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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Three Men on the Bummel, by Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Three Men on the Bummel
+
+
+Author: Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
+
+Release Date: July 2, 2006  [eBook #2183]
+[Last updated: March 26, 2011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE MEN ON THE BUMMEL***
+
+
+
+
+
+Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome.  1914 J. W. Arrowsmith
+edition.  Scanned and proofed by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+THREE MEN ON THE BUMMEL
+by JEROME K. JEROME
+
+
+_Illustrated by L. Raven Hill_
+
+A NEW EDITION
+
+BRISTOL
+J. W. ARROWSMITH LTD., QUAY STREET
+LONDON
+SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT AND CO. LIMITED
+1914
+
+TO THE GENTLE
+
+GUIDE
+
+WHO LETS ME EVER GO MY OWN WAY, YET BRINGS ME RIGHT--
+
+TO THE LAUGHTER-LOVING
+
+PHILOSOPHER
+
+WHO, IF HE HAS NOT RECONCILED ME TO BEARING THE TOOTHACHE
+PATENTLY, AT LEAST HAS TAUGHT ME THE COMFORT THAT
+THIS EVEN WILL ALSO PASS--
+
+TO THE GOOD
+
+FRIEND
+
+WHO SMILES WHEN I TELL HIM OF MY TROUBLES, AND WHO
+WHEN I ASK FOR HELP, ANSWERS ONLY "WAIT!"--
+
+TO THE GRAVE-FACED
+
+JESTER
+
+TO WHOM ALL LIFE IS BUT A VOLUME OF OLD HUMOUR--
+
+TO GOOD MASTER
+
+Time
+
+THIS LITTLE WORK OF A POOR
+
+PUPIL
+
+IS DEDICATED
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Three men need change--Anecdote showing evil result of deception--Moral
+cowardice of George--Harris has ideas--Yarn of the Ancient Mariner and
+the Inexperienced Yachtsman--A hearty crew--Danger of sailing when the
+wind is off the land--Impossibility of sailing when the wind is off the
+sea--The argumentativeness of Ethelbertha--The dampness of the
+river--Harris suggests a bicycle tour--George thinks of the wind--Harris
+suggests the Black Forest--George thinks of the hills--Plan adopted by
+Harris for ascent of hills--Interruption by Mrs. Harris.
+
+"What we want," said Harris, "is a change."
+
+At this moment the door opened, and Mrs. Harris put her head in to say
+that Ethelbertha had sent her to remind me that we must not be late
+getting home because of Clarence.  Ethelbertha, I am inclined to think,
+is unnecessarily nervous about the children.  As a matter of fact, there
+was nothing wrong with the child whatever.  He had been out with his aunt
+that morning; and if he looks wistfully at a pastrycook's window she
+takes him inside and buys him cream buns and "maids-of-honour" until he
+insists that he has had enough, and politely, but firmly, refuses to eat
+another anything.  Then, of course, he wants only one helping of pudding
+at lunch, and Ethelbertha thinks he is sickening for something.  Mrs.
+Harris added that it would be as well for us to come upstairs soon, on
+our own account also, as otherwise we should miss Muriel's rendering of
+"The Mad Hatter's Tea Party," out of _Alice in Wonderland_.  Muriel is
+Harris's second, age eight: she is a bright, intelligent child; but I
+prefer her myself in serious pieces.  We said we would finish our
+cigarettes and follow almost immediately; we also begged her not to let
+Muriel begin until we arrived.  She promised to hold the child back as
+long as possible, and went.  Harris, as soon as the door was closed,
+resumed his interrupted sentence.
+
+"You know what I mean," he said, "a complete change."
+
+The question was how to get it.
+
+George suggested "business."  It was the sort of suggestion George would
+make.  A bachelor thinks a married woman doesn't know enough to get out
+of the way of a steam-roller.  I knew a young fellow once, an engineer,
+who thought he would go to Vienna "on business."  His wife wanted to know
+"what business?"  He told her it would be his duty to visit the mines in
+the neighbourhood of the Austrian capital, and to make reports.  She said
+she would go with him; she was that sort of woman.  He tried to dissuade
+her: he told her that a mine was no place for a beautiful woman.  She
+said she felt that herself, and that therefore she did not intend to
+accompany him down the shafts; she would see him off in the morning, and
+then amuse herself until his return, looking round the Vienna shops, and
+buying a few things she might want.  Having started the idea, he did not
+see very well how to get out of it; and for ten long summer days he did
+visit the mines in the neighbourhood of Vienna, and in the evening wrote
+reports about them, which she posted for him to his firm, who didn't want
+them.
+
+I should be grieved to think that either Ethelbertha or Mrs. Harris
+belonged to that class of wife, but it is as well not to overdo
+"business"--it should be kept for cases of real emergency.
+
+"No," I said, "the thing is to be frank and manly.  I shall tell
+Ethelbertha that I have come to the conclusion a man never values
+happiness that is always with him.  I shall tell her that, for the sake
+of learning to appreciate my own advantages as I know they should be
+appreciated, I intend to tear myself away from her and the children for
+at least three weeks.  I shall tell her," I continued, turning to Harris,
+"that it is you who have shown me my duty in this respect; that it is to
+you we shall owe--"
+
+Harris put down his glass rather hurriedly.
+
+"If you don't mind, old man," he interrupted, "I'd really rather you
+didn't.  She'll talk it over with my wife, and--well, I should not be
+happy, taking credit that I do not deserve."
+
+"But you do deserve it," I insisted; "it was your suggestion."
+
+"It was you gave me the idea," interrupted Harris again.  "You know you
+said it was a mistake for a man to get into a groove, and that unbroken
+domesticity cloyed the brain."
+
+"I was speaking generally," I explained.
+
+"It struck me as very apt," said Harris.  "I thought of repeating it to
+Clara; she has a great opinion of your sense, I know.  I am sure that
+if--"
+
+"We won't risk it," I interrupted, in my turn; "it is a delicate matter,
+and I see a way out of it.  We will say George suggested the idea."
+
+There is a lack of genial helpfulness about George that it sometimes
+vexes me to notice.  You would have thought he would have welcomed the
+chance of assisting two old friends out of a dilemma; instead, he became
+disagreeable.
+
+"You do," said George, "and I shall tell them both that my original plan
+was that we should make a party--children and all; that I should bring my
+aunt, and that we should hire a charming old chateau I know of in
+Normandy, on the coast, where the climate is peculiarly adapted to
+delicate children, and the milk such as you do not get in England.  I
+shall add that you over-rode that suggestion, arguing we should be
+happier by ourselves."
+
+With a man like George kindness is of no use; you have to be firm.
+
+"You do," said Harris, "and I, for one, will close with the offer.  We
+will just take that chateau.  You will bring your aunt--I will see to
+that,--and we will have a month of it.  The children are all fond of you;
+J. and I will be nowhere.  You've promised to teach Edgar fishing; and it
+is you who will have to play wild beasts.  Since last Sunday Dick and
+Muriel have talked of nothing else but your hippopotamus.  We will picnic
+in the woods--there will only be eleven of us,--and in the evenings we
+will have music and recitations.  Muriel is master of six pieces already,
+as perhaps you know; and all the other children are quick studies."
+
+George climbed down--he has no real courage--but he did not do it
+gracefully.  He said that if we were mean and cowardly and false-hearted
+enough to stoop to such a shabby trick, he supposed he couldn't help it;
+and that if I didn't intend to finish the whole bottle of claret myself,
+he would trouble me to spare him a glass.  He also added, somewhat
+illogically, that it really did not matter, seeing both Ethelbertha and
+Mrs. Harris were women of sense who would judge him better than to
+believe for a moment that the suggestion emanated from him.
+
+This little point settled, the question was: What sort of a change?
+
+Harris, as usual, was for the sea.  He said he knew a yacht, just the
+very thing--one that we could manage by ourselves; no skulking lot of
+lubbers loafing about, adding to the expense and taking away from the
+romance.  Give him a handy boy, he would sail it himself.  We knew that
+yacht, and we told him so; we had been on it with Harris before.  It
+smells of bilge-water and greens to the exclusion of all other scents; no
+ordinary sea air can hope to head against it.  So far as sense of smell
+is concerned, one might be spending a week in Limehouse Hole.  There is
+no place to get out of the rain; the saloon is ten feet by four, and half
+of that is taken up by a stove, which falls to pieces when you go to
+light it.  You have to take your bath on deck, and the towel blows
+overboard just as you step out of the tub.  Harris and the boy do all the
+interesting work--the lugging and the reefing, the letting her go and the
+heeling her over, and all that sort of thing,--leaving George and myself
+to do the peeling of the potatoes and the washing up.
+
+"Very well, then," said Harris, "let's take a proper yacht, with a
+skipper, and do the thing in style."
+
+That also I objected to.  I know that skipper; his notion of yachting is
+to lie in what he calls the "offing," where he can be well in touch with
+his wife and family, to say nothing of his favourite public-house.
+
+Years ago, when I was young and inexperienced, I hired a yacht myself.
+Three things had combined to lead me into this foolishness: I had had a
+stroke of unexpected luck; Ethelbertha had expressed a yearning for sea
+air; and the very next morning, in taking up casually at the club a copy
+of the _Sportsman_, I had come across the following advertisement:--
+
+
+
+
+
+TO YACHTSMEN.--Unique Opportunity.--"Rogue," 28-ton Yawl.--Owner, called
+away suddenly on business, is willing to let this superbly-fitted
+"greyhound of the sea" for any period short or long.  Two cabins and
+saloon; pianette, by Woffenkoff; new copper.  Terms, 10 guineas a
+week.--Apply Pertwee and Co., 3A Bucklersbury.
+
+
+It had seemed to me like the answer to a prayer.  "The new copper" did
+not interest me; what little washing we might want could wait, I thought.
+But the "pianette by Woffenkoff" sounded alluring.  I pictured
+Ethelbertha playing in the evening--something with a chorus, in which,
+perhaps, the crew, with a little training, might join--while our moving
+home bounded, "greyhound-like," over the silvery billows.
+
+I took a cab and drove direct to 3A Bucklersbury.  Mr. Pertwee was an
+unpretentious-looking gentleman, who had an unostentatious office on the
+third floor.  He showed me a picture in water-colours of the _Rogue_
+flying before the wind.  The deck was at an angle of 95 to the ocean.  In
+the picture no human beings were represented on the deck; I suppose they
+had slipped off.  Indeed, I do not see how anyone could have kept on,
+unless nailed.  I pointed out this disadvantage to the agent, who,
+however, explained to me that the picture represented the _Rogue_
+doubling something or other on the well-known occasion of her winning the
+Medway Challenge Shield.  Mr. Pertwee assumed that I knew all about the
+event, so that I did not like to ask any questions.  Two specks near the
+frame of the picture, which at first I had taken for moths, represented,
+it appeared, the second and third winners in this celebrated race.  A
+photograph of the yacht at anchor off Gravesend was less impressive, but
+suggested more stability.  All answers to my inquiries being
+satisfactory, I took the thing for a fortnight.  Mr. Pertwee said it was
+fortunate I wanted it only for a fortnight--later on I came to agree with
+him,--the time fitting in exactly with another hiring.  Had I required it
+for three weeks he would have been compelled to refuse me.
+
+The letting being thus arranged, Mr. Pertwee asked me if I had a skipper
+in my eye.  That I had not was also fortunate--things seemed to be
+turning out luckily for me all round,--because Mr. Pertwee felt sure I
+could not do better than keep on Mr. Goyles, at present in charge--an
+excellent skipper, so Mr. Pertwee assured me, a man who knew the sea as a
+man knows his own wife, and who had never lost a life.
+
+It was still early in the day, and the yacht was lying off Harwich.  I
+caught the ten forty-five from Liverpool Street, and by one o'clock was
+talking to Mr. Goyles on deck.  He was a stout man, and had a fatherly
+way with him.  I told him my idea, which was to take the outlying Dutch
+islands and then creep up to Norway.  He said, "Aye, aye, sir," and
+appeared quite enthusiastic about the trip; said he should enjoy it
+himself.  We came to the question of victualling, and he grew more
+enthusiastic.  The amount of food suggested by Mr. Goyles, I confess,
+surprised me.  Had we been living in the days of Drake and the Spanish
+Main, I should have feared he was arranging for something illegal.
+However, he laughed in his fatherly way, and assured me we were not
+overdoing it.  Anything left the crew would divide and take home with
+them--it seemed this was the custom.  It appeared to me that I was
+providing for this crew for the winter, but I did not like to appear
+stingy, and said no more.  The amount of drink required also surprised
+me.  I arranged for what I thought we should need for ourselves, and then
+Mr. Goyles spoke up for the crew.  I must say that for him, he did think
+of his men.
+
+"We don't want anything in the nature of an orgie, Mr. Goyles," I
+suggested.
+
+"Orgie!" replied Mr. Goyles; "why they'll take that little drop in their
+tea."
+
+He explained to me that his motto was, Get good men and treat them well.
+
+"They work better for you," said Mr. Goyles; "and they come again."
+
+Personally, I didn't feel I wanted them to come again.  I was beginning
+to take a dislike to them before I had seen them; I regarded them as a
+greedy and guzzling crew.  But Mr. Goyles was so cheerfully emphatic, and
+I was so inexperienced, that again I let him have his way.  He also
+promised that even in this department he would see to it personally that
+nothing was wasted.
+
+I also left him to engage the crew.  He said he could do the thing, and
+would, for me, with the help two men and a boy.  If he was alluding to
+the clearing up of the victuals and drink, I think he was making an under-
+estimate; but possibly he may have been speaking of the sailing of the
+yacht.
+
+I called at my tailors on the way home and ordered a yachting suit, with
+a white hat, which they promised to bustle up and have ready in time; and
+then I went home and told Ethelbertha all I had done.  Her delight was
+clouded by only one reflection--would the dressmaker be able to finish a
+yachting costume for her in time?  That is so like a woman.
+
+Our honeymoon, which had taken place not very long before, had been
+somewhat curtailed, so we decided we would invite nobody, but have the
+yacht to ourselves.  And thankful I am to Heaven that we did so decide.
+On Monday we put on all our clothes and started.  I forget what
+Ethelbertha wore, but, whatever it may have been, it looked very
+fetching.  My own costume was a dark blue trimmed with a narrow white
+braid, which, I think, was rather effective.
+
+Mr. Goyles met us on deck, and told us that lunch was ready.  I must
+admit Goyles had secured the services of a very fair cook.  The
+capabilities of the other members of the crew I had no opportunity of
+judging.  Speaking of them in a state of rest, however, I can say of them
+they appeared to be a cheerful crew.
+
+My idea had been that so soon as the men had finished their dinner we
+would weigh anchor, while I, smoking a cigar, with Ethelbertha by my
+side, would lean over the gunwale and watch the white cliffs of the
+Fatherland sink imperceptibly into the horizon.  Ethelbertha and I
+carried out our part of the programme, and waited, with the deck to
+ourselves.
+
+"They seem to be taking their time," said Ethelbertha.
+
+"If, in the course of fourteen days," I said, "they eat half of what is
+on this yacht, they will want a fairly long time for every meal.  We had
+better not hurry them, or they won't get through a quarter of it."
+
+"They must have gone to sleep," said Ethelbertha, later on.  "It will be
+tea-time soon."
+
+They were certainly very quiet.  I went for'ard, and hailed Captain
+Goyles down the ladder.  I hailed him three times; then he came up
+slowly.  He appeared to be a heavier and older man than when I had seen
+him last.  He had a cold cigar in his mouth.
+
+"When you are ready, Captain Goyles," I said, "we'll start."
+
+Captain Goyles removed the cigar from his mouth.
+
+"Not to-day we won't, sir," he replied, "_with_ your permission."
+
+"Why, what's the matter with to-day?" I said.  I know sailors are a
+superstitious folk; I thought maybe a Monday might be considered unlucky.
+
+"The day's all right," answered Captain Goyles, "it's the wind I'm
+a-thinking of.  It don't look much like changing."
+
+"But do we want it to change?" I asked.  "It seems to me to be just where
+it should be, dead behind us."
+
+"Aye, aye," said Captain Goyles, "dead's the right word to use, for dead
+we'd all be, bar Providence, if we was to put out in this.  You see,
+sir," he explained, in answer to my look of surprise, "this is what we
+call a 'land wind,' that is, it's a-blowing, as one might say, direct off
+the land."
+
+When I came to think of it the man was right; the wind was blowing off
+the land.
+
+"It may change in the night," said Captain Goyles, more hopefully
+"anyhow, it's not violent, and she rides well."
+
+Captain Goyles resumed his cigar, and I returned aft, and explained to
+Ethelbertha the reason for the delay.  Ethelbertha, who appeared to be
+less high spirited than when we first boarded, wanted to know _why_ we
+couldn't sail when the wind was off the land.
+
+"If it was not blowing off the land," said Ethelbertha, "it would be
+blowing off the sea, and that would send us back into the shore again.  It
+seems to me this is just the very wind we want."
+
+I said: "That is your inexperience, love; it _seems_ to be the very wind
+we want, but it is not.  It's what we call a land wind, and a land wind
+is always very dangerous."
+
+Ethelbertha wanted to know _why_ a land wind was very dangerous.
+
+Her argumentativeness annoyed me somewhat; maybe I was feeling a bit
+cross; the monotonous rolling heave of a small yacht at anchor depresses
+an ardent spirit.
+
+"I can't explain it to you," I replied, which was true, "but to set sail
+in this wind would be the height of foolhardiness, and I care for you too
+much, dear, to expose you to unnecessary risks."
+
+I thought this rather a neat conclusion, but Ethelbertha merely replied
+that she wished, under the circumstances, we hadn't come on board till
+Tuesday, and went below.
+
+In the morning the wind veered round to the north; I was up early, and
+observed this to Captain Goyles.
+
+"Aye, aye, sir," he remarked; "it's unfortunate, but it can't be helped."
+
+"You don't think it possible for us to start to-day?" I hazarded.
+
+He did not get angry with me, he only laughed.
+
+"Well, sir," said he, "if you was a-wanting to go to Ipswich, I should
+say as it couldn't be better for us, but our destination being, as you
+see, the Dutch coast--why there you are!"
+
+I broke the news to Ethelbertha, and we agreed to spend the day on shore.
+Harwich is not a merry town, towards evening you might call it dull.  We
+had some tea and watercress at Dovercourt, and then returned to the quay
+to look for Captain Goyles and the boat.  We waited an hour for him.  When
+he came he was more cheerful than we were; if he had not told me himself
+that he never drank anything but one glass of hot grog before turning in
+for the night, I should have said he was drunk.
+
+The next morning the wind was in the south, which made Captain Goyles
+rather anxious, it appearing that it was equally unsafe to move or to
+stop where we were; our only hope was it would change before anything
+happened.  By this time, Ethelbertha had taken a dislike to the yacht;
+she said that, personally, she would rather be spending a week in a
+bathing machine, seeing that a bathing machine was at least steady.
+
+We passed another day in Harwich, and that night and the next, the wind
+still continuing in the south, we slept at the "King's Head."  On Friday
+the wind was blowing direct from the east.  I met Captain Goyles on the
+quay, and suggested that, under these circumstances, we might start.  He
+appeared irritated at my persistence.
+
+"If you knew a bit more, sir," he said, "you'd see for yourself that it's
+impossible.  The wind's a-blowing direct off the sea."
+
+I said: "Captain Goyles, tell me what is this thing I have hired?  Is it
+a yacht or a house-boat?"
+
+He seemed surprised at my question.
+
+He said: "It's a yawl."
+
+"What I mean is," I said, "can it be moved at all, or is it a fixture
+here?  If it is a fixture," I continued, "tell me so frankly, then we
+will get some ivy in boxes and train over the port-holes, stick some
+flowers and an awning on deck, and make the thing look pretty.  If, on
+the other hand, it can be moved--"
+
+"Moved!" interrupted Captain Goyles.  "You get the right wind behind the
+_Rogue_--"
+
+I said: "What is the right wind?"
+
+Captain Goyles looked puzzled.
+
+"In the course of this week," I went on, "we have had wind from the
+north, from the south, from the east, from the west--with variations.  If
+you can think of any other point of the compass from which it can blow,
+tell me, and I will wait for it.  If not, and if that anchor has not
+grown into the bottom of the ocean, we will have it up to-day and see
+what happens."
+
+He grasped the fact that I was determined.
+
+"Very well, sir," he said, "you're master and I'm man.  I've only got one
+child as is still dependent on me, thank God, and no doubt your executors
+will feel it their duty to do the right thing by the old woman."
+
+His solemnity impressed me.
+
+"Mr. Goyles," I said, "be honest with me.  Is there any hope, in any
+weather, of getting away from this damned hole?"
+
+Captain Goyles's kindly geniality returned to him.
+
+"You see, sir," he said, "this is a very peculiar coast.  We'd be all
+right if we were once out, but getting away from it in a cockle-shell
+like that--well, to be frank, sir, it wants doing."
+
+I left Captain Goyles with the assurance that he would watch the weather
+as a mother would her sleeping babe; it was his own simile, and it struck
+me as rather touching.  I saw him again at twelve o'clock; he was
+watching it from the window of the "Chain and Anchor."
+
+At five o'clock that evening a stroke of luck occurred; in the middle of
+the High Street I met a couple of yachting friends, who had had to put in
+by reason of a strained rudder.  I told them my story, and they appeared
+less surprised than amused.  Captain Goyles and the two men were still
+watching the weather.  I ran into the "King's Head," and prepared
+Ethelbertha.  The four of us crept quietly down to the quay, where we
+found our boat.  Only the boy was on board; my two friends took charge of
+the yacht, and by six o'clock we were scudding merrily up the coast.
+
+We put in that night at Aldborough, and the next day worked up to
+Yarmouth, where, as my friends had to leave, I decided to abandon the
+yacht.  We sold the stores by auction on Yarmouth sands early in the
+morning.  I made a loss, but had the satisfaction of "doing" Captain
+Goyles.  I left the _Rogue_ in charge of a local mariner, who, for a
+couple of sovereigns, undertook to see to its return to Harwich; and we
+came back to London by train.  There may be yachts other than the
+_Rogue_, and skippers other than Mr. Goyles, but that experience has
+prejudiced me against both.
+
+George also thought a yacht would be a good deal of responsibility, so we
+dismissed the idea.
+
+"What about the river?" suggested Harris.
+
+"We have had some pleasant times on that."
+
+George pulled in silence at his cigar, and I cracked another nut.
+
+"The river is not what it used to be," said I; "I don't know what, but
+there's a something--a dampness--about the river air that always starts
+my lumbago."
+
+"It's the same with me," said George.  "I don't know how it is, but I
+never can sleep now in the neighbourhood of the river.  I spent a week at
+Joe's place in the spring, and every night I woke up at seven o'clock and
+never got a wink afterwards."
+
+"I merely suggested it," observed Harris.  "Personally, I don't think it
+good for me, either; it touches my gout."
+
+"What suits me best," I said, "is mountain air.  What say you to a
+walking tour in Scotland?"
+
+"It's always wet in Scotland," said George.  "I was three weeks in
+Scotland the year before last, and was never dry once all the time--not
+in that sense."
+
+"It's fine enough in Switzerland," said Harris.
+
+"They would never stand our going to Switzerland by ourselves," I
+objected.  "You know what happened last time.  It must be some place
+where no delicately nurtured woman or child could possibly live; a
+country of bad hotels and comfortless travelling; where we shall have to
+rough it, to work hard, to starve perhaps--"
+
+"Easy!" interrupted George, "easy, there!  Don't forget I'm coming with
+you."
+
+"I have it!" exclaimed Harris; "a bicycle tour!"
+
+George looked doubtful.
+
+"There's a lot of uphill about a bicycle tour," said he, "and the wind is
+against you."
+
+"So there is downhill, and the wind behind you," said Harris.
+
+"I've never noticed it," said George.
+
+"You won't think of anything better than a bicycle tour," persisted
+Harris.
+
+I was inclined to agree with him.
+
+"And I'll tell you where," continued he; "through the Black Forest."
+
+"Why, that's _all_ uphill," said George.
+
+"Not all," retorted Harris; "say two-thirds.  And there's one thing
+you've forgotten."
+
+He looked round cautiously, and sunk his voice to a whisper.
+
+"There are little railways going up those hills, little cogwheel things
+that--"
+
+The door opened, and Mrs. Harris appeared.  She said that Ethelbertha was
+putting on her bonnet, and that Muriel, after waiting, had given "The Mad
+Hatter's Tea Party" without us.
+
+"Club, to-morrow, at four," whispered Harris to me, as he rose, and I
+passed it on to George as we went upstairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+A delicate business--What Ethelbertha might have said--What she did
+say--What Mrs. Harris said--What we told George--We will start on
+Wednesday--George suggests the possibility of improving our minds--Harris
+and I are doubtful--Which man on a tandem does the most work?--The
+opinion of the man in front--Views of the man behind--How Harris lost his
+wife--The luggage question--The wisdom of my late Uncle Podger--Beginning
+of story about a man who had a bag.
+
+I opened the ball with Ethelbertha that same evening.  I commenced by
+being purposely a little irritable.  My idea was that Ethelbertha would
+remark upon this.  I should admit it, and account for it by over brain
+pressure.  This would naturally lead to talk about my health in general,
+and the evident necessity there was for my taking prompt and vigorous
+measures.  I thought that with a little tact I might even manage so that
+the suggestion should come from Ethelbertha herself.  I imagined her
+saying: "No, dear, it is change you want; complete change.  Now be
+persuaded by me, and go away for a month.  No, do not ask me to come with
+you.  I know you would rather that I did, but I will not.  It is the
+society of other men you need.  Try and persuade George and Harris to go
+with you.  Believe me, a highly strung brain such as yours demands
+occasional relaxation from the strain of domestic surroundings.  Forget
+for a little while that children want music lessons, and boots, and
+bicycles, with tincture of rhubarb three times a day; forget there are
+such things in life as cooks, and house decorators, and next-door dogs,
+and butchers' bills.  Go away to some green corner of the earth, where
+all is new and strange to you, where your over-wrought mind will gather
+peace and fresh ideas.  Go away for a space and give me time to miss you,
+and to reflect upon your goodness and virtue, which, continually present
+with me, I may, human-like, be apt to forget, as one, through use, grows
+indifferent to the blessing of the sun and the beauty of the moon.  Go
+away, and come back refreshed in mind and body, a brighter, better man--if
+that be possible--than when you went away."
+
+But even when we obtain our desires they never come to us garbed as we
+would wish.  To begin with, Ethelbertha did not seem to remark that I was
+irritable; I had to draw her attention to it.  I said:
+
+"You must forgive me, I'm not feeling quite myself to-night."
+
+She said: "Oh!  I have not noticed anything different; what's the matter
+with you?"
+
+"I can't tell you what it is," I said; "I've felt it coming on for
+weeks."
+
+"It's that whisky," said Ethelbertha.  "You never touch it except when we
+go to the Harris's.  You know you can't stand it; you have not a strong
+head."
+
+"It isn't the whisky," I replied; "it's deeper than that.  I fancy it's
+more mental than bodily."
+
+"You've been reading those criticisms again," said Ethelbertha, more
+sympathetically; "why don't you take my advice and put them on the fire?"
+
+"And it isn't the criticisms," I answered; "they've been quite flattering
+of late--one or two of them."
+
+"Well, what is it?" said Ethelbertha; "there must be something to account
+for it."
+
+"No, there isn't," I replied; "that's the remarkable thing about it; I
+can only describe it as a strange feeling of unrest that seems to have
+taken possession of me."
+
+Ethelbertha glanced across at me with a somewhat curious expression, I
+thought; but as she said nothing, I continued the argument myself.
+
+"This aching monotony of life, these days of peaceful, uneventful
+felicity, they appall one."
+
+"I should not grumble at them," said Ethelbertha; "we might get some of
+the other sort, and like them still less."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that," I replied.  "In a life of continuous joy, I
+can imagine even pain coming as a welcome variation.  I wonder sometimes
+whether the saints in heaven do not occasionally feel the continual
+serenity a burden.  To myself a life of endless bliss, uninterrupted by a
+single contrasting note, would, I feel, grow maddening.  I suppose," I
+continued, "I am a strange sort of man; I can hardly understand myself at
+times.  There are moments," I added, "when I hate myself."
+
+Often a little speech like this, hinting at hidden depths of
+indescribable emotion has touched Ethelbertha, but to-night she appeared
+strangely unsympathetic.  With regard to heaven and its possible effect
+upon me, she suggested my not worrying myself about that, remarking it
+was always foolish to go half-way to meet trouble that might never come;
+while as to my being a strange sort of fellow, that, she supposed, I
+could not help, and if other people were willing to put up with me, there
+was an end of the matter.  The monotony of life, she added, was a common
+experience; there she could sympathise with me.
+
+"You don't know I long," said Ethelbertha, "to get away occasionally,
+even from you; but I know it can never be, so I do not brood upon it."
+
+I had never heard Ethelbertha speak like this before; it astonished and
+grieved me beyond measure.
+
+"That's not a very kind remark to make," I said, "not a wifely remark."
+
+"I know it isn't," she replied; "that is why I have never said it before.
+You men never can understand," continued Ethelbertha, "that, however fond
+a woman may be of a man, there are times when he palls upon her.  You
+don't know how I long to be able sometimes to put on my bonnet and go
+out, with nobody to ask me where I am going, why I am going, how long I
+am going to be, and when I shall be back.  You don't know how I sometimes
+long to order a dinner that I should like and that the children would
+like, but at the sight of which you would put on your hat and be off to
+the Club.  You don't know how much I feel inclined sometimes to invite
+some woman here that I like, and that I know you don't; to go and see the
+people that I want to see, to go to bed when _I_ am tired, and to get up
+when _I_ feel I want to get up.  Two people living together are bound
+both to be continually sacrificing their own desires to the other one.  It
+is sometimes a good thing to slacken the strain a bit."
+
+On thinking over Ethelbertha's words afterwards, have come to see their
+wisdom; but at the time I admit I was hurt and indignant.
+
+"If your desire," I said, "is to get rid of me--"
+
+"Now, don't be an old goose," said Ethelbertha; "I only want to get rid
+of you for a little while, just long enough to forget there are one or
+two corners about you that are not perfect, just long enough to let me
+remember what a dear fellow you are in other respects, and to look
+forward to your return, as I used to look forward to your coming in the
+old days when I did not see you so often as to become, perhaps, a little
+indifferent to you, as one grows indifferent to the glory of the sun,
+just because he is there every day."
+
+I did not like the tone that Ethelbertha took.  There seemed to be a
+frivolity about her, unsuited to the theme into which we had drifted.
+That a woman should contemplate cheerfully an absence of three or four
+weeks from her husband appeared to me to be not altogether nice, not what
+I call womanly; it was not like Ethelbertha at all.  I was worried, I
+felt I didn't want to go this trip at all.  If it had not been for George
+and Harris, I would have abandoned it.  As it was, I could not see how to
+change my mind with dignity.
+
+"Very well, Ethelbertha," I replied, "it shall be as you wish.  If you
+desire a holiday from my presence, you shall enjoy it; but if it be not
+impertinent curiosity on the part of a husband, I should like to know
+what you propose doing in my absence?"
+
+"We will take that house at Folkestone," answered Ethelbertha, "and I'll
+go down there with Kate.  And if you want to do Clara Harris a good
+turn," added Ethelbertha, "you'll persuade Harris to go with you, and
+then Clara can join us.  We three used to have some very jolly times
+together before you men ever came along, and it would be just delightful
+to renew them.  Do you think," continued Ethelbertha, "that you could
+persuade Mr. Harris to go with you?"
+
+I said I would try.
+
+"There's a dear boy," said Ethelbertha; "try hard.  You might get George
+to join you."
+
+I replied there was not much advantage in George's coming, seeing he was
+a bachelor, and that therefore nobody would be much benefited by his
+absence.  But a woman never understands satire.  Ethelbertha merely
+remarked it would look unkind leaving him behind.  I promised to put it
+to him.
+
+I met Harris at the Club in the afternoon, and asked him how he had got
+on.
+
+He said, "Oh, that's all right; there's no difficulty about getting
+away."
+
+But there was that about his tone that suggested incomplete satisfaction,
+so I pressed him for further details.
+
+"She was as sweet as milk about it," he continued; "said it was an
+excellent idea of George's, and that she thought it would do me good."
+
+"That seems all right," I said; "what's wrong about that?"
+
+"There's nothing wrong about that," he answered, "but that wasn't all.
+She went on to talk of other things."
+
+"I understand," I said.
+
+"There's that bathroom fad of hers," he continued.
+
+"I've heard of it," I said; "she has started Ethelbertha on the same
+idea."
+
+"Well, I've had to agree to that being put in hand at once; I couldn't
+argue any more when she was so nice about the other thing.  That will
+cost me a hundred pounds, at the very least."
+
+"As much as that?" I asked.
+
+"Every penny of it," said Harris; "the estimate alone is sixty."
+
+I was sorry to hear him say this.
+
+"Then there's the kitchen stove," continued Harris; "everything that has
+gone wrong in the house for the last two years has been the fault of that
+kitchen stove."
+
+"I know," I said.  "We have been in seven houses since we were married,
+and every kitchen stove has been worse than the last.  Our present one is
+not only incompetent; it is spiteful.  It knows when we are giving a
+party, and goes out of its way to do its worst."
+
+"_We_ are going to have a new one," said Harris, but he did not say it
+proudly.  "Clara thought it would be such a saving of expense, having the
+two things done at the same time.  I believe," said Harris, "if a woman
+wanted a diamond tiara, she would explain that it was to save the expense
+of a bonnet."
+
+"How much do you reckon the stove is going to cost you?" I asked.  I felt
+interested in the subject.
+
+"I don't know," answered Harris; "another twenty, I suppose.  Then we
+talked about the piano.  Could you ever notice," said Harris, "any
+difference between one piano and another?"
+
+"Some of them seem to be a bit louder than others," I answered; "but one
+gets used to that."
+
+"Ours is all wrong about the treble," said Harris.  "By the way, what
+_is_ the treble?"
+
+"It's the shrill end of the thing," I explained; "the part that sounds as
+if you'd trod on its tail.  The brilliant selections always end up with a
+flourish on it."
+
+"They want more of it," said Harris; "our old one hasn't got enough of
+it.  I'll have to put it in the nursery, and get a new one for the
+drawing-room."
+
+"Anything else?" I asked.
+
+"No," said Harris; "she didn't seem able to think of anything else."
+
+"You'll find when you get home," I said, "she has thought of one other
+thing."
+
+"What's that?" said Harris.
+
+"A house at Folkestone for the season."
+
+"What should she want a house at Folkestone for?" said Harris.
+
+"To live in," I suggested, "during the summer months."
+
+"She's going to her people in Wales," said Harris, "for the holidays,
+with the children; we've had an invitation."
+
+"Possibly," I said, "she'll go to Wales before she goes to Folkestone, or
+maybe she'll take Wales on her way home; but she'll want a house at
+Folkestone for the season, notwithstanding.  I may be mistaken--I hope
+for your sake that I am--but I feel a presentiment that I'm not."
+
+"This trip," said Harris, "is going to be expensive."
+
+"It was an idiotic suggestion," I said, "from the beginning."
+
+"It was foolish of us to listen to him," said Harris; "he'll get us into
+real trouble one of these days."
+
+"He always was a muddler," I agreed.
+
+"So headstrong," added Harris.
+
+We heard his voice at that moment in the hall, asking for letters.
+
+"Better not say anything to him," I suggested; "it's too late to go back
+now."
+
+"There would be no advantage in doing so," replied Harris.  "I should
+have to get that bathroom and piano in any case now."
+
+He came in looking very cheerful.
+
+"Well," he said, "is it all right?  Have you managed it?"
+
+There was that about his tone I did not altogether like; I noticed Harris
+resented it also.
+
+"Managed what?" I said.
+
+"Why, to get off," said George.
+
+I felt the time was come to explain things to George.
+
+"In married life," I said, "the man proposes, the woman submits.  It is
+her duty; all religion teaches it."
+
+George folded his hands and fixed his eyes on the ceiling.
+
+"We may chaff and joke a little about these things," I continued; "but
+when it comes to practice, that is what always happens.  We have
+mentioned to our wives that we are going.  Naturally, they are grieved;
+they would prefer to come with us; failing that, they would have us
+remain with them.  But we have explained to them our wishes on the
+subject, and--there's an end of the matter."
+
+George said, "Forgive me; I did not understand.  I am only a bachelor.
+People tell me this, that, and the other, and I listen."
+
+I said, "That is where you do wrong.  When you want information come to
+Harris or myself; we will tell you the truth about these questions."
+
+George thanked us, and we proceeded with the business in hand.
+
+"When shall we start?" said George.
+
+"So far as I am concerned," replied Harris, "the sooner the better."
+
+His idea, I fancy, was to get away before Mrs. H. thought of other
+things.  We fixed the following Wednesday.
+
+"What about route?" said Harris.
+
+"I have an idea," said George.  "I take it you fellows are naturally
+anxious to improve your minds?"
+
+I said, "We don't want to become monstrosities.  To a reasonable degree,
+yes, if it can be done without much expense and with little personal
+trouble."
+
+"It can," said George.  "We know Holland and the Rhine.  Very well, my
+suggestion is that we take the boat to Hamburg, see Berlin and Dresden,
+and work our way to the Schwarzwald, through Nuremberg and Stuttgart."
+
+"There are some pretty bits in Mesopotamia, so I've been told," murmured
+Harris.
+
+George said Mesopotamia was too much out of our way, but that the Berlin-
+Dresden route was quite practicable.  For good or evil, he persuaded us
+into it.
+
+"The machines, I suppose," said George, "as before.  Harris and I on the
+tandem, J.--"
+
+"I think not," interrupted Harris, firmly.  "You and J. on the tandem, I
+on the single."
+
+"All the same to me," agreed George.  "J. and I on the tandem, Harris--"
+
+"I do not mind taking my turn," I interrupted, "but I am not going to
+carry George _all_ the way; the burden should be divided."
+
+"Very well," agreed Harris, "we'll divide it.  But it must be on the
+distinct understanding that he works."
+
+"That he what?" said George.
+
+"That he works," repeated Harris, firmly; "at all events, uphill."
+
+"Great Scott!" said George; "don't you want _any_ exercise?"
+
+There is always unpleasantness about this tandem.  It is the theory of
+the man in front that the man behind does nothing; it is equally the
+theory of the man behind that he alone is the motive power, the man in
+front merely doing the puffing.  The mystery will never be solved.  It is
+annoying when Prudence is whispering to you on the one side not to overdo
+your strength and bring on heart disease; while Justice into the other
+ear is remarking, "Why should you do it all?  This isn't a cab.  He's not
+your passenger:" to hear him grunt out:
+
+"What's the matter--lost your pedals?"
+
+Harris, in his early married days, made much trouble for himself on one
+occasion, owing to this impossibility of knowing what the person behind
+is doing.  He was riding with his wife through Holland.  The roads were
+stony, and the machine jumped a good deal.
+
+"Sit tight," said Harris, without turning his head.
+
+What Mrs. Harris thought he said was, "Jump off."  Why she should have
+thought he said "Jump off," when he said "Sit tight," neither of them can
+explain.
+
+Mrs. Harris puts it in this way, "If you had said, 'Sit tight,' why
+should I have jumped off?"
+
+Harris puts it, "If I had wanted you to jump off, why should I have said
+'Sit tight!'?"
+
+The bitterness is past, but they argue about the matter to this day.
+
+Be the explanation what it may, however, nothing alters the fact that
+Mrs. Harris did jump off, while Harris pedalled away hard, under the
+impression she was still behind him.  It appears that at first she
+thought he was riding up the hill merely to show off.  They were both
+young in those days, and he used to do that sort of thing.  She expected
+him to spring to earth on reaching the summit, and lean in a careless and
+graceful attitude against the machine, waiting for her.  When, on the
+contrary, she saw him pass the summit and proceed rapidly down a long and
+steep incline, she was seized, first with surprise, secondly with
+indignation, and lastly with alarm.  She ran to the top of the hill and
+shouted, but he never turned his head.  She watched him disappear into a
+wood a mile and a half distant, and then sat down and cried.  They had
+had a slight difference that morning, and she wondered if he had taken it
+seriously and intended desertion.  She had no money; she knew no Dutch.
+People passed, and seemed sorry for her; she tried to make them
+understand what had happened.  They gathered that she had lost something,
+but could not grasp what.  They took her to the nearest village, and
+found a policeman for her.  He concluded from her pantomime that some man
+had stolen her bicycle.  They put the telegraph into operation, and
+discovered in a village four miles off an unfortunate boy riding a lady's
+machine of an obsolete pattern.  They brought him to her in a cart, but
+as she did not appear to want either him or his bicycle they let him go
+again, and resigned themselves to bewilderment.
+
+Meanwhile, Harris continued his ride with much enjoyment.  It seemed to
+him that he had suddenly become a stronger, and in every way a more
+capable cyclist.  Said he to what he thought was Mrs. Harris:
+
+"I haven't felt this machine so light for months.  It's this air, I
+think; it's doing me good."
+
+Then he told her not to be afraid, and he would show her how fast he
+_could_ go.  He bent down over the handles, and put his heart into his
+work.  The bicycle bounded over the road like a thing of life; farmhouses
+and churches, dogs and chickens came to him and passed.  Old folks stood
+and gazed at him, the children cheered him.
+
+In this way he sped merrily onward for about five miles.  Then, as he
+explains it, the feeling began to grow upon him that something was wrong.
+He was not surprised at the silence; the wind was blowing strongly, and
+the machine was rattling a good deal.  It was a sense of void that came
+upon him.  He stretched out his hand behind him, and felt; there was
+nothing there but space.  He jumped, or rather fell off, and looked back
+up the road; it stretched white and straight through the dark wood, and
+not a living soul could be seen upon it.  He remounted, and rode back up
+the hill.  In ten minutes he came to where the road broke into four;
+there he dismounted and tried to remember which fork he had come down.
