirt andinjury by glass. 

I very much wanted one of the sorry old tables which the prisoners hadspent so many years in ornamenting with their pocket-knives, but redtape was in the way. The custodian could not sell one without anorder from a superior; and that superior would have to get it from HISsuperior; and this one would have to get it from a higher one--and so onup and up until the faculty should sit on the matter and deliver finaljudgment. The system was right, and nobody could find fault with it; butit did not seem justifiable to bother so many people, so I proceeded nofurther. It might have cost me more than I could afford, anyway; forone of those prison tables, which was at the time in a private museumin Heidelberg, was afterward sold at auction for two hundred and fiftydollars. It was not worth more than a dollar, or possibly a dollar andhalf, before the captive students began their work on it. Persons whosaw it at the auction said it was so curiously and wonderfully carvedthat it was worth the money that was paid for it. 

Among them many who have tasted the college prison's dreary hospitalitywas a lively young fellow from one of the Southern states of America, whose first year's experience of German university life was ratherpeculiar. The day he arrived in Heidelberg he enrolled his name on thecollege books, and was so elated with the fact that his dearest hopehad found fruition and he was actually a student of the old and renowneduniversity, that he set to work that very night to celebrate the eventby a grand lark in company with some other students. In the course ofhis lark he managed to make a wide breach in one of the university'smost stringent laws. Sequel: before noon, next day, he was in thecollege prison--booked for three months. The twelve long weeks draggedslowly by, and the day of deliverance came at last. A great crowd ofsympathizing fellow-students received him with a rousing demonstrationas he came forth, and of course there was another grand lark--in thecourse of which he managed to make a wide breach of the CITY'S moststringent laws. Sequel: before noon, next day, he was safe in the citylockup--booked for three months. This second tedious captivity drew toan end in the course of time, and again a great crowd of sympathizingfellow students gave him a rousing reception as he came forth; buthis delight in his freedom was so boundless that he could not proceedsoberly and calmly, but must go hopping and skipping and jumping downthe sleety street from sheer excess of joy. Sequel: he slipped and brokehis leg, and actually lay in the hospital during the next three months!

When he at last became a free man again, he said he believed he wouldhunt up a brisker seat of learning; the Heidelberg lectures mightbe good, but the opportunities of attending them were too rare, theeducational process too slow; he said he had come to Europe with theidea that the acquirement of an education was only a matter of time, but if he had averaged the Heidelberg system correctly, it was rather amatter of eternity. 

APPENDIX D. 

The Awful German Language

 A little learning makes the whole world kin. --Proverbs xxxii, 7. 

I went often to look at the collection of curiosities in HeidelbergCastle, and one day I surprised the keeper of it with my German. I spokeentirely in that language. He was greatly interested; and after I hadtalked a while he said my German was very rare, possibly a "unique"; andwanted to add it to his museum. 

If he had known what it had cost me to acquire my art, he would alsohave known that it would break any collector to buy it. Harris and I hadbeen hard at work on our German during several weeks at that time, andalthough we had made good progress, it had been accomplished under greatdifficulty and annoyance, for three of our teachers had died in the meantime. A person who has not studied German can form no idea of what aperplexing language it is. 

Surely there is not another language that is so slipshod and systemless, and so slippery and elusive to the grasp. One is washed about in it, hither and thither, in the most helpless way; and when at last he thinkshe has captured a rule which offers firm ground to take a rest on amidthe general rage and turmoil of the ten parts of speech, he turns overthe page and reads, "Let the pupil make careful note of the followingEXCEPTIONS. " He runs his eye down and finds that there are moreexceptions to the rule than instances of it. So overboard he goes again, to hunt for another Ararat and find another quicksand. Such has been, and continues to be, my experience. Every time I think I have got oneof these four confusing "cases" where I am master of it, a seeminglyinsignificant preposition intrudes itself into my sentence, clothed withan awful and unsuspected power, and crumbles the ground from underme. For instance, my book inquires after a certain bird--(it is alwaysinquiring after things which are of no sort of consequence to anybody):"Where is the bird?" Now the answer to this question--according to thebook--is that the bird is waiting in the blacksmith shop on account ofthe rain. Of course no bird would do that, but then you must stick tothe book. Very well, I begin to cipher out the German for that answer. Ibegin at the wrong end, necessarily, for that is the German idea. Isay to myself, "REGEN (rain) is masculine--or maybe it is feminine--orpossibly neuter--it is too much trouble to look now. Therefore, itis either DER (the) Regen, or DIE (the) Regen, or DAS (the) Regen, according to which gender it may turn out to be when I look. In theinterest of science, I will cipher it out on the hypothesis that it ismasculine. Very well--then THE rain is DER Regen, if it is simply inthe quiescent state of being MENTIONED, without enlargement ordiscussion--Nominative case; but if this rain is lying around, in a kindof a general way on the ground, it is then definitely located, it isDOING SOMETHING--that is, RESTING (which is one of the German grammar'sideas of doing something), and this throws the rain into the Dativecase, and makes it DEM Regen. However, this rain is not resting, but isdoing something ACTIVELY, --it is falling--to interfere with the bird, likely--and this indicates MOVEMENT, which has the effect of sliding itinto the Accusative case and changing DEM Regen into DEN Regen. "Having completed the grammatical horoscope of this matter, I answerup confidently and state in German that the bird is staying in theblacksmith shop "wegen (on account of) DEN Regen. " Then the teacher letsme softly down with the remark that whenever the word "wegen" dropsinto a sentence, it ALWAYS throws that subject into the GENITIVE case, regardless of consequences--and therefore this bird stayed in theblacksmith shop "wegen DES Regens. "

N. B. --I was informed, later, by a higher authority, that there wasan "exception" which permits one to say "wegen DEN Regen" in certainpeculiar and complex circumstances, but that this exception is notextended to anything BUT rain. 

There are ten parts of speech, and they are all troublesome. An averagesentence, in a German newspaper, is a sublime and impressive curiosity;it occupies a quarter of a column; it contains all the ten parts ofspeech--not in regular order, but mixed; it is built mainly of compoundwords constructed by the writer on the spot, and not to be found inany dictionary--six or seven words compacted into one, without jointor seam--that is, without hyphens; it treats of fourteen or fifteendifferent subjects, each enclosed in a parenthesis of its own, with hereand there extra parentheses, making pens within pens: finally, all theparentheses and reparentheses are massed together between a coupleof king-parentheses, one of which is placed in the first line of themajestic sentence and the other in the middle of the last line ofit--AFTER WHICH COMES THE VERB, and you find out for the first time whatthe man has been talking about; and after the verb--merely by way ofornament, as far as I can make out--the writer shovels in "HABEN SINDGEWESEN GEHABT HAVEN GEWORDEN SEIN, " or words to that effect, and themonument is finished. I suppose that this closing hurrah is in thenature of the flourish to a man's signature--not necessary, but pretty. German books are easy enough to read when you hold them beforethe looking-glass or stand on your head--so as to reverse theconstruction--but I think that to learn to read and understand a Germannewspaper is a thing which must always remain an impossibility to aforeigner. 

