IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 11.25 tti|28 [to ^^" itt m u ■*0 25 22 2.0 U_il.6 Photographic Sciences Corporation \ 4 ^ V \ 23 WtST MAM STRRT WttSm,N.Y. USM (716)in-4S03 '^ ^ .^ * .^ .**<. c ^.<^ k ^ Transparence Quality of prir Qualit^ inigale de I'impression Includes supplementary materii Comprend du mat6rlei suppiimentaire Only edition available/ Seule Mition disponible r~7\ Showthrough/ r~~] Quality of print varies/ r~~| Includes supplementary material/ I I Only edition available/ D Pages wholly or partially obscured by errata slips, tissues, etc.. have been ref limed to ensure the bost possible image/ Les pages totalement ou partieilement obscurcies par un feuiliet d'errata. une pelure. etc., ont 6ti film^es A nouveau de faqon d obtenir la meilleure image possible. The tot Thai poi oft flln Orif bef the sior oth first sior or I Tha shal TIN whi Mai diffi anti bag! righi requ met This item is filmed at the reduction ratio checked below/ Ce document est film* au taux de reduction indiquA ci-dessous. 10X 14X 18X 22X 26X 30X v/ 12X 16X 20X 24X 28X 32X Th« copy fHincd hw haa b««n raproduoMl thanks to tha flanaroahy of: UnivtnHy of SMkalehnran tokatoon L'axamplaira film* fut raproduH grica i la 04n«roaitA da: Unhrtnity of SMkatdiMMNi Ttia imagaa appaaring hara ara tha baat quality poaalbia conaidaring tha condition and laflihllity of tha original copy and in kaaping with tha filming contract apacif icatlona. Original copiaa in printad papar covara ara filmad baginning with tha front covar and anding on tha laat paga with a printad or illuatratad Impraa- aion, or tha back covar whan approprlata. All othar original copiaa ara filmad baginning on tha firat paga with a printad or liluatratad Impraa- slon. and anding on tha laat paga with a printad or illuatratad impraaaion. Laa imagaa auivantas ont AtA raprodultaa avac la plus grand soln. compta tanu da la condition at da la rtattatA da l'axamplaira film*, at mn conformitA avac las conditions du contrat da filmaga. Las axamplairas originaux dont la couvarture an papiar aat imprimAa sont filmAs an commandant par la pramiar plat at an tarminant soit par la darniAra paga qui comporta una amprainta d'impraaalon ou d'illustration. soit par la sacond plat, salon la cas. Tous las autras axamplairas originaux sont filmAs an commandant par la pramlAra paga qui comporta una amprainta d'impraaalon ou d'illustration at an tarminant par la darniAra paga qui comporta una talla amprainta. Tha laat racordad frama on aach microficha shall contain tha symbol -^^ (moaning "CON- TINUED"), or tha symbol ▼ (moaning "END"), whichavar applias. Un das symbolas suivants apparaftra sur la darniAra imaga da chaqua microficha, salon la cas: la symbols — »> signifia "A SUIVRE", la symbols ▼ signifia "FIN". Maps, plataa, charts, ate, may ba filmad at diffarant raduction ratios. Thoaa too larga to ba antlraly includad In ona axpoaura ara filmad baginning in tha uppar laft hand cornar, laft to right and top to bottom, as many framas as raquirad. Tha following diagrams illuatrata tha mathod: Las cartas, planchas, tablaaux. ate. peuvant Atra filmAs A das taux da rAduction diffArents. Lorsqua la documant ast trop grand pour Atra raproduit an un saul clichA. il ast f ilmA A partir da I'angla supAriaur gaucha, da gauche A droits, at da haut an bas, an prenant la nombre d'imagas nAcsssaira. Las diagrammes suivants illustrant la mAthoda. 'v-'f-. r 2 3 l':i:t.:' : :■ i . 3 32X t 2 3 5 6 ,< ■^: [ '•; i^- ■,=4*»p^|'* 'S^a^Hia^s*- ^i't ir^^m. A TRAMP ABROAD; ILLU8TRATBD BT W. FR. BROWK, TRUB WITJ.IAMR, B. DAT AITD OTBU ARTISTS — WITH AI^O THRBB OR FOUR PIOTURBS MADB BT TUB AUTHOR OF THIS BOOK, WITHOUT OUTSIOB BBLP. BT MARK T\A/^AIN, (BAMUBL L. OLBMBMg.) ROSE PUBLISHING COMPANY. ^ * ntlNnO AHDBOUlfO HUNTER. &0S£ & OO, voBona ' i ! A TRAMP ABROAD. CHAPTER L ONE d»y it ooetirred to me that it had been many yean tinM the world had been afforded the spectacle of a man adven* turous enough to undertake a journey through Europe on foot. After much thought, I decided that I was a person fitted to fur* nish to mankind this spectacle. So I determined to do it. Thia was in March, 1878. I looked about me for the right sort of person to accompany me in the capacity of agent, and finally hired a Mr. Harris for this service. It was also my purpose to study art while in Europe. Mr. Harris was in sympathy with me in this. He was as much of an enthusiast in art as I was, and not less anxious to learn to paint. I desired to learn the German language ; so did Harris. Toward the middle of April we sailed in the Holiatiaj Capi. Brandt, and had a very pleasant trip indeed. After a brief rest at Hamburg, we made preparation! ^r? * long pedestrian trip southward in the soft spring weather, bu^ ;«% the last moment we changed the programme, for private reasonai and took4;he express train. We made a short halt at FrankfortH>n-the-Main, and found ii an interesting city. I would have liked to visit the birth-place of Guttenberg, but it could not be done, as no memorandum of the Bite of the house has been kept. So we spent an hour in the Goethe mansion instead. The city permits this house to belong to private parties, instead of gracing and dignifying herself with the honor of possessing and protecting it. Frankfort is one of the sixteen cities which have the diiti&O* tion of being the place where the following incident cicounrecL Charlemagne, while chasing the Saxone^ (as he said,) or beinf ehased bv th*»Tn. ^•' ' r '.• of ih*» river 1 A TB\in> ABROAD. at dawn, In a fog. The enemy were either before him or behind him ; but in any case he wanted to get across, very badly. He would have given anything for a guide, but none was to be had. Presently he saw a deer, followed by her young, approach the water. He watched her, judging that she would seek a ford, and he was right. She waded over, and the army followed. Ho a great Prankish victory or defeat was gained or avoided ; and in order to commemorate the episode, Charlomagne commanded a city to be built there, which he named Frankfort, — the ford of the Franks. None of the other cities where this event happened were named from it. This is good evidence that Frankfort was the first place it occurred at. Frankfort has another distinction, — It is the birthplace of the German ali)habet : or at least of the German word for alphabet, — Buehstaben. They say that the first movable types were made on birch sticks, — Buchatabe, — hence the name. I was taught a lesson in political economy in Frankfort. 1 had brought from home a box containing a thousand very cheap cigars. By way of experiment, I stepped into a little shop in a queer old back street, took four gaily decorated boxes of wax matches and three cigars, and laid down a silver piece worth 48 cents. The man gave me 43 cents change. In Frankfort everybody wears clean clothes, and I think we noticed that this strange thing was the case in Hamburg too, and in the villages along the road. Even in the narrowest and poor- est and most ancient quarters of Frankfort neat and clean clothes were the rule. The little children of both sexes were nearly always nice enough to take into a body's lap. And as fbr the uniforms of the soldiers, they were newness and brightness carried to perfection. One could never detect a smirch or a grain of dust upon them. The street car conductors and drivers wore pretty unifo ms which seemed to be just out of the band* box, and the> manners were as fine as their clothes. In one of the shops 1 had the luck to stumble upon a book which has charmed me nearly to death. It is entitled '^The Legends of the Rhine from Basle to Rotterdam, by F. J. Kiefer } Translated by L. W. Garnham, B. A." All tourists mention the Rhine legends, — in that sort of way which quietly pretends that the mentioner has been familiar A TBAMV ABROAD* with them all hit life, and that the reader cannot poniblj be Ignorant of them, — but no touriit ever t$ll9 them. So thia little book fed me in a very hungry place ; and I, in my turn, intend to feed my reader, with one or two little lunches from the same larder. 1 shall not mar Oamham's translation by meddling with its English ; for the most toothsome thing about it is its quaint fashion of building English sentences on the German plan, — and punctuating them according to no plan at all. In the chapter devoted to " Legends of Frankfort," I find the following : '^THB KNAVa OF BBRGRN/* ''In Frankfort at the Romer was a great mask-ball, at the coronation festival, and in the illuminated saloon, the clanging music invited to dance, and splendidly appeared the rich toileta and charms of the ladies, and the festively costumed Princes and , Knights. All seemed pleasure, joy, and roguish gayety, only one of the numerous guests had a gloomy exterior ; but exactly the black armor in which he walked about excited general attention, and his tall figure, as well as the noble propriety of his move* monts, attracted especially the regards of the ladies. Who the Knight was ? Nobody could guess, for his Visier was well closed, and nothing made him recognizable. Proud and yet modest he advanced to the Empress : bowed on one knee before her seat, and begged for the favor of a waits with the Queen of the festival. And she allowed his request. With light and graeeful steps he danced through the long saloon, with %he sovereign who thought never to have found a more dexterous and excellent dancer. But also by the grace of his manner, and fine conversation he knew to win the Queen, and she graciously accorded him a second dance for which he begged, a third, and a fourth, as well as others were nut refused him. How all regarded the happy dancer, how many envied him the high favor; how increased curiosity, who the masked knight could be. Also the Emperor became more and more excited with ourioa* ity, and with great suspense one awaited the hour, when accord* ing to mask-law, each masked guest must make himself known. This moment came, but although all others had unmasked ; the secret knight still refused to allow his features to be seen, tiU at last the Queen driven by curiosity, and vexed at the obatinate r*> If A TBIMP ABBOAD. ftual, oommandttd him to op«n hia Vitier. He opened it, and n — been empty ever since ; a log house, with a plank roof— just one big room, and no more ; no ceiling^nothing between the rafters and the floor. Well, one Sunday morning I was sitting out here in front of my cabin. With my cat, taking the sun, and looking at the bliie hills, and listening to the leaves rustling so lonely in the trees, and thinking of the home away yonder in the States^ and I hadn't heard from in thirteen years, when a blue jay lit on that house, with an acorn in his mouth, and says, ' Hello, I reckon I've struck something.' When he spoke, the acorn droppod out of his mouth and rolled down the roof, of course, but he didn't care ; his mind was all on the thing he had struck. It was a knot-hole in the roof. He cocked his head to one side, shut one eye and put the other one to the hole^ like a 'possum looking down a jug; then he glanced up with his bright eyes, gave a wink or two with his wings — which signifies gratification, you understand, — and says, * I^ looks like a hole, it's located like a hole, — blamed if I don't believe it is a hole I' '' Then he cocked his head down and took another look ; he glances up perfectly joyful, this time ; winks his wings and his tail both, and says, ' 0, no, this ain't no fat thing, I reckon 1 If I ain't in luck ! — why it's a perfectly elegant hole 1' So he flew down and got that acorn, and fetched it up and dropped it in, and was just tilting his head back, with the heavenliest smile on his face, when all of a sudden he was paralyzed into a listening attitude and that smile faded gradually out of his countenance like breath ofifn a razor, and the queerest look of surprise took Itt place. Then he says/ Why, I didn't hear it fall r HeoockeA *-k. A TEiMP ABBOiD. IB B whem he is Ml ay ain't human, ['m going to tell pxikget oorreotly, re. Seven year* id away. There >g house, with a ceiling — nothing nday morning I Y cat, taUng the g to the leaves the home away I thirteen years, in his mouth, ing.' When he 'olled down the all on tho thing He cocked his one to the hole^ led up with his which signifies iks like a hole, it ia a hole I' ,other look; he wings and his I reckon ! If I 1' So he flew dropped it in, inliest smile on to a listening s countenance surprise took 1' He oockMl hii «T« at the hole again, and took a long look ; raised ap and •hook his head ; stepped around to the other side of the hole and took another look from that side ; shook his head again. He studied a while, then he just went into the details— walked round and round the hole and spied into it from every point of the oompass. No use. Now he took a thinking attitude on the comb of the roof and scratched the back of his head with his right ibot a minute, and finally says, ' Well, it's too many for me, that's certain; must be a mighty long hole; however,! ain't, got no time to fool aroimd here, I got to 'tend to business ; I reckon it's all right— chance it, anyway.' " So he flew off and fetched another acorn and dropped it in, and tried to flirt his eye to the hole quick enough to see what become of it, but he was too late. He held his eye there aa much as a minute ; then he raised up and sighed, and says, ' Con' •ound it, I don't seem to understand this thing, no way ; however) I'll tackle her again.' He fetched another acorn, and done his level best to see what become of it, but he couldn't. He says, < Well, / never struck no such a hole as this, before ; I'm of the ojiinion it's a totally new kind of a hole.' Then he begun to get mad. He held in for a spell, walking up and down the comb of the roof and shaking his head and muttering to himself ; but his feelings got the upper hand of him, presently, and he broke loose and cussed himself black in the face. I never see a bird take on so about a little thing. When he got through he walks to the hole and looks in ; gain for half a minute ; then he says, * Well, you're a long hole, and a deep hole, and a mighty singular hole altogether — but I've started in to fill you, and I'm d — d if I don^t fill you, if it takes a hundred years 1' • - " And with that, away he went. You never see a bird work so since you was bom. He laid into his work like a nigger, and the way he hove acorns into that hole for about two hours and a half was one of the most exciting and astonishing spectacles I ever struck. He never stopped to take a look any more— he just hove 'em m and went for more. Well at last he could hardly flop his wings, he was so tuckered out. He comes a-drooping down, once more, sweating like an ice-pitcher, drops his acorn in and says, ' Now I guess I've got the bulge on you by this time 1* So he benfc down for a look. If you'll believe mo, when hia head t6 A TRUf? ABROAD. eome up again he was just pale with rage. He says, ' I've shoveled Acoms enough in there to keep the family thirty years, and if I can see a sign of one of 'em 1 wish I may land in a museum with » belly full of sawdust in two minutes I' " He just had strength enough to crawl up on to the comb and lean his back agin the chiml>ly, and then he collected his impres- sionf and begim to free his mind. I see in a second that what 1 had mistook for profanity in the mines was only just the rudi- ments', as you may say. " Another jay was going by, and heard him doing his devotions, and stops to inquire *what was up. The sufferer, told him the whole circumstance, and says, * Now yonder's the hole, and if you don't believe me, go and look for yourself.' So this fellow went and looked, and tsomes back and says, ' How many did you say you put in there ?' ' Not any less than two tons,' says the sufferer. The other jay went and looked again. He couldn't seem to make it out, so he raised a yell, and three more jays . oome. They all examined the hole, they all made the sufferer tell it over again, then they all discussed it, and got off as many leather-headed opinions about it as an average crowd of humans could have done. '* lliey called in more jays j then more and more, till pretty soon this whole region 'peared to have a blue flush about it. . There must have been five thousand of them ; and such another jawing and disputing and ripping and cussing, you never heard. Every jay in the whole lot put his eye to the hole and delivered a more chuckle headed opinion about the mystery than the jay that went there before him. They examined the house all over, too. The door was standing half open, and at last one old jay liappened to go and light on it and look in. Of course that knocked the mystery galley-west in a second. There lay the acorns, scattered all over the floor. He flopped his wings and raised a whoop. * Come here I' he says, ' Come here, everybody j bang'd if this fool hasn't been trying to fill up a house with acorns I' They all came a-swooping down like a blue cloud, and as each fellow lit on the door and took a glance, the whole absur- dity of the contract that that first jay had tackled hit him home and he fell over backwards suffocating with laughter, and the next jay took his place and done the same. A TBAMP ABROAD. 17 ** Well, sir, they roosted around here on the honse-top and th« trees for an hour, and guffawed over that thing like human beings. It ain't any use to tell me a blue-jay hasn't got a sense of humor, because I kno# better. And memory, too. They brought jays -here from all over the United States to look down that hole, erery summer for three years. Other birds, too. And they could all see the point, except an owl that come from Nova Scotia to visit the Yo Semite, and he took this thing in on hit way back. He said he couldn't see anything funny in it, • But then he was a good deal disappointed about Yo Semite, too." CHAPTER IV. THE summer semester was in full tide ; consequently the mot! frequent figure in and about Heidelberg was the student* Most of the students were Germans, of course, but the represen* tativQS of foreign lands were very numerous. They hailed from every corner of the globe — for instruction is cheap in Heidelberg, and so is living, too. The Anglo-American Club, composed of British and American students, had twenty-five members, and there was still much material left to draw from. Nine-tenths of the Heidelberg students wore no badge or uniform ; the other tenth wore caps of various colors, and belonged to social organizations called "corps." There were five corps, each with a color of its own ; there were whit^ caps, blue caps, and red, yellow, and green ones. The famous duel-fighting is confined to the " corps" boys. The '' kneip'^ seems to be a specialty of theirs, toa Kneips are held, now and then, to \ celebrate great occasions — like the election of a beer kvag, for instance. The solemnity is simple ; the five corps assemble at night, and at a signal they all fall loading themselves with beer, out of pint-mugs, as fast as possible, and each man keeps his own count — usually by laying aside a lucifer match for each mug he empties. The election is soon decided. When tho candidates can hold no more, a count is instituted and the one who has drank the greatest number of pints is proclaimed king. I was told that the last beer king elected by the corps — or by his own capabilitiea A nUMF ABBOAS. iptied liii mug leTentyfiva tiin«f. No stonMob eonld bold ftll ihftt quantity at one time, of course — but there are wayi of frequently creating a vacuum, which thoee who have been much at tea will understand. One sees so many students abroad at all hours, that he pre- sently begins to wonder if they ever have any working hours. Some of them have, some of them haven't. Each can choose for himself whether he will work or play ; for German university life is a Very free life ; it seems to have no restraints. The student does not live in the college buildings, but hires his own lodgings, in any locality he prefers, and he takes his meals when and where he pleases. He goes to bed when it suits him, and does not get up at all unless he wants to. He is not entered at the university for any particular length of time ; so he is likely to change about. He passes no examination upon entering college. He merely pays a trifling fee of five or ten dollars, receives a card entitling him to the privileges of the university, and that is the end of it. He is now ready for business — or play, as he shall prefer. If he elects to work, he finds a large list of lectures tb choose from« He ■elects the subjects which he will study, and enters his name for these studies ; but he can skip attendance. The result of this system is, that lecture courses upon specialties of an unusual nature are often delivered to very slim audiences, while those upon more practical and every-day matters of educa- tion are delivered to very large ones. 1 heard of one case where, day after day, the lecturer's audience consisted of three students — and always the same three. But one day two of them remained away. The lecturer began as usual — '' Qentlemen," — —then, without a smile, he corrected himself, saying — "Sir,"— •1i ' —end went on with hit discourse. v i i«^ i It is said that the vast majority of the Heidelberg students are hard workers, and make the most of their opportunities ; that they have no surplus means to spend in dissipation, and no time to spare for frolickmg. One lecture follows right on the heels of •nothert with very little time for the student to get out of one A nUMP ABBOAO. 19 ihout a smile, it on with hit hail and iato th« next ; but the induttrioui ones muiAge it hj going on % trot. The profeiaora Miist them in the saring of their time by being promptly in their little boxedup pulpita when th« hours strike, and as promptly out ngain when the hour finishee. I entered an empty lecture room one day just before the clock ■truck. The place had simple, unpainted pine desks and benches for about two hundred persons. About a minute before the clock struck, a hundred and fifty students swarmed in, rushed to their seats, immediately spread open their note-books and dipped their pens in the ink. When the clock began to strike, a burly professor entered, was received with a round of applause, moved swiftly down the centre aisle, said, " Gentlemen," and began to talk as he climbed his pulpit steps ; and by the time he had arrived in his box and faced hia audience, his lecture was well under way and all the pens were going. He had no notes, he talked with prodigious rapidity and energy for an hour — then the students began to remind him in certain well understood ways that his time was up ; he seized his hat, still talking, proceeded swiftly down his pulpit steps, got out the last word of his discourse as he struck the tloor ; everybody rose respectfully, and he swept rapidly, down the aisle and disappeared. An instant rush for some other lecture room followed, and in a minute I was alone with the empty benchea once more. Yes, without doubt, idle students are not the rule. Out of eight hundred in the town, I knew the faces of only about fifty ) but these I saw everywhere, and daily. They walked about the streets and the wooded hills, they drove in cabs, they boated on the river, they sipped beer and coflfee, afternoons, in the Schloss gardens. A good many of them wore the colored caps of the corps. They were finely and fashionably dressed, their manners were quite superb, and they led an easy, careless, comfortable life. If a doeen of them sat together, and a lady or a gentleman passed whom one of them knew and saluted, they all rose to their feet and took off their caps. The members of a corps always received a fellow-member in this way, too ; but they paid no attention to members of other corps ; they did not seem to see them. This was not a discourtesy } it was only a part of ths •laborate and rigid corps etiquette. ill W A TIAMP ABMAS. Thbf •••mi to be no chilly distance existing between thft Oernuui itudents and the professor ; but on the contrary, • eompanionable intercourse, the opposite of chilliness and reserve. When the professor enters a beor hall in the evening where ■tudentfl are gathered together, these riso .^p and take off their oaps, and invite the oiU gentleman to sit with them and partake. He accepts, and the pleasi^nt talk and the beer flow for an hour or two, and by and by the profissor, properly charged and com- fortable, gives a cordial good night, while the students stand bowing and uncovered ; and then he moves on his happy way homeward with all his vast cargo of learning afloat in his hold. Nobody finds fault or feels outraged ; no harm has been done. It seemed to be a part of corps-etiquette to keep a dog or so, too. I mean a corps-dog — the common property of the organiza- tion, like the corps-steward or head servant; then there are other dogs, owned by individuals. On a summer afternoon in the Castle gardens, I have seen six students march solemnly into the grounds, in single file, each carrying a bright Chinese parasol and leading a prodigious dog by a string. It was a very imposing spectacle. Sometimes there >% AS IMPOSINO SPEOTAOUk would be about as many dogs around the pavilion as students ; and of all breeds and of all degrees of beauty and ugliness. These dogs had a rather dry time of it ; for they were tied to the beuohei and had no amusement for an hour or two at a tima ii '^, 4 TMkM9 AMU>AD. «ze«pt what th«7 ooold g«t oat of p»wing »t the gnats, or trying to sleep and not succeeding. Howeveri they got a 1 -mp of sugar occasionally— they were fond of that. It seemed right and proper that r udenta shoukl indulge in dogs ; but every body else had them, too, -old men and young ones, old women and nice young ladies. If there is one spectacle that is unpleananter than another, it is that of an elegantly dressed young lady towing a dog by a string. It is said to be the sign and symbol of blighted love. It seems to me that some other way of advertising it might be devised, which Fould be just as conspicuous and yet not so trying to the proprieties. It would be a mistake to suppose that the easy-going pleasure* seeking student carries an empty head. Just the contrary. He has spent nine years' in the Gymnasium, under a system which allowed him no freedom, but vigorously compelled him to work like a slave. Consequently he has left the gymnasium with an education which is so extensive and complete, that the most a dniversity can do for it is to perfect some of its profounder spe* cialties. It is said that when a pupil leaves the gymnasium, he not only has a comprehensive education, but he knows what he knows — it is not befogged with uncertainty ; it is burnt into him go that it will stay. For instance; he does not merely read and write Greek, but speaks it ; the same with the Latin. Foreign youth steer clear of the gymnasium ; its rules are too severe. They go to the university to put a mansard roof on their whole general education ; but the German . student already has his mansard roof, so he goes there to add a steeple in the nature of some specialty, such as a particular branch of law, or medicine, or philology — like international law, or diseases of the eye, or special study of the ancient Gothic tongues. So this German attends only the lectures which belongs to the chosen branch, and drinks his beer and tows his dog around and has a general good time the rest of the day. He has been in rigid bondage so long that the large liberty of university life is just what he needi and likes and thoroughly appreciates ; and as it cannot last for- ever, he makes the most of it while it does last, and so lays up a good rest against the day that must see him put on the chains once more and enter the slavery of o£Eicial or professional life. i i 4 nUMP ABBOAA* CHAPTER V ONE day we took the train and went down to Manulieim to see King Lear played in German. It was a mistake. We sat in our seats' three whole hours and never understood nny thing but the thunder and lightning ', and even that was reversed to suit German ideas, for the thunder came first and the lightning fol- lowed after. , . ' . The behavior of the audience was perfect. There were no rustlings, or whisperings, or other little disturbances ; each act was listened to in silence, and the applauding was done after the curtain was down. The doors opened at half-past four, the play began promptly at half-past five, and within two minutes after- ward all who were coming were in their seats, and quiet reigned. A German gentleman in the train had said that a Shaksperian play was an appreciated treat in Germany, and that we should find the house filled. It was true ; all the six tiers were filled, and remained so to the end — which suggested that it is not only balcony people who like Shakespeare in Germany, but those of the pit and the gallery, too. Another time, we went to Mannheim and attended a shivaree -—otherwise an opera — the one called Lohengrin. The banging and slamming and booming and crashing were something beyona belief. The racking and pitiless pain of it remains stored up in my memory alongside the memory of the time that I had my teeth fixed. There were circumstances which made it necessary for me to stay through the four hours to the end, and I staid ; but the recollection of that long, dragging, relentless season of suffering is indestructible. To have to endure it in silence, and sitting still, made it all the harder. I was in a railed compart- ment with eight or ten strangers, of the two sexes, and this compelled repression ; yet at times the |)ain was so exquisite that I oould hardly keep the tears back. At those times, as the bowlings and waUings and shiiekings of the singers, and the ^ A TBAMP ABROiD. # ngings And ronringt and explosions of th* vast orchestra rta% higher and higher, and wilder and wilder, and fiercer and fiercer, I could have cried if I had been alone. Those strangers would not have been surprised to see a man do such a thing who «vaa being gradually skinned, but they would have marveled at it here, and made remarks about it no doubt, whereas there was nothing in the present case which was an advantage over being skinned. There was a wait of half an hour at the end of the first act, and I could have gone out and rested during that time, but I could not trust myself to do it, for I felt that I should desert and stcay out. There was another wait of half an hour toward nine o'clock, but I had gone through so much by that time that I had no spirit left, and so had no desire but to be left alone. I do not wish to suggest that the rest of the people there were like me, for indeed they were not. Whether it was that they naturally liked that noise, or whether it was that they had learned to like it by getting used to it, I did not at that time know J but they did like it — this was plain enough. While it was going on they sat and looked as rapt and grateful as cats do when one strokes their backs ; and whenever the curtain fell they rose to their feet, in one solid mighty multitude, and the air was snowed thick with waving handkerchiefs, and hurricanes of applause swept the place. This was not comprehensible to me. Of course there were many people there who were not under compulsion to stay ; yet the tiers were as full at the close as they had been at the beginning. This showed that the people liked it. It was a curious sort of a play. In the matter of costumes and scenery it was fine and showy enough ; but there was not much action. That is to say, there was not much really done, it was only talked about ; and always violently. It was what one might call a narrative play. Everybody had a narrative and ft grievance, and none were reasonable about it but all in an offensive and ungovernable state. There was little of that sort of customary thing where the tenor and the soprano stand down by the footlights, warbling, with blended voices, and keep holding out their arms toward <^h other and drawing them back and spreading both hands Over first AH0"lireast and then the other witb A «]Mke and a pressure— U7dii'waS| every rioter for himsctlf u I 94 A nUMP ABBOABw and no blending. Each sang his indictive narratire fai funit accompanied by the whole orchestra of sixty instrumen'vii, ana when this had continued for some time, and one was hoping they might come to an understanding and modify the noise, a great chorus composed entirely of maniacs would suddenly break forth, and then during two minutes, and sometimes three, I lived over again all that I had suffered the time the orphan asylum burned /, down. ; . /^ We only had one brief little season of heaven and heaven'i sweet ecstasy and peace during all this long and diligent and acrimonious reproduction of the other place. This was while a gorgeous procession of people marched around and around, in the third act, and sang the Wedding Chorus. To my untutored ear that was music — almost divine music. While my seared soul was steeped in the healing balm of those gracious sounds, it seemed to me that I could almost re suffer the torments which had gone before, in order to be so healed again. There is where the deep ingenuity of the operatic idea is betrayed. It deals so largely in pain that its scattered delights are prodigiously augmented by the contrasts. A pretty air in an opera is prettier there than it could be anywhere else, I suppose, just as an honest man in politics shines more than he would elsewhere. I have since found out that there is nothing the Germans like 80 much as an opera. They like it, not in a mild and moderate way, but with their whole hearts. This is a legitimate result of habit and education. Our nation will like the opera, too, by and by, no doubt. One in fifty of those who attend our operas likes it already, perhaps, but I think a good many of the other forty- nine go in order to learn to like it, and the rest in order to be able to talk knowingly about it. The latter usually hum the aira while they are being sung, so that their neighbors may perceive that they have been to operas before. The funerals of these do not occur often enough. A gentle, old-maidish person and a sweet young girl of seven- teen sat right in front of us that night at the Mannheim opera. These people talked, between the acts, and I understood them, though I understood nothing that was uttered on the distant * stage. At first they were guarded in their talk, but after they hftd heard my ageat and m^ coaversing in English ih^y dropped ^ ;H' I A TRAMP ABBOiD. 36 their reserve and I picked up many of their little confidences ; no, I mean many of her little confidences — meaning the elder party — for the young girl only listened, and gave assenting nods, i)ut never said a word. How pretty she was, and how sweet she was I I wished she would speak. But evidently she was absorbed in her own thoughts, her own young-girl dreams, and found a dearer pleasure in silence. But she was not dreaming sleepy dreams — no, she was awake, alive, alert, she could not sit still a moment. She was an enchanting study. Her gown was of a soft white silky stuff that clung to her round young figure like a fish's skin, and it was rippled over with the gracefullest little fringy films of lace ; she had deep, tender eyes, with long, curved lashes ; ' and she had peachy cheeks, and a dimpled chin, and such a dear little dewy rosebud of a mouth ; and she was so dove-like, so pure, and so gracious, so sweet and bewitching. For long hours I did mightily wish she would speak. And at last she did ; the red lips parted, and out leaped her thought — and with such a guileless and pretty enthusiasm, too : " Auntie, I just know I've got five hundred fleas on me I" That was probably over the average. Yes, it must have been very much over the average. The average at that time in the Grand Duchy of Baden was forty-five to a young person, (when alone,) according to the official estimate of the Home Secretary for that year ; the average for older people was shifty and in- determinable, for whenever a wholesome young girl came into the presence of her elders she immediately lowered their average and raised her own. She became a sort of contribution box. This dear young thing in the theatre had been sitting there un consciously taking up a collection. Many a skinny old being in our neighborhood was the happier and the restfuUer for her coming. In that large audience, that night, there were eight very con spicuous people. These were ladies who had their hats or bonnets on. What a blessed thing it would be if a lady could make herself conspicuous in our theatres bv wearing her hat. It is not usual in Europe to allow ladies and gentlemen^ to take bonnets, hats, overcoats, canes or umbrellas into the auditorium, but in Mannheim this rule was not enforced because the audiences were largely made up of people from aUislance, and among these I!' f ' 99 4 TEAMP ABBOU». wer« always a tvw tlniid ladies who were afraid that if th».)r liad to go into an ante-room to get their things when the piajr was over, they would miss their train. But the great mass ot 'iiose who came from a distance always ran the risk and twOK ibe chancesi preferring the loss of the train to a breach ol good manners and the discomfort of b^ing impleasantly com AllROil>. r It if th».