+
+While he was deliberating a man passed, sitting sideways on a horse.
+Harris stopped him, and explained to him that he had lost his wife.  The
+man appeared to be neither surprised nor sorry for him.  While they were
+talking another farmer came along, to whom the first man explained the
+matter, not as an accident, but as a good story.  What appeared to
+surprise the second man most was that Harris should be making a fuss
+about the thing.  He could get no sense out of either of them, and
+cursing them he mounted his machine again, and took the middle road on
+chance.  Half-way up, he came upon a party of two young women with one
+young man between them.  They appeared to be making the most of him.  He
+asked them if they had seen his wife.  They asked him what she was like.
+He did not know enough Dutch to describe her properly; all he could tell
+them was she was a very beautiful woman, of medium size.  Evidently this
+did not satisfy them, the description was too general; any man could say
+that, and by this means perhaps get possession of a wife that did not
+belong to him.  They asked him how she was dressed; for the life of him
+he could not recollect.
+
+I doubt if any man could tell how any woman was dressed ten minutes after
+he had left her.  He recollected a blue skirt, and then there was
+something that carried the dress on, as it were, up to the neck.
+Possibly, this may have been a blouse; he retained a dim vision of a
+belt; but what sort of a blouse?  Was it green, or yellow, or blue?  Had
+it a collar, or was it fastened with a bow?  Were there feathers in her
+hat, or flowers?  Or was it a hat at all?  He dared not say, for fear of
+making a mistake and being sent miles after the wrong party.  The two
+young women giggled, which in his then state of mind irritated Harris.
+The young man, who appeared anxious to get rid of him, suggested the
+police station at the next town.  Harris made his way there.  The police
+gave him a piece of paper, and told him to write down a full description
+of his wife, together with details of when and where he had lost her.  He
+did not know where he had lost her; all he could tell them was the name
+of the village where he had lunched.  He knew he had her with him then,
+and that they had started from there together.
+
+The police looked suspicious; they were doubtful about three matters:
+Firstly, was she really his wife?  Secondly, had he really lost her?
+Thirdly, why had he lost her?  With the aid of a hotel-keeper, however,
+who spoke a little English, he overcame their scruples.  They promised to
+act, and in the evening they brought her to him in a covered wagon,
+together with a bill for expenses.  The meeting was not a tender one.
+Mrs. Harris is not a good actress, and always has great difficulty in
+disguising her feelings.  On this occasion, she frankly admits, she made
+no attempt to disguise them.
+
+The wheel business settled, there arose the ever-lasting luggage
+question.
+
+"The usual list, I suppose," said George, preparing to write.
+
+That was wisdom I had taught them; I had learned it myself years ago from
+my Uncle Podger.
+
+"Always before beginning to pack," my Uncle would say, "make a list."
+
+He was a methodical man.
+
+"Take a piece of paper"--he always began at the beginning--"put down on
+it everything you can possibly require, then go over it and see that it
+contains nothing you can possibly do without.  Imagine yourself in bed;
+what have you got on?  Very well, put it down--together with a change.
+You get up; what do you do?  Wash yourself.  What do you wash yourself
+with?  Soap; put down soap.  Go on till you have finished.  Then take
+your clothes.  Begin at your feet; what do you wear on your feet?  Boots,
+shoes, socks; put them down.  Work up till you get to your head.  What
+else do you want besides clothes?  A little brandy; put it down.  A
+corkscrew, put it down.  Put down everything, then you don't forget
+anything."
+
+That is the plan he always pursued himself.  The list made, he would go
+over it carefully, as he always advised, to see that he had forgotten
+nothing.  Then he would go over it again, and strike out everything it
+was possible to dispense with.
+
+Then he would lose the list.
+
+Said George: "Just sufficient for a day or two we will take with us on
+our bikes.  The bulk of our luggage we must send on from town to town."
+
+"We must be careful," I said; "I knew a man once--"
+
+Harris looked at his watch.
+
+"We'll hear about him on the boat," said Harris; "I have got to meet
+Clara at Waterloo Station in half an hour."
+
+"It won't take half an hour," I said; "it's a true story, and--"
+
+"Don't waste it," said George: "I am told there are rainy evenings in the
+Black Forest; we may be glad of it.  What we have to do now is to finish
+this list."
+
+Now I come to think of it, I never did get off that story; something
+always interrupted it.  And it really was true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Harris's one fault--Harris and the Angel--A patent bicycle lamp--The
+ideal saddle--The "Overhauler"--His eagle eye--His method--His cheery
+confidence--His simple and inexpensive tastes--His appearance--How to get
+rid of him--George as prophet--The gentle art of making oneself
+disagreeable in a foreign tongue--George as a student of human nature--He
+proposes an experiment--His Prudence--Harris's support secured, upon
+conditions.
+
+On Monday afternoon Harris came round; he had a cycling paper in his
+hand.
+
+I said: "If you take my advice, you will leave it alone."
+
+Harris said: "Leave what alone?"
+
+I said: "That brand-new, patent, revolution in cycling, record-breaking,
+Tomfoolishness, whatever it may be, the advertisement of which you have
+there in your hand."
+
+He said: "Well, I don't know; there will be some steep hills for us to
+negotiate; I guess we shall want a good brake."
+
+I said: "We shall want a brake, I agree; what we shall not want is a
+mechanical surprise that we don't understand, and that never acts when it
+is wanted."
+
+"This thing," he said, "acts automatically."
+
+"You needn't tell me," I said.  "I know exactly what it will do, by
+instinct.  Going uphill it will jamb the wheel so effectively that we
+shall have to carry the machine bodily.  The air at the top of the hill
+will do it good, and it will suddenly come right again.  Going downhill
+it will start reflecting what a nuisance it has been.  This will lead to
+remorse, and finally to despair.  It will say to itself: 'I'm not fit to
+be a brake.  I don't help these fellows; I only hinder them.  I'm a
+curse, that's what I am;' and, without a word of warning, it will 'chuck'
+the whole business.  That is what that brake will do.  Leave it alone.
+You are a good fellow," I continued, "but you have one fault."
+
+"What?" he asked, indignantly.
+
+"You have too much faith," I answered.  "If you read an advertisement,
+you go away and believe it.  Every experiment that every fool has thought
+of in connection with cycling you have tried.  Your guardian angel
+appears to be a capable and conscientious spirit, and hitherto she has
+seen you through; take my advice and don't try her too far.  She must
+have had a busy time since you started cycling.  Don't go on till you
+make her mad."
+
+He said: "If every man talked like that there would be no advancement
+made in any department of life.  If nobody ever tried a new thing the
+world would come to a standstill.  It is by--"
+
+"I know all that can be said on that side of the argument," I
+interrupted.  "I agree in trying new experiments up to thirty-five;
+_after_ thirty-five I consider a man is entitled to think of himself.  You
+and I have done our duty in this direction, you especially.  You have
+been blown up by a patent gas lamp--"
+
+He said: "I really think, you know, that was my fault; I think I must
+have screwed it up too tight."
+
+I said: "I am quite willing to believe that if there was a wrong way of
+handling the thing that is the way you handle it.  You should take that
+tendency of yours into consideration; it bears upon the argument.  Myself,
+I did not notice what you did; I only know we were riding peacefully and
+pleasantly along the Whitby Road, discussing the Thirty Years' War, when
+your lamp went off like a pistol-shot.  The start sent me into the ditch;
+and your wife's face, when I told her there was nothing the matter and
+that she was not to worry, because the two men would carry you upstairs,
+and the doctor would be round in a minute bringing the nurse with him,
+still lingers in my memory."
+
+He said: "I wish you had thought to pick up the lamp.  I should like to
+have found out what was the cause of its going off like that."
+
+I said: "There was not time to pick up the lamp.  I calculate it would
+have taken two hours to have collected it.  As to its 'going off,' the
+mere fact of its being advertised as the safest lamp ever invented would
+of itself, to anyone but you, have suggested accident.  Then there was
+that electric lamp," I continued.
+
+"Well, that really did give a fine light," he replied; "you said so
+yourself."
+
+I said: "It gave a brilliant light in the King's Road, Brighton, and
+frightened a horse.  The moment we got into the dark beyond Kemp Town it
+went out, and you were summoned for riding without a light.  You may
+remember that on sunny afternoons you used to ride about with that lamp
+shining for all it was worth.  When lighting-up time came it was
+naturally tired, and wanted a rest."
+
+"It was a bit irritating, that lamp," he murmured; "I remember it."
+
+I said: "It irritated me; it must have been worse for you.  Then there
+are saddles," I went on--I wished to get this lesson home to him.  "Can
+you think of any saddle ever advertised that you have _not_ tried?"
+
+He said: "It has been an idea of mine that the right saddle is to be
+found."
+
+I said: "You give up that idea; this is an imperfect world of joy and
+sorrow mingled.  There may be a better land where bicycle saddles are
+made out of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; in this world the simplest thing
+is to get used to something hard.  There was that saddle you bought in
+Birmingham; it was divided in the middle, and looked like a pair of
+kidneys."
+
+He said: "You mean that one constructed on anatomical principles."
+
+"Very likely," I replied.  "The box you bought it in had a picture on the
+cover, representing a sitting skeleton--or rather that part of a skeleton
+which does sit."
+
+He said: "It was quite correct; it showed you the true position of the--"
+
+I said: "We will not go into details; the picture always seemed to me
+indelicate."
+
+He said: "Medically speaking, it was right."
+
+"Possibly," I said, "for a man who rode in nothing but his bones.  I only
+know that I tried it myself, and that to a man who wore flesh it was
+agony.  Every time you went over a stone or a rut it nipped you; it was
+like riding on an irritable lobster.  You rode that for a month."
+
+"I thought it only right to give it a fair trial," he answered.
+
+I said: "You gave your family a fair trial also; if you will allow me the
+use of slang.  Your wife told me that never in the whole course of your
+married life had she known you so bad tempered, so un-Christian like, as
+you were that month.  Then you remember that other saddle, the one with
+the spring under it."
+
+He said: "You mean 'the Spiral.'"
+
+I said: "I mean the one that jerked you up and down like a Jack-in-the-
+box; sometimes you came down again in the right place, and sometimes you
+didn't.  I am not referring to these matters merely to recall painful
+memories, but I want to impress you with the folly of trying experiments
+at your time of life."
+
+He said.  "I wish you wouldn't harp so much on my age.  A man at thirty-
+four--"
+
+"A man at what?"
+
+He said: "If you don't want the thing, don't have it.  If your machine
+runs away with you down a mountain, and you and George get flung through
+a church roof, don't blame me."
+
+"I cannot promise for George," I said; "a little thing will sometimes
+irritate him, as you know.  If such an accident as you suggest happen, he
+may be cross, but I will undertake to explain to him that it was not your
+fault."
+
+"Is the thing all right?" he asked.
+
+"The tandem," I replied, "is well."
+
+He said: "Have you overhauled it?"
+
+I said: "I have not, nor is anyone else going to overhaul it.  The thing
+is now in working order, and it is going to remain in working order till
+we start."
+
+I have had experience of this "overhauling."  There was a man at
+Folkestone; I used to meet him on the Lees.  He proposed one evening we
+should go for a long bicycle ride together on the following day, and I
+agreed.  I got up early, for me; I made an effort, and was pleased with
+myself.  He came half an hour late: I was waiting for him in the garden.
+It was a lovely day.  He said:--
+
+"That's a good-looking machine of yours.  How does it run?"
+
+"Oh, like most of them!" I answered; "easily enough in the morning; goes
+a little stiffly after lunch."
+
+He caught hold of it by the front wheel and the fork and shook it
+violently.
+
+I said: "Don't do that; you'll hurt it."
+
+I did not see why he should shake it; it had not done anything to him.
+Besides, if it wanted shaking, I was the proper person to shake it.  I
+felt much as I should had he started whacking my dog.
+
+He said: "This front wheel wobbles."
+
+I said: "It doesn't if you don't wobble it."  It didn't wobble, as a
+matter of fact--nothing worth calling a wobble.
+
+He said: "This is dangerous; have you got a screw-hammer?"
+
+I ought to have been firm, but I thought that perhaps he really did know
+something about the business.  I went to the tool shed to see what I
+could find.  When I came back he was sitting on the ground with the front
+wheel between his legs.  He was playing with it, twiddling it round
+between his fingers; the remnant of the machine was lying on the gravel
+path beside him.
+
+He said: "Something has happened to this front wheel of yours."
+
+"It looks like it, doesn't it?" I answered.  But he was the sort of man
+that never understands satire.
+
+He said: "It looks to me as if the bearings were all wrong."
+
+I said: "Don't you trouble about it any more; you will make yourself
+tired.  Let us put it back and get off."
+
+He said: "We may as well see what is the matter with it, now it is out."
+He talked as though it had dropped out by accident.
+
+Before I could stop him he had unscrewed something somewhere, and out
+rolled all over the path some dozen or so little balls.
+
+"Catch 'em!" he shouted; "catch 'em!  We mustn't lose any of them."  He
+was quite excited about them.
+
+We grovelled round for half an hour, and found sixteen.  He said he hoped
+we had got them all, because, if not, it would make a serious difference
+to the machine.  He said there was nothing you should be more careful
+about in taking a bicycle to pieces than seeing you did not lose any of
+the balls.  He explained that you ought to count them as you took them
+out, and see that exactly the same number went back in each place.  I
+promised, if ever I took a bicycle to pieces I would remember his advice.
+
+I put the balls for safety in my hat, and I put my hat upon the doorstep.
+It was not a sensible thing to do, I admit.  As a matter of fact, it was
+a silly thing to do.  I am not as a rule addle-headed; his influence must
+have affected me.
+
+He then said that while he was about it he would see to the chain for me,
+and at once began taking off the gear-case.  I did try to persuade him
+from that.  I told him what an experienced friend of mine once said to me
+solemnly:--
+
+"If anything goes wrong with your gear-case, sell the machine and buy a
+new one; it comes cheaper."
+
+He said: "People talk like that who understand nothing about machines.
+Nothing is easier than taking off a gear-case."
+
+I had to confess he was right.  In less than five minutes he had the gear-
+case in two pieces, lying on the path, and was grovelling for screws.  He
+said it was always a mystery to him the way screws disappeared.
+
+We were still looking for the screws when Ethelbertha came out.  She
+seemed surprised to find us there; she said she thought we had started
+hours ago.
+
+He said: "We shan't be long now.  I'm just helping your husband to
+overhaul this machine of his.  It's a good machine; but they all want
+going over occasionally."
+
+Ethelbertha said: "If you want to wash yourselves when you have done you
+might go into the back kitchen, if you don't mind; the girls have just
+finished the bedrooms."
+
+She told me that if she met Kate they would probably go for a sail; but
+that in any case she would be back to lunch.  I would have given a
+sovereign to be going with her.  I was getting heartily sick of standing
+about watching this fool breaking up my bicycle.
+
+Common sense continued to whisper to me: "Stop him, before he does any
+more mischief.  You have a right to protect your own property from the
+ravages of a lunatic.  Take him by the scruff of the neck, and kick him
+out of the gate!"
+
+But I am weak when it comes to hurting other people's feelings, and I let
+him muddle on.
+
+He gave up looking for the rest of the screws.  He said screws had a
+knack of turning up when you least expected them; and that now he would
+see to the chain.  He tightened it till it would not move; next he
+loosened it until it was twice as loose as it was before.  Then he said
+we had better think about getting the front wheel back into its place
+again.
+
+I held the fork open, and he worried with the wheel.  At the end of ten
+minutes I suggested he should hold the forks, and that I should handle
+the wheel; and we changed places.  At the end of his first minute he
+dropped the machine, and took a short walk round the croquet lawn, with
+his hands pressed together between his thighs.  He explained as he walked
+that the thing to be careful about was to avoid getting your fingers
+pinched between the forks and the spokes of the wheel.  I replied I was
+convinced, from my own experience, that there was much truth in what he
+said.  He wrapped himself up in a couple of dusters, and we commenced
+again.  At length we did get the thing into position; and the moment it
+was in position he burst out laughing.
+
+I said: "What's the joke?"
+
+He said: "Well, I am an ass!"
+
+It was the first thing he had said that made me respect him.  I asked him
+what had led him to the discovery.
+
+He said: "We've forgotten the balls!"
+
+I looked for my hat; it was lying topsy-turvy in the middle of the path,
+and Ethelbertha's favourite hound was swallowing the balls as fast as he
+could pick them up.
+
+"He will kill himself," said Ebbson--I have never met him since that day,
+thank the Lord; but I think his name was Ebbson--"they are solid steel."
+
+I said: "I am not troubling about the dog.  He has had a bootlace and a
+packet of needles already this week.  Nature's the best guide; puppies
+seem to require this kind of stimulant.  What I am thinking about is my
+bicycle."
+
+He was of a cheerful disposition.  He said: "Well, we must put back all
+we can find, and trust to Providence."
+
+We found eleven.  We fixed six on one side and five on the other, and
+half an hour later the wheel was in its place again.  It need hardly be
+added that it really did wobble now; a child might have noticed it.
+Ebbson said it would do for the present.  He appeared to be getting a bit
+tired himself.  If I had let him, he would, I believe, at this point have
+gone home.  I was determined now, however, that he should stop and
+finish; I had abandoned all thoughts of a ride.  My pride in the machine
+he had killed.  My only interest lay now in seeing him scratch and bump
+and pinch himself.  I revived his drooping spirits with a glass of beer
+and some judicious praise.  I said:
+
+"Watching you do this is of real use to me.  It is not only your skill
+and dexterity that fascinates me, it is your cheery confidence in
+yourself, your inexplicable hopefulness, that does me good."
+
+Thus encouraged, he set to work to refix the gear-case.  He stood the
+bicycle against the house, and worked from the off side.  Then he stood
+it against a tree, and worked from the near side.  Then I held it for
+him, while he lay on the ground with his head between the wheels, and
+worked at it from below, and dropped oil upon himself.  Then he took it
+away from me, and doubled himself across it like a pack-saddle, till he
+lost his balance and slid over on to his head.  Three times he said:
+
+"Thank Heaven, that's right at last!"
+
+And twice he said:
+
+"No, I'm damned if it is after all!"
+
+What he said the third time I try to forget.
+
+Then he lost his temper and tried bullying the thing.  The bicycle, I was
+glad to see, showed spirit; and the subsequent proceedings degenerated
+into little else than a rough-and-tumble fight between him and the
+machine.  One moment the bicycle would be on the gravel path, and he on
+top of it; the next, the position would be reversed--he on the gravel
+path, the bicycle on him.  Now he would be standing flushed with victory,
+the bicycle firmly fixed between his legs.  But his triumph would be
+short-lived.  By a sudden, quick movement it would free itself, and,
+turning upon him, hit him sharply over the head with one of its handles.
+
+At a quarter to one, dirty and dishevelled, cut and breeding, he said: "I
+think that will do;" and rose and wiped his brow.
+
+The bicycle looked as if it also had had enough of it.  Which had
+received most punishment it would have been difficult to say.  I took him
+into the back kitchen, where, so far as was possible without soda and
+proper tools, he cleaned himself, and sent him home.
+
+The bicycle I put into a cab and took round to the nearest repairing
+shop.  The foreman of the works came up and looked at it.
+
+"What do you want me to do with that?" said he.
+
+"I want you," I said, "so far as is possible, to restore it."
+
+"It's a bit far gone," said he; "but I'll do my best."
+
+He did his best, which came to two pounds ten.  But it was never the same
+machine again; and at the end of the season I left it in an agent's hands
+to sell.  I wished to deceive nobody; I instructed the man to advertise
+it as a last year's machine.  The agent advised me not to mention any
+date.  He said:
+
+"In this business it isn't a question of what is true and what isn't;
+it's a question of what you can get people to believe.  Now, between you
+and me, it don't look like a last year's machine; so far as looks are
+concerned, it might be a ten-year old.  We'll say nothing about date;
+we'll just get what we can."
+
+I left the matter to him, and he got me five pounds, which he said was
+more than he had expected.
+
+There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can
+"overhaul" it, or you can ride it.  On the whole, I am not sure that a
+man who takes his pleasure overhauling does not have the best of the
+bargain.  He is independent of the weather and the wind; the state of the
+roads troubles him not.  Give him a screw-hammer, a bundle of rags, an
+oil-can, and something to sit down upon, and he is happy for the day.  He
+has to put up with certain disadvantages, of course; there is no joy
+without alloy.  He himself always looks like a tinker, and his machine
+always suggests the idea that, having stolen it, he has tried to disguise
+it; but as he rarely gets beyond the first milestone with it, this,
+perhaps, does not much matter.  The mistake some people make is in
+thinking they can get both forms of sport out of the same machine.  This
+is impossible; no machine will stand the double strain.  You must make up
+your mind whether you are going to be an "overhauler" or a rider.
+Personally, I prefer to ride, therefore I take care to have near me
+nothing that can tempt me to overhaul.  When anything happens to my
+machine I wheel it to the nearest repairing shop.  If I am too far from
+the town or village to walk, I sit by the roadside and wait till a cart
+comes along.  My chief danger, I always find, is from the wandering
+overhauler.  The sight of a broken-down machine is to the overhauler as a
+wayside corpse to a crow; he swoops down upon it with a friendly yell of
+triumph.  At first I used to try politeness.  I would say:
+
+"It is nothing; don't you trouble.  You ride on, and enjoy yourself, I
+beg it of you as a favour; please go away."
+
+Experience has taught me, however, that courtesy is of no use in such an
+extremity.  Now I say:
+
+"You go away and leave the thing alone, or I will knock your silly head
+off."
+
+And if you look determined, and have a good stout cudgel in your hand,
+you can generally drive him off.
+
+George came in later in the day.  He said:
+
+"Well, do you think everything will be ready?"
+
+I said: "Everything will be ready by Wednesday, except, perhaps, you and
+Harris."
+
+He said: "Is the tandem all right?"
+
+"The tandem," I said, "is well."
+
+He said: "You don't think it wants overhauling?"
+
+I replied: "Age and experience have taught me that there are few matters
+concerning which a man does well to be positive.  Consequently, there
+remain to me now but a limited number of questions upon which I feel any
+degree of certainty.  Among such still-unshaken beliefs, however, is the
+conviction that that tandem does not want overhauling.  I also feel a
+presentiment that, provided my life is spared, no human being between now
+and Wednesday morning is going to overhaul it."
+
+George said: "I should not show temper over the matter, if I were you.
+There will come a day, perhaps not far distant, when that bicycle, with a
+couple of mountains between it and the nearest repairing shop, will, in
+spite of your chronic desire for rest, _have_ to be overhauled.  Then you
+will clamour for people to tell you where you put the oil-can, and what
+you have done with the screw-hammer.  Then, while you exert yourself
+holding the thing steady against a tree, you will suggest that somebody
+else should clean the chain and pump the back wheel."
+
+I felt there was justice in George's rebuke--also a certain amount of
+prophetic wisdom.  I said:
+
+"Forgive me if I seemed unresponsive.  The truth is, Harris was round
+here this morning--"
+
+George said: "Say no more; I understand.  Besides, what I came to talk to
+you about was another matter.  Look at that."
+
+He handed me a small book bound in red cloth.  It was a guide to English
+conversation for the use of German travellers.  It commenced "On a Steam-
+boat," and terminated "At the Doctor's"; its longest chapter being
+devoted to conversation in a railway carriage, among, apparently, a
+compartment load of quarrelsome and ill-mannered lunatics: "Can you not
+get further away from me, sir?"--"It is impossible, madam; my neighbour,
+here, is very stout"--"Shall we not endeavour to arrange our
+legs?"--"Please have the goodness to keep your elbows down"--"Pray do not
+inconvenience yourself, madam, if my shoulder is of any accommodation to
+you," whether intended to be said sarcastically or not, there was nothing
+to indicate--"I really must request you to move a little, madam, I can
+hardly breathe," the author's idea being, presumably, that by this time
+the whole party was mixed up together on the floor.  The chapter
+concluded with the phrase, "Here we are at our destination, God be
+thanked!  (_Gott sei dank_!)" a pious exclamation, which under the
+circumstances must have taken the form of a chorus.
+
+At the end of the book was an appendix, giving the German traveller hints
+concerning the preservation of his health and comfort during his sojourn
+in English towns, chief among such hints being advice to him to always
+travel with a supply of disinfectant powder, to always lock his bedroom
+door at night, and to always carefully count his small change.
+
+"It is not a brilliant publication," I remarked, handing the book back to
+George; "it is not a book that personally I would recommend to any German
+about to visit England; I think it would get him disliked.  But I have
+read books published in London for the use of English travellers abroad
+every whit as foolish.  Some educated idiot, misunderstanding seven
+languages, would appear to go about writing these books for the
+misinformation and false guidance of modern Europe."
+
+"You cannot deny," said George, "that these books are in large request.
+They are bought by the thousand, I know.  In every town in Europe there
+must be people going about talking this sort of thing."
+
+"Maybe," I replied; "but fortunately nobody understands them.  I have
+noticed, myself, men standing on railway platforms and at street corners
+reading aloud from such books.  Nobody knows what language they are
+speaking; nobody has the slightest knowledge of what they are saying.
+This is, perhaps, as well; were they understood they would probably be
+assaulted."
+
+George said: "Maybe you are right; my idea is to see what would happen if
+they were understood.  My proposal is to get to London early on Wednesday
+morning, and spend an hour or two going about and shopping with the aid
+of this book.  There are one or two little things I want--a hat and a
+pair of bedroom slippers, among other articles.  Our boat does not leave
+Tilbury till twelve, and that just gives us time.  I want to try this
+sort of talk where I can properly judge of its effect.  I want to see how
+the foreigner feels when he is talked to in this way."
+
+It struck me as a sporting idea.  In my enthusiasm I offered to accompany
+him, and wait outside the shop.  I said I thought that Harris would like
+to be in it, too--or rather outside.
+
+George said that was not quite his scheme.  His proposal was that Harris
+and I should accompany him into the shop.  With Harris, who looks
+formidable, to support him, and myself at the door to call the police if
+necessary, he said he was willing to adventure the thing.
+
+We walked round to Harris's, and put the proposal before him.  He
+examined the book, especially the chapters dealing with the purchase of
+shoes and hats.  He said:
+
+"If George talks to any bootmaker or any hatter the things that are put
+down here, it is not support he will want; it is carrying to the hospital
+that he will need."
+
+That made George angry.
+
+"You talk," said George, "as though I were a foolhardy boy without any
+sense.  I shall select from the more polite and less irritating speeches;
+the grosser insults I shall avoid."
+
+This being clearly understood, Harris gave in his adhesion; and our start
+was fixed for early Wednesday morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Why Harris considers alarm clocks unnecessary in a family--Social
+instinct of the young--A child's thoughts about the morning--The
+sleepless watchman--The mystery of him--His over anxiety--Night
+thoughts--The sort of work one does before breakfast--The good sheep and
+the bad--Disadvantages of being virtuous--Harris's new stove begins
+badly--The daily out-going of my Uncle Podger--The elderly city man
+considered as a racer--We arrive in London--We talk the language of the
+traveller.
+
+George came down on Tuesday evening, and slept at Harris's place.  We
+thought this a better arrangement than his own suggestion, which was that
+we should call for him on our way and "pick him up."  Picking George up
+in the morning means picking him out of bed to begin with, and shaking
+him awake--in itself an exhausting effort with which to commence the day;
+helping him find his things and finish his packing; and then waiting for
+him while he eats his breakfast, a tedious entertainment from the
+spectator's point of view, full of wearisome repetition.
+
+I knew that if he slept at "Beggarbush" he would be up in time; I have
+slept there myself, and I know what happens.  About the middle of the
+night, as you judge, though in reality it may be somewhat later, you are
+startled out of your first sleep by what sounds like a rush of cavalry
+along the passage, just outside your door.  Your half-awakened
+intelligence fluctuates between burglars, the Day of Judgment, and a gas
+explosion.  You sit up in bed and listen intently.  You are not kept
+waiting long; the next moment a door is violently slammed, and somebody,
+or something, is evidently coming downstairs on a tea-tray.
+
+"I told you so," says a voice outside, and immediately some hard
+substance, a head one would say from the ring of it, rebounds against the
+panel of your door.
+
+By this time you are charging madly round the room for your clothes.
+Nothing is where you put it overnight, the articles most essential have
+disappeared entirely; and meanwhile the murder, or revolution, or
+whatever it is, continues unchecked.  You pause for a moment, with your
+head under the wardrobe, where you think you can see your slippers, to
+listen to a steady, monotonous thumping upon a distant door.  The victim,
+you presume, has taken refuge there; they mean to have him out and finish
+him.  Will you be in time?  The knocking ceases, and a voice, sweetly
+reassuring in its gentle plaintiveness, asks meekly:
+
+"Pa, may I get up?"
+
+You do not hear the other voice, but the responses are:
+
+"No, it was only the bath--no, she ain't really hurt,--only wet, you
+know.  Yes, ma, I'll tell 'em what you say.  No, it was a pure accident.
+Yes; good-night, papa."
+
+Then the same voice, exerting itself so as to be heard in a distant part
+of the house, remarks:
+
+"You've got to come upstairs again.  Pa says it isn't time yet to get
+up."
+
+You return to bed, and lie listening to somebody being dragged upstairs,
+evidently against their will.  By a thoughtful arrangement the spare
+rooms at "Beggarbush" are exactly underneath the nurseries.  The same
+somebody, you conclude, still offering the most creditable opposition, is
+being put back into bed.  You can follow the contest with much
+exactitude, because every time the body is flung down upon the spring
+mattress, the bedstead, just above your head, makes a sort of jump; while
+every time the body succeeds in struggling out again, you are aware by
+the thud upon the floor.  After a time the struggle wanes, or maybe the
+bed collapses; and you drift back into sleep.  But the next moment, or
+what seems to be the next moment, you again open your eyes under the
+consciousness of a presence.  The door is being held ajar, and four
+solemn faces, piled one on top of the other, are peering at you, as
+though you were some natural curiosity kept in this particular room.
+Seeing you awake, the top face, walking calmly over the other three,
+comes in and sits on the bed in a friendly attitude.
+
+"Oh!" it says, "we didn't know you were awake.  I've been awake some
+time."
+
+"So I gather," you reply, shortly.
+
+"Pa doesn't like us to get up too early," it continues.  "He says
+everybody else in the house is liable to be disturbed if we get up.  So,
+of course, we mustn't."
+
+The tone is that of gentle resignation.  It is instinct with the spirit
+of virtuous pride, arising from the consciousness of self-sacrifice.
+
+"Don't you call this being up?" you suggest.
+
+"Oh, no; we're not really up, you know, because we're not properly
+dressed."  The fact is self-evident.  "Pa's always very tired in the
+morning," the voice continues; "of course, that's because he works hard
+all day.  Are you ever tired in the morning?"
+
+At this point he turns and notices, for the first time, that the three
+other children have also entered, and are sitting in a semi-circle on the
+floor.  From their attitude it is clear they have mistaken the whole
+thing for one of the slower forms of entertainment, some comic lecture or
+conjuring exhibition, and are waiting patiently for you to get out of bed
+and do something.  It shocks him, the idea of their being in the guest's
+bedchamber.  He peremptorily orders them out.  They do not answer him,
+they do not argue; in dead silence, and with one accord they fall upon
+him.  All you can see from the bed is a confused tangle of waving arms
+and legs, suggestive of an intoxicated octopus trying to find bottom.  Not
+a word is spoken; that seems to be the etiquette of the thing.  If you
+are sleeping in your pyjamas, you spring from the bed, and only add to
+the confusion; if you are wearing a less showy garment, you stop where
+you are and shout commands, which are utterly unheeded.  The simplest
+plan is to leave it to the eldest boy.  He does get them out after a
+while, and closes the door upon them.  It re-opens immediately, and one,
+generally Muriel, is shot back into the room.  She enters as from a
+catapult.  She is handicapped by having long hair, which can be used as a
+convenient handle.  Evidently aware of this natural disadvantage, she
+clutches it herself tightly in one hand, and punches with the other.  He
+opens the door again, and cleverly uses her as a battering-ram against
+the wall of those without.  You can hear the dull crash as her head
+enters among them, and scatters them.  When the victory is complete, he
+comes back and resumes his seat on the bed.  There is no bitterness about
+him; he has forgotten the whole incident.
+
+"I like the morning," he says, "don't you?"
+
+"Some mornings," you agree, "are all right; others are not so peaceful."
+
+He takes no notice of your exception; a far-away look steals over his
+somewhat ethereal face.
+
+"I should like to die in the morning," he says; "everything is so
+beautiful then."
+
+"Well," you answer, "perhaps you will, if your father ever invites an
+irritable man to come and sleep here, and doesn't warn him beforehand."
+
+He descends from his contemplative mood, and becomes himself again.
+
+"It's jolly in the garden," he suggests; "you wouldn't like to get up and
+have a game of cricket, would you?"
+
+It was not the idea with which you went to bed, but now, as things have
+turned out, it seems as good a plan as lying there hopelessly awake; and
+you agree.
+
+You learn, later in the day, that the explanation of the proceeding is
+that you, unable to sleep, woke up early in the morning, and thought you
+would like a game of cricket.  The children, taught to be ever courteous
+to guests, felt it their duty to humour you.  Mrs. Harris remarks at
+breakfast that at least you might have seen to it that the children were
+properly dressed before you took them out; while Harris points out to
+you, pathetically, how, by your one morning's example and encouragement,
+you have undone his labour of months.
+
+On this Wednesday morning, George, it seems, clamoured to get up at a
+quarter-past five, and persuaded them to let him teach them cycling
+tricks round the cucumber frames on Harris's new wheel.  Even Mrs.
+Harris, however, did not blame George on this occasion; she felt
+intuitively the idea could not have been entirely his.
+
+It is not that the Harris children have the faintest notion of avoiding
+blame at the expense of a friend and comrade.  One and all they are
+honesty itself in accepting responsibility for their own misdeeds.  It
+simply is, that is how the thing presents itself to their understanding.
+When you explain to them that you had no original intention of getting up
+at five o'clock in the morning to play cricket on the croquet lawn, or to
+mimic the history of the early Church by shooting with a cross-bow at
+dolls tied to a tree; that as a matter of fact, left to your own
+initiative, you would have slept peacefully till roused in Christian
+fashion with a cup of tea at eight, they are firstly astonished, secondly
+apologetic, and thirdly sincerely contrite.  In the present instance,
+waiving the purely academic question whether the awakening of George at a
+little before five was due to natural instinct on his part, or to the
+accidental passing of a home-made boomerang through his bedroom window,
+the dear children frankly admitted that the blame for his uprising was
+their own.  As the eldest boy said:
+
+"We ought to have remembered that Uncle George had a long day, before
+him, and we ought to have dissuaded him from getting up.  I blame myself
+entirely."
+
+But an occasional change of habit does nobody any harm; and besides, as
+Harris and I agreed, it was good training for George.  In the Black
+Forest we should be up at five every morning; that we had determined on.
+Indeed, George himself had suggested half-past four, but Harris and I had
+argued that five would be early enough as an average; that would enable
+us to be on our machines by six, and to break the back of our journey
+before the heat of the day set in.  Occasionally we might start a little
+earlier, but not as a habit.
+
+I myself was up that morning at five.  This was earlier than I had
+intended.  I had said to myself on going to sleep, "Six o'clock, sharp!"
+
+There are men I know who can wake themselves at any time to the minute.
+They say to themselves literally, as they lay their heads upon the
+pillow, "Four-thirty," "Four-forty-five," or "Five-fifteen," as the case
+may be; and as the clock strikes they open their eyes.  It is very
+wonderful this; the more one dwells upon it, the greater the mystery
+grows.  Some Ego within us, acting quite independently of our conscious
+self, must be capable of counting the hours while we sleep.  Unaided by
+clock or sun, or any other medium known to our five senses, it keeps
+watch through the darkness.  At the exact moment it whispers "Time!" and
+we awake.  The work of an old riverside fellow I once talked with called
+him to be out of bed each morning half an hour before high tide.  He told
+me that never once had he overslept himself by a minute.  Latterly, he
+never even troubled to work out the tide for himself.  He would lie down
+tired, and sleep a dreamless sleep, and each morning at a different hour
+this ghostly watchman, true as the tide itself, would silently call him.
+Did the man's spirit haunt through the darkness the muddy river stairs;
+or had it knowledge of the ways of Nature?  Whatever the process, the man
+himself was unconscious of it.
+
+In my own case my inward watchman is, perhaps, somewhat out of practice.
+He does his best; but he is over-anxious; he worries himself, and loses
+count.  I say to him, maybe, "Five-thirty, please;" and he wakes me with
+a start at half-past two.  I look at my watch.  He suggests that,
+perhaps, I forgot to wind it up.  I put it to my ear; it is still going.
+He thinks, maybe, something has happened to it; he is confident himself
+it is half-past five, if not a little later.  To satisfy him, I put on a
+pair of slippers and go downstairs to inspect the dining-room clock.  What
+happens to a man when he wanders about the house in the middle of the
+night, clad in a dressing-gown and a pair of slippers, there is no need
+to recount; most men know by experience.  Everything--especially
+everything with a sharp corner--takes a cowardly delight in hitting him.
+When you are wearing a pair of stout boots, things get out of your way;
+when you venture among furniture in woolwork slippers and no socks, it
+comes at you and kicks you.  I return to bed bad tempered, and refusing
+to listen to his further absurd suggestion that all the clocks in the
+house have entered into a conspiracy against me, take half an hour to get
+to sleep again.  From four to five he wakes me every ten minutes.  I wish
+I had never said a word to him about the thing.  At five o'clock he goes
+to sleep himself, worn out, and leaves it to the girl, who does it half
+an hour later than usual.
+
+On this particular Wednesday he worried me to such an extent, that I got
+up at five simply to be rid of him.  I did not know what to do with
+myself.  Our train did not leave till eight; all our luggage had been
+packed and sent on the night before, together with the bicycles, to
+Fenchurch Street Station.  I went into my study; I thought I would put in
+an hour's writing.  The early morning, before one has breakfasted, is
+not, I take it, a good season for literary effort.  I wrote three
+paragraphs of a story, and then read them over to myself.  Some unkind
+things have been said about my work; but nothing has yet been written
+which would have done justice to those three paragraphs.  I threw them
+into the waste-paper basket, and sat trying to remember what, if any,
+charitable institutions provided pensions for decayed authors.
+
+To escape from this train of reflection, I put a golf-ball in my pocket,
+and selecting a driver, strolled out into the paddock.  A couple of sheep
+were browsing there, and they followed and took a keen interest in my
+practice.  The one was a kindly, sympathetic old party.  I do not think
+she understood the game; I think it was my doing this innocent thing so
+early in the morning that appealed to her.  At every stroke I made she
+bleated:
+
+"Go-o-o-d, go-o-o-d ind-e-e-d!"
+
+She seemed as pleased as if she had done it herself.
+
+As for the other one, she was a cantankerous, disagreeable old thing, as
+discouraging to me as her friend was helpful.
+
+"Ba-a-ad, da-a-a-m ba-a-a-d!" was her comment on almost every stroke.  As
+a matter of fact, some were really excellent strokes; but she did it just
+to be contradictory, and for the sake of irritating.  I could see that.
+
+By a most regrettable accident, one of my swiftest balls struck the good
+sheep on the nose.  And at that the bad sheep laughed--laughed distinctly
+and undoubtedly, a husky, vulgar laugh; and, while her friend stood glued
+to the ground, too astonished to move, she changed her note for the first
+time and bleated:
+
+"Go-o-o-d, ve-e-ry go-o-o-d!  Be-e-e-est sho-o-o-ot he-e-e's ma-a-a-de!"
+
+I would have given half-a-crown if it had been she I had hit instead of
+the other one.  It is ever the good and amiable who suffer in this world.
+
+I had wasted more time than I had intended in the paddock, and when
+Ethelbertha came to tell me it was half-past seven, and the breakfast was
+on the table, I remembered that I had not shaved.  It vexes Ethelbertha
+my shaving quickly.  She fears that to outsiders it may suggest a poor-
+spirited attempt at suicide, and that in consequence it may get about the
+neighbourhood that we are not happy together.  As a further argument, she
+has also hinted that my appearance is not of the kind that can be trifled
+with.
+
+On the whole, I was just as glad not to be able to take a long farewell
+of Ethelbertha; I did not want to risk her breaking down.  But I should
+have liked more opportunity to say a few farewell words of advice to the
+children, especially as regards my fishing rod, which they will persist
+in using for cricket stumps; and I hate having to run for a train.
+Quarter of a mile from the station I overtook George and Harris; they
+were also running.  In their case--so Harris informed me, jerkily, while
+we trotted side by side--it was the new kitchen stove that was to blame.
+This was the first morning they had tried it, and from some cause or
+other it had blown up the kidneys and scalded the cook.  He said he hoped
+that by the time we returned they would have got more used to it.
+
+We caught the train by the skin of our teeth, as the saying is, and
+reflecting upon the events of the morning, as we sat gasping in the
+carriage, there passed vividly before my mind the panorama of my Uncle
+Podger, as on two hundred and fifty days in the year he would start from
+Ealing Common by the nine-thirteen train to Moorgate Street.
+
+From my Uncle Podger's house to the railway station was eight minutes'
+walk.  What my uncle always said was:
+
+"Allow yourself a quarter of an hour, and take it easily."
+
+What he always did was to start five minutes before the time and run.  I
+do not know why, but this was the custom of the suburb.  Many stout City
+gentlemen lived at Ealing in those days--I believe some live there
+still--and caught early trains to Town.  They all started late; they all
+carried a black bag and a newspaper in one hand, and an umbrella in the
+other; and for the last quarter of a mile to the station, wet or fine,
+they all ran.