Yet even the German books are not entirely free from attacks of theParenthesis distemper--though they are usually so mild as to cover onlya few lines, and therefore when you at last get down to the verb itcarries some meaning to your mind because you are able to remember agood deal of what has gone before. Now here is a sentence from a popularand excellent German novel--with a slight parenthesis in it. I will makea perfectly literal translation, and throw in the parenthesis-marks andsome hyphens for the assistance of the reader--though in the originalthere are no parenthesis-marks or hyphens, and the reader is left toflounder through to the remote verb the best way he can:

"But when he, upon the street, the(in-satin-and-silk-covered-now-very-unconstrained-after-the-newest-fashioned-dressed)government counselor's wife MET, " etc. , etc. [1]

1. Wenn er aber auf der Strasse der in Sammt und Seide gehuelltenjetz sehr ungenirt nach der neusten mode gekleideten Regierungsrathinbegegnet. 

That is from THE OLD MAMSELLE'S SECRET, by Mrs. Marlitt. And thatsentence is constructed upon the most approved German model. You observehow far that verb is from the reader's base of operations; well, in aGerman newspaper they put their verb away over on the next page; andI have heard that sometimes after stringing along the excitingpreliminaries and parentheses for a column or two, they get in a hurryand have to go to press without getting to the verb at all. Of course, then, the reader is left in a very exhausted and ignorant state. 

We have the Parenthesis disease in our literature, too; and one may seecases of it every day in our books and newspapers: but with us it is themark and sign of an unpracticed writer or a cloudy intellect, whereaswith the Germans it is doubtless the mark and sign of a practiced penand of the presence of that sort of luminous intellectual fogwhich stands for clearness among these people. For surely it is NOTclearness--it necessarily can't be clearness. Even a jury would havepenetration enough to discover that. A writer's ideas must be a gooddeal confused, a good deal out of line and sequence, when he starts outto say that a man met a counselor's wife in the street, and then rightin the midst of this so simple undertaking halts these approachingpeople and makes them stand still until he jots down an inventory of thewoman's dress. That is manifestly absurd. It reminds a person of thosedentists who secure your instant and breathless interest in a tooth bytaking a grip on it with the forceps, and then stand there anddrawl through a tedious anecdote before they give the dreaded jerk. Parentheses in literature and dentistry are in bad taste. 

The Germans have another kind of parenthesis, which they make bysplitting a verb in two and putting half of it at the beginning ofan exciting chapter and the OTHER HALF at the end of it. Can any oneconceive of anything more confusing than that? These things are called"separable verbs. " The German grammar is blistered all over withseparable verbs; and the wider the two portions of one of them arespread apart, the better the author of the crime is pleased with hisperformance. A favorite one is REISTE AB--which means departed. Here isan example which I culled from a novel and reduced to English:

"The trunks being now ready, he DE- after kissing his mother andsisters, and once more pressing to his bosom his adored Gretchen, who, dressed in simple white muslin, with a single tuberose in the amplefolds of her rich brown hair, had tottered feebly down the stairs, stillpale from the terror and excitement of the past evening, but longing tolay her poor aching head yet once again upon the breast of him whom sheloved more dearly than life itself, PARTED. "

However, it is not well to dwell too much on the separable verbs. One issure to lose his temper early; and if he sticks to the subject, and willnot be warned, it will at last either soften his brain or petrifyit. Personal pronouns and adjectives are a fruitful nuisance in thislanguage, and should have been left out. For instance, the same sound, SIE, means YOU, and it means SHE, and it means HER, and it means IT, and it means THEY, and it means THEM. Think of the ragged poverty ofa language which has to make one word do the work of six--and a poorlittle weak thing of only three letters at that. But mainly, think ofthe exasperation of never knowing which of these meanings the speaker istrying to convey. This explains why, whenever a person says SIE to me, Igenerally try to kill him, if a stranger. 

Now observe the Adjective. Here was a case where simplicity would havebeen an advantage; therefore, for no other reason, the inventor of thislanguage complicated it all he could. When we wish to speak of our "goodfriend or friends, " in our enlightened tongue, we stick to the one formand have no trouble or hard feeling about it; but with the Germantongue it is different. When a German gets his hands on an adjective, he declines it, and keeps on declining it until the common sense is alldeclined out of it. It is as bad as Latin. He says, for instance:

SINGULAR

Nominative--Mein gutER Freund, my good friend. Genitives--MeinES GutENFreundES, of my good friend. Dative--MeinEM gutEN Freund, to my goodfriend. Accusative--MeinEN gutEN Freund, my good friend. 

PLURAL

N. --MeinE gutEN FreundE, my good friends. G. --MeinER gutEN FreundE, of my good friends. D. --MeinEN gutEN FreundEN, to my good friends. A. --MeinE gutEN FreundE, my good friends. 

Now let the candidate for the asylum try to memorize those variations, and see how soon he will be elected. One might better go without friendsin Germany than take all this trouble about them. I have shown what abother it is to decline a good (male) friend; well this is only a thirdof the work, for there is a variety of new distortions of the adjectiveto be learned when the object is feminine, and still another when theobject is neuter. Now there are more adjectives in this language thanthere are black cats in Switzerland, and they must all be aselaborately declined as the examples above suggested. Difficult?--troublesome?--these words cannot describe it. I heard aCalifornian student in Heidelberg say, in one of his calmest moods, thathe would rather decline two drinks than one German adjective. 

The inventor of the language seems to have taken pleasure incomplicating it in every way he could think of. For instance, if one iscasually referring to a house, HAUS, or a horse, PFERD, or a dog, HUND, he spells these words as I have indicated; but if he is referring tothem in the Dative case, he sticks on a foolish and unnecessary E andspells them HAUSE, PFERDE, HUNDE. So, as an added E often signifies theplural, as the S does with us, the new student is likely to go on for amonth making twins out of a Dative dog before he discovers his mistake;and on the other hand, many a new student who could ill afford loss, has bought and paid for two dogs and only got one of them, becausehe ignorantly bought that dog in the Dative singular when he reallysupposed he was talking plural--which left the law on the seller's side, of course, by the strict rules of grammar, and therefore a suit forrecovery could not lie. 

In German, all the Nouns begin with a capital letter. Now that is a goodidea; and a good idea, in this language, is necessarily conspicuous fromits lonesomeness. I consider this capitalizing of nouns a good idea, because by reason of it you are almost always able to tell a noun theminute you see it. You fall into error occasionally, because you mistakethe name of a person for the name of a thing, and waste a good deal oftime trying to dig a meaning out of it. German names almost always domean something, and this helps to deceive the student. I translated apassage one day, which said that "the infuriated tigress broke looseand utterly ate up the unfortunate fir forest" (Tannenwald). When I wasgirding up my loins to doubt this, I found out that Tannenwald in thisinstance was a man's name. 

Every noun has a gender, and there is no sense or system in thedistribution; so the gender of each must be learned separately and byheart. There is no other way. To do this one has to have a memory like amemorandum-book. In German, a young lady has no sex, while a turnip has. Think what overwrought reverence that shows for the turnip, and whatcallous disrespect for the girl. See how it looks in print--I translatethis from a conversation in one of the best of the German Sunday-schoolbooks:

"Gretchen. Wilhelm, where is the turnip?

"Wilhelm. She has gone to the kitchen. 

"Gretchen. Where is the accomplished and beautiful English maiden?

"Wilhelm. It has gone to the opera. "

To continue with the German genders: a tree is male, its buds arefemale, its leaves are neuter; horses are sexless, dogs are male, catsare female--tomcats included, of course; a person's mouth, neck, bosom, elbows, fingers, nails, feet, and body are of the male sex, and his headis male or neuter according to the word selected to signify it, and NOTaccording to the sex of the individual who wears it--for in Germany allthe women wear either male heads or sexless ones; a person's nose, lips, shoulders, breast, hands, and toes are of the female sex; and his hair, ears, eyes, chin, legs, knees, heart, and conscience haven't any sexat all. The inventor of the language probably got what he knew about aconscience from hearsay. 