^ a*d the piajr ^ V 4 HAMP ABBQABb CHAPTER Vn. THE iuinm«r dftyi pMted pleaMmUy in Heidelb«rg. We h»d A skilled tnuner, and under hit instructions we were getting our legs in the right condition for the contemplated pedestrian tours ; we were well satisfied with the progress which we had made in the German language, and more than satisfied with what we had accomplished in Art. We had had the best instructors in drawing and painting in Germany — Hammerling, Vogel, MuUer, Dieti and Schumann. Hammerling taught us landscape painting, Vogel taught us figure drawing, Muller taught us to do still-life, and Dieti and Schumann gave us a finishing course in two specialties — battle pieces and shipwrecks. Whatever I am in Art I owe to these men. I have something of the manner of each and all of them ; but they all said that I had also a manner of my own, (ind that it was conspicuous. They said there was a marked individuality about my style— insomuch that if I ever painted the commonest type of a dog, I should be sure to throw a something into the aspect of that dog which would keep him from being mistaken for the creation of any other artist. Secretly I wanted to believe all these kind sayings, but I could not ; I was afraid that my masters' partiality for me, and pride in me, biased their judgment. So I resolved to make a test. Privately, and unknown to any one, I painted my great picture, " Heidel- berg Castle Illuminated,"— my first really important work in oils— and had it hung up in the midst of a wilderness of oil pio tures in the Art Exhibition, with no name attached to it. To my great gratification it was instantly recognized as mine. All the town flocked to see it, and people even came from neighbor- ing localities to visit it. It made more stir than any other work in the Exhibition. But the most gratifying thing of all was that chance strangers, passing through, who had not heard of my pic- ture, were not only drawn to it, as by a lodestone, the moment they entered the (allery, Jgai ftlfrays took it for » " Turo«r." 84 A TBAMT IBftoAS. Kr. Harria wm graduated in Art about tha lama tima wiik myself, and we took a studio together. We waited awhile foi some orders; then oa time began to drag a little, we concluded to make a pedestrian tour. After much couHideration, we determined on a trip up the ithui-OH of the beautiful Neckur to Heilbronn. Apparently nobody hod ever done that. Th'?tr« were ruined castleH on the overhanging clitiii and crags all the way ; these were said to have their legends, like those on the Hhine, and what was better still, they hatz von Berlichingen, abode m after he got out of captivity in the Square Tower of Heilbronn between three hundred and fifty and four hundred years ago. Harris and I occupied the same room which he had occupied and the same paper had not all peeled off the walls yet The furni ^ture was quaint old carved stuff, full four hundred years old, and some of the smells were over a thousand. There was a hook in the wall, which the landlord said the terrific old Gotz used to hang his iron hand on when he took it off to go to bed. This room was very large — it might be called immense — and it was on the first floor ; which means it was in the second story, for in Europe the houses are so high that they do not count the first story, else they woulci get tired climbing before they got to the top. The wall paper was a fiery red, with huge gold figures in it, well smirched by time, and it covered all the doors. These doon fitted m anugly and continued th* fi(ure9 Qf th« paper «q A TBAMP iVMAB. 07 nnbrokenly, that wh«n they were doted one had to go feoUng and searching along the wall to find them. There waa a itore in the comer — one of those tall, square, stately white porcelain things that looks like a monument, and keeps you thinking of death when you ought to be enjoying your travels. The windows looked out on a little alley, and over that into a stable and some poultry and pig yards in the rear of some tenement houses. There were the customary two beds in the room, one in one end of it, the other in the other, about an old-fashioned brass-mounted, single-barreled pistol-shot apart. They were fully as narrow as the usual German bed, too, and had the German bed's ineradi* cable habit of spilling the blankets on the floor every time you forgot yourself and went to sleep. A round-table as large as King Arthur's stood in the centre of the room; while the waiters were getting ready to serve our dinner on it we all went out to see the renowned clock on the front of the municipal buildings. CHAPTER Vin. THE Raihhautf or municipal building, is of the quaintest and most picturesque Middle-Age architecture. It has a massive portico and steps before it, heavily, balustraded, and adorned with life-size rusty iron knights in complete armor. The clock* face on the front of the building is very large and of curious pat- tern. Ordinarily a gilded angel strikes the hour on a big bell with a hammer ; as the striking ceases, a life-size figure of Time raises its hour-glass and turns it ; two golden rams advance and butt each other ; a gilded cock lifts its wings ; but the main fea- tures are two great angels, who stand on each side of the dial with long horns at their lips ; it was said that they blew melo- dious blasts on these horns every hour — but they did not do it for us. We were told, later, that they blew only at night> when the town was still. Within the Mathhaut were a number of huge wild boar's heads, preserved, and mounted on brackets along the wall ; they bor* inscriptions telling who kiUed iM^Vf^ »^d hQw m^y l^uccMred yewrf ■'*4 88 A TRAMP ABROAD. f I in igo it wai done. One room in the building was devoted to the preservation of ancient archives. There Uiey showed us no end of aged document^ ; some were signed by Popes, 3ome by Tilly and other great Generals, an times he would swoop down from his high castle on the liklls of the Neckar and capture passing car- goes of merchandize. In his memoirs he piously thanks the Giver of all Good for remembering him in his needs and delive^ ing sundry such cargoes into his hands at times when only spe cial providence could have relieved him. He was a doughty warrior, and found a deep joy in battle. In an assault upon a stronghold in Bavaria, when he was only twenty-three years old, hia right hand was shot away, but he was so interested in the fight that he did not observe it for a while. He said that the iron hand which was made for him afterward, and which he wore for more than half a century, was nearly as clever a member as the fleshy one had been. I was glad to get a fac-simile of the letter written by this fine old German Bobin Hood, though I was not able to read it. He was a better artist with his sword than with his pen. ' ' "_. We went down by the river and saw the Square Tower. It was a very venerable structure, very strong, and very unorna* mental. There was no opening near the ground. They had to use a ladder to get into it, no doubt. We visited the principal church, also — a curious'old structure^ with a tower-like spire, adorned with all sorts of grotesque inwgei. The inner waUs of the church were placarded witb A TBAMP ABBOAD. large mural tablets of copper, bearing engraved inscription! celebrating the merits of old Heilbronn worthies of two or three centuries ago, and also bearing rudely painted effigies of them* selves and their families tricked out in the queer costumes of those days. The head of the family sat in the foreground, and beyond him extended a sharply receding and diminishing row of sons ; facing him sat his wife, and beyond her extended a long row of diminishing daughters. The family was usually large, but the perspective bad. Then we hired the hack and the horse which Gotz von Ber. lichingen used to use, and drove several miles into the country to visit the place called Weibertreu — Wife's Fidelity I suppose it means. It was a feudal Castle of the Middle Ages. When we reached its neighborhood we found it was beautifully situated* but on top of a mound, or hill, round and tolerably steep, and about two hundred feet high. Therefore, as the sun was blazing hot, we did not climb up there, but took the place on trust, and observed it from a distance while the horse leaned up against a fence and rested. The place has no interest except that which is lent it by its legend, which is a very pretty one— to this eflfect '* THE LEGEND. In the Middle Ages, a couple of yc mg dukes, brothers, took opposite sides in one of the wars, the one fighting for the Em^ror, the other against him. One of them owned the castle and village on top of the mound which I have been speaking of, and in hig absence his brother came with his knights and soldiers and began a siege. It was a long and tedious business, for the people made a stubborn and faithful defense. But at last their supplies ran out and starvation began its work ; more fell by hunger than by the missiles of the enemy. They by and by surrendered, and begged for charitable terms. But the beleaguering prince was so incensed against them for their long resistance that he said he would spare none but the women and children— all the men should be put to the sword without exception, and all their goods destroyed. Then the women came and fell on their knees and begged for the lives of their husbands. '* No," said the prince, not a man of them shall escape alive } you yourselves, shall go with your children into houseless and friendless banishment j but that you may not starve I grant you this one grace, that each woman may bear with her from this lill ■ 'i»1 I I { ' aliml 40 ▲ TBiMF ABBOAS. ■i I place M maoli of her most valuable property as she it able to carry. Very well, presently the gates swung open and out filed those women carrying their husbands on their shoulders. The besiegers, furious at the trick, rushed forward to slaughter the men, but the Duke stepped between and said— *•' No, put up your swords — a prince's word is inviolable.** When we got back to the hotel, King Arthur's Round Table was ready for us in its white drapery, and the head waiter and his first assistant, in swallow-tails and white cravats, brought in the soup and the hot plates at once. Mr. X. had ordered the dinner, and when the wine came on, he picked up a bottle, glanced at the label, and then turned to the grave, the melancholy, the sepulchral head waiter and isaid it was not the sort of wine he had asked for. The head waitei picked up the bottle, cast his undertaker eye on it and said — ** It is true ; I beg pardon." Then he turned on his subordinate and calmly said, " Bring another label." At the same time he slid the present label off with his hand and laid it aside ; it had been newly put on, its paste was still wet. When the new label came, he put it on ; our French wine v t];|^g now turned into German wine, according to desire, the I ll^liEyraiter went blandly about his other duties, as if the working '^ of t^mra^soiictf miracle was a common and easy thing to him. Mr. X. tMlil lie had not known, before, that there were people honest enoughi to do this miracle in public, but he was aware that thousands upon thousands of labels were imported into America from Europe every year, to enable dealers to furnish to their customers in a quiet and inexpensive way, all the different kinds ^of foreign wines they might require. We took a turn aroimd the town, after dinner, and found h fully as interesting in the moonlight as it had been in the day time. The streets were narrow and roughly paved, and there was not a side':valk or a street lamp anywhere. The dwellings were cen* tuAes old, and vast enough for hotels. They widened all the way up ; the stories projected further and further forward and aside as they ascended, and the long rows of lighted windows, filled with little bits of panes, curtained with figured white muslin and adorned outside with boxes of flowers, made a pretty effect. The moQV^ w«t bri|;ht, and the light and sluvdow ver^ strong *, and *f she it able to A nhXP A^BOAI>• 41 nothing could b^ more picturesque than those earring etreete, with their rows of huge high |^blesjeanin|; far ov^r to ward eac h other in afriendl y goasipp rng wayTand thecrbwda below ariftiiig through the alternating blots of glooro and mellow bars of moon- light. Nearly everybody was abroad, chatting, singing, romping, or massed in lazy comfortable attitudes in the doorways. In one place there was a public building which was fenced tbout with a thick, rusty chain, which sagged from post to post in a succession of low swings. The pavement, here, was maile of heavy blocks of stone. In the glare of the moon a party of bare- footed* children were swinging on those chains and having a noisy good time. They were not the first ones who had done that; even their great-great grandfathers had not been the first to do it when they were children. The strokes of the bare feet had worn grooves inches deep in the stone flags ; it had taken many generations of swinging children to accomplish that. Everywhere in the town were the mould and decay that go with antiquity, and evidence it ; but I do not know that anything else S;ave us so vivid a sense of the old age of Heilbitmn m thoit bot-wom groovei in the paving stones. • I o«rtaial7 thot^ht tlism bsrafbotod, bot •ri'lmUy tit* mUM hM hdl 4o. I looked around ; I was at Harris's bed, a Sabbath dfty's joarn«y from my own. There was only one sofa ; it was against the wall } there was only one chair where a body could get at it — I had been revolving around it like a planet, and colliding with it like a comet half the night I explained how I had been employing myself, and why. Then the landlord's party left, and the rest of us set about our prepa* lAtions for breakfast, for the dawn was ready to break. I glanced furtively at my pedometer, and found 1 had made forty-seven miles. But I did not oarei for I had come out for a pedestrian tour anyway. OHAPTEB X. WHEN the landlord learned that I and my agent were artists, our party rose perceptibly in his esteem *, we rose still higher when he learned that we were making a pedestrian tour of Europe. He told U8 all about the Heidelberg road, and which were tiki best places to avoid and which the best ones to tarry at ; he charged me less than cost for the things I broke in the night ; he put up a fine luncheon for Us and added to it a quantity of great light-green plums, the pleasantest fruit in Germany ; he was so anxious to do us honor that he would not allow us to walk out of Heilbronn, but called up Gotz von Berlichingen's horse and cab and made us ride. We discharged the carriage at the bridge. The river was full of logs—long, slender, barkless pine logs — and we leaned on the rails of the bridge and watched the men put them together into rafts, lliese rafts were of a'shape and coiastruction to suit the crookedness and extreme narrowness of the Neckar. They were from 50 to 100 yards long, and they gradually tapered from a 9-log breadth at their stems, to a Slog bi-e:idth at their bow-ends. The main part of the steering is done at the bow, with a pole ; the i.\og breadth there furnishes room tor only the ateersman, for A TRAVF ABBOAD. lhM« little log! ir« not larger around than an aT«rag« young lady's waiit. The connections of the iieveral sectiona of the mft are alack and pliant, so that the mft mtiy be readily bent into uny ■ori of ounre required by the shape of the river. The Neckar is in many places so narrow that a person cnn throw a dog across it, if he has one ; when it is also sharply curved i)\ such places, the raftsmiin has to do some pretty nice snug piloting to make the turns. The rivor is not always allowed to npread over its whole bed — which is as much as thirty, and sometimes forty yards wide — but is split into three equal bodies of water, by ston^ dikes which throw the main volume, depth, and current into the central one. In low water tliCHe neat narrow-edged dikes project four or five inches above the surface, like the comb of a sub* merged roof, but in high water they are overflowed. A hatful of rain makes high water in the Neckur, uiid a basketful pioduces an overflow. There are dikes abreast the Schloss Hotel, and the current is violently swift at that point. I used to sit for hours in my gin- a cage, watching the longy narrow rafts slip along through the central channel, grazing the right bank dike and aiming carclully for the middle arch of the stone bridge below ; 1 watched them in this way, and lost all this time hoping to see one of them hit the bridge-pier and wreck itself sometime or other, but was always disappointed. One was smashod there one morning, bi t I had just stepped into my room a moment to light a pipe, so I lost it. ^ While I was looking down upon the rafts thai, morning in Ileil* bronn, the dare-devil spirit of adventure came suddenly upon mef and I said to my comrades — ** J am going to Heidelberg on a raft. Will you venture with me?" Their faces paled a little, but they asRented with a? good a grace as they could. Harris wanted to cable his. mother -thought it his duty to do that, as he was all she had in this world — so, while he attended to this, I went down to the longest and finest rn'4 and hailed the captain with a hearty " Ahoy, shipmate I" which put us ui)on pleasant terms at once, and we entered upon business. I said we were on a pedestrian tour to Heidelberg, and would like to take passage with him. I said this partly A TfiAMY 4BR0A0. 49 venture with throtigh young Z, who spoke Gf>rtn«n very well, and |mrt1y through Mr. X, who ipoke it peculiarly. 1 can undertland German m well M the maniac that invented it, but I talk it bent through an luitTpn^ter. Ilu^ captain hitched up his trowgere, then shifted his quid tlioughtiully. Presently he said just what I was expecting he would say — that he had no license to carry pa^flengers, and tlieiufore was afraid the law would be after him in ca«e the mat' lor got noised about or any accident happened. Ho I chartered the raft and the crew and took all the responsil/ilities on mynelf. With a rattling song the starboard watch bent to their work »nd hove the cable short, then got the anchor home, and our burk moved off with a stately stride, and soon was bowling along Ht about two knots an hour. Our party were grouped amidships. At first the talk was a little gloomy, and ran mainly upon the shortness of life, the un- certainty of it, the perils which beset it, and the need and wis* dom of being always prepared for the worst ; this shaded off into low-voiced references to the dangers of the deep, and kindred matters ; but as the gray east began to redden and the mysteri- ous solemnity and silence of the dawn to give place to the joy- songs of the birds, the talk took a cheerier tone, and our spirits began to rise steadily. Germany, in the summer, is the perfection of the beautiful, but nobody has understood, and realized, and enjoyed the utmost possibilities of this soft and peaceful beauty unless he has voy« aged down the Neckar on a raft. The motion of a raft is the needful motion ; it is gentle, and gliding, and smooth, and noise- less j it calms down all feverish activities, it soothes to sleep all nervous hurry and impatience ; under its restful influence all tne troubles and vexations and sorrows that harrass the mind vanish away, and existence becomes a dream, a charm, a deep and tranquil ecstacy. How it contrasts with hot and perspiring pedestrianism, and dusty and deafening railroad rush, and tedi' 0U8 jolting behind tired horses over blinding white roads I We went slipi^ing silently along, between the green and tnf^ rant banks, with a sense of pleasure and contentment that grew, and grew, all the time. Sometimes the banks were OTe^hung With thick masses of willows that wholly hid the ^raund iMhiadl A 1'HAMP ABBOAb. ■ometimea we haa noble hills on one hand, clothed densely with foliage to their tops, and on the other hand open levelH Itlaxing with poppies, or clothed in the rich blue of the com flower ; •ometimes we drifted in the shadow of forests, and somctiineM along the margin of long stretches of velvety grass, frexli and green and bright, a tireless chami to the eye. And the biid<* ! — ilipy were everywhere; they swept back and forth across the river constantly, and their jubilant music was never stilled. It was a deep and satisfying pleasure to see the sun creat ' the new morning, and gradually, patiently, lovingly, clothe it on with splendor after splendor, an munches a petrified sandwich and waits for the train. CHAPTER XL MEN and women and cattle were at work in the dewy fields by this time. The people often stepped aboard the raft, as we glided along the grassy shores, and gossipped vriih us and with the crew for a hundred yards or so, then stepped ashore again, refreshed by the ride. (^nly the men did this ; the women were too busy. The women do all kinds of work on the continent. They dig, they hoe, tiiey i-eap, they sow, they bear monstrous burdens on their backs, they shove similar ones long distances on wheelbarrows, they drag the cart when there is no dog or lean cow to drag it — and when there is, (hey assist the dog or cow. Age is no matter— the older the woman, the stronger she is, apparently. Qn tht> farm a woman's duties are not defined— she does a little of every- thing *, but in the towns it is diflferent, there she only does cer tain things, the men do the rest. For instance, a hotel chambe^ maid has nothing to do but make beds and fires in fifty or sixty rooms, bring towels and candles, and fetch several tons of water up several flights of stairti, a hundred pounds at a time, in pro- digious metal pitchers. Shtt does not have to work more than A TUXf ABB0A1>. ffl «i|^teen or twenty houn a day, and she can alwayi g«t down on her knees and lorub the floors of halls and closets when ahe is tired and needs a rest. As the morning advanced and the weather grew hot, ^re took off our outside clothing and sat in a row along the edge of the raft and ei\joyed the scenery, with our siun umbrellas over our heads and our legs dangling in the water. Every now and then we plunged in and had a swim. Every projecting grassy cape had its joyous gro^ip of naked children, the boys to themselves and the girls to themselves, the latter usually in care of some mo- therly dame who sat in the shade of a tree with her knitting. The little boys swam out to us, sometimes, but the little maids stood knee deep in the water and stopped their splashing and frolicking to inspect the raft with their innocent eyes as it drifted by. Once we turned a comer suddenly and surprised a slender girl of twelve years or upwards, just stepping into the water. She had not time to run, but she did what answered just as well ; she promptly drew a lithe young willow bough athwart her white body with one hand, and then contemplated us with a simple and untroubled interest. Thus she stood while we glided by. She was a pretty creature, and she and her willow bow made a very pretty picture, and one which could not offend the modesty of the most fastidious spectator. Her white skin had a low bank of fresh green willows for background and effective contrast— for she stood against them — and above and out of them projected tho eager faces and white shoulders of two smaller girla. Towards noon we heard the inspiriting cry— « SaU ho I" " Where away ?" shouted the captain. " Three points off the weather bow I" We ran forward to see the vessel. It proved to be a steamboat —for they had begim to run a steamer up the Neckar, for the first time in May. She was a tug, and one of very peculiar build and aspect. I had often watched her from the hotel, and wondered how she propelled herself, for apparently she had no propeller or paddles. She came churning along, now, making a deal of noiao of one kind and another, and aggravating it every now and then by blowing a hoarse whistle. She had nine keel-boats hitohed on behind and following after her in a long, slender rank. Wo mot A TRAMP ABROAD. her in a narrow place, between dikes, and there was hardlj room for us both in the cramped passage. As she went grinding an furnish the proper exposure, dre given up to the grape. That region is a great producer of Rhine wines. The Germans are | exceedingly fond of Rhine wines ; they are put up m tall, slender i bottles, and are consid«)red a pleasant beverage. One tells them - f rom vinegar by the al. The Homberg hill ib . ^ tunneled, and the new railway will pass under the castle. THB OATB or THB SPBOTBB. Two miles below Homberg castle is a cave in a low cliff, wUoh the captain of the raft said had once been occupied by a beautiful heiress of Homberg — the Lady Gertrude — in the old times. It Yfos seven hundred years ago. She had a number of rich and noble lovers, and one poor and obscure one, Sir Wendel Loben- t'eld. With the native chuskleheadedness of the heroine of romance, she preferred the poor and obscure lover. With the native sound judgineiit cf the father of heroine of romance, the Ton Berlichingen of that day shut his daughter up in his donjon keep, or his oubliette, or his culverin, or some such place, and resolved that she should stay there until she selected a husband from among her rich and noble lovers. The latter visited her and persecu'^wBd her with their supplications, but without effect, for her heart was true to her poor despised Crusader, who was tighting in the Holy Land. Finally she resolved that she would endure the attentions of the rich lovers no longer ; so one stormy night she escaped and went down the river and hid herself in the oave on the other side. Her father ransaclced the oountry for I mm r « ^ 64 A TRAMP ABBOAD. her, but found not a trace of her. As the days went by, and still no tidings of her came, his conscience began to torture him, and he caused proclamation to be made that if she were yet living and would return, he would oppose her no longer, she might marry whom she would. The months dragged on, all hope forsook the old man, he | ceased from his customary pnr- ■uits and pleasures, he devoted - himself to pious works, and longer ) for the deliverance of death. Now just at midnight, every night, the lost heiress stood in the mouth nf her cave, ar- rayed in white robes, and sang a little love ballad which her Crusader had made for her. She judged that if he came home alive the superstitious | peasants would tell him about the ghost that sang in the cave, and that as soon as they described the ballad he would know that none but he and she knew that song, therefore he would suspect that she was alive and would come and find her. A« time went on, the people of the region became sorely distressed about the Spectre of the Haimted Cave. It was said that ill luck of one kind or another always overtook any one who had the misfortune to hear that song. Eventually, every calamity that happened thereabouts was laid at the door of that music. Con- sequently no boatman would consent to pass the cave at night the peasants shunned the place, even in the daytime. But the faithful girl sang on, night after night, month after month, and patiently waited ; her reward must come at last. Five years dragged by, and still, every night at midnight , the plaintive tones floated out over the silent land, while the distant boatmen and peasants thrust their fingers into their ears and ■httddered out a prayer. tiADV SKSTBOOB. 4 TBAVP ABROAD. m- tby, andstil) ture him, and »re yet living OB. • . , ;> ely distressed d that ill luck who had the calamity that music. Con- save at night ne. t, month after come at last, midnight , the ile the distant heir eiurs and And now came the crusader home, bronied and batt1e-searr«d, but bringing a great and splendid fame to lay at the feet of hi« bride. 'Jlie old lord of Homberg received him aa a son, and MOUTU U>' 'lUK OAVICRN. wanted him to stay by him and be the comfort and blessing of his age ; but the tale of that young girl's devotion to him and ita pathetic consequences, made a changed man of the knight H« w\:\ 06 A TBAMP ABROAD. could not enjoy hia well-earned rest. He taid his heaf broken, he would give the remnant of his life to high deeds in the cause of humanity, and so find a worthy death and a blessed reunion with the brave tn# heart whose love had more honored him than all his victories in war. When the people heard this resolve of his, they came and told him there was a pitiless dragon in human disguise in the Haunted Cave, a dread creature which no knight hari yet been bold enough to face, and begged him to rid the land of its (lesolating presence. He said he .would do it. They told him .about the song, and when he asked what song it was, they said the memory of it was gone, for nobody had been hardy enough to listen to it for the past four years or more. Towards midnight the Crusader came floating down the rivfi- in a boat, with his trusty cross-bow in his hands. He drifted silently through the dim reflections of the crags and trees, witii his intent eyes fixed upon the low ciiflT which he was approach. ing. As he drew nearer, he discerned the black mouth of the cave. Now — is that a white figure ? Yes. The plaintive son^* begins to well forth and float away over meadow anfl river - tlie cross bow is slowly raised to position, a steady aim is taken, the bolt flies straight to the mark — the figure sinks down, st^l sing ing, the knight takes the wool out of his ears, and recognizes the old ballad — too late I Ah, if he had only not put the wool in his ears ! The Crusader went away to the wars again, and presently fell in battle, fighting for the Cross. Tradition says that during several centuries the spirittof the unfortunate girl sang nightly from the cave at midnight, but the music carried no curse with it ; and although many listened for the mysterious sounds, few were favored, since only those could hear them who had never failed in a trust. It is believed that the singing still continues, but it is known that nobody has heard it during the present century. %^.i ■•-;•, A TBAMF ABIOAD. CHAPTER Xn. THE last legend reminds one of the " Lorelei" — a legend of tb< ' Rhine. There is a song called " The Lorelei." Germany is rich in folk-songs, and the words and airs of several of them are peculiarly beautiful — but "The Lorelei" is the people's favorite. I could not endure it at first but by and by it began to take hold of me, anv{ now there is no tune which I like BO well. It is not possible that it is much known in America, else I should have heard it there. The fact that I never heard it therei is evidence that there are others in my country who have fared likewise ; therefore, for the sake of these, 1 mean to print the words in this chapter. And I will refresh the reader's memory by printing the legend of the Lorelei too. I have it by me in the " Legends of the Rhine," done into English by the wildly gifted Garnham, Bachelor of Arts. 1 print the legend partly to refresh my own memory, too, for I have never read it before. THE LEGEND. Lore (two syllables,) was a water nymph who used to sit on % high rock called Ley or Lei (pronounced like our word lie) in the Rhine, and lure boatmen to destruction in a furious rapid which marred the channel at that spot. She so bewitched them with her plaintive songs and her wonderful beauty that they forgot everything else to gaze up at her, and so they presently drifted among the^broken reefs and were lost. In those old, old times, the count Bruno lived in a great castle near there with his son the count Hermann, a youth of twenty. Hermann had heard a great deal about the beautiful Lore, and bad finally fallen very deeply in love with her without having yet seen her. So he used to wander to the neighborhood of the Lei, evenings, with his Zither and " Express his Longing in low Sing* ing," as Garnham says. On one of these occasions " suddenly i..'^ M A nUMF ABBOAD. th«ra lMrr«r«d aronnd the top of the rock a brightneta of un* equaled cleamefs and color, which, in increasingly smaller circles thickened, was the enchanting figure of the beautiful Lore. " An unintentional cry ot Joy escaped the Youth, he let his Zither Call, and with extended arms he called out the name of the enigmatical Being, who seemed to stoop loyingly to him and beckon to him in a friendly manner ; indeed, if his ear did not deceive him, she called his name with unutterable sweet Whispers, proper to love. Be side himself with delight the youth lost his Senses and sank senseless to the earth." After that he was a changed person. He went dreaming < about thinking only of his fairvj and caring for naught else in the world. " The old count saw with affliction this changement in his son," whose cause he could not divine, and tried to divert hiti mind into cheerful channels, but to no purpose. Then the old count used authority. He com* manded the youth to betake himself to th« camp. Obedience was promised. Garnham says : ** It was on the evening before his departur«. as he wished still once to visit the Lei and offer to the Nymph of the Rhine his Sighs, the tones of his Zither, and his Songs. He went, in his boat, this time accompanied by a faithful squire, down the stream. The moon shed her silvery light over the whole Country ; the steep bank mountains appeared in the most fantMtical shapes, and the high oaks on either side bowed their Branches on Her- mann's passing. As soon as he approached the Lf^u and was aware of the surf-waves, his attendant was seized with an inex- pressible Anxiety and he begged permission to land t but the Knight swept the strings of his Guitar and sang : "Once I naw thee in dark night, ;j In lupematural Beauty bright; ' Of Light-rays, wai the Figure ir«T% To ihar* iu light, leok«4-lutir itiovSb A TEilir ABB01& 59 B7 U17 hand Um dgn of Iot*^ ThT tyM iw**! •aohMttant, BaylBf to BM, oh 1 Mitnute«m«it "Oi wtrt thon Irat my ■WMthe«rt, How willingly thy love to parti With daUffat I ahoold bfl bound To thy rooky hooM in deep ground.