+
+Folks with nothing else to do, nursemaids chiefly and errand boys, with
+now and then a perambulating costermonger added, would gather on the
+common of a fine morning to watch them pass, and cheer the most
+deserving.  It was not a showy spectacle.  They did not run well, they
+did not even run fast; but they were earnest, and they did their best.
+The exhibition appealed less to one's sense of art than to one's natural
+admiration for conscientious effort.
+
+Occasionally a little harmless betting would take place among the crowd.
+
+"Two to one agin the old gent in the white weskit!"
+
+"Ten to one on old Blowpipes, bar he don't roll over hisself 'fore 'e
+gets there!"
+
+"Heven money on the Purple Hemperor!"--a nickname bestowed by a youth of
+entomological tastes upon a certain retired military neighbour of my
+uncle's,--a gentleman of imposing appearance when stationary, but apt to
+colour highly under exercise.
+
+My uncle and the others would write to the _Ealing Press_ complaining
+bitterly concerning the supineness of the local police; and the editor
+would add spirited leaders upon the Decay of Courtesy among the Lower
+Orders, especially throughout the Western Suburbs.  But no good ever
+resulted.
+
+It was not that my uncle did not rise early enough; it was that troubles
+came to him at the last moment.  The first thing he would do after
+breakfast would be to lose his newspaper.  We always knew when Uncle
+Podger had lost anything, by the expression of astonished indignation
+with which, on such occasions, he would regard the world in general.  It
+never occurred to my Uncle Podger to say to himself:
+
+"I am a careless old man.  I lose everything: I never know where I have
+put anything.  I am quite incapable of finding it again for myself.  In
+this respect I must be a perfect nuisance to everybody about me.  I must
+set to work and reform myself."
+
+On the contrary, by some peculiar course of reasoning, he had convinced
+himself that whenever he lost a thing it was everybody else's fault in
+the house but his own.
+
+"I had it in my hand here not a minute ago!" he would exclaim.
+
+From his tone you would have thought he was living surrounded by
+conjurers, who spirited away things from him merely to irritate him.
+
+"Could you have left it in the garden?" my aunt would suggest.
+
+"What should I want to leave it in the garden for?  I don't want a paper
+in the garden; I want the paper in the train with me."
+
+"You haven't put it in your pocket?"
+
+"God bless the woman!  Do you think I should be standing here at five
+minutes to nine looking for it if I had it in my pocket all the while?  Do
+you think I'm a fool?"
+
+Here somebody would explain, "What's this?" and hand him from somewhere a
+paper neatly folded.
+
+"I do wish people would leave my things alone," he would growl, snatching
+at it savagely.
+
+He would open his bag to put it in, and then glancing at it, he would
+pause, speechless with sense of injury.
+
+"What's the matter?" aunt would ask.
+
+"The day before yesterday's!" he would answer, too hurt even to shout,
+throwing the paper down upon the table.
+
+If only sometimes it had been yesterday's it would have been a change.
+But it was always the day before yesterday's; except on Tuesday; then it
+would be Saturday's.
+
+We would find it for him eventually; as often as not he was sitting on
+it.  And then he would smile, not genially, but with the weariness that
+comes to a man who feels that fate has cast his lot among a band of
+hopeless idiots.
+
+"All the time, right in front of your noses--!"  He would not finish the
+sentence; he prided himself on his self-control.
+
+This settled, he would start for the hall, where it was the custom of my
+Aunt Maria to have the children gathered, ready to say good-bye to him.
+
+My aunt never left the house herself, if only to make a call next door,
+without taking a tender farewell of every inmate.  One never knew, she
+would say, what might happen.
+
+One of them, of course, was sure to be missing, and the moment this was
+noticed all the other six, without an instant's hesitation, would scatter
+with a whoop to find it.  Immediately they were gone it would turn up by
+itself from somewhere quite near, always with the most reasonable
+explanation for its absence; and would at once start off after the others
+to explain to them that it was found.  In this way, five minutes at least
+would be taken up in everybody's looking for everybody else, which was
+just sufficient time to allow my uncle to find his umbrella and lose his
+hat.  Then, at last, the group reassembled in the hall, the drawing-room
+clock would commence to strike nine.  It possessed a cold, penetrating
+chime that always had the effect of confusing my uncle.  In his
+excitement he would kiss some of the children twice over, pass by others,
+forget whom he had kissed and whom he hadn't, and have to begin all over
+again.  He used to say he believed they mixed themselves up on purpose,
+and I am not prepared to maintain that the charge was altogether false.
+To add to his troubles, one child always had a sticky face; and that
+child would always be the most affectionate.
+
+If things were going too smoothly, the eldest boy would come out with
+some tale about all the clocks in the house being five minutes slow, and
+of his having been late for school the previous day in consequence.  This
+would send my uncle rushing impetuously down to the gate, where he would
+recollect that he had with him neither his bag nor his umbrella.  All the
+children that my aunt could not stop would charge after him, two of them
+struggling for the umbrella, the others surging round the bag.  And when
+they returned we would discover on the hall table the most important
+thing of all that he had forgotten, and wondered what he would say about
+it when he came home.
+
+We arrived at Waterloo a little after nine, and at once proceeded to put
+George's experiment into operation.  Opening the book at the chapter
+entitled "At the Cab Rank," we walked up to a hansom, raised our hats,
+and wished the driver "Good-morning."
+
+This man was not to be outdone in politeness by any foreigner, real or
+imitation.  Calling to a friend named "Charles" to "hold the steed," he
+sprang from his box, and returned to us a bow, that would have done
+credit to Mr. Turveydrop himself.  Speaking apparently in the name of the
+nation, he welcomed us to England, adding a regret that Her Majesty was
+not at the moment in London.
+
+We could not reply to him in kind.  Nothing of this sort had been
+anticipated by the book.  We called him "coachman," at which he again
+bowed to the pavement, and asked him if he would have the goodness to
+drive us to the Westminster Bridge road.
+
+He laid his hand upon his heart, and said the pleasure would be his.
+
+Taking the third sentence in the chapter, George asked him what his fare
+would be.
+
+The question, as introducing a sordid element into the conversation,
+seemed to hurt his feelings.  He said he never took money from
+distinguished strangers; he suggested a souvenir--a diamond scarf pin, a
+gold snuffbox, some little trifle of that sort by which he could remember
+us.
+
+As a small crowd had collected, and as the joke was drifting rather too
+far in the cabman's direction, we climbed in without further parley, and
+were driven away amid cheers.  We stopped the cab at a boot shop a little
+past Astley's Theatre that looked the sort of place we wanted.  It was
+one of those overfed shops that the moment their shutters are taken down
+in the morning disgorge their goods all round them.  Boxes of boots stood
+piled on the pavement or in the gutter opposite.  Boots hung in festoons
+about its doors and windows.  Its sun-blind was as some grimy vine,
+bearing bunches of black and brown boots.  Inside, the shop was a bower
+of boots.  The man, when we entered, was busy with a chisel and hammer
+opening a new crate full of boots.
+
+George raised his hat, and said "Good-morning."
+
+The man did not even turn round.  He struck me from the first as a
+disagreeable man.  He grunted something which might have been
+"Good-morning," or might not, and went on with his work.
+
+George said: "I have been recommended to your shop by my friend, Mr. X."
+
+In response, the man should have said: "Mr. X. is a most worthy
+gentleman; it will give me the greatest pleasure to serve any friend of
+his."
+
+What he did say was: "Don't know him; never heard of him."
+
+This was disconcerting.  The book gave three or four methods of buying
+boots; George had carefully selected the one centred round "Mr. X," as
+being of all the most courtly.  You talked a good deal with the
+shopkeeper about this "Mr. X," and then, when by this means friendship
+and understanding had been established, you slid naturally and gracefully
+into the immediate object of your coming, namely, your desire for boots,
+"cheap and good."  This gross, material man cared, apparently, nothing
+for the niceties of retail dealing.  It was necessary with such an one to
+come to business with brutal directness.  George abandoned "Mr. X," and
+turning back to a previous page, took a sentence at random.  It was not a
+happy selection; it was a speech that would have been superfluous made to
+any bootmaker.  Under the present circumstances, threatened and stifled
+as we were on every side by boots, it possessed the dignity of positive
+imbecility.  It ran:--"One has told me that you have here boots for
+sale."
+
+For the first time the man put down his hammer and chisel, and looked at
+us.  He spoke slowly, in a thick and husky voice.  He said:
+
+"What d'ye think I keep boots for--to smell 'em?"
+
+He was one of those men that begin quietly and grow more angry as they
+proceed, their wrongs apparently working within them like yeast.
+
+"What d'ye think I am," he continued, "a boot collector?  What d'ye think
+I'm running this shop for--my health?  D'ye think I love the boots, and
+can't bear to part with a pair?  D'ye think I hang 'em about here to look
+at 'em?  Ain't there enough of 'em?  Where d'ye think you are--in an
+international exhibition of boots?  What d'ye think these boots are--a
+historical collection?  Did you ever hear of a man keeping a boot shop
+and not selling boots?  D'ye think I decorate the shop with 'em to make
+it look pretty?  What d'ye take me for--a prize idiot?"
+
+I have always maintained that these conversation books are never of any
+real use.  What we wanted was some English equivalent for the well-known
+German idiom: "Behalten Sie Ihr Haar auf."
+
+Nothing of the sort was to be found in the book from beginning to end.
+However, I will do George the credit to admit he chose the very best
+sentence that was to be found therein and applied it.  He said:.
+
+"I will come again, when, perhaps, you will have some more boots to show
+me.  Till then, adieu!"
+
+With that we returned to our cab and drove away, leaving the man standing
+in the centre of his boot-bedecked doorway addressing remarks to us.  What
+he said, I did not hear, but the passers-by appeared to find it
+interesting.
+
+George was for stopping at another boot shop and trying the experiment
+afresh; he said he really did want a pair of bedroom slippers.  But we
+persuaded him to postpone their purchase until our arrival in some
+foreign city, where the tradespeople are no doubt more inured to this
+sort of talk, or else more naturally amiable.  On the subject of the hat,
+however, he was adamant.  He maintained that without that he could not
+travel, and, accordingly, we pulled up at a small shop in the Blackfriars
+Road.
+
+The proprietor of this shop was a cheery, bright-eyed little man, and he
+helped us rather than hindered us.
+
+When George asked him in the words of the book, "Have you any hats?" he
+did not get angry; he just stopped and thoughtfully scratched his chin.
+
+"Hats," said he.  "Let me think.  Yes"--here a smile of positive pleasure
+broke over his genial countenance--"yes, now I come to think of it, I
+believe I have a hat.  But, tell me, why do you ask me?"
+
+George explained to him that he wished to purchase a cap, a travelling
+cap, but the essence of the transaction was that it was to be a "good
+cap."
+
+The man's face fell.
+
+"Ah," he remarked, "there, I am afraid, you have me.  Now, if you had
+wanted a bad cap, not worth the price asked for it; a cap good for
+nothing but to clean windows with, I could have found you the very thing.
+But a good cap--no; we don't keep them.  But wait a minute," he
+continued,--on seeing the disappointment that spread over George's
+expressive countenance, "don't be in a hurry.  I have a cap here"--he
+went to a drawer and opened it--"it is not a good cap, but it is not so
+bad as most of the caps I sell."
+
+He brought it forward, extended on his palm.
+
+"What do you think of that?" he asked.  "Could you put up with that?"
+
+George fitted it on before the glass, and, choosing another remark from
+the book, said:
+
+"This hat fits me sufficiently well, but, tell me, do you consider that
+it becomes me?"
+
+The man stepped back and took a bird's-eye view.
+
+"Candidly," he replied, "I can't say that it does."
+
+He turned from George, and addressed himself to Harris and myself.
+
+"Your friend's beauty," said he, "I should describe as elusive.  It is
+there, but you can easily miss it.  Now, in that cap, to my mind, you do
+miss it."
+
+At that point it occurred to George that he had had sufficient fun with
+this particular man.  He said:
+
+"That is all right.  We don't want to lose the train.  How much?"
+
+Answered the man: "The price of that cap, sir, which, in my opinion, is
+twice as much as it is worth, is four-and-six.  Would you like it wrapped
+up in brown paper, sir, or in white?"
+
+George said he would take it as it was, paid the man four-and-six
+in-silver, and went out.  Harris and I followed.
+
+At Fenchurch Street we compromised with our cabman for five shillings.  He
+made us another courtly bow, and begged us to remember him to the Emperor
+of Austria.
+
+Comparing views in the train, we agreed that we had lost the game by two
+points to one; and George, who was evidently disappointed, threw the book
+out of window.
+
+We found our luggage and the bicycles safe on the boat, and with the tide
+at twelve dropped down the river.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+A necessary digression--Introduced by story containing moral--One of the
+charms of this book--The Journal that did not command success--Its boast:
+"Instruction combined with Amusement"--Problem: say what should be
+considered instructive and what amusing--A popular game--Expert opinion
+on English law--Another of the charms of this book--A hackneyed tune--Yet
+a third charm of this book--The sort of wood it was where the maiden
+lived--Description of the Black Forest.
+
+A story is told of a Scotchman who, loving a lassie, desired her for his
+wife.  But he possessed the prudence of his race.  He had noticed in his
+circle many an otherwise promising union result in disappointment and
+dismay, purely in consequence of the false estimate formed by bride or
+bridegroom concerning the imagined perfectability of the other.  He
+determined that in his own case no collapsed ideal should be possible.
+Therefore, it was that his proposal took the following form:
+
+"I'm but a puir lad, Jennie; I hae nae siller to offer ye, and nae land."
+
+"Ah, but ye hae yoursel', Davie!"
+
+"An' I'm wishfu' it wa' onything else, lassie.  I'm nae but a puir ill-
+seasoned loon, Jennie."
+
+"Na, na; there's mony a lad mair ill-looking than yoursel', Davie."
+
+"I hae na seen him, lass, and I'm just a-thinkin' I shouldna' care to."
+
+"Better a plain man, Davie, that ye can depend a' than ane that would be
+a speirin' at the lassies, a-bringin' trouble into the hame wi' his
+flouting ways."
+
+"Dinna ye reckon on that, Jennie; it's nae the bonniest Bubbly Jock that
+mak's the most feathers to fly in the kailyard.  I was ever a lad to run
+after the petticoats, as is weel kent; an' it's a weary handfu' I'll be
+to ye, I'm thinkin'."
+
+"Ah, but ye hae a kind heart, Davie! an' ye love me weel.  I'm sure
+on't."
+
+"I like ye weel enoo', Jennie, though I canna say how long the feeling
+may bide wi' me; an' I'm kind enoo' when I hae my ain way, an' naethin'
+happens to put me oot.  But I hae the deevil's ain temper, as my mither
+call tell ye, an' like my puir fayther, I'm a-thinkin', I'll grow nae
+better as I grow mair auld."
+
+"Ay, but ye're sair hard upon yersel', Davie.  Ye're an honest lad.  I
+ken ye better than ye ken yersel', an' ye'll mak a guid hame for me."
+
+"Maybe, Jennie!  But I hae my doots.  It's a sair thing for wife an'
+bairns when the guid man canna keep awa' frae the glass; an' when the
+scent of the whusky comes to me it's just as though I hae'd the throat o'
+a Loch Tay salmon; it just gaes doon an' doon, an' there's nae filling o'
+me."
+
+"Ay, but ye're a guid man when ye're sober, Davie."
+
+"Maybe I'll be that, Jennie, if I'm nae disturbed."
+
+"An' ye'll bide wi' me, Davie, an' work for me?"
+
+"I see nae reason why I shouldna bide wi' yet Jennie; but dinna ye clack
+aboot work to me, for I just canna bear the thoct o't."
+
+"Anyhow, ye'll do your best, Davie?  As the minister says, nae man can do
+mair than that."
+
+"An' it's a puir best that mine'll be, Jennie, and I'm nae sae sure ye'll
+hae ower muckle even o' that.  We're a' weak, sinfu' creatures, Jennie,
+an' ye'd hae some deefficulty to find a man weaker or mair sinfu' than
+mysel'."
+
+"Weel, weel, ye hae a truthfu' tongue, Davie.  Mony a lad will mak fine
+promises to a puir lassie, only to break 'em an' her heart wi' 'em.  Ye
+speak me fair, Davie, and I'm thinkin' I'll just tak ye, an' see what
+comes o't."
+
+Concerning what did come of it, the story is silent, but one feels that
+under no circumstances had the lady any right to complain of her bargain.
+Whether she ever did or did not--for women do not invariably order their
+tongues according to logic, nor men either for the matter of that--Davie,
+himself, must have had the satisfaction of reflecting that all reproaches
+were undeserved.
+
+I wish to be equally frank with the reader of this book.  I wish here
+conscientiously to let forth its shortcomings.  I wish no one to read
+this book under a misapprehension.
+
+There will be no useful information in this book.
+
+Anyone who should think that with the aid of this book he would be able
+to make a tour through Germany and the Black Forest would probably lose
+himself before he got to the Nore.  That, at all events, would be the
+best thing that could happen to him.  The farther away from home he got,
+the greater only would be his difficulties.
+
+I do not regard the conveyance of useful information as my _forte_.  This
+belief was not inborn with me; it has been driven home upon me by
+experience.
+
+In my early journalistic days, I served upon a paper, the forerunner of
+many very popular periodicals of the present day.  Our boast was that we
+combined instruction with amusement; as to what should be regarded as
+affording amusement and what instruction, the reader judged for himself.
+We gave advice to people about to marry--long, earnest advice that would,
+had they followed it, have made our circle of readers the envy of the
+whole married world.  We told our subscribers how to make fortunes by
+keeping rabbits, giving facts and figures.  The thing that must have
+surprised them was that we ourselves did not give up journalism and start
+rabbit-farming.  Often and often have I proved conclusively from
+authoritative sources how a man starting a rabbit farm with twelve
+selected rabbits and a little judgment must, at the end of three years,
+be in receipt of an income of two thousand a year, rising rapidly; he
+simply could not help himself.  He might not want the money.  He might
+not know what to do with it when he had it.  But there it was for him.  I
+have never met a rabbit farmer myself worth two thousand a year, though I
+have known many start with the twelve necessary, assorted rabbits.
+Something has always gone wrong somewhere; maybe the continued atmosphere
+of a rabbit farm saps the judgment.
+
+We told our readers how many bald-headed men there were in Iceland, and
+for all we knew our figures may have been correct; how many red herrings
+placed tail to mouth it would take to reach from London to Rome, which
+must have been useful to anyone desirous of laying down a line of red
+herrings from London to Rome, enabling him to order in the right quantity
+at the beginning; how many words the average woman spoke in a day; and
+other such like items of information calculated to make them wise and
+great beyond the readers of other journals.
+
+We told them how to cure fits in cats.  Personally I do not believe, and
+I did not believe then, that you can cure fits in cats.  If I had a cat
+subject to fits I should advertise it for sale, or even give it away.  But
+our duty was to supply information when asked for.  Some fool wrote,
+clamouring to know; and I spent the best part of a morning seeking
+knowledge on the subject.  I found what I wanted at length at the end of
+an old cookery book.  What it was doing there I have never been able to
+understand.  It had nothing to do with the proper subject of the book
+whatever; there was no suggestion that you could make anything savoury
+out of a cat, even when you had cured it of its fits.  The authoress had
+just thrown in this paragraph out of pure generosity.  I can only say
+that I wish she had left it out; it was the cause of a deal of angry
+correspondence and of the loss of four subscribers to the paper, if not
+more.  The man said the result of following our advice had been two
+pounds worth of damage to his kitchen crockery, to say nothing of a
+broken window and probable blood poisoning to himself; added to which the
+cat's fits were worse than before.  And yet it was a simple enough
+recipe.  You held the cat between your legs, gently, so as not to hurt
+it, and with a pair of scissors made a sharp, clean cut in its tail.  You
+did not cut off any part of the tail; you were to be careful not to do
+that; you only made an incision.
+
+As we explained to the man, the garden or the coal cellar would have been
+the proper place for the operation; no one but an idiot would have
+attempted to perform it in a kitchen, and without help.
+
+We gave them hints on etiquette.  We told them how to address peers and
+bishops; also how to eat soup.  We instructed shy young men how to
+acquire easy grace in drawing-rooms.  We taught dancing to both sexes by
+the aid of diagrams.  We solved their religious doubts for them, and
+supplied them with a code of morals that would have done credit to a
+stained-glass window.
+
+The paper was not a financial success, it was some years before its time,
+and the consequence was that our staff was limited.  My own apartment, I
+remember, included "Advice to Mothers"--I wrote that with the assistance
+of my landlady, who, having divorced one husband and buried four
+children, was, I considered, a reliable authority on all domestic
+matters; "Hints on Furnishing and Household Decorations--with Designs" a
+column of "Literary Counsel to Beginners"--I sincerely hope my guidance
+was of better service to them than it has ever proved to myself; and our
+weekly article, "Straight Talks to Young Men," signed "Uncle Henry."  A
+kindly, genial old fellow was "Uncle Henry," with wide and varied
+experience, and a sympathetic attitude towards the rising generation.  He
+had been through trouble himself in his far back youth, and knew most
+things.  Even to this day I read of "Uncle Henry's" advice, and, though I
+say it who should not, it still seems to me good, sound advice.  I often
+think that had I followed "Uncle Henry's" counsel closer I would have
+been wiser, made fewer mistakes, felt better satisfied with myself than
+is now the case.
+
+A quiet, weary little woman, who lived in a bed-sitting room off the
+Tottenham Court Road, and who had a husband in a lunatic asylum, did our
+"Cooking Column," "Hints on Education"--we were full of hints,--and a
+page and a half of "Fashionable Intelligence," written in the pertly
+personal style which even yet has not altogether disappeared, so I am
+informed, from modern journalism: "I must tell you about the _divine_
+frock I wore at 'Glorious Goodwood' last week.  Prince C.--but there, I
+really must not repeat all the things the silly fellow says; he is _too_
+foolish--and the _dear_ Countess, I fancy, was just the _weeish_ bit
+jealous"--and so on.
+
+Poor little woman!  I see her now in the shabby grey alpaca, with the
+inkstains on it.  Perhaps a day at "Glorious Goodwood," or anywhere else
+in the fresh air, might have put some colour into her cheeks.
+
+Our proprietor--one of the most unashamedly ignorant men I ever met--I
+remember his gravely informing a correspondent once that Ben Jonson had
+written _Rabelais_ to pay for his mother's funeral, and only laughing
+good-naturedly when his mistakes were pointed out to him--wrote with the
+aid of a cheap encyclopedia the pages devoted to "General Information,"
+and did them on the whole remarkably well; while our office boy, with an
+excellent pair of scissors for his assistant, was responsible for our
+supply of "Wit and Humour."
+
+It was hard work, and the pay was poor, what sustained us was the
+consciousness that we were instructing and improving our fellow men and
+women.  Of all games in the world, the one most universally and eternally
+popular is the game of school.  You collect six children, and put them on
+a doorstep, while you walk up and down with the book and cane.  We play
+it when babies, we play it when boys and girls, we play it when men and
+women, we play it as, lean and slippered, we totter towards the grave.  It
+never palls upon, it never wearies us.  Only one thing mars it: the
+tendency of one and all of the other six children to clamour for their
+turn with the book and the cane.  The reason, I am sure, that journalism
+is so popular a calling, in spite of its many drawbacks, is this: each
+journalist feels he is the boy walking up and down with the cane.  The
+Government, the Classes, and the Masses, Society, Art, and Literature,
+are the other children sitting on the doorstep.  He instructs and
+improves them.
+
+But I digress.  It was to excuse my present permanent disinclination to
+be the vehicle of useful information that I recalled these matters.  Let
+us now return.
+
+Somebody, signing himself "Balloonist," had written to ask concerning the
+manufacture of hydrogen gas.  It is an easy thing to manufacture--at
+least, so I gathered after reading up the subject at the British Museum;
+yet I did warn "Balloonist," whoever he might be, to take all necessary
+precaution against accident.  What more could I have done?  Ten days
+afterwards a florid-faced lady called at the office, leading by the hand
+what, she explained, was her son, aged twelve.  The boy's face was
+unimpressive to a degree positively remarkable.  His mother pushed him
+forward and took off his hat, and then I perceived the reason for this.
+He had no eyebrows whatever, and of his hair nothing remained but a
+scrubby dust, giving to his head the appearance of a hard-boiled egg,
+skinned and sprinkled with black pepper.
+
+"That was a handsome lad this time last week, with naturally curly hair,"
+remarked the lady.  She spoke with a rising inflection, suggestive of the
+beginning of things.
+
+"What has happened to him?" asked our chief.
+
+"This is what's happened to him," retorted the lady.  She drew from her
+muff a copy of our last week's issue, with my article on hydrogen gas
+scored in pencil, and flung it before his eyes.  Our chief took it and
+read it through.
+
+"He was 'Balloonist'?" queried the chief.
+
+"He was 'Balloonist,'" admitted the lady, "the poor innocent child, and
+now look at him!"
+
+"Maybe it'll grow again," suggested our chief.
+
+"Maybe it will," retorted the lady, her key continuing to rise, "and
+maybe it won't.  What I want to know is what you are going to do for
+him."
+
+Our chief suggested a hair wash.  I thought at first she was going to fly
+at him; but for the moment she confined herself to words.  It appears she
+was not thinking of a hair wash, but of compensation.  She also made
+observations on the general character of our paper, its utility, its
+claim to public support, the sense and wisdom of its contributors.
+
+"I really don't see that it is our fault," urged the chief--he was a mild-
+mannered man; "he asked for information, and he got it."
+
+"Don't you try to be funny about it," said the lady (he had not meant to
+be funny, I am sure; levity was not his failing) "or you'll get something
+that _you_ haven't asked for.  Why, for two pins," said the lady, with a
+suddenness that sent us both flying like scuttled chickens behind our
+respective chairs, "I'd come round and make your head like it!"  I take
+it, she meant like the boy's.  She also added observations upon our
+chief's personal appearance, that were distinctly in bad taste.  She was
+not a nice woman by any means.
+
+Myself, I am of opinion that had she brought the action she threatened,
+she would have had no case; but our chief was a man who had had
+experience of the law, and his principle was always to avoid it.  I have
+heard him say:
+
+"If a man stopped me in the street and demanded of me my watch, I should
+refuse to give it to him.  If he threatened to take it by force, I feel I
+should, though not a fighting man, do my best to protect it.  If, on the
+other hand, he should assert his intention of trying to obtain it by
+means of an action in any court of law, I should take it out of my pocket
+and hand it to him, and think I had got off cheaply."
+
+He squared the matter with the florid-faced lady for a five-pound note,
+which must have represented a month's profits on the paper; and she
+departed, taking her damaged offspring with her.  After she was gone, our
+chief spoke kindly to me.  He said:
+
+"Don't think I am blaming you in the least; it is not your fault, it is
+Fate.  Keep to moral advice and criticism--there you are distinctly good;
+but don't try your hand any more on 'Useful Information.'  As I have
+said, it is not your fault.  Your information is correct enough--there is
+nothing to be said against that; it simply is that you are not lucky with
+it."
+
+I would that I had followed his advice always; I would have saved myself
+and other people much disaster.  I see no reason why it should be, but so
+it is.  If I instruct a man as to the best route between London and Rome,
+he loses his luggage in Switzerland, or is nearly shipwrecked off Dover.
+If I counsel him in the purchase of a camera, he gets run in by the
+German police for photographing fortresses.  I once took a deal of
+trouble to explain to a man how to marry his deceased wife's sister at
+Stockholm.  I found out for him the time the boat left Hull and the best
+hotels to stop at.  There was not a single mistake from beginning to end
+in the information with which I supplied him; no hitch occurred anywhere;
+yet now he never speaks to me.
+
+Therefore it is that I have come to restrain my passion for the giving of
+information; therefore it is that nothing in the nature of practical
+instruction will be found, if I can help it, within these pages.
+
+There will be no description of towns, no historical reminiscences, no
+architecture, no morals.
+
+I once asked an intelligent foreigner what he thought of London.
+
+He said: "It is a very big town."
+
+I said: "What struck you most about it?"
+
+He replied: "The people."
+
+I said: "Compared with other towns--Paris, Rome, Berlin,--what did you
+think of it?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  "It is bigger," he said; "what more can one
+say?"
+
+One anthill is very much like another.  So many avenues, wide or narrow,
+where the little creatures swarm in strange confusion; these bustling by,
+important; these halting to pow-wow with one another.  These struggling
+with big burdens; those but basking in the sun.  So many granaries stored
+with food; so many cells where the little things sleep, and eat, and
+love; the corner where lie their little white bones.  This hive is
+larger, the next smaller.  This nest lies on the sand, and another under
+the stones.  This was built but yesterday, while that was fashioned ages
+ago, some say even before the swallows came; who knows?
+
+Nor will there be found herein folk-lore or story.
+
+Every valley where lie homesteads has its song.  I will tell you the
+plot; you can turn it into verse and set it to music of your own.
+
+There lived a lass, and there came a lad, who loved and rode away.
+
+It is a monotonous song, written in many languages; for the young man
+seems to have been a mighty traveller.  Here in sentimental Germany they
+remember him well.  So also the dwellers of the Blue Alsatian Mountains
+remember his coming among them; while, if my memory serves me truly, he
+likewise visited the Banks of Allan Water.  A veritable Wandering Jew is
+he; for still the foolish girls listen, so they say, to the dying away of
+his hoof-beats.
+
+In this land of many ruins, that long while ago were voice-filled homes,
+linger many legends; and here again, giving you the essentials, I leave
+you to cook the dish for yourself.  Take a human heart or two, assorted;
+a bundle of human passions--there are not many of them, half a dozen at
+the most; season with a mixture of good and evil; flavour the whole with
+the sauce of death, and serve up where and when you will.  "The Saint's
+Cell," "The Haunted Keep," "The Dungeon Grave," "The Lover's Leap"--call
+it what you will, the stew's the same.
+
+Lastly, in this book there will be no scenery.  This is not laziness on
+my part; it is self-control.  Nothing is easier to write than scenery;
+nothing more difficult and unnecessary to read.  When Gibbon had to trust
+to travellers' tales for a description of the Hellespont, and the Rhine
+was chiefly familiar to English students through the medium of _Caesar's
+Commentaries_, it behoved every globe-trotter, for whatever distance, to
+describe to the best of his ability the things that he had seen.  Dr.
+Johnson, familiar with little else than the view down Fleet Street, could
+read the description of a Yorkshire moor with pleasure and with profit.
+To a cockney who had never seen higher ground than the Hog's Back in
+Surrey, an account of Snowdon must have appeared exciting.  But we, or
+rather the steam-engine and the camera for us, have changed all that.  The
+man who plays tennis every year at the foot of the Matterhorn, and
+billiards on the summit of the Rigi, does not thank you for an elaborate
+and painstaking description of the Grampian Hills.  To the average man,
+who has seen a dozen oil paintings, a hundred photographs, a thousand
+pictures in the illustrated journals, and a couple of panoramas of
+Niagara, the word-painting of a waterfall is tedious.
+
+An American friend of mine, a cultured gentleman, who loved poetry well
+enough for its own sake, told me that he had obtained a more correct and
+more satisfying idea of the Lake district from an eighteenpenny book of
+photographic views than from all the works of Coleridge, Southey, and
+Wordsworth put together.  I also remember his saying concerning this
+subject of scenery in literature, that he would thank an author as much
+for writing an eloquent description of what he had just had for dinner.
+But this was in reference to another argument; namely, the proper
+province of each art.  My friend maintained that just as canvas and
+colour were the wrong mediums for story telling, so word-painting was, at
+its best, but a clumsy method of conveying impressions that could much
+better be received through the eye.
+
+As regards the question, there also lingers in my memory very distinctly
+a hot school afternoon.  The class was for English literature, and the
+proceedings commenced with the reading of a certain lengthy, but
+otherwise unobjectionable, poem.  The author's name, I am ashamed to say,
+I have forgotten, together with the title of the poem.  The reading
+finished, we closed our books, and the Professor, a kindly, white-haired
+old gentleman, suggested our giving in our own words an account of what
+we had just read.
+
+"Tell me," said the Professor, encouragingly, "what it is all about."
+
+"Please, sir," said the first boy--he spoke with bowed head and evident
+reluctance, as though the subject were one which, left to himself, he
+would never have mentioned,--"it is about a maiden."
+
+"Yes," agreed the Professor; "but I want you to tell me in your own
+words.  We do not speak of a maiden, you know; we say a girl.  Yes, it is
+about a girl.  Go on."
+
+"A girl," repeated the top boy, the substitution apparently increasing
+his embarrassment, "who lived in a wood."
+
+"What sort of a wood?" asked the Professor.
+
+The first boy examined his inkpot carefully, and then looked at the
+ceiling.
+
+"Come," urged the Professor, growing impatient, "you have been reading
+about this wood for the last ten minutes.  Surely you can tell me
+something concerning it."
+
+"The gnarly trees, their twisted branches"--recommenced the top boy.
+
+"No, no," interrupted the Professor; "I do not want you to repeat the
+poem.  I want you to tell me in your own words what sort of a wood it was
+where the girl lived."
+
+The Professor tapped his foot impatiently; the top boy made a dash for
+it.
+
+"Please, sir, it was the usual sort of a wood."
+
+"Tell him what sort of a wood," said he, pointing to the second lad.
+
+The second boy said it was a "green wood."  This annoyed the Professor
+still more; he called the second boy a blockhead, though really I cannot
+see why, and passed on to the third, who, for the last minute, had been
+sitting apparently on hot plates, with his right arm waving up and down
+like a distracted semaphore signal.  He would have had to say it the next
+second, whether the Professor had asked him or not; he was red in the
+face, holding his knowledge in.
+
+"A dark and gloomy wood," shouted the third boy, with much relief to his
+feelings.
+
+"A dark and gloomy wood," repeated the Professor, with evident approval.
+"And why was it dark and gloomy?"
+
+The third boy was still equal to the occasion.
+
+"Because the sun could not get inside it."
+
+The Professor felt he had discovered the poet of the class.
+
+"Because the sun could not get into it, or, better, because the sunbeams
+could not penetrate.  And why could not the sunbeams penetrate there?"
+
+"Please, sir, because the leaves were too thick."
+
+"Very well," said the Professor.  "The girl lived in a dark and gloomy
+wood, through the leafy canopy of which the sunbeams were unable to
+pierce.  Now, what grew in this wood?"  He pointed to the fourth boy.
+
+"Please, sir, trees, sir."
+
+"And what else?"
+
+"Toadstools, sir."  This after a pause.
+
+The Professor was not quite sure about the toadstools, but on referring
+to the text he found that the boy was right; toadstools had been
+mentioned.
+
+"Quite right," admitted the Professor, "toadstools grew there.  And what
+else?  What do you find underneath trees in a wood?"
+
+"Please, sir, earth, sir."
+
+"No; no; what grows in a wood besides trees?"
+
+"Oh, please, sir, bushes, sir."
+
+"Bushes; very good.  Now we are getting on.  In this wood there were
+trees and bushes.  And what else?"
+
+He pointed to a small boy near the bottom, who having decided that the
+wood was too far off to be of any annoyance to him, individually, was
+occupying his leisure playing noughts and crosses against himself.  Vexed
+and bewildered, but feeling it necessary to add something to the
+inventory, he hazarded blackberries.  This was a mistake; the poet had
+not mentioned blackberries.
+
+"Of course, Klobstock would think of something to eat," commented the
+Professor, who prided himself on his ready wit.  This raised a laugh
+against Klobstock, and pleased the Professor.
+
+"You," continued he, pointing to a boy in the middle; "what else was
+there in this wood besides trees and bushes?"
+
+"Please, sir, there was a torrent there."
+
+"Quite right; and what did the torrent do?"
+
+"Please, sir, it gurgled."
+
+"No; no.  Streams gurgle, torrents--?"
+
+"Roar, sir."
+
+"It roared.  And what made it roar?"
+
+This was a poser.  One boy--he was not our prize intellect, I
+admit--suggested the girl.  To help us the Professor put his question in
+another form:
+
+"When did it roar?"
+
+Our third boy, again coming to the rescue, explained that it roared when
+it fell down among the rocks.  I think some of us had a vague idea that
+it must have been a cowardly torrent to make such a noise about a little
+thing like this; a pluckier torrent, we felt, would have got up and gone
+on, saying nothing about it.  A torrent that roared every time it fell
+upon a rock we deemed a poor spirited torrent; but the Professor seemed
+quite content with it.
+
+"And what lived in this wood beside the girl?" was the next question.
+
+"Please, sir, birds, sir."
+
+"Yes, birds lived in this wood.  What else?"
+
+Birds seemed to have exhausted our ideas.
+
+"Come," said the Professor, "what are those animals with tails, that run
+up trees?"
+
+We thought for a while, then one of us suggested cats.
+
+This was an error; the poet had said nothing about cats; squirrels was
+what the Professor was trying to get.
+
+I do not recall much more about this wood in detail.  I only recollect
+that the sky was introduced into it.  In places where there occurred an
+opening among the trees you could by looking up see the sky above you;
+very often there were clouds in this sky, and occasionally, if I remember
+rightly, the girl got wet.
+
+I have dwelt upon this incident, because it seems to me suggestive of the
+whole question of scenery in literature.  I could not at the time, I
+cannot now, understand why the top boy's summary was not sufficient.  With
+all due deference to the poet, whoever he may have been, one cannot but
+acknowledge that his wood was, and could not be otherwise than, "the
+usual sort of a wood."
+
+I could describe the Black Forest to you at great length.  I could
+translate to you Hebel, the poet of the Black Forest.  I could write
+pages concerning its rocky gorges and its smiling valleys, its pine-clad
+slopes, its rock-crowned summits, its foaming rivulets (where the tidy
+German has not condemned them to flow respectably through wooden troughs
+or drainpipes), its white villages, its lonely farmsteads.
+
+But I am haunted by the suspicion you might skip all this.  Were you
+sufficiently conscientious--or weak-minded enough--not to do so, I
+should, all said and done, succeed in conveying to you only an impression
+much better summed up in the simple words of the unpretentious guide
+book:
+
+"A picturesque, mountainous district, bounded on the south and the west
+by the plain of the Rhine, towards which its spurs descend precipitately.
+Its geological formation consists chiefly of variegated sandstone and
+granite; its lower heights being covered with extensive pine forests.  It
+is well watered with numerous streams, while its populous valleys are
+fertile and well cultivated.  The inns are good; but the local wines
+should be partaken of by the stranger with discretion."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Why we went to Hanover--Something they do better abroad--The art of
+polite foreign conversation, as taught in English schools--A true
+history, now told for the first time--The French joke, as provided for
+the amusement of British youth--Fatherly instincts of Harris--The road-
+waterer, considered as an artist--Patriotism of George--What Harris ought
+to have done--What he did--We save Harris's life--A sleepless city--The
+cab-horse as a critic.
+
+We arrived in Hamburg on Friday after a smooth and uneventful voyage; and
+from Hamburg we travelled to Berlin by way of Hanover.  It is not the
+most direct route.  I can only account for our visit to Hanover as the
+nigger accounted to the magistrate for his appearance in the Deacon's
+poultry-yard.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Yes, sar, what the constable sez is quite true, sar; I was dar, sar."
+
+"Oh, so you admit it?  And what were you doing with a sack, pray, in
+Deacon Abraham's poultry-yard at twelve o'clock at night?"
+
+"I'se gwine ter tell yer, sar; yes, sar.  I'd been to Massa Jordan's wid
+a sack of melons.  Yes, sar; an' Massa Jordan he wuz very 'greeable, an'
+axed me for ter come in."
+
+"Yes, sar, very 'greeable man is Massa Jordan.  An' dar we sat a talking
+an' a talking--"
+
+"Very likely.  What we want to know is what you were doing in the
+Deacon's poultry-yard?"
+
+"Yes, sar, dat's what I'se cumming to.  It wuz ver' late 'fore I left
+Massa Jordan's, an' den I sez ter mysel', sez I, now yer jest step out
+with yer best leg foremost, Ulysses, case yer gets into trouble wid de
+ole woman.  Ver' talkative woman she is, sar, very--"
+
+"Yes, never mind her; there are other people very talkative in this town
+besides your wife.  Deacon Abraham's house is half a mile out of your way
+home from Mr. Jordan's.  How did you get there?"
+
+"Dat's what I'm a-gwine ter explain, sar."
+
+"I am glad of that.  And how do you propose to do it?"
+
+"Well, I'se thinkin', sar, I must ha' digressed."
+
+I take it we digressed a little.
+
+At first, from some reason or other, Hanover strikes you as an
+uninteresting town, but it grows upon you.  It is in reality two towns; a
+place of broad, modern, handsome streets and tasteful gardens; side by
+side with a sixteenth-century town, where old timbered houses overhang
+the narrow lanes; where through low archways one catches glimpses of
+galleried courtyards, once often thronged, no doubt, with troops of
+horse, or blocked with lumbering coach and six, waiting its rich merchant
+owner, and his fat placid Frau, but where now children and chickens
+scuttle at their will; while over the carved balconies hang dingy clothes
+a-drying.
+
+A singularly English atmosphere hovers over Hanover, especially on
+Sundays, when its shuttered shops and clanging bells give to it the
+suggestion of a sunnier London.  Nor was this British Sunday atmosphere
+apparent only to myself, else I might have attributed it to imagination;
+even George felt it.  Harris and I, returning from a short stroll with
+our cigars after lunch on the Sunday afternoon, found him peacefully
+slumbering in the smoke-room's easiest chair.
+
+"After all," said Harris, "there is something about the British Sunday
+that appeals to the man with English blood in his veins.  I should be
+sorry to see it altogether done away with, let the new generation say
+what it will."