Now, by the above dissection, the reader will see that in Germany aman may THINK he is a man, but when he comes to look into the matterclosely, he is bound to have his doubts; he finds that in sober truthhe is a most ridiculous mixture; and if he ends by trying to comforthimself with the thought that he can at least depend on a third of thismess as being manly and masculine, the humiliating second thought willquickly remind him that in this respect he is no better off than anywoman or cow in the land. 

In the German it is true that by some oversight of the inventor ofthe language, a Woman is a female; but a Wife (Weib) is not--which isunfortunate. A Wife, here, has no sex; she is neuter; so, accordingto the grammar, a fish is HE, his scales are SHE, but a fishwife isneither. To describe a wife as sexless may be called under-description;that is bad enough, but over-description is surely worse. A Germanspeaks of an Englishman as the ENGLÄNNDER; to change the sex, headds INN, and that stands for Englishwoman--ENGLÄNDERINN. That seemsdescriptive enough, but still it is not exact enough for a German; so heprecedes the word with that article which indicates that the creature tofollow is feminine, and writes it down thus: "die Engländerinn, "--whichmeans "the she-Englishwoman. " I consider that that person isover-described. 

Well, after the student has learned the sex of a great number of nouns, he is still in a difficulty, because he finds it impossible to persuadehis tongue to refer to things as "he" and "she, " and "him" and "her, "which it has been always accustomed to refer to as "it. " When he evenframes a German sentence in his mind, with the hims and hers in theright places, and then works up his courage to the utterance-point, itis no use--the moment he begins to speak his tongue flies the track andall those labored males and females come out as "its. " And even when heis reading German to himself, he always calls those things "it, " whereashe ought to read in this way:

TALE OF THE FISHWIFE AND ITS SAD FATE [2]

2. I capitalize the nouns, in the German (and ancient English) fashion. 

It is a bleak Day. Hear the Rain, how he pours, and the Hail, how herattles; and see the Snow, how he drifts along, and of the Mud, howdeep he is! Ah the poor Fishwife, it is stuck fast in the Mire; it hasdropped its Basket of Fishes; and its Hands have been cut by the Scalesas it seized some of the falling Creatures; and one Scale has even gotinto its Eye, and it cannot get her out. It opens its Mouth to cryfor Help; but if any Sound comes out of him, alas he is drowned by theraging of the Storm. And now a Tomcat has got one of the Fishes and shewill surely escape with him. No, she bites off a Fin, she holds her inher Mouth--will she swallow her? No, the Fishwife's brave Mother-dogdeserts his Puppies and rescues the Fin--which he eats, himself, as hisReward. O, horror, the Lightning has struck the Fish-basket; he sets himon Fire; see the Flame, how she licks the doomed Utensil with her redand angry Tongue; now she attacks the helpless Fishwife's Foot--sheburns him up, all but the big Toe, and even SHE is partly consumed; andstill she spreads, still she waves her fiery Tongues; she attacks theFishwife's Leg and destroys IT; she attacks its Hand and destroys HERalso; she attacks the Fishwife's Leg and destroys HER also; she attacksits Body and consumes HIM; she wreathes herself about its Heart and ITis consumed; next about its Breast, and in a Moment SHE is a Cinder; nowshe reaches its Neck--He goes; now its Chin--IT goes; now its Nose--SHEgoes. In another Moment, except Help come, the Fishwife will be no more. Time presses--is there none to succor and save? Yes! Joy, joy, with flying Feet the she-Englishwoman comes! But alas, the generousshe-Female is too late: where now is the fated Fishwife? It has ceasedfrom its Sufferings, it has gone to a better Land; all that is left ofit for its loved Ones to lament over, is this poor smoldering Ash-heap. Ah, woeful, woeful Ash-heap! Let us take him up tenderly, reverently, upon the lowly Shovel, and bear him to his long Rest, with the Prayerthat when he rises again it will be a Realm where he will have one goodsquare responsible Sex, and have it all to himself, instead of having amangy lot of assorted Sexes scattered all over him in Spots. 

There, now, the reader can see for himself that this pronoun business isa very awkward thing for the unaccustomed tongue. I suppose that in alllanguages the similarities of look and sound between words which haveno similarity in meaning are a fruitful source of perplexity to theforeigner. It is so in our tongue, and it is notably the case in theGerman. Now there is that troublesome word VERMÄHLT: to me it has soclose a resemblance--either real or fancied--to three or four otherwords, that I never know whether it means despised, painted, suspected, or married; until I look in the dictionary, and then I find it means thelatter. There are lots of such words and they are a great torment. Toincrease the difficulty there are words which SEEM to resemble eachother, and yet do not; but they make just as much trouble as if theydid. For instance, there is the word VERMIETHEN (to let, to lease, tohire); and the word VERHEIRATHEN (another way of saying to marry). Iheard of an Englishman who knocked at a man's door in Heidelberg andproposed, in the best German he could command, to "verheirathen" thathouse. Then there are some words which mean one thing when you emphasizethe first syllable, but mean something very different if you throw theemphasis on the last syllable. For instance, there is a word whichmeans a runaway, or the act of glancing through a book, according to theplacing of the emphasis; and another word which signifies toASSOCIATE with a man, or to AVOID him, according to where you put theemphasis--and you can generally depend on putting it in the wrong placeand getting into trouble. 

There are some exceedingly useful words in this language. SCHLAG, forexample; and ZUG. There are three-quarters of a column of SCHLAGS in thedictonary, and a column and a half of ZUGS. The word SCHLAG means Blow, Stroke, Dash, Hit, Shock, Clap, Slap, Time, Bar, Coin, Stamp, Kind, Sort, Manner, Way, Apoplexy, Wood-cutting, Enclosure, Field, Forest-clearing. This is its simple and EXACT meaning--that is to say, its restricted, its fettered meaning; but there are ways by whichyou can set it free, so that it can soar away, as on the wings of themorning, and never be at rest. You can hang any word you please toits tail, and make it mean anything you want to. You can beginwith SCHLAG-ADER, which means artery, and you can hang on the wholedictionary, word by word, clear through the alphabet to SCHLAG-WASSER, which means bilge-water--and including SCHLAG-MUTTER, which meansmother-in-law. 

Just the same with ZUG. Strictly speaking, ZUG means Pull, Tug, Draught, Procession, March, Progress, Flight, Direction, Expedition, Train, Caravan, Passage, Stroke, Touch, Line, Flourish, Trait of Character, Feature, Lineament, Chess-move, Organ-stop, Team, Whiff, Bias, Drawer, Propensity, Inhalation, Disposition: but that thing which it does NOTmean--when all its legitimate pennants have been hung on, has not beendiscovered yet. 

One cannot overestimate the usefulness of SCHLAG and ZUG. Armed justwith these two, and the word ALSO, what cannot the foreigner on Germansoil accomplish? The German word ALSO is the equivalent of the Englishphrase "You know, " and does not mean anything at all--in TALK, thoughit sometimes does in print. Every time a German opens his mouth anALSO falls out; and every time he shuts it he bites one in two that wastrying to GET out. 