** That Hermann should have gone to that place at all, was not wise , that he should have gone with such a song as that in his mouth was a most serious mistake. The Lorelei did not " call his name in unutterable sweet Whispers" this time. No, that Bong naturally worked an instant and thorough " chaiigement" in her ; and not only that, but it stirred the bowels of the whole afflicted region round about there — for — " Scarcely had these tones sounded, everywhere there began tumult and sound, as if voices above and below the water. On the Lei rose flames, the Fairy stood above, at that time, and beckoned with her right hand clearly and urgently to the infatuated Knight, while with a staff in her left she called the waves to her service. They began to mount heavenward ; the boat was upset, mockiug every exertion ; the waves roso to the gunwale, and splitting on the hard stones, the Boat broke into Pieces. The youth sank into the depths, but the squire was thrown on shore by a powerful wave." The bitterest things have been said about the Lorelei during many centuries, but surely her conduct upon this occasion en* titles her to our respect. One feels drawn tenderly toward her, and is moved to forget her many crimes and remember only the good deed that crowned and closed her career. " The Fairy was never more seen ; but her enchanting tones have often been heard. In the beautiful, refreshing, still nights of spring, when the moon pours her silver light over the Country, the listening shipper hears from the rushing of the waves the echoing Clang of a wonderfully charming voice, which sings a song from the crystal castle, and with sorrow and fear he thinks on the young Count Hermann, seduced by the Nymph." I have a prejudice against people who print things in a foreign language and add no translation. When 1 am the reader, and the author considers me able to do the translating myself, he pays me 60 4 TRAlfP ABBOAD. quite » nio« oompliment — but if he would do the tranilating for me I would try and get along without the compliment. If I were at home, no doubt I could get a translation of thia poem, but I am abroad and can't ; therefore I will make a trans- lation myself, it may not be a good one, for poetry is out of my line, but it will serve my purpose — which is, to give the un-Oerman young girl a jingle of words to hang the tune on until she can get hold of a good version, made by some one who is a poet and knows how to convey a poetical thought from one language to anotlier. THE LORKLBI. X cannot dlTtne whftt It meuieth, Thia haunting n»m«leii pain : A tale of the bjrgone agei Keepe brooding through my bAia I The faint air cooli in the gloaming^ And peaceful flowi the Khine, The thintjr summita are drinking The lonset'i flooding wine ; The loTeliest maiden ii sitting High-throned in you blue air, Her golden Jewels are shining. She oombfl her golden hair ; She Qombi with a comb that is goldea« And sings a weird refrain That steeps in a deadly enchantment The Hefner's ravished brain : Ths doomed in his drifting shallop, Is tranced with the sad sweet tone) He sees not the yawning breakers, • He sees but the maid alone t The pitiless billows engulf him I— Ho perish sailor and bark ; And this, with her baleful singing, Is the Lorelei's grewsome work. T have a translation by Garnham, Bachelor of Arts, in the *' Legends of the Rhine," but it would not answer the purpose I mentioned above, because the measure is too nobly irregular ; it don't fit the tune snugly enough ; in places it hangs over at the ends too far, nnd in other places one runs out of words before h« getf to the end of ft bar. Still, Garuham'a translation has 4 TB4lir ABIOAO. ' Arts, in the the purpose I y irregular ; it igs over at the f words before translation luui high BtriU, a&d I am not dreaming of leaving it out of my book. I believe thia poet is wholly unknown in America and England ; I take peculiar pleasure in bringing him forward, b» eaase I ooniider that I discovered him THB LORBUn. TrmmiUUd Hr £. 5r. O mrmk m wtt B. JL I do not know what it ilgiiiflM, Tlwl X MB M wmtrirftil r A fktl* of old TimM to t«rrifl««, Lmtm my iMMt to thooghtfuL Tho Air !• oool and it darkwii, ▲ad ealmly flom tha Bhin* ; Tin ■iimiiilt nf llii iiiiiiiiittlii ImiJMS In •Ttninff ■oiuhiiM Ua*. TIm BMMt b«aatkftal Maidra «Btr»aMS AboT* wonderfnlly than, Har baaatif al golden attiira glaaoa^ Bha oomba har golden hair. With golden comb so lastroua, And thereby a aong aingii It haa a tone lo wondxoae, That powerful melody riaga The ihipper in the little ahlp Iteffeota with woea lad might | Ha does not eee the rooky elip, Ha only regards dreaded height. I believe the turbulent wavei Swallow at laat ehippar and boat i She with her singing cravee All to Tiait har magic moat No translation could be closer. He has got in all the facts ) snd in their regular order too. There is not a statistic wanting. It is as succinct as an invoice. That is what a translation ought to be ; it should exactly reflect the thought of the original. You can't ting " Above wonderfully there," because it simply won't go to the tune without damaging the singer ; but it is a most clingingly exact translation of Dort oben wunderbar — fits it like a blister. Mr. Gamham's reproduction has other merits — a huu' dred of them — ^but it it not necessary to point them out. Tb»;f w^l bedeteotod. 4S, k TRAMP. 4BB0AD m No on* with a specialty can hope to have a monopoly of it Bven Oarnham has a rival. Mr. X. hai(»che8 is leading a footpath animated by travelers." " A learned man 'n a cynical and torn dress holding an open book in his hand." '* St. Bartholoma^ and the Executioner with the knife to ful* fill the martyr." ''Portrait of a young man. A long while this picture was thought to be Bindi Altoviti's portrait ; now somebody will afain httfe it io be the self-portrait of T^aphaeL" A TEAMr ABROAD. fP ** RoiMi bathing, surprised by the two old tuUk. In Um baok* ground the lapidation of the condemned." (" Lapidation " is good } it ia much more elegant than " itoa* ing.") '' St. RoohuB sitting in a landscape with an angel who looka al his plague-sore, whilst the dog the bread in his mouth attenta him." *' Spring. The Goddess Flora, sitting. Behind her a feirtU* Talley perfused by a river." *' A beautiHuI bouquet animated by May-bugs, etc.** ** A warrior in armour with a gy])seou8 pipe in his hand lean» agaiutit a table and blows the smoke far away o! himself." " A Dutch landscape along a navigable river which perfuses ii till to the background." ^ " Pome peasants singing in a cottage. A woman lets drink a ohild out of a cup." " St. John's head as a boy,— painted ingfresoo on a brick." (Meaning a tile.) w " A young man of the Riccio family, his hair out ofif right at the end, dressed in black with the same cap. Attributed to Baphael, but the signation is false." " The Virgin holding the Infant. Is very painted in the manner of Sassoferrato." " A Larder with greens and dead game animated by a eook* tnaid and two kitchen-boys." However, the English of this catalogue is at least as happy as taat which distinguishes an inscription upon a certain picture in Rome — to wit : " Revelations- View. St. John in Patterson's Island." But meantime the raft u moving on. ^ I m f IT? 4 TEUIF ABBOAD. M- ^v CHAPTEBXm. A MILE or two above Eberbaoh we saw a pamiliar rain prc^t- ing above the foliage which clothed the peak of a high and very steep hill, rhis ruin consisted of merely a couple of crumbling masses of masonry which bore a rude resemblance to human faces ; they leaned forward and touched foreheads, and had the look of being absorbed in conversation. This ruin had nothing very imposing or picturesque about it, and there was no great deal of it, yet it was called the " Spectacular Ruin." LBOBlIfi OF THE " SPBCTAOULAB RUIN." }Bim0] thUaf The captain of th^roft, who was as full of history as he could stick, said that in the Middle Ages a most prodigious fire-breath ing dragon used to live in that region, and made more trouble than a tax collector. He was as long as a railway train, and had the customary impenetrable green scales all over him. His breath bred pestilence and conflagration, and his appetite br«d famine. He ate men and cattle impartially, and was exceedingly unpopular. The German emperor of that day made the usual offer : he would grant to the destroyer of the dragon, any one solitary thing he might ask for; for he had a surplusage of daughters, and it was customary for dragon-killers to take a daughter for pay. So the most renowned knights came from the four comers of the earth and retired down the dragon's throat one after i\xtt t .hor. A panic arose and spread. Heroes grew cautious, llie procession ceased. The dragon became more destructive than ever. The people lost all hope of succor, and fled to the moun tains for refuge. At last Sir Wissenschaft, a poor and obscure knight, out of a far country, arrived to do battle with the monster. A pitiable object, he was, with his armor hanging in rags about him, and his ttrange shaped knapaaok atrapped upon hia back, fiveiyboth A TBAMP ABBOAD. tamed op their noeee at hiini and some openlj jeered him. But he was calm. He simply enquired if the emperor's offer was still in force. The emperor said it was — but charitably advised hitii to go and hunt hares and not endanger so precious a life as his in an attempt which had brought death to so many of the world's most illustrious heroes. But this tramp only asked — " Were any of those heroes men of science?" This raised a laugh, of course, for science was despised in those days. But the tramp was not in the least ruffled. He said he might be a little in advance of his age, but no matter —science would come to be hon- ored, some time or other. He said he would march against the dragon in the morning. — Out of compassion, then, a good spear was offered him, but he declined, and said, " spears were useless to men of science." They allowed him to sup in the servants' hall, and gave him a bed in the stables. When he started forth in the morning, thousands were gathered to see. The emperor said — << Do not be rash, take a spear, and leave off your knapsack." But the tramp said — ^ It is not a knapsack," and moved straight on. The dragon wes waiting and ready. He was breathing forth VAs^ volumes of sulphurous smoke and lurid blasts of flame. The ragged knight stole warily to a good position, then he unslung his cylindrical knapsack — which was simpiy the common fire- extinguisher known to modern times — and the first chance he got he turned on his hose and shot the dragon square in the center of his cavernous mouth. Out went the fires in an ingtaaty and the dragon ourled up and diec^ hi m i|fi 66 ▲ TBAMP ABBOAD. lUt num had brought brains to his aid. He had reared dragoni from the egg, in his laboratory, he had watched over them like a mother, and patiently studied them and experimented upon them while they grew, 'llius he had found out that fire was the life principle of a dragon ; put out the dragon's fires and it could make bteam no longer, and must die. He could not put out a fire with a spear, therefore he invented the extinguisher. The dragon being dead, the emperor fell on the hero's neck and said : " Deliverer, name your request," at the same time beckoning out behind with his heel for a detachment of his daughters to form and advance. But the tramp gave them no observance. He simply said — " My request is, that upon me be conferred the monopoly of the manufacture and sale ot spectacles in Germany." The emperor sprang aside and exclaimed — " This transcends all the impudence I ever heard I A modest demand, by my halidome ! Why didn't you ask for the Imperial revenues at once, a(tk be done with it ?" But the monarchnad given his word, and he kept it. To everybody's surprise, the unselfish monopolist immediately reduced the price of spectacles to such a degree that a great and crushing burden was removed from the nation. The emperor, to commemorate this generous act, and to testify his appreciation oT it, issued a decree commanding everybody to buy this bene- factor's spectacles and wear them, whether they needed them or not. So originated the wide-spread custom of wearing spectacles in Germany ; and as a custom once established iu these old lands is imperishable, this one remains universal in the Empire to this day. Such is the legend of the monopolist's once stately and sumptuous castle, now called thf " Spectacular Ruin." On the right bank, two or three miles below. the Spectacular Ruin, we passed by a noble pile of castellated buildings overlook ing the water from the crest of a lofty elevation. A strettfh ol two hundred yards of the high front wall was heavily draped with ivy, and out of the mass of buildings within rose three picturesque old towers. The place was in fine order, and was inhabited by a family of princely rank. This castle had its legend, too, but ] ■hould not feel justified in repeating it because I doubted Hk* kiUk of somo of its muor detail*. A TBiMP ISBOtD. m Along IB this region a multitude of Italian laborer! were blMi> 'ng away the frontage of the hills to make room for the new railway. They were fifty or a hundred feet above the rWrir. Aa we turned a sharp corner they hegan to wave signals und shout warnings to us to look out for the exploHion^i. It was all very well to warn us, but what could we ^o? You can't back a raft up stream, you can't hurry it down stream, you can't scatter out to one side when you haven't any room to speak of, you won't take to the perpendicular cliffs on the other shore when they appear to be blasting there too. Your resources are limited, you see. There is simply nothing for it but to watch and pray. For some hours we had been making three and a half or four miles an hour and we were still making that. We had been dancing right along until those men began to shout ; then for the next ten minutes it seemed to me that 1 had never seen a raft go so slowly. When the first blast went oflf we raised our sun-umbrellas and waited for the result. No harm done ; nope of the stones fell in the water. Another|^Iast followed, and another and another. Some of the rubbish fell in the water just astern of us. We ran that whole battery of nine blasts in a row, and it was certainly one of the most exciting and uncomfortable weeks I ever spent, either aship or ashore. Of course we frequently manned the poles and shoved earnestly for a second or so, but every time one of those spurts of dust and debris shot aloft every man dropped his pole and looked up to get the bearings of his share of it. It was very busy times along there for a while. It appeared certain that we must perish', but even that was not the bitterest thought j no, the abjectly unheroic nature of the death that was the sting — that and the bizarre wording of the resulting obituary : " Shot with a rock, on « raft.^^ There would be no poetry written about it. None could be written about it. Ex- ample : Not by war'8 shock, or war^B shaft— Shot, with a rock, on a raft. No poet who valued his reputation would touch such a theme as that. I should be distinguished as the only " distinguished dead" who went down to the grave unsonneted, in 1878. But we escaped, and I have never regretted it. The last blast was a peculiarly strong one, and after the small rubbish waa dona WB k TBAVP ABBOAD. rdning around ui and we were joat going to sh«ke haadi oror our deliyerance, a later and larger stone came down amongst our little group of pedestrians and wrecked an umbrella. It did no other harm, but we took to the water Just the same. It seems that the heavy work in the quarries and the new rail- way gradings is done mainly by Italians. That was a revelation. We have the notion in our country that Italians never do heavy I work at all, but confine themselves to the lighter arts, like organ- /grinding, operatic singing, and assassination. We have blun- dered, that is plain. All along the river, near every village, we saw little station houses for the future railway. They were finished and waiting for the rails and business. They were as trim and snug and pretty as they could be. They were always of brick or stone ; they were of graceful shape, they had vines and flowers about them already, and around them the grass was bright and green, and showed that it was carefully looked after They were a decoration to the blbautiful landscape, not an offense. Wherever one saw a pile of gravel, or a pile of broken stone, it was always heaped as trimly and exactly as a new grave or a stack of cannon balls ; nothing about those stations, or along the railroad or the wagon road was allowed to look shabby or be unomamentaL The keeping a country in such beautiful order as Germany; ex- hibits, has a wise practical side to it, too, for it keeps thousands of people in work and bread who would otherwise be idle and mischievous. I As the night shut down the captain wanted to tie up, but I thought maybe we might make Hirschhorn, so we went on. Pre- sently the sky became overcast, and the captain came aft look- ing imeasy. He cast his eye aloft, then shook his head, and said it was coming on to blow. My party wanted to land at once — therefore I wanted to go on. The captain said we ought to shorten sail, anyway, out of common prudence. Consequently the larboard watch was ordered to lay in his pole. It grew quite dark now, and the wind began to rise. It wailed through the swaying branches of the trees, and swept our decks in fitful gusts. Things were taking on an ugly look. The captain shouted to the steersman on the forward lo|^ — '^ 9ow'i 8l^« heading ?" ▲ TEiUfP ABROAD. Tlie answer came faint and hoarse from far forward : " Nor' east-and by-nor*, east-by-east, half-east, sir." " Let her go ofif a point I" " Ay-aye, sir 1" " What water have you got T" " Shoal, sir. Two foot large, on the stabboard, two and a half •cant on the labboard !" '' Let her go off another point I" " Ay-aye, sir I" " Forward, men, all of you t Lively, now ! Stand by to crowd her round the weather corner I" " Ay-aye, sir I" Then followed a wild running and trampling and hoarse shout ing, but the forms of the men were lost in the darkness and the sounds were distorted and confused by the roaring of the wind through the shingle bundles. By this time the sea was running inches high, and threatening every moment to engulf the frail bark. Now came the mate hurrying aft, and said, close to the captain's ear, in a low, agitated voice — " Prepare for the worst, sir — we have sprung a leak 1" " Heavens I where ?" " Right aft the second row of logs." " Nothing but a miracle can save us I Don't let the men know, or there will be a panic and mutiny 1 Lay her in shore and stand by to jump with the stern-line the moment she touches. Gentle- men, I must look to you to second my endeavors in this hour oi peril. You have hats — go forrard and bail for your lives I" Down swept another mighty blast of wind, clothed in spray and thick darkness. At such a moment as this, came from away forward that most appalling of all cries that are ever heard at sea : ^^ Man overboard V\ The captain shouted — " Hard a-port I Never mind the man I Let him climb aboard or wade ashore I" Another cry came down the wind — . " Breakers ahead I" "Where away?" •' Not a log's length off' her port fore-foot I" We bad groped our slippery way forward, and were now beiHas 70 A TRAMP \ BROAD. with the freniy of despair, when we heard the in«te*0 teirifted cry, from far aft — " Stop that dashed bailing, or we shall bb aground I" But this was immediately followed by the glad shout — '' Land aboard the starboard transom I" ** Saved I" cried the captain. " Jump ashore and take a turn around a tree and pass the bight aboard I" The next moment we were all on shore weeping and embracing for joy, while the rain poured down in torrents. The captain said he had been a mariner for forty years on the Neokar, and in that time had seen storms to make a man's cheek blanch and his pulses stop, but he had never, never seen a storm that even approched this one. How familiar that sounded I For I have been at sea a good deal and have heard that remark from captains with a frequency accordingly. We framed in our minds the usual resolution of thanks and admiration and gratitude, and took the first opportunity to vote it, and put it in writing and present it to the captain, with the customary speech. We tramped through the darkness and the drenching summer rain full three miles, and reached the " Naturalist Tavern" in the village of Hirschhorn just an hour before midnight, almost exhausted from hardship, fatigue and terror. I can never forget (hat night. The landlord was rich, and therefore could afford to be crusty and disobliging ; he did not at all like being turned out of his warm bed to open his house for us. But no matter, his house- hold got up and cooked a quick supper for us, and we brewed a hot punch for ourselves, to keep off consumption. After supper and punch we had an hour's, soothing smoke while we fought the naval battle over again and voted the resolutions ; then we re- tired to exceedingly neat and pretty chambers np stairs that had clean, comfortable beds in them with heir-loom pillow-cases most elabor&tely and tastefully embroidered by hand. Such rooms and beds and embroidered linen are as frequent in German village inns as they are rare in ours. Our villages are superior to German villages in more merits, excellencies, con- veniences and privileges than I can enumerate, but the hotels do not belong in the htt. A TRAMP ABROAD. n take a turn ihing summer ''The NatunUitt Tavern" was not a meaningless name; for all the halla and all the rooms were lined with large glass oases which were filled with all sorts of birds and animals, glass-eyed, ably staffed, and set up in the most natural and eloquent and dramatic attitudes. The moment we were abed, the rain cleared away and the moon came out. I dozed off to sleep while con- templating a great white stufifed owl which was looking intently down on me from a high perch with the air of a person who thought he had met me before but could not make out for certain. But young Z. did not get off so easily. He said that as he was sinking deliciously to sleep, the moon lifted away the shadows and developed a huge cat, on a bracket, dead and stufied. but crouching, with every muscle tense, for a spring, and with its glittering glass eyes aimed straight at him. It made Z. uncom* fortable. He tried closing his own eyes, but that did not answer, for a natural instinct kept making him open them again to see if the cat was still getting ready to launch at him — which she always was. He tried turning his back, but that was a failure ; he knew the sinister eyes were on him still. So at last he got up, after an hour or two of worry and experiment, and set the cat out in the aall. So he won, that time. CHAPTER XIV. IN the morning we took breakfast in the garden, under the trees, in the delightful German summer fashion. The air was filled with the fragrance of flowers and wild animals ; the living portion of the menagerie of the " Naturalist Tavern " was all about us. Therj were great cages populous with fluttering and chattering foreign birds, and other great cages and greater wire pens, populous with quadrupeds, both native and foreign. There were some free creatures, too, and quite sociable ones they were. White rabbits went lopping about the place, and occa' sionally came and sniffed at our shoes and shins ; a fawn, with a red ribbon on its neck, walked up and examined us fearlessly ; we breeds Qf chickens and doves begged for crumbsi and a poor 71 A rmatf inoiD. •Id talllMt mTMi hopped About with a hiimbl«, ■haiB«*ftM«d mien which sftid, '' Please do not notice my expoiure, — think how you would feel in my circumstancei, and be charitable.** If he waa obienrad too much, he would retire behind something and stay there until he judged the party's interest had found another object. I never have seen another dumb creature that was so morbidly sensitive. Bayard Taylor, who could interpret the dim reasonings of animals, and understood their moral na- tures better than most men, would have found some way to make this poor old chap forget his troubles for a while, but we had not his kindly art, and so had to leave the raven to his griefs. After breakfast we climbed the hill and visited the ancient oastle of Hirschhom, and the ruined church near it. There were some curious old bas-reliefs leaning against the inner walls of the church, — sculptured lords of Hirschhom in complete armor, and ladies of Hirschhom in the picturesque court costumes of the Middle Ages. These things are suffering damage and passing to decay, for the last Hirschhom has been dead two hundred years, and there is nobody now Who cares to preserve the family relics. In the chancel was a twisted stone column, and the captain told us a legend about it, of course, for in the matter of legends he could not seem to restrain himself; but I do not repeat his tale because there was nothing plausable about it except that the Hero wrenched this column into its present screw shape with his hands,— just one single wrench. All the rest of the legend was doubtful. But Hirschhom is best seen from a distance, dowi^ the river. Then the clustered brown towers perched on the green hilltops, and the old battlemented stone wall stretching up and over the grassy ridge and disappearing in the leafy sea beyond| make a picture whose grace and beauty entirely satisfy the eye. We descended from the church by steep stone stairways which curved this way and that down narrow alleys between the packed and dirty tenements of the village. It was a quarter well stocked with deformed, leering, unkempt and uncombed idiots, who held out hands or caps and begged piteously. The people d the quarter were not all idiots, of courae, but all that begged Memed to be, and were said to be. X was thinking of |oin|; by litiff tQ fho noxt ifiiwn^ K•ok•^ A nun* ASliOAV. 7S ■teinach J to I tmi to th« rirer tide in acItmim of tho potty oiid ••ked tk mtoi there if he had a boat to hire. I suppoeo I miut have spoken HighQerman — Court Oerman — I intended it for that, anyway— ao he did not understand me. I turned and twisted my question around and about, trying to strike that man's ayerage, but failed. He could not make out what I wanted. Now Mr. Z. arrived, faced this same man, looked him in the eye, snd emptied this aentence on him, in the most glib and confident way: " Can man boat get here f* The mariner promptly understood and promptly answered. I can comprehend why he was able to understand that particular Bentence, because by mere accident all the words in it except " get" have the same sound and the same meaning in German that they have in English ; but how he managed to understand Mr. X.'8 next remark puisled me. I will insert it, presently. X. turned away a moment, and I asked the mariner if he could not find a board, and so construct an additional seat. I spoke in the purest German, but I might as well have spoken in the purest Choctaw for all the good it did. The man tried his best to under- Btand me ; he tried, and kept on trying, harder and harder, until 1 saw it was really of no use, and said— " There, don't strain yourself— it is of no consequence.** Then X. turned to him and crisply said— " Machen Sie a flat board." I wish my epitaph may tell the truth about me if the man did not answer up at once, and say he would go and borrow a board ss soon as he had lit the pipe which he was filling. We changed our mind about taking a boat, so we did not have to go. ' I have given Mr. X.'s two remarks just as he made them. Four of the five words in the first one were English, and that they were also German was only accidental, not intentional ; three out of the five words in the second remark were English, and English only, and the two German ones did not mean anything in parti* cular, in such a connection. X. always spoke English, to Germans, but his plan was to turn the sentence wrong end first and upside down, according to Oennan construction, and sprinkle in a German word without mf nmnMfi} miraninf to it, here and there, hy way of flavor. 74 A TSAlfP ABBOAD. Yet he alwAyt ouule himself understood. He ooald make thon diftleot-speftking rafUmen understand him, sometimes, when even young Z. had failed with them ; and young Z. was a pretty good German scholar. For one thing, X. always spoke with such confidence — perhaps that helped. And possibly the raftsmen's dialect was what is called platt-Deutehf and so they found his English more familiar to their ears than another man's German. Quite indifferent students of German can read Fritz Renter's charming platt-Deutch tales with some little facility because many of the words are English. I suppose this is the tongue which our Saxon ancestors carried to England with them. By and by I will enquire of some other philologist. However, in the meantime it had transpired that the men employed to caulk the raft had found that the leak was not a leak at all, but only a crack between the logs — a crack which belonged there, and was not dangerous, but had been magnified into a leak by the disordered imagination of the mate. Hierefore we went aboard again with a good degree of confidence, and presently got to sea without accident. As we swam smoothly along be- tween the^ enchanting shores, we fell to swapping notes about manners and customs in Germany and elsewhere. As I write now, many months later, I perceive that each of us^ by observing and noting and enquiring, diligently and day by day, had managed to lay in a most varied and opulent stock of misin- formation. But this is not surprising ; it is very difficult to get accurate details in any country. For example, I had the idea, once, in Heidelberg, to find out all about those five student-corps. I started with the White-cap corps. I began to inquire of this and that and the other citizen, and here is what I found out : 1. It is called the Prussian Corps, because none but Prussians are admitted to it. 2. It is called the Prussian Corps for no parti(iular reason. It has simply pleased each corps to name itself after some German State. 3. It is not named the Prussian Corps at all, but only tha White Cap Corps. \ 4. Any student can belong to it who is a German by birth. 6. Any student can belong to it who is Suropean by birth. A TBAMP ABftOAD. 76 make thOM when even >reity good with such raftsmen's f found hit i'b Oernum. its Reuter't ity because the tongue I them. By at the men as not a leak oh belonged d into a leak tore we went id presently »ly along be* notes about t each of us, i day by day, jck of misin- ifficult to get g, to find out le White-cap other citizen, >ut Prussians X reason. It ome German )ut only ih« \ by birth, by birth. 6. Any European bom student can belong to it, •jcMpi be ba a Frenchman. 7. Any student can belong to it, no matter where he was bom. 8. No student can belong to it who is not of noble blood. 9. No student can belong to it who cannot show three full generations of noble descent. 10. Nobility is n( t a necessary qualification. 11. No moneyless student can belong to it. 12. Money qualification is nonsense— such a thing has never been thought of. I got somq of this information from students themselves— students who did noi belong to the corps. I finally went to headquarters — to the White Caps — where I would have gone in the first place if I had 'been acquainted. But even at head- quarters I found difficulties ; I perceived that there were things about the White Cap Corps which one member knew and another one didn't. It was natural ; for very few members of any organ- ization know all that can be known about it. I doubt if there is a man or a woman in Heidelberg who would not answer promptly and confidently thiee out of every five questions about the White Cap Corps which a stranger might ask ; yet it is a very safe bet that two of the three answers would be incorrect every time. There is one German custom which is universal — the bowing courteously to strangers when sitting down at table or rising up from it. This bow startles a stranger out of his self-possession the first time it occurs, and he is likely to fall over a chair or something in his embarrassment, but it pleases him nevertheless. One soon learns to expect this bow and be on the lookout and ready to return it ; but to learn to lead off and make the initial bow one's self is a difficult matter for a diffident man. One thinks, '' If I rise to go and tender my bow, and these ladies and gentlemen take it into their heads to ignore the custom of their nation and not return it, how shall I feel, in case I survive to feel anything ?" Therefore he is afraid to venture. He sits out the dinner, and makes the strangers rise first and originate the bovic- ing. A table d'hote dinner is a tedious affair for'a man who sel- dom touches anything after the three first courses ; therefore I used to do some pretty dreary waiting because of my fears. It took me mcmtha to assure myself that thoaa fears were ground- A TRAIIP ABHOAD. I, but I did MiiiT« myself at iMt by experhnenting diligently through my agent. I made HarriR get up and bow and leare ; inTariably hi* bow was returned, then I got up and bowed myself •nd retired. Thus my education proceeded easily and comfortably for me, but not for Harrii. Three courses of a table d'hote dinner were enough for me, but Harris preferred thirteen. Even after I had acquired full confidence, and no longer needed the agent's help, I sometimes encountered difficulties. Onoe at Baden-Baden I nearly lost a train because I could not be sure that three young ladies opposite me at table, were Germans, since 1 had not he^rd them speak ; they might be American, they might be English, it was not safe to venture a bow ; but just as I had got that far with my thought, one of them began a German remark, to my great relief and grati- tude *, and before she had got out her third word, our bows had been delivered and graciously returned, and we wei'e off. There is a friendly something about the German character which is very winning. When Harris and I were making a pedestrian tour through the Black Forest, we stopped at a little country inn for dinner one day ; two young ladies and a young gentleman entered and sat down opposite us. They were pedes- trians, too. Our knapsacks were strapped upon our backs, but they had a sturdy youth along to carry thei^ for them. All parties were hungry, so there was no talking. By and by the usual bows were exchanged, and we separated. As we sat at a late breakfast in the hotel at Allerheiligen next momingi these young people entered and took places near us obatrring us j but presently thej saw vm mkI at once A TRAWP ABROAb. n UUgenUy id leave; ad mytelf y for me, nner were no longer lifEiculties. mid not be mng ladies *ble, were 1 bad not eak } tbey rican, they 1, it was not a bow ; but that far with ,e of them 1 remark, to ■ and grati- )re she had rd word, our leliveredand •ned, and we [heiligen next llaces near us and fti once Dowed And imiled; not ceremoniously, but with the gratifled look of people who have found acquaintances where they were expecting strangers. Then they spoke of the wenther and the roads. We also spoke of the weather and the roads. Nextf they said they had had an enjoyable walk notwithstanding the weulher. We said that that had been our case, too. 