+
+And taking one each end of the ample settee, we kept George company.
+
+To Hanover one should go, they say, to learn the best German.  The
+disadvantage is that outside Hanover, which is only a small province,
+nobody understands this best German.  Thus you have to decide whether to
+speak good German and remain in Hanover, or bad German and travel about.
+Germany being separated so many centuries into a dozen principalities, is
+unfortunate in possessing a variety of dialects.  Germans from Posen
+wishful to converse with men of Wurtemburg, have to talk as often as not
+in French or English; and young ladies who have received an expensive
+education in Westphalia surprise and disappoint their parents by being
+unable to understand a word said to them in Mechlenberg.  An
+English-speaking foreigner, it is true, would find himself equally
+nonplussed among the Yorkshire wolds, or in the purlieus of Whitechapel;
+but the cases are not on all fours.  Throughout Germany it is not only in
+the country districts and among the uneducated that dialects are
+maintained.  Every province has practically its own language, of which it
+is proud and retentive.  An educated Bavarian will admit to you that,
+academically speaking, the North German is more correct; but he will
+continue to speak South German and to teach it to his children.
+
+In the course of the century, I am inclined to think that Germany will
+solve her difficulty in this respect by speaking English.  Every boy and
+girl in Germany, above the peasant class, speaks English.  Were English
+pronunciation less arbitrary, there is not the slightest doubt but that
+in the course of a very few years, comparatively speaking, it would
+become the language of the world.  All foreigners agree that,
+grammatically, it is the easiest language of any to learn.  A German,
+comparing it with his own language, where every word in every sentence is
+governed by at least four distinct and separate rules, tells you that
+English has no grammar.  A good many English people would seem to have
+come to the same conclusion; but they are wrong.  As a matter of fact,
+there is an English grammar, and one of these days our schools will
+recognise the fact, and it will be taught to our children, penetrating
+maybe even into literary and journalistic circles.  But at present we
+appear to agree with the foreigner that it is a quantity neglectable.
+English pronunciation is the stumbling-block to our progress.  English
+spelling would seem to have been designed chiefly as a disguise to
+pronunciation.  It is a clever idea, calculated to check presumption on
+the part of the foreigner; but for that he would learn it in a year.
+
+For they have a way of teaching languages in Germany that is not our way,
+and the consequence is that when the German youth or maiden leaves the
+gymnasium or high school at fifteen, "it" (as in Germany one conveniently
+may say) can understand and speak the tongue it has been learning.  In
+England we have a method that for obtaining the least possible result at
+the greatest possible expenditure of time and money is perhaps
+unequalled.  An English boy who has been through a good middle-class
+school in England can talk to a Frenchman, slowly and with difficulty,
+about female gardeners and aunts; conversation which, to a man possessed
+perhaps of neither, is liable to pall.  Possibly, if he be a bright
+exception, he may be able to tell the time, or make a few guarded
+observations concerning the weather.  No doubt he could repeat a goodly
+number of irregular verbs by heart; only, as a matter of fact, few
+foreigners care to listen to their own irregular verbs, recited by young
+Englishmen.  Likewise he might be able to remember a choice selection of
+grotesquely involved French idioms, such as no modern Frenchman has ever
+heard or understands when he does hear.
+
+The explanation is that, in nine cases out of ten, he has learnt French
+from an "Ahn's First-Course."  The history of this famous work is
+remarkable and instructive.  The book was originally written for a joke,
+by a witty Frenchman who had resided for some years in England.  He
+intended it as a satire upon the conversational powers of British
+society.  From this point of view it was distinctly good.  He submitted
+it to a London publishing firm.  The manager was a shrewd man.  He read
+the book through.  Then he sent for the author.
+
+"This book of yours," said he to the author, "is very clever.  I have
+laughed over it myself till the tears came."
+
+"I am delighted to hear you say so," replied the pleased Frenchman.  "I
+tried to be truthful without being unnecessarily offensive."
+
+"It is most amusing," concurred the manager; "and yet published as a
+harmless joke, I feel it would fail."
+
+The author's face fell.
+
+"Its humour," proceeded the manager, "would be denounced as forced and
+extravagant.  It would amuse the thoughtful and intelligent, but from a
+business point of view that portion of the public are never worth
+considering.  But I have an idea," continued the manager.  He glanced
+round the room to be sure they were alone, and leaning forward sunk his
+voice to a whisper.  "My notion is to publish it as a serious work for
+the use of schools!"
+
+The author stared, speechless.
+
+"I know the English schoolman," said the manager; "this book will appeal
+to him.  It will exactly fit in with his method.  Nothing sillier,
+nothing more useless for the purpose will he ever discover.  He will
+smack his lips over the book, as a puppy licks up blacking."
+
+The author, sacrificing art to greed, consented.  They altered the title
+and added a vocabulary, but left the book otherwise as it was.
+
+The result is known to every schoolboy.  "Ahn" became the palladium of
+English philological education.  If it no longer retains its ubiquity, it
+is because something even less adaptable to the object in view has been
+since invented.
+
+Lest, in spite of all, the British schoolboy should obtain, even from the
+like of "Ahn," some glimmering of French, the British educational method
+further handicaps him by bestowing upon him the assistance of, what is
+termed in the prospectus, "A native gentleman."  This native French
+gentleman, who, by-the-by, is generally a Belgian, is no doubt a most
+worthy person, and can, it is true, understand and speak his own language
+with tolerable fluency.  There his qualifications cease.  Invariably he
+is a man with a quite remarkable inability to teach anybody anything.
+Indeed, he would seem to be chosen not so much as an instructor as an
+amuser of youth.  He is always a comic figure.  No Frenchman of a
+dignified appearance would be engaged for any English school.  If he
+possess by nature a few harmless peculiarities, calculated to cause
+merriment, so much the more is he esteemed by his employers.  The class
+naturally regards him as an animated joke.  The two to four hours a week
+that are deliberately wasted on this ancient farce, are looked forward to
+by the boys as a merry interlude in an otherwise monotonous existence.
+And then, when the proud parent takes his son and heir to Dieppe merely
+to discover that the lad does not know enough to call a cab, he abuses
+not the system, but its innocent victim.
+
+I confine my remarks to French, because that is the only language we
+attempt to teach our youth.  An English boy who could speak German would
+be looked down upon as unpatriotic.  Why we waste time in teaching even
+French according to this method I have never been able to understand.  A
+perfect unacquaintance with a language is respectable.  But putting aside
+comic journalists and lady novelists, for whom it is a business
+necessity, this smattering of French which we are so proud to possess
+only serves to render us ridiculous.
+
+In the German school the method is somewhat different.  One hour every
+day is devoted to the same language.  The idea is not to give the lad
+time between each lesson to forget what he learned at the last; the idea
+is for him to get on.  There is no comic foreigner provided for his
+amusement.  The desired language is taught by a German school-master who
+knows it inside and out as thoroughly as he knows his own.  Maybe this
+system does not provide the German youth with that perfection of foreign
+accent for which the British tourist is in every land remarkable, but it
+has other advantages.  The boy does not call his master "froggy," or
+"sausage," nor prepare for the French or English hour any exhibition of
+homely wit whatever.  He just sits there, and for his own sake tries to
+learn that foreign tongue with as little trouble to everybody concerned
+as possible.  When he has left school he can talk, not about penknives
+and gardeners and aunts merely, but about European politics, history,
+Shakespeare, or the musical glasses, according to the turn the
+conversation may take.
+
+Viewing the German people from an Anglo-Saxon standpoint, it may be that
+in this book I shall find occasion to criticise them: but on the other
+hand there is much that we might learn from them; and in the matter of
+common sense, as applied to education, they can give us ninety-nine in a
+hundred and beat us with one hand.
+
+The beautiful wood of the Eilenriede bounds Hanover on the south and
+west, and here occurred a sad drama in which Harris took a prominent
+part.
+
+We were riding our machines through this wood on the Monday afternoon in
+the company of many other cyclists, for it is a favourite resort with the
+Hanoverians on a sunny afternoon, and its shady pathways are then filled
+with happy, thoughtless folk.  Among them rode a young and beautiful girl
+on a machine that was new.  She was evidently a novice on the bicycle.
+One felt instinctively that there would come a moment when she would
+require help, and Harris, with his accustomed chivalry, suggested we
+should keep near her.  Harris, as he occasionally explains to George and
+to myself, has daughters of his own, or, to speak more correctly, a
+daughter, who as the years progress will no doubt cease practising
+catherine wheels in the front garden, and will grow up into a beautiful
+and respectable young lady.  This naturally gives Harris an interest in
+all beautiful girls up to the age of thirty-five or thereabouts; they
+remind him, so he says, of home.
+
+We had ridden for about two miles, when we noticed, a little ahead of us
+in a space where five ways met, a man with a hose, watering the roads.
+The pipe, supported at each joint by a pair of tiny wheels, writhed after
+him as he moved, suggesting a gigantic-worm, from whose open neck, as the
+man, gripping it firmly in both hands, pointing it now this way, and now
+that, now elevating it, now depressing it, poured a strong stream of
+water at the rate of about a gallon a second.
+
+"What a much better method than ours," observed Harris, enthusiastically.
+Harris is inclined to be chronically severe on all British institutions.
+"How much simpler, quicker, and more economical!  You see, one man by
+this method can in five minutes water a stretch of road that would take
+us with our clumsy lumbering cart half an hour to cover."
+
+George, who was riding behind me on the tandem, said, "Yes, and it is
+also a method by which with a little carelessness a man could cover a
+good many people in a good deal less time than they could get out of the
+way."
+
+George, the opposite to Harris, is British to the core.  I remember
+George quite patriotically indignant with Harris once for suggesting the
+introduction of the guillotine into England.
+
+"It is so much neater," said Harris.
+
+"I don't care if it is," said George; "I'm an Englishman; hanging is good
+enough for me."
+
+"Our water-cart may have its disadvantages," continued George, "but it
+can only make you uncomfortable about the legs, and you can avoid it.
+This is the sort of machine with which a man can follow you round the
+corner and upstairs."
+
+"It fascinates me to watch them," said Harris.  "They are so skilful.  I
+have seen a man from the corner of a crowded square in Strassburg cover
+every inch of ground, and not so much as wet an apron string.  It is
+marvellous how they judge their distance.  They will send the water up to
+your toes, and then bring it over your head so that it falls around your
+heels.  They can--"
+
+"Ease up a minute," said George.  I said: "Why?"
+
+He said: "I am going to get off and watch the rest of this show from
+behind a tree.  There may be great performers in this line, as Harris
+says; this particular artist appears to me to lack something.  He has
+just soused a dog, and now he's busy watering a sign-post.  I am going to
+wait till he has finished."
+
+"Nonsense," said Harris; "he won't wet you."
+
+"That is precisely what I am going to make sure of," answered George,
+saying which he jumped off, and, taking up a position behind a remarkably
+fine elm, pulled out and commenced filling his pipe.
+
+I did not care to take the tandem on by myself, so I stepped off and
+joined him, leaving the machine against a tree.  Harris shouted something
+or other about our being a disgrace to the land that gave us birth, and
+rode on.
+
+The next moment I heard a woman's cry of distress.  Glancing round the
+stem of the tree, I perceived that it proceeded from the young and
+elegant lady before mentioned, whom, in our interest concerning the road-
+waterer, we had forgotten.  She was riding her machine steadily and
+straightly through a drenching shower of water from the hose.  She
+appeared to be too paralysed either to get off or turn her wheel aside.
+Every instant she was becoming wetter, while the man with the hose, who
+was either drunk or blind, continued to pour water upon her with utter
+indifference.  A dozen voices yelled imprecations upon him, but he took
+no heed whatever.
+
+Harris, his fatherly nature stirred to its depths, did at this point
+what, under the circumstances, was quite the right and proper thing to
+do.  Had he acted throughout with the same coolness and judgment he then
+displayed, he would have emerged from that incident the hero of the hour,
+instead of, as happened, riding away followed by insult and threat.
+Without a moment's hesitation he spurted at the man, sprang to the
+ground, and, seizing the hose by the nozzle, attempted to wrest it away.
+
+What he ought to have done, what any man retaining his common sense would
+have done the moment he got his hands upon the thing, was to turn off the
+tap.  Then he might have played foot-ball with the man, or battledore and
+shuttlecock as he pleased; and the twenty or thirty people who had rushed
+forward to assist would have only applauded.  His idea, however, as he
+explained to us afterwards, was to take away the hose from the man, and,
+for punishment, turn it upon the fool himself.  The waterman's idea
+appeared to be the same, namely, to retain the hose as a weapon with
+which to soak Harris.  Of course, the result was that, between them, they
+soused every dead and living thing within fifty yards, except themselves.
+One furious man, too drenched to care what more happened to him, leapt
+into the arena and also took a hand.  The three among them proceeded to
+sweep the compass with that hose.  They pointed it to heaven, and the
+water descended upon the people in the form of an equinoctial storm.  They
+pointed it downwards, and sent the water in rushing streams that took
+people off their feet, or caught them about the waist line, and doubled
+them up.
+
+Not one of them would loosen his grip upon the hose, not one of them
+thought to turn the water off.  You might have concluded they were
+struggling with some primeval force of nature.  In forty-five seconds, so
+George said, who was timing it, they had swept that circus bare of every
+living thing except one dog, who, dripping like a water nymph, rolled
+over by the force of water, now on this side, now on that, still
+gallantly staggered again and again to its feet to bark defiance at what
+it evidently regarded as the powers of hell let loose.
+
+Men and women left their machines upon the ground, and flew into the
+woods.  From behind every tree of importance peeped out wet, angry heads.
+
+At last, there arrived upon the scene one man of sense.  Braving all
+things, he crept to the hydrant, where still stood the iron key, and
+screwed it down.  And then from forty trees began to creep more or less
+soaked human beings, each one with something to say.
+
+At first I fell to wondering whether a stretcher or a clothes basket
+would be the more useful for the conveyance of Harris's remains back to
+the hotel.  I consider that George's promptness on that occasion saved
+Harris's life.  Being dry, and therefore able to run quicker, he was
+there before the crowd.  Harris was for explaining things, but George cut
+him short.
+
+"You get on that," said George, handing him his bicycle, "and go.  They
+don't know we belong to you, and you may trust us implicitly not to
+reveal the secret.  We'll hang about behind, and get in their way.  Ride
+zig-zag in case they shoot."
+
+I wish this book to be a strict record of fact, unmarred by exaggeration,
+and therefore I have shown my description of this incident to Harris,
+lest anything beyond bald narrative may have crept into it.  Harris
+maintains it is exaggerated, but admits that one or two people may have
+been "sprinkled."  I have offered to turn a street hose on him at a
+distance of five-and-twenty yards, and take his opinion afterwards, as to
+whether "sprinkled" is the adequate term, but he has declined the test.
+Again, he insists there could not have been more than half a dozen
+people, at the outside, involved in the catastrophe, that forty is a
+ridiculous misstatement.  I have offered to return with him to Hanover
+and make strict inquiry into the matter, and this offer he has likewise
+declined.  Under these circumstances, I maintain that mine is a true and
+restrained narrative of an event that is, by a certain number of
+Hanoverians, remembered with bitterness unto this very day.
+
+We left Hanover that same evening, and arrived at Berlin in time for
+supper and an evening stroll.  Berlin is a disappointing town; its centre
+over-crowded, its outlying parts lifeless; its one famous street, Unter
+den Linden, an attempt to combine Oxford Street with the Champs Elysee,
+singularly unimposing, being much too wide for its size; its theatres
+dainty and charming, where acting is considered of more importance than
+scenery or dress, where long runs are unknown, successful pieces being
+played again and again, but never consecutively, so that for a week
+running you may go to the same Berlin theatre, and see a fresh play every
+night; its opera house unworthy of it; its two music halls, with an
+unnecessary suggestion of vulgarity and commonness about them,
+ill-arranged and much too large for comfort.  In the Berlin cafes and
+restaurants, the busy time is from midnight on till three.  Yet most of
+the people who frequent them are up again at seven.  Either the Berliner
+has solved the great problem of modern life, how to do without sleep, or,
+with Carlyle, he must be looking forward to eternity.
+
+Personally, I know of no other town where such late hours are the vogue,
+except St. Petersburg.  But your St. Petersburger does not get up early
+in the morning.  At St. Petersburg, the music halls, which it is the
+fashionable thing to attend _after_ the theatre--a drive to them taking
+half an hour in a swift sleigh--do not practically begin till twelve.
+Through the Neva at four o'clock in the morning you have to literally
+push your way; and the favourite trains for travellers are those starting
+about five o'clock in the morning.  These trains save the Russian the
+trouble of getting up early.  He wishes his friends "Good-night," and
+drives down to the station comfortably after supper, without putting the
+house to any inconvenience.
+
+Potsdam, the Versailles to Berlin, is a beautiful little town, situate
+among lakes and woods.  Here in the shady ways of its quiet,
+far-stretching park of Sans Souci, it is easy to imagine lean, snuffy
+Frederick "bummeling" with shrill Voltaire.
+
+Acting on my advice, George and Harris consented not to stay long in
+Berlin; but to push on to Dresden.  Most that Berlin has to show can be
+seen better elsewhere, and we decided to be content with a drive through
+the town.  The hotel porter introduced us to a droschke driver, under
+whose guidance, so he assured us, we should see everything worth seeing
+in the shortest possible time.  The man himself, who called for us at
+nine o'clock in the morning, was all that could be desired.  He was
+bright, intelligent, and well-informed; his German was easy to
+understand, and he knew a little English with which to eke it out on
+occasion.  With the man himself there was no fault to be found, but his
+horse was the most unsympathetic brute I have ever sat behind.
+
+He took a dislike to us the moment he saw us.  I was the first to come
+out of the hotel.  He turned his head, and looked me up and down with a
+cold, glassy eye; and then he looked across at another horse, a friend of
+his that was standing facing him.  I knew what he said.  He had an
+expressive head, and he made no attempt to disguise his thought.
+
+He said:
+
+"Funny things one does come across in the summer time, don't one?"
+
+George followed me out the next moment, and stood behind me.  The horse
+again turned his head and looked.  I have never known a horse that could
+twist himself as this horse did.  I have seen a camelopard do trick's
+with his neck that compelled one's attention, but this animal was more
+like the thing one dreams of after a dusty days at Ascot, followed by a
+dinner with six old chums.  If I had seen his eyes looking at me from
+between his own hind legs, I doubt if I should have been surprised.  He
+seemed more amused with George if anything, than with myself.  He turned
+to his friend again.
+
+"Extraordinary, isn't it?" he remarked; "I suppose there must be some
+place where they grow them"; and then he commenced licking flies off his
+own left shoulder.  I began to wonder whether he had lost his mother when
+young, and had been brought up by a cat.
+
+George and I climbed in, and sat waiting for Harris.  He came a moment
+later.  Myself, I thought he looked rather neat.  He wore a white flannel
+knickerbocker suit, which he had had made specially for bicycling in hot
+weather; his hat may have been a trifle out of the common, but it did
+keep the sun off.
+
+The horse gave one look at him, said "Gott in Himmel!" as plainly as ever
+horse spoke, and started off down Friedrich Strasse at a brisk walk,
+leaving Harris and the driver standing on the pavement.  His owner called
+to him to stop, but he took no notice.  They ran after us, and overtook
+us at the corner of the Dorotheen Strasse.  I could not catch what the
+man said to the horse, he spoke quickly and excitedly; but I gathered a
+few phrases, such as:
+
+"Got to earn my living somehow, haven't I?  Who asked for your opinion?
+Aye, little you care so long as you can guzzle."
+
+The horse cut the conversation short by turning up the Dorotheen Strasse
+on his own account.  I think what he said was:
+
+"Come on then; don't talk so much.  Let's get the job over, and, where
+possible, let's keep to the back streets."
+
+Opposite the Brandenburger Thor our driver hitched the reins to the whip,
+climbed down, and came round to explain things to us.  He pointed out the
+Thiergarten, and then descanted to us of the Reichstag House.  He
+informed us of its exact height, length, and breadth, after the manner of
+guides.  Then he turned his attention to the Gate.  He said it was
+constructed of sandstone, in imitation of the "Properleer" in Athens.
+
+At this point the horse, which had been occupying its leisure licking its
+own legs, turned round its head.  It did not say anything, it just
+looked.
+
+The man began again nervously.  This time he said it was an imitation of
+the "Propeyedliar."
+
+Here the horse proceeded up the Linden, and nothing would persuade him
+not to proceed up the Linden.  His owner expostulated with him, but he
+continued to trot on.  From the way he hitched his shoulders as he moved,
+I somehow felt he was saying:
+
+"They've seen the Gate, haven't they?  Very well, that's enough.  As for
+the rest, you don't know what you are talking about, and they wouldn't
+understand you if you did.  You talk German."
+
+It was the same throughout the length of the Linden.  The horse consented
+to stand still sufficiently long to enable us to have a good look at each
+sight, and to hear the name of it.  All explanation and description he
+cut short by the simple process of moving on.
+
+"What these fellows want," he seemed to say to himself, "is to go home
+and tell people they have seen these things.  If I am doing them an
+injustice, if they are more intelligent than they look, they can get
+better information than this old fool of mine is giving them from the
+guide book.  Who wants to know how high a steeple is?  You don't remember
+it the next five minutes when you are told, and if you do it is because
+you have got nothing else in your head.  He just tires me with his talk.
+Why doesn't he hurry up, and let us all get home to lunch?"
+
+Upon reflection, I am not sure that wall-eyed old brute had not sense on
+its side.  Anyhow, I know there have been occasions, with a guide, when I
+would have been glad of its interference.
+
+But one is apt to "sin one's mercies," as the Scotch say, and at the time
+we cursed that horse instead of blessing it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+George wonders--German love of order--"The Band of the Schwarzwald
+Blackbirds will perform at seven"--The china dog--Its superiority over
+all other dogs--The German and the solar system--A tidy country--The
+mountain valley as it ought to be, according to the German idea--How the
+waters come down in Germany--The scandal of Dresden--Harris gives an
+entertainment--It is unappreciated--George and the aunt of him--George, a
+cushion, and three damsels.
+
+At a point between Berlin and Dresden, George, who had, for the last
+quarter of an hour or so, been looking very attentively out of the
+window, said:
+
+"Why, in Germany, is it the custom to put the letter-box up a tree?  Why
+do they not fix it to the front door as we do?  I should hate having to
+climb up a tree to get my letters.  Besides, it is not fair to the
+postman.  In addition to being most exhausting, the delivery of letters
+must to a heavy man, on windy nights, be positively dangerous work.  If
+they will fix it to a tree, why not fix it lower down, why always among
+the topmost branches?  But, maybe, I am misjudging the country," he
+continued, a new idea occurring to him.  "Possibly the Germans, who are
+in many matters ahead of us, have perfected a pigeon post.  Even so, I
+cannot help thinking they would have been wiser to train the birds, while
+they were about it, to deliver the letters nearer the ground.  Getting
+your letters out of those boxes must be tricky work even to the average
+middle-aged German."
+
+I followed his gaze out of window.  I said:
+
+"Those are not letter-boxes, they are birds' nests.  You must understand
+this nation.  The German loves birds, but he likes tidy birds.  A bird
+left to himself builds his nest just anywhere.  It is not a pretty
+object, according to the German notion of prettiness.  There is not a bit
+of paint on it anywhere, not a plaster image all round, not even a flag.
+The nest finished, the bird proceeds to live outside it.  He drops things
+on the grass; twigs, ends of worms, all sorts of things.  He is
+indelicate.  He makes love, quarrels with his wife, and feeds the
+children quite in public.  The German householder is shocked.  He says to
+the bird:
+
+"'For many things I like you.  I like to look at you.  I like to hear you
+sing.  But I don't like your ways.  Take this little box, and put your
+rubbish inside where I can't see it.  Come out when you want to sing; but
+let your domestic arrangements be confined to the interior.  Keep to the
+box, and don't make the garden untidy.'"
+
+In Germany one breathes in love of order with the air, in Germany the
+babies beat time with their rattles, and the German bird has come to
+prefer the box, and to regard with contempt the few uncivilised outcasts
+who continue to build their nests in trees and hedges.  In course of time
+every German bird, one is confident, will have his proper place in a full
+chorus.  This promiscuous and desultory warbling of his must, one feels,
+be irritating to the precise German mind; there is no method in it.  The
+music-loving German will organise him.  Some stout bird with a specially
+well-developed crop will be trained to conduct him, and, instead of
+wasting himself in a wood at four o'clock in the morning, he will, at the
+advertised time, sing in a beer garden, accompanied by a piano.  Things
+are drifting that way.
+
+Your German likes nature, but his idea of nature is a glorified Welsh
+Harp.  He takes great interest in his garden.  He plants seven rose trees
+on the north side and seven on the south, and if they do not grow up all
+the same size and shape it worries him so that he cannot sleep of nights.
+Every flower he ties to a stick.  This interferes with his view of the
+flower, but he has the satisfaction of knowing it is there, and that it
+is behaving itself.  The lake is lined with zinc, and once a week he
+takes it up, carries it into the kitchen, and scours it.  In the
+geometrical centre of the grass plot, which is sometimes as large as a
+tablecloth and is generally railed round, he places a china dog.  The
+Germans are very fond of dogs, but as a rule they prefer them of china.
+The china dog never digs holes in the lawn to bury bones, and never
+scatters a flower-bed to the winds with his hind legs.  From the German
+point of view, he is the ideal dog.  He stops where you put him, and he
+is never where you do not want him.  You can have him perfect in all
+points, according to the latest requirements of the Kennel Club; or you
+can indulge your own fancy and have something unique.  You are not, as
+with other dogs, limited to breed.  In china, you can have a blue dog or
+a pink dog.  For a little extra, you can have a double-headed dog.
+
+On a certain fixed date in the autumn the German stakes his flowers and
+bushes to the earth, and covers them with Chinese matting; and on a
+certain fixed date in the spring he uncovers them, and stands them up
+again.  If it happens to be an exceptionally fine autumn, or an
+exceptionally late spring, so much the worse for the unfortunate
+vegetable.  No true German would allow his arrangements to be interfered
+with by so unruly a thing as the solar system.  Unable to regulate the
+weather, he ignores it.
+
+Among trees, your German's favourite is the poplar.  Other disorderly
+nations may sing the charms of the rugged oak, the spreading chestnut, or
+the waving elm.  To the German all such, with their wilful, untidy ways,
+are eyesores.  The poplar grows where it is planted, and how it is
+planted.  It has no improper rugged ideas of its own.  It does not want
+to wave or to spread itself.  It just grows straight and upright as a
+German tree should grow; and so gradually the German is rooting out all
+other trees, and replacing them with poplars.
+
+Your German likes the country, but he prefers it as the lady thought she
+would the noble savage--more dressed.  He likes his walk through the
+wood--to a restaurant.  But the pathway must not be too steep, it must
+have a brick gutter running down one side of it to drain it, and every
+twenty yards or so it must have its seat on which he can rest and mop his
+brow; for your German would no more think of sitting on the grass than
+would an English bishop dream of rolling down One Tree Hill.  He likes
+his view from the summit of the hill, but he likes to find there a stone
+tablet telling him what to look at, find a table and bench at which he
+can sit to partake of the frugal beer and "belegte Semmel" he has been
+careful to bring with him.  If, in addition, he can find a police notice
+posted on a tree, forbidding him to do something or other, that gives him
+an extra sense of comfort and security.
+
+Your German is not averse even to wild scenery, provided it be not too
+wild.  But if he consider it too savage, he sets to work to tame it.  I
+remember, in the neighbourhood of Dresden, discovering a picturesque and
+narrow valley leading down towards the Elbe.  The winding roadway ran
+beside a mountain torrent, which for a mile or so fretted and foamed over
+rocks and boulders between wood-covered banks.  I followed it enchanted
+until, turning a corner, I suddenly came across a gang of eighty or a
+hundred workmen.  They were busy tidying up that valley, and making that
+stream respectable.  All the stones that were impeding the course of the
+water they were carefully picking out and carting away.  The bank on
+either side they were bricking up and cementing.  The overhanging trees
+and bushes, the tangled vines and creepers they were rooting up and
+trimming down.  A little further I came upon the finished work--the
+mountain valley as it ought to be, according to German ideas.  The water,
+now a broad, sluggish stream, flowed over a level, gravelly bed, between
+two walls crowned with stone coping.  At every hundred yards it gently
+descended down three shallow wooden platforms.  For a space on either
+side the ground had been cleared, and at regular intervals young poplars
+planted.  Each sapling was protected by a shield of wickerwork and bossed
+by an iron rod.  In the course of a couple of years it is the hope of the
+local council to have "finished" that valley throughout its entire
+length, and made it fit for a tidy-minded lover of German nature to walk
+in.  There will be a seat every fifty yards, a police notice every
+hundred, and a restaurant every half-mile.
+
+They are doing the same from the Memel to the Rhine.  They are just
+tidying up the country.  I remember well the Wehrthal.  It was once the
+most romantic ravine to be found in the Black Forest.  The last time I
+walked down it some hundreds of Italian workmen were encamped there hard
+at work, training the wild little Wehr the way it should go, bricking the
+banks for it here, blasting the rocks for it there, making cement steps
+for it down which it can travel soberly and without fuss.
+
+For in Germany there is no nonsense talked about untrammelled nature.  In
+Germany nature has got to behave herself, and not set a bad example to
+the children.  A German poet, noticing waters coming down as Southey
+describes, somewhat inexactly, the waters coming down at Lodore, would be
+too shocked to stop and write alliterative verse about them.  He would
+hurry away, and at once report them to the police.  Then their foaming
+and their shrieking would be of short duration.
+
+"Now then, now then, what's all this about?" the voice of German
+authority would say severely to the waters.  "We can't have this sort of
+thing, you know.  Come down quietly, can't you?  Where do you think you
+are?"
+
+And the local German council would provide those waters with zinc pipes
+and wooden troughs, and a corkscrew staircase, and show them how to come
+down sensibly, in the German manner.
+
+It is a tidy land is Germany.
+
+We reached Dresden on the Wednesday evening, and stayed there over the
+Sunday.
+
+Taking one consideration with another, Dresden, perhaps, is the most
+attractive town in Germany; but it is a place to be lived in for a while
+rather than visited.  Its museums and galleries, its palaces and gardens,
+its beautiful and historically rich environment, provide pleasure for a
+winter, but bewilder for a week.  It has not the gaiety of Paris or
+Vienna, which quickly palls; its charms are more solidly German, and more
+lasting.  It is the Mecca of the musician.  For five shillings, in
+Dresden, you can purchase a stall at the opera house, together,
+unfortunately, with a strong disinclination ever again to take the
+trouble of sitting out a performance in any English, French, or, American
+opera house.
+
+The chief scandal of Dresden still centres round August the Strong, "the
+Man of Sin," as Carlyle always called him, who is popularly reputed to
+have cursed Europe with over a thousand children.  Castles where he
+imprisoned this discarded mistress or that--one of them, who persisted in
+her claim to a better title, for forty years, it is said, poor lady!  The
+narrow rooms where she ate her heart out and died are still shown.
+Chateaux, shameful for this deed of infamy or that, lie scattered round
+the neighbourhood like bones about a battlefield; and most of your
+guide's stories are such as the "young person" educated in Germany had
+best not hear.  His life-sized portrait hangs in the fine Zwinger, which
+he built as an arena for his wild beast fights when the people grew tired
+of them in the market-place; a beetle-browed, frankly animal man, but
+with the culture and taste that so often wait upon animalism.  Modern
+Dresden undoubtedly owes much to him.
+
+But what the stranger in Dresden stares at most is, perhaps, its electric
+trams.  These huge vehicles flash through the streets at from ten to
+twenty miles an hour, taking curves and corners after the manner of an
+Irish car driver.  Everybody travels by them, excepting only officers in
+uniform, who must not.  Ladies in evening dress, going to ball or opera,
+porters with their baskets, sit side by side.  They are all-important in
+the streets, and everything and everybody makes haste to get out of their
+way.  If you do not get out of their way, and you still happen to be
+alive when picked up, then on your recovery you are fined for having been
+in their way.  This teaches you to be wary of them.
+
+One afternoon Harris took a "bummel" by himself.  In the evening, as we
+sat listening to the band at the Belvedere, Harris said, _a propos_ of
+nothing in particular, "These Germans have no sense of humour."
+
+"What makes you think that?" I asked.
+
+"Why, this afternoon," he answered, "I jumped on one of those electric
+tramcars.  I wanted to see the town, so I stood outside on the little
+platform--what do you call it?"
+
+"The Stehplatz," I suggested.
+
+"That's it," said Harris.  "Well, you know the way they shake you about,
+and how you have to look out for the corners, and mind yourself when they
+stop and when they start?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"There were about half a dozen of us standing there," he continued, "and,
+of course, I am not experienced.  The thing started suddenly, and that
+jerked me backwards.  I fell against a stout gentleman, just behind me.
+He could not have been standing very firmly himself, and he, in his turn,
+fell back against a boy who was carrying a trumpet in a green baize case.
+They never smiled, neither the man nor the boy with the trumpet; they
+just stood there and looked sulky.  I was going to say I was sorry, but
+before I could get the words out the tram eased up, for some reason or
+other, and that, of course, shot me forward again, and I butted into a
+white-haired old chap, who looked to me like a professor.  Well, _he_
+never smiled, never moved a muscle."
+
+"Maybe, he was thinking of something else," I suggested.
+
+"That could not have been the case with them all," replied Harris, "and
+in the course of that journey, I must have fallen against every one of
+them at least three times.  You see," explained Harris, "they knew when
+the corners were coming, and in which direction to brace themselves.  I,
+as a stranger, was naturally at a disadvantage.  The way I rolled and
+staggered about that platform, clutching wildly now at this man and now
+at that, must have been really comic.  I don't say it was high-class
+humour, but it would have amused most people.  Those Germans seemed to
+see no fun in it whatever--just seemed anxious, that was all.  There was
+one man, a little man, who stood with his back against the brake; I fell
+against him five times, I counted them.  You would have expected the
+fifth time would have dragged a laugh out of him, but it didn't; he
+merely looked tired.  They are a dull lot."
+
+George also had an adventure at Dresden.  There was a shop near the
+Altmarkt, in the window of which were exhibited some cushions for sale.
+The proper business of the shop was handling of glass and china; the
+cushions appeared to be in the nature of an experiment.  They were very
+beautiful cushions, hand-embroidered on satin.  We often passed the shop,
+and every time George paused and examined those cushions.  He said he
+thought his aunt would like one.
+
+George has been very attentive to this aunt of his during the journey.  He
+has written her quite a long letter every day, and from every town we
+stop at he sends her off a present.  To my mind, he is overdoing the
+business, and more than once I have expostulated with him.  His aunt will
+be meeting other aunts, and talking to them; the whole class will become
+disorganised and unruly.  As a nephew, I object to the impossible
+standard that George is setting up.  But he will not listen.
+
+Therefore it was that on the Saturday he left us after lunch, saying he
+would go round to that shop and get one of those cushions for his aunt.
+He said he would not be long, and suggested our waiting for him.
+
+We waited for what seemed to me rather a long time.  When he rejoined us
+he was empty handed, and looked worried.  We asked him where his cushion
+was.  He said he hadn't got a cushion, said he had changed his mind, said
+he didn't think his aunt would care for a cushion.  Evidently something
+was amiss.  We tried to get at the bottom of it, but he was not
+communicative.  Indeed, his answers after our twentieth question or
+thereabouts became quite short.
+
+In the evening, however, when he and I happened to be alone, he broached
+the subject himself.  He said:
+
+"They are somewhat peculiar in some things, these Germans."
+
+I said: "What has happened?"
+
+"Well," he answered, "there was that cushion I wanted."
+
+"For your aunt," I remarked.
+
+"Why not?" he returned.  He was huffy in a moment; I never knew a man so
+touchy about an aunt.  "Why shouldn't I send a cushion to my aunt?"
+
+"Don't get excited," I replied.  "I am not objecting; I respect you for
+it."
+
+He recovered his temper, and went on:
+
+"There were four in the window, if you remember, all very much alike, and
+each one labelled in plain figures twenty marks.  I don't pretend to
+speak German fluently, but I can generally make myself understood with a
+little effort, and gather the sense of what is said to me, provided they
+don't gabble.  I went into the shop.  A young girl came up to me; she was
+a pretty, quiet little soul, one might almost say, demure; not at all the
+sort of girl from whom you would have expected such a thing.  I was never
+more surprised in all my life."
+
+"Surprised about what?" I said.
+
+George always assumes you know the end of the story while he is telling
+you the beginning; it is an annoying method.
+
+"At what happened," replied George; "at what I am telling you.  She
+smiled and asked me what I wanted.  I understood that all right; there
+could have been no mistake about that.  I put down a twenty mark piece on
+the counter and said:
+
+"Please give me a cushion."
+
+"She stared at me as if I had asked for a feather bed.  I thought, maybe,
+she had not heard, so I repeated it louder.  If I had chucked her under
+the chin she could not have looked more surprised or indignant.
+
+"She said she thought I must be making a mistake.
+
+"I did not want to begin a long conversation and find myself stranded.  I
+said there was no mistake.  I pointed to my twenty mark piece, and
+repeated for the third time that I wanted a cushion, 'a twenty mark
+cushion.'
+
+"Another girl came up, an elder girl; and the first girl repeated to her
+what I had just said: she seemed quite excited about it.  The second girl
+did not believe her--did not think I looked the sort of man who would
+want a cushion.  To make sure, she put the question to me herself.
+
+"'Did you say you wanted a cushion?' she asked.
+
+"'I have said it three times,' I answered.  'I will say it again--I want
+a cushion.'
+
+"She said: 'Then you can't have one.'
+
+"I was getting angry by this time.  If I hadn't really wanted the thing I
+should have walked out of the shop; but there the cushions were in the
+window, evidently for sale.  I didn't see _why_ I couldn't have one.
+
+"I said: 'I will have one!'  It is a simple sentence.  I said it with
+determination.
+
+"A third girl came up at this point, the three representing, I fancy, the
+whole force of the shop.  She was a bright-eyed, saucy-looking little
+wench, this last one.  On any other occasion I might have been pleased to
+see her; now, her coming only irritated me.  I didn't see the need of
+three girls for this business.
+
+"The first two girls started explaining the thing to the third girl, and
+before they were half-way through the third girl began to giggle--she was
+the sort of girl who would giggle at anything.  That done, they fell to
+chattering like Jenny Wrens, all three together; and between every half-
+dozen words they looked across at me; and the more they looked at me the
+more the third girl giggled; and before they had finished they were all
+three giggling, the little idiots; you might have thought I was a clown,
+giving a private performance.
+
+"When she was steady enough to move, the third girl came up to me; she
+was still giggling.  She said:
+
+"'If you get it, will you go?'
+
+"I did not quite understand her at first, and she repeated it.
+
+"'This cushion.  When you've got it, will you go--away--at once?'
+
+"I was only too anxious to go.  I told her so.  But, I added I was not
+going without it.  I had made up my mind to have that cushion now if I
+stopped in the shop all night for it.
+
+"She rejoined the other two girls.  I thought they were going to get me
+the cushion and have done with the business.  Instead of that, the
+strangest thing possible happened.  The two other girls got behind the
+first girl, all three still giggling, Heaven knows what about, and pushed
+her towards me.  They pushed her close up to me, and then, before I knew
+what was happening, she put her hands on my shoulders, stood up on
+tiptoe, and kissed me.  After which, burying her face in her apron, she
+ran off, followed by the second girl.  The third girl opened the door for
+me, and so evidently expected me to go, that in my confusion I went,
+leaving my twenty marks behind me.  I don't say I minded the kiss, though
+I did not particularly want it, while I did want the cushion.  I don't
+like to go back to the shop.  I cannot understand the thing at all."
+
+I said: "What did you ask for?"
+
+He said: "A cushion"
+
+I said: "That is what you wanted, I know.  What I mean is, what was the
+actual German word you said."
+
+He replied: "A kuss."
+
+I said: "You have nothing to complain of.  It is somewhat confusing.  A
+'kuss' sounds as if it ought to be a cushion, but it is not; it is a
+kiss, while a 'kissen' is a cushion.  You muddled up the two words--people
+have done it before.  I don't know much about this sort of thing myself;
+but you asked for a twenty mark kiss, and from your description of the
+girl some people might consider the price reasonable.  Anyhow, I should
+not tell Harris.  If I remember rightly, he also has an aunt."
+
+George agreed with me it would be better not.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Mr. and Miss Jones, of Manchester--The benefits of cocoa--A hint to the
+Peace Society--The window as a mediaeval argument--The favourite
+Christian recreation--The language of the guide--How to repair the
+ravages of time--George tries a bottle--The fate of the German beer
+drinker--Harris and I resolve to do a good action--The usual sort of
+statue--Harris and his friends--A pepperless Paradise--Women and towns.
+
+We were on our way to Prague, and were waiting in the great hall of the
+Dresden Station until such time as the powers-that-be should permit us on
+to the platform.  George, who had wandered to the bookstall, returned to
+us with a wild look in his eyes.  He said:
+
+"I've seen it."
+
+I said, "Seen what?"
+
+He was too excited to answer intelligently.  He said
+
+"It's here.  It's coming this way, both of them.  If you wait, you'll see
+it for yourselves.  I'm not joking; it's the real thing."
+
+As is usual about this period, some paragraphs, more or less serious, had
+been appearing in the papers concerning the sea-serpent, and I thought
+for the moment he must be referring to this.  A moment's reflection,
+however, told me that here, in the middle of Europe, three hundred miles
+from the coast, such a thing was impossible.  Before I could question him
+further, he seized me by the arm.
+
+"Look!" he said; "now am I exaggerating?"