Now, the foreigner, equipped with these three noble words, is master ofthe situation. Let him talk right along, fearlessly; let him pour hisindifferent German forth, and when he lacks for a word, let him heave aSCHLAG into the vacuum; all the chances are that it fits it like aplug, but if it doesn't let him promptly heave a ZUG after it; the twotogether can hardly fail to bung the hole; but if, by a miracle, theySHOULD fail, let him simply say ALSO! and this will give him a moment'schance to think of the needful word. In Germany, when you load yourconversational gun it is always best to throw in a SCHLAG or two and aZUG or two, because it doesn't make any difference how much the rest ofthe charge may scatter, you are bound to bag something with THEM. Thenyou blandly say ALSO, and load up again. Nothing gives such an airof grace and elegance and unconstraint to a German or an Englishconversation as to scatter it full of "Also's" or "You knows. "

In my note-book I find this entry:

July 1. --In the hospital yesterday, a word of thirteen syllables wassuccessfully removed from a patient--a North German from near Hamburg;but as most unfortunately the surgeons had opened him in the wrongplace, under the impression that he contained a panorama, he died. Thesad event has cast a gloom over the whole community. 

That paragraph furnishes a text for a few remarks about one of the mostcurious and notable features of my subject--the length of German words. Some German words are so long that they have a perspective. Observethese examples:

Freundschaftsbezeigungen. 

Dilettantenaufdringlichkeiten. 

Stadtverordnetenversammlungen. 

These things are not words, they are alphabetical processions. And theyare not rare; one can open a German newspaper at any time and see themmarching majestically across the page--and if he has any imaginationhe can see the banners and hear the music, too. They impart a martialthrill to the meekest subject. I take a great interest in thesecuriosities. Whenever I come across a good one, I stuff it and put it inmy museum. In this way I have made quite a valuable collection. When Iget duplicates, I exchange with other collectors, and thus increase thevariety of my stock. Here are some specimens which I lately bought at anauction sale of the effects of a bankrupt bric-a-brac hunter:

Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen. 

Alterthumswissenschaften. 

Kinderbewahrungsanstalten. 

Unabhängigkeitserklärungen. 

Wiedererstellungbestrebungen. 

Waffenstillstandsunterhandlungen. 

Of course when one of these grand mountain ranges goes stretching acrossthe printed page, it adorns and ennobles that literary landscape--but atthe same time it is a great distress to the new student, for it blocksup his way; he cannot crawl under it, or climb over it, or tunnelthrough it. So he resorts to the dictionary for help, but there is nohelp there. The dictionary must draw the line somewhere--so it leavesthis sort of words out. And it is right, because these long things arehardly legitimate words, but are rather combinations of words, and theinventor of them ought to have been killed. They are compound words withthe hyphens left out. The various words used in building them are inthe dictionary, but in a very scattered condition; so you can hunt thematerials out, one by one, and get at the meaning at last, but it is atedious and harassing business. I have tried this process upon some ofthe above examples. "Freundshaftsbezeigungen" seems to be "Friendshipdemonstrations, " which is only a foolish and clumsy way of saying"demonstrations of friendship. " "Unabhängigkeitserklärungen" seems to be"Independencedeclarations, " which is no improvement upon"Declarations of Independence, " so far as I can see. "Generalstaatsverordnetenversammlungen" seems to be"General-statesrepresentativesmeetings, " as nearly as I can get at it--amere rhythmical, gushy euphemism for "meetings of the legislature, "I judge. We used to have a good deal of this sort of crime in ourliterature, but it has gone out now. We used to speak of a thing as a"never-to-be-forgotten" circumstance, instead of cramping it into thesimple and sufficient word "memorable" and then going calmly about ourbusiness as if nothing had happened. In those days we were not contentto embalm the thing and bury it decently, we wanted to build a monumentover it. 

But in our newspapers the compounding-disease lingers a little to thepresent day, but with the hyphens left out, in the German fashion. Thisis the shape it takes: instead of saying "Mr. Simmons, clerk of thecounty and district courts, was in town yesterday, " the new form putsit thus: "Clerk of the County and District Courts Simmons was in townyesterday. " This saves neither time nor ink, and has an awkwardsound besides. One often sees a remark like this in our papers: "MRS. Assistant District Attorney Johnson returned to her city residenceyesterday for the season. " That is a case of really unjustifiablecompounding; because it not only saves no time or trouble, but confersa title on Mrs. Johnson which she has no right to. But these littleinstances are trifles indeed, contrasted with the ponderous and dismalGerman system of piling jumbled compounds together. I wish to submit thefollowing local item, from a Mannheim journal, by way of illustration:

"In the daybeforeyesterdayshortlyaftereleveno'clock Night, theinthistownstandingtavern called 'The Wagoner' was downburnt. When thefire to the onthedownburninghouseresting Stork's Nest reached, flew theparent Storks away. But when the bytheraging, firesurrounded Nest ITSELFcaught Fire, straightway plunged the quickreturning Mother-Stork intothe Flames and died, her Wings over her young ones outspread. "

Even the cumbersome German construction is not able to take the pathosout of that picture--indeed, it somehow seems to strengthen it. Thisitem is dated away back yonder months ago. I could have used it sooner, but I was waiting to hear from the Father-stork. I am still waiting. 

"ALSO!" If I had not shown that the German is a difficult language, Ihave at least intended to do so. I have heard of an American studentwho was asked how he was getting along with his German, and who answeredpromptly: "I am not getting along at all. I have worked at it hard forthree level months, and all I have got to show for it is one solitaryGerman phrase--'ZWEI GLAS'" (two glasses of beer). He paused for amoment, reflectively; then added with feeling: "But I've got thatSOLID!"

And if I have not also shown that German is a harassing and infuriatingstudy, my execution has been at fault, and not my intent. I heard latelyof a worn and sorely tried American student who used to fly to a certainGerman word for relief when he could bear up under his aggravations nolonger--the only word whose sound was sweet and precious to his ear andhealing to his lacerated spirit. This was the word DAMIT. It was onlythe SOUND that helped him, not the meaning; [3] and so, at last, when helearned that the emphasis was not on the first syllable, his only stayand support was gone, and he faded away and died. 

3. It merely means, in its general sense, "herewith. "

I think that a description of any loud, stirring, tumultuous episodemust be tamer in German than in English. Our descriptive words of thischaracter have such a deep, strong, resonant sound, while their Germanequivalents do seem so thin and mild and energyless. Boom, burst, crash, roar, storm, bellow, blow, thunder, explosion; howl, cry, shout, yell, groan; battle, hell. These are magnificent words; the have a force andmagnitude of sound befitting the things which they describe. But theirGerman equivalents would be ever so nice to sing the children to sleepwith, or else my awe-inspiring ears were made for display and not forsuperior usefulness in analyzing sounds. Would any man want to die in abattle which was called by so tame a term as a SCHLACHT? Or would nota comsumptive feel too much bundled up, who was about to go out, ina shirt-collar and a seal-ring, into a storm which the bird-song wordGEWITTER was employed to describe? And observe the strongest of theseveral German equivalents for explosion--AUSBRUCH. Our word Toothbrushis more powerful than that. It seems to me that the Germans coulddo worse than import it into their language to describe particularlytremendous explosions with. The German word for hell--Hoelle--soundsmore like HELLY than anything else; therefore, how necessarily chipper, frivolous, and unimpressive it is. If a man were told in German to gothere, could he really rise to thee dignity of feeling insulted?