'llicn they •uiit they hahour pedestrian excursion to the village and oastle of Dilsberg, a mile distant, on the other side of the river. I do not mean that we proposed to be two hours makiug two miles — no, we meant to employ most of the time in inspecting Dilsberg. For Dili berg is a quaint place. It is most quaintly and pic- turesquely situated, too. Imagine the beautiful river before you ; then a few rods of brilliant green sward on its opposite shore ^ then a sudden hill — no preparatory gently-rising slopes, but a sort of instantaneous hill — a hill two hundred and fifty or three hundred feet high, as round as a bowl, with the same taper upward that an inverted bowl has, and with about the same rela- tion of height to diameter that distinguishes a bowl of good honest depth — a hill which is thickly clothed with green bushes —a comely, shapely hiU, rising abruptly out of the dead level of the surrounding green plains, visible from a great distance down the bends of the river, and with just exactly room on the top of its head for its steepled and turreted and roof-clustered cap of architecture, which same is tightly jammed and compacted within the perfectly round hoop of the ancient village wall. There is no house outfide the wall on the whole hill, or any restige of a former house ; all the houses are inside the wall, but there isn't room for another one. It is really a finished town, and has been finished a very long tim«. There is no ipace between the wall and the first circle of buildings ; no, the village wall is itself the rear wall of the first circle of buildings, and the roofs jut a little over the wall and thus furnish it with eaves. The general level of the massed roofs is gracefully broken and relieved by the dominating towers of the ruined castle and the I (all spires of a couple of churches ; so, from a distance Dilsberf 1 n >'i 80 A TRAMP ABBOiD. hM nther more tho look of a king's crowu than a cap. That lofty green eminence and its quaint cornet form quite a striking picture, you may be sure, in the flush of the evening sun. We crossed over in a boat and began the ascent by a narrow, steep path which plunged us at once into the leafy deeps of the bushes. But they weru not cool deeps by any means, for the sun's rays were weltering hot and there was little or no breeze to temper them. As we panted up the short ascent, we met brown, bareheaded and barefooted boys and girls, occasionally, and sometimes men ; they came upon us without warning, they gave us good-day, flashed out of sight in the bushes, and were gone as suddenly and mysteriously as they had come. They were bound for the other side of the river to work. This path had been traveled by many generatiohs of these people. They have always gone down to the valley to earn their bread, but they have always climbed their hill again to eat it, and to sleep in their snug town. It is said that the Dilsbergers do not emigrate much ; they find that living up there above the world, in their peaceful nest, is pleasanter than living down in the troublous world. The seven hundred inhabitants are all blood-kin to each other, too j they have always been blood-kin to each other for fifteen hundred years ; they are simply one large family, and they like the honie folks better than they like strangers, hence thoy persistently stay at home. It has been said that for ages Dilsberg has been merely a thriving and diligent idiot-factorj'. I saw no idiots there, but the captain said, " Because of late years the Government has taken to lugging them off to asylums and otherwheres ; and government wants to cripple the factory, too, and is trying to get these Dilsbergers to many out of the funuly, but they don't like to." The captain probal)Iy imagined all this, as modem science denies that the intermarrying of relatives d -^terioraiDss the stock. Arrived within the wall, we found the usual village sights and life. We moved along a narrow, crooked iane which had been paved in the Mi'Ulle A;.tos. A strapping, ruildy giri was beating flax or some such stuff in u little bit of a goods-box of a barn, and she swung her flail with a wi 1 — if it was a flail ; I was not farmer enough to know what she w as at ; a frowsy, barelegged girl was herding half a dozen geese ,vith a stick — driving them along the A TR4MP ABROAIV. M >. That striking u. , narrow, ps of the 8, for the breeze to et brown, lully, and they gave re gone as rere bound had been lave always lave always snug town. I ; they find 3ful nest, is The seven [., too ; they 2n hundred le the home persistently rg has been idiots there, Government wheres •, and trying to get ey don't like lem science IS the stock. ae sights and ich had been i was beating if a barn, and as not farmer gged girl was lem along the Une and keet)ing thorn out of the dwellings ; a coop*»r wm at work in a shop which I know he did not make no large a thing as a hogHhead in, for there was not room. In the front rooms of dwellings girls and women were cooking or spinning, and ducks and chickens were waddling in and out, over the threshold, pick. ing up chance crumbs and liolding pleasant converse ; a very old and wrinkled man sat asleep before his door, with his chin upon his breast and his extinguished pipe in his lap ; soiled children were playing in the dirt everywhere along the lane, unmindful of Ihe sun. Except the sleeping old man, everybody was at work, but the place was very still and peaceful, nevertheless ; so still thot the distant cackle of the successful hen smote upon the ear but little dulled by intervening sounds. That commonest of village sights was lacking here — the public pump, with its great stone tank or trough of limpid water, and its group of gossiping pitcher-bearers j for there is no well or fountain or spring on this tall hill ; cisterns of rain water are used. Our alpenstocks and muslin tails compelled attention, and as we moved through the village we gathered a considerable pro- cession of little boys and girls, and so went in some state to the castle. It proved to be an extensive pile of crumbling walls, arches and towers, massive, properly grouped for picturesque effect, weedy, grass-grown and satisfactory. The children acted as guides ; they walked us along the top of the highest wall, then took us up into a high tower and showed us a wide and beautiful landscape, made up of wavy distances of woody hills, and a nearer prospect of undulaHng expanses of green lowlands, on the one hand, and castle-gracod crags and ridges on the other, with the shining curves of the Neckar flowing between. But the principal show, the chief pride of the children, was the ancient and emi)ty well in the grass-grown court of the castle. Its massive stone curb stands up three or four feet above ground, and is whole and uninjured. The children said that in the Middle Ages this well was four hundred feet deep, and furnished all the village with an abundant supply of water, in war and peace. They said that in that old day its bottom was below the level of the Neckar^ hence the watei* supply was inexhaustible. But there were some who believed it never had been a well at sa A TtLAMP ABROAD. all, and wai never deeper than it Is now — eiphty feet ; thtit at that depth a subterranean passage branched from it and de. cended graduall> to a remote place in the valley, where it opener! into somebody's cellar or other hidden recess, an self and afflict such as loved him with the memory of it. Straight- way the company privately laid their heads together to contrive some way to get this superstitious young man to sleep in that chamber. And they succeeded — in this way. They persuaded his betrothed, a lovely mischievous young creature, niece of the lord of the castle, to help them in their plot. She presently took him aside and had speech with him. She used all her per- suasions, but could not shake him ; he said his belief was firm that if he should sleep there he would wake no more for fifty years, and it made him shudder to think of it. Catharina began to weep. This was a better argument : Conrad could not hold out against it. Ue yielded and said she should have hei wish if she would only smile and be happy again. She flung her arms about his neck, and the kisses she gave him showed that her thankfulness and her pleasure were very real. Then she flew to tell the company her success, and the applause she received made her glad and proud she had undertaken her mission, since all alone she had accomplished what the multitude had failed in. At midnight that night, after ihe usual feasting, Conrad was taken to the haunted chamber and left there. He fell asleep, by and by. When he awoke again and looked about him, his heart stood still with horror 1 The whole aspect of the chamber was changed. The walls were mouldy and hung with ancient cobwebs ; the curtains and beddmgs were rotten ; the furniture was rickety and ready to lall to pieces. He sprang out of bed, but his quak* mg knees sunk under him and he fell to the floor. ** This is the weakness of age," he baJd. 84 ▲ TBAMP ABROAD. He roM and sought his clothing. It was clothing no \cnp .r. The colors were gone ; the garments gave way in many places while he was putting them on. He fled, shuddering, into the corridor, and along it to the great hall. Jiere he was met by a middle-aged stranger of a kind ooimtenance, who stopped and gazed at him with 8uri)rise. ('onrail said : "Good sir, will you send hither tlie lord Ulrich?" The stranger looked puzzled a moment, then said— > « The lord Ulrich ?" " Yes — if you will be so good." The stranger called, " Willnilm !" A young serving man came^ •nd the stranger said to him — " Is there a lord Ulrich among the guests ?" " I know of none of the name, so please your honor.** Conrad said, hesitatingly — " I did not mean a guest, but the lord of the castle, sir." The stranger and the servant exchanged wondering glances Then the former said — " I am the lord of the castle.'* " Since when, sir ?" " Since the death of my father, the good lord Ulrich, more than forty years ago." Conrad sank upon a bench and covered his face with his hands, while he rocked his body to and fro and moaned. 'I'he stranger said in a low voice to the servant — " I fear me this poor old creature is mad. Call some one." In a moment several people came and grouped themselves about, talking in whispers. Conrad looked up and scanned the faces about him wistfully. Then he shook his 'head and said, in a grieved voice — " No, there is none among ye that I know. I f m old and alone in the world. They are dead and gone these many years that oared for me. But sure, some of these aged ones I see about me can tell me some little word or two concerning them." Several bent and tottering men and women came nearer and answ^ered his questions about each former friend as he mentioned the names. This one they said had been dead ten years, that one twenty, another thirty. Each succeeding blow struck heavief and heaviAr. At last the suli'erer said — way, "/I A TRAMP ABROAD. 81 » lang^ t, y places into the met by a )ped and lau came. sir." Lg glances more than his hands, be stranger le one." Ihemselves canned the and said, in d and alone years that Be about me »> nearer and e mentioned ars, that one uck heaviei 'There is one more, but I have not the courage to— O, my loti Catharina t" One of the old dames said — "Ah, I knew her wall, poor soul. A misfortune overtook her lover, and she died of sorrow nearly fifty years ago. She lieth under the linden tree without the court." Conrad bowed his head and said — ** Ah, why did I ever wake I And so she died of grief for me, poor child. So young, so sweet, so good 1 She never wittingly did a hurtful thing in all the little summer of her life. Her loving debt shall be repaid — for I will die of grief for her." His head drooped upon his breast. In a moment there was m wild burst of joyous laughter, a pair of round young arms were iiung about Conrad's neck and a sweet voice cried — " There, Conrad mine, thy kind words kill me — the farce shall go no further I Jjook up, and laugh with us — 'twas ail a jest I" And he did look up, and gazed, in a dazed wonderment — for the disguises were stripped away, and the aged men and women were bright and young and gay again. Catharina's happy tongue ran on — " 'Twas a marvelous jest, and bravely carried out. They gave you a heavy sleeping draught before you went to bed, and in the night they bore you to a ruined chamber where all had fallen to decay, and placed these rags of clothing by you. And when your sleep was spent and you came forth, two strangers, well instructed in their parts, were here to meet you ; and all we, your friendS| in our disguises, were close at hand, to see and hear, you may be sure. Ah, it was a gallant jest t Come, now, and make thee ready for the pleasures of the day. How real was thy misery for the moment, thou poor lad ! Look up and have thy laugh, now 1" He looked up, searched the merry faces about him in a dreamy way, then sighed and said— " 1 am aweary, good strangers, I pray you lead me to her grave.** All the smiles vanished away, every cheek blanched, Catharin* sunk to the ground in a swoon. All day the people went about the castle with troubled faces, and communed together in undertones. A painful hush pervaded the place which had lately beeu so full of cheeky Ufe. Each in A TRAMP ABBOAD. his turn tried to arouse Conrad out of his hHlluoination and bring him to himself ; but all the answer any got was a meek, bewildered ■tare, and then the words — " Good stranger, I have no friends, all are at rest these many years ; ye speak me fair, ye mean me well, but I know ye not ; I am alone and forlorn in the world — prithee lead me to her grave." I>uring two years Conrad spent his days, from the early mom* ing till the night, mourning over the im&ginary grave of his Catharina. Catharina was the only company of the harmless madman. He was veiy friendly towards her, because, as he Sbid, in some ways she reminded him of his Catharina whom he had lost " fifty years ago." He often said — " She was so gay. so happy>hearted — but you never smile } and always when you think I am not looking, you cry." When Conrad died they buried him under the Linden, accord* ing to his directions, so that he might rest " near his poor Cath* arina." Then Catharina sat under the linden alone, every day and all day long, a great many years, speaking to no one, and never smiling ; and at last h»r long repentance was rewarded with death, and she was buried by Conrad's side. Harris pleased the captain by saying it was a good legend, and pleased him further by adding — *^ Now that I have seen this mighty tree, vigorous with its four hundred years, I feel a desire to believe the legend for iU sake ; so I will humor the desire, and consider that the tree really watches over those poor hearts and feels a sort of human tender- ness for them." We returned to Neckarsteinach, plunged our hot heads into the trough at the town pump, and then went to the hotel and ate our trout dinner in leisurely comfort, in the garden, with the beautiful Neckar flowing at our feet, the quaint Dilsberg looming beyond, and the graceful towers and battlements of a couple of medieeval castles (called the " Swallow's Nest " and '* The Bro- thers ") assisting the rugged scenery of a bend of the river down to our right. We got to sea in season to make the eight-mile run to Heidelberg before the night shut down. We sailed by the hotel in the mellow glow of sunset, and came slashing down with the mad current into the narrow passive between the dikes. A nun* ABBOAD. t7 id bring rildered le many e not ; I p grave." ly mom- re of his barmlesB 8 he Bfcid, 1 he had aile } and a, accord- poor Cath- every day > one, and rewarded )gend, and th its four iU sake ; br6e really tan tender- heads into hotel and n, with the )rg looming couple of ** The Bro- river down eight-mile e sailed by khing down , the dikes. £ believed I eouli shoot the bridge myself, to I went to tlM ftir* irard triplet of logs and relieved the pilot of his polo and hk responaibility. AN SXOBLLBNT PILOT— ONOB I We went tearing along in a most exhilarating way, and 1 per- formed the delicate duties of my office very well indeed for a first attempt ; but perceiving presently that I really was going to shoot the bridge itself, instead of the archway under it, I judiciously stepped ashore. The next moment I had my long coveted desire : I saw a raft wrecked. It hit the pier in the centre and went all to smash and scatteration like » box of liatohes struck by lightning. I was the only one of our party who mw thiB grand sight} tbt 8S A TftjUlP ABftOAO. oihern w^re ftttitudlniting. for the benefit of the long rmnk of young ladies who were promenading on the banX, and no they loet it. Bui I helpnd to fish them out of the river, down below the bridge, and then described it to them as well as I could. They were not interested, though. They snid they were wot and felt ridioulouB and did not care anything for descriptions of scenery. The young ladies, and other people, crowded? around and showed a gr»at deal of sympathy, but that did not li<'lp matters ; for my friends said they did not want sympathy, they wanted a back fciley and solitude. ▲ nUMP ABBOAO. CHAPTER XVI. NEXT morning brought good news— our trunkii had arrired from Hamburg at laat. Let this be a warning to the rt»ader. 'Vhe Oermans are very conHcieiitious, and this trait makes them very particular. Therefore if you tell a German you want a thing done immediately, he takes you at your word : he thinks you mean what you say ; ho he does that thing immediately — accord- ing to hla idea of immediately — which is uhout a wcok : that is, it is a week if it refers to the building of a garment, or it is an hour and a half if it refers to the cooking of a trout. Very well ; if you tell a German to send your trunk to you by " slow freight," he taktfs you at your word ; ho sends it by *' slow freight," and you cannot imagine how long you will go on enlarging your admiration of the expressiveness of that phrase in the German tongue, before you get that trunk. The hair on my trunk was soft and thick and youthful, when I got it ready for shipment in Hamburg; it was baldheaded when it reached Heidelburg. HoW' ever, it was still sound, that was a comfort, it was not battered in the least ; the baggagemen seemed to be conscientiously careful, in Germany, of the baggage intrusted to their hands. There was nothing now in the way of our departurci therefore we set about our preparations. Naturally my chief solicitude was about my collection of Keramics. Of course I could not take it with me, that would be inconvenient, and dangerous besides. 1 took advice, but the best brick-a-braokers were divided as to the wisest course to pursue ; some said pack the collection and warehouse it ; others said try to get it into the Grand Ducal Museum at Mannheim for safe-keeping. So I divided the collection, and followed the advice of both parties. I set aside, for the Museum, those articles which were the most frail and precious. Among these was my Etruscan tear-jug. I have made a little sketch of it here ; that thing creeping up the side is not a bug, it is a hole, struboait nAs-jua. I bought this tear-jug of a dealer in antiquities for four hundred IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) ^ A-^ 1.0 1.1 ^m tsi 1.0 ■ 2.2 u US 2.0 IL25 i 1.4 m m z 5 Kc/ Photographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 A TEAMP ABBOAO. t ' ' ! (■ ■»■! n. WhATM. ■Bd llfij doUan. It it very imre. The man laid ih« Etnuor v UMd to keep teem or something in these things, and that it w** ▼•17 hard to get hold of a broken one, now. I also set aside m^ Henri II. plate. See sketch from my pencil • it is in the main correct, though I think 1 hay* foreshortened one end of it a little too much perhaps. This is very fine and rare ; the shape is exceedingly beautiful and imusual. It har wonderful decorations on it, but I am not able to reproduce them. It cost more than the tear-jug, as the dealer said their was not another plate just like it in the world. He said there was much false Henri II. ware around, but that the genuineness of this piece was unquestionable. He showed me its pedigree, or its history if you please ; it was a document which traced this plate's movements all the way down from its birth — showed who bought it, from whom, and what he paid for it->from the first buyer down to me, whereby I saw that it had gone steadily up from thirty-five cents to seven hundred dollars. He said that the whole Eeramic world would be informed that it was now in my possession and would make a note of it, with the price paid. I also set apart my exquisite specimen of Old Blue China. This is considered to be the finest example of Chinese art now in existence. I do not refer to the bastard Chinese art of modem tic es, but that noble and pure and genuine art which flourished under the fostering and appreciative care of the Emperors of the Chung-a-Lung-Fung dynasty. There were masters in those days, but alas, it is not so now. Of course the main preciousness of this piece lies in its color ; it is that old sensuous, pervading, ramifying, interpolating, trans- boreal blue which is the despair of modern art. However, I must not be frittering away the reader^'s time with these details. I did not intend to go into any detail at all, at first, but it is the failing of the true keramiker, or the true de* votee in any department of brick-a-brackery, that once he gets his tongue or his pen started on his darling theme, he cannot well stop until he drops from exhaustion. He has no more sense of the ffight of time than has any other lover when talking of hii ^ A nUMP ABftOAD, 91 ncU' hav« aucb ibap« t bar table n tbe lother tbere it tbat bowed umeni . om its aid for it bad lollare. I tbat it itbtbe Gbina. now in ododem uiisbed of tbe 10 now. olorj it trans- me witb t all, at true de- be gets cannot ire sense of bit iwet^tbeart. Tbe rerj ** marks ** on the bottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to tbrow me into a gibbering ectasy ; and I could forsake a drowning relative to belp dispute about whetber tbe stopple of a departed Boun Betiro scent-bottle was genuine or spurious. Many people say tbat for a male person, bric-a-brac bunting is about as robust a business as making doll-clothes, or decorating Japanese pots witb decalcomanie butterflies would be, and these people fling mud at tbat elegant Englishman, Byng, who wrote a book called " Tbe Bric-a-Brac Hunter," and make fun of him for chasing around what they chose to call " his despicable trifles ;" and for "gushing" over these trifles; and for exhibiting his " deep infantile delight " in what they call his " tuppeny col. lection of beggarly trivialities ;" and for beginning his book witb a picture of himself, seated, in a " sappy, self-complacent attitude} in the midst of his poor little ridiculous brie a-brac junk shop." It is easy to say these things ; it is easy to revile us, easy to despise us ; therefore, let these people rail on ; they cannot feel as Byng and I feel — it is their loss not ours. For my part I am content to be a brick-a-bracker and a keramiker — more, I am proud to be so named. I am proud to know tbat I lose my reason as immediately in tbe presence of a rare jug witb an illustrious mark on the bottom of it, as if I had just emptied that jug. Very well ; I packed and stored a part of my collection, and the rest I placed in the care of tbe Grand Ducal Museum in Mannheim, by permission. My Olive Blue China Cat remains tbere yet. I presented it to that excellent institution. I had but one misfortune with my things. An egg which I had kept back from breakfast that morning, was broken in packing. It was a great pity. I had shown it to the best connoisseurs in Heidelberg, and they all said it was an antique. We spent a day or two in farewell visits, and then left for Baden-Baden. We had a pleasant trip of it, for the Rhine valley is always lovely. The only trouble was that the trip was too short. If I remember rightly it only occupied a couple of hours, therefore I judge that the distance was very little, if any, over fifty miles. We quitted the train at Oos, and walked the entire remaining distance to Baden-Baden, witb the exceptiou of a lift of less than an hour which we got on a passing waggon, the weather being exbauit* ingly warm. We came into town on foot. if " 92 A TBAMP ABBOAD. One of the first persons we encountered as we walked up the street, was the Rev. Mr. , an old friend from America— a luv-iky encounter, indeed, for his is a most gentle, refined and sensitive nature, and his company and companionehip are a genuine refreshment. We knew he had been in Europe some time, but were not at all expecting to run across him. Both parties burst forth into loving enthusiasms, and Kev. Mr. ■■- said— *• I have got a brimfull reservoir of talk to pour out on you, and an empty one ready and thirsty to receive what you have got ; we will sit up till midnight and have a good satisfying inter- change, for I leave here early in the morning." We agreed to that, of course. I had been vaguely conscious for a while of a person who was walking in the street abreast of us ; I had glanced furtively at him once or twice, and noticed that he was a fine, large, vigorous young fellow, with an open, independent countenance, faintly shaded with a pale and even almost imperceptible crop of early down, and that he was clothed from head to heel in cool ana enviable snow-white linen. I thought I had also noticed that his head had a sort of listening tilt to it. Now about this time the Rev. Mr. said — , ' " The sidewalk is hardly wide enough for three, so I will walk behind ; but keep the talk going, keep the talk going, there's no time to lose, and you may be sure 1 will do my share." He ranged himself behind us, and straightway that stately snow-white young fellow closed up to the sidewalk alongside him, fetched him a cordial slap on the shoulder with his broad palm, and sung out with a hearty cheeriness — " Americans, for twoand a-half and the money up I ffey f" The Reverend winced, but said mildly — ** Yes — we are Americans." ** Lord love you, you can just bet that's what / am, every time I Put it there 1" He held out his Sahara of a palm, and the Reverend laid his diminutive hand in it and got so cordial a shake tliat we heard his glove burst under it. ' " iSay, didn't I put you up right?** «*0.ye8.»» ^. k T&AM» ABRdAD. M up th« rica— a ed and > are a )e some . Both ^ou, and ive got ; ig intep- ,greed to who was rtively at vigorous 8, faintly ) of early cool ana d that his time the wiU walk there's no ire." He now-white I, fetched and sung Beyf" ^ery time ! id laid his we heard ** Sho I I tpotted you for my kind the minute I heard your clack. Tou been over here long 7" " About four months. Have you been over long 7" " Long t Well, I should say so I Oping on two yMurt, by geeminy I Say, are you homesick 7" " No, I can't say that I am. Are you f** ** 0, hellf yes I" This with immense enthusiasm* The Reverend shrunk a little in his clothes, and we were aware, rather by instinct than otherwise, that he was throwing out sig* nals of distress to us ; but we did not interfere or try to succor him, for we were quite happy. The young fellow hooked his arm into the Reverend's nowi with the confiding and grateful air of a waif who has been long- ing for a friend, and a sympathetic ear, and a chance to lisp once more the sweet accents of the mother tongue — and then he lim- bered up the muscles of his mouth and turned himself loose— and with such a relish I Some of his words were not Sunday* school words, so I am obliged to put blanks where they occur. " Yes indeedy ! if 1 ain't an American there ainH any Americans, that's all. And when I heard you fellows gassing away in the good old American language, I'm if it wasn't all I could do to keep from hugging you I My tongue's all warped with trying to curl it around these forsaken wind-galled nine- jointed German words here ; now I tell you it's awful good to lay it over a Christian word once more and kind of let the old taste soak in. I'm from western New York. My name is Cholley Adams. I'm a student, you knov?. Been here going on two years* I'm learning to be a horse doctor. I like that part of it, you know, but ■ these people, they won't learn a fellow in his own language, they make him learn in German j so before I could tackle the horse-doctoring I had to tackle this miserable language. *' Firstoff, I thought it would certainly give me the botts, but I don't mind it now. I've got it where the hair's short, I think j and dontchuknow, they made me learn Latin, too. Now between you and me, I wouldn't give a for all the Latin that was ever Jabbered ; and the first thing /calculate to do when I get through, is to just flit down and forget it. 'Twont take me long, and 1 don't mind the time, anyway. And I tell you what t the difier> 94 A TRAMP ABROAD. i i II encc between school teaching over yonder and school -teaching over here — bho I We don't know anything about it I Here you've got to peg and peg and peg and there just ain't any let-up— and what you learn here, you've got to knoto, dontchuknow — or else you'll have one of these spavined, spectacled, ring-boned, knock-kneed old professors in your hair. I've been here long enough, and I'm getting blessed tired of it, mind I iell you. The old man wrote me that he was coming over in June, and said he'd take me home in August, whether I was done with my education or not, but durn him, he didn't come ; never said why ; just sent me a hamper of Sunday School books, and told me to be good and hold on a while. I don't take to Simday school books, dontchuknow — I don't hanker after them when I can get pie — but I read them, anyway, because whatever the old man tells me to do, that's the thing that I'm a-going to do, or tear something, you know. 1 buckled in and read all of those books, because he wanted me to ; but that kind of thing don't excite me, I like something hearty. But I'm awful homesick. I'm homesick from ear-socket to crupper, and from crupper to hock joint ; but it ain't any use, I've got to stay here, till the old man drops the rag and gives the word — yes, sir, right here in this country I've got to linger till the old man says Comet — and you bet your bottom dollar, Johnny, it ain't just as easy as it is for a cat to have twins I" At the end of this profane and cordial explosion he fetched a prodigious '* Whoosh!'' to relieve his lungs and make recognition of the heat, and then he straightway dived into his narrative again for " Johnny's" benefit, beginning, " Well, it ain't any use talking, some of those old American words do have a kind of a bully swing to them ; a man can express himself with 'em a man can get at what he wants to say, dontchuknow." When we reached our hotel and it seemed that he was about to lose the Reverend, he showed so much sorrow, and begged so bard and so earnestly that the Reverend's heart was not hard enough to hold out against the pleadings — bo he went away with the parent-honoring student, like a right Christian, and took Bupper with him in his lodgings and sat in the surf-beat of hia slang and profanity till near midnight, and t|^en left him — left him pretty well talked out, but grateful "clear down to his frog duri sive Choi preti in hi gem, BAI arl and c throug grounc lofty ai music J and in fashion forth though rather people J rheuma These canes ; cheerle houses, must he land wi generou of thes( again, p vidual V forms o^ fiaden. dissolve A TRAMP ABBOAD. 95 iching you've )— and or else itacled, e been id I ieli 1 June, ne with ^er said ind told Sunday I when 1 : the old b, or tear se books, t't excite ick. I'm f to hock 8 old man re in this man says iH just as fetched a ecognition narrative it da do have mself with tnow." was about begged so 5 not hard , away with , and took beat of bis him— left [own to his frogs,** as he expressed it. 13ie Reverend said it had transpired during the interview that " ChoUey" Adam's father was an exten- sive dealer in horses in western New York ; this accounted for Cholley's choice of a profession. The Reverend brought away a pretty high opinion of Cholley as a manly young fellow, with stuff in him for a useful citizen ; he considered him rather a rough gem, but a gem, nevertheless. ^^._. _,., r > CHAPTER XVII. BADEN-BADEN sits in the lap of the hills, and the natural and artificial beauties of tl^e surroundings are combined effectively and charmingly. The level strip of ground which stretches through and beyond the town is laid out in handsome pleasure- grounds, shaded by noble trees and adorned at intervals with lofty and sparkling fountain-jets. Thrice a day a fine band makes music in the public promenade before the Conversation- House, and in the afternoon and evenings that locality is populous with fashionably dressed people of both sexes, who march back apd forth past the great music-stand and look very much bored, though they make a show of feeling otherwise. It seems like a rather aimless and stupid existence. A good many of these people are there for a real purpose, however ; they are racked with rheumatism, and they are there to stew it out in the hot baths. These invalids looked melancholy enough, limping about on their canes and crutches, and apparently brooding over all sorts of cheerless things. People say that Germany, with her damp stchie houses, is the home of rheumatism. If that is so, Providence must have foreseen that it would be so, and therefore filled the land with these healing baths. Perhaps no other country is so generously supplied with medicinal springs as Germany. Some of these baths are good for one ailment, some for another ; and again, peculiar ailments are conquered by combining the indi- vidual virtues of several different baths. For instance, for some forms of disease, the patient drinks the native hot water of Baden-Baden, with a spoonful of salt from .the Carlsbad springs disaoUed in it. That is not a dose to be forgotten right away. d6 A TRAMP ABROAD. P m ^>\ They dotiH ielt this hot water ; no, you go into the gttAi THtik* halle, and stand around, first on one foot and then on the other, while two or three young girls sit pottering at some soft Of lady- like sewing work in your neighborhood and can't seem to see you — polite as three-dollar clerks in government offices. By and by one of these rises painfully, and " stretches ;" — stretches fists and body heavenward till she raises her heels from the fioor, at the same time refreshing herself with a yawn of such comprehensiveness that the bulk of her face disappears behind her upper lip and one is able to see how she is constructed inside — then she slowly closes her cavern, brings down her fists and her heels, comes languidly forward, contemplates you contemp- tuously, draws you a glass of hot water and sets it down where you can get it by reaching for it. You take it and sayl— " How much 7" — and she returns you, with elaborate indiffer- ence, a beggar's answer — " Naeh Beliebe (what you please). This thing of using the common beggar's trick and the common beggar's shibboleth to put you on your liberality when you were expecting a simple straight-forward commercial transaction, adds a little to your prospering sense of irritation. You ignore her reply, and ask again — " How much ?" — and she calmly, indiffer- ently, repeats — *' Nach Beliebe." ' You are getting angry, but you are trying not to show it ; you resolve to keep on asking your question till she changes her answer, or at least her annoyingly indifferent manner. There- fore, if your case be like mine, you too fools stand there, and without perceptible emotion of any kind, or any emphasis on any sylllible, you look blandly into each other's eyes, and hold the following idiotic conversation— •'How much ?" « Naeh Beliebe." ^-" ....-;> « How much ?" " Naeh Beliebe." - ^^ - > r ' " Naeh Beliebe." '^^-i^ " ^- ' *" ' ' " Naeh Beliebe." ,./;.. « Naeh Beliebe.»» - ; "Naeh Beliebe." ■' I do not know what another person would hftve done, but ^t this point I gave it up ; that cast-iron indifference, that tranquil contemptuousness, conquered me, and I struck my colon. Novf A " How much ?" " How much ?" " How much ?" «' How much ?" A TEAMF AimOAB. tr Trtttk* otheri f lady- lee you 168 }»'- )l8 from of such behind id inside ists and ontexnp- n where indiffer- >t coinmoti you were [tion, adds jnore her indiffer- w it J you anges her ,r. There- here, and lis on any hold the Icme, but ^t ]at tranquil lion. N buy it ?' Howeveri these people are not impolite to Kussiana A TRAMP ABBOAD. 'li". :''M or Oermani. And m to rank, the j worship that, for they h»?« long been used to generals and nobles. If you wish to soe to what abysses servility can descend, present yourself before a Baden-Baden shop-keeper in the character of a Russian prince.