+
+I turned my head and saw what, I suppose, few living Englishmen have ever
+seen before--the travelling Britisher according to the Continental idea,
+accompanied by his daughter.  They were coming towards us in the flesh
+and blood, unless we were dreaming, alive and concrete--the English
+"Milor" and the English "Mees," as for generations they have been
+portrayed in the Continental comic press and upon the Continental stage.
+They were perfect in every detail.  The man was tall and thin, with sandy
+hair, a huge nose, and long Dundreary whiskers.  Over a pepper-and-salt
+suit he wore a light overcoat, reaching almost to his heels.  His white
+helmet was ornamented with a green veil; a pair of opera-glasses hung at
+his side, and in his lavender-gloved hand he carried an alpenstock a
+little taller than himself.  His daughter was long and angular.  Her
+dress I cannot describe: my grandfather, poor gentleman, might have been
+able to do so; it would have been more familiar to him.  I can only say
+that it appeared to me unnecessarily short, exhibiting a pair of
+ankles--if I may be permitted to refer to such points--that, from an
+artistic point of view, called rather for concealment.  Her hat made me
+think of Mrs. Hemans; but why I cannot explain.  She wore side-spring
+boots--"prunella," I believe, used to be the trade name--mittens, and
+pince-nez.  She also carried an alpenstock (there is not a mountain
+within a hundred miles of Dresden) and a black bag strapped to her waist.
+Her teeth stuck out like a rabbit's, and her figure was that of a bolster
+on stilts.
+
+Harris rushed for his camera, and of course could not find it; he never
+can when he wants it.  Whenever we see Harris scuttling up and down like
+a lost dog, shouting, "Where's my camera?  What the dickens have I done
+with my camera?  Don't either of you remember where I put my
+camera?"--then we know that for the first time that day he has come
+across something worth photographing.  Later on, he remembered it was in
+his bag; that is where it would be on an occasion like this.
+
+They were not content with appearance; they acted the thing to the
+letter.  They walked gaping round them at every step.  The gentleman had
+an open Baedeker in his hand, and the lady carried a phrase book.  They
+talked French that nobody could understand, and German that they could
+not translate themselves!  The man poked at officials with his alpenstock
+to attract their attention, and the lady, her eye catching sight of an
+advertisement of somebody's cocoa, said "Shocking!" and turned the other
+way.
+
+Really, there was some excuse for her.  One notices, even in England, the
+home of the proprieties, that the lady who drinks cocoa appears,
+according to the poster, to require very little else in this world; a
+yard or so of art muslin at the most.  On the Continent she dispenses, so
+far as one can judge, with every other necessity of life.  Not only is
+cocoa food and drink to her, it should be clothes also, according to the
+idea of the cocoa manufacturer.  But this by the way.
+
+Of course, they immediately became the centre of attraction.  By being
+able to render them some slight assistance, I gained the advantage of
+five minutes' conversation with them.  They were very affable.  The
+gentleman told me his name was Jones, and that he came from Manchester,
+but he did not seem to know what part of Manchester, or where Manchester
+was.  I asked him where he was going to, but he evidently did not know.
+He said it depended.  I asked him if he did not find an alpenstock a
+clumsy thing to walk about with through a crowded town; he admitted that
+occasionally it did get in the way.  I asked him if he did not find a
+veil interfere with his view of things; he explained that you only wore
+it when the flies became troublesome.  I enquired of the lady if she did
+not find the wind blow cold; she said she had noticed it, especially at
+the corners.  I did not ask these questions one after another as I have
+here put them down; I mixed them up with general conversation, and we
+parted on good terms.
+
+I have pondered much upon the apparition, and have come to a definite
+opinion.  A man I met later at Frankfort, and to whom I described the
+pair, said he had seen them himself in Paris, three weeks after the
+termination of the Fashoda incident; while a traveller for some English
+steel works whom we met in Strassburg remembered having seen them in
+Berlin during the excitement caused by the Transvaal question.  My
+conclusion is that they were actors out of work, hired to do this thing
+in the interest of international peace.  The French Foreign Office,
+wishful to allay the anger of the Parisian mob clamouring for war with
+England, secured this admirable couple and sent them round the town.  You
+cannot be amused at a thing, and at the same time want to kill it.  The
+French nation saw the English citizen and citizeness--no caricature, but
+the living reality--and their indignation exploded in laughter.  The
+success of the stratagem prompted them later on to offer their services
+to the German Government, with the beneficial results that we all know.
+
+Our own Government might learn the lesson.  It might be as well to keep
+near Downing Street a few small, fat Frenchmen, to be sent round the
+country when occasion called for it, shrugging their shoulders and eating
+frog sandwiches; or a file of untidy, lank-haired Germans might be
+retained, to walk about, smoking long pipes, saying "So."  The public
+would laugh and exclaim, "War with such?  It would be too absurd."
+Failing the Government, I recommend the scheme to the Peace Society.
+
+Our visit to Prague we were compelled to lengthen somewhat.  Prague is
+one of the most interesting towns in Europe.  Its stones are saturated
+with history and romance; its every suburb must have been a battlefield.
+It is the town that conceived the Reformation and hatched the Thirty
+Years' War.  But half Prague's troubles, one imagines, might have been
+saved to it, had it possessed windows less large and temptingly
+convenient.  The first of these mighty catastrophes it set rolling by
+throwing the seven Catholic councillors from the windows of its Rathhaus
+on to the pikes of the Hussites below.  Later, it gave the signal for the
+second by again throwing the Imperial councillors from the windows of the
+old Burg in the Hradschin--Prague's second "Fenstersturz."  Since, other
+fateful questions have been decide in Prague, one assumes from their
+having been concluded without violence that such must have been discussed
+in cellars.  The window, as an argument, one feels, would always have
+proved too strong a temptation to any true-born Praguer.
+
+In the Teynkirche stands the worm-eaten pulpit from which preached John
+Huss.  One may hear from the selfsame desk to-day the voice of a Papist
+priest, while in far-off Constance a rude block of stone, half ivy
+hidden, marks the spot where Huss and Jerome died burning at the stake.
+History is fond of her little ironies.  In this same Teynkirche lies
+buried Tycho Brahe, the astronomer, who made the common mistake of
+thinking the earth, with its eleven hundred creeds and one humanity, the
+centre of the universe; but who otherwise observed the stars clearly.
+
+Through Prague's dirty, palace-bordered alleys must have pressed often in
+hot haste blind Ziska and open-minded Wallenstein--they have dubbed him
+"The Hero" in Prague; and the town is honestly proud of having owned him
+for citizen.  In his gloomy palace in the Waldstein-Platz they show as a
+sacred spot the cabinet where he prayed, and seem to have persuaded
+themselves he really had a soul.  Its steep, winding ways must have been
+choked a dozen times, now by Sigismund's flying legions, followed by
+fierce-killing Tarborites, and now by pale Protestants pursued by the
+victorious Catholics of Maximilian.  Now Saxons, now Bavarians, and now
+French; now the saints of Gustavus Adolphus, and now the steel fighting
+machines of Frederick the Great, have thundered at its gates and fought
+upon its bridges.
+
+The Jews have always been an important feature of Prague.  Occasionally
+they have assisted the Christians in their favourite occupation of
+slaughtering one another, and the great flag suspended from the vaulting
+of the Altneuschule testifies to the courage with which they helped
+Catholic Ferdinand to resist the Protestant Swedes.  The Prague Ghetto
+was one of the first to be established in Europe, and in the tiny
+synagogue, still standing, the Jew of Prague has worshipped for eight
+hundred years, his women folk devoutly listening, without, at the ear
+holes provided for them in the massive walls.  A Jewish cemetery
+adjacent, "Bethchajim, or the House of Life," seems as though it were
+bursting with its dead.  Within its narrow acre it was the law of
+centuries that here or nowhere must the bones of Israel rest.  So the
+worn and broken tombstones lie piled in close confusion, as though tossed
+and tumbled by the struggling host beneath.
+
+The Ghetto walls have long been levelled, but the living Jews of Prague
+still cling to their foetid lanes, though these are being rapidly
+replaced by fine new streets that promise to eventually transform this
+quarter into the handsomest part of the town.
+
+At Dresden they advised us not to talk German in Prague.  For years
+racial animosity between the German minority and the Czech majority has
+raged throughout Bohemia, and to be mistaken for a German in certain
+streets of Prague is inconvenient to a man whose staying powers in a race
+are not what once they were.  However, we did talk German in certain
+streets in Prague; it was a case of talking German or nothing.  The Czech
+dialect is said to be of great antiquity and of highly scientific
+cultivation.  Its alphabet contains forty-two letters, suggestive to a
+stranger of Chinese.  It is not a language to be picked up in a hurry.  We
+decided that on the whole there would be less risk to our constitution in
+keeping to German, and as a matter of fact no harm came to us.  The
+explanation I can only surmise.  The Praguer is an exceedingly acute
+person; some subtle falsity of accent, some slight grammatical
+inaccuracy, may have crept into our German, revealing to him the fact
+that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, we were no true-born
+Deutscher.  I do not assert this; I put it forward as a possibility.
+
+To avoid unnecessary danger, however, we did our sight-seeing with the
+aid of a guide.  No guide I have ever come across is perfect.  This one
+had two distinct failings.  His English was decidedly weak.  Indeed, it
+was not English at all.  I do not know what you would call it.  It was
+not altogether his fault; he had learnt English from a Scotch lady.  I
+understand Scotch fairly well--to keep abreast of modern English
+literature this is necessary,--but to understand broad Scotch talked with
+a Sclavonic accent, occasionally relieved by German modifications, taxes
+the intelligence.  For the first hour it was difficult to rid one's self
+of the conviction that the man was choking.  Every moment we expected him
+to die on our hands.  In the course of the morning we grew accustomed to
+him, and rid ourselves of the instinct to throw him on his back every
+time he opened his mouth, and tear his clothes from him.  Later, we came
+to understand a part of what he said, and this led to the discovery of
+his second failing.
+
+It would seem he had lately invented a hair-restorer, which he had
+persuaded a local chemist to take up and advertise.  Half his time he had
+been pointing out to us, not the beauties of Prague, but the benefits
+likely to accrue to the human race from the use of this concoction; and
+the conventional agreement with which, under the impression he was waxing
+eloquent concerning views and architecture, we had met his enthusiasm he
+had attributed to sympathetic interest in this wretched wash of his.
+
+The result was that now there was no keeping him away from the subject.
+Ruined palaces and crumbling churches he dismissed with curt reference as
+mere frivolities, encouraging a morbid taste for the decadent.  His duty,
+as he saw it, was not to lead us to dwell upon the ravages of time, but
+rather to direct our attention to the means of repairing them.  What had
+we to do with broken-headed heroes, or bald-headed saints?  Our interest
+should be surely in the living world; in the maidens with their flowing
+tresses, or the flowing tresses they might have, by judicious use of
+"Kophkeo," in the young men with their fierce moustaches--as pictured on
+the label.
+
+Unconsciously, in his own mind, he had divided the world into two
+sections.  The Past ("Before Use"), a sickly, disagreeable-looking,
+uninteresting world.  The Future ("After Use") a fat, jolly, God-bless-
+everybody sort of world; and this unfitted him as a guide to scenes of
+mediaeval history.
+
+He sent us each a bottle of the stuff to our hotel.  It appeared that in
+the early part of our converse with him we had, unwittingly, clamoured
+for it.  Personally, I can neither praise it nor condemn it.  A long
+series of disappointments has disheartened me; added to which a permanent
+atmosphere of paraffin, however faint, is apt to cause remark, especially
+in the case of a married man.  Now, I never try even the sample.
+
+I gave my bottle to George.  He asked for it to send to a man he knew in
+Leeds.  I learnt later that Harris had given him his bottle also, to send
+to the same man.
+
+A suggestion of onions has clung to this tour since we left Prague.
+George has noticed it himself.  He attributes it to the prevalence of
+garlic in European cooking.
+
+It was in Prague that Harris and I did a kind and friendly thing to
+George.  We had noticed for some time past that George was getting too
+fond of Pilsener beer.  This German beer is an insidious drink,
+especially in hot weather; but it does not do to imbibe too freely of it.
+It does not get into your head, but after a time it spoils your waist.  I
+always say to myself on entering Germany:
+
+"Now, I will drink no German beer.  The white wine of the country, with a
+little soda-water; perhaps occasionally a glass of Ems or potash.  But
+beer, never--or, at all events, hardly ever."
+
+It is a good and useful resolution, which I recommend to all travellers.
+I only wish I could keep to it myself.  George, although I urged him,
+refused to bind himself by any such hard and fast limit.  He said that in
+moderation German beer was good.
+
+"One glass in the morning," said George, "one in the evening, or even
+two.  That will do no harm to anyone."
+
+Maybe he was right.  It was his half-dozen glasses that troubled Harris
+and myself.
+
+"We ought to do something to stop it," said Harris; "it is becoming
+serious."
+
+"It's hereditary, so he has explained to me," I answered.  "It seems his
+family have always been thirsty."
+
+"There is Apollinaris water," replied Harris, "which, I believe, with a
+little lemon squeezed into it, is practically harmless.  What I am
+thinking about is his figure.  He will lose all his natural elegance."
+
+We talked the matter over, and, Providence aiding us, we fixed upon a
+plan.  For the ornamentation of the town a new statue had just been cast.
+I forget of whom it was a statue.  I only remember that in the essentials
+it was the usual sort of street statue, representing the usual sort of
+gentleman, with the usual stiff neck, riding the usual sort of horse--the
+horse that always walks on its hind legs, keeping its front paws for
+beating time.  But in detail it possessed individuality.  Instead of the
+usual sword or baton, the man was holding, stretched out in his hand, his
+own plumed hat; and the horse, instead of the usual waterfall for a tail,
+possessed a somewhat attenuated appendage that somehow appeared out of
+keeping with his ostentatious behaviour.  One felt that a horse with a
+tail like that would not have pranced so much.
+
+It stood in a small square not far from the further end of the
+Karlsbrucke, but it stood there only temporarily.  Before deciding
+finally where to fix it, the town authorities had resolved, very
+sensibly, to judge by practical test where it would look best.
+Accordingly, they had made three rough copies of the statue--mere wooden
+profiles, things that would not bear looking at closely, but which,
+viewed from a little distance, produced all the effect that was
+necessary.  One of these they had set up at the approach to the Franz-
+Josefsbrucke, a second stood in the open space behind the theatre, and
+the third in the centre of the Wenzelsplatz.
+
+"If George is not in the secret of this thing," said Harris--we were
+walking by ourselves for an hour, he having remained behind in the hotel
+to write a letter to his aunt,--"if he has not observed these statues,
+then by their aid we will make a better and a thinner man of him, and
+that this very evening."
+
+So during dinner we sounded him, judiciously; and finding him ignorant of
+the matter, we took him out, and led him by side-streets to the place
+where stood the real statue.  George was for looking at it and passing
+on, as is his way with statues, but we insisted on his pulling up and
+viewing the thing conscientiously.  We walked him round that statue four
+times, and showed it to him from every possible point of view.  I think,
+on the whole, we rather bored him with the thing, but our object was to
+impress it upon him.  We told him the history of the man who rode upon
+the horse, the name of the artist who had made the statue, how much it
+weighed, how much it measured.  We worked that statue into his system.  By
+the time we had done with him he knew more about that statue, for the
+time being, than he knew about anything else.  We soaked him in that
+statue, and only let him go at last on the condition that he would come
+again with us in the morning, when we could all see it better, and for
+such purpose we saw to it that he made a note in his pocket-book of the
+place where the statue stood.
+
+Then we accompanied him to his favourite beer hall, and sat beside him,
+telling him anecdotes of men who, unaccustomed to German beer, and
+drinking too much of it, had gone mad and developed homicidal mania; of
+men who had died young through drinking German beer; of lovers that
+German beer had been the means of parting for ever from beautiful girls.
+
+At ten o'clock we started to walk back to the hotel.  It was a stormy-
+looking night, with heavy clouds drifting over a light moon.  Harris
+said:
+
+"We won't go back the same way we came; we'll walk back by the river.  It
+is lovely in the moonlight."
+
+Harris told a sad history, as we walked, about a man he once knew, who is
+now in a home for harmless imbeciles.  He said he recalled the story
+because it was on just such another night as this that he was walking
+with that man the very last time he ever saw the poor fellow.  They were
+strolling down the Thames Embankment, Harris said, and the man frightened
+him then by persisting that he saw the statue of the Duke of Wellington
+at the corner of Westminster Bridge, when, as everybody knows, it stands
+in Piccadilly.
+
+It was at this exact instant that we came in sight of the first of these
+wooden copies.  It occupied the centre of a small, railed-in square a
+little above us on the opposite side of the way.  George suddenly stood
+still and leant against the wall of the quay.
+
+"What's the matter?" I said; "feeling giddy?"
+
+He said: "I do, a little.  Let's rest here a moment."
+
+He stood there with his eyes glued to the thing.
+
+He said, speaking huskily:
+
+"Talking of statues, what always strikes me is how very much one statue
+is like another statue."
+
+Harris said: "I cannot agree with you there--pictures, if you like.  Some
+pictures are very like other pictures, but with a statue there is always
+something distinctive.  Take that statue we saw early in the evening,"
+continued Harris, "before we went into the concert hall.  It represented
+a man sitting on a horse.  In Prague you will see other statues of men on
+horses, but nothing at all like that one."
+
+"Yes they are," said George; "they are all alike.  It's always the same
+horse, and it's always the same man.  They are all exactly alike.  It's
+idiotic nonsense to say they are not."
+
+He appeared to be angry with Harris.
+
+"What makes you think so?" I asked.
+
+"What makes me think so?" retorted George, now turning upon me.  "Why,
+look at that damned thing over there!"
+
+I said: "What damned thing?"
+
+"Why, that thing," said George; "look at it!  There is the same horse
+with half a tail, standing on its hind legs; the same man without his
+hat; the same--"
+
+Harris said: "You are talking now about the statue we saw in the
+Ringplatz."
+
+"No, I'm not," replied George; "I'm talking about the statue over there."
+
+"What statue?" said Harris.
+
+George looked at Harris; but Harris is a man who might, with care, have
+been a fair amateur actor.  His face merely expressed friendly sorrow,
+mingled with alarm.  Next, George turned his gaze on me.  I endeavoured,
+so far as lay with me, to copy Harris's expression, adding to it on my
+own account a touch of reproof.
+
+"Will you have a cab?" I said as kindly as I could to George.  "I'll run
+and get one."
+
+"What the devil do I want with a cab?" he answered, ungraciously.  "Can't
+you fellows understand a joke?  It's like being out with a couple of
+confounded old women," saying which, he started off across the bridge,
+leaving us to follow.
+
+"I am so glad that was only a joke of yours," said Harris, on our
+overtaking him.  "I knew a case of softening of the brain that began--"
+
+"Oh, you're a silly ass!" said George, cutting him short; "you know
+everything."
+
+He was really most unpleasant in his manner.
+
+We took him round by the riverside of the theatre.  We told him it was
+the shortest way, and, as a matter of fact, it was.  In the open space
+behind the theatre stood the second of these wooden apparitions.  George
+looked at it, and again stood still.
+
+"What's the matter?" said Harris, kindly.  "You are not ill, are you?"
+
+"I don't believe this is the shortest way," said George.
+
+"I assure you it is," persisted Harris.
+
+"Well, I'm going the other," said George; and he turned and went, we, as
+before, following him.
+
+Along the Ferdinand Strasse Harris and I talked about private lunatic
+asylums, which, Harris said, were not well managed in England.  He said a
+friend of his, a patient in a lunatic asylum--
+
+George said, interrupting: "You appear to have a large number of friends
+in lunatic asylums."
+
+He said it in a most insulting tone, as though to imply that that is
+where one would look for the majority of Harris's friends.  But Harris
+did not get angry; he merely replied, quite mildly:
+
+"Well, it really is extraordinary, when one comes to think of it, how
+many of them have gone that way sooner or later.  I get quite nervous
+sometimes, now."
+
+At the corner of the Wenzelsplatz, Harris, who was a few steps ahead of
+us, paused.
+
+"It's a fine street, isn't it?" he said, sticking his hands in his
+pockets, and gazing up at it admiringly.
+
+George and I followed suit.  Two hundred yards away from us, in its very
+centre, was the third of these ghostly statues.  I think it was the best
+of the three--the most like, the most deceptive.  It stood boldly
+outlined against the wild sky: the horse on its hind legs, with its
+curiously attenuated tail; the man bareheaded, pointing with his plumed
+hat to the now entirely visible moon.
+
+"I think, if you don't mind," said George--he spoke with almost a
+pathetic ring in his voice, his aggressiveness had completely fallen from
+him,--"that I will have that cab, if there's one handy."
+
+"I thought you were looking queer," said Harris, kindly.  "It's your
+head, isn't it?"
+
+"Perhaps it is," answered George.
+
+"I have noticed it coming on," said Harris; "but I didn't like to say
+anything to you.  You fancy you see things, don't you?"
+
+"No, no; it isn't that," replied George, rather quickly.  "I don't know
+what it is."
+
+"I do," said Harris, solemnly, "and I'll tell you.  It's this German beer
+that you are drinking.  I have known a case where a man--"
+
+"Don't tell me about him just now," said George.  "I dare say it's true,
+but somehow I don't feel I want to hear about him."
+
+"You are not used to it," said Harris.
+
+"I shall give it up from to-night," said George.  "I think you must be
+right; it doesn't seem to agree with me."
+
+We took him home, and saw him to bed.  He was very gentle and quite
+grateful.
+
+One evening later on, after a long day's ride, followed by a most
+satisfactory dinner, we started him on a big cigar, and, removing things
+from his reach, told him of this stratagem that for his good we had
+planned.
+
+"How many copies of that statue did you say we saw?" asked George, after
+we had finished.
+
+"Three," replied Harris.
+
+"Only three?" said George.  "Are you sure?"
+
+"Positive," replied Harris.  "Why?"
+
+"Oh, nothing!" answered George.
+
+But I don't think he quite believed Harris.
+
+From Prague we travelled to Nuremberg, through Carlsbad.  Good Germans,
+when they die, go, they say, to Carlsbad, as good Americans to Paris.
+This I doubt, seeing that it is a small place with no convenience for a
+crowd.  In Carlsbad, you rise at five, the fashionable hour for
+promenade, when the band plays under the Colonnade, and the Sprudel is
+filled with a packed throng over a mile long, being from six to eight in
+the morning.  Here you may hear more languages spoken than the Tower of
+Babel could have echoed.  Polish Jews and Russian princes, Chinese
+mandarins and Turkish pashas, Norwegians looking as if they had stepped
+out of Ibsen's plays, women from the Boulevards, Spanish grandees and
+English countesses, mountaineers from Montenegro and millionaires from
+Chicago, you will find every dozen yards.  Every luxury in the world
+Carlsbad provides for its visitors, with the one exception of pepper.
+That you cannot get within five miles of the town for money; what you can
+get there for love is not worth taking away.  Pepper, to the liver
+brigade that forms four-fifths of Carlsbad's customers, is poison; and,
+prevention being better than cure, it is carefully kept out of the
+neighbourhood.  "Pepper parties" are formed in Carlsbad to journey to
+some place without the boundary, and there indulge in pepper orgies.
+
+Nuremberg, if one expects a town of mediaeval appearance, disappoints.
+Quaint corners, picturesque glimpses, there are in plenty; but everywhere
+they are surrounded and intruded upon by the modern, and even what is
+ancient is not nearly so ancient as one thought it was.  After all, a
+town, like a woman, is only as old as it looks; and Nuremberg is still a
+comfortable-looking dame, its age somewhat difficult to conceive under
+its fresh paint and stucco in the blaze of the gas and the electric
+light.  Still, looking closely, you may see its wrinkled walls and grey
+towers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Harris breaks the law--The helpful man: The dangers that beset him--George
+sets forth upon a career of crime--Those to whom Germany would come as a
+boon and a blessing--The English Sinner: His disappointments--The German
+Sinner: His exceptional advantages--What you may not do with your bed--An
+inexpensive vice--The German dog: His simple goodness--The misbehaviour
+of the beetle--A people that go the way they ought to go--The German
+small boy: His love of legality--How to go astray with a perambulator--The
+German student: His chastened wilfulness.
+
+All three of us, by some means or another, managed, between Nuremberg and
+the Black Forest, to get into trouble.
+
+Harris led off at Stuttgart by insulting an official.  Stuttgart is a
+charming town, clean and bright, a smaller Dresden.  It has the
+additional attraction of containing little that one need to go out of
+one's way to see: a medium-sized picture gallery, a small museum of
+antiquities, and half a palace, and you are through with the entire thing
+and can enjoy yourself.  Harris did not know it was an official he was
+insulting.  He took it for a fireman (it looked like a fireman), and he
+called it a "dummer Esel."
+
+In German you are not permitted to call an official a "silly ass," but
+undoubtedly this particular man was one.  What had happened was this:
+Harris in the Stadgarten, anxious to get out, and seeing a gate open
+before him, had stepped over a wire into the street.  Harris maintains he
+never saw it, but undoubtedly there was hanging to the wire a notice,
+"Durchgang Verboten!"  The man, who was standing near the gates stopped
+Harris, and pointed out to him this notice.  Harris thanked him, and
+passed on.  The man came after him, and explained that treatment of the
+matter in such off-hand way could not be allowed; what was necessary to
+put the business right was that Harris should step back over the wire
+into the garden.  Harris pointed out to the man that the notice said
+"going through forbidden," and that, therefore, by re-entering the garden
+that way he would be infringing the law a second time.  The man saw this
+for himself, and suggested that to get over the difficulty Harris should
+go back into the garden by the proper entrance, which was round the
+corner, and afterwards immediately come out again by the same gate.  Then
+it was that Harris called the man a silly ass.  That delayed us a day,
+and cost Harris forty marks.
+
+I followed suit at Carlsruhe, by stealing a bicycle.  I did not mean to
+steal the bicycle; I was merely trying to be useful.  The train was on
+the point of starting when I noticed, as I thought, Harris's bicycle
+still in the goods van.  No one was about to help me.  I jumped into the
+van and hauled it out, only just in time.  Wheeling it down the platform
+in triumph, I came across Harris's bicycle, standing against a wall
+behind some milk-cans.  The bicycle I had secured was not Harris's, but
+some other man's.
+
+It was an awkward situation.  In England, I should have gone to the
+stationmaster and explained my mistake.  But in Germany they are not
+content with your explaining a little matter of this sort to one man:
+they take you round and get you to explain it to about half a dozen; and
+if any one of the half dozen happens not to be handy, or not to have time
+just then to listen to you, they have a habit of leaving you over for the
+night to finish your explanation the next morning.  I thought I would
+just put the thing out of sight, and then, without making any fuss or
+show, take a short walk.  I found a wood shed, which seemed just the very
+place, and was wheeling the bicycle into it when, unfortunately, a red-
+hatted railway official, with the airs of a retired field-marshal, caught
+sight of me and came up.  He said:
+
+"What are you doing with that bicycle?"
+
+I said: "I am going to put it in this wood shed out of the way."  I tried
+to convey by my tone that I was performing a kind and thoughtful action,
+for which the railway officials ought to thank me; but he was
+unresponsive.
+
+"Is it your bicycle?" he said.
+
+"Well, not exactly," I replied.
+
+"Whose is it?" he asked, quite sharply.
+
+"I can't tell you," I answered.  "I don't know whose bicycle it is."
+
+"Where did you get it from?" was his next question.  There was a
+suspiciousness about his tone that was almost insulting.
+
+"I got it," I answered, with as much calm dignity as at the moment I
+could assume, "out of the train."
+
+"The fact is," I continued, frankly, "I have made a mistake."
+
+He did not allow me time to finish.  He merely said he thought so too,
+and blew a whistle.
+
+Recollection of the subsequent proceedings is not, so far as I am
+concerned, amusing.  By a miracle of good luck--they say Providence
+watches over certain of us--the incident happened in Carlsruhe, where I
+possess a German friend, an official of some importance.  Upon what would
+have been my fate had the station not been at Carlsruhe, or had my friend
+been from home, I do not care to dwell; as it was I got off, as the
+saying is, by the skin of my teeth.  I should like to add that I left
+Carlsruhe without a stain upon my character, but that would not be the
+truth.  My going scot free is regarded in police circles there to this
+day as a grave miscarriage of justice.
+
+But all lesser sin sinks into insignificance beside the lawlessness of
+George.  The bicycle incident had thrown us all into confusion, with the
+result that we lost George altogether.  It transpired subsequently that
+he was waiting for us outside the police court; but this at the time we
+did not know.  We thought, maybe, he had gone on to Baden by himself; and
+anxious to get away from Carlsruhe, and not, perhaps, thinking out things
+too clearly, we jumped into the next train that came up and proceeded
+thither.  When George, tired of waiting, returned to the station, he
+found us gone and he found his luggage gone.  Harris had his ticket; I
+was acting as banker to the party, so that he had in his pocket only some
+small change.  Excusing himself upon these grounds, he thereupon
+commenced deliberately a career of crime that, reading it later, as set
+forth baldly in the official summons, made the hair of Harris and myself
+almost to stand on end.
+
+German travelling, it may be explained, is somewhat complicated.  You buy
+a ticket at the station you start from for the place you want to go to.
+You might think this would enable you to get there, but it does not.  When
+your train comes up, you attempt to swarm into it; but the guard
+magnificently waves you away.  Where are your credentials?  You show him
+your ticket.  He explains to you that by itself that is of no service
+whatever; you have only taken the first step towards travelling; you must
+go back to the booking-office and get in addition what is called a
+"schnellzug ticket."  With this you return, thinking your troubles over.
+You are allowed to get in, so far so good.  But you must not sit down
+anywhere, and you must not stand still, and you must not wander about.
+You must take another ticket, this time what is called a "platz ticket,"
+which entitles you to a place for a certain distance.
+
+What a man could do who persisted in taking nothing but the one ticket, I
+have often wondered.  Would he be entitled to run behind the train on the
+six-foot way?  Or could he stick a label on himself and get into the
+goods van?  Again, what could be done with the man who, having taken his
+schnellzug ticket, obstinately refused, or had not the money to take a
+platz ticket: would they let him lie in the umbrella rack, or allow him
+to hang himself out of the window?
+
+To return to George, he had just sufficient money to take a third-class
+slow train ticket to Baden, and that was all.  To avoid the
+inquisitiveness of the guard, he waited till the train was moving, and
+then jumped in.
+
+That was his first sin:
+
+(a)  Entering a train in motion;
+
+(b)  After being warned not to do so by an official.
+
+Second sin:
+
+(a)  Travelling in train of superior class to that for which ticket was
+held.
+
+(b)  Refusing to pay difference when demanded by an official.  (George
+says he did not "refuse"; he simply told the man he had not got it.)
+
+Third sin:
+
+(a)  Travelling in carriage of superior class to that for which ticket
+was held.
+
+(b)  Refusing to pay difference when demanded by an official.  (Again
+George disputes the accuracy of the report.  He turned his pockets out,
+and offered the man all he had, which was about eightpence in German
+money.  He offered to go into a third class, but there was no third
+class.  He offered to go into the goods van, but they would not hear of
+it.)
+
+Fourth sin:
+
+(a)  Occupying seat, and not paying for same.
+
+(b)  Loitering about corridor.  (As they would not let him sit down
+without paying, and as he could not pay, it was difficult to see what
+else he could do.)
+
+But explanations are held as no excuse in Germany; and his journey from
+Carlsruhe to Baden was one of the most expensive perhaps on record.
+
+Reflecting upon the case and frequency with which one gets into trouble
+here in Germany, one is led to the conclusion that this country would
+come as a boon and a blessing to the average young Englishman.  To the
+medical student, to the eater of dinners at the Temple, to the subaltern
+on leave, life in London is a wearisome proceeding.  The healthy Briton
+takes his pleasure lawlessly, or it is no pleasure to him.  Nothing that
+he may do affords to him any genuine satisfaction.  To be in trouble of
+some sort is his only idea of bliss.  Now, England affords him small
+opportunity in this respect; to get himself into a scrape requires a good
+deal of persistence on the part of the young Englishman.
+
+I spoke on this subject one day with our senior churchwarden.  It was the
+morning of the 10th of November, and we were both of us glancing,
+somewhat anxiously, through the police reports.  The usual batch of young
+men had been summoned for creating the usual disturbance the night before
+at the Criterion.  My friend the churchwarden has boys of his own, and a
+nephew of mine, upon whom I am keeping a fatherly eye, is by a fond
+mother supposed to be in London for the sole purpose of studying
+engineering.  No names we knew happened, by fortunate chance, to be in
+the list of those detained in custody, and, relieved, we fell to
+moralising upon the folly and depravity of youth.
+
+"It is very remarkable," said my friend the churchwarden, "how the
+Criterion retains its position in this respect.  It was just so when I
+was young; the evening always wound up with a row at the Criterion."
+
+"So meaningless," I remarked.
+
+"So monotonous," he replied.  "You have no idea," he continued, a dreamy
+expression stealing over his furrowed face, "how unutterably tired one
+can become of the walk from Piccadilly Circus to the Vine Street Police
+Court.  Yet, what else was there for us to do?  Simply nothing.  Sometimes
+we would put out a street lamp, and a man would come round and light it
+again.  If one insulted a policeman, he simply took no notice.  He did
+not even know he was being insulted; or, if he did, he seemed not to
+care.  You could fight a Covent Garden porter, if you fancied yourself at
+that sort of thing.  Generally speaking, the porter got the best of it;
+and when he did it cost you five shillings, and when he did not the price
+was half a sovereign.  I could never see much excitement in that
+particular sport.  I tried driving a hansom cab once.  That has always
+been regarded as the acme of modern Tom and Jerryism.  I stole it late
+one night from outside a public-house in Dean Street, and the first thing
+that happened to me was that I was hailed in Golden Square by an old lady
+surrounded by three children, two of them crying and the third one half
+asleep.  Before I could get away she had shot the brats into the cab,
+taken my number, paid me, so she said, a shilling over the legal fare,
+and directed me to an address a little beyond what she called North
+Kensington.  As a matter of fact, the place turned out to be the other
+side of Willesden.  The horse was tired, and the journey took us well
+over two hours.  It was the slowest lark I ever remember being concerned
+in.  I tried once or twice to persuade the children to let me take them
+back to the old lady: but every time I opened the trap-door to speak to
+them the youngest one, a boy, started screaming; and when I offered other
+drivers to transfer the job to them, most of them replied in the words of
+a song popular about that period: 'Oh, George, don't you think you're
+going just a bit too far?'  One man offered to take home to my wife any
+last message I might be thinking of, while another promised to organise a
+party to come and dig me out in the spring.  When I mounted the dickey I
+had imagined myself driving a peppery old colonel to some lonesome and
+cabless region, half a dozen miles from where he wanted to go, and there
+leaving him upon the kerbstone to swear.  About that there might have
+been good sport or there might not, according to circumstances and the
+colonel.  The idea of a trip to an outlying suburb in charge of a nursery
+full of helpless infants had never occurred to me.  No, London,"
+concluded my friend the churchwarden with a sigh, "affords but limited
+opportunity to the lover of the illegal."
+
+Now, in Germany, on the other hand, trouble is to be had for the asking.
+There are many things in Germany that you must not do that are quite easy
+to do.  To any young Englishman yearning to get himself into a scrape,
+and finding himself hampered in his own country, I would advise a single
+ticket to Germany; a return, lasting as it does only a month, might prove
+a waste.
+
+In the Police Guide of the Fatherland he will find set forth a list of
+the things the doing of which will bring to him interest and excitement.
+In Germany you must not hang your bed out of window.  He might begin with
+that.  By waving his bed out of window he could get into trouble before
+he had his breakfast.  At home he might hang himself out of window, and
+nobody would mind much, provided he did not obstruct anybody's ancient
+lights or break away and injure any passer underneath.
+
+In Germany you must not wear fancy dress in the streets.  A Highlander of
+my acquaintance who came to pass the winter in Dresden spent the first
+few days of his residence there in arguing this question with the Saxon
+Government.  They asked him what he was doing in those clothes.  He was
+not an amiable man.  He answered, he was wearing them.  They asked him
+why he was wearing them.  He replied, to keep himself warm.  They told
+him frankly that they did not believe him, and sent him back to his
+lodgings in a closed landau.  The personal testimony of the English
+Minister was necessary to assure the authorities that the Highland garb
+was the customary dress of many respectable, law-abiding British
+subjects.  They accepted the statement, as diplomatically bound, but
+retain their private opinion to this day.  The English tourist they have
+grown accustomed to; but a Leicestershire gentleman, invited to hunt with
+some German officers, on appearing outside his hotel, was promptly
+marched off, horse and all, to explain his frivolity at the police court.
+
+Another thing you must not do in the streets of German towns is to feed
+horses, mules, or donkeys, whether your own or those belonging to other
+people.  If a passion seizes you to feed somebody else's horse, you must
+make an appointment with the animal, and the meal must take place in some
+properly authorised place.  You must not break glass or china in the
+street, nor, in fact, in any public resort whatever; and if you do, you
+must pick up all the pieces.  What you are to do with the pieces when you
+have gathered them together I cannot say.  The only thing I know for
+certain is that you are not permitted to throw them anywhere, to leave
+them anywhere, or apparently to part with them in any way whatever.
+Presumably, you are expected to carry them about with you until you die,
+and then be buried with them; or, maybe, you are allowed to swallow them.
+
+In German streets you must not shoot with a crossbow.  The German law-
+maker does not content himself with the misdeeds of the average man--the
+crime one feels one wants to do, but must not: he worries himself
+imagining all the things a wandering maniac might do.  In Germany there
+is no law against a man standing on his head in the middle of the road;
+the idea has not occurred to them.  One of these days a German statesman,
+visiting a circus and seeing acrobats, will reflect upon this omission.
+Then he will straightway set to work and frame a clause forbidding people
+from standing on their heads in the middle of the road, and fixing a
+fine.  This is the charm of German law: misdemeanour in Germany has its
+fixed price.  You are not kept awake all night, as in England, wondering
+whether you will get off with a caution, be fined forty shillings, or,
+catching the magistrate in an unhappy moment for yourself, get seven
+days.  You know exactly what your fun is going to cost you.  You can
+spread out your money on the table, open your Police Guide, and plan out
+your holiday to a fifty pfennig piece.  For a really cheap evening, I
+would recommend walking on the wrong side of the pavement after being
+cautioned not to do so.  I calculate that by choosing your district and
+keeping to the quiet side streets you could walk for a whole evening on
+the wrong side of the pavement at a cost of little over three marks.
+
+In German towns you must not ramble about after dark "in droves."  I am
+not quite sure how many constitute a "drove," and no official to whom I
+have spoken on this subject has felt himself competent to fix the exact
+number.  I once put it to a German friend who was starting for the
+theatre with his wife, his mother-in-law, five children of his own, his
+sister and her _fiance_, and two nieces, if he did not think he was
+running a risk under this by-law.  He did not take my suggestion as a
+joke.  He cast an eye over the group.
+
+"Oh, I don't think so," he said; "you see, we are all one family."
+
+"The paragraph says nothing about its being a family drove or not," I
+replied; "it simply says 'drove.'  I do not mean it in any
+uncomplimentary sense, but, speaking etymologically, I am inclined
+personally to regard your collection as a 'drove.'  Whether the police
+will take the same view or not remains to be seen.  I am merely warning
+you."
+
+My friend himself was inclined to pooh-pooh my fears; but his wife
+thinking it better not to run any risk of having the party broken up by
+the police at the very beginning of the evening, they divided, arranging
+to come together again in the theatre lobby.
+
+Another passion you must restrain in Germany is that prompting you to
+throw things out of window.  Cats are no excuse.  During the first week
+of my residence in Germany I was awakened incessantly by cats.  One night
+I got mad.  I collected a small arsenal--two or three pieces of coal, a
+few hard pears, a couple of candle ends, an odd egg I found on the
+kitchen table, an empty soda-water bottle, and a few articles of that
+sort,--and, opening the window, bombarded the spot from where the noise
+appeared to come.  I do not suppose I hit anything; I never knew a man
+who did hit a cat, even when he could see it, except, maybe, by accident
+when aiming at something else.  I have known crack shots, winners of
+Queen's prizes--those sort of men,--shoot with shot-guns at cats fifty
+yards away, and never hit a hair.  I have often thought that, instead of
+bull's-eyes, running deer, and that rubbish, the really superior marksman
+would be he who could boast that he had shot the cat.
+
+But, anyhow, they moved off; maybe the egg annoyed them.  I had noticed
+when I picked it up that it did not look a good egg; and I went back to
+bed again, thinking the incident closed.  Ten minutes afterwards there
+came a violent ringing of the electric bell.  I tried to ignore it, but
+it was too persistent, and, putting on my dressing gown, I went down to
+the gate.  A policeman was standing there.  He had all the things I had
+been throwing out of the window in a little heap in front of him, all
+except the egg.  He had evidently been collecting them.  He said:
+
+"Are these things yours?"
+
+I said: "They were mine, but personally I have done with them.  Anybody
+can have them--you can have them."
+
+He ignored my offer.  He said:
+
+"You threw these things out of window."
+
+"You are right," I admitted; "I did."
+
+"Why did you throw them out of window?" he asked.  A German policeman has
+his code of questions arranged for him; he never varies them, and he
+never omits one.
+
+"I threw them out of the window at some cats," I answered.
+
+"What cats?" he asked.
+
+It was the sort of question a German policeman would ask.  I replied with
+as much sarcasm as I could put into my accent that I was ashamed to say I
+could not tell him what cats.  I explained that, personally, they were
+strangers to me; but I offered, if the police would call all the cats in
+the district together, to come round and see if I could recognise them by
+their yaul.