Having pointed out, in detail, the several vices of this language, Inow come to the brief and pleasant task of pointing out its virtues. Thecapitalizing of the nouns I have already mentioned. But far before thisvirtue stands another--that of spelling a word according to the sound ofit. After one short lesson in the alphabet, the student can tell how anyGerman word is pronounced without having to ask; whereas in our languageif a student should inquire of us, "What does B, O, W, spell?" we shouldbe obliged to reply, "Nobody can tell what it spells when you set if offby itself; you can only tell by referring to the context and finding outwhat it signifies--whether it is a thing to shoot arrows with, or a nodof one's head, or the forward end of a boat. "

There are some German words which are singularly and powerfullyeffective. For instance, those which describe lowly, peaceful, andaffectionate home life; those which deal with love, in any and allforms, from mere kindly feeling and honest good will toward the passingstranger, clear up to courtship; those which deal with outdoor Nature, in its softest and loveliest aspects--with meadows and forests, andbirds and flowers, the fragrance and sunshine of summer, and themoonlight of peaceful winter nights; in a word, those which deal withany and all forms of rest, repose, and peace; those also which deal withthe creatures and marvels of fairyland; and lastly and chiefly, inthose words which express pathos, is the language surpassingly richand affective. There are German songs which can make a stranger to thelanguage cry. That shows that the SOUND of the words is correct--itinterprets the meanings with truth and with exactness; and so the ear isinformed, and through the ear, the heart. 

The Germans do not seem to be afraid to repeat a word when it is theright one. They repeat it several times, if they choose. That iswise. But in English, when we have used a word a couple of times in aparagraph, we imagine we are growing tautological, and so we are weakenough to exchange it for some other word which only approximatesexactness, to escape what we wrongly fancy is a greater blemish. Repetition may be bad, but surely inexactness is worse. 

There are people in the world who will take a great deal of trouble topoint out the faults in a religion or a language, and then go blandlyabout their business without suggesting any remedy. I am not that kindof person. I have shown that the German language needs reforming. Verywell, I am ready to reform it. At least I am ready to make the propersuggestions. Such a course as this might be immodest in another; but Ihave devoted upward of nine full weeks, first and last, to a careful andcritical study of this tongue, and thus have acquired a confidence inmy ability to reform it which no mere superficial culture could haveconferred upon me. 

In the first place, I would leave out the Dative case. It confuses theplurals; and, besides, nobody ever knows when he is in the Dative case, except he discover it by accident--and then he does not know when orwhere it was that he got into it, or how long he has been in it, orhow he is ever going to get out of it again. The Dative case is but anornamental folly--it is better to discard it. 

In the next place, I would move the Verb further up to the front. Youmay load up with ever so good a Verb, but I notice that you never reallybring down a subject with it at the present German range--you onlycripple it. So I insist that this important part of speech should bebrought forward to a position where it may be easily seen with the nakedeye. 

Thirdly, I would import some strong words from the English tongue--toswear with, and also to use in describing all sorts of vigorous thingsin a vigorous way. [4]

1. "Verdammt, " and its variations and enlargements, are words whichhave plenty of meaning, but the SOUNDS are so mild and ineffectual thatGerman ladies can use them without sin. German ladies who could not beinduced to commit a sin by any persuasion or compulsion, promptly ripout one of these harmless little words when they tear their dresses ordon't like the soup. It sounds about as wicked as our "My gracious. "German ladies are constantly saying, "Ach! Gott!" "Mein Gott!" "Gott inHimmel!" "Herr Gott" "Der Herr Jesus!" etc. They think our ladies havethe same custom, perhaps; for I once heard a gentle and lovely oldGerman lady say to a sweet young American girl: "The two languages areso alike--how pleasant that is; we say 'Ach! Gott!' you say 'Goddamn. '"

Fourthly, I would reorganizes the sexes, and distribute them accordinglyto the will of the creator. This as a tribute of respect, if nothingelse. 

Fifthly, I would do away with those great long compounded words; orrequire the speaker to deliver them in sections, with intermissions forrefreshments. To wholly do away with them would be best, for ideas aremore easily received and digested when they come one at a time than whenthey come in bulk. Intellectual food is like any other; it is pleasanterand more beneficial to take it with a spoon than with a shovel. 

Sixthly, I would require a speaker to stop when he is done, and nothang a string of those useless "haven sind gewesen gehabt haben gewordenseins" to the end of his oration. This sort of gewgaws undignify aspeech, instead of adding a grace. They are, therefore, an offense, andshould be discarded. 

Seventhly, I would discard the Parenthesis. Also the reparenthesis, there-reparenthesis, and the re-re-re-re-re-reparentheses, and likewisethe final wide-reaching all-enclosing king-parenthesis. I would requireevery individual, be he high or low, to unfold a plain straightforwardtale, or else coil it and sit on it and hold his peace. Infractions ofthis law should be punishable with death. 

And eighthly, and last, I would retain ZUG and SCHLAG, with theirpendants, and discard the rest of the vocabulary. This would simplifythe language. 

I have now named what I regard as the most necessary and importantchanges. These are perhaps all I could be expected to name for nothing;but there are other suggestions which I can and will make in case myproposed application shall result in my being formally employed by thegovernment in the work of reforming the language. 

My philological studies have satisfied me that a gifted person ought tolearn English (barring spelling and pronouncing) in thirty hours, Frenchin thirty days, and German in thirty years. It seems manifest, then, that the latter tongue ought to be trimmed down and repaired. If it isto remain as it is, it ought to be gently and reverently set aside amongthe dead languages, for only the dead have time to learn it. 

A FOURTH OF JULY ORATION IN THE GERMAN TONGUE, DELIVERED AT A BANQUET OFTHE ANGLO-AMERICAN CLUB OF STUDENTS BY THE AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK

Gentlemen: Since I arrived, a month ago, in this old wonderland, thisvast garden of Germany, my English tongue has so often proved a uselesspiece of baggage to me, and so troublesome to carry around, in a countrywhere they haven't the checking system for luggage, that I finally setto work, and learned the German language. Also! Es freut mich dass diesso ist, denn es muss, in ein hauptsächlich degree, höflich sein, dassman auf ein occasion like this, sein Rede in die Sprache des Landesworin he boards, aussprechen soll. Dafuer habe ich, aus reinischeVerlegenheit--no, Vergangenheit--no, I mean Höflichkeit--aus reinisheHöflichkeit habe ich resolved to tackle this business in the Germanlanguage, um Gottes willen! Also! Sie muessen so freundlich sein, undverzeih mich die interlarding von ein oder zwei Englischer Worte, hieund da, denn ich finde dass die deutsche is not a very copious language, and so when you've really got anything to say, you've got to draw on alanguage that can stand the strain. 

Wenn haber man kann nicht meinem Rede Verstehen, so werde ich ihm späterdasselbe uebersetz, wenn er solche Dienst verlangen wollen haben werdensollen sein hätte. (I don't know what wollen haben werden sollen seinhätte means, but I notice they always put it at the end of a Germansentence--merely for general literary gorgeousness, I suppose. )

This is a great and justly honored day--a day which is worthy of theveneration in which it is held by the true patriots of all climes andnationalities--a day which offers a fruitful theme for thought andspeech; und meinem Freunde--no, meinEN FreundEN--meinES FreundES--well, take your choice, they're all the same price; I don't know which one isright--also! ich habe gehabt haben worden gewesen sein, as Goethe saysin his Paradise Lost--ich--ich--that is to say--ich--but let us changecars. 