^ It is an inane town, filled with sham, and petty fraud, and snobbery, but the baths are good. I spoke with many people, and they were all agreed in that. I had had twinges of rheuma tism unceasingly during three ye»rs, but the last one departed after a fortnight's bathing there, and I have never had one since. I fully believe I left my rheumatism in Baden-Baden. Baden- Baden is welcome to it. It was little, but it was all I had to give. I Would have preferred to leave something that was catching, but it was not in my power. There are several hot springs there, and during two thousand years they have poured forth a never diminishing abundance of the healing water. This water is conducted in pipes to the numerous bath houses, and is reduced to an endurable tempera- ture by the addition of cold water. The new Friederichsbad is A very large and beautiful building, and in it one may have any sort of bath that has oven been invented, and with all the addi- tions of herbs and drugs that his ailment may need or that the physician of the establishment may consider a useful thing to put into the water. You go there, enter the great door, get a bow graduated to your style and clothes from the gorgeous por- tier, and a bath ticket and an insult from the frowsy woman for a quarter ; she strikes a bell and a serving man conducts you down a long hall and shuts you into a commodious room which has a washstand, a mirror, a bootjack and a sofa in it, and there you undress at your leisure. The room is divided by a great curtain ; you draw this curtain aside, and find a large white marble bath tub, with its rim sunk to the level of the floor, and with three white marble steps lead- ing down into it. Thid tub is full of water which is as clear as erystal, and is tempered to 28" Reaumur (about 95" Fahrenheit). Sunk into the floor, by the tub, is a covered copper box which contains some warm towels and a sheet. You look fully as white as an angel when you are stretched out in that limpid bath. You remain in it ten minutes the first time, and afterwards in- crease the duration from day to day* till you reach twentyfive qi A TRAMP ABROAD. 99 thirty minutM. There you stop. Tlie appointments of the plaoe are so luxurious, the benefit so marked, tho price so moderate, and the insults so sure, that you very soon find yourself adoring the Friederichsbad and infesting it. We had a plain, simple, unpretending, good hotel, in Baden- Baden — the Hotel de France — and alongside my room I had ft giggling, cackling, chattering family who always wont to bed just two hours after me and always got up just two hours nhoad of me. But that is common in German hotels ; the people gener* ally go to bed long after eleven and get up long before eight. The partitions convey sound like a drumhead, and everybody knows it ; but no matter, a German family who are all kindness and consideration in the daytime make apparently no effort to moderate their noises for your benefit at night. They will sing, laugh, and talk loudly, and bang furniture around in the most pitiless way. If you knock on your wall appealingly, they will quiet down and discus the matter softly amongst thomsolves for a moment — then, like the mice, they fall to persecuting you again, and as vigorously as before. They keep cruelly late and early hours for such noisy folk. Of course when one begins to find fault with foreign people*! ways, he is very likely to get a reminder to look nearer home before he gets far with it. I open my note book to soo if I can find some more information of a valuable nature about Baden- Baden, and the first thing I fall upon is this : Baden-Baden, (no date.) Lot of vociferous Americans at break- fast this morning. Talking at everybodjj, while pretending to talk among themselves. On their first trorvels, manifestly. Show- ing off. The usual signs — airy, easy-going references to grand distances and foreign places. " Well, good-hye, old fellow — if I don't run across you in Italy, you hunt me up in London before you sail." The next item which I find in my note book is this one : " The fact that a band of 6,000 Indians are now murdering our frontiersmen at their impudent leisure, and that we are able ta send 1200 soldiers against them, is utilized here to discourage emigration to America. The common people think the Indians are in New Jersey." Tlus is a new and peculiar argument against keeping our arm| 100 A TRiMF ABSOAD. down to a ridlculoui figure in the matter of numbera. It \» rather a striking one, too. I have not distorted the truth in say ing that the facts in the above item, about the army and the %£ Indians, are made use of to discourage emigration to America. That the common people should be rather foggy in their geo- graphy, and foggy as to the location of the Indians, is a matter for amusement, maybe, but not of surprise. There is an interesting old cemetery in Baden-Baden, and we spent several pleasant hours in wandering through it and spelling out the inscriptions on the aged tombstones. Apparently after a man has lain there a century or two, and has had a good many people buried on top of him, it is considered that his tombstone is not needed by him any longer. I judge so from the fact that hundreds of old gravestones have been removed from the graves and placed against the inner walls of the cemetery. What artists they had in the old times 1 Tney chiseled angels and cherubs and devils and skeletons on the tombstones in the most lavish •ad gexiexous way — as to supply — but curiously grotes<|ue and A nUMP ABIOAB. It If n MT d the ii.. II imerica. eir geo- matter and we spelling ly after odmany mbstone act that e graves At artista cherubs st lavish mie and outlandish as to form. It U not always —kj to toll whieh of th« figures belong among the blest and which of them among the op> posite party. But there was an inscription, in Frenohf on gravine in 1725, and remains as she left it at her death. We wan* dered through a great many of its rooms, and they all had striking peculiarities of decoration. For instance, the walls of one room were pretty completely covered with small pictures of the Mar* gravine in all conceivable varieties of fanciful costumes, some of them male. The walls of another room were covered with grotesquely and elaborately figured hand-wrought tapestry. The musty ancient beds remained in the chambers, and their quilts and curtains and canopies were decorated with curious hand-work, and the walls and ceilings frescoed with historical and mythological scenes in glaring colours. There was enough crazy and rotten rubbish in the building to make the true brioa-bracker green with envy. A painting in the dining hall verged upoh the indelicate— but then the Margravine was herself a trifle indelicate. It is in every way a wildly and picturesquely decorated housey and brimfull of interest as a reflection of the charaote? «nd tMitt of Uw^^ rude hjiflnm time, 102 A TRAMP ABROAD. In the grounds, a few roda from the palace, stands the Kargra* ▼ine's chapely just as she left it — a coarse wooden structure, wholly barren of ornament. It is said that the Margravine would give herself up to debauchery and exceedingly fast living for several months at a time, and then retire to this miserable wooden den and spend a few months in repenting and getting ready for another good time. She was a devoted Catholic, and was perhap<^ quite a model sort of a Christian as Christians went then, in high life. Tradition says she spent the last two years of her life in the strange den I have been speaking of, after having indulged herself in one final, triumphant and satisfying spree. She shut herself up there, without company, and without even a servant, and so abjured and forsook the world. In her little bit of a kitchen she did her own cooking ; sae wore a hair shirt next the skin, and castigated herself with whips — these aids to grace are exhibited there yet. She prayed and told her beads, in another little room before a Waxen Virgin niched in a little box against the wall ; she beddt^l herself like a slave. In another small room is an unpainted wooden table, and behind it sit half-life-size waxen figures of the Holy Family, made by the very worst artist that ever lived, perhaps, and clothed in gaudy, flimsy drapery. The Margravine used to bring her meals to this table and dine with the Holy Family. What an idea that was t What a grisly spectacle it must have been 1 Imagine it : Those rigid, shock-headed figures, with corpsy complexions and fishy glass eyes, occupying one side of the table in the constrained attitudes and dead fixedness that distinguish all men that are born of wax, and this wrinkled, smouldering old fire-eater occupy- ing the other side, mumbling her prayers and munching her sausages in the ghostly stillness and shadowy indistinctness of ? winter twilight. It mak^s one feel crawly even to think of it. In this sordid place, and clothed, bedded and fed like a pauper, this strange princess lived and worshiped during two years, and in it she died. Two or three himdred years ago, this would have made the poor den holy grouL^d ; and the church would have set up a miracle-factory there and made plenty of money out of \t. The den could be moved Into some portions of France and made ft good property even now. .,.*,,.,;,, A TEAMP ABBOAD* 108 CHAPTER XVin, FtOM Baden-Baden we made the oustomaiy trip into the Black Forest. We were on foot moot of the time. One cannot describe those noble woods, nor the feeling with which they insf^ire him. A feature of the feeling, however, is a deep sense of contentment ; another feature of it is a buoyant, boyish glad- ness ; and a third and very conspicuous feature of it is one's tense of the remoteness of the workday world and his entire emancipation from it and its affairs. Those woods stretch unbroken over a vast region ; and every- where they are such dense woods, and so still, and so piney and fragrant. The stems of the trees are trim and straight, and in many places all the ground is hidden for miles under a thick cushion of moss of a vivid green color, with not a decayed or ragged spot in its surface, and not a fallen leaf or twig to mar its immaculate ti'v -ness. A rich cathedral gloom pervades the pillared aisles j so the stray flecks of sunlight that strike a trunk here and a bough yonder are strongly accented, and when they strike the moss they fairly seem to burn. But the wierdest effect, and the most enchanting, is that produced by the diffused light of the low afternoon sun ; no single ray is able to pierce its way in, then, but the diffused light takes color from moss and foliage, and pervades the place like a faint, green4inted mist, the theatrical fire of fairyland. The suggestion of mystery and the supernatural which hannts the forest at all times, is intensi- fied by this unearthly glow. We found the Black Forest farm houses and villages all that the Black Forest stories have pictured them. The first genuine specimen which we came upon* was the mansion of a rich farmer ai\d member of the Common Council of the parish or district. He was an important personage in the land and so was his wife also, of course. His daughter was the '' catch" of the region, and abe mii^ be already entering into immortality as the heroine lOi A TRAV^ ABROAD. •1 1 •1 A tBAW ABBOAD. 105 t>r fliiA of AuMrVaoh's norelt for all I know. We thall mo, for IT he puts her in I ihall reoogniie her by her Bleok Foreet clothee, «nd her burned oomplexion, her plump figure, her fat hands, her dull expreMion, her gentle tpiriti her generoue feet| and her bonnetleai head. The house was big enough for a hotel ; it was a hundred feet long and fifty wide, and ten feet high, from ground to eaves ; but from the eares to the comb of the mighty roof was as much as forty feet, or maybe even more. This roof was of anoient mud* colored straw thatch a foot thick, and was covered all over, except in a few trifling spots, with a thriving and luxurious growth of green vegetation, mainly moss. The mossless spots were places where repairs had been made by the insertion of bright new masses of yellow straw. The eaves projected far down^ like sheltering, hospitable wings. Across the gable that fronted the road, and about ten feet above the ground, ran a nar- row porch, with a wooden railing ; a row of small windows filled with very small panes looked upon the porch. Above were two or three other little windows, one clear up under the sharp apex of the roof. Before the ground-floor door was a huge pile of manure. The door of a second-story room on the side of the house was open, and occupied by the rear elevation of a cow. Was this probably the drawing-room T All ot the front half of the house from the ground up seemed to be occupied by the people^ the cows and the chickens, and all the rear half by draft animals and hay. But the chief feature all around this house was the big heaps of manure. We became very familiar with the fertilizer in the Forest. We fell unconsciously into the habit of judging of a man's station in life by this outward and eloquent sign. Sometimes we said " Here is a poor devil, this is manifest." When we saw a stately accumulation, we said, " Here is a banker." When we encoun- tered a country seat surrounded by an Alpine pomp of manurey we said, " Doubtless a Duke lives here." The importance of this feature has not been properly magnified •in the Black Forest stories. Manure is evidently the Black Forester's main treasure — ^his coin, his jewel, his pride, his Old Master, his keramios, his bric-a-brao, hu darling, his title to public •consideration, envy, veneration, and his flrst solicitude when ht 106 A TEAMP ABBOIB. gets ready to make his will. The true Black Forest norel, if it !■ ever written, will be skeletoned somewhat in this way } iKBLBTOir fOB BLACK fOBBST NOTBL. Rich old fanner, named Huss. Has inherited great wealth of manure, and by diligence has added to it. It is double-starred in Baedeker.* The Black Forest artist paints it^— his master* piece. The king comes to see it. Gretohen Huss, daughter and heiress.— Paul Hoch, young neigh- bor, suitor for Gretohe* n's hand— ostensibly ; he really wants the manure. Hoch has a good many cart loads of the iBlack Forest currency himself, and therefore is a good catch; but he is sordid, ■ ; mean, and without senti- ment, whereas Gretch- en is all sentiment and poetry. Hans Schmidt, young neighbor, full of BicH oziD HXTBa. scntimeut, full of poetry, loves Gretohen, Gretchen loves him. But he has no manure.' Old Huss forbids him the house. His heart breaks, he goes away to die in the woods, far from the cruel world — for he says, bitterly, << What is man, without manure?" [Interval of six months.] Paul Hoch comes to Old Huss and says, ''I am at last as rich as you required — come and view the pile." Old Hubs views it : and says, " It is sufficient — take her and be happy" — ^meaning Gretchfcn. [ Interval of two weeks.] Wedding party assembled in old Huss's drawing room ; Hoch placid and content, Gretchen weeping over her hard late Enter ^ * When Bftedeknr'B guide bookt mention • thing and put tiro It MMM <* w«U worth Tisiting." after it, ILK A TBAMP ABBOAO. 107 old Huss's head book-keeper. Htus Bays fiercely, ** I gare 70a three weeks to find out why your books don't balance, and to prove that you are not a defaulter ; the time is up^find me the missing property or you go to prison as a thief." Book-keeper: "I have found it." "Where?" Book-keeper: sternly— tragic- ally : " In the bridegroom's pile ! — ^behold the thief—see him blench and tremble !" [Sensation.] Paul Hoch ; " Lost, lost 1" — falls over the cow in a swoon and is handcuffed. Ghretchen . " Saved I" Falls over the calf in a swoon of joy, but is caught in the arms of Hans Schmidt, who springs in at that moment. Old Hubs : " What, you here, varlet? imhand the maid and quit the place." Hans: still supporting the msensible girl: "Never I Cruel old man, know that I come with claims, which even you can not despise." Hubs : " What, you f name them." Hans : ** Then listen. The world had forsaken me, I forsook the world, I wandered in the solitude of the forest, longing for death but finding none. I fed upon roots, and in my bitterness I dug for the bitterest, loathing the sweeter kind. Digging, three days agone, I struck a manure mine ! — a Golconda, a limitless Bonanza, of solid manure I I can buy you all, and have moun- tain ranges of manure left! Ha-ha now thou smilest a smile 1" 'Immense sensation.] Exhibition of specimens from the mine. Old Huss, enthusiastically : " Wake her up, shake her up, noble young man, she is yours I" Wedding takes place on the spotj book-keeper restored to his office and emoluments ; Paul Hoch led off to jail. The Bonanza king of the Black Forest lives to a good old age, blessed with the love of his wife and of his twenty- seven children, and the still sweeter envy of everybody around. We took our noon meal of fried trout one day at the Plow Inn, in a very pretty village (Ottenhofen), and then went into the public room to rest and smoke. There we found nine or ten Black Forest grandees assembled around a table. They were the Common Council of the parish. They had gathered there at eight o'clock that morning to elect a new member, and they had now been drinking beer four hours at the new member's expense. They were men of fifty or sixty years of age, with grave, good- natured faces, and were all dressed in the costume made familiar to us by the Black Forest stories : broad, round-topped black felt 108 ▲ TBiMP ABBOAD. hfttt with the brims curled up all around; long red wdsteoati with large metal buttons, black alpaca coats with the waists up between the shoulders. There were no speeches, there was but little talk, there were no frivolities ; the Council filled themseWes gradually, steadily, but surely, with beer, and conducted them* selves with sedate decorum, as became men of position, men of influence, men of manure. We had a hot afternoon tramp up the valley, along the grassy bank of a rushing stream of clear water, past farm houses, water mills, and no end of wayside crucifixes and saints and Virgins. These crucifixes, etc., are set up in memory of departed friends by survivors, and are almost as frequent as telegraph poles are in other lands. We followed the carriage road, and had our usual luck : we traveled under a beating sun, and always saw the shade leave the shady places before we could get to them. In all our wanderings we seldom managed to strike a piece of road at its time for being shady. We hajd a particularly hot time of it on that par- ticular Afternoon, and with no comfort but what we could get « out of the fact that the peasants at work away up on the steep mountain sides above our heads were even worse ofif than we were. By and by it became impossible to endure the intolerable glare and heat any longer ; so we struck across the ravine and entered the deep cool twilight of the forest, to hunt for what the guide book called the '' old road." We found an old road, and it proved eventually to be the right one, though we followed it at the time with the conviction that it was the wrong one. If it was the wrong one there could be no use in hurryi&g, therefore we did not hurry, but sat down fre- quently on the soft moss and ei\joyed the restful quiet and shade of the forest solitudes. There had been distractions in the car- riage road — school children, peasants, wagons, troops of pedes- tnanizing students from all over Germany — ^but we had the old road all to ourselves. Now and then while we rested we watched the laborious ant at his work. I found nothing new in him — certainly nothing to change my opinion of him. It seems to me that in the matter pf intellect the ant must be a strangely overrated bird. During •umm«ni| morn, 1 have watched him, when I ought to have A TRAMP ABROAD. 100 been in b«Mer business, and I have not yet eome aerosi a living ant that seemed to have any more sense than a dead one. I refer to the ordinary ant, of course ; I have had no experience of those wonderful swiss and African ones which vote, keep drilled aimies^ hold slaves, and dispute about religion. Those particular ants may be all that the naturalist paints them, but I am persuaded that the average ant is a sham. I admit his industry, of course i he is the hardest working creature in tho world — when anybody is looking — but nis leather-head edness is the point I make against him. He goes out foraging, he makes a capture, and then what does he do ? Go home ? No — he goes anywhere but home. He dosn't know where home is. His home may be only three feet away — no matter, no can't fmd it. He makes his capture, as I have said ; it is generally something which can be of no sort of use to himself or anybody else ; it is usually seven times bigger than it ought to be ; he hunts out the awkwardest place to take hold of it; he lifts it bodily up in the air by main force, and starts : not toward noma, but in the opposite direction ; not calmly and wisely, but with a frantic haste which is wasting to its strength ; he fetches up against a pebble, and instead of going around it, he climbs over it backwards dragging his booty after him, tumbles down on the other side, jumps up in a passion, kicks the dust off his clothes, moistens his hands, grabs his property viciously , yanks in this way and then that, shoves it ah<>ad of him a moment, turns tail and lugs it after him another moment, gets madder and madder, then presently hoists it into the air and goes tearing away in an entirely new direction ; comes to a weed j li never occurs to him to go around it; no, he must climb it; and he does climb it, dragging his worthless property to the top — which is as b;jg!it a thing to do as it would be for me to carry a sack of flour I'rom Heidelberg to Paris by way of Strasbnrg steeple ; when he gets up tiiere he finds that that is not the place; takes a cursory glance at the scenery and either climbs down again or aimbles down, and starts off once more — as usual, in a new direi'Uon. At the end of half an hour, he fetches up within six inches of the place he started from and lays his burden down ; meantime he has been over all the ground for two yards around, and climbe. 115 antil the topic of skeletoni raiBed up Nicoclftmus Dodf* oat of the deep graye in my memory where he had lain buried and forgotten for twenty-five years. When I wan a boy in a printing office in Missouri, a loose-jointed, longlefK<> tuw )ieaded,Joani clad, countrified oub of about six'^^n loun^««d in one day, and without removing his hands from t)><' dopths of his trowsera pooketaor taking off his faded ruin of a slotK^h hat, whose broken ■BBKINO ▲ SITUATIOir. brim bong limp and ragged about his eyes and ean like a bog. eaten cabbage leaf, stared indifferently around, then leaned his hip against the editor's table, crossed his mighty brogans, aimed at a distant fly from a crevice in his upper teeth| laid him loW| and said with composure, "Whar's the boss?" "I am the boss," said the editor, following this curious bit of architecture wonderingly along up to its clock-face with his eye* « Don't want anybody fur to learn the business, 't ain't likelj t" « Well, I don't know. Would you like to learn it?" "-ifej... 116 A TRAMP ABROAD. ''Pap's 80 po' he cain't run me no mo/ so 1 want to git a show somers if I kin, 'tain't no diffunce what — I'm strong and hearty, And 1 don't turn my back on no kind of work, hard nur soft." " Do you think you would like to learn the printing business 7" " Well, I don't re'ly k'yer a durn what I do learn, so's I git a chance fur to make my way. I'd jist as soon learn print'n 'i anything." " Can you read ?" « Yes— middiin'." \ "Write?" " Well, I've seed people could lay over me thar." "Cipher?" " Not good enough to keep store, I don't reckon, but up as fur as twelve-times-twelve I ain't no slouch. 'Tother side of that is what gits me." " Where is your home ?" ' *"' • " I'm fm old Shelby." - " What's your father's religious denomination ?'' " Him ? 0, he's a blacksmith." " No, no — I don' t mean his trade. What's his religioua denomi- nation ?" " — I didn't understand you befo'. He's a Freemason." " No-no, you don't get my meaning yet. What I mean is, does he belong to any church ?" " Noiv you're talk in' ! Couldn't make out what you was a tryin to git through yo' head no way. B'long to a church ! ' Why boss he's ben the pizenest kind of a Free-will Baptis' for forty year. They ain't no pizener ones 'n' what he is. Mighty good man, pap is. Everybody says that. If they said any difirunt Ihey wouldn't say it whar / wuz — not much they wouldn't." " What is your own religion ?" "Well, boss, you've kind o' got me, thar— .and yit you hain't got me so mighty much, nuther. I think 't if a feller he'ps ano- ther feller when he's in trouble, and don't cuss, and don't do no mean things, nur noth'n' he ain' no business to do, and don't spell the Savior's name with a little g, he ain't runnin' no resks — he's about as saift as if he b'longed to a church." ' "But suppose he did spell it with a little g -what then ?" " Well, if he done it a-purpose. I reckon he wouldn't stand no k TRAM? ABROAD. 117 chance — he oughtn^t to have no chance, anyway, I'm most rotten certain 'bout that." " What Ib your name ?" ** Nicodemus Dodge " " I think maybe you'll do, Nicodemus. We'll give you a trial, anyway." ,.,^. ^ .;. ..., . ,. . ■... . .; "All right." " .::,{., ' " When would you like to begin ?" "Now." So, within ten minutes after we had first glimpsed this nonde* script he was one of us, and with his coat off and hard at it." Beyond that end of our establishment which was furthest from the street, was a deserted garden, pathless, and thickly grown with the bloomy and villanous " jimpson" weed and its commor friend the stately sunflower. In the midst of this mournful spot was a decayed and aged little " frame" house with but one room, one window, and no ceiling — it had been a smoke-house a genera- tion before. Nicodemus was given this lonely and ghostly den as ft bed chamber. '' \ The village smarties recognized a treasure in Nicodemus, right away — a butt to play jokes on. It was easy to see that he was inconceivably green and confiding. George Jones had the glory of perpetrating the first joke on him ; he gave him a cigar with a fire-cracker in it and winked to the crowd to come ; the thing exploded presently and swept away the bulk of Nicodemus's eyebrows and eyelashes. He simply said — " I consider them kind of seeg'yars dangersome," and seemed to suspect nothing. The next evening Nicodemus waylaid George and poured a bucket of ice-water over him. One day, while Nicodemus was in swimming, Tom McElroy " tied " his clothes. Nicodemus made a bonfire of Tom's, by way of retaliation, A third joke was played upon Nicodemus a day or two later — he walked up the middle aisle of the village church, Sunday night, with a staring hand bill pinned between his shoulders. The joker spent the remainder of the night after church in the cellar af a deserted house, and Nicodemus sat on the cellar door till towards breakfast time to make sure that the prisoner re* membered that if any noise was made, some rough treatment 118 A TRAMP ABBOAD. Uh l\ wonld h% th« eonsequenoe. The cellar had two feet of stagnant water in it, and was bottomed with six inches of soft mud. But 1 wander from the pomt. It was the subject of skeleton! that brought this boy back to my recollection. Before a very long time had elapsed the village smarties began to feel an un* comfortable consciousness of not having made a very shining success out of their attempts on the simpleton from ** old Shelby.** Experimenters grew scarce and chary. Now the young doctor came to the rescue. There was delight and applause when he proposed to scare Nicodemus to death, and explained how he was going to do it. He had a noble new skeleton — the skeleton of the late and only local celebrity, Jimmy Finn, the village drunkard — a grisly piece of property which he had bought of Jimmy Finn himself, at auction, for fifty dollars, under great competition, when Jimmy lay very sick in the tan-yard a fort* night before his death, llie fifty dollars had gone promptly for whiskyi and had considerably hurried up the change of owner* ship in the skeleton. The doctor would put Jimmy Finn's skele* ton in Nicodemus's bed 1 This was done — about half-past ten in the evening. About Nicodemus's usual bedtime — midnight — the village jokers came creeping stealthily through the jimpson w^eds and sunflowers toward the lonely frame den. They reached the window and peeped in. There sat the long-legged pauper on his bed, in a very short shirt, and nothing more ; he was dangling his legs contentedly back and forth, and wheezing the music of " Camp* town Baces " out of a paper-overlaid comb which he was pressing against his mouth ; by him lay a new jewsharp, a new top, a solid india-rubber ball, a handfull of painted marbles, five poimds of ** store " candy, and a well-knawed slab of gingerbread as big and as thick as a volume of sheet music. He had sold the skele- ton to » traveling quack for three dollars and was eiijoying the result I Just as we had finished talking about skeletons and were drift, ing into the subject of fossils, Harris and I heard a shout, and glanced up the steep hillside. We saw men and women standing away up there looking frightened, and there was a bulky object tumbling and floundering down the steep slope toward us. We got out of the way, and when the object landed in the road it ▲ TRAMP ABBOAD. 119 proved to be a boy. He had tripped and fallen, and there waa nothing for him to do bat tnut to luck and take what might oome. When one starta to roll dowa a place like that, there ia no atop> ping till the bottom is reached. Think of people farming on a slant which is so steep that the best you can say of it — ^if you MSkut to be fastidiously accurate — is, that it is a little steeper than a ladder and not quite so steep as a mansard roof. But that is what they do. Some cf the little farms on the liillside opposite Heidelberg were stood up "edgeways." The boy was wonder- fully jolted up, and his head was' bleeding, from cuts which it had got fiam small stones on the way. Harris and I gathered him up a^d set Mm on a stone, and by that time the men and women had scampered down and brought his cap. Men, women and children flocked out from neighboring ook- tsges and joined the crowd ; the pale boy was petted, and stand a{:, and commiserated, and water was brought for him to dzink, and bathe his bruises in. And such another clatter of tongaes ! All who had teen the catastrophe were describing it at once, and each trying to talk louder than his neighbor } and one youth of a superior genius ran a little way up the hill, called attention, tripped, fell, rolled down among us, and thus triumphantly showed exactly how the thing had been done. Hmths and I were included in all the descriptions; how we were coming along ; how Hans Gros shouted ; how we looked up 8tartle ' A TRAMP ABBOAD. dUUMMl t lliftt WM my fint thought. In the pew direoUy in froai of ui Mt an elderly lady, plainly and cheaply dressed ; at hw side sat a young lady with a very sweet face, and she also i«a- quite simply dressed ; but around us and about us were clothes and jewels which it would do anybody's heart good to worship in. 1 thought it was pretty manifest that the elderly lady was embarrassed at finding herself in such a conspicuous place arrayed in such che!Ap apparel ; I began to feel sorry for her and troubled about her. She tried to seem very busy with her prayer book and her responses, and unconscious that she was out of place, but I said to myself, " She is not succeeding — there is a distressed tremulousness in her voice which betrays increasing embarrassment." Presently the Savior's name was mentioned, and in her flurry she lost her head completely, and rose and curtsied, instead of making a slight nod as everybody else did. The sympathetic blood surged to my temples and I turned and gave those fine birds what I intended to ba a beseeching look but my feelings got the better of me and changed it into a look which said, " If any of you pets of fortune laugh at this poor soul, you will deserve to be fiayed for it." Things went from bad to worse, and I shortly found myself mentally taking the unfriended lady under my protection. My mind was wholly upon her, I forgot all about the sermon. Her embarrassment took stronger and stronger hold upon her ; she got to snapping the lid of her smellirig bottle— it made a loud, sharp sound, but in her trouble she snapped and snapped away, unconscious of what she was doing. The last extremity was reached when the collection-plate began its rounds ; the moderate people threw in pennies, the nobles and the rich contributed silver, but she laid a twenty f mark gold piece upon the book rest before her with a sounding ■lap I I said to myself, *' She has parted with all her little hoard to buy the consideration of these unpitying people — it is a sor. I'dwful spectacle." I did not venture to look around this time ; but as the service closed, I said to myself, " Let them laugh, it is their opportunity ; but at the do6( of this church they shall see her step into our fine carriage with us, and our gaudy coachman ■hall drive her home." " ' * Then she rose — and all the congregation stood while she walked down the aisle. She was the Empress of Germany 1 A TIAMP ABBOAD. 128 No—the had not been lo much embarrauod m I hid luppotad. My imagination had got started on the wrong soent, and that it always hopeless ; one it sure then to go straight on misinter* preting everything, clear through to the end. llie young lady with her imperial Mi\jesty was a maid of honor — and I had been taking her for one of her boarders all the time. This it the only time I have ever had an Empress under my personal protection ; and considering my inexperience, I wonder I got through with it so well. I should have been a little embar- rassed myself if I had known earlier what sort of a contract I had on my hands. We found that the Empress had been in Baden Baden several days. It is said that she never attends any but the English form of church service. I lay abed and read and rested from my journey's fatiguet the remainder of that Sunday, but I sent my agent to represent me at the afternoon service, for I never allow anything to Anteiiero with my habit of attending church twice every Sunday. There was a vast crowd in the public grounds that night to hear the band play the '' Fremersberg." This piece tellt one of the old legends of that region : how a great noble of the Middle Aifie» got lost in the mountainS| and wandered about with his dof^ in a violent storm, until at last the faint tones of a monas- te^rj bell, calling the monks to a midnight service, caught his ear, and he followed the direction the sounds came from and was saved. A beautiful air ran through the music, without ceasing ; sometimes loud and strong, sometimes so soft that it could hardly be distinguished' but it was always there; it swung grandly along through the shrill whistling of the storm wind, the rattling patter of the rain, and the boom and crash of the thunder ; it wound soft and low through the lesser sounds, the distant ones, such as the throbbing of the convent bell, the melodious wind* ing of the hunter's horn, the distressed hayings of his dogs, and the solemn chanting of the monks ; it rose again, with a jubilant ii ig, and mingled itself with the country songs and dances of the peasants assembled in the convent hall to cheer up the res- cued huntsman while he ate his supp&r. The instruments imi- tated all these sounds with a marvelous exactness. More than one man started to raise his umbrella when the ttorm bunt §-1 ■ r£;-;i 124 A TIIAUP ABROAD. forth »nd the sheets of mimic rain came driving by j it wai hardly possible to keep from i)utting your hand to your hat when the fierce wind began to rage and shriek ; and it was not possible to refrain from starting when those sudden and charm ingly real thundercrashes were let loose. I suppose the Fremersberg is very low-grade music ; I know, indeed, that it must be low-grade music, because it so delighted me, warmed me, moved me, stirred me, uplifted me, enraptured me, that I was full of cry all the time, and mad with enthusiasm. My soul had never had such a scour ing out since I was born. The solemn I and majestic chanting of the monks was not done by instruments, but by men's vo: ;• s ; and it rose and fell, and rose a able things ; it reconciles us to fishes swimming around on top of the mud — I mean the water. The most of the picture is a mani- fest impossibility — that is to say, a lie ; and only rigid cultivation can enable a man to find truth in a lie. But it enabled Mr. Ruskin to do it, and it has enabled me to do it, and I am thankful for it. A Boston newspaper reporter went and took a look at the Slave Ship floundering about in that fierce conflagation of reds and yellows, and said it reminded him of a tortoise-shell cat having a fit in a platter of tomatoes. In my then uneducated state, that went home to my non cultivation, and I thought, here is a man with an unobstructed eye. Mr. Ruskin would have said : This person is an ass. That is what I would say, now.