+
+The German policeman does not understand a joke, which is perhaps on the
+whole just as well, for I believe there is a heavy fine for joking with
+any German uniform; they call it "treating an official with contumely."
+He merely replied that it was not the duty of the police to help me
+recognise the cats; their duty was merely to fine me for throwing things
+out of window.
+
+I asked what a man was supposed to do in Germany when woke up night after
+night by cats, and he explained that I could lodge an information against
+the owner of the cat, when the police would proceed to caution him, and,
+if necessary, order the cat to be destroyed.  Who was going to destroy
+the cat, and what the cat would be doing during the process, he did not
+explain.
+
+I asked him how he proposed I should discover the owner of the cat.  He
+thought for a while, and then suggested that I might follow it home.  I
+did not feel inclined to argue with him any more after that; I should
+only have said things that would have made the matter worse.  As it was,
+that night's sport cost me twelve marks; and not a single one of the four
+German officials who interviewed me on the subject could see anything
+ridiculous in the proceedings from beginning to end.
+
+But in Germany most human faults and follies sink into comparative
+insignificance beside the enormity of walking on the grass.  Nowhere, and
+under no circumstances, may you at any time in Germany walk on the grass.
+Grass in Germany is quite a fetish.  To put your foot on German grass
+would be as great a sacrilege as to dance a hornpipe on a Mohammedan's
+praying-mat.  The very dogs respect German grass; no German dog would
+dream of putting a paw on it.  If you see a dog scampering across the
+grass in Germany, you may know for certain that it is the dog of some
+unholy foreigner.  In England, when we want to keep dogs out of places,
+we put up wire netting, six feet high, supported by buttresses, and
+defended on the top by spikes.  In Germany, they put a notice-board in
+the middle of the place, "Hunden verboten," and a dog that has German
+blood in its veins looks at that notice-board and walks away.  In a
+German park I have seen a gardener step gingerly with felt boots on to
+grass-plot, and removing therefrom a beetle, place it gravely but firmly
+on the gravel; which done, he stood sternly watching the beetle, to see
+that it did not try to get back on the grass; and the beetle, looking
+utterly ashamed of itself, walked hurriedly down the gutter, and turned
+up the path marked "Ausgang."
+
+In German parks separate roads are devoted to the different orders of the
+community, and no one person, at peril of liberty and fortune, may go
+upon another person's road.  There are special paths for "wheel-riders"
+and special paths for "foot-goers," avenues for "horse-riders," roads for
+people in light vehicles, and roads for people in heavy vehicles; ways
+for children and for "alone ladies."  That no particular route has yet
+been set aside for bald-headed men or "new women" has always struck me as
+an omission.
+
+In the Grosse Garten in Dresden I once came across an old lady, standing,
+helpless and bewildered, in the centre of seven tracks.  Each was guarded
+by a threatening notice, warning everybody off it but the person for whom
+it was intended.
+
+"I am sorry to trouble you," said the old lady, on learning I could speak
+English and read German, "but would you mind telling me what I am and
+where I have to go?"
+
+I inspected her carefully.  I came to the conclusion that she was a
+"grown-up" and a "foot-goer," and pointed out her path.  She looked at
+it, and seemed disappointed.
+
+"But I don't want to go down there," she said; "mayn't I go this way?"
+
+"Great heavens, no, madam!" I replied.  "That path is reserved for
+children."
+
+"But I wouldn't do them any harm," said the old lady, with a smile.  She
+did not look the sort of old lady who would have done them any harm.
+
+"Madam," I replied, "if it rested with me, I would trust you down that
+path, though my own first-born were at the other end; but I can only
+inform you of the laws of this country.  For you, a full-grown woman, to
+venture down that path is to go to certain fine, if not imprisonment.
+There is your path, marked plainly--_Nur fur Fussganger_, and if you will
+follow my advice, you will hasten down it; you are not allowed to stand
+here and hesitate."
+
+"It doesn't lead a bit in the direction I want to go," said the old lady.
+
+"It leads in the direction you _ought_ to want to go," I replied, and we
+parted.
+
+In the German parks there are special seats labelled, "Only for grown-
+ups" (_Nur fur Erwachsene_), and the German small boy, anxious to sit
+down, and reading that notice, passes by, and hunts for a seat on which
+children are permitted to rest; and there he seats himself, careful not
+to touch the woodwork with his muddy boots.  Imagine a seat in Regent's
+or St. James's Park labelled "Only for grown-ups!"  Every child for five
+miles round would be trying to get on that seat, and hauling other
+children off who were on.  As for any "grown-up," he would never be able
+to get within half a mile of that seat for the crowd.  The German small
+boy, who has accidentally sat down on such without noticing, rises with a
+start when his error is pointed out to him, and goes away with down-cast
+head, brushing to the roots of his hair with shame and regret.
+
+Not that the German child is neglected by a paternal Government.  In
+German parks and public gardens special places (_Spielplatze_) are
+provided for him, each one supplied with a heap of sand.  There he can
+play to his heart's content at making mud pies and building sand castles.
+To the German child a pie made of any other mud than this would appear an
+immoral pie.  It would give to him no satisfaction: his soul would revolt
+against it.
+
+"That pie," he would say to himself, "was not, as it should have been,
+made of Government mud specially set apart for the purpose; it was nor
+manufactured in the place planned and maintained by the Government for
+the making of mud pies.  It can bring no real blessing with it; it is a
+lawless pie."  And until his father had paid the proper fine, and he had
+received his proper licking, his conscience would continue to trouble
+him.
+
+Another excellent piece of material for obtaining excitement in Germany
+is the simple domestic perambulator.  What you may do with a
+"kinder-wagen," as it is called, and what you may not, covers pages of
+German law; after the reading of which, you conclude that the man who can
+push a perambulator through a German town without breaking the law was
+meant for a diplomatist.  You must not loiter with a perambulator, and
+you must not go too fast.  You must not get in anybody's way with a
+perambulator, and if anybody gets in your way you must get out of their
+way.  If you want to stop with a perambulator, you must go to a place
+specially appointed where perambulators may stop; and when you get there
+you _must_ stop.  You must not cross the road with a perambulator; if you
+and the baby happen to live on the other side, that is your fault.  You
+must not leave your perambulator anywhere, and only in certain places can
+you take it with you.  I should say that in Germany you could go out with
+a perambulator and get into enough trouble in half an hour to last you
+for a month.  Any young Englishman anxious for a row with the police
+could not do better than come over to Germany and bring his perambulator
+with him.
+
+In Germany you must not leave your front door unlocked after ten o'clock
+at night, and you must not play the piano in your own house after eleven.
+In England I have never felt I wanted to play the piano myself, or to
+hear anyone else play it, after eleven o'clock at night; but that is a
+very different thing to being told that you must not play it.  Here, in
+Germany, I never feel that I really care for the piano until eleven
+o'clock, then I could sit and listen to the "Maiden's Prayer," or the
+Overture to "Zampa," with pleasure.  To the law-loving German, on the
+other hand, music after eleven o'clock at night ceases to be music; it
+becomes sin, and as such gives him no satisfaction.
+
+The only individual throughout Germany who ever dreams of taking
+liberties with the law is the German student, and he only to a certain
+well-defined point.  By custom, certain privileges are permitted to him,
+but even these are strictly limited and clearly understood.  For
+instance, the German student may get drunk and fall asleep in the gutter
+with no other penalty than that of having the next morning to tip the
+policeman who has found him and brought him home.  But for this purpose
+he must choose the gutters of side-streets.  The German student,
+conscious of the rapid approach of oblivion, uses all his remaining
+energy to get round the corner, where he may collapse without anxiety.  In
+certain districts he may ring bells.  The rent of flats in these
+localities is lower than in other quarters of the town; while the
+difficulty is further met by each family preparing for itself a secret
+code of bell-ringing by means of which it is known whether the summons is
+genuine or not.  When visiting such a household late at night it is well
+to be acquainted with this code, or you may, if persistent, get a bucket
+of water thrown over you.
+
+Also the German student is allowed to put out lights at night, but there
+is a prejudice against his putting out too many.  The larky German
+student generally keeps count, contenting himself with half a dozen
+lights per night.  Likewise, he may shout and sing as he walks home, up
+till half-past two; and at certain restaurants it is permitted to him to
+put his arm round the Fraulein's waist.  To prevent any suggestion of
+unseemliness, the waitresses at restaurants frequented by students are
+always carefully selected from among a staid and elderly classy of women,
+by reason of which the German student can enjoy the delights of
+flirtation without fear and without reproach to anyone.
+
+They are a law-abiding people, the Germans.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Baden from the visitor's point of view--Beauty of the early morning, as
+viewed from the preceding afternoon--Distance, as measured by the
+compass--Ditto, as measured by the leg--George in account with his
+conscience--A lazy machine--Bicycling, according to the poster: its
+restfulness--The poster cyclist: its costume; its method--The griffin as
+a household pet--A dog with proper self-respect--The horse that was
+abused.
+
+From Baden, about which it need only be said that it is a pleasure resort
+singularly like other pleasure resorts of the same description, we
+started bicycling in earnest.  We planned a ten days' tour, which, while
+completing the Black Forest, should include a spin down the Donau-Thal,
+which for the twenty miles from Tuttlingen to Sigmaringen is, perhaps,
+the finest valley in Germany; the Danube stream here winding its narrow
+way past old-world unspoilt villages; past ancient monasteries, nestling
+in green pastures, where still the bare-footed and bare-headed friar, his
+rope girdle tight about his loins, shepherds, with crook in hand, his
+sheep upon the hill sides; through rocky woods; between sheer walls of
+cliff, whose every towering crag stands crowned with ruined fortress,
+church, or castle; together with a blick at the Vosges mountains, where
+half the population is bitterly pained if you speak to them in French,
+the other half being insulted when you address them in German, and the
+whole indignantly contemptuous at the first sound of English; a state of
+things that renders conversation with the stranger somewhat nervous work.
+
+We did not succeed in carrying out our programme in its entirety, for the
+reason that human performance lags ever behind human intention.  It is
+easy to say and believe at three o'clock in the afternoon that: "We will
+rise at five, breakfast lightly at half-past, and start away at six."
+
+"Then we shall be well on our way before the heat of the day sets in,"
+remarks one.
+
+"This time of the year, the early morning is really the best part of the
+day.  Don't you think so?" adds another.
+
+"Oh, undoubtedly."
+
+"So cool and fresh."
+
+"And the half-lights are so exquisite."
+
+The first morning one maintains one's vows.  The party assembles at half-
+past five.  It is very silent; individually, somewhat snappy; inclined to
+grumble with its food, also with most other things; the atmosphere
+charged with compressed irritability seeking its vent.  In the evening
+the Tempter's voice is heard:
+
+"I think if we got off by half-past six, sharp, that would be time
+enough?"
+
+The voice of Virtue protests, faintly: "It will be breaking our
+resolution."
+
+The Tempter replies: "Resolutions were made for man, not man for
+resolutions."  The devil can paraphrase Scripture for his own purpose.
+"Besides, it is disturbing the whole hotel; think of the poor servants."
+
+The voice of Virtue continues, but even feebler: "But everybody gets up
+early in these parts."
+
+"They would not if they were not obliged to, poor things!  Say breakfast
+at half-past six, punctual; that will be disturbing nobody."
+
+Thus Sin masquerades under the guise of Good, and one sleeps till six,
+explaining to one's conscience, who, however, doesn't believe it, that
+one does this because of unselfish consideration for others.  I have
+known such consideration extend until seven of the clock.
+
+Likewise, distance measured with a pair of compasses is not precisely the
+same as when measured by the leg.
+
+"Ten miles an hour for seven hours, seventy miles.  A nice easy day's
+work."
+
+"There are some stiff hills to climb?"
+
+"The other side to come down.  Say, eight miles an hour, and call it
+sixty miles.  Gott in Himmel! if we can't average eight miles an hour, we
+had better go in bath-chairs."  It does seem somewhat impossible to do
+less, on paper.
+
+But at four o'clock in the afternoon the voice of Duty rings less trumpet-
+toned:
+
+"Well, I suppose we ought to be getting on."
+
+"Oh, there's no hurry! don't fuss.  Lovely view from here, isn't it?"
+
+"Very.  Don't forget we are twenty-five miles from St. Blasien."
+
+"How far?"
+
+"Twenty-five miles, a little over if anything."
+
+"Do you mean to say we have only come thirty-five miles?"
+
+"That's all."
+
+"Nonsense.  I don't believe that map of yours."
+
+"It is impossible, you know.  We have been riding steadily ever since the
+first thing this morning."
+
+"No, we haven't.  We didn't get away till eight, to begin with."
+
+"Quarter to eight."
+
+"Well, quarter to eight; and every half-dozen miles we have stopped."
+
+"We have only stopped to look at the view.  It's no good coming to see a
+country, and then not seeing it."
+
+"And we have had to pull up some stiff hills."
+
+"Besides, it has been an exceptionally hot day to-day."
+
+"Well, don't forget St. Blasien is twenty-five miles off, that's all."
+
+"Any more hills?"
+
+"Yes, two; up and down."
+
+"I thought you said it was downhill into St. Blasien?"
+
+"So it is for the last ten miles.  We are twenty-five miles from St.
+Blasien here."
+
+"Isn't there anywhere between here and St. Blasien?  What's that little
+place there on the lake?"
+
+"It isn't St. Blasien, or anywhere near it.  There's a danger in
+beginning that sort of thing."
+
+"There's a danger in overworking oneself.  One should study moderation in
+all things.  Pretty little place, that Titisee, according to the map;
+looks as if there would be good air there."
+
+"All right, I'm agreeable.  It was you fellows who suggested our making
+for St. Blasien."
+
+"Oh, I'm not so keen on St. Blasien! poky little place, down in a valley.
+This Titisee, I should say, was ever so much nicer."
+
+"Quite near, isn't it?"
+
+"Five miles."
+
+General chorus: "We'll stop at Titisee."
+
+George made discovery of this difference between theory and practice on
+the very first day of our ride.
+
+"I thought," said George--he was riding the single, Harris and I being a
+little ahead on the tandem--"that the idea was to train up the hills and
+ride down them."
+
+"So it is," answered Harris, "as a general rule.  But the trains don't go
+up _every_ hill in the Black Forest."
+
+"Somehow, I felt a suspicion that they wouldn't," growled George; and for
+awhile silence reigned.
+
+"Besides," remarked Harris, who had evidently been ruminating the
+subject, "you would not wish to have nothing but downhill, surely.  It
+would not be playing the game.  One must take a little rough with one's
+smooth."
+
+Again there returned silence, broken after awhile by George, this time.
+
+"Don't you two fellows over-exert yourselves merely on my account," said
+George.
+
+"How do you mean?" asked Harris.
+
+"I mean," answered George, "that where a train does happen to be going up
+these hills, don't you put aside the idea of taking it for fear of
+outraging my finer feelings.  Personally, I am prepared to go up all
+these hills in a railway train, even if it's not playing the game.  I'll
+square the thing with my conscience; I've been up at seven every day for
+a week now, and I calculate it owes me a bit.  Don't you consider me in
+the matter at all."
+
+We promised to bear this in mind, and again the ride continued in dogged
+dumbness, until it was again broken by George.
+
+"What bicycle did you say this was of yours?" asked George.
+
+Harris told him.  I forget of what particular manufacture it happened to
+be; it is immaterial.
+
+"Are you sure?" persisted George.
+
+"Of course I am sure," answered Harris.  "Why, what's the matter with
+it?"
+
+"Well, it doesn't come up to the poster," said George, "that's all."
+
+"What poster?" asked Harris.
+
+"The poster advertising this particular brand of cycle," explained
+George.  "I was looking at one on a hoarding in Sloane Street only a day
+or two before we started.  A man was riding this make of machine, a man
+with a banner in his hand: he wasn't doing any work, that was clear as
+daylight; he was just sitting on the thing and drinking in the air.  The
+cycle was going of its own accord, and going well.  This thing of yours
+leaves all the work to me.  It is a lazy brute of a machine; if you don't
+shove, it simply does nothing: I should complain about it, if I were
+you."
+
+When one comes to think of it, few bicycles do realise the poster.  On
+only one poster that I can recollect have I seen the rider represented as
+doing any work.  But then this man was being pursued by a bull.  In
+ordinary cases the object of the artist is to convince the hesitating
+neophyte that the sport of bicycling consists in sitting on a luxurious
+saddle, and being moved rapidly in the direction you wish to go by unseen
+heavenly powers.
+
+Generally speaking, the rider is a lady, and then one feels that, for
+perfect bodily rest combined with entire freedom from mental anxiety,
+slumber upon a water-bed cannot compare with bicycle-riding upon a hilly
+road.  No fairy travelling on a summer cloud could take things more
+easily than does the bicycle girl, according to the poster.  Her costume
+for cycling in hot weather is ideal.  Old-fashioned landladies might
+refuse her lunch, it is true; and a narrowminded police force might
+desire to secure her, and wrap her in a rug preliminary to summonsing
+her.  But such she heeds not.  Uphill and downhill, through traffic that
+might tax the ingenuity of a cat, over road surfaces calculated to break
+the average steam roller she passes, a vision of idle loveliness; her
+fair hair streaming to the wind, her sylph-like form poised airily, one
+foot upon the saddle, the other resting lightly upon the lamp.  Sometimes
+she condescends to sit down on the saddle; then she puts her feet on the
+rests, lights a cigarette, and waves above her head a Chinese lantern.
+
+Less often, it is a mere male thing that rides the machine.  He is not so
+accomplished an acrobat as is the lady; but simple tricks, such as
+standing on the saddle and waving flags, drinking beer or beef-tea while
+riding, he can and does perform.  Something, one supposes, he must do to
+occupy his mind: sitting still hour after hour on this machine, having no
+work to do, nothing to think about, must pall upon any man of active
+temperament.  Thus it is that we see him rising on his pedals as he nears
+the top of some high hill to apostrophise the sun, or address poetry to
+the surrounding scenery.
+
+Occasionally the poster pictures a pair of cyclists; and then one grasps
+the fact how much superior for purposes of flirtation is the modern
+bicycle to the old-fashioned parlour or the played-out garden gate.  He
+and she mount their bicycles, being careful, of course, that such are of
+the right make.  After that they have nothing to think about but the old
+sweet tale.  Down shady lanes, through busy towns on market days, merrily
+roll the wheels of the "Bermondsey Company's Bottom Bracket Britain's
+Best," or of the "Camberwell Company's Jointless Eureka."  They need no
+pedalling; they require no guiding.  Give them their heads, and tell them
+what time you want to get home, and that is all they ask.  While Edwin
+leans from his saddle to whisper the dear old nothings in Angelina's ear,
+while Angelina's face, to hide its blushes, is turned towards the horizon
+at the back, the magic bicycles pursue their even course.
+
+And the sun is always shining and the roads are always dry.  No stern
+parent rides behind, no interfering aunt beside, no demon small boy
+brother is peeping round the corner, there never comes a skid.  Ah me!
+Why were there no "Britain's Best" nor "Camberwell Eurekas" to be hired
+when _we_ were young?
+
+Or maybe the "Britain's Best" or the "Camberwell Eureka" stands leaning
+against a gate; maybe it is tired.  It has worked hard all the afternoon,
+carrying these young people.  Mercifully minded, they have dismounted, to
+give the machine a rest.  They sit upon the grass beneath the shade of
+graceful boughs; it is long and dry grass.  A stream flows by their feet.
+All is rest and peace.
+
+That is ever the idea the cycle poster artist sets himself to convey--rest
+and peace.
+
+But I am wrong in saying that no cyclist, according to the poster, ever
+works.  Now I come to reflect, I have seen posters representing gentlemen
+on cycles working very hard--over-working themselves, one might almost
+say.  They are thin and haggard with the toil, the perspiration stands
+upon their brow in beads; you feel that if there is another hill beyond
+the poster they must either get off or die.  But this is the result of
+their own folly.  This happens because they will persist in riding a
+machine of an inferior make.  Were they riding a "Putney Popular" or
+"Battersea Bounder," such as the sensible young man in the centre of the
+poster rides, then all this unnecessary labour would be saved to them.
+Then all required of them would be, as in gratitude bound, to look happy;
+perhaps, occasionally to back-pedal a little when the machine in its
+youthful buoyancy loses its head for a moment and dashes on too swiftly.
+
+You tired young men, sitting dejectedly on milestones, too spent to heed
+the steady rain that soaks you through; you weary maidens, with the
+straight, damp hair, anxious about the time, longing to swear, not
+knowing how; you stout bald men, vanishing visibly as you pant and grunt
+along the endless road; you purple, dejected matrons, plying with pain
+the slow unwilling wheel; why did you not see to it that you bought a
+"Britain's Best" or a "Camberwell Eureka"?  Why are these bicycles of
+inferior make so prevalent throughout the land
+
+Or is it with bicycling as with all other things: does Life at no point
+realise the Poster?
+
+The one thing in Germany that never fails to charm and fascinate me is
+the German dog.  In England one grows tired of the old breeds, one knows
+them all so well: the mastiff, the plum-pudding dog, the terrier (black,
+white or rough-haired, as the case may be, but always quarrelsome), the
+collie, the bulldog; never anything new.  Now in Germany you get variety.
+You come across dogs the like of which you have never seen before: that
+until you hear them bark you do not know are dogs.  It is all so fresh,
+so interesting.  George stopped a dog in Sigmaringen and drew our
+attention to it.  It suggested a cross between a codfish and a poodle.  I
+would not like to be positive it was _not_ a cross between a codfish and
+a poodle.  Harris tried to photograph it, but it ran up a fence and
+disappeared through some bushes.
+
+I do not know what the German breeder's idea is; at present he retains
+his secret.  George suggests he is aiming at a griffin.  There is much to
+bear out this theory, and indeed in one or two cases I have come across
+success on these lines would seem to have been almost achieved.  Yet I
+cannot bring myself to believe that such are anything more than mere
+accidents.  The German is practical, and I fail to see the object of a
+griffin.  If mere quaintness of design be desired, is there not already
+the Dachshund!  What more is needed?  Besides, about a house, a griffin
+would be so inconvenient: people would be continually treading on its
+tail.  My own idea is that what the Germans are trying for is a mermaid,
+which they will then train to catch fish.
+
+For your German does not encourage laziness in any living thing.  He
+likes to see his dogs work, and the German dog loves work; of that there
+can be no doubt.  The life of the English dog must be a misery to him.
+Imagine a strong, active, and intelligent being, of exceptionally
+energetic temperament, condemned to spend twenty-four hours a day in
+absolute idleness!  How would you like it yourself?  No wonder he feels
+misunderstood, yearns for the unattainable, and gets himself into trouble
+generally.
+
+Now the German dog, on the other hand, has plenty to occupy his mind.  He
+is busy and important.  Watch him as he walks along harnessed to his milk
+cart.  No churchwarden at collection time could feel or look more pleased
+with himself.  He does not do any real work; the human being does the
+pushing, he does the barking; that is his idea of division of labour.
+What he says to himself is:
+
+"The old man can't bark, but he can shove.  Very well."
+
+The interest and the pride he takes in the business is quite beautiful to
+see.  Another dog passing by makes, maybe, some jeering remark, casting
+discredit upon the creaminess of the milk.  He stops suddenly, quite
+regardless of the traffic.
+
+"I beg your pardon, what was that you said about our milk?"
+
+"I said nothing about your milk," retorts the other dog, in a tone of
+gentle innocence.  "I merely said it was a fine day, and asked the price
+of chalk."
+
+"Oh, you asked the price of chalk, did you?  Would you like to know?"
+
+"Yes, thanks; somehow I thought you would be able to tell me."
+
+"You are quite right, I can.  It's worth--"
+
+"Oh, do come along!" says the old lady, who is tired and hot, and anxious
+to finish her round.
+
+"Yes, but hang it all; did you hear what he hinted about our milk?"
+
+"Oh, never mind him!  There's a tram coming round the corner: we shall
+all get run over."
+
+"Yes, but I do mind him; one has one's proper pride.  He asked the price
+of chalk, and he's going to know it!  It's worth just twenty times as
+much--"
+
+"You'll have the whole thing over, I know you will," cries the old lady,
+pathetically, struggling with all her feeble strength to haul him back.
+"Oh dear, oh dear!  I do wish I had left you at home."
+
+The tram is bearing down upon them; a cab-driver is shouting at them;
+another huge brute, hoping to be in time to take a hand, is dragging a
+bread cart, followed by a screaming child, across the road from the
+opposite side; a small crowd is collecting; and a policeman is hastening
+to the scene.
+
+"It's worth," says the milk dog, "just twenty-times as much as you'll be
+worth before I've done with you."
+
+"Oh, you think so, do you?"
+
+"Yes, I do, you grandson of a French poodle, you cabbage-eating--"
+
+"There!  I knew you'd have it over," says the poor milk-woman.  "I told
+him he'd have it over."
+
+But he is busy, and heeds her not.  Five minutes later, when the traffic
+is renewed, when the bread girl has collected her muddy rolls, and the
+policeman has gone off with the name and address of everybody in the
+street, he consents to look behind him.
+
+"It _is_ a bit of an upset," he admits.  Then shaking himself free of
+care, he adds, cheerfully, "But I guess I taught him the price of chalk.
+He won't interfere with us again, I'm thinking."
+
+"I'm sure I hope not," says the old lady, regarding dejectedly the milky
+road.
+
+But his favourite sport is to wait at the top of the hill for another
+dog, and then race down.  On these occasions the chief occupation of the
+other fellow is to run about behind, picking up the scattered articles,
+loaves, cabbages, or shirts, as they are jerked out.  At the bottom of
+the hill, he stops and waits for his friend.
+
+"Good race, wasn't it?" he remarks, panting, as the Human comes up, laden
+to the chin.  "I believe I'd have won it, too, if it hadn't been for that
+fool of a small boy.  He was right in my way just as I turned the corner.
+_You noticed him_?  Wish I had, beastly brat!  What's he yelling like
+that for?  _Because I knocked him down and ran over him_?  Well, why
+didn't he get out of the way?  It's disgraceful, the way people leave
+their children about for other people to tumble over.  Halloa! did all
+those things come out?  You couldn't have packed them very carefully; you
+should see to a thing like that.  _You did not dream of my tearing down
+the hill twenty miles an hour_?  Surely, you knew me better than to
+expect I'd let that old Schneider's dog pass me without an effort.  But
+there, you never think.  You're sure you've got them all?  _You believe
+so_?  I shouldn't 'believe' if I were you; I should run back up the hill
+again and make sure.  _You feel too tired_?  Oh, all right! don't blame
+me if anything is missing, that's all."
+
+He is so self-willed.  He is cock-sure that the correct turning is the
+second on the right, and nothing will persuade him that it is the third.
+He is positive he can get across the road in time, and will not be
+convinced until he sees the cart smashed up.  Then he is very apologetic,
+it is true.  But of what use is that?  As he is usually of the size and
+strength of a young bull, and his human companion is generally a weak-
+kneed old man or woman, or a small child, he has his way.  The greatest
+punishment his proprietor can inflict upon him is to leave him at home,
+and take the cart out alone.  But your German is too kind-hearted to do
+this often.
+
+That he is harnessed to the cart for anybody's pleasure but his own it is
+impossible to believe; and I am confident that the German peasant plans
+the tiny harness and fashions the little cart purely with the hope of
+gratifying his dog.  In other countries--in Belgium, Holland and France--I
+have seen these draught dogs ill-treated and over-worked; but in Germany,
+never.  Germans abuse animals shockingly.  I have seen a German stand in
+front of his horse and call it every name he could lay his tongue to.  But
+the horse did not mind it.  I have seen a German, weary with abusing his
+horse, call to his wife to come out and assist him.  When she came, he
+told her what the horse had done.  The recital roused the woman's temper
+to almost equal heat with his own; and standing one each side of the poor
+beast, they both abused it.  They abused its dead mother, they insulted
+its father; they made cutting remarks about its personal appearance, its
+intelligence, its moral sense, its general ability as a horse.  The
+animal bore the torrent with exemplary patience for awhile; then it did
+the best thing possible to do under the circumstances.  Without losing
+its own temper, it moved quietly away.  The lady returned to her washing,
+and the man followed it up the street, still abusing it.
+
+A kinder-hearted people than the Germans there is no need for.  Cruelty
+to animal or child is a thing almost unknown in the land.  The whip with
+them is a musical instrument; its crack is heard from morning to night,
+but an Italian coachman that in the streets of Dresden I once saw use it
+was very nearly lynched by the indignant crowd.  Germany is the only
+country in Europe where the traveller can settle himself comfortably in
+his hired carriage, confident that his gentle, willing friend between the
+shafts will be neither over-worked nor cruelly treated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Black Forest House: and the sociability therein--Its perfume--George
+positively declines to remain in bed after four o'clock in the
+morning--The road one cannot miss--My peculiar extra instinct--An
+ungrateful party--Harris as a scientist--His cheery confidence--The
+village: where it was, and where it ought to have been--George: his
+plan--We promenade a la Francais--The German coachman asleep and
+awake--The man who spreads the English language abroad.
+
+There was one night when, tired out and far from town or village, we
+slept in a Black Forest farmhouse.  The great charm about the Black
+Forest house is its sociability.  The cows are in the next room, the
+horses are upstairs, the geese and ducks are in the kitchen, while the
+pigs, the children, and the chickens live all over the place.
+
+You are dressing, when you hear a grunt behind you.
+
+"Good-morning!  Don't happen to have any potato peelings in here?  No, I
+see you haven't; good-bye."
+
+Next there is a cackle, and you see the neck of an old hen stretched
+round the corner.
+
+"Fine morning, isn't it?  You don't mind my bringing this worm of mine in
+here, do you?  It is so difficult in this house to find a room where one
+can enjoy one's food with any quietness.  From a chicken I have always
+been a slow eater, and when a dozen--there, I thought they wouldn't leave
+me alone.  Now they'll all want a bit.  You don't mind my getting on the
+bed, do you?  Perhaps here they won't notice me."
+
+While you are dressing various shock heads peer in at the door; they
+evidently regard the room as a temporary menagerie.  You cannot tell
+whether the heads belong to boys or girls; you can only hope they are all
+male.  It is of no use shutting the door, because there is nothing to
+fasten it by, and the moment you are gone they push it open again.  You
+breakfast as the Prodigal Son is generally represented feeding: a pig or
+two drop in to keep you company; a party of elderly geese criticise you
+from the door; you gather from their whispers, added to their shocked
+expression, that they are talking scandal about you.  Maybe a cow will
+condescend to give a glance in.
+
+This Noah's Ark arrangement it is, I suppose, that gives to the Black
+Forest home its distinctive scent.  It is not a scent you can liken to
+any one thing.  It is as if you took roses and Limburger cheese and hair
+oil, some heather and onions, peaches and soapsuds, together with a dash
+of sea air and a corpse, and mixed them up together.  You cannot define
+any particular odour, but you feel they are all there--all the odours
+that the world has yet discovered.  People who live in these houses are
+fond of this mixture.  They do not open the window and lose any of it;
+they keep it carefully bottled up.  If you want any other scent, you can
+go outside and smell the wood violets and the pines; inside there is the
+house; and after a while, I am told, you get used to it, so that you miss
+it, and are unable to go to sleep in any other atmosphere.
+
+We had a long walk before us the next day, and it was our desire,
+therefore, to get up early, even so early as six o'clock, if that could
+be managed without disturbing the whole household.  We put it to our
+hostess whether she thought this could be done.  She said she thought it
+could.  She might not be about herself at that time; it was her morning
+for going into the town, some eight miles off, and she rarely got back
+much before seven; but, possibly, her husband or one of the boys would be
+returning home to lunch about that hour.  Anyhow, somebody should be sent
+back to wake us and get our breakfast.
+
+As it turned out, we did not need any waking.  We got up at four, all by
+ourselves.  We got up at four in order to get away from the noise and the
+din that was making our heads ache.  What time the Black Forest peasant
+rises in the summer time I am unable to say; to us they appeared to be
+getting up all night.  And the first thing the Black Forester does when
+he gets up is to put on a pair of stout boots with wooden soles, and take
+a constitutional round the house.  Until he has been three times up and
+down the stairs, he does not feel he is up.  Once fully awake himself,
+the next thing he does is to go upstairs to the stables, and wake up a
+horse.  (The Black Forest house being built generally on the side of a
+steep hill, the ground floor is at the top, and the hay-loft at the
+bottom.)  Then the horse, it would seem, must also have its
+constitutional round the house; and this seen to, the man goes downstairs
+into the kitchen and begins to chop wood, and when he has chopped
+sufficient wood he feels pleased with himself and begins to sing.  All
+things considered, we came to the conclusion we could not do better than
+follow the excellent example set us.  Even George was quite eager to get
+up that morning.
+
+We had a frugal breakfast at half-past four, and started away at five.
+Our road lay over a mountain, and from enquiries made in the village it
+appeared to be one of those roads you cannot possibly miss.  I suppose
+everybody knows this sort of road.  Generally, it leads you back to where
+you started from; and when it doesn't, you wish it did, so that at all
+events you might know where you were.  I foresaw evil from the very
+first, and before we had accomplished a couple of miles we came up with
+it.  The road divided into three.  A worm-eaten sign-post indicated that
+the path to the left led to a place that we had never heard of--that was
+on no map.  Its other arm, pointing out the direction of the middle road,
+had disappeared.  The road to the right, so we all agreed, clearly led
+back again to the village.
+
+"The old man said distinctly," so Harris reminded us, "keep straight on
+round the hill."
+
+"Which hill?" George asked, pertinently.
+
+We were confronted by half a dozen, some of them big, some of them
+little.
+
+"He told us," continued Harris, "that we should come to a wood."
+
+"I see no reason to doubt him," commented George, "whichever road we
+take."
+
+As a matter of fact, a dense wood covered every hill.
+
+"And he said," murmured Harris, "that we should reach the top in about an
+hour and a half."
+
+"There it is," said George, "that I begin to disbelieve him."
+
+"Well, what shall we do?" said Harris.
+
+Now I happen to possess the bump of locality.  It is not a virtue; I make
+no boast of it.  It is merely an animal instinct that I cannot help.  That
+things occasionally get in my way--mountains, precipices, rivers, and
+such like obstructions--is no fault of mine.  My instinct is correct
+enough; it is the earth that is wrong.  I led them by the middle road.
+That the middle road had not character enough to continue for any quarter
+of a mile in the same direction; that after three miles up and down hill
+it ended abruptly in a wasps' nest, was not a thing that should have been
+laid to my door.  If the middle road had gone in the direction it ought
+to have done, it would have taken us to where we wanted to go, of that I
+am convinced.
+
+Even as it was, I would have continued to use this gift of mine to
+discover a fresh way had a proper spirit been displayed towards me.  But
+I am not an angel--I admit this frankly,--and I decline to exert myself
+for the ungrateful and the ribald.  Besides, I doubt if George and Harris
+would have followed me further in any event.  Therefore it was that I
+washed my hands of the whole affair, and that Harris entered upon the
+vacancy.
+
+"Well," said Harris.  "I suppose you are satisfied with what you have
+done?"
+
+"I am quite satisfied," I replied from the heap of stones where I was
+sitting.  "So far, I have brought you with safety.  I would continue to
+lead you further, but no artist can work without encouragement.  You
+appear dissatisfied with me because you do not know where you are.  For
+all you know, you may be just where you want to be.  But I say nothing as
+to that; I expect no thanks.  Go your own way; I have done with you
+both."
+
+I spoke, perhaps, with bitterness, but I could not help it.  Not a word
+of kindness had I had all the weary way.
+
+"Do not misunderstand us," said Harris; "both George and myself feel that
+without your assistance we should never be where we now are.  For that we
+give you every credit.  But instinct is liable to error.  What I propose
+to do is to substitute for it Science, which is exact.  Now, where's the
+sun?"
+
+"Don't you think," said George, "that if we made our way back to the
+village, and hired a boy for a mark to guide us, it would save time in
+the end?"
+
+"It would be wasting hours," said Harris, with decision.  "You leave this
+to me.  I have been reading about this thing, and it has interested me."
+He took out his watch, and began turning himself round and round.
+
+"It's as simple as A B C," he continued.  "You point the short hand at
+the sun, then you bisect the segment between the short hand and the
+twelve, and thus you get the north."
+
+He worried up and down for a while, then he fixed it.
+
+"Now I've got it," he said; "that's the north, where that wasps' nest is.
+Now give me the map."
+
+We handed it to him, and seating himself facing the wasps, he examined
+it.
+
+"Todtmoos from here," he said, "is south by south-west."
+
+"How do you mean, from here?" asked George.
+
+"Why, from here, where we are," returned Harris.
+
+"But where are we?" said George.
+
+This worried Harris for a time, but at length he cheered up.
+
+"It doesn't matter where we are," he said.  "Wherever we are, Todtmoos is
+south by south-west.  Come on, we are only wasting time."
+
+"I don't quite see how you make it out," said George, as he rose and
+shouldered his knapsack; "but I suppose it doesn't matter.  We are out
+for our health, and it's all pretty!"
+
+"We shall be all right," said Harris, with cheery confidence.  "We shall
+be in at Todtmoos before ten, don't you worry.  And at Todtmoos we will
+have something to eat."
+
+He said that he, himself, fancied a beefsteak, followed by an omelette.
+George said that, personally, he intended to keep his mind off the
+subject until he saw Todtmoos.
+
+We walked for half an hour, then emerging upon an opening, we saw below
+us, about two miles away, the village through which we had passed that
+morning.  It had a quaint church with an outside staircase, a somewhat
+unusual arrangement.
+
+The sight of it made me sad.  We had been walking hard for three hours
+and a half, and had accomplished, apparently, about four miles.  But
+Harris was delighted.
+
+"Now, at last," said Harris, "we know where we are."
+
+"I thought you said it didn't matter," George reminded him.
+
+"No more it does, practically," replied Harris, "but it is just as well
+to be certain.  Now I feel more confidence in myself."
+
+"I'm not so sure about that being an advantage," muttered George.  But I
+do not think Harris heard him.
+
+"We are now," continued Harris, "east of the sun, and Todtmoos is south-
+west of where we are.  So that if--"
+
+He broke off.  "By-the-by," he said, "do you remember whether I said the
+bisecting line of that segment pointed to the north or to the south?"
+
+"You said it pointed to the north," replied George.
+
+"Are you positive?" persisted Harris.
+
+"Positive," answered George "but don't let that influence your
+calculations.  In all probability you were wrong."
+
+Harris thought for a while; then his brow cleared.
+
+"That's all right," he said; "of course, it's the north.  It must be the
+north.  How could it be the south?  Now we must make for the west.  Come
+on."
+
+"I am quite willing to make for the west," said George; "any point of the
+compass is the same to me.  I only wish to remark that, at the present
+moment, we are going dead east."
+
+"No we are not," returned Harris; "we are going west."
+
+"We are going east, I tell you," said George.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't keep saying that," said Harris, "you confuse me."
+
+"I don't mind if I do," returned George; "I would rather do that than go
+wrong.  I tell you we are going dead east."
+
+"What nonsense!" retorted Harris; "there's the sun."
+
+"I can see the sun," answered George, "quite distinctly.  It may be where
+it ought to be, according to you and Science, or it may not.  All I know
+is, that when we were down in the village, that particular hill with that
+particular lump of rock upon it was due north of us.  At the present
+moment we are facing due east."
+
+"You are quite right," said Harris; "I forgot for the moment that we had
+turned round."
+
+"I should get into the habit of making a note of it, if I were you,"
+grumbled George; "it's a manoeuvre that will probably occur again more
+than once."
+
+We faced about, and walked in the other direction.  At the end of forty
+minutes' climbing we again emerged upon an opening, and again the village
+lay just under our feet.  On this occasion it was south of us.
+
+"This is very extraordinary," said Harris.
+
+"I see nothing remarkable about it," said George.  "If you walk steadily
+round a village it is only natural that now and then you get a glimpse of
+it.  Myself, I am glad to see it.  It proves to me that we are not
+utterly lost."
+
+"It ought to be the other side of us," said Harris.
+
+"It will be in another hour or so," said George, "if we keep on."
+
+I said little myself; I was vexed with both of them; but I was glad to
+notice George evidently growing cross with Harris.  It was absurd of
+Harris to fancy he could find the way by the sun.
+
+"I wish I knew," said Harris, thoughtfully, "for certain whether that
+bisecting line points to the north or to the south."
+
+"I should make up my mind about it," said George; "it's an important
+point."
+
+"It's impossible it can be the north," said Harris, "and I'll tell you
+why."
+
+"You needn't trouble," said George; "I am quite prepared to believe it
+isn't."
+
+"You said just now it was," said Harris, reproachfully.
+
+"I said nothing of the sort," retorted George.  "I said you said it was--a
+very different thing.  If you think it isn't, let's go the other way.
+It'll be a change, at all events."
+
+So Harris worked things out according to the contrary calculation, and
+again we plunged into the wood; and again after half an hour's stiff
+climbing we came in view of that same village.  True, we were a little
+higher, and this time it lay between us and the sun.
+
+"I think," said George, as he stood looking down at it, "this is the best
+view we've had of it, as yet.  There is only one other point from which
+we can see it.  After that, I propose we go down into it and get some
+rest."
+
+"I don't believe it's the same village," said Harris; "it can't be."
+
+"There's no mistaking that church," said George.  "But maybe it is a case
+on all fours with that Prague statue.  Possibly, the authorities
+hereabout have had made some life-sized models of that village, and have
+stuck them about the Forest to see where the thing would look best.
+Anyhow, which way do we go now?"
+
+"I don't know," said Harris, "and I don't care.  I have done my best;
+you've done nothing but grumble, and confuse me."
+
+"I may have been critical," admitted George "but look at the thing from
+my point of view.  One of you says he's got an instinct, and leads me to
+a wasps' nest in the middle of a wood."
+
+"I can't help wasps building in a wood," I replied.