Also! Die Anblich so viele Grossbrittanischer und Amerikanischerhier zusammengetroffen in Bruderliche concord, ist zwar a welcome andinspiriting spectacle. And what has moved you to it? Can theterse German tongue rise to the expression of this impulse? Is itFreundschaftsbezeigungenstadtverordnetenversammlungenfamilieneigenthümlichkeiten?Nein, O nein! This is a crisp and noble word, but it fails to piercethe marrow of the impulse which has gathered this friendly meeting andproduced diese Anblick--eine Anblich welche ist gut zu sehen--gut fuerdie Augen in a foreign land and a far country--eine Anblick solche alsin die gewöhnliche Heidelberger phrase nennt man ein "schönes Aussicht!"Ja, freilich natürlich wahrscheinlich ebensowohl! Also! Die Aussicht aufdem Koenigsstuhl mehr grösser ist, aber geistlische sprechend nichtso schön, lob' Gott! Because sie sind hier zusammengetroffen, inBruderlichem concord, ein grossen Tag zu feirn, whose high benefits werenot for one land and one locality, but have conferred a measure ofgood upon all lands that know liberty today, and love it. Hundert Jahrevorueber, waren die Engländer und die Amerikaner Feinde; aber heut sindsie herzlichen Freunde, Gott sei Dank! May this good-fellowship endure;may these banners here blended in amity so remain; may they neverany more wave over opposing hosts, or be stained with blood which waskindred, is kindred, and always will be kindred, until a line drawn upona map shall be able to say: "THIS bars the ancestral blood from flowingin the veins of the descendant!"

APPENDIX E. 

Legend of the Castles Called the "Swallow's Nest" and "The Brothers, " asCondensed from the Captain's Tale

In the neighborhood of three hundred years ago the Swallow's Nest andthe larger castle between it and Neckarsteinach were owned and occupiedby two old knights who were twin brothers, and bachelors. They had norelatives. They were very rich. They had fought through the wars andretired to private life--covered with honorable scars. They were honest, honorable men in their dealings, but the people had given them a coupleof nicknames which were very suggestive--Herr Givenaught and HerrHeartless. The old knights were so proud of these names that if aburgher called them by their right ones they would correct them. 

The most renowned scholar in Europe, at the time, was the Herr DoctorFranz Reikmann, who lived in Heidelberg. All Germany was proud of thevenerable scholar, who lived in the simplest way, for great scholars arealways poor. He was poor, as to money, but very rich in his sweet youngdaughter Hildegarde and his library. He had been all his life collectinghis library, book and book, and he lived it as a miser loves his hoardedgold. He said the two strings of his heart were rooted, the one in hisdaughter, the other in his books; and that if either were severed hemust die. Now in an evil hour, hoping to win a marriage portion for hischild, this simple old man had intrusted his small savings to a sharperto be ventured in a glittering speculation. But that was not the worstof it: he signed a paper--without reading it. That is the way with poetsand scholars; they always sign without reading. This cunning paper madehim responsible for heaps of things. The rest was that one night hefound himself in debt to the sharper eight thousand pieces of gold!--anamount so prodigious that it simply stupefied him to think of it. It wasa night of woe in that house. 

"I must part with my library--I have nothing else. So perishes oneheartstring, " said the old man. 

"What will it bring, father?" asked the girl. 

"Nothing! It is worth seven hundred pieces of gold; but by auction itwill go for little or nothing. "

"Then you will have parted with the half of your heart and the joy ofyour life to no purpose, since so mighty a burden of debt will remainbehind. "

"There is no help for it, my child. Our darlings must pass under thehammer. We must pay what we can. "

"My father, I have a feeling that the dear Virgin will come to our help. Let us not lose heart. "

"She cannot devise a miracle that will turn NOTHING into eight thousandgold pieces, and lesser help will bring us little peace. "

"She can do even greater things, my father. She will save us, I know shewill. "

Toward morning, while the old man sat exhausted and asleep in his chairwhere he had been sitting before his books as one who watches by hisbeloved dead and prints the features on his memory for a solace in theaftertime of empty desolation, his daughter sprang into the room andgently woke him, saying--

"My presentiment was true! She will save us. Three times has sheappeared to me in my dreams, and said, 'Go to the Herr Givenaught, go tothe Herr Heartless, ask them to come and bid. ' There, did I not tell youshe would save us, the thrice blessed Virgin!"

Sad as the old man was, he was obliged to laugh. 

"Thou mightest as well appeal to the rocks their castles stand upon asto the harder ones that lie in those men's breasts, my child. THEY bidon books writ in the learned tongues!--they can scarce read their own. "

But Hildegarde's faith was in no wise shaken. Bright and early she wason her way up the Neckar road, as joyous as a bird. 

Meantime Herr Givenaught and Herr Heartless were having an earlybreakfast in the former's castle--the Sparrow's Nest--and flavoringit with a quarrel; for although these twins bore a love for each otherwhich almost amounted to worship, there was one subject upon which theycould not touch without calling each other hard names--and yet it wasthe subject which they oftenest touched upon. 

"I tell you, " said Givenaught, "you will beggar yourself yet with yourinsane squanderings of money upon what you choose to consider poor andworthy objects. All these years I have implored you to stop this foolishcustom and husband your means, but all in vain. You are always lyingto me about these secret benevolences, but you never have managed todeceive me yet. Every time a poor devil has been set upon his feet Ihave detected your hand in it--incorrigible ass!"

"Every time you didn't set him on his feet yourself, you mean. Where Igive one unfortunate a little private lift, you do the same for a dozen. The idea of YOUR swelling around the country and petting yourself withthe nickname of Givenaught--intolerable humbug! Before I would be sucha fraud as that, I would cut my right hand off. Your life is a continuallie. But go on, I have tried MY best to save you from beggaring yourselfby your riotous charities--now for the thousandth time I wash my handsof the consequences. A maundering old fool! that's what you are. "

"And you a blethering old idiot!" roared Givenaught, springing up. 

"I won't stay in the presence of a man who has no more delicacy than tocall me such names. Mannerless swine!"

So saying, Herr Heartless sprang up in a passion. But some luckyaccident intervened, as usual, to change the subject, and the dailyquarrel ended in the customary daily living reconciliation. Thegray-headed old eccentrics parted, and Herr Heartless walked off to hisown castle. 

Half an hour later, Hildegarde was standing in the presence of HerrGivenaught. He heard her story, and said--

"I am sorry for you, my child, but I am very poor, I care nothing forbookish rubbish, I shall not be there. "

He said the hard words kindly, but they nearly broke poor Hildegarde'sheart, nevertheless. When she was gone the old heartbreaker muttered, rubbing his hands--

"It was a good stroke. I have saved my brother's pocket this time, in spite of him. Nothing else would have prevented his rushing off torescue the old scholar, the pride of Germany, from his trouble. The poorchild won't venture near HIM after the rebuff she has received from hisbrother the Givenaught. "

But he was mistaken. The Virgin had commanded, and Hildegarde wouldobey. She went to Herr Heartless and told her story. But he saidcoldly--

"I am very poor, my child, and books are nothing to me. I wish you well, but I shall not come. "

When Hildegarde was gone, he chuckled and said--

"How my fool of a soft-headed soft-hearted brother would rage if he knewhow cunningly I have saved his pocket. How he would have flown to theold man's rescue! But the girl won't venture near him now. "

When Hildegarde reached home, her father asked her how she hadprospered. She said--

"The Virgin has promised, and she will keep her word; but not in the wayI thought. She knows her own ways, and they are best. "

The old man patted her on the head, and smiled a doubting smile, but hehonored her for her brave faith, nevertheless. 