* However, our businesE in Baden-Baden this time, was to join our courier. I had thought it best to hire one, as we should be in Italy, by and by, and we did not know that language. Neither did he. We found him at the hotel, ready to take charge of us. I asked him if he was " all fixed." He said he was. That was very true. He had a trunk, two small satchels, and an umbrella. I was to pay him $55 a month and railway fares. ()n the conti* nent the railway fare on a trunk is about the same it is on a man. Couriers do not have to pay any board and lodging. This seems a great saving to the tourist— at first. It does not occur to the tourist that somebody pays that man's board and lodging. It occurs to him by and by, however, in one of his lucid moments. * Months after this was written, 1 happened into the National Gallery in London, Knd soon became so fascinated witli tbo Turner pictures that I could hardly get away from the place. I went there often, afterward, meaning to see tJie rest of the gallery, but the Tomer spell was too strong ; it could not be shaken off. However, tlM Tutnen »bnh attTMtaA bm moit did mt remind me of tho Sl«vo Sbif. 'It n\ A TBAHP ABaOin. CHAPTER XXL 'M NEXT morning we left in the train for Switzerland, and reached Lucerne about ten o'clock at night. The first dlBCOvery I made was that the beauty of the lake had not been exaggerated. Within a day or two I made anotlier discovery. This was, that the lauded chamois is not a wild goat ; that it is not a horned animal ; that it is not shy ; that it does not avoid human society ; and that there is no peril in hunting it. The chamois is a black or Wown creature no bigger than a mustard seed ; you do not have to go after it, it comes after you ; it arrives in /ast herds and skips and scampers all over your body, inside you • clothes ; thus it is not shy, but extremely sociable ; it is not afrnid of man, on the contrary it will attack him ; its bite is not dangerous, but neither is it pleasant ; its activity has not been overstated— i^ you try to put your finger on it, it will skip a thousand times its own length at one jump, and no eye is sharp enough to -•'^e where it lights. A great deal of romantic nonsense has beoii written about the Swiss chamois and the perils of hunting i', whereas the truth is that even women and children hunt it, and fear. lessly ; indeed, everybody hunts it j the hunting is going on all the time, day and night, in bed and out of it. It is poetic foolish. ness to hunt it with a gun ; very few people do that ; there is not one man in a million who can hit it with a gun. Ji is much easier to catch it than it is to shoot it, and only the exjierienced chamois hunter can do either. Another common piece of exag. geration is that about the " scarcity " of the chamois. It is the reverr.c of scarce. Droves of 100,000,000 chamois are not unusual in the Swiss hotels. Indeed they are so numerous as to be a great pest. The romancers always dress up the chamois hunter, in a fanciful and picturesque costume, whereas the best way to hunt this game is to do it without any costume at all. The article of commerce called chamois skin is another fraud ; nobody could ■kin a chamois, it is too small. The creature is a humbug in 4 TIUMF AUBOAIk ii7 ohed ery 1 >at6cll. , that ornod ciety •, black lo not herds othes ; )f mani us, but ted— i' □aes its where (vritten i^hereas id fear- on all ibolisli. ,here is much enced of exag. is the unusual a great er, in a to hunt tide of ly could mbug in ri€ ir erery way, and everything which hM be^n written about it ii •entimental exaggeration. It was no pleasure to me to find the chamois out, for he had been one of my pet illusions ; all mf life it had been my dream to see him in his native wilds som« day, and engage in the aSrenturous sport of chasing him from cliff to cliff. It is no pleasure to me to expose him, now, and destroy the reader's delight in him and respect for him, but still it must be done, for when an honest writer discovers an imposi- tion it is his simple duty to strip it bare and hurl it down from its place of honour, no matter who suffers by it ; any other courM would render him unworthy of the public confidence. Lucerne is a charming place. It begins at the water's edge, wivh a fringe of hotels, and scrambles up and spreads itself orer two or three sharp hills in a crowded, disorderly, but picturesque way, offering to the eye a heaped-up confusion of red roofs, quaint gables, dormer windows, toothpick steeples, with here and there a bit of ancient embattled wall bending itself over the ridges, worm-fashion, and here and there an old square tower of heavy masonry. And also here and there a town clock with only one hand — a hand which stretches straight across the dial and has no joint in it ; such a clock helps out the picture, but you cannot tell the time of day by it Between the curving line of hotels and the lake is a broad avenue with lamps and a doubla rank of low shade trees. The lake front is walled with masonry like a pier, and has a railing to keep people from walking over- board. All day long the vehicles dash along the avenue, and nurses, children and tourists sit in the shade of the trees, or lean on the railing and watch the schools of fishes darting about in the clear water, or gaze out over the lake at the stately border of snow-hooded mountain peaks. Little pleasure-steamers, black with people, are coming and going all the time ; and everywhere one sees young girls and young men paddling about in fanciful row-boats, or skimming along by the help of sails when there is any wind. The front rooms of the hotels have little railed bal- conies, where one may take his private luncheon in calm, cool comfort, and look down upon this busy and pretty scene and enjoy it without having to do any of the work connected with it. Most of the people, both male and female, are in walking ooa> iume, and carry alpenstocks. Evidently it is not considered ffvlil ■■•>x i2ft 4 tSAMP ABROA^. •afe to go about in Switierland, oven in town, mthout an atpett* ■took. If the tourist forgets, an i comes down to breakfast with- out his alpenstock, he goes back and gets it, and stands it up in the corner. When his touring in Switzerland is finished, he does not throw that broomstick away, but lugs it home with him, to the far comers of the earth, although this costH him more trouble and bother than a baby or a courier could. You see, the alpen* stock is luH trophy ; his name is burned upon it ; and if he haa climbed a hill, or jumped a brook, or traversed a brickyard with it, he has the names of those places burned upon it, too. Thus,^ it is his regimental flag, so to speak, and beai-8 the record of his achievements. It is worth three francs wlion he buys it, but a bonanza could not purchase it after his great deeds have been inscribed upon it. There are artisans all about Switzerland- whose trade it is to burn these things upon tlio alpenstock of the' tourist. And observe, a inan is respected in Switzerland accord ing to his alpenstock. 1 found I could get no attention there while I carried an unbranded one. However, branding is not so expensive, so I sopn rem&died that. The effect upon the next detachment of tourists w^s very marked. I felt repaid for my trouble. Half of the summer horde in Switzerland is made up of English people ; the other half is made Lp of many nationalities, the Germans leading and the ^tmericaas coming next. The Ameri- cans were not as numerous as I had expected they would be. The 7:30 table d'hote at the great Schvveitzerhof furnished a mighty array and variety of nationalities, but it offered a better opportunity to observe costtimes than people, for the multitude sat at immensely long tables., and therefore the laces were mainly Been in perspective ; but th e breakfasts were served at small round tables, and then if on'e had the fortune to got a table in the midst of the assemblage he could have as many laces to study as he could desire. We used' to try to guess out the nationalities, and generally succeeded tol* rably well. Some times we tried to guess people's names ; but that was a failure ; that is a tkiu^ which probably requires a goiod deal of practice. We presently dropped it and gave our efforits to less difficult particulars. One morning I said — *^ Xh«re ia an American part,/."' - i A TRAMP ABROAD. 199 Harris Mid— ** Yea— but name the Sut*.** I named ono State, Harris named another. We agreed upon one thing, however — that the young girl with the party was very beautiful, and very taste^ illy dressed. But we disagreed as to her age. I said she waa ighteen, Harris said she was twenty. The dispute between us waxed warm and I finally said with ib pretense of being in earnest — " Well, there is one way to set- tle the matter — I will go and ask her." Harris said, sarcastically, '• Cer- tainly, that is the thing to do. All you need to do is to use the common formula over here : go and say * I'm an American I' Of course she will be glad to see you." Then he hinted that perhaps there was no great danger of my venturing to speak to her. I said, " I was only talking — I didn't intend to approach her, but 1 see that you do not know what an intrepid person I am. I am not afraid of any woman that walks. I will go and speak to this young girl." The thing I had in my mind was not difficult. I meant to address her in the most respectful way and ask her to pardon me if her strong resemblance to a former acquaintance of mine was deceiving me ; and when she should reply that the name I men. tioned was not the name she bore, I meant to beg pardon again • most respectfully, and retire. There would be no harm done. I walked to her table, bowed to the gentleman, then turned to her and was about to begin my little speech when she exclaimed — '•I knew I wasn't mistaken— I told John it was you I John said it probably wasn't, but I knew I was right. I said you would recognize me presently and come over ; and I'm glad you did, for I shouldn't have felt much flattered if you had gone out of this room without recognizing me. Sit down, sit down — how odd U ii-'jou are ike last person I was ever expecting to Me again ** IM A TBAMP ABBOID. lliif WM ft itopefyiiig inrprise. It took mj witi dear tmujt for an instant. However, we shook hands cordially all around, and I sat down. But truly this was the tightest place I ever was in. I seemed to vaguely remember the girl's face, now, but I had no idea where I had seen it before, or what name belonged with it. I immediately tried to get up a diversion about Swiss scenery, to keep, her from laimching into topics that might be tray that I did not know her, but it was of no use, she went right along upon matters which interested her more : " dear, what a night that wes when the sea washed the for. ward boats away-> do you remember it ?" " 0, don't 1 1" said I — but I didn't. I wished the sea had washed the rudder and the smoke-stack and the captain away — then I could have located this questioner. ** And don't you remember how frightened poor Mary was, and how she cried ?" ** Indeed I do 1" said I. " Dear me, how it all comes backl'* I fervently wished it would come back — but my memory was a blank. The wise way would have been to frankly own up ; but I could not bring myself to do that, after the young girl had praised me so for recognizing her ; so I went on, deeper and deeper into the mire, hoping for a chance clue but never getting one. The Unrecognizable continued, with vivacity — ** Do you know, George married Mary, after all T" ** Why, no I Did he ?" *' Indeed he did. He said he did not believe she was half as much to blame as her father was, and I thought he was right. Didn't you ?" '* Of course he was. It was a perfectly plain case. I always said so." ^ " Why no you didn't ! — at least that summer." " *^ Oh, no, not that summer. No, you are perfectly right about that. It was the following winter that I said it." ** Well, as it tuiued out, Mary was not in the least to blame— it was all her father's fa;ilt— at least his and old Darley's." v It was necessary to oay something — so I said — ** I always regarded Darley as a troublesome old thing." '^ So he was, but then they always had a great affection for him^ although h« had so many eccentricities. Yqu I'emember that "a A TBAMP ABBOAD. 181 when the weather was the least cold, he would try to oome into the house.'' I was ratlier a fraad to proceed. Evidently Darley was not a man — he must be aome other kind of animal — possibly a dog, maybe an elephant. However, tails are common to all animals, so I ventured to say — " '' " And what a tail he had I" " Onef He had a thousand I*' This was bewildering. I did not quite know what to say, bo I only said — " Yes, he was rather well fixed in the matter of tails." *' For a n'^gvo, and a crazy one at that, I should say he waSi** said she. It was getting pretty sultry for me. I said to myself, "Is it possible she is going to stop there, and wait for me to speak ? If she does, the conversation is blocked. A negro with a thousand tails is a topic which a person cannot talk upon fluently and in- Etructively without more or less preparation. As to diving rashly into such a vast subject — " But here, to my gratitude, she interrupted my thought by saying— " Yes, when it came to tales of his crazy woes, there was simply no end to them if anybody would listen. His own quarters were comfortable enough, but when the weather was cold, the family were sure to have his company — nothing could keep him out of the house. But they always bore it kindly because he had saved lom's life, years before. You remember Tom ?" •' 0, perfectly. Fine fellow he was, too." t -•- "Yes he was. And what a pretty little thing his child was 1" " You may well say that. I never saw a prettier child." '• I used to delight to pet it and dandle it and play with it." " So did I." " You named it. What was that name ? I can't call it to mind." It appeared to me that the ice was getting pretty thin, here. I would have given something to know what the child's sex was. However, [ had the good luck to think of a name that would 0,% either sex- -so I brought it out — .^, *' I named it Frances." . rkji. r *i" S'^\\ ';/" 188 ▲ TRAMP ABROAD. ** From a relative, I suppose ? But you named the one that died, too— one that I never saw. What did you call that one ?" I was out of neutral names, but as the child was dead and she had never seen it, I thought I might risk a name for it and trust to luck. Therefore 1 said — " I called that one Thomas Henry." She said, musingly — ■ "That is very singular very singular.** I Bst still and let the cold sweat run down. I was in a good deal of trouble, but I believed I could worry through if she wouldn't ask me to name any more children. I wondered where the lightning was going to strike next. She was still ruminating over that last child's title, but presently she said — ** I have always been sorry you were away at the time-^J would hi^Tf bi|d you n^me my child." A THAMP ABBOAD. 188 [■•a ** Tour child \ Are you married?" ** I have been married thirteen years.** " Christened, you mean." " No, married. The youth by your side is my son.** " It seems incredible — even impossible. I do not mean any harm by it, but would you mind telling me if you are any over eighteen ? — that is to say, will you tell me how old you are ?" " I was just nineteen the day of the storm we were talking about. That was my birth-day." That did not help matters much, as I did not know the date of the storm. I tried to think of some non-committal thing to say, to keep up my end of the talk and render my poverty in the matter of reminiscences as little noticeable as possible, but I seemed to be about out of non-committal things. I was about to say, " You haven't changed a bit since then" — but that was risky. I thought of saying " You have improved ever so much since then" — but that Wouldn't answer, of course. I was about to try a shy at the weather, for a saving change, when the girl sUpped in ahead of me and said — " How I have enjoyed this talk over those happy old timea— haven't you?" " I never have spent such a half hour in all my life before I" said I, with emotion ; and I could have added, with a near ap> proach to truth, " and I would rather be scalped than spend another one like it," I was holily grateful to be through with the ordeal, and was about to make my good-byes and get out, when the girl said — " But there is one thing that is ever so puzzling to me." "Why what is that?" " • ' . " That dead child's name. What did you say it was ?" Here was another balmy place to be in : I had forgotten the child's name ; I hadn't imagined it would be needed again. However, I had to pretend to know, anyway, so I said— "Joseph William." T*he youth at my side corrected me, and said — " No— Thomas Henry." 1 thanked him — in words — and said, with trepidation — " 0, yes — 1 was thinking of another child that I named — 1 have named a great many, and I get them confused — tbis oo« wat Dtmed Henry ThompsoQ— " ill i ^ i in „ m \ i f- 184 A TRAMP ABROAD. li I ' lil^ III i "Thomas Henry," calmly interposed the boy. I thanked him again — strictly in words— and stammered out — "Thomas Henry — yes, Thomas Henry was the poor child's name. I named him for Thomas- -er— Thomas Carlyle, the groat author, you know — and Henry — ei- — er — Henry the Eighth. The parents were very grateful to ha.eu child named lliomai Henry." " That makes it more singular than ever," murmured my beau- tiful friend. "Does it? Why?" "Because when the p/*rents speak of that child now, they always call it Susan Amelia." That spiked my gun. I could not say anything. I was entirely out of verbal obliquities ; to go furtherwould be to lie, and that I would not do; so I simply sat still and suffered — sat mutely and resignedly there, and fizzled— for I was being slowly fried tc death in my own blushes. Presently the enemy laughed a happj laugh, and said — " I have enjoyed this talk over old times, but you have not. 1 saw very soon that you were only pretending to know me, and BO as I had wasted a compliment on you in the beginning, I made up my mind to punish you. And J have succeeded pretty well. I was glad to see that you knew George and Tom and Darley, for I had never heard of them before, and therefore could not be sure that you had ; and I was glad to learn the names of those imaginary children, too. One can get quite a fund of information out of you if one goes at it cleverly. Mary and the storm, and the sweeping away of the for- ward boats, were facts — all the rest was fiction. Mary was my sister j her full name was Mary . New do you re- member me ?" " Yes," I said, " I do remember you now 5 and you are as hard- hearted as you were thirteen years ago m that ship, else you wouldn't have punished me so. You haven't changed your na- ture nor your person in any way at all ; you look just as young •8 you did then, you are Just as beautiful as you were then, and A TRAMP ABROAD. 185 jon hare transmitted a deal of your comelinese to this fine boy. There— if that speech moves you any, let's fly the flag of truce, with the understanding that I am conquered and confess it." AH of which was agreed to and accomplished on the spot. When 1 went back to Harris, I said — "Now you see what a person with talent and address can io." " Excuse me, I see what a person of colossal ignorance and iimplicity can do. The idea of your going and intruding on a party of strangers that way, and talking for half an hour ; why I never heard of a man in his right mind doing such a thing before. What did you say to them." " I never said any harm. I merely asked the girl what her name was." ; r i -^ .*• " I don't doubt it. Upon my word I don't* I think you were capable of it. It was stupid in me to let you go over there and make such an exhibition of yourself. But you know I couldn't really believe you would do such an inexcusable thing. What will those people think of us ? How did you say it ? — I mean the manner of it. I hope you were not abrupt." " No, I was careful about that. I said * My friend and I would like to know what your name is, if you don't mind.' " " No, that was not abrupt. There is a polish about it that does you infinite credit. And I am glad you put me in ; that was a delicate attention which I appreciate at its full value. What did she do ?" "She didn't do anything in particular. She told me her name." " Simply told you her name. Do you mean to say she did not show any surprise 7" " Well, now I come to think, she did show something j may be it was surprise ; I hadn't thought of that— I took it for gratifica- tion." " 0, undoubtedly you were right ; it must have been gratifica- tion ; it could not be otherwise than gratifying to be assaulted by a stranger with such a question as that. Then what did you do ?" " I offered my hand and the party gave me a shake." " I saw it I I did not believe my own eyes, at the time. Did the gentleman say anything about cutting your throat 7" M M 186 A TRAlfP ABROAD, .\ ** No, they all seemed glad to see me, as far ai I could judge.^ " And do you know, I believe they were. I think they said to themselves, ' Doubtless this curiosity has got away from his keeper — let us amuse ourselves with him.' There is no other way of accounting for their facile docility. You sat down. Did they ask you to sit down ?" " No, they did not ask me, but I suppose they did not think of it." "You have an unerring instinct. What else did you do? What did you talk about?" , . " Well, I asked the girl how old she was ?" " Undoubtedly. Your delicacy is beyond praise. Go on, go on — don't mind my apparent misery — 1 always look so wnen lam steeped in a profound and reverent joy. Go on — she lold you her age ?*• " Yes, she told me ner age, and all about her mother, A her grand- mother, and Jier other relations, and all about herself." "Did she volunteer these statis- tics?" "No, not exactly that. I asked the questions and she answered them." " This is divine. Go on — it is not possible that you forgot to inquire into her politics ?" " No, I thought of that. She is a democrat, her husband is a republi- can, and both of them are Baptists " "Her husband? Is that chiM married ?" " She is not a child. She is married, and that is her husband who is there with her." " Has she any children ?" "Yes — seven and a half." , • * . " That is impossible." ** No, she has them. She told me herself.** ** Well, but seven and a halff How do yqu make out the half? Where does the half oome in 7'V ^y A TRAMP ABBOAIK 187 *' That is a child which she had by another husband — not this one, lAit another one— so it is a step-child, and they do not count it full measure." " Another husband ? Has she had another husband ?" " Yes, four. This one is number four." " I do not believe a word of it. It is impossible, upon its face. Is that boy there her brother ?" " No, that is her son. He is her youngest. He is not as old as he looks j he is only eleven and a half." " These things are all manifestly impossible. This is a wretched business. It is a plain case ; they simply took your measure, and concluded to fill you up. They seem to have succeeded. 1 am glad I am not in the mess ; they may at least be charitable enough to think there ain't a pair of us. Are they going to stay here long?" \ " No, they leave before noon." ' " There is one man who is deeply grateful for that. How did :you find out? You asked, I suppose?" " No, along at first I inquired into their plans, in a general way, and they said they were going to be here a week, and make trips round about ; but toward the end of the interview, when I said :you and I would tour around with them with pleasure, and oflered to bring you over and introduce you, they hesitated a little, and asked if you were from the same establishment tliat I was. 1 said you were, and then they said they had changed their mind and considered it necessary to start at once and visit a sick rela- tive in Siberia." "Ah me, you struck the summit I You struck the loftiest altitude of stupidity that human effort has every reached. You shall have a monument of jackass's skulls as high as the Stras- burg spire if you die before I do. ITiey wanted to know if I was from the same * estaolishment ' that you hail from, did they ? What did they mean by ' establishment ? ' " , .., ^ " I don't know j it never occurred to m 3 to ask." " Well /know. They meant an asylum — an idiot asylum, do you understand ? So they da think there's a pair of us after all. Now what do you think of yourself? " " Well I don't know. I didn't know I was doing any harm j I didn't meatk to do any harm. They were very nice people, and ihey seemed to like me." 188 A TRAMP ABROAD. '■ ', Harris made some rude remarks and made for hit bedroom— to break some furniture, he said. He was a singularly irascible man ; any little thing would disturb his temper. 1 had been well scorched by the young woman, but no matter, I took it out of Harris. One should always " get even " in some way, else the sore place will go on hurting." CHAPTER XXII. 'T^HE Hofkirsche is celebrated for its organ concerts. All sum •^ mer long the tourists flock to that church about six o'clock in the evening, and pay their franc, and listen to the noise. They don't stay to hear all of it, but get up and tramp over the sound ing stone floor, meeting late comers who tramp in in a sounding and vigorous way. This tramping back and forth is kept up ne&i'ly all the time, and is accented by the continuous slamming of the door, and the coughing and barking and sneezing of the crowd. Meantime the big organ is booming and crashing and thundering away, doing its best to prove that it is the biggest and loudest organ in Europe, and that a tight little box of a church is the most favourable place to average and appreciate its powers in. It is true, there were some soft and merciful passages occa- sionally, but the tramp-tramp of the tourists only allowed one to get fitful glimpses of them, so to speak. Then right away the organist would let go another avalanche. The commerce of Lucerne consists mainly in gimcrackery of the souvenir sort ; the shops are packed with Alpine crystals, photographs of scenery, and wooden and ivory carvings. I will not conceal the fact that miniature figures of the Lion of Lucerne are to be had in them. Millions of them. But they are libels upon him, every one of them. There is a subtle something about the majestic pathos of the original which the copyist cannot get. Even the sun fails to get it ; both the photographer and the carver give you a dying lion, and that is all. The shape is right, the attitude is right, the proportions are right, but that indescribable something which makes the Lion of Lucerne the m<. 3t mournful and moving piece of stone in the world, is waai. A TRAMP ABROAD, 189 rhe X^on lies in his lair in the perpendicular faoo of a Ion cliff— for he is carved from the living lock of the cliff. His size is colossal, his attitude is noble. His head is bowed, the broken spear is sticking in his shoulder, his protecting paw rests upon the lilies of France. Vines hang down the cliff and wave in the wind, and a clear stream trickles from above and'^ empties into a pond at the base, and in the smooth surface of the pond the lion is mirrored, among the water lilies. ; Around about are green trees and grass. The place is a shel- tered, reposeful, woodland nook, remote from noise and stir and confusion — and all this is fitting, for lions do die in such places, and not on granite pedestals in public squares fenced with fancy iron railings. The Lion of Lucorno would be impressive any- where, but nowhere so impressive as where he is. Martyrdom is the luckiest fate that can befall some people. Louis XVI. did not die in his bed, consequently history is very gentle with him ; she is charitable toward his failings, and she finds in him high virtues which ore not usually considered to be virtues when they are lodged in kings. She makes him out to be a person with a meek and modest spirit, the heart of a female saint, and a wrong head. None of these qualities are kingly but the last. Taken together they make a character which would have fared harshly at the hands of history if its owner had had the ill luck to miss martyrdom. With the best intentions to do the right thing, he always managed to do the wrong one. Moreover, nothing could get the female saint out of him. He knew well enough that m national emergencies he must not consider how he ought to act as a man, but how he ought to act as a king ; so he honestly tried to sink the man and be the king — but it was a failure, he only succeeded in being the female saint. He was not mstant in season, but out of season. He could not be per- suaded to do a thing while it could do any good — he was iron, he was adamant in his stubbornuoss then — but as lOon as the thing ->*fi»~- i til p^i 140 ▲ TBAMP ABBOAD. had reached a point where it would he positirely harmful to do it, do it he would, and nothing could 8t#p him. He did not do it because it would be harmful, but becuuse he hoped it was not yet too late to achieve by it the good which it would have done if applied earlier. His comprehension was always a train or two behind-hand. If a national toe required amputating, he could not see that it needed anything more than poulticing; when others saw that th. 146 BBee,f« \ ick and le would u under* ''Well, onj^t the remains of an old sulky — said he just wanted to see those green Tennes> leans stare and gawk when they saw him come a-ripping along in a sulky— didn't believe they'd ever heard of a sulky in their Uvea. If I til ;■■■ I I ^'fi iit»id 146 m '!? A TBAMP ABROAD. " Well, on the 29th of August he sold his colored coachman- said he didn't need a coachman for a sulky — wouldn't be roow enough for two in it anyway — and besides it wasn't every day NOT THROWN AWAY. that Providence sent a man a fool who was willing to pay nine himdred dollars for such a third-rate negro as that — been want- ing to get rid of the creature for years, but didn't like to throw him away. " Eighteen months later— that is to say, on the 15th of Febru- ary, 1837 — he sold the sulky and bought a saddle — said horse WHAT THE DOOTOR RECOMMENDED. ■ back riding was what the iloctoi had always recommended him to take, and dog'd if he wanted to risk his neck going over those mountain roads on wheels in the dead of winter, not if he knew himself. " On the 9th of April he sold the saddle said he wasn't going to risk hU life with any perishable saddle-girth that ever was ►-^"^ WANTED TO PEEI- SAFE. made, over a rainy, miry April road, while he could ride bareback and know and feel he was safe— always had despised to ride on u saddle, anyway A T&AltP ABROAD. 147 " On the 24th of April he sold his horse — said ' I'm juit 57 tO' day, hale and hearty — it would be a pretty howdy-do for me to be wasting such a trip as that and such weather as this on a horM, PREFERRED TO TRAMP ON FOOT. when there ain't anything in the world so splendid as a tramp on foot through the fresh spring woods and over the cherry moun- tains, to a man that u a man — and I can make my dog carry my claim in a little bundle anyway, when it's collected. So to-mor- row I'll be up bright and early, make my little old collection, and mosey off to Tear' o^<>^ on my own hind legs, with a rousing ' Good-bye to Gp > .■ i. " On the 22nd ot June he sold his dog— said ' Dem a dog, any- way, where you're just starting off on a rattling, bully pleasure* tramp through the summer woods and hills — perfect nuisance- chases the squirrels, barks at everything, goes a- capering and splattering around in the fords — man can't get any chance to reflect and enjoy nature — and I'd a blamed sight ruther carry the claim myself, it's a mighty sight safer ; a dog's mighty uncertain DBRN A DOG, ANYWAY. in a financial way — always noticed it— well, goodbye, boys last call — I'm off for Tennessee with a good leg and a gay heart, early in the morning !" There was a pause and a silence — except the noise of the wind and the pelting snow. Mr. Lykins said, impatiently— "WeUT" 1i i ? /•^ff,' I4d A TBAMP ABROAD. Riley said — " Well— that was thirty years ago." " Very well, very well — what of it ?** " I'm great friends with that old patriarch. He comes evfiy evening to tell me good bye. I saw him nn hour ago — he's oil ff)r Tennessee early to moi row morning— as usual ; said he calcu- lated to get his claim through and be oft before night-owls like me have turned out of bed. 'I'he tears were in his ;i 152 k TBiJiP ABROAD. " New England.** ** So'm I. I from New Bloomfield. Anybody with you T* "Yes— a friend." *' Our whole family's along. It's awful slow, going around aIon»- don't you think so ?" " Rather slow." " Ever been over here'before V* "Yes." *' T haven't. My first trip. But we've been all around— Paris and everywhere. I'm to enter Harvard next year. Studying German all the lime now. Can't enter till I know German. I know considerable French — I get alon;^ pretty well in Paris or anywli^ re where they speak French. What hotel are you stopping at ?" " Schweitzeihof." " No I is that so ? I never see you in the reception room. I go to the reception room a good deul of the time, because there's so many Americans there. I make lots of acquaintances. I know an American as soon as I see him — and so I speak to him and make his acquaintance. I like to be always making acquaintances — don't you?" "Lord, yes I" " You see it breaks up a trip like this first rate. I never get bored on a trip like this, if I can make acquaintances and have somebody to talk to. But I think a trip like this would be an awful bore if a body couldn't find anybody to get acquainted with and talk to on a trip like this. I'm fond of talking, ain't you?" " Passionately.** " Have you felt bored, on this trip ?" " Not all the time, part of it." ** That's it 1 — ^you see you ought to go around and get acquainted A TRAMP ABROAD. 158 and talk. That's my way. That's the way 1 nlways do— I just go 'round, 'round, 'round, and talk, talk, talk — 1 never get bored. You been up the Rigi yet ?" u No.»» « Going r» "Ithinkso.* ** What hotel you going to stop at?" " 1 don't know. Is there more than one T" "Three. You stop at the Schrieber— you'll find it full of Americans. What ship did you say you came over in ?" « City of Antwerp." ' ** German, I guess. You going to Geneva 7" « Yes." *' What hotel you going to stop at?" ^ " Hotel de 1' Ecu de Geneve." I « Don't you do it I No Americans there. You stop at one of those big hotels over the bridge — they're packed full of Ameri- cans." " But I want to practice my Arabic." ** Good gracious, do you speak Arabic 7" ^ " Yes — well enough to get along." <' Why, hang it, you won't get along in Geneva — they don't speak Arabic, they speak French. What hotel are you stopping at here ?" " Hotel Pension-Beaurivage." " Sho, you ought to stop at the Schweitzerhof. Didn't you know the Schweitzerhof was the best hotel in Switzerland ? — look at your Baedecker." " Yes, I know — but I had an idea there warn't any Americans there." " No Americans 1 Why, bless your soul, it's just alive with them I I'm in the great reception room most all the time. I make lots of acquaintances there. Not as many as I did at first, because now only the new ones stop in there — the others go right along through. Where are you from?" "Arkansaw." , : ,. v' • "Is that so? I'm from New England — New Bloomfield's my town when I'm at home. I'm having a mighty good time to-day, ain't you?" 4 , , ••Diyine." 154 A TBiilP ABROAD. **TiuA*M what I oall it 1 like this knocking around, Ioom and r, and making acquaintances and talking. 