+
+"I don't say you can," answered George.  "I am not arguing; I am merely
+stating incontrovertible facts.  The other one, who leads me up and down
+hill for hours on scientific principles, doesn't know the north from the
+south, and is never quite sure whether he's turned round or whether he
+hasn't.  Personally, I profess to no instincts beyond the ordinary, nor
+am I a scientist.  But two fields off I can see a man.  I am going to
+offer him the worth of the hay he is cutting, which I estimate at one
+mark fifty pfennig, to leave his work, and lead me to within sight of
+Todtmoos.  If you two fellows like to follow, you can.  If not, you can
+start another system and work it out by yourselves."
+
+George's plan lacked both originality and aplomb, but at the moment it
+appealed to us.  Fortunately, we had worked round to a very short
+distance away from the spot where we had originally gone wrong; with the
+result that, aided by the gentleman of the scythe, we recovered the road,
+and reached Todtmoos four hours later than we had calculated to reach it,
+with an appetite that took forty-five minutes' steady work in silence to
+abate.
+
+From Todtmoos we had intended to walk down to the Rhine; but having
+regard to our extra exertions of the morning, we decided to promenade in
+a carriage, as the French would say: and for this purpose hired a
+picturesque-looking vehicle, drawn by a horse that I should have called
+barrel-bodied but for contrast with his driver, in comparison with whom
+he was angular.  In Germany every vehicle is arranged for a pair of
+horses, but drawn generally by one.  This gives to the equipage a lop-
+sided appearance, according to our notions, but it is held here to
+indicate style.  The idea to be conveyed is that you usually drive a pair
+of horses, but that for the moment you have mislaid the other one.  The
+German driver is not what we should call a first-class whip.  He is at
+his best when he is asleep.  Then, at all events, he is harmless; and the
+horse being, generally speaking, intelligent and experienced, progress
+under these conditions is comparatively safe.  If in Germany they could
+only train the horse to collect the money at the end of the journey,
+there would be no need for a coachman at all.  This would be a distinct
+relief to the passenger, for when the German coachman is awake and not
+cracking his whip he is generally occupied in getting himself into
+trouble or out of it.  He is better at the former.  Once I recollect
+driving down a steep Black Forest hill with a couple of ladies.  It was
+one of those roads winding corkscrew-wise down the slope.  The hill rose
+at an angle of seventy-five on the off-side, and fell away at an angle of
+seventy-five on the near-side.  We were proceeding very comfortably, the
+driver, we were happy to notice, with his eyes shut, when suddenly
+something, a bad dream or indigestion, awoke him.  He seized the reins,
+and, by an adroit movement, pulled the near-side horse over the edge,
+where it clung, half supported by the traces.  Our driver did not appear
+in the least annoyed or surprised; both horses, I also, noticed, seemed
+equally used to the situation.  We got out, and he got down.  He took
+from under the seat a huge clasp-knife, evidently kept there for the
+purpose, and deftly cut the traces.  The horse, thus released, rolled
+over and over until he struck the road again some fifty feet below.  There
+he regained his feet and stood waiting for us.  We re-entered the
+carriage and descended with the single horse until we came to him.  There,
+with the help of some bits of string, our driver harnessed him again, and
+we continued on our way.  What impressed me was the evident
+accustomedness of both driver and horses to this method of working down a
+hill.
+
+Evidently to them it appeared a short and convenient cut.  I should not
+have been surprised had the man suggested our strapping ourselves in, and
+then rolling over and over, carriage and all, to the bottom.
+
+Another peculiarity of the German coachman is that he never attempts to
+pull in or to pull up.  He regulates his rate of speed, not by the pace
+of the horse, but by manipulation of the brake.  For eight miles an hour
+he puts it on slightly, so that it only scrapes the wheel, producing a
+continuous sound as of the sharpening of a saw; for four miles an hour he
+screws it down harder, and you travel to an accompaniment of groans and
+shrieks, suggestive of a symphony of dying pigs.  When he desires to come
+to a full stop, he puts it on to its full.  If his brake be a good one,
+he calculates he can stop his carriage, unless the horse be an extra
+powerful animal, in less than twice its own length.  Neither the German
+driver nor the German horse knows, apparently, that you can stop a
+carriage by any other method.  The German horse continues to pull with
+his full strength until he finds it impossible to move the vehicle
+another inch; then he rests.  Horses of other countries are quite willing
+to stop when the idea is suggested to them.  I have known horses content
+to go even quite slowly.  But your German horse, seemingly, is built for
+one particular speed, and is unable to depart from it.  I am stating
+nothing but the literal, unadorned truth, when I say I have seen a German
+coachman, with the reins lying loose over the splash-board, working his
+brake with both hands, in terror lest he would not be in time to avoid a
+collision.
+
+At Waldshut, one of those little sixteenth-century towns through which
+the Rhine flows during its earlier course, we came across that
+exceedingly common object of the Continent: the travelling Briton grieved
+and surprised at the unacquaintance of the foreigner with the subtleties
+of the English language.  When we entered the station he was, in very
+fair English, though with a slight Somersetshire accent, explaining to a
+porter for the tenth time, as he informed us, the simple fact that though
+he himself had a ticket for Donaueschingen, and wanted to go to
+Donaueschingen, to see the source of the Danube, which is not there,
+though they tell you it is, he wished his bicycle to be sent on to Engen
+and his bag to Constance, there to await his arrival.  He was hot and
+angry with the effort of the thing.  The porter was a young man in years,
+but at the moment looked old and miserable.  I offered my services.  I
+wish now I had not--though not so fervently, I expect, as he, the
+speechless one, came subsequently to wish this.  All three routes, so the
+porter explained to us, were complicated, necessitating changing and re-
+changing.  There was not much time for calm elucidation, as our own train
+was starting in a few minutes.  The man himself was voluble--always a
+mistake when anything entangled has to be made clear; while the porter
+was only too eager to get the job done with and so breathe again.  It
+dawned upon me ten minutes later, when thinking the matter over in the
+train, that though I had agreed with the porter that it would be best for
+the bicycle to go by way of Immendingen, and had agreed to his booking it
+to Immendingen, I had neglected to give instructions for its departure
+from Immendingen.  Were I of a despondent temperament I should be
+worrying myself at the present moment with the reflection that in all
+probability that bicycle is still at Immendingen to this day.  But I
+regard it as good philosophy to endeavour always to see the brighter side
+of things.  Possibly the porter corrected my omission on his own account,
+or some simple miracle may have happened to restore that bicycle to its
+owner some time before the end of his tour.  The bag we sent to
+Radolfzell: but here I console myself with the recollection that it was
+labelled Constance; and no doubt after a while the railway authorities,
+finding it unclaimed at Radolfzell, forwarded it on to Constance.
+
+But all this is apart from the moral I wished to draw from the incident.
+The true inwardness of the situation lay in the indignation of this
+Britisher at finding a German railway porter unable to comprehend
+English.  The moment we spoke to him he expressed this indignation in no
+measured terms.
+
+"Thank you very much indeed," he said; "it's simple enough.  I want to go
+to Donaueschingen myself by train; from Donaueschingen I am going to walk
+to Geisengen; from Geisengen I am going to take the train to Engen, and
+from Engen I am going to bicycle to Constance.  But I don't want to take
+my bag with me; I want to find it at Constance when I get there.  I have
+been trying to explain the thing to this fool for the last ten minutes;
+but I can't get it into him."
+
+"It is very disgraceful," I agreed.  "Some of these German workmen know
+hardly any other language than their own."
+
+"I have gone over it with him," continued the man, "on the time table,
+and explained it by pantomime.  Even then I could not knock it into him."
+
+"I can hardly believe you," I again remarked; "you would think the thing
+explained itself."
+
+Harris was angry with the man; he wished to reprove him for his folly in
+journeying through the outlying portions of a foreign clime, and seeking
+in such to accomplish complicated railway tricks without knowing a word
+of the language of the country.  But I checked the impulsiveness of
+Harris, and pointed out to him the great and good work at which the man
+was unconsciously assisting.
+
+Shakespeare and Milton may have done their little best to spread
+acquaintance with the English tongue among the less favoured inhabitants
+of Europe.  Newton and Darwin may have rendered their language a
+necessity among educated and thoughtful foreigners.  Dickens and Ouida
+(for your folk who imagine that the literary world is bounded by the
+prejudices of New Grub Street, would be surprised and grieved at the
+position occupied abroad by this at-home-sneered-at lady) may have helped
+still further to popularise it.  But the man who has spread the knowledge
+of English from Cape St. Vincent to the Ural Mountains is the Englishman
+who, unable or unwilling to learn a single word of any language but his
+own, travels purse in hand into every corner of the Continent.  One may
+be shocked at his ignorance, annoyed at his stupidity, angry at his
+presumption.  But the practical fact remains; he it is that is
+anglicising Europe.  For him the Swiss peasant tramps through the snow on
+winter evenings to attend the English class open in every village.  For
+him the coachman and the guard, the chambermaid and the laundress, pore
+over their English grammars and colloquial phrase books.  For him the
+foreign shopkeeper and merchant send their sons and daughters in their
+thousands to study in every English town.  For him it is that every
+foreign hotel- and restaurant-keeper adds to his advertisement: "Only
+those with fair knowledge of English need apply."
+
+Did the English-speaking races make it their rule to speak anything else
+than English, the marvellous progress of the English tongue throughout
+the world would stop.  The English-speaking man stands amid the strangers
+and jingles his gold.
+
+"Here," cries, "is payment for all such as can speak English."
+
+He it is who is the great educator.  Theoretically we may scold him;
+practically we should take our hats off to him.  He is the missionary of
+the English tongue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+We are grieved at the earthly instincts of the German--A superb view, but
+no restaurant--Continental opinion of the Englishman--That he does not
+know enough to come in out of the rain--There comes a weary traveller
+with a brick--The hurting of the dog--An undesirable family residence--A
+fruitful region--A merry old soul comes up the hill--George, alarmed at
+the lateness of the hour, hastens down the other side--Harris follows
+him, to show him the way--I hate being alone, and follow
+Harris--Pronunciation specially designed for use of foreigners.
+
+A thing that vexes much the high-class Anglo-Saxon soul is the earthly
+instinct prompting the German to fix a restaurant at the goal of every
+excursion.  On mountain summit, in fairy glen, on lonely pass, by
+waterfall or winding stream, stands ever the busy Wirtschaft.  How can
+one rhapsodise over a view when surrounded by beer-stained tables?  How
+lose one's self in historical reverie amid the odour of roast veal and
+spinach?
+
+One day, on elevating thoughts intent, we climbed through tangled woods.
+
+"And at the top," said Harris, bitterly, as we paused to breathe a space
+and pull our belts a hole tighter, "there will be a gaudy restaurant,
+where people will be guzzling beefsteaks and plum tarts and drinking
+white wine."
+
+"Do you think so?" said George.
+
+"Sure to be," answered Harris; "you know their way.  Not one grove will
+they consent to dedicate to solitude and contemplation; not one height
+will they leave to the lover of nature unpolluted by the gross and the
+material."
+
+"I calculate," I remarked, "that we shall be there a little before one
+o'clock, provided we don't dawdle."
+
+"The 'mittagstisch' will be just ready," groaned Harris, "with possibly
+some of those little blue trout they catch about here.  In Germany one
+never seems able to get away from food and drink.  It is maddening!"
+
+We pushed on, and in the beauty of the walk forgot our indignation.  My
+estimate proved to be correct.
+
+At a quarter to one, said Harris, who was leading:
+
+"Here we are; I can see the summit."
+
+"Any sign of that restaurant?" said George.
+
+"I don't notice it," replied Harris; "but it's there, you may be sure;
+confound it!"
+
+Five minutes later we stood upon the top.  We looked north, south, east
+and west; then we looked at one another.
+
+"Grand view, isn't it?" said Harris.
+
+"Magnificent," I agreed.
+
+"Superb," remarked George.
+
+"They have had the good sense for once," said Harris, "to put that
+restaurant out of sight."
+
+"They do seem to have hidden it," said George.  "One doesn't mind the
+thing so much when it is not forced under one's nose," said Harris.
+
+"Of course, in its place," I observed, "a restaurant is right enough."
+
+"I should like to know where they have put it," said George.
+
+"Suppose we look for it?" said Harris, with inspiration.
+
+It seemed a good idea.  I felt curious myself.  We agreed to explore in
+different directions, returning to the summit to report progress.  In
+half an hour we stood together once again.  There was no need for words.
+The face of one and all of us announced plainly that at last we had
+discovered a recess of German nature untarnished by the sordid suggestion
+of food or drink.
+
+"I should never have believed it possible," said Harris: "would you?"
+
+"I should say," I replied, "that this is the only square quarter of a
+mile in the entire Fatherland unprovided with one."
+
+"And we three strangers have struck it," said George, "without an
+effort."
+
+"True," I observed.  "By pure good fortune we are now enabled to feast
+our finer senses undisturbed by appeal to our lower nature.  Observe the
+light upon those distant peaks; is it not ravishing?"
+
+"Talking of nature," said George, "which should you say was the nearest
+way down?"
+
+"The road to the left," I replied, after consulting the guide book,
+"takes us to Sonnensteig--where, by-the-by, I observe the 'Goldener
+Adler' is well spoken of--in about two hours.  The road to the right,
+though somewhat longer, commands more extensive prospects."
+
+"One prospect," said Harris, "is very much like another prospect; don't
+you think so?"
+
+"Personally," said George, "I am going by the left-hand road."  And
+Harris and I went after him.
+
+But we were not to get down so soon as we had anticipated.  Storms come
+quickly in these regions, and before we had walked for quarter of an hour
+it became a question of seeking shelter or living for the rest of the day
+in soaked clothes.  We decided on the former alternative, and selected a
+tree that, under ordinary circumstances, should have been ample
+protection.  But a Black Forest thunderstorm is not an ordinary
+circumstance.  We consoled ourselves at first by telling each other that
+at such a rate it could not last long.  Next, we endeavoured to comfort
+ourselves with the reflection that if it did we should soon be too wet to
+fear getting wetter.
+
+"As it turned out," said Harris, "I should have been almost glad if there
+had been a restaurant up here."
+
+"I see no advantage in being both wet _and_ hungry," said George.  "I
+shall give it another five minutes, then I am going on."
+
+"These mountain solitudes," I remarked, "are very attractive in fine
+weather.  On a rainy day, especially if you happen to be past the age
+when--"
+
+At this point there hailed us a voice, proceeding from a stout gentleman,
+who stood some fifty feet away from us under a big umbrella.
+
+"Won't you come inside?" asked the stout gentleman.
+
+"Inside where?" I called back.  I thought at first he was one of those
+fools that will try to be funny when there is nothing to be funny about.
+
+"Inside the restaurant," he answered.
+
+We left our shelter and made for him.  We wished for further information
+about this thing.
+
+"I did call to you from the window," said the stout gentleman, as we drew
+near to him, "but I suppose you did not hear me.  This storm may last for
+another hour; you will get _so_ wet."
+
+He was a kindly old gentleman; he seemed quite anxious about us.
+
+I said: "It is very kind of you to have come out.  We are not lunatics.
+We have not been standing under that tree for the last half-hour knowing
+all the time there was a restaurant, hidden by the trees, within twenty
+yards of us.  We had no idea we were anywhere near a restaurant."
+
+"I thought maybe you hadn't," said the old gentleman; "that is why I
+came."
+
+It appeared that all the people in the inn had been watching us from the
+windows also, wondering why we stood there looking miserable.  If it had
+not been for this nice old gentleman the fools would have remained
+watching us, I suppose, for the rest of the afternoon.  The landlord
+excused himself by saying he thought we looked like English.  It is no
+figure of speech.  On the Continent they do sincerely believe that every
+Englishman is mad.  They are as convinced of it as is every English
+peasant that Frenchmen live on frogs.  Even when one makes a direct
+personal effort to disabuse them of the impression one is not always
+successful.
+
+It was a comfortable little restaurant, where they cooked well, while the
+Tischwein was really most passable.  We stopped there for a couple of
+hours, and dried ourselves and fed ourselves, and talked about the view;
+and just before we left an incident occurred that shows how much more
+stirring in this world are the influences of evil compared with those of
+good.
+
+A traveller entered.  He seemed a careworn man.  He carried a brick in
+his hand, tied to a piece of rope.  He entered nervously and hurriedly,
+closed the door carefully behind him, saw to it that it was fastened,
+peered out of the window long and earnestly, and then, with a sigh of
+relief, laid his brick upon the bench beside him and called for food and
+drink.
+
+There was something mysterious about the whole affair.  One wondered what
+he was going to do with the brick, why he had closed the door so
+carefully, why he had looked so anxiously from the window; but his aspect
+was too wretched to invite conversation, and we forbore, therefore, to
+ask him questions.  As he ate and drank he grew more cheerful, sighed
+less often.  Later he stretched his legs, lit an evil-smelling cigar, and
+puffed in calm contentment.
+
+Then it happened.  It happened too suddenly for any detailed explanation
+of the thing to be possible.  I recollect a Fraulein entering the room
+from the kitchen with a pan in her hand.  I saw her cross to the outer
+door.  The next moment the whole room was in an uproar.  One was reminded
+of those pantomime transformation scenes where, from among floating
+clouds, slow music, waving flowers, and reclining fairies, one is
+suddenly transported into the midst of shouting policemen tumbling
+yelling babies, swells fighting pantaloons, sausages and harlequins,
+buttered slides and clowns.  As the Fraulein of the pan touched the door
+it flew open, as though all the spirits of sin had been pressed against
+it, waiting.  Two pigs and a chicken rushed into the room; a cat that had
+been sleeping on a beer-barrel spluttered into fiery life.  The Fraulein
+threw her pan into the air and lay down on the floor.  The gentleman with
+the brick sprang to his feet, upsetting the table before him with
+everything upon it.
+
+One looked to see the cause of this disaster: one discovered it at once
+in the person of a mongrel terrier with pointed ears and a squirrel's
+tail.  The landlord rushed out from another door, and attempted to kick
+him out of the room.  Instead, he kicked one of the pigs, the fatter of
+the two.  It was a vigorous, well-planted kick, and the pig got the whole
+of it; none of it was wasted.  One felt sorry for the poor animal; but no
+amount of sorrow anyone else might feel for him could compare with the
+sorrow he felt for himself.  He stopped running about; he sat down in the
+middle of the room, and appealed to the solar system generally to observe
+this unjust thing that had come upon him.  They must have heard his
+complaint in the valleys round about, and have wondered what upheaval of
+nature was taking place among the hills.
+
+As for the hen it scuttled, screaming, every way at once.  It was a
+marvellous bird: it seemed to be able to run up a straight wall quite
+easily; and it and the cat between them fetched down mostly everything
+that was not already on the floor.  In less than forty seconds there were
+nine people in that room, all trying to kick one dog.  Possibly, now and
+again, one or another may have succeeded, for occasionally the dog would
+stop barking in order to howl.  But it did not discourage him.  Everything
+has to be paid for, he evidently argued, even a pig and chicken hunt;
+and, on the whole, the game was worth it.
+
+Besides, he had the satisfaction of observing that, for every kick he
+received, most other living things in the room got two.  As for the
+unfortunate pig--the stationary one, the one that still sat lamenting in
+the centre of the room--he must have averaged a steady four.  Trying to
+kick this dog was like playing football with a ball that was never
+there--not when you went to kick it, but after you had started to kick
+it, and had gone too far to stop yourself, so that the kick had to go on
+in any case, your only hope being that your foot would find something or
+another solid to stop it, and so save you from sitting down on the floor
+noisily and completely.  When anybody did kick the dog it was by pure
+accident, when they were not expecting to kick him; and, generally
+speaking, this took them so unawares that, after kicking him, they fell
+over him.  And everybody, every half-minute, would be certain to fall
+over the pig the sitting pig, the one incapable of getting out of
+anybody's way.
+
+How long the scrimmage might have lasted it is impossible to say.  It was
+ended by the judgment of George.  For a while he had been seeking to
+catch, not the dog but the remaining pig, the one still capable of
+activity.  Cornering it at last, he persuaded it to cease running round
+and round the room, and instead to take a spin outside.  It shot through
+the door with one long wail.
+
+We always desire the thing we have not.  One pig, a chicken, nine people,
+and a cat, were as nothing in that dog's opinion compared with the quarry
+that was disappearing.  Unwisely, he darted after it, and George closed
+the door upon him and shot the bolt.
+
+Then the landlord stood up, and surveyed all the things that were lying
+on the floor.
+
+"That's a playful dog of yours," said he to the man who had come in with
+the brick.
+
+"He is not my dog," replied the man sullenly.
+
+"Whose dog is it then?" said the landlord.
+
+"I don't know whose dog it is," answered the man.
+
+"That won't do for me, you know," said the landlord, picking up a picture
+of the German Emperor, and wiping beer from it with his sleeve.
+
+"I know it won't," replied the man; "I never expected it would.  I'm
+tired of telling people it isn't my dog.  They none of them believe me."
+
+"What do you want to go about with him for, if he's not your dog?" said
+the landlord.  "What's the attraction about him?"
+
+"I don't go about with him," replied the man; "he goes about with me.  He
+picked me up this morning at ten o'clock, and he won't leave me.  I
+thought I had got rid of him when I came in here.  I left him busy
+killing a duck more than a quarter of an hour away.  I'll have to pay for
+that, I expect, on my way back."
+
+"Have you tried throwing stones at him?" asked Harris.
+
+"Have I tried throwing stones at him!" replied the man, contemptuously.
+"I've been throwing stones at him till my arm aches with throwing stones;
+and he thinks it's a game, and brings them back to me.  I've been
+carrying this beastly brick about with me for over an hour, in the hope
+of being able to drown him, but he never comes near enough for me to get
+hold of him.  He just sits six inches out of reach with his mouth open,
+and looks at me."
+
+"It's the funniest story I've heard for a long while," said the landlord.
+
+"Glad it amuses somebody," said the man.
+
+We left him helping the landlord to pick up the broken things, and went
+our way.  A dozen yards outside the door the faithful animal was waiting
+for his friend.  He looked tired, but contented.  He was evidently a dog
+of strange and sudden fancies, and we feared for the moment lest he might
+take a liking to us.  But he let us pass with indifference.  His loyalty
+to this unresponsive man was touching; and we made no attempt to
+undermine it.
+
+Having completed to our satisfaction the Black Forest, we journeyed on
+our wheels through Alt Breisach and Colmar to Munster; whence we started
+a short exploration of the Vosges range, where, according to the present
+German Emperor, humanity stops.  Of old, Alt Breisach, a rocky fortress
+with the river now on one side of it and now on the other--for in its
+inexperienced youth the Rhine never seems to have been quite sure of its
+way,--must, as a place of residence, have appealed exclusively to the
+lover of change and excitement.  Whoever the war was between, and
+whatever it was about, Alt Breisach was bound to be in it.  Everybody
+besieged it, most people captured it; the majority of them lost it again;
+nobody seemed able to keep it.  Whom he belonged to, and what he was, the
+dweller in Alt Breisach could never have been quite sure.  One day he
+would be a Frenchman, and then before he could learn enough French to pay
+his taxes he would be an Austrian.  While trying to discover what you did
+in order to be a good Austrian, he would find he was no longer an
+Austrian, but a German, though what particular German out of the dozen
+must always have been doubtful to him.  One day he would discover that he
+was a Catholic, the next an ardent Protestant.  The only thing that could
+have given any stability to his existence must have been the monotonous
+necessity of paying heavily for the privilege of being whatever for the
+moment he was.  But when one begins to think of these things one finds
+oneself wondering why anybody in the Middle Ages, except kings and tax
+collectors, ever took the trouble to live at all.
+
+For variety and beauty, the Vosges will not compare with the hills of the
+Schwarzwald.  The advantage about them from the tourist's point of view
+is their superior poverty.  The Vosges peasant has not the unromantic air
+of contented prosperity that spoils his _vis-a-vis_ across the Rhine.  The
+villages and farms possess more the charm of decay.  Another point
+wherein the Vosges district excels is its ruins.  Many of its numerous
+castles are perched where you might think only eagles would care to
+build.  In others, commenced by the Romans and finished by the
+Troubadours, covering acres with the maze of their still standing walls,
+one may wander for hours.
+
+The fruiterer and greengrocer is a person unknown in the Vosges.  Most
+things of that kind grow wild, and are to be had for the picking.  It is
+difficult to keep to any programme when walking through the Vosges, the
+temptation on a hot day to stop and eat fruit generally being too strong
+for resistance.  Raspberries, the most delicious I have ever tasted, wild
+strawberries, currants, and gooseberries, grow upon the hill-sides as
+black-berries by English lanes.  The Vosges small boy is not called upon
+to rob an orchard; he can make himself ill without sin.  Orchards exist
+in the Vosges mountains in plenty; but to trespass into one for the
+purpose of stealing fruit would be as foolish as for a fish to try and
+get into a swimming bath without paying.  Still, of course, mistakes do
+occur.
+
+One afternoon in the course of a climb we emerged upon a plateau, where
+we lingered perhaps too long, eating more fruit than may have been good
+for us; it was so plentiful around us, so varied.  We commenced with a
+few late strawberries, and from those we passed to raspberries.  Then
+Harris found a greengage-tree with some early fruit upon it, just
+perfect.
+
+"This is about the best thing we have struck," said George; "we had
+better make the most of this."  Which was good advice, on the face of it.
+
+"It is a pity," said Harris, "that the pears are still so hard."
+
+He grieved about this for a while, but later on came across some
+remarkably fine yellow plums and these consoled him somewhat.
+
+"I suppose we are still a bit too far north for pineapples," said George.
+"I feel I could just enjoy a fresh pineapple.  This commonplace fruit
+palls upon one after a while."
+
+"Too much bush fruit and not enough tree, is the fault I find," said
+Harris.  "Myself, I should have liked a few more greengages."
+
+"Here is a man coming up the hill," I observed, "who looks like a native.
+Maybe, he will know where we can find some more greengages."
+
+"He walks well for an old chap," remarked Harris.
+
+He certainly was climbing the hill at a remarkable pace.  Also, so far as
+we were able to judge at that distance, he appeared to be in a remarkably
+cheerful mood, singing and shouting at the top of his voice,
+gesticulating, and waving his arms.
+
+"What a merry old soul it is," said Harris; "it does one good to watch
+him.  But why does he carry his stick over his shoulder?  Why doesn't he
+use it to help him up the hill?"
+
+"Do you know, I don't think it is a stick," said George.
+
+"What can it be, then?" asked Harris.
+
+"Well, it looks to me," said George, "more like a gun."
+
+"You don't think we can have made a mistake?" suggested Harris.  "You
+don't think this can be anything in the nature of a private orchard?"
+
+I said: "Do you remember the sad thing that happened in the South of
+France some two years ago?  A soldier picked some cherries as he passed a
+house, and the French peasant to whom the cherries belonged came out, and
+without a word of warning shot him dead."
+
+"But surely you are not allowed to shoot a man dead for picking fruit,
+even in France?" said George.
+
+"Of course not," I answered.  "It was quite illegal.  The only excuse
+offered by his counsel was that he was of a highly excitable disposition,
+and especially keen about these particular cherries."
+
+"I recollect something about the case," said Harris, "now you mention it.
+I believe the district in which it happened--the 'Commune,' as I think it
+is called--had to pay heavy compensation to the relatives of the deceased
+soldier; which was only fair."
+
+George said: "I am tired of this place.  Besides, it's getting late."
+
+Harris said: "If he goes at that rate he will fall and hurt himself.
+Besides, I don't believe he knows the way."
+
+I felt lonesome up there all by myself, with nobody to speak to.  Besides,
+not since I was a boy, I reflected, had I enjoyed a run down a really
+steep hill.  I thought I would see if I could revive the sensation.  It
+is a jerky exercise, but good, I should say, for the liver.
+
+We slept that night at Barr, a pleasant little town on the way to St.
+Ottilienberg, an interesting old convent among the mountains, where you
+are waited upon by real nuns, and your bill made out by a priest.  At
+Barr, just before supper a tourist entered.  He looked English, but spoke
+a language the like of which I have never heard before.  Yet it was an
+elegant and fine-sounding language.  The landlord stared at him blankly;
+the landlady shook her head.  He sighed, and tried another, which somehow
+recalled to me forgotten memories, though, at the time, I could not fix
+it.  But again nobody understood him.
+
+"This is damnable," he said aloud to himself.
+
+"Ah, you are English!" exclaimed the landlord, brightening up.
+
+"And Monsieur looks tired," added the bright little landlady.  "Monsieur
+will have supper."
+
+They both spoke English excellently, nearly as well as they spoke French
+and German; and they bustled about and made him comfortable.  At supper
+he sat next to me, and I talked to him.
+
+"Tell me," I said--I was curious on the subject--"what language was it
+you spoke when you first came in?"
+
+"German," he explained.
+
+"Oh," I replied, "I beg your pardon."
+
+"You did not understand it?" he continued.
+
+"It must have been my fault," I answered; "my knowledge is extremely
+limited.  One picks up a little here and there as one goes about, but of
+course that is a different thing."
+
+"But _they_ did not understand it," he replied, "the landlord and his
+wife; and it is their own language."
+
+"I do not think so," I said.  "The children hereabout speak German, it is
+true, and our landlord and landlady know German to a certain point.  But
+throughout Alsace and Lorraine the old people still talk French."
+
+"And I spoke to them in French also," he added, "and they understood that
+no better."
+
+"It is certainly very curious," I agreed.
+
+"It is more than curious," he replied; "in my case it is
+incomprehensible.  I possess a diploma for modern languages.  I won my
+scholarship purely on the strength of my French and German.  The
+correctness of my construction, the purity of my pronunciation, was
+considered at my college to be quite remarkable.  Yet, when I come abroad
+hardly anybody understands a word I say.  Can you explain it?"
+
+"I think I can," I replied.  "Your pronunciation is too faultless.  You
+remember what the Scotsman said when for the first time in his life he
+tasted real whisky: 'It may be puir, but I canna drink it'; so it is with
+your German.  It strikes one less as a language than as an exhibition.  If
+I might offer advice, I should say: Mispronounce as much as possible, and
+throw in as many mistakes as you can think of."
+
+It is the same everywhere.  Each country keeps a special pronunciation
+exclusively for the use of foreigners--a pronunciation they never dream
+of using themselves, that they cannot understand when it is used.  I once
+heard an English lady explaining to a Frenchman how to pronounce the word
+Have.
+
+"You will pronounce it," said the lady reproachfully, "as if it were
+spelt H-a-v.  It isn't.  There is an 'e' at the end."
+
+"But I thought," said the pupil, "that you did not sound the 'e' at the
+end of h-a-v-e."
+
+"No more you do," explained his teacher.  "It is what we call a mute 'e';
+but it exercises a modifying influence on the preceding vowel."
+
+Before that, he used to say "have" quite intelligently.  Afterwards, when
+he came to the word he would stop dead, collect his thoughts, and give
+expression to a sound that only the context could explain.
+
+Putting aside the sufferings of the early martyrs, few men, I suppose,
+have gone through more than I myself went through in trying to I attain
+the correct pronunciation of the German word for church--"Kirche."  Long
+before I had done with it I had determined never to go to church in
+Germany, rather than be bothered with it.
+
+"No, no," my teacher would explain--he was a painstaking gentleman; "you
+say it as if it were spelt K-i-r-c-h-k-e.  There is no k.  It is--."  And
+he would illustrate to me again, for the twentieth time that morning, how
+it should be pronounced; the sad thing being that I could never for the
+life of me detect any difference between the way he said it and the way I
+said it.  So he would try a new method.
+
+"You say it from your throat," he would explain.  He was quite right; I
+did.  "I want you to say it from down here," and with a fat forefinger he
+would indicate the region from where I was to start.  After painful
+efforts, resulting in sounds suggestive of anything rather than a place
+of worship, I would excuse myself.
+
+"I really fear it is impossible," I would say.  "You see, for years I
+have always talked with my mouth, as it were; I never knew a man could
+talk with his stomach.  I doubt if it is not too late now for me to
+learn."
+
+By spending hours in dark corners, and practising in silent streets, to
+the terror of chance passers-by, I came at last to pronounce this word
+correctly.  My teacher was delighted with me, and until I came to Germany
+I was pleased with myself.  In Germany I found that nobody understood
+what I meant by it.  I never got near a church with it.  I had to drop
+the correct pronunciation, and painstakingly go back to my first wrong
+pronunciation.  Then they would brighten up, and tell me it was round the
+corner, or down the next street, as the case might be.
+
+I also think pronunciation of a foreign tongue could be better taught
+than by demanding from the pupil those internal acrobatic feats that are
+generally impossible and always useless.  This is the sort of instruction
+one receives:
+
+"Press your tonsils against the underside of your larynx.  Then with the
+convex part of the septum curved upwards so as almost--but not quite--to
+touch the uvula, try with the tip of your tongue to reach your thyroid.
+Take a deep breath, and compress your glottis.  Now, without opening your
+lips, say 'Garoo.'"
+
+And when you have done it they are not satisfied.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+An examination into the character and behaviour of the German student--The
+German Mensur--Uses and abuses of use--Views of an impressionist--The
+humour of the thing--Recipe for making savages--The Jungfrau: her
+peculiar taste in laces--The Kneipe--How to rub a Salamander--Advice to
+the stranger--A story that might have ended sadly--Of two men and two
+wives--Together with a bachelor.
+
+On our way home we included a German University town, being wishful to
+obtain an insight into the ways of student life, a curiosity that the
+courtesy of German friends enabled us to gratify.
+
+The English boy plays till he is fifteen, and works thence till twenty.
+In Germany it is the child that works; the young man that plays.  The
+German boy goes to school at seven o'clock in the summer, at eight in the
+winter, and at school he studies.  The result is that at sixteen he has a
+thorough knowledge of the classics and mathematics, knows as much history
+as any man compelled to belong to a political party is wise in knowing,
+together with a thorough grounding in modern languages.  Therefore his
+eight College Semesters, extending over four years, are, except for the
+young man aiming at a professorship, unnecessarily ample.  He is not a
+sportsman, which is a pity, for he should make good one.  He plays
+football a little, bicycles still less; plays French billiards in stuffy
+cafes more.  But generally speaking he, or the majority of him, lays out
+his time bummeling, beer drinking, and fighting.  If he be the son of a
+wealthy father he joins a Korps--to belong to a crack Korps costs about
+four hundred pounds a year.  If he be a middle-class young man, he enrols
+himself in a Burschenschaft, or a Landsmannschaft, which is a little
+cheaper.  These companies are again broken up into smaller circles, in
+which attempt is made to keep to nationality.  There are the Swabians,
+from Swabia; the Frankonians, descendants of the Franks; the Thuringians,
+and so forth.  In practice, of course, this results as all such attempts
+do result--I believe half our Gordon Highlanders are Cockneys--but the
+picturesque object is obtained of dividing each University into some
+dozen or so separate companies of students, each one with its distinctive
+cap and colours, and, quite as important, its own particular beer hall,
+into which no other student wearing his colours may come.
+
+The chief work of these student companies is to fight among themselves,
+or with some rival Korps or Schaft, the celebrated German Mensur.
+
+The Mensur has been described so often and so thoroughly that I do not
+intend to bore my readers with any detailed account of it.  I merely come
+forward as an impressionist, and I write purposely the impression of my
+first Mensur, because I believe that first impressions are more true and
+useful than opinions blunted by intercourse, or shaped by influence.
+
+A Frenchman or a Spaniard will seek to persuade you that the bull-ring is
+an institution got up chiefly for the benefit of the bull.  The horse
+which you imagined to be screaming with pain was only laughing at the
+comical appearance presented by its own inside.  Your French or Spanish
+friend contrasts its glorious and exciting death in the ring with the
+cold-blooded brutality of the knacker's yard.  If you do not keep a tight
+hold of your head, you come away with the desire to start an agitation
+for the inception of the bull-ring in England as an aid to chivalry.  No
+doubt Torquemada was convinced of the humanity of the Inquisition.  To a
+stout gentleman, suffering, perhaps, from cramp or rheumatism, an hour or
+so on the rack was really a physical benefit.  He would rise feeling more
+free in his joints--more elastic, as one might say, than he had felt for
+years.  English huntsmen regard the fox as an animal to be envied.  A
+day's excellent sport is provided for him free of charge, during which he
+is the centre of attraction.
+
+Use blinds one to everything one does not wish to see.  Every third
+German gentleman you meet in the street still bears, and will bear to his
+grave, marks of the twenty to a hundred duels he has fought in his
+student days.  The German children play at the Mensur in the nursery,
+rehearse it in the gymnasium.  The Germans have come to persuade
+themselves there is no brutality in it--nothing offensive, nothing
+degrading.  Their argument is that it schools the German youth to
+coolness and courage.  If this could be proved, the argument,
+particularly in a country where every man is a soldier, would be
+sufficiently one-sided.  But is the virtue of the prize-fighter the
+virtue of the soldier?  One doubts it.  Nerve and dash are surely of more
+service in the field than a temperament of unreasoning indifference as to
+what is happening to one.  As a matter of fact, the German student would
+have to be possessed of much more courage not to fight.  He fights not to
+please himself, but to satisfy a public opinion that is two hundred years
+behind the times.
+
+All the Mensur does is to brutalise him.  There may be skill displayed--I
+am told there is,--but it is not apparent.  The mere fighting is like
+nothing so much as a broadsword combat at a Richardson's show; the
+display as a whole a successful attempt to combine the ludicrous with the
+unpleasant.  In aristocratic Bonn, where style is considered, and in
+Heidelberg, where visitors from other nations are more common, the affair
+is perhaps more formal.  I am told that there the contests take place in
+handsome rooms; that grey-haired doctors wait upon the wounded, and
+liveried servants upon the hungry, and that the affair is conducted
+throughout with a certain amount of picturesque ceremony.  In the more
+essentially German Universities, where strangers are rare and not much
+encouraged, the simple essentials are the only things kept in view, and
+these are not of an inviting nature.
+
+Indeed, so distinctly uninviting are they, that I strongly advise the
+sensitive reader to avoid even this description of them.  The subject
+cannot be made pretty, and I do not intend to try.
+
+The room is bare and sordid; its walls splashed with mixed stains of
+beer, blood, and candle-grease; its ceiling, smoky; its floor, sawdust
+covered.  A crowd of students, laughing, smoking, talking, some sitting
+on the floor, others perched upon chairs and benches form the framework.
+
+In the centre, facing one another, stand the combatants, resembling
+Japanese warriors, as made familiar to us by the Japanese tea-tray.
+Quaint and rigid, with their goggle-covered eyes, their necks tied up in
+comforters, their bodies smothered in what looks like dirty bed quilts,
+their padded arms stretched straight above their heads, they might be a
+pair of ungainly clockwork figures.  The seconds, also more or less
+padded--their heads and faces protected by huge leather-peaked caps,--drag
+them out into their proper position.  One almost listens to hear the
+sound of the castors.  The umpire takes his place, the word is given, and
+immediately there follow five rapid clashes of the long straight swords.
+There is no interest in watching the fight: there is no movement, no
+skill, no grace (I am speaking of my own impressions.)  The strongest man
+wins; the man who, with his heavily-padded arm, always in an unnatural
+position, can hold his huge clumsy sword longest without growing too weak
+to be able either to guard or to strike.
+
+The whole interest is centred in watching the wounds.  They come always
+in one of two places--on the top of the head or the left side of the
+face.  Sometimes a portion of hairy scalp or section of cheek flies up
+into the air, to be carefully preserved in an envelope by its proud
+possessor, or, strictly speaking, its proud former possessor, and shown
+round on convivial evenings; and from every wound, of course, flows a
+plentiful stream of blood.  It splashes doctors, seconds, and spectators;
+it sprinkles ceiling and walls; it saturates the fighters, and makes
+pools for itself in the sawdust.  At the end of each round the doctors
+rush up, and with hands already dripping with blood press together the
+gaping wounds, dabbing them with little balls of wet cotton wool, which
+an attendant carries ready on a plate.  Naturally, the moment the men
+stand up again and commence work, the blood gushes out again, half
+blinding them, and rendering the ground beneath them slippery.  Now and
+then you see a man's teeth laid bare almost to the ear, so that for the
+rest of the duel he appears to be grinning at one half of the spectators,
+his other side, remaining serious; and sometimes a man's nose gets slit,
+which gives to him as he fights a singularly supercilious air.
+
+As the object of each student is to go away from the University bearing
+as many scars as possible, I doubt if any particular pains are taken to
+guard, even to the small extent such method of fighting can allow.  The
+real victor is he who comes out with the greatest number of wounds; he
+who then, stitched and patched almost to unrecognition as a human being,
+can promenade for the next month, the envy of the German youth, the
+admiration of the German maiden.  He who obtains only a few unimportant
+wounds retires sulky and disappointed.
+
+But the actual fighting is only the beginning of the fun.  The second act
+of the spectacle takes place in the dressing-room.  The doctors are
+generally mere medical students--young fellows who, having taken their
+degree, are anxious for practice.  Truth compels me to say that those
+with whom I came in contact were coarse-looking men who seemed rather to
+relish their work.  Perhaps they are not to be blamed for this.  It is
+part of the system that as much further punishment as possible must be
+inflicted by the doctor, and the ideal medical man might hardly care for
+such job.  How the student bears the dressing of his wounds is as
+important as how he receives them.  Every operation has to be performed
+as brutally as may be, and his companions carefully watch him during the
+process to see that he goes through it with an appearance of peace and
+enjoyment.  A clean-cut wound that gapes wide is most desired by all
+parties.  On purpose it is sewn up clumsily, with the hope that by this
+means the scar will last a lifetime.  Such a wound, judiciously mauled
+and interfered with during the week afterwards, can generally be reckoned
+on to secure its fortunate possessor a wife with a dowry of five figures
+at the least.