II

Next day the people assembled in the great hall of the Ritter tavern, to witness the auction--for the proprietor had said the treasure ofGermany's most honored son should be bartered away in no meaner place. Hildegarde and her father sat close to the books, silent and sorrowful, and holding each other's hands. There was a great crowd of peoplepresent. The bidding began--

"How much for this precious library, just as it stands, all complete?"called the auctioneer. 

"Fifty pieces of gold!"

"A hundred!"

"Two hundred. "

"Three!"

"Four!"

"Five hundred!"

"Five twenty-five. "

A brief pause. 

"Five forty!"

A longer pause, while the auctioneer redoubled his persuasions. 

"Five-forty-five!"

A heavy drag--the auctioneer persuaded, pleaded, implored--it wasuseless, everybody remained silent--

"Well, then--going, going--one--two--"

"Five hundred and fifty!"

This in a shrill voice, from a bent old man, all hung with rags, andwith a green patch over his left eye. Everybody in his vicinityturned and gazed at him. It was Givenaught in disguise. He was using adisguised voice, too. 

"Good!" cried the auctioneer. "Going, going--one--two--"

"Five hundred and sixty!"

This, in a deep, harsh voice, from the midst of the crowd at the otherend of the room. The people near by turned, and saw an old man, in astrange costume, supporting himself on crutches. He wore a long whitebeard, and blue spectacles. It was Herr Heartless, in disguise, andusing a disguised voice. 

"Good again! Going, going--one--"

"Six hundred!"

Sensation. The crowd raised a cheer, and some one cried out, "Go it, Green-patch!" This tickled the audience and a score of voices shouted, "Go it, Green-patch!"

"Going--going--going--third and last call--one--two--"

"Seven hundred!"

"Huzzah!--well done, Crutches!" cried a voice. The crowd took it up, andshouted altogether, "Well done, Crutches!"

"Splendid, gentlemen! you are doing magnificently. Going, going--"

"A thousand!"

"Three cheers for Green-patch! Up and at him, Crutches!"

"Going--going--"

"Two thousand!"

And while the people cheered and shouted, "Crutches" muttered, "Who canthis devil be that is fighting so to get these useless books?--But nomatter, he sha'n't have them. The pride of Germany shall have his booksif it beggars me to buy them for him. "

"Going, going, going--"

"Three thousand!"

"Come, everybody--give a rouser for Green-patch!"

And while they did it, "Green-patch" muttered, "This cripple is plainlya lunatic; but the old scholar shall have his books, nevertheless, though my pocket sweat for it. "

"Going--going--"

"Four thousand!"

"Huzza!"

"Five thousand!"

"Huzza!"

"Six thousand!"

"Huzza!"

"Seven thousand!"

"Huzza!"

"EIGHT thousand!"

"We are saved, father! I told you the Holy Virgin would keep her word!""Blessed be her sacred name!" said the old scholar, with emotion. Thecrowd roared, "Huzza, huzza, huzza--at him again, Green-patch!"

"Going--going--"

"TEN thousand!" As Givenaught shouted this, his excitement was sogreat that he forgot himself and used his natural voice. His brotherrecognized it, and muttered, under cover of the storm of cheers--

"Aha, you are there, are you, besotted old fool? Take the books, I knowwhat you'll do with them!"

So saying, he slipped out of the place and the auction was at an end. Givenaught shouldered his way to Hildegarde, whispered a word inher ear, and then he also vanished. The old scholar and his daughterembraced, and the former said, "Truly the Holy Mother has done morethan she promised, child, for she has given you a splendid marriageportion--think of it, two thousand pieces of gold!"

"And more still, " cried Hildegarde, "for she has given you back yourbooks; the stranger whispered me that he would none of them--'thehonored son of Germany must keep them, ' so he said. I would I might haveasked his name and kissed his hand and begged his blessing; but he wasOur Lady's angel, and it is not meet that we of earth should venturespeech with them that dwell above. "

APPENDIX F. 

German Journals The daily journals of Hamburg, Frankfort, Baden, Munich, and Augsburg are all constructed on the same general plan. I speak ofthese because I am more familiar with them than with any other Germanpapers. They contain no "editorials" whatever; no "personals"--and thisis rather a merit than a demerit, perhaps; no funny-paragraph column;no police-court reports; no reports of proceedings of higher courts;no information about prize-fights or other dog-fights, horse-races, walking-machines, yachting-contents, rifle-matches, or other sportingmatters of any sort; no reports of banquet speeches; no department ofcurious odds and ends of floating fact and gossip; no "rumors" aboutanything or anybody; no prognostications or prophecies about anything oranybody; no lists of patents granted or sought, or any reference tosuch things; no abuse of public officials, big or little, or complaintsagainst them, or praises of them; no religious columns Saturdays, norehash of cold sermons Mondays; no "weather indications"; no "localitem" unveiling of what is happening in town--nothing of a local nature, indeed, is mentioned, beyond the movements of some prince, or theproposed meeting of some deliberative body. 

After so formidable a list of what one can't find in a German daily, the question may well be asked, What CAN be found in it? It is easilyanswered: A child's handful of telegrams, mainly about European nationaland international political movements; letter-correspondence about thesame things; market reports. There you have it. That is what a Germandaily is made of. A German daily is the slowest and saddest anddreariest of the inventions of man. Our own dailies infuriate thereader, pretty often; the German daily only stupefies him. Once aweek the German daily of the highest class lightens up its heavycolumns--that is, it thinks it lightens them up--with a profound, anabysmal, book criticism; a criticism which carries you down, down, downinto the scientific bowels of the subject--for the German critic isnothing if not scientific--and when you come up at last and scent thefresh air and see the bonny daylight once more, you resolve without adissenting voice that a book criticism is a mistaken way to lighten upa German daily. Sometimes, in place of the criticism, the first-classdaily gives you what it thinks is a gay and chipper essay--about ancientGrecian funeral customs, or the ancient Egyptian method of tarring amummy, or the reasons for believing that some of the peoples who existedbefore the flood did not approve of cats. These are not unpleasantsubjects; they are not uninteresting subjects; they are even excitingsubjects--until one of these massive scientists gets hold of them. Hesoon convinces you that even these matters can be handled in such a wayas to make a person low-spirited. 

As I have said, the average German daily is made up solely ofcorrespondences--a trifle of it by telegraph, the rest of it by mail. Every paragraph has the side-head, "London, " "Vienna, " or some othertown, and a date. And always, before the name of the town, is placeda letter or a sign, to indicate who the correspondent is, so that theauthorities can find him when they want to hang him. Stars, crosses, triangles, squares, half-moons, suns--such are some of the signs used bycorrespondents. 

Some of the dailies move too fast, others too slowly. For instance, myHeidelberg daily was always twenty-four hours old when it arrived atthe hotel; but one of my Munich evening papers used to come a fulltwenty-four hours before it was due. 

Some of the less important dailies give one a tablespoonful of acontinued story every day; it is strung across the bottom of the page, in the French fashion. By subscribing for the paper for five years Ijudge that a man might succeed in getting pretty much all of the story. 