1 know an Ameri- can soon as I see him ; so I go and speak to him and make tiis acquaintance. I ain't ever bored on a trip like this if I can make new acquaintances and talk. I'm awful fond of talking when 1 can get hold of the right kind of person, ain't you?" " 1 prefer it to any other dissipation." ** That's my notion, too. Now some people like to take a book and sit down and read, and read, and read, or moon around yawping at the lake or these mountains and things, but that ain't my way ; no, sir, if they liko it, let 'em do it, I don't object ; but as for me, talking's what / like. You been up the Rigi ?" « Yes." '' What hotel did you stop at?" « Schrieber." " That's thf place 1^1 stopped there too. Full of Americans, wasn't it ? It always is-^always is. That's what they say. Every- body says that. What ship did you come over in?" « ViUe de Paris." " French, I reckon. What kind of a passage did ezcu8« me a minute, there's some Americans 1 haven't seen before." And away he went. He went uninjured, too — I had the muv* derous impulse to harpoon him in the back with my alpenstock, but as I raised the weapon the disposition left me ; I found I hadn't the heart to kill him, he was such a joyous, innocent, good- natured numscull. Half an hour later I was sitting on a bench inspecting, with strong interest, a noble monolith which we were skimming by — a monolith not shaped by man, but by Nature's free great hand — a massy pyramidal rock eighty feet high, devised by Nature ten million years ago against the day when a man worthy of it should need it for his monument. The time came at last, and now this grand remembrancer bears Schiller's name in huge letters upon its face. Curiously enough, this rock was not degraded or defiled In an^ « down over i wordf -rcTcO-^- Hev that h( trial th "Yoi insolen to prof through doing h( his pocl erent. and ignc tence lii would ( Hearanc remove < work fro you pay < you will ment at be horse ered, dej on a rai The seve] to you, bi give you a^he ste deck. M of a coup one and I ''You a "Yes- t . A TRAMP ABBOAO. 155 In any way. It !■ said that two years ago a stranger let himftelf down from the top of it with ropes and pulleys, and painted all orer it, in blue letters biggor than those in Schiller's name, these worda: '• Try Sozodont ;'• ,'; :. "But Sun Stovk Por.isii;'* " Hklmbold's BucHU ;" ,. , •♦Try Bbnzalinr for thk BijoodJ* He was captured, and it turned out that he was an American. Upon his trial the judge said to him — ♦* You are from a land where any insolent that wants to, is privileged to profane and insult Nature, and through her, Nature's God, if by so doing he can put a sordid penny in his pocket. But here the case is dif- erent. Because you are a foreigner and ignorant, I will make your sen- tence light ; if you were a native I would deal strenuously with you.- Hearand obey. You will immediately remove every trace of your offensive work from the Schiller monument; you pay a fine of ten thousand francs j you will Buffer two years' imprison- ment at hard labor; you will then be horse-whipped, tarred and feath- ered, deprived of your ears, ridden on a rail to the confines of the canton, and banished forever. The severer penalties are omitted in your case — not as a grace to you, but to that great republic which had the misfortune to give you birth." The steamer's benches were ranged back to back across the deck. My back hair was mingling innocently with the back hair of a couple of ladies. Presently they were addressed by some one and i overheard this conversation : ** You are Americans, I think ? So'm I,'* " Yes— we are Americans." 156 A TRAliP ABROAD. \'m •* I knew it — 1 o*n alvays teh tl»any hours] 6,000 feet a| ^hen we A TBAMP ABROAD. 169 canB. *'0, Boyon did. Are you going up the no, I asked fou that. What ship no, I asked you that, too. What hotel are you no, you told me that Let me see um 0, what kind of avoy no, we've been over that ground, too. Um um ....well, I believe that is all. Bonjour — I am very glad to have made your acquaintance, ladies. Outen Tag," ; > r , •y few ing at every- y head ;o talk, irer feel ^ CHAPTER xxnr. rr^HE Bigi-Eulm is an imposing Alpine mass, 6,000 feet high, i- which stands by itself, and commands a mighty prospect of blue lakes, green valleys, and snowy mountains — a compact and magnificent picture three hundred miles in circumference. The ascent is nuMle by rail, or horseback, or on foot, as one may pre- fer. I and my agent panoplied ourselves in walking oostimie, one bright morning, and started down the lake on the steamboat . we got ashore at the village of Waggis, three quarters of an hour distant from Lucerne. This village is at the foot of the mountain. We were soon tramping leisurely up the leafy mule-path, and then the talk began to flow, as usual. It was twelve o'clock noon, and a breezy, cloudless day ; the ascent was gradual, find the glimpses, from under the curtaining boughs, of blue water, and tiny sail boats, and beetling cliiSs, were as charming as glimpses of dreamland. All the circumstances were perfect — and the anticipations, too, for we should soon be enjoying, for the first time, that wonderful spectacle, an Alpine sunrise — the object of cur journey. There was (apparently) no real need to hurry, for the guide-book made the walking distance from Waggis to the summit only three hours and a quarter. I say " apparently," because the guide-book had already fooled us once — about the distance from AUerheiligen to Oppenau— and for aught I knew it might be getting ready to fool us again. We were only certain as to the altitudes — we calculated to find out for ourselves how many hours it is from the bottom to the top. The summit is 6,000 feet above the sea, but only 4,500 feet above the lake. When w "Fifteen minutes too late, at last!" said Harns,/^^ ve.vHfi voice. " I'he sun is clear above the horizon.'' " No njatter," I said, " it is a most magnificent spectacl we will see it do the rest of its rising, anyway." In a moment we were deeply absorbed in the marvel before us, and dead to everything else. The great cloud-barred disk of the sun stood just above a limitless expanse of tossing white-caps— 80 to speak — a billowy chaos of massy mountain domes and peaks draped in imperishable snow, and flooded with an opaline glory of changing and dissolving splendors, whilst throuch rifts in a black cloudbnnk above tho sun, radiating' lances of diamond -duo t A TRAMP ABROAD. 169 shot to the zenith. The cloven valleys of the lower world swam in a tinted mist whit^h veilo could only gaze in drunken ecstasy and drink it in, Presently Uarriii exclaimed — " Why ^nation, its going down f^ Perfectly true. We had missed the morning hom-blow, and •lept all day. This was stupefying. Harris said — " Look here, the sun isn't the spectacle — its ua — stacked up here on top of this gallows, in these idiotic blankets, and two hundred and fifty well dressed nu*n and women do^vii here gawk* ing up at us and not caring a .straw whether the sun rises or sets, as long as the've got such a ridiculous spectacle as this to set down in their memorandum-books. They seem to be laughing their ribs loose, and there's one girl there that seems to be going all to pieces. I never saw such a man as you before. I think you are the very last possibility in the way of an ass." *' What have / done ? " I answered with heat. « .- " What have you done ? You've got up at half past seven o'clock m the evening to see the sun rise, that's what you've done." •' And have you done any better, Pd like to know ? I always used to get izp with the lark, till I came under the petrifying in- fluence of your turgid intellect." " Ton used to get up with the lark — 0, no doubt — you'll get up with the hangman one of these days. But you ought to be ashamed to be jawing here like this, in a red blanket, on a forty- foot scaffold on top of the Alps. And no end of people down here to boot ; this isn't any place for an exhibition of temper." And so the customary quarrel went on. When the sun was fairly down, we slipped back to the hotel, in the charitable gloam- ing, and went to bed again. We had encountered the horn-blower on the way, and he had tried to collect compensation, not only for announcing the sunset, which we did see, but for the sunrise, which we had totally missed ; but we said no, we only took our soiar rations on the " European plan " — pay for what you get. He promised to make us hear his hpm in the morning if we were lUye. 170 A TRAMP ABROAD. |1"! CHAPTER XXV. • HE kept hia word. We heard his horn and instantly got up, It was dark and cold and wretched. As I fumbled around for the matches, knocking things down with my quaking hands, I wished the sun would rise in the middle of the day, when it war .varm and bright and cheerful, and one wasn't sleepy. We pro oeeded to dress by the gloom of a couple of sickly candles, but we could hardly button anything, ouv hands shook so. I thought of how many happy people there were in Europe, Asia and Ame- rica, and everywhere, who were sleeping peacefully in their beds and did not have to get up and see the Kigi sunrise— ,people who did not appreciate their advantage, us like as not, but would get up in the morning wanting iirore boons of Frqvidence. While thinking these thoughts I pawned, in a rather ample way, and my upper teeth got hitched on a nail over the door, aud whilst I was mounting a chair to free mj'sclf; Harris drew the window curtain and said — '< 0, this is luck ! We shan't have to go out at all — ^yonder are the mountains, in full view." That was glad news, indeed. It made us cheerful right away. One could see the grand Alpine masses dimly outlined against the black firmament, and one or two faint stars blinking through rifts in the night. Fully clothed, and wrapped in blankets, we huddled ourselves up, by the window, with lighted pipes, and fell into chat, while we waited in exceeding comfort to see how an Alpine sunrise was going to look by candle light. £y and by a delicate, spiritual sort of effulgence spread itself by imperceptible degrees over the loftiest altitudes of the snowy wastes — ^but there the effort seemed to stop. I said, presently — '' There is at hitch about this sunrise somewhere. It doesn't leem to go. What do you reckon is the matter with it T" " I don't know. It appears to hang fire somewhere. I never saw a sunrise act like that before. Can it be that the hotel ii playing anything on us?" 4 TIUMP ABROAD. 171 "Of conrM not. TTia hotel merely han a property interost in the 8un, it Hhs nothing to do with the management of it. It is a precarious kind of property, too ; a suooession of total eolipnes would probably ruin this tavern. Now what can be the matter with this sunrise 7" Harris jumped up and said — " I've got it I I know what's the matter with it! We've been look'-'g at the place where the sun »et last night 1" " 1 V is perfectly true t Why couldn't you have thought of that sooner T Now we've lost another one! And all through your blundering. It was exactly like you to light a pipe and sit down to wait for the sun to rise in the west." " It was exactly like me to find out the mistake, too. You nev^r would have found it out. I find out all the mistakes." " You make them all, too, else your most valuable faculty would be wasted on you. But don't stop to quarrel now— may bo we are not too late yet." But we were. The sun was well up when we got to the ezhibi* tion ground. On our way up we met the crowd returning — men and women dressed in all sorts of queer costumes, and exhibiting all degrees of cold and wretchedness in their gaits and ooimtenances. A dozen still remained on the ground when we reached there, hud- dled together about the scaffold with their backs to the bitter wind. They had their red guide-books open at the diagram of the view, and were painfully picking out the several mountains and trying to impress their names and positions on their memo- ries. It was one of the saddest sights I ever saw. Two sides of this place were guarded by railings, to keep people from being blown over the precipices. The view, looking sheer down into the broad valley, eastward, from this great elevation — almost a perpendicular mile — was very quaint and curious. Counties, towns, hilly ribs and ridges, wide stretches of green meadow, great forest tracts, winding streams, a dozen blue lakec, a flock ot busy steamboats — we saw all this little world in unique circumstantiality of detail — saw it just as the birds see it — and all reduced to the smallest of scales and as sharply worked out and finished as a steel engraving. The numerous toy villages, with tiny spires projecting out of them, were just as the children 172 A TBAMP ABROAD. 0: might have left them when done with play the day before ; tne forest tracts were diminished to cushions of moss ] one or two big lakes were dwarfed to ponds, the smaller ones to puddles— though they did not look like puddles, but like blue ear drope which had fallen and lodged in slight depressions conformable to their shapes among the moss-beds and the smooth levels of dainty green farm-land ; the microscopic steamboats glided along, as in a city reservoir, taking a mighty time to cover the distance be- tween ports which seemed only a yard apart ; and the isthmus which separated two lakes looked as if one might stretch out on it and lie with both elbows in the water, yet we knew invisible wagons were toiling across it and finding the distance a tedious one. This beautiful miniature world had exactly the appearance of those " relief maps" which reproduce nature precisely, with the heights and depressions and other details graduated to a re ' duced scale, and with the rocks, trees, lakes, etc., colored after nature. I believed we could walk down to Waggis or Vitznau in a day, but I knew we could go down by rail in about an hour, so I chose the latter method. I wanted to see what it was like, anyway. The train came along about the middle of the forenoon, and an odd thing it was. The locomotive boiler stood on end, and it and the whole locopiotive were tilted sharply backward. There were two paf^senger ears, roofed, but wide open all around. These cars were not tilted back, but the seats were ; this enables the passengers to sit level while going down a steep incline. There T-re '.jhree railway tracks ; the central one is cogged ; the " lantern wheel" of the engine grips its way along these cogs, and pulls the train up the hill or retards its motion on the down trip. About the same speed — three miles an hour — is maintained both ways. Whether going up or down, the locomotive is alwayi at the lower end of the train. It pushes, in the one case, braces back in the other. The passengers ride backward going Uf , aoid face forward going down. We got front seats, and while the train moved along abou Qfty yards on level ground, I was not the least frightened ; bu< now it started abruptly dowr stairs, and I caught my breath And I, like my neighbors, unsconsciously held back all I could and threw my weight to the rear, but of course that did no par A TRAMP ABROAD. 173 tioular good. I had slidden down the balusten when I was a boy, and thought nothing of it, but to slide down the balusters ia % railway train is a thing to make one's flesh creep. bometimeB we had as much as ten yards of almost level groimd, and this gave us a few full breaths in comfori; ; but straightway we would turn a comer and see a long steep line of rails stretching down below us, and the comfort was at an end. One expected to see the locomotive pause, or slack up a little, and approach this plunge cautiously, but it did nothing of the kind ; it went calmly on, and when it reached the jumpingoff place it made a sudden bow, and went gliding smoothly down stairs, untroubled by the circumstances. It was wildly exhilarating to slide along the edge of the preci pices after this grisly fashion, and look straight down upon that far-off valley which I was describing a while ago. There was no level ground at the Kaltbad station ; the railbea vas as steep as a rod ; I was curious to see how the stop was going to be managed. But it was very simple : the train came •Uding dowi), and when it reached the right spot it juit stopped If* It r^" 'M 174 A TRAMP ABROAD —that wu all there was ^ to if—stopped on the steep incline, andwiien the exchange of passengers and baggage had been made, it moved oflf and went sliding down again. The train can be stopped anywhere, at a moment's notice. There was one orioua effect, which I need not take the trouble to describe — because I can scissor a description of it out of the railway company's advertising pamphlet, and save my ink : " On the whole ^our, particularly at the Descent, we undergo an optical illusion which often seems to be incredible. All the shrubs, fir-treee, stables, houses, etc., seem to be bent in u slant- ing direction, as by an immense pressure of air. They are all standing awry, so much awry that the chalets and cottages of the peasants seem to be tumbling down. It is the consequence of the steep inclination of the line. Those fffao are seated in the carriage do not observe that they are gdng dovm a declivity of 20 to 250 (their seats being adapted to this course of proceeding and being bent down at their backs). They mistake their car- riage and its horizontal lines for a proper measure of the normal plain, and therefore all the objects outside which really are in a horizontal position, must show a disproportion of 20 to 25^ decli- vity, in regard to the mountain." By the time one reaches Kaltbad, he ham acquired confidence m the railway, and he now ceases to try to ease the locomotive by holding back. Thenceforward he smokes his pipe in serenity, and g£.2es out upon the magnificent picture below and about him with unfettered enjoyment. There is nothing to interrupt the view or the breeze ; it is like inspecting the world on the wing. However — to be exact — there is one place where the serenity lapses for a while : this is while one is crossing the Schnurrtobel Bridge, a frail structure which swings its gossamer frame down through the dizzy air, over a gorge, like a vagrant spider-strand. One has no difficulty in remembazing his s'ns while the train is creeping down this bridge ; and he repents of them, too ; though he sees, when he gets to Vitznau, that he need not have done it, the b. idge was perfectly safe. So ends the eveptful trip which we made to the Rigi-Kulm to see an Alpine sunrise. AN] undert himsel Thin d'dnot horn, t] book tc fact, a ] them. never al shod wa I calh and mal and brir my bool possible, expediti thence him. He o since he but I the now as I trouble, balanced niands, a journeys Sj the departed my ageni Ofa\ About 'tailed ftl A TBAMP ABROAD. 175 CHAPTER XXVJ. AN hour's sail brought us to Lucerne again. I judged it best to go to bed and rest several days, for I knew that the umn who undertakes to make the tour of Europe on foot must take care o>. himself. • Thinking over my plans, as mapped out, I perceived that they d'dnot take in the Furka Pass, the Rhone Glacier, the Finsteraar- horn, the Wetterhorn, etc. 1 immediately examined the guide- book to see if these were important, and found they were ; in fact, a pedestrian tour of Europe could not be complete without them. Of course that decided me at once to see them, for I never allow myself to do things by halves, or in a slurring slip- shod way. I called in my agent and instructed him to go without delay and make a careful examination of these noted places, on foot, and bring me back a written report of the result, for insertion in my book. I instructed him to go to Hospenthal as quickly as possible, and make his grand start from there ; to exiend his foot expedition as far as the Giesbach fall, and return to me from thence by diligence or mule. I told him to take the courier with him. He objected to the courier, and with some show of reason, eince he was about to venture upon new and untried ground ; but I thought he might as well learn how to take care of the couner now as later, therefore I enforced my point. I said that tiie troiible, delay and inconvenience of traveling with a courier were balanced by the deep respect which a courier's presence com- mands, and I must insist that as much style be thrown into my journeys as possible. Sj the two assumed complete mountaineering costume? and departed. A week later th . y returned, pretty well used up, and my agent handed me the following Official Report Of a Visit to th« Furka Region. By H. Harris, Agent. About 7 o'clock in the morning, with perfectly fine weather, w« started ft m Hospenthal, and arrived at the maiaon on the Furka (M .4 H 176 A TRAMP ABROAD. I in a little under quatre houni. The want of variety in tbe 8e«nery from Hospenthal made the kahkahponeeka wearisome ; but let none be discouraged : no one can fail to be completely recom pensee for his fatigue, when he sees, for the first time, the monarch of the Oberland, the tremendous Finsteraarhorn. A moment bipifore all wac dulness, but a pas further has placed us on the summit of the Furka ; and exactly in front of us, at a hopoio ol only fifteen miles, this magnificent mountain lifts its snow- wreathed precipices into the deep blue sky. The inferior moun- tains on each side of the pass form a sort of frame for the picture of their dread lord, and close in the view so completely that no other prominent feature in the Oberland is visible from this bong a-bong ; nothing withdraws the attention from the solitary gran deur of the Finsteraarhorn and the dependent spurs which form the abutments of the central peak. With the addition of some others, who were also bound for th« Grimsel, we formed a large xhvloj as we descended the steg which winds round the shoulder of a mountain toward the Rhone glacier. We soon left the path and took to the ice ; and after wandering amongst the crevasses un peu, to admire the wondert> of these deep blue caverns, and hear the rushing of waters through their subglacial channels, we struck out a course towards V autre cote and crossed the glacier successfully, a little above the cave from which the infant Rhone takes its first bound from under thv* grand precipice of ice. Half a mile below this we began to climb the flowery side of the Meienwand. One of our party started before the rest, but the Hitze was so great, that we found ihnt quite exhausted, and lying at full length in the shade of a large Gestein. We sat down with him for a time, for all felt the heal exceedingly in the climb up this very steep bolwoggoly, and then we set out again together, and arrived at last near the Dead Man's Lake, at the foot of the Sidelhorn. This lonely spot, once uf>ed for an extempore burying place, after a sanguinary battue between the French and Austrians, is the perfection of desola- tion ; there is nothing in sight to mark the hand cf man, except the line of weather-beaten whitened posts, set up to indicate the direction of the pass in the owdawakk of winter. Near this point the footpath Joins the wider track, which connects the Grimsel with the h«iid of the Rhone ftehnawp i this has .«^k»a carefully A TRAMP ABBOAD. 177 constructed, and leads with a tortuous course among ant] over let pierrea, down to the bank of the gloomy little stooshawoshf which almost washes against the walls of the Grimsel Hospice. We arrived a little before 4 o'clock at the end of our day's journey, hot enough to justify the step, taken by most of the par tie, of plunging into the crystal water of the snow-fed lake. The next afternoon we started for a walk up the Unteraar glacier, with the intention of, at all events, getting as far as the Hutte which is used as a sleeping place by most of those who cross the Strahleck Pass to Grindelwald. We gotover the tedious collection of stones and debris which covers the pied of the Gletcher, and nad walked nearly three hours from the Grimsel| when, just as we were thinking of crossing over to the right, to 2limb the cliffs at the foot of the hut,''the clouds, which had for gome time assumed a threateningappearance, suddenly dropped, ind a huge mass of them, driving towards us from the Finsteraar- born, poured down a deluge of haboolong and hail. Fortunately, ive were not far from a very large glacier table ; it was a huge rock balanced on a pedestal of ice high enough to admit of our ill creeping under it for gowkarak. A stream of puckittypukk bad furrowed a course for itself in the ice at its base, and we were obliged to stand with one Fuss on each side of this, and en- deavour to keep ourselves chaud by cutting steps in the steep liank of the pedestal, so as to get a higher place for standing on, as the wasser rose rapidly in its trench. Avery cold bzzzzzzzzeeeee arccompanied the storm and made our position far from pleasant *, aud presently came a flash of Blitzen, apparently in the middle of our little party, when an instantaneous clap of yokky, sound- ing like a large gun fired close to our ears : the effect was start- ling ; but in a few seconds our attention was fixed by the roaring echoes of the thunder against the tremendous mountains which completely surrounded us. This was followed by many more bursts, none of welche, however, was so dangerously near ; and after waiti.^g a long demi-howY in our icy prison, we sallied out to 'valk through a haboolong which, though not so heavy as before, was quite enough to give us a thorough soaking before our arrival at the Hospice. The Gi'imsel is certainement a wonderful place ; situated at the bottom of a sort of huge crater, the sides of which are utterly i, aM; if- 178 A TRAMP ABROAD. i 1 '^rmi' ■' A savage Gebirge, composed of barrnn rocks which cannot even tup port a single pine arhre, and afford only scanty food for a herd of gmwwkllolp, it looks as if it must be completely begraben iv ihe winter snows. Enormous avalanches fall against it every spring, sometimes covering everything to the depth of thirty or forty feet; and, in spite of walls four feet thick, and furnished witli outside iron shutters, the two men who stay here when the vuyayeura are snugly quartered in their distant homes can tell you that the snow sometimes shakes the house to its founda- tions. Next morning the hogglebumbnUtip still continued bad, but we made up our minds to go on, und make the best of it. HaH an hour after we started, the Begen thickened unpleasantly, and we attempted to get shelter under a projecting rock, but being far too nass already to make standing at all agreeable, we pushed on for the Handeck, consoling ourselves with the reflection that from the furious rushing of the river Aar at our side, we should at all events see the celebrated Wasserfall in grande perfection. Nor were we nappersoclcet in our expectation : the water was roaring down its leap of two hundrea and fifty feet in a most magnificent frenzy, while the trees which cling to its rocky sides swayed to and fro in the* violence of the hurricane whicli it brought down with it : even the stream, which falls into the main cascade at right angles, and toutfois forms a beautiful feature in the scene, was now swollen into a raging torrent ; and the violence of this "meeting of the waters," about fiity feet below the frail bridge where we stood, was fearfully grand. While we were looking at it, glucklichewise a gleam of sunshine came out, and instantly a beautiful rainbow was formed by the gpray, and hung in mid air suspended over the awful gorge. On going into the chalet above the fall, v.e were informed that R Brucke had broken down near Guttanen, and that it would be impossible to proceed for some time : accordingly we were kept in our drenched condition for eine Stunde, when some voyageurs arrived from Meyringen, and told us that there had been a trifling accident, ahen that we could now cross. On arriving at the spot I was much inclined to suspect that the whole st ^" was a ruse to make us slowwk and drink the more in the Uu.ideck Inn, for only a few planks had been carried away, and though tiiere >n A TBAMP ABBOAD. 179 might perhaps haye been some difficulty with mules, the gip was certainly not larger than a mmbglx might cross with a very slight leapi. Near Outtanen the haboolong happily ceased, and we had 11 time to walk ourselves tolerably dry l>etore ai riving at Reichen* sach, 100 we enjoyed a good dine at the Hotel de« Alps. S (i ' MS ,»} '^ I, . VA 180 A TBAMP ABROAD. 1 ' '• : ^^Hj^H ' '■'''. 'i^H^R '1 'H lii jHB [ i ' fllBf ij ' ftj^^ " '■' I'l'l Next morning we walked to Rosenlaui, the beau ideal of Swisi ■cenery, where we spent the middle of the day in an excursion to the glacier. This was aiore beautiful than words can describe, for in the constant progress of the ice it has changed the form of its extremity and formed a vast cavern, as blue as the sky above, and rippled like a frozen oc6i.n. A few steps cut in the whoopjamboreehoo enabled us to walk completely under this, and feast our eyes upon one of the loveliest objects in creation. The glacier was all around divided by numberless fissures of the same exquisite color, and the finest wood-Erdbeeren were growing in abundance but a few yards from the ice. The inn stands in a eharmani spot close to the cote dt la riviere, which, lower down forms the Reichenbaoh fall, and embosomed in the richest of pinewoods, while the fine form of the Wellborn looking down upon it completes the enchanting bopple. In the afternoon we walked over the great Scheideck to Grindelwald, stopping to pay a visit to the Upper glacier by the way j but we were again over- taken by bad hogglebumgullup and arrived at the hotel in solche a state that the landlord's wardrobe was in great request. The qlouds by this time seemed to have done their worst, for a lovaiy day succeeded, which we determined to devote to an ascent of the Faulhom. We left Grindelwald just as a thunder- storm was dymg away, and we hoped to find guten Wetter up above ; but the rain, which had nearly ceased, began again, and we were struck by the rapidly increasing froid as we ascended. Two thirds of the way up were completed when the rain was ex- changed for gnillic, with which the Boden was thickly covered, and before we arrived at the top the gnillic and mist became so thick that we could not see one another at more than twenty poopoo distance, and it became difficult to pick our way over the rough and thickly covered ground. Shivering with cold we turned into bed with a double allowance of clothes, and slept comfort ably whije the wind howled autour de la maison : when 1 awoke, the wall and the window looked equally dark, but in another hour I found 1 could just see the form of the letter ; so I jumped out of bed, and forced it open, though with diflSculty from the frost and the quantities of gnillic heaped up against it. A row of huge icicles hung down from the edge ot the fOt)f, Aad anything more wintry than the whole Anbliek could not well <^ A TRAMP ABBOAD. 181 be imagined ; but the sudden appearance of the great moun- tains in front was so startling that I felt no inclination to move tov^ards bed again. The snow which had collected upon la fene- ire had increased the Finsterniss oder der Duukelheit. so that when I looked out I was surprised to find that the daylight was considerable, and that the balragootnah would evidently rise be- fore long. Only the brightest of les etoiles were^still shining; the sky was cloudless overhead, though small curling mists lay thoiTsands of feet below us in the valleys, wreathed around the feet of the mountains, and adding to the splendor of their lofty Bumniits. We were soon dressed and out of the house, watching the gradual approach of dawn, thoroughly absorbed in the first near view of the Oberland giants, which broke upon us unex- pectedly after the intense obscurity of the evening before. *^ Kabaugwakko acngwashee Kum Wetterhorn snatopo!" cried some one, as that grand summit gleamed with the first rose of dawn, and in a few moments the double crest of the Schreck- korn followed its example ; peak after peak seemed warmed with life, the Jungfrau blushed even more beautifully than her oeighbors, and soon, from the Wetterhorn in the east to tht mm -■■■•'* \ ■'."'■ '"L W I * If I 3 i 1, m 162 A TtLkUP ABBOAP. Wildstrubel in the west, a long row of fires glowed upon mighty altars, truly worthy of the gods. The iclgw was very severe ; out sleeping place could hardly be dittingue from the snow around it, which had fallen to the depth of &fiirk during the past even- ing, and we heartily eiyoyed a rough scramble en has to the Gios bach Falls, where we soon found a warm climate. At noon the day before &t Grindelwald the thermometer could not hav« stood at less than 100^' Fahr. in the sun ; and in the evening judging from the icicles formed and the state of the windows, there must have been at least twelve dingblatter of fiost; thui givijig a change of bO'^ during a few hours. I isaid — " You have done well, Harris ; this report is concise, comj^ct well expressed ; the language is crisp, the descriptions are vivic and not needlessly elaborated ; your report goes straight to the point, attends strictly to business, aud doesn't fool around. It 13 in many ways an excellent document. But it has a fault— il is too learned, it is much too learned. What is 'dingblattirP ' *' Dingblatter is a Fiji word meaning * degj'-tei.' " « You knew the English of it, then ?" « 0, yes." "Wh&t is 'gnniicV" " That is the Esquimaux term for * snow.* " '* So you knew tho English for tuat, too." "Why, certainly.'* « What does ♦ mmbglx ' stand for ?" " That is Zulu for pedestrian." " * While the form of the WelUiom looking down upon it com pletes the enchanting hopple. What id ' boppleV " , "Picture. It's Chocktaw." ** What is * schnawp V" "Valley. That is Choctaw, also." " What is * bolwoggoly V " " That is Chinese for * hill.» »» ^ KahkaaponeekaV^ y " Ascent. Chocktaw." " ' But we were again overtaken by bad kogglebumgullvp. What does hogglebumguUup mean 7" " That is Chinese i'or ' weather.' '* A TRAMP ABROAD. 188 Th it ''Tb hogglebumfnillup bettor than ihe Engliih wordf any more descriptive ?" *' No, it meanfl just the same.** " And dinghlatter and gnillic— and bopple and schnawp— ar« they better than the English words ?" ** No, they mean just what the English ones do." " Then why do you use them? Why have you used all thi.* Chinese and Choctaw and Zulu rubbish ?" " Because I didn't know any French but two or three words, and I didn't know any I^atin or Greek at ail." <' That is nothing. Why should you want to use foreign words, anyhow?" " To adorn my page. They all do it." "Who is 'all?'" ** Everybody. Everybody that writes elegantly. Anybody has a right to that who wants to." " 1 think you are mistaken." I then proceeded in the follow- ing scathing manner. " When really learned men write books for other learned men to read, they are justified in using as many learned words as they please — their audience will understand them ; but a man who writes a book for the general public to read is not justified in disfiguring his pages with untranslated foreign expressions, li is an insolence toward the majority oi the purchasers, for it is a very frank and impudent way of saying, ' Get the translations made yourself if you want them, this book is not written for the ignorant classes.' There are men who know a foreign language so well and have used it so long in their daily life that they seem to discharge whole volleys of it into their English writings unconsciously, and so they omit to trans- late, as much as half the time. That is a great cruelty to nine out of ten of the man's readers. What is the excuse for this? The writer would say he only uses the foreign language where the delicacy of his point cannot be conveyed in English. Very well, then he writes his best things for the tenth man, and he ought to warn the other nine not to buy his book. However, the excuse he offers is at least on excuse ; but there is another set of men who are like you : they know a word here and th' ''e, of ft foreign language, or a few beggarly little three-word phrases, hlched from the back of the Dictionary, and these they are ; if r liii IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) 1.0 I.I 2.0 IL25 Ifll 1.4 I rMI: 1.6 Hiotographic Sciences Corporation 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14SS0 (716) S72-4S03 184 A TBAMP ABBOAO. continually peppering into their literature, with a pretense o) knowing that language — what excuse can they offer 7 The foreign words and phrases which they use have their exact equivalents in a nobler language — English ; yet they think they ' adorn their page' when they say Strasse for street, and Bahnhof for railway station, and so on— flaunting these fluttering rags oi poverty in the reader's face and imagining he will be ass enough to take them for the sign of untold riches held in reserve. 