If you ask a citizen of Munich which is the best Munich daily journal, he will always tell you that there is only one good Munich daily, andthat it is published in Augsburg, forty or fifty miles away. It is likesaying that the best daily paper in New York is published out in NewJersey somewhere. Yes, the Augsburg ALLGEMEINE ZEITUNG is "the bestMunich paper, " and it is the one I had in my mind when I was describinga "first-class German daily" above. The entire paper, opened out, is notquite as large as a single page of the New York HERALD. It is printed onboth sides, of course; but in such large type that its entire contentscould be put, in HERALD type, upon a single page of the HERALD--andthere would still be room enough on the page for the ZEITUNG's"supplement" and some portion of the ZEITUNG's next day's contents. 

Such is the first-class daily. The dailies actually printed in Munichare all called second-class by the public. If you ask which is the bestof these second-class papers they say there is no difference; one is asgood as another. I have preserved a copy of one of them; it iscalled the MÜNCHENER TAGES-ANZEIGER, and bears date January 25, 1879. Comparisons are odious, but they need not be malicious; and without anymalice I wish to compare this journal, published in a German city of170, 000 inhabitants, with journals of other countries. I know of noother way to enable the reader to "size" the thing. 

A column of an average daily paper in America contains from 1, 800 to2, 500 words; the reading-matter in a single issue consists of from25, 000 to 50, 000 words. The reading-matter in my copy of the Munichjournal consists of a total of 1, 654 words --for I counted them. Thatwould be nearly a column of one of our dailies. A single issue of thebulkiest daily newspaper in the world--the London TIMES--often contains100, 000 words of reading-matter. Considering that the DAILY ANZEIGERissues the usual twenty-six numbers per month, the reading matter in asingle number of the London TIMES would keep it in "copy" two months anda half. 

The ANZEIGER is an eight-page paper; its page is one inch wider and oneinch longer than a foolscap page; that is to say, the dimensions of itspage are somewhere between those of a schoolboy's slate and a lady'spocket handkerchief. One-fourth of the first page is taken up with theheading of the journal; this gives it a rather top-heavy appearance;the rest of the first page is reading-matter; all of the second page isreading-matter; the other six pages are devoted to advertisements. 

The reading-matter is compressed into two hundred and five small-picalines, and is lighted up with eight pica headlines. The bill of fareis as follows: First, under a pica headline, to enforce attention andrespect, is a four-line sermon urging mankind to remember that, althoughthey are pilgrims here below, they are yet heirs of heaven; and that"When they depart from earth they soar to heaven. " Perhaps a four-linesermon in a Saturday paper is the sufficient German equivalent of theeight or ten columns of sermons which the New-Yorkers get in theirMonday morning papers. The latest news (two days old) follows thefour-line sermon, under the pica headline "Telegrams"--these are"telegraphed" with a pair of scissors out of the AUGSBURGER ZEITUNG ofthe day before. These telegrams consist of fourteen and two-thirds linesfrom Berlin, fifteen lines from Vienna, and two and five-eights linesfrom Calcutta. Thirty-three small-pica lines of telegraphic news in adaily journal in a King's Capital of one hundred and seventy thousandinhabitants is surely not an overdose. Next we have the pica heading, "News of the Day, " under which the following facts are set forth: PrinceLeopold is going on a visit to Vienna, six lines; Prince Arnulph iscoming back from Russia, two lines; the Landtag will meet at ten o'clockin the morning and consider an election law, three lines and one wordover; a city government item, five and one-half lines; prices of ticketsto the proposed grand Charity Ball, twenty-three lines--for this oneitem occupies almost one-fourth of the entire first page; there is to bea wonderful Wagner concert in Frankfurt-on-the-Main, with an orchestraof one hundred and eight instruments, seven and one-half lines. Thatconcludes the first page. Eighty-five lines, altogether, on that page, including three headlines. About fifty of those lines, as one perceives, deal with local matters; so the reporters are not overworked. 

Exactly one-half of the second page is occupied with an opera criticism, fifty-three lines (three of them being headlines), and "Death Notices, "ten lines. 

The other half of the second page is made up of two paragraphs underthe head of "Miscellaneous News. " One of these paragraphs tells about aquarrel between the Czar of Russia and his eldest son, twenty-one anda half lines; and the other tells about the atrocious destruction of apeasant child by its parents, forty lines, or one-fifth of the total ofthe reading-matter contained in the paper. 

Consider what a fifth part of the reading-matter of an American dailypaper issued in a city of one hundred and seventy thousand inhabitantsamounts to! Think what a mass it is. Would any one suppose I could sosnugly tuck away such a mass in a chapter of this book that it would bedifficult to find it again if the reader lost his place? Surely not. I will translate that child-murder word for word, to give the reader arealizing sense of what a fifth part of the reading-matter of a Munichdaily actually is when it comes under measurement of the eye:

"From Oberkreuzberg, January 21st, the DONAU ZEITUNG receives a longaccount of a crime, which we shortened as follows: In Rametuach, a village near Eppenschlag, lived a young married couple with twochildren, one of which, a boy aged five, was born three years before themarriage. For this reason, and also because a relative at Iggensbach hadbequeathed M400 ($100) to the boy, the heartless father considered himin the way; so the unnatural parents determined to sacrifice him in thecruelest possible manner. They proceeded to starve him slowly to death, meantime frightfully maltreating him--as the village people now makeknown, when it is too late. The boy was shut in a hole, and whenpeople passed by he cried, and implored them to give him bread. Hislong-continued tortures and deprivations destroyed him at last, on thethird of January. The sudden (sic) death of the child created suspicion, the more so as the body was immediately clothed and laid upon the bier. Therefore the coroner gave notice, and an inquest was held on the 6th. What a pitiful spectacle was disclosed then! The body was a completeskeleton. The stomach and intestines were utterly empty; they containednothing whatsoever. The flesh on the corpse was not as thick as the backof a knife, and incisions in it brought not one drop of blood. Therewas not a piece of sound skin the size of a dollar on the whole body;wounds, scars, bruises, discolored extravasated blood, everywhere--evenon the soles of the feet there were wounds. The cruel parents assertedthat the boy had been so bad that they had been obliged to use severepunishments, and that he finally fell over a bench and broke his neck. However, they were arrested two weeks after the inquest and put in theprison at Deggendorf. "

Yes, they were arrested "two weeks after the inquest. " What a home soundthat has. That kind of police briskness rather more reminds me of mynative land than German journalism does. 

I think a German daily journal doesn't do any good to speak of, but atthe same time it doesn't do any harm. That is a very large merit, andshould not be lightly weighted nor lightly thought of. 

The German humorous papers are beautifully printed upon fine paper, andthe illustrations are finely drawn, finely engraved, and are not vapidlyfunny, but deliciously so. So also, generally speaking, are the two orthree terse sentences which accompany the pictures. I remember one ofthese pictures: A most dilapidated tramp is ruefully contemplating somecoins which lie in his open palm. He says: "Well, begging is gettingplayed out. Only about five marks ($1. 25) for the whole day; many anofficial makes more!" And I call to mind a picture of a commercialtraveler who is about to unroll his samples:

MERCHANT (pettishly). --NO, don't. I don't want to buy anything!

DRUMMER. --If you please, I was only going to show you--

MERCHANT. --But I don't wish to see them!

DRUMMER (after a pause, pleadingly). --But do you you mind letting MElook at them! I haven't seen them for three weeks!