1 will let your ^ learning' remain in your report ; you have as much right, I suppose, to ' adorn your page' with Zulu and Chinese and Choctaw rubbish, as others of your sort have to adorn theirs with insolent odds and ends smouched from half a dozen learned tongues whose a-b aba they don't even know." When the musing spider steps upon the red-hot shovel, he first exhibits a wild surprise, then he shrivels up. Similar was the effect of these blistering words' upon the tranquil and unsus pectin^ Agent. I can be dreadfully rough on a oerson when the mood takes m«» "^ ■^'' A TfiAMP ABROAD. 185 > i v* CHAPTER XXVII. TTTE now prepared for a considerable walk — ^from Lucerne to ^ * Interlaken, over the Brunig Pass. But at the last moment the weather was so good that I changed my mind and hired a four-horse carriage. It was a huge vehicle, roomy, as easy in its motion as a palanquin, and exceedingly comfortable. ^^ rf"^'*- We got away pretty early in tbe morning, after a hot breakfast, and went bowling along over a hard, smooth road, through the summer loveliness of Switzerland, with near and distant lakes and mountains before and about us for the entertainment of the eye, and the music of multitudinous birds to charm the air. Some- times there was only the width of the road between the imposing precipices on the right and the clear cool water on the left with its shoals of uncatchable iishes skimming about through the bars of sun and shadow ; and sometimes, in place of the precipices, the grassy land stretched away, in an apparently endless upward slant, and was dotted everywhere with snug little chalatK, the peculiarly cAptivating cottage of Switzerlaritl. 186 A TRAMP ABROAD. The ordinary chalet turns ft broad, honest gable end to the road, and its ample roof hovers over the home in a protecting caressing way, projecting its sheltering eaves far outward. The quaint windows are filled with little panes, and garnished with white muslin curtains, and brightened with boxes of blooming flowers. Across the front of the house, and up the spreading eaves and along the fanciful railings of the shallow porch, are elaborate carvings — wreaths, fruits, arabesques, verses from Scripture, names, dates, etc. The building is wholly of wood, reddish brown in tint, a very pleasing color. It generally hai vines climbing over it. Set such a house against the fresh green of the hillside, and it looks ever so cosy and inviting and pictur- esque, and is a decidedly graceful addition to the landscape. One does not find out what a hold the chalet has taken upon him, until he presently comes upon a new house — a house which Is aping the town fashions of Germany and France, a prim, hide- ous, straight'Up -and -down thing, plastered all over on the outside to look like stone, and altogether so stiff, and formal, and ugly and forbidding, and so out of tune with the gracious landscape, and so deaf and dumb and dead to the poetry of its surroundings, that it suggests an undertaker at a pic-nic, a corpse at a wedding a puritan in Paradise. In the course of the morning we passed the spot where Pontius Pilate is said to have thrown himself into the lake. The legend goes that after the Cruicifixion his conscience troubled him and he fled from Jerusalem and wandered about the earth, weary of life and a prey to tortures of the mind. Eventually he hid himself away, on the heights of Mount Pilatus, and dwelt alone among the clouds and crags for years : but rest and peace were etill denied him, 80 he finally put an end to his misery by drown- mg himself. Presently we passed the place where a man of better odor was born. This was the children's friend, Santa Glaus, or St Nicholas. There are some unaccountable reputations in the world. This saint's is an instance. He has ranked for ages as the peculiar friend of children, yet it appAara ha wu not much of a friend to his own. He had ten of them, and when fiftf yeik« old he left them, and sought out as dismal a refuge from th world as possible and became a hermit in order that he might A TRAUP ABROAD. 187 reflect upon piotu themes without being disturbed by the joycui and other noises from the nursery, doubtless. ...■! 11 ^ P' 1 » ti 1 :\i- ! ff" J* "•■ I ; f w u lam } • rtii \ v.. l-'ll r K|' J ;']^ *• i. I;T M 188 A TRAMP ABBOAD. Judging by PiUte uid St. NioholM, there ezifte no rule for the eonitruotion of hermits : they leem made out of all kinds of material. But Pilate attended to the matter of expiating his sin while he was alive, whereas St. Nicholas will probably have to go on climbing down iiooty chimneys, Christmas Eve, forever, and conferring kindness on other people's children, to make up for deserting his own. His bones are kept in a church in a village (Sachselnf) which we visited, and are naturally held in great reverence. His portrait is common in the farm houses of the region, but is believed by many to be but an indifferent likeness. During his hermit life, according to the legend, he partook of the bread and wine of the communion once a month, but all the rest of the month he fasted. A constant marvel with us, as we sped along the bases of the ■teep mountains on this journey, was, not that avalanches occur, but that they are not occurring all the time. One does not understand why rocks and landslides do not plunge down these declivities daily. A landslip occurred three quarters of a century ago, on the route from Arth to Brunnen, which was a formidable thing. A mass of conglomerate two miles long, a thousand feet broad and a hundred feet thick, broke away from a cliff three thousand feet high and hurled itself into the valley below, bury- ing four villages and five hundred people, as in a ^ve. We had such a beautiful day, and such endless pictures of limpid lakes, and green hills and valleys, and m^jestio moun- tains, and milky cataracts dancing down the steeps and gleaming in the sun, that^we could not help feeling sweet toward all the world ; so we tried to drink all the milk, and eat all the grapes and apricots and berries, and buy all the bouquets of vidld flowers ' which the little peasant boys and girls offered for sale ; but we had to retire from this contract, for it was too heavy. At short distances — and they were entirely too short — all along the road, were groups of neat and comely children, with their wares nicely and temptingly set forth in the grass under the shade trees, and as soon as we approached they swarmed into the road, holding out their baskets and milk bottles, and ran beside the carriage, barefoot and bareheaded, and importuned us to buy. They seldom desisted early, but continued to run and insist — besids til^e wafon while they could, and behind it until they lest breath. A nUMP ABSOID. 189 Then they turned and chased a returning carriage back to their trading post again. After several iio«rs of this, without any intermission, it becomes almost annoying. I do not know what we should have done without the returning carriages to draw off the pursuit. However, there were plenty of these, loaded with dust^ tourists and piled high with luggage. Indeed, from Lucerne to Interl&ken we had the spectacle, among other scenery, of an unbroken procession of fruit pedlars and tourist carriages. Our talk was mostly anticipatory of what we should see on the down grade of the Brunig, by and by, after we should pass the summit. All our friends in Lucerne had said that to look down upon Meiringen, and the rushing blue-gray river Aaar, and the broad level green valley ; and across at tho mighty Alpine preci- pices that rise straight up to the clouds out of that valley ; and up at the microscopic chalets perched upon the dizzy eaves of those precipices and winking dimly and fitfully through the drifting veil of vapor ; and still up and up, at the superb Oltaehi- haeh and the other beautiful cascades that leap from those rug- ged heights, robed in powdery spray, ruffled with foam, and girdled with rainbows— to look upon these things, they said, was to look upon the last possibility of the sublime and the enchant* ing. Therefore, as I say, we talked mainly of these coming wonders ; if we were conscious of any impatience, it was to get there in favorable season ; if we felt any anxiety, it was that the day might remain perfect and enable us to see these marvels at their best. As we approached the Kaiserstuhl, a part of the harness gave iray. We were in distress for a moment, but onl> a moment. It was the fore-and aft gear that was broken — the thing that leads aft from the forward part of the horse and is made fast to the thing that pulls the waggon. In America this would have been a heavy leathern strap ; but, all over the continent it is nothing but a piece of rope the size of your little finger — clothes-line is what it is. Cabs use it, private carriages, freight carts and wagons, all sorts of vehicles have it. In Munich I afterwards saw it used on a long wagon laden with fifty-four half-barrels of beer ; I had before noticed that the cabs in Heidelberg used it — not new i-ope, but rope that had been in use since Abraham's time— and I had felt nervous, sometimes, behmd it when the cab wat m too A TUAM? Anr«Mi>, l«»ring down a hill. But 1 liad Ion;: hoen acoiiHtomed to it now, and had even becomo afvnid oF tho leather strap wliich belonged to its place. Our driver got a fresh piece of clothes-line out ol his locker and repaired the break in two minutes. iSo much for one European fashion. Every country has its own ways. It may interest the reader to know how they ^' put horses to" on the continent. Tho man stands up the horses on each side of the thing that projects from the front end of the wagon, and then throws the tangled mess of gear on top of the horses, and passes tho thing tliat goes forward through a ring, and hauls it aft, and passes the other thing through another ring and hauls it aft on the other side of the other horse, opposite to the first one, after crossing them and bringing the loose end back, and then buckles the other thing underneath the horse, and takes another thing and wraps it around the thing I spoke of before, and puts another thing over each horse's head with broad flappers to it to keep the dust out of his eyes, and puts the iron thing in his mouth for him to grit his teeth on up hill, and brings the end of these things aft over his back, after buck- ling another one around imder his neck to hold his head up, and hitching another thing on a thing that goes over his shoulders to keep his head up when he is climbing a hill, and then takes the slack of the thing which I mentioned a while ago, end fetches it aft and makes it fast to the thing that pulls the wagon, and hiind the other things up to the driver to steer with. I never have buckled up a horse myself, but I do not think we do it that way. We had four very handsome horses, and the driver was very proud of his turnout. He would bowl along on a reasonable trot on the hi^'hway, but when he entered a village he did it on a furious run, and accqmjninied it with a frenzy of ceaseless whip crackings that sounded like volleys of musketry. lie tore through the narrow streets and around the sharp curves like a mov- ing earthquake, showering his volleys as. he went, and before him swept a continuous tidal wave of scampering children, ducks, cats, and mothers clasping babies which they had snatched out of the way of the coming destruction ; and as this living wave washed aside, along the walls, its elements, being safe, forgot their fearsj and turned their admiring gaze upon that gallant A TRAMP ABBOAD. 191 •I river til( he ihnndered around the next oanre and WM lost to sight. He was a great man to those villagers, with his gaudy clothea and his terrifSc ways. Whenever he stopped to have his cattle watered and fed with loaves of bread, the villagers stood around admiring him while he swaggered about, the little boys gazed up at his face with humble homage, and the landlord brought out foaming mugs of beer and conversed proudlf ¥rith him wbilt 192 A TXULHP ABROAD. ae drank. Then he mounted his lofty box, swung his explosive vrhip, and away he went again like a storm. I had not seen any- thing like this before since I was a boy, and the stage used to flourish through the village with the dust flying and the horn tooting. When we reached the base of the Kaisertuhl, we took two more horses ; we had to toil along with difficulty for an hour and a half or two hours, for the cscent was not very gradual, but when we passed the backbone and approached the station, the driver surpassed all his previous efforts in the way of rush and clatter. He could not have six horses all the time, so he made the most of his chance while he had it. Up to this point we had been in the heart of the William Tell region. The hero is not forgotten by any means, or held in doubtful veneration. His wooden image, with his bow drawn, above the doors of taverns, was a frequent feature of the scenery. About noon we arrived at the foot of the Brunig Pass, and made a two-hour stop at the village hotel, another of those clean, pretty and thoroughly well-kept inns which are such an astonish- ment to people who are accustomed to hotels of a dismally dif- ferent pattern in remote country towns. There was a lake here, in the lap of the great mountains, the green slopes that rose to- ward the lower crags were graced with scattered Swiss cottages nestling among miniature farms and gardens, and from out a leafy ambuscade in the upper heights tumbleda brawling cataract. Carriage after carriage, laden with tourists and trunks, arrived, and the quiet hotel was soon populous. We were early at the table d'hote and saw the people all come in. There were twenty- five, perhaps. They were of various nationalities, but we were the only Americans. Next to me sat an English bride, and next to her sat her new husband, whom she called '' Neddy," though he was big enough and stalwart enough to be entitled to his full name. They had a pretty little lover's quarrel over what wine they should have. Neddy was for obeying the guide-book and taking the wine of the country ) but the bride said-— " What, that nahsty stuff 1" ** It isn't nahsty. Pet ; it's quite good." •' It is nahsty." '^Nok it Un*t nahsty*" \ A HUMP ABROAD. 198 ** It't oftil nahity, Neddy, and I ihanh't drink it** Th»n the question waa, what ihe mutt have. She aaid he knew very well that ihe never drank anything but champaign. She added — " You know very well papa always hat champaign on hit table, and I've alwayt been used to it." Neddy made a playful pretense of being distretsed about the expente, and this amused her so much that she nearly exhausted herself with laughter — and this pleased him so mych that he repeated hit jest a couple of times, and added new and killing varieties to it. When the bride finally recovered, she gave Neddy a loveboz on the arm with her fap, and said with arch severity — ",Well, you would have me — nothing else would do-^to you'll have to make the best of a bad bargain. Do order the champaign, I'm oful dry." So with a mock groan which made her laugh again, Neddy ordered the champaign. The fact that this young woman had never moistened the telvedge edge of her soul with a less plebian tipple than cham- paign, had a marked and subduing effect upon Harris. He believed she belonged to the royal family. But I had my doubts. We heard two or three different languages spoken by people at ^he table and guessed out the nationalities of most of the guests to our satisfaction, but we failed with an elderly gentleman and his wife and a young girl who sat opposite us, and with a gentle- man of about thirty five who sat three seats beyond Harris. We did not hear any of these opeak. But finally the last named gentleman left while we were not noticing, but we looked up as he reached the far end of the table. He stopped there, a mo- ment, and made his toilet with a pocket comb. So he was a German ; or else he had lived in German hotels long enough to catch the fashion. When the elderly couple and the young girl rose to leave, they bowed respectfully to us. So they were Ger- mans, too. This national custom is worth six of the other one, for export. *" After dinner we talked with several Englishmen, and they inflamed our desire to a hotter degree than ever, to see the sights of Meiringen from the heights of the Brunig pass. They said the view was marvelous, and that one who had seen it once could never forget it. They also spoke of the romantic nature of the 194 A TRAMP ABROAD. I E! \i ' m road oyer the pMs, and how in one place it had been cut th'^ough a flank of the solid rock, in Ruch a way that the mountain over> hung the tourist as he passed by ; and they furthermore said that the sharp turns in the road, and the abruptness of the deicenti T would afford us a thrilling experience, for we should go down in a flying gallop and seem to be spinning around the rings of a whirl wind, Ike a drop of whiskey descending the spirals of a cork-screw. I got all the information out ol these gentlemen that we could need ; and then, to make every thing complete, I asked them if ft body could got hold of a lit tie '-uit and milk here and there, io A TRAMP AIIIUUD, 195 OMe of neoostiij. They throw up their liands in upeeohless inti* mation that the road wua aimply paven all bh e Eiree, and a fair and her Boul I audience annonade to four in leld their wring the ley struck ' non-com- f country- direction, jerfection. rovst music re human ot through, ed alacrity 1, this time, unded that e war path red on the to look and ie went off ippetite was 200 A TRAMP ABROAD. What a change had come oyer Switzerland, and in fact all Europe, during this century. Seventy or eighty years ago Napo- leon waa the only man in Europe who could really be called a traveler ; he was the only man who had devoted his attention to it and taken a powerful interest in it ; he was the only man who had traveled extensively ; but now everybody goes everywhere ; Aid Switzerland and many other regions which were unvisited and unknown remotenesses a hundred years ago, are in our days a buzzing hive of restless strangers every summer. But I di- gress. In the morning, when we looked out of our windows, we saw a wonderful sight. Across the valley, and apparently quite neigh- borly and close at hand, the giant form of the Jungfrau rose cold and white into the clear sky, beyond a gateway in the nearer highlands. Is reminded me, somehow, of one of those colossul billows which swells suddenly up beside one's ship at sea some times, with its crest and shoulders snowy white and the rest of its noble proportions streaked downward with creamy foam. I took out my sketch book and made a little picture of the Jungfrau, merely to get the shape. It was hard to believe that that lofty wooded ramnpart on the left which so overtops the Jungfrau was not actually the higher of the two, but it was not, of course. It is only 2,00() or 3,000 feet high, and of course has no snow upon it in summer, whereas the Jungfrau is not much short of 14,000 feet high, and therefore that lowest verge of snow on her side, which seems nearly down to the valley level, is really about seven thousand feet higher up in the air than the summit of that wooded rampart. It is the distance that makes the deception. The wooded height is four or five miles removed from us, but the Jungfrau is four or five times that distance away. Walking down the street of shops, in the forenoon, I was at- tracted by a large picture, carved, frame and all, from a single block of chocolate-colored wood. There are people who know everything. Some of these had told us that continental shop- keepers always raise their prices on English and Americans. Many people had told us it was expensive to buy things through a courier, whereas I had supposed it just the reverse. When I ■aw this picture I conjectured that it was worth more than the A TBAMP ABROAD. 201 friend I proposed to buy it for would like to pay, but still it was worth while to inquire ; so I told the courier to step in and ask the price, as if he wanted it for himself; I told him not to speak ia English, and above all not to reveal the fact that he was a courier. Then I moved on a few yards and waited. The courier came presently and reported the price. I said to myself, *' It is a hundred francs too much," and so dis^ssed the matter from my mind. But in the afternoon I was passing that place with Harris, and the picture attracted me again. We stepped in, to see how much higher broken German would raise the price. The shopwoman named a figure just a hundred francs lower than the courier had named. This was a pleasant surprise. I said I would take it. After I had given directions as to where it was to be shipped, the shopwoman said, appealingly — " If you please, do not let your courier know you bought it." This was an unexpected remark. I said — " What makes you think I have a courier ?" " Ah, that is very simple ; he told me himself." " He was very thoughtful. But tell me — why did you charge him more than you are charging me 7" " That is very simple, also j I do not have to pay you a' per- centage." <' 0, 1 begin to see. You would have had to pay the courier a percentage." " Undoubtedly. The courier always has the percentage. In this case it would have been a hundred francs." " Then the tradesman does not pay a part of it — the purchaser pays all of it ?" ^' There are occasions when the tradesman and the courier agree upon a price which is twice or thrice the value of the article, then the two divide, and both get a percentage." *' I see. But it seems to me that the purchaser does all the paying, even then." " 0, to be sure I It goes without saying." " But I have bought this picture myself ; therefore why shouldn't the courier know it ?" The woman exclaimed, in distress — " Ah, indeed it would take all my little profit I He would eome and demand his hundred francs, and I should have to p^y.** ; J' I: kl 1 m I m A TRAMP ABItOAD. " lie has not uone the buying. You couM refuse." " I could not dure to refuse. He would never bring travelers here again. More than that, ho would denounce me to the other couriers, they would divert custom from me, and my business would be injured." I went away in a thoughtful frame of mind. I began to see why a courier could afford to work for $55 a month and his fares. A month or two later I was able to understand why a courier did not have to pay aiiy board and lodging, and why my hotel bills were always larger when I had him with me than when I left him behind, somewhere, for a few days. Another thing was also explained, now, apparently. In one town I had taken the courier to the bank to do the translating when I drew some money. I had sat in the reading room till the transaction was finished. Then a clerk had brought the money to me in person, and had been exceedingly polite, even going so far as to precede me to the door and hold it open for me and bow me out as if I had been a distinguished personage. It was a new experience. Exchange had been in my favor ever since I had been in Europe, but just that one time. I got simply the face of my draft, and no extra francs, whereas 1 had expected to get quite a number of them. This was the first time I had ever used the courier at a bank. I had suspected something then, and as long as he remained with me afterward I managed bank matters by myself. : iStill, if I felt that I could afford the tax, I would never travel without a courier, for a good courier is a convenience whose value cannot be estimated in dollars and cents. Without him, travel is a bitter harassment, a purgatory of little exasperating annoyances, a ceaseless and pitiless punishment — I mean to an irascible man who has no business capacity and is confesed by details. I Without a courier, travel hasn't a ray of pleasure in it, any. where ; but with him it is a continued and unruffled delight. He IS always at hand, never has to be sent for ; if your bell is not answered promptly— and it seldom is — you have only to open the door and speak, the courier will hear, and he will have the order attended to or raise an insurrection. You tell him what da^ jTOU will starti and whither you are going— leave all the rest , any- lit. He is not 1' •m 1 . \ 1 '1 ' P Mt i .I'i ir n '(5>-" i ' 1 r^ 1 l,li;| •' 'iltf ,;(i 1 204 A TftAMP ABBOAD. I IL to him. You need not inquire about trainSi or fikres, or ou changes, or hotels, or anything else. At the proper time he will put you in a cab or an omnibus, and drive you to the train or the boat ; he has packed your luggage and transferred it; he has paid all the bills. Other people have preceded you half an hour to^ scramble for impossible places and lose their tempers, but you ! can take your time, the courier has secured your seats for you, and you can occupy them at your leisure. At the station the crowd mash one another into pulp in the effort to get the weigher's attention to their trunks ; they dis- pute hotly with these tyrants, who are cool and indifferent ; they get their baggage billets at last, and then have another squeeze and another rage over the disheartening business of trying to get them recorded and paid for, and still another over the equally disheartening business of trying to get near enough to the tickc^t office to buy a ticket ; and now, with their tempers gone to the dogs, they must stand penned up and packed together, laden with wraps and satchels and shawl-straps, with the weary wife and babies, in the waiting room, till the doors are thrown open-> and then all hands make a grand final rush to the train, find it full, and have to stand on the platform and fret until some more oars are put on. They are in a condition to kill somebody by this time. Meantime you have been sitting in your car, smoking, and observing all this misery in the extremest comfort. On the journey the guard is polite and watchful — ^won't alloiy anybody to get into your compartment— tells them you are just recovering A?om the small-pox and do not like to be disturbed. For the courier has made everything right with the guard. At way stations the courier comes to your compartment to see if you want a glass of water, or a newspaper, or anything ; at eat- ing stations he sends luncheon out to you, while the other peopls scramble and worry in the dining rooms. If anything breaks in the car you are in, and it station master proposes to pack you and your agent into a compartment with strangers, the courier reveals to him, confidentially, that you are a French duke bom deaf and dumb, and the official comes and makes affable signs that he has ordered a choice car to be added to the train for you. At custom-houses the multitude file tediously through, hot and irriUiedi and look on while the officers burrow into the trunki A TRAMP ABROAD. 205 and make a men of everything ; but you hand your keyi to the courier and sit still. Perhaps you arrive at your destination in a rainstorm at ten at night — you generally do. The multitude spend half an hour verifying their baggage and getting it trans- ferred to the omnibuses ; but the courier puts you into a vehicle without a moment's loss of time, and when you reach your hotel you find your rooms have been secured two or three days in ad- vance ; everything is ready — you can go at once to bed. Some of those other people will have to drift aroimd to two or three hotels, in the rain, before they find accommodations. I have not set down half of the virtues that are vested in a good courier, but I think I have set down a sufficiency of them to show that an irritable man who can afiford one and does not employ him, is not a wise economist. My courier was the worst one in Europe, yet he was a good deal better than none at all. It could not pay him to be a better one than he was, because 1 could not afiford to buy things through him. He was a good enough courier for the small amount he got out of his service. Yes, to travel with a courier is bliss, to travel without one is the reverse. I have had dealings with some very bad couriers ; but I have ilso had dealings with one who might fairly be called perfection. He was a young Polander, named Joseph N. Verey. He spoke eight languages, and seemed to be equally at home in all of them.; he was shrewd, prompt, posted, and punctual ; he wan fertile in resources, and singularly gifted in the matter of overcoming dif- ficulties ; he not only knew how to do everything in his line, but he knew the best ways and the quickest ; he was handy with children and invalids , all his employer needed to do was to take life easy and leave everything to the courier. His address is £are of Messrs. Gay & Son, Strand, London ; he was formerly a conductor of Gay's tourist parties. Excellent couriers are some- what rare ; if the reader is about to travel, he will find it to hm idvantage to make a note of this one. ifi. i u:m ao6 A TBAMP ABfiOiB. OHAPTEB XXnL THE beautiful Giesbaoh Fall is near Interlaken, on the mAer side of the lake of Briens, and is illuminated every night with those gorgeous theatrical fires whose name I cannot call just at this moment. This was said to be a spectacle which the tourist ought by no means to miss. I was strongly tempted, but I could not go there with propriety, because one goes in a boat. The task which I had set myself was to walk over Europe on foot, not skim over it in a boat. I had made a tacit contract with myself ; it was my duty to abide by it. I was willing to make boat trips for a pleasure, but I could not conscientiously make them in the way of business. It cost me something of a pang to lose that fine sight, but I lived down the desire, and gained in my self-respect through the triumph. I had a finer and a grander sight, however, where I was. This was the mighty dome of the Jungfrau softly outlined against the sky and faintly silvered by the starlight. There was something subduing in the influence of that silent and solemn awful presence ; one seemed to meet the immutable, the inde- structible, the eternal, face to face, and to feel the trivial and fleeting nature of his own exbtence the more sharply by the contrast. One had the sense of being under the brooding con- templation of a spirit, not an inert mass of rocks and ice— a spirit which had looked down, through the slow drift of the ages, upon a million vanished races of men, and judged them ; and would judge a million more — and still be there, watching, unchanged and unchangeable, after all life should be gone and the earth have become a vacant desolation. While I was feeling these things, I was groping, without know- ing it, toward an understanding of what the spell is which peoplu JBnd in the Alps, and in no other mountains — that strange, deep, nameless influence, which, once felt, cannot be forgotten — oncu felt, leaves always behind it a restless longing to feel it again—r longfn^ ing, wh 1 met d and urn through why. 1 because they coi they liv< chains a to break they saic when th< to sleep j the Greai their hur not thini before thi Down t and we jo might aflf mental gt whey and whom phj by tho gri told me, i] to live bu dearly, de making th Some o grape syst highly me< ftnd admin were pills. 06 tore brei meals, five four at sup way of a * «gularl/ it ▲ TRAMP IBBOAD. 207 longing which b like hometiokneu ; ft grieving, haunting y«*ni* ing, which will plead, implore, and persecute lill it has its will. 1 met doiens of people, imaginative and unimaginative, cultivated and uncultivated, who had come from far countries and roamed through the Swiss Alps year after year — they could not explain why. They had come first, they said, out of idle curiosity because everybody talked about it ; they had come since because they could not help it, and they should keep on coming, whila they lived, for the same reason ; they hod tried to brenk their chains and stay away, but it was futile ; now, they had no desire to break them. Others came nearer formulating what they felt : they said they could find perfect rest and peace nowhere else when they were troubled : all frets and worries and chafings sank to sleep in the presence of the benignant serenity of the Alps { the Oreat Spirit of the Mountain breathed his own peace Upon their hurt minds and sore hearts, and healed them ; they could not think base thoughts or do mean and sordid things here, before the visible throne of God. Down the road a piece was a Kursaal — whatever t&at may be — and we joined the human tide to see what sort of enjoyment it might afford. It was the usual open air concert, in an oma- mental garden, mth wines, beer, milk, whey, grapes, etc.— the whey and the grapes being necessaries of life to certain invalids whom physicians cannot repair, and who only continue to exist by tho grace of whey or grapes. One of these departed spirits told me, in a sad and lifeless ly&y, that there was no way for him to live but by whey j never drank anything, now, but whey, and dearly, dearly loved whey, he didn't know whey he did. After making this pun he died — that is the whey it served him. Some other remains, preserved from decomposition by the grape system, told me that the grapes were of a peculiar breed, highly medicinal in their nature, and that they were counted out and administered by the grape-doctors as methodically as if they were pills. The new patient, if very feeble, began with one grape net'ore breakfast, took three during breakfast, a couple between meals, five at luncheon, three in the afternoon, seven at dinner four at supper, and part of a grape just before going to bed. by way of a general regulator. The quantity was giadually and regularly increftsed^ according to the needs and capacities of the 'M^' %■' -m A TRAMP ABROAD. 209 jatiiiit, until hy timl by you \^'ouM find him <1i8|>08ing of hid one grapu per second till tho gulur barrel pordfty. He Haid that men cured iii this way, And enabled to discard the grape syHteni, novci ifter got <>v@r the habit of talking as if they were dictating to a Hiotv nmunuenMi.x, )>ecau8e they always inudc a pause between each two words while they sMcked the sub* itance out of an imaginary grnpe. ile said these were tedious ^)eoi)le to talk with. He said that men who had been cured by the other process were easily distinguished from the rest of mankind because they always tilted their heads back, between every two words, and swallowed a swig of imaginary whey. He Mtiid it was an impressive thing to observe two men, who had been cured by the two processes, engaged in conversation — said their pauses and accompanying movements were so continuous and regular that a stranger would think himself in the presence of a coup''!) of automatic machines. One finds out a great many won* dorl'ul things, by travelling, if he stumbles upon the right person. 1 did not remain long at the Kursaal; the music was good enough, but it seemed rather tame after the cyclone of that Arkansaw expert. Besides, my adventurous spirit had conceived a formidable enterprise — nothing less than atvipfromlnterlaken, by the Gemmi and Visp, clear to Zermatt, on foot I So it was necessary to plan the details, and get ready for an early start. The courier (this was not the one I have just been speaking of) thought that the portier of the hotel would be able to tell ut how to tind our way. And so it turned out. He showed us the whole thing, on a relief-map, and we could see our route, with all its elevations and depressions, its villages and its rivers, as clearly as if we were sailing over it in a balloon. A relief-map is u great thing. The portier also wrote down each day's journey and the nightly hotel on a piece of paper, and ma