+
+These are the general bi-weekly Mensurs, of which the average student
+fights some dozen a year.  There are others to which visitors are not
+admitted.  When a student is considered to have disgraced himself by some
+slight involuntary movement of the head or body while fighting, then he
+can only regain his position by standing up to the best swordsman in his
+Korps.  He demands and is accorded, not a contest, but a punishment.  His
+opponent then proceeds to inflict as many and as bloody wounds as can be
+taken.  The object of the victim is to show his comrades that he can
+stand still while his head is half sliced from his skull.
+
+Whether anything can properly be said in favour of the German Mensur I am
+doubtful; but if so it concerns only the two combatants.  Upon the
+spectators it can and does, I am convinced, exercise nothing but evil.  I
+know myself sufficiently well to be sure I am not of an unusually
+bloodthirsty disposition.  The effect it had upon me can only be the
+usual effect.  At first, before the actual work commenced, my sensation
+was curiosity mingled with anxiety as to how the sight would trouble me,
+though some slight acquaintance with dissecting-rooms and operating
+tables left me less doubt on that point than I might otherwise have felt.
+As the blood began to flow, and nerves and muscles to be laid bare, I
+experienced a mingling of disgust and pity.  But with the second duel, I
+must confess, my finer feelings began to disappear; and by the time the
+third was well upon its way, and the room heavy with the curious hot
+odour of blood, I began, as the American expression is, to see things
+red.
+
+I wanted more.  I looked from face to face surrounding me, and in most of
+them I found reflected undoubtedly my own sensations.  If it be a good
+thing to excite this blood thirst in the modern man, then the Mensur is a
+useful institution.  But is it a good thing?  We prate about our
+civilisation and humanity, but those of us who do not carry hypocrisy to
+the length of self-deception know that underneath our starched shirts
+there lurks the savage, with all his savage instincts untouched.
+Occasionally he may be wanted, but we never need fear his dying out.  On
+the other hand, it seems unwise to over-nourish him.
+
+In favour of the duel, seriously considered, there are many points to be
+urged.  But the Mensur serves no good purpose whatever.  It is
+childishness, and the fact of its being a cruel and brutal game makes it
+none the less childish.  Wounds have no intrinsic value of their own; it
+is the cause that dignifies them, not their size.  William Tell is
+rightly one of the heroes of the world; but what should we think of the
+members of a club of fathers, formed with the object of meeting twice a
+week to shoot apples from their sons' heads with cross-bows?  These young
+German gentlemen could obtain all the results of which they are so proud
+by teasing a wild cat!  To join a society for the mere purpose of getting
+yourself hacked about reduces a man to the intellectual level of a
+dancing Dervish.  Travellers tell us of savages in Central Africa who
+express their feelings on festive occasions by jumping about and slashing
+themselves.  But there is no need for Europe to imitate them.  The Mensur
+is, in fact, the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the duel; and if the Germans
+themselves cannot see that it is funny, one can only regret their lack of
+humour.
+
+But though one may be unable to agree with the public opinion that
+supports and commands the Mensur, it at least is possible to understand.
+The University code that, if it does not encourage it, at least condones
+drunkenness, is more difficult to treat argumentatively.  All German
+students do not get drunk; in fact, the majority are sober, if not
+industrious.  But the minority, whose claim to be representative is
+freely admitted, are only saved from perpetual inebriety by ability,
+acquired at some cost, to swill half the day and all the night, while
+retaining to some extent their five senses.  It does not affect all
+alike, but it is common in any University town to see a young man not yet
+twenty with the figure of a Falstaff and the complexion of a Rubens
+Bacchus.  That the German maiden can be fascinated with a face, cut and
+gashed till it suggests having been made out of odd materials that never
+could have fitted, is a proved fact.  But surely there can be no
+attraction about a blotched and bloated skin and a "bay window" thrown
+out to an extent threatening to overbalance the whole structure.  Yet
+what else can be expected, when the youngster starts his beer-drinking
+with a "Fruhschoppen" at 10 a.m., and closes it with a "Kneipe" at four
+in the morning?
+
+The Kneipe is what we should call a stag party, and can be very harmless
+or very rowdy, according to its composition.  One man invites his fellow-
+students, a dozen or a hundred, to a cafe, and provides them with as much
+beer and as many cheap cigars as their own sense of health and comfort
+may dictate, or the host may be the Korps itself.  Here, as everywhere,
+you observe the German sense of discipline and order.  As each new comer
+enters all those sitting round the table rise, and with heels close
+together salute.  When the table is complete, a chairman is chosen, whose
+duty it is to give out the number of the songs.  Printed books of these
+songs, one to each two men, lie round the table.  The chairman gives out
+number twenty-nine.  "First verse," he cries, and away all go, each two
+men holding a book between them exactly as two people might hold a hymn-
+book in church.  There is a pause at the end of each verse until the
+chairman starts the company on the next.  As every German is a trained
+singer, and as most of them have fair voices, the general effect is
+striking.
+
+Although the manner may be suggestive of the singing of hymns in church,
+the words of the songs are occasionally such as to correct this
+impression.  But whether it be a patriotic song, a sentimental ballad, or
+a ditty of a nature that would shock the average young Englishman, all
+are sung through with stern earnestness, without a laugh, without a false
+note.  At the end, the chairman calls "Prosit!"  Everyone answers
+"Prosit!" and the next moment every glass is empty.  The pianist rises
+and bows, and is bowed to in return; and then the Fraulein enters to
+refill the glasses.
+
+Between the songs, toasts are proposed and responded to; but there is
+little cheering, and less laughter.  Smiles and grave nods of approval
+are considered as more seeming among German students.
+
+A particular toast, called a Salamander, accorded to some guest as a
+special distinction, is drunk with exceptional solemnity.
+
+"We will now," says the chairman, "a Salamander rub"  ("Einen Salamander
+reiben").  We all rise, and stand like a regiment at attention.
+
+"Is the stuff prepared?"  ("Sind die stoffe parat?") demands the
+chairman.
+
+"Sunt," we answer, with one voice.
+
+"Ad exercitium Salamandri," says the chairman, and we are ready.
+
+"Eins!"  We rub our glasses with a circular motion on the table.
+
+"Zwei!"  Again the glasses growl; also at "Drei!"
+
+"Drink!"  ("Bibite!")
+
+And with mechanical unison every glass is emptied and held on high.
+
+"Eins!" says the chairman.  The foot of every empty glass twirls upon the
+table, producing a sound as of the dragging back of a stony beach by a
+receding wave.
+
+"Zwei!"  The roll swells and sinks again.
+
+"Drei!"  The glasses strike the table with a single crash, and we are in
+our seats again.
+
+The sport at the Kneipe is for two students to insult each other (in
+play, of course), and to then challenge each other to a drinking duel.  An
+umpire is appointed, two huge glasses are filled, and the men sit
+opposite each other with their hands upon the handles, all eyes fixed
+upon them.  The umpire gives the word to go, and in an instant the beer
+is gurgling down their throats.  The man who bangs his perfectly finished
+glass upon the table first is victor.
+
+Strangers who are going through a Kneipe, and who wish to do the thing in
+German style, will do well, before commencing proceedings, to pin their
+name and address upon their coats.  The German student is courtesy
+itself, and whatever his own state may be, he will see to it that, by
+some means or another, his guest gets safely home before the morning.
+But, of course, he cannot be expected to remember addresses.
+
+A story was told me of three guests to a Berlin Kneipe which might have
+had tragic results.  The strangers determined to do the thing thoroughly.
+They explained their intention, and were applauded, and each proceeded to
+write his address upon his card, and pin it to the tablecloth in front of
+him.  That was the mistake they made.  They should, as I have advised,
+have pinned it carefully to their coats.  A man may change his place at a
+table, quite unconsciously he may come out the other side of it; but
+wherever he goes he takes his coat with him.
+
+Some time in the small hours, the chairman suggested that to make things
+more comfortable for those still upright, all the gentlemen unable to
+keep their heads off the table should be sent home.  Among those to whom
+the proceedings had become uninteresting were the three Englishmen.  It
+was decided to put them into a cab in charge of a comparatively speaking
+sober student, and return them.  Had they retained their original seats
+throughout the evening all would have been well; but, unfortunately, they
+had gone walking about, and which gentleman belonged to which card nobody
+knew--least of all the guests themselves.  In the then state of general
+cheerfulness, this did not to anybody appear to much matter.  There were
+three gentlemen and three addresses.  I suppose the idea was that even if
+a mistake were made, the parties could be sorted out in the morning.
+Anyhow, the three gentlemen were put into a cab, the comparatively
+speaking sober student took the three cards in his hand, and the party
+started amid the cheers and good wishes of the company.
+
+There is this advantage about German beer: it does not make a man drunk
+as the word drunk is understood in England.  There is nothing
+objectionable about him; he is simply tired.  He does not want to talk;
+he wants to be let alone, to go to sleep; it does not matter
+where--anywhere.
+
+The conductor of the party stopped his cab at the nearest address.  He
+took out his worst case; it was a natural instinct to get rid of that
+first.  He and the cabman carried it upstairs, and rang the bell of the
+Pension.  A sleepy porter answered it.  They carried their burden in, and
+looked for a place to drop it.  A bedroom door happened to be open; the
+room was empty; could anything be better?--they took it in there.  They
+relieved it of such things as came off easily, and laid it in the bed.
+This done, both men, pleased with themselves, returned to the cab.
+
+At the next address they stopped again.  This time, in answer to their
+summons, a lady appeared, dressed in a tea gown, with a book in her hand.
+The German student looked at the top one of two cards remaining in his
+hand, and enquired if he had the pleasure of addressing Frau Y.  It
+happened that he had, though so far as any pleasure was concerned that
+appeared to be entirely on his side.  He explained to Frau Y. that the
+gentleman at that moment asleep against the wall was her husband.  The
+reunion moved her to no enthusiasm; she simply opened the bedroom door,
+and then walked away.  The cabman and the student took him in, and laid
+him on the bed.  They did not trouble to undress him, they were feeling
+tired!  They did not see the lady of the house again, and retired
+therefore without adieus.
+
+The last card was that of a bachelor stopping at an hotel.  They took
+their last man, therefore, to that hotel, passed him over to the night
+porter, and left him.
+
+To return to the address at which the first delivery was made, what had
+happened there was this.  Some eight hours previously had said Mr. X. to
+Mrs. X.: "I think I told you, my dear, that I had an invitation for this
+evening to what, I believe, is called a Kneipe?"
+
+"You did mention something of the sort," replied Mrs. X.  "What is a
+Kneipe?"
+
+"Well, it's a sort of bachelor party, my dear, where the students meet to
+sing and talk and--and smoke, and all that sort of thing, you know."
+
+"Oh, well, I hope you will enjoy yourself!" said Mrs. X., who was a nice
+woman and sensible.
+
+"It will be interesting," observed Mr. X.  "I have often had a curiosity
+to see one.  I may," continued Mr. X.,--"I mean it is possible, that I
+may be home a little late."
+
+"What do you call late?" asked Mrs. X.
+
+"It is somewhat difficult to say," returned Mr. X.  "You see these
+students, they are a wild lot, and when they get together--And then, I
+believe, a good many toasts are drunk.  I don't know how it will affect
+me.  If I can see an opportunity I shall come away early, that is if I
+can do so without giving offence; but if not--"
+
+Said Mrs. X., who, as I remarked before, was a sensible woman: "You had
+better get the people here to lend you a latchkey.  I shall sleep with
+Dolly, and then you won't disturb me whatever time it may be."
+
+"I think that an excellent idea of yours," agreed Mr. X.  "I should hate
+disturbing you.  I shall just come in quietly, and slip into bed."
+
+Some time in the middle of the night, or maybe towards the early morning,
+Dolly, who was Mrs. X.'s sister, sat up in bed and listened.
+
+"Jenny," said Dolly, "are you awake?"
+
+"Yes, dear," answered Mrs. X.  "It's all right.  You go to sleep again."
+
+"But whatever is it?" asked Dolly.  "Do you think it's fire?"
+
+"I expect," replied Mrs. X., "that it's Percy.  Very possibly he has
+stumbled over something in the dark.  Don't you worry, dear; you go to
+sleep."
+
+But so soon as Dolly had dozed off again, Mrs. X., who was a good wife,
+thought she would steal off softly and see to it that Percy was all
+right.  So, putting on a dressing-gown and slippers, she crept along the
+passage and into her own room.  To awake the gentleman on the bed would
+have required an earthquake.  She lit a candle and stole over to the
+bedside.
+
+It was not Percy; it was not anyone like Percy.  She felt it was not the
+man that ever could have been her husband, under any circumstances.  In
+his present condition her sentiment towards him was that of positive
+dislike.  Her only desire was to get rid of him.
+
+But something there was about him which seemed familiar to her.  She went
+nearer, and took a closer view.  Then she remembered.  Surely it was Mr.
+Y., a gentleman at whose flat she and Percy had dined the day they first
+arrived in Berlin.
+
+But what was he doing here?  She put the candle on the table, and taking
+her head between her hands sat down to think.  The explanation of the
+thing came to her with a rush.  It was with this Mr. Y. that Percy had
+gone to the Kneipe.  A mistake had been made.  Mr. Y. had been brought
+back to Percy's address.  Percy at this very moment--
+
+The terrible possibilities of the situation swam before her.  Returning
+to Dolly's room, she dressed herself hastily, and silently crept
+downstairs.  Finding, fortunately, a passing night-cab, she drove to the
+address of Mrs. Y.  Telling the man to wait, she flew upstairs and rang
+persistently at the bell.  It was opened as before by Mrs. Y., still in
+her tea-gown, and with her book still in her hand.
+
+"Mrs. X.!" exclaimed Mrs. Y.  "Whatever brings you here?"
+
+"My husband!" was all poor Mrs. X. could think to say at the moment, "is
+he here?"
+
+"Mrs. X.," returned Mrs. Y., drawing herself up to her full height, "how
+dare you?"
+
+"Oh, please don't misunderstand me!" pleaded Mrs. X.  "It's all a
+terrible mistake.  They must have brought poor Percy here instead of to
+our place, I'm sure they must.  Do please look and see."
+
+"My dear," said Mrs. Y., who was a much older woman, and more motherly,
+"don't excite yourself.  They brought him here about half an hour ago,
+and, to tell you the truth, I never looked at him.  He is in here.  I
+don't think they troubled to take off even his boots.  If you keep cool,
+we will get him downstairs and home without a soul beyond ourselves being
+any the wiser.
+
+Indeed, Mrs. Y. seemed quite eager to help Mrs. X.
+
+She pushed open the door, and Mrs. X, went in.  The next moment she came
+out with a white, scared face.
+
+"It isn't Percy," she said.  "Whatever am I to do?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't make these mistakes," said Mrs. Y., moving to enter
+the room herself.
+
+Mrs. X. stopped her.  "And it isn't your husband either."
+
+"Nonsense," said Mrs. Y.
+
+"It isn't really," persisted Mrs. X.  "I know, because I have just left
+him, asleep on Percy's bed."
+
+"What's he doing there?" thundered Mrs. Y.
+
+"They brought him there, and put him there," explained Mrs. X., beginning
+to cry.  "That's what made me think Percy must be here."
+
+The two women stood and looked at one another; and there was silence for
+awhile, broken only by the snoring of the gentleman the other side of the
+half-open door.
+
+"Then who is that, in there?" demanded Mrs. Y., who was the first to
+recover herself.
+
+"I don't know," answered Mrs. X., "I have never seen him before.  Do you
+think it is anybody you know?"
+
+But Mrs. Y. only banged to the door.
+
+"What are we to do?" said Mrs. X.
+
+"I know what _I_ am going to do," said Mrs. Y.  "I'm coming back with you
+to fetch my husband."
+
+"He's very sleepy," explained Mrs. X.
+
+"I've known him to be that before," replied Mrs. Y., as she fastened on
+her cloak.
+
+"But where's Percy?" sobbed poor little Mrs. X., as they descended the
+stairs together.
+
+"That my dear," said Mrs. Y., "will be a question for you to ask _him_."
+
+"If they go about making mistakes like this," said Mrs. X., "it is
+impossible to say what they may not have done with him."
+
+"We will make enquiries in the morning, my dear," said Mrs. Y.,
+consolingly.
+
+"I think these Kneipes are disgraceful affairs," said Mrs. X.  "I shall
+never let Percy go to another, never--so long as I live."
+
+"My dear," remarked Mrs. Y., "if you know your duty, he will never want
+to."  And rumour has it that he never did.
+
+But, as I have said, the mistake was in pinning the card to the
+tablecloth instead of to the coat.  And error in this world is always
+severely punished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Which is serious: as becomes a parting chapter--The German from the Anglo-
+Saxon's point of view--Providence in buttons and a helmet--Paradise of
+the helpless idiot--German conscience: its aggressiveness--How they hang
+in Germany, very possibly--What happens to good Germans when they
+die?--The military instinct: is it all-sufficient?--The German as a
+shopkeeper--How he supports life--The New Woman, here as everywhere--What
+can be said against the Germans, as a people--The Bummel is over and
+done.
+
+"Anybody could rule this country," said George; "_I_ could rule it."
+
+We were seated in the garden of the Kaiser Hof at Bonn, looking down upon
+the Rhine.  It was the last evening of our Bummel; the early morning
+train would be the beginning of the end.
+
+"I should write down all I wanted the people to do on a piece of paper,"
+continued George; "get a good firm to print off so many copies, have them
+posted about the towns and villages; and the thing would be done."
+
+In the placid, docile German of to-day, whose only ambition appears to be
+to pay his taxes, and do what he is told to do by those whom it has
+pleased Providence to place in authority over him, it is difficult, one
+must confess, to detect any trace of his wild ancestor, to whom
+individual liberty was as the breath of his nostrils; who appointed his
+magistrates to advise, but retained the right of execution for the tribe;
+who followed his chief, but would have scorned to obey him.  In Germany
+to-day one hears a good deal concerning Socialism, but it is a Socialism
+that would only be despotism under another name.  Individualism makes no
+appeal to the German voter.  He is willing, nay, anxious, to be
+controlled and regulated in all things.  He disputes, not government, but
+the form of it.  The policeman is to him a religion, and, one feels, will
+always remain so.  In England we regard our man in blue as a harmless
+necessity.  By the average citizen he is employed chiefly as a signpost,
+though in busy quarters of the town he is considered useful for taking
+old ladies across the road.  Beyond feeling thankful to him for these
+services, I doubt if we take much thought of him.  In Germany, on the
+other hand, he is worshipped as a little god and loved as a guardian
+angel.  To the German child he is a combination of Santa Claus and the
+Bogie Man.  All good things come from him: Spielplatze to play in,
+furnished with swings and giant-strides, sand heaps to fight around,
+swimming baths, and fairs.  All misbehaviour is punished by him.  It is
+the hope of every well-meaning German boy and girl to please the police.
+To be smiled at by a policeman makes it conceited.  A German child that
+has been patted on the head by a policeman is not fit to live with; its
+self-importance is unbearable.
+
+The German citizen is a soldier, and the policeman is his officer.  The
+policeman directs him where in the street to walk, and how fast to walk.
+At the end of each bridge stands a policeman to tell the German how to
+cross it.  Were there no policeman there, he would probably sit down and
+wait till the river had passed by.  At the railway station the policeman
+locks him up in the waiting-room, where he can do no harm to himself.
+When the proper time arrives, he fetches him out and hands him over to
+the guard of the train, who is only a policeman in another uniform.  The
+guard tells him where to sit in the train, and when to get out, and sees
+that he does get out.  In Germany you take no responsibility upon
+yourself whatever.  Everything is done for you, and done well.  You are
+not supposed to look after yourself; you are not blamed for being
+incapable of looking after yourself; it is the duty of the German
+policeman to look after you.  That you may be a helpless idiot does not
+excuse him should anything happen to you.  Wherever you are and whatever
+you are doing you are in his charge, and he takes care of you--good care
+of you; there is no denying this.
+
+If you lose yourself, he finds you; and if you lose anything belonging to
+you, he recovers it for you.  If you don't know what you want, he tells
+you.  If you want anything that is good for you to have, he gets it for
+you.  Private lawyers are not needed in Germany.  If you want to buy or
+sell a house or field, the State makes out the conveyance.  If you have
+been swindled, the State takes up the case for you.  The State marries
+you, insures you, will even gamble with you for a trifle.
+
+"You get yourself born," says the German Government to the German
+citizen, "we do the rest.  Indoors and out of doors, in sickness and in
+health, in pleasure and in work, we will tell you what to do, and we will
+see to it that you do it.  Don't you worry yourself about anything."
+
+And the German doesn't.  Where there is no policeman to be found, he
+wanders about till he comes to a police notice posted on a wall.  This he
+reads; then he goes and does what it says.
+
+I remember in one German town--I forget which; it is immaterial; the
+incident could have happened in any--noticing an open gate leading to a
+garden in which a concert was being given.  There was nothing to prevent
+anyone who chose from walking through that gate, and thus gaining
+admittance to the concert without paying.  In fact, of the two gates
+quarter of a mile apart it was the more convenient.  Yet of the crowds
+that passed, not one attempted to enter by that gate.  They plodded
+steadily on under a blazing sun to the other gate, at which a man stood
+to collect the entrance money.  I have seen German youngsters stand
+longingly by the margin of a lonely sheet of ice.  They could have skated
+on that ice for hours, and nobody have been the wiser.  The crowd and the
+police were at the other end, more than half a mile away, and round the
+corner.  Nothing stopped their going on but the knowledge that they ought
+not.  Things such as these make one pause to seriously wonder whether the
+Teuton be a member of the sinful human family or not.  Is it not possible
+that these placid, gentle folk may in reality be angels, come down to
+earth for the sake of a glass of beer, which, as they must know, can only
+in Germany be obtained worth the drinking?
+
+In Germany the country roads are lined with fruit trees.  There is no
+voice to stay man or boy from picking and eating the fruit, except
+conscience.  In England such a state of things would cause public
+indignation.  Children would die of cholera by the hundred.  The medical
+profession would be worked off its legs trying to cope with the natural
+results of over-indulgence in sour apples and unripe walnuts.  Public
+opinion would demand that these fruit trees should be fenced about, and
+thus rendered harmless.  Fruit growers, to save themselves the expense of
+walls and palings, would not be allowed in this manner to spread sickness
+and death throughout the community.
+
+But in Germany a boy will walk for miles down a lonely road, hedged with
+fruit trees, to buy a pennyworth of pears in the village at the other
+end.  To pass these unprotected fruit trees, drooping under their burden
+of ripe fruit, strikes the Anglo-Saxon mind as a wicked waste of
+opportunity, a flouting of the blessed gifts of Providence.
+
+I do not know if it be so, but from what I have observed of the German
+character I should not be surprised to hear that when a man in Germany is
+condemned to death he is given a piece of rope, and told to go and hang
+himself.  It would save the State much trouble and expense, and I can see
+that German criminal taking that piece of rope home with him, reading up
+carefully the police instructions, and proceeding to carry them out in
+his own back kitchen.
+
+The Germans are a good people.  On the whole, the best people perhaps in
+the world; an amiable, unselfish, kindly people.  I am positive that the
+vast majority of them go to Heaven.  Indeed, comparing them with the
+other Christian nations of the earth, one is forced to the conclusion
+that Heaven will be chiefly of German manufacture.  But I cannot
+understand how they get there.  That the soul of any single individual
+German has sufficient initiative to fly up by itself and knock at St.
+Peter's door, I cannot believe.  My own opinion is that they are taken
+there in small companies, and passed in under the charge of a dead
+policeman.
+
+Carlyle said of the Prussians, and it is true of the whole German nation,
+that one of their chief virtues was their power of being drilled.  Of the
+Germans you might say they are a people who will go anywhere, and do
+anything, they are told.  Drill him for the work and send him out to
+Africa or Asia under charge of somebody in uniform, and he is bound to
+make an excellent colonist, facing difficulties as he would face the
+devil himself, if ordered.  But it is not easy to conceive of him as a
+pioneer.  Left to run himself, one feels he would soon fade away and die,
+not from any lack of intelligence, but from sheer want of presumption.
+
+The German has so long been the soldier of Europe, that the military
+instinct has entered into his blood.  The military virtues he possesses
+in abundance; but he also suffers from the drawbacks of the military
+training.  It was told me of a German servant, lately released from the
+barracks, that he was instructed by his master to deliver a letter to a
+certain house, and to wait there for the answer.  The hours passed by,
+and the man did not return.  His master, anxious and surprised, followed.
+He found the man where he had been sent, the answer in his hand.  He was
+waiting for further orders.  The story sounds exaggerated, but personally
+I can credit it.
+
+The curious thing is that the same man, who as an individual is as
+helpless as a child, becomes, the moment he puts on the uniform, an
+intelligent being, capable of responsibility and initiative.  The German
+can rule others, and be ruled by others, but he cannot rule himself.  The
+cure would appear to be to train every German for an officer, and then
+put him under himself.  It is certain he would order himself about with
+discretion and judgment, and see to it that he himself obeyed himself
+with smartness and precision.
+
+For the direction of German character into these channels, the schools,
+of course, are chiefly responsible.  Their everlasting teaching is duty.
+It is a fine ideal for any people; but before buckling to it, one would
+wish to have a clear understanding as to what this "duty" is.  The German
+idea of it would appear to be: "blind obedience to everything in
+buttons."  It is the antithesis of the Anglo-Saxon scheme; but as both
+the Anglo-Saxon and the Teuton are prospering, there must be good in both
+methods.  Hitherto, the German has had the blessed fortune to be
+exceptionally well governed; if this continue, it will go well with him.
+When his troubles will begin will be when by any chance something goes
+wrong with the governing machine.  But maybe his method has the advantage
+of producing a continuous supply of good governors; it would certainly
+seem so.
+
+As a trader, I am inclined to think the German will, unless his
+temperament considerably change, remain always a long way behind his
+Anglo-Saxon competitor; and this by reason of his virtues.  To him life
+is something more important than a mere race for wealth.  A country that
+closes its banks and post-offices for two hours in the middle of the day,
+while it goes home and enjoys a comfortable meal in the bosom of its
+family, with, perhaps, forty winks by way of dessert, cannot hope, and
+possibly has no wish, to compete with a people that takes its meals
+standing, and sleeps with a telephone over its bed.  In Germany there is
+not, at all events as yet, sufficient distinction between the classes to
+make the struggle for position the life and death affair it is in
+England.  Beyond the landed aristocracy, whose boundaries are
+impregnable, grade hardly counts.  Frau Professor and Frau
+Candlestickmaker meet at the Weekly Kaffee-Klatsch and exchange scandal
+on terms of mutual equality.  The livery-stable keeper and the doctor
+hobnob together at their favourite beer hall.  The wealthy master
+builder, when he prepares his roomy waggon for an excursion into the
+country, invites his foreman and his tailor to join him with their
+families.  Each brings his share of drink and provisions, and returning
+home they sing in chorus the same songs.  So long as this state of things
+endures, a man is not induced to sacrifice the best years of his life to
+win a fortune for his dotage.  His tastes, and, more to the point still,
+his wife's, remain inexpensive.  He likes to see his flat or villa
+furnished with much red plush upholstery and a profusion of gilt and
+lacquer.  But that is his idea; and maybe it is in no worse taste than is
+a mixture of bastard Elizabethan with imitation Louis XV, the whole lit
+by electric light, and smothered with photographs.  Possibly, he will
+have his outer walls painted by the local artist: a sanguinary battle, a
+good deal interfered with by the front door, taking place below, while
+Bismarck, as an angel, flutters vaguely about the bedroom windows.  But
+for his Old Masters he is quite content to go to the public galleries;
+and "the Celebrity at Home" not having as yet taken its place amongst the
+institutions of the Fatherland, he is not impelled to waste his, money
+turning his house into an old curiosity shop.
+
+The German is a gourmand.  There are still English farmers who, while
+telling you that farming spells starvation, enjoy their seven solid meals
+a day.  Once a year there comes a week's feast throughout Russia, during
+which many deaths occur from the over-eating of pancakes; but this is a
+religious festival, and an exception.  Taking him all round, the German
+as a trencherman stands pre-eminent among the nations of the earth.  He
+rises early, and while dressing tosses off a few cups of coffee, together
+with half a dozen hot buttered rolls.  But it is not until ten o'clock
+that he sits down to anything that can properly be called a meal.  At one
+or half-past takes place his chief dinner.  Of this he makes a business,
+sitting at it for a couple of hours.  At four o'clock he goes to the
+cafe, and eats cakes and drinks chocolate.  The evening he devotes to
+eating generally--not a set meal, or rarely, but a series of snacks,--a
+bottle of beer and a Belegete-semmel or two at seven, say; another bottle
+of beer and an Aufschnitt at the theatre between the acts; a small bottle
+of white wine and a Spiegeleier before going home; then a piece of cheese
+or sausage, washed down by more beer, previous to turning in for the
+night.
+
+But he is no gourmet.  French cooks and French prices are not the rule at
+his restaurant.  His beer or his inexpensive native white wine he prefers
+to the most costly clarets or champagnes.  And, indeed, it is well for
+him he does; for one is inclined to think that every time a French grower
+sells a bottle of wine to a German hotel- or shop-keeper, Sedan is
+rankling in his mind.  It is a foolish revenge, seeing that it is not the
+German who as a rule drinks it; the punishment falls upon some innocent
+travelling Englishman.  Maybe, however, the French dealer remembers also
+Waterloo, and feels that in any event he scores.
+
+In Germany expensive entertainments are neither offered nor expected.
+Everything throughout the Fatherland is homely and friendly.  The German
+has no costly sports to pay for, no showy establishment to maintain, no
+purse-proud circle to dress for.  His chief pleasure, a seat at the opera
+or concert, can be had for a few marks; and his wife and daughters walk
+there in home-made dresses, with shawls over their heads.  Indeed,
+throughout the country the absence of all ostentation is to English eyes
+quite refreshing.  Private carriages are few and far between, and even
+the droschke is made use of only when the quicker and cleaner electric
+car is not available.
+
+By such means the German retains his independence.  The shopkeeper in
+Germany does not fawn upon his customers.  I accompanied an English lady
+once on a shopping excursion in Munich.  She had been accustomed to
+shopping in London and New York, and she grumbled at everything the man
+showed her.  It was not that she was really dissatisfied; this was her
+method.  She explained that she could get most things cheaper and better
+elsewhere; not that she really thought she could, merely she held it good
+for the shopkeeper to say this.  She told him that his stock lacked
+taste--she did not mean to be offensive; as I have explained, it was her
+method;--that there was no variety about it; that it was not up to date;
+that it was commonplace; that it looked as if it would not wear.  He did
+not argue with her; he did not contradict her.  He put the things back
+into their respective boxes, replaced the boxes on their respective
+shelves, walked into the little parlour behind the shop, and closed the
+door.
+
+"Isn't he ever coming back?" asked the lady, after a couple of minutes
+had elapsed.
+
+Her tone did not imply a question, so much as an exclamation of mere
+impatience.
+
+"I doubt it," I replied.
+
+"Why not?" she asked, much astonished.
+
+"I expect," I answered, "you have bored him.  In all probability he is at
+this moment behind that door smoking a pipe and reading the paper."
+
+"What an extraordinary shopkeeper!" said my friend, as she gathered her
+parcels together and indignantly walked out.
+
+"It is their way," I explained.  "There are the goods; if you want them,
+you can have them.  If you do not want them, they would almost rather
+that you did not come and talk about them."
+
+On another occasion I listened in the smoke-room of a German hotel to a
+small Englishman telling a tale which, had I been in his place, I should
+have kept to myself.
+
+"It doesn't do," said the little Englishman, "to try and beat a German
+down.  They don't seem to understand it.  I saw a first edition of _The
+Robbers_ in a shop in the Georg Platz.  I went in and asked the price.  It
+was a rum old chap behind the counter.  He said: 'Twenty-five marks,' and
+went on reading.  I told him I had seen a better copy only a few days
+before for twenty--one talks like that when one is bargaining; it is
+understood.  He asked me 'Where?'  I told him in a shop at Leipsig.  He
+suggested my returning there and getting it; he did not seem to care
+whether I bought the book or whether I didn't.  I said:
+
+"'What's the least you will take for it?'
+
+"'I have told you once,' he answered; 'twenty-five marks.'  He was an
+irritable old chap.
+
+"I said: 'It's not worth it.'
+
+"'I never said it was, did I?' he snapped.
+
+"I said: 'I'll give you ten marks for it.'  I thought, maybe, he would
+end by taking twenty.
+
+"He rose.  I took it he was coming round the counter to get the book out.
+Instead, he came straight up to me.  He was a biggish sort of man.  He
+took me by the two shoulders, walked me out into the street, and closed
+the door behind me with a bang.  I was never more surprised in all my
+life.
+
+"Maybe the book was worth twenty-five marks," I suggested.
+
+"Of course it was," he replied; "well worth it.  But what a notion of
+business!"
+
+If anything change the German character, it will be the German woman.  She
+herself is changing rapidly--advancing, as we call it.  Ten years ago no
+German woman caring for her reputation, hoping for a husband, would have
+dared to ride a bicycle: to-day they spin about the country in their
+thousands.  The old folks shake their heads at them; but the young men, I
+notice, overtake them and ride beside them.  Not long ago it was
+considered unwomanly in Germany for a lady to be able to do the outside
+edge.  Her proper skating attitude was thought to be that of clinging
+limpness to some male relative.  Now she practises eights in a corner by
+herself, until some young man comes along to help her.  She plays tennis,
+and, from a point of safety, I have even noticed her driving a dog-cart.
+
+Brilliantly educated she always has been.  At eighteen she speaks two or
+three languages, and has forgotten more than the average Englishwoman has
+ever read.  Hitherto, this education has been utterly useless to her.  On
+marriage she has retired into the kitchen, and made haste to clear her
+brain of everything else, in order to leave room for bad cooking.  But
+suppose it begins to dawn upon her that a woman need not sacrifice her
+whole existence to household drudgery any more than a man need make
+himself nothing else than a business machine.  Suppose she develop an
+ambition to take part in the social and national life.  Then the
+influence of such a partner, healthy in body and therefore vigorous in
+mind, is bound to be both lasting and far-reaching.
+
+For it must be borne in mind that the German man is exceptionally
+sentimental, and most easily influenced by his women folk.  It is said of
+him, he is the best of lovers, the worst of husbands.  This has been the
+woman's fault.  Once married, the German woman has done more than put
+romance behind her; she has taken a carpet-beater and driven it out of
+the house.  As a girl, she never understood dressing; as a wife, she
+takes off such clothes even as she had, and proceeds to wrap herself up
+in any odd articles she may happen to find about the house; at all
+events, this is the impression she produces.  The figure that might often
+be that of a Juno, the complexion that would sometimes do credit to a
+healthy angel, she proceeds of malice and intent to spoil.  She sells her
+birth-right of admiration and devotion for a mess of sweets.  Every
+afternoon you may see her at the cafe, loading herself with rich cream-
+covered cakes, washed down by copious draughts of chocolate.  In a short
+time she becomes fat, pasty, placid, and utterly uninteresting.
+
+When the German woman gives up her afternoon coffee and her evening beer,
+takes sufficient exercise to retain her shape, and continues to read
+after marriage something else than the cookery-book, the German
+Government will find it has a new and unknown force to deal with.  And
+everywhere throughout Germany one is confronted by unmistakable signs
+that the old German Frauen are giving place to the newer Damen.
+
+Concerning what will then happen one feels curious.  For the German
+nation is still young, and its maturity is of importance to the world.
+They are a good people, a lovable people, who should help much to make
+the world better.
+
+The worst that can be said against them is that they have their failings.
+They themselves do not know this; they consider themselves perfect, which
+is foolish of them.  They even go so far as to think themselves superior
+to the Anglo-Saxon: this is incomprehensible.  One feels they must be
+pretending.
+
+"They have their points," said George; "but their tobacco is a national
+sin.  I'm going to bed."
+
+We rose, and leaning over the low stone parapet, watched the dancing
+lights upon the soft, dark river.
+
+"It has been a pleasant Bummel, on the whole," said Harris; "I shall be
+glad to get back, and yet I am sorry it is over, if you understand me."
+
+"What is a 'Bummel'?" said George.  "How would you translate it?"
+
+"A 'Bummel'," I explained, "I should describe as a journey, long or
+short, without an end; the only thing regulating it being the necessity
+of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started.
+Sometimes it is through busy streets, and sometimes through the fields
+and lanes; sometimes we can be spared for a few hours, and sometimes for
+a few days.  But long or short, but here or there, our thoughts are ever
+on the running of the sand.  We nod and smile to many as we pass; with
+some we stop and talk awhile; and with a few we walk a little way.  We
+have been much interested, and often a little tired.  But on the whole we
+have had a pleasant time, and are sorry when 'tis over."
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE MEN ON THE BUMMEL***
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook of Three Men on the Bummel, by Jerome K. Jerome
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
+most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
+whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
+of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
+www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you
+will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
+using this eBook.
+
+Title: Three Men on the Bummel
+
+Author: Jerome K. Jerome
+
+Release Date: May, 2000 [eBook #2183]
+[Most recently updated: June 8, 2021]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+Produced by: David Price
+
+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE MEN ON THE BUMMEL ***
+
+
+
+
+THREE MEN ON THE BUMMEL
+by JEROME K. JEROME
+
+
+_Illustrated by L. Raven Hill_
+
+A NEW EDITION
+
+BRISTOL
+J. W. ARROWSMITH LTD., QUAY STREET
+LONDON
+SIMPKIN, MARSHALL, HAMILTON, KENT AND CO. LIMITED
+1914
+
+TO THE GENTLE
+
+GUIDE
+
+WHO LETS ME EVER GO MY OWN WAY, YET BRINGS ME RIGHT--
+
+TO THE LAUGHTER-LOVING
+
+PHILOSOPHER
+
+WHO, IF HE HAS NOT RECONCILED ME TO BEARING THE TOOTHACHE
+PATENTLY, AT LEAST HAS TAUGHT ME THE COMFORT THAT
+THIS EVEN WILL ALSO PASS--
+
+TO THE GOOD
+
+FRIEND
+
+WHO SMILES WHEN I TELL HIM OF MY TROUBLES, AND WHO
+WHEN I ASK FOR HELP, ANSWERS ONLY "WAIT!"--
+
+TO THE GRAVE-FACED
+
+JESTER
+
+TO WHOM ALL LIFE IS BUT A VOLUME OF OLD HUMOUR--
+
+TO GOOD MASTER
+
+Time
+
+THIS LITTLE WORK OF A POOR
+
+PUPIL
+
+IS DEDICATED
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+Three men need change--Anecdote showing evil result of deception--Moral
+cowardice of George--Harris has ideas--Yarn of the Ancient Mariner and
+the Inexperienced Yachtsman--A hearty crew--Danger of sailing when the
+wind is off the land--Impossibility of sailing when the wind is off the
+sea--The argumentativeness of Ethelbertha--The dampness of the
+river--Harris suggests a bicycle tour--George thinks of the wind--Harris
+suggests the Black Forest--George thinks of the hills--Plan adopted by
+Harris for ascent of hills--Interruption by Mrs. Harris.
+
+"What we want," said Harris, "is a change."
+
+At this moment the door opened, and Mrs. Harris put her head in to say
+that Ethelbertha had sent her to remind me that we must not be late
+getting home because of Clarence. Ethelbertha, I am inclined to think,
+is unnecessarily nervous about the children. As a matter of fact, there
+was nothing wrong with the child whatever. He had been out with his aunt
+that morning; and if he looks wistfully at a pastrycook's window she
+takes him inside and buys him cream buns and "maids-of-honour" until he
+insists that he has had enough, and politely, but firmly, refuses to eat
+another anything. Then, of course, he wants only one helping of pudding
+at lunch, and Ethelbertha thinks he is sickening for something. Mrs.
+Harris added that it would be as well for us to come upstairs soon, on
+our own account also, as otherwise we should miss Muriel's rendering of
+"The Mad Hatter's Tea Party," out of _Alice in Wonderland_. Muriel is
+Harris's second, age eight: she is a bright, intelligent child; but I
+prefer her myself in serious pieces. We said we would finish our
+cigarettes and follow almost immediately; we also begged her not to let
+Muriel begin until we arrived. She promised to hold the child back as
+long as possible, and went. Harris, as soon as the door was closed,
+resumed his interrupted sentence.
+
+"You know what I mean," he said, "a complete change."
+
+The question was how to get it.
+
+George suggested "business." It was the sort of suggestion George would
+make. A bachelor thinks a married woman doesn't know enough to get out
+of the way of a steam-roller. I knew a young fellow once, an engineer,
+who thought he would go to Vienna "on business." His wife wanted to know
+"what business?" He told her it would be his duty to visit the mines in
+the neighbourhood of the Austrian capital, and to make reports. She said
+she would go with him; she was that sort of woman. He tried to dissuade
+her: he told her that a mine was no place for a beautiful woman. She
+said she felt that herself, and that therefore she did not intend to
+accompany him down the shafts; she would see him off in the morning, and
+then amuse herself until his return, looking round the Vienna shops, and
+buying a few things she might want. Having started the idea, he did not
+see very well how to get out of it; and for ten long summer days he did
+visit the mines in the neighbourhood of Vienna, and in the evening wrote
+reports about them, which she posted for him to his firm, who didn't want
+them.
+
+I should be grieved to think that either Ethelbertha or Mrs. Harris
+belonged to that class of wife, but it is as well not to overdo
+"business"--it should be kept for cases of real emergency.
+
+"No," I said, "the thing is to be frank and manly. I shall tell
+Ethelbertha that I have come to the conclusion a man never values
+happiness that is always with him. I shall tell her that, for the sake
+of learning to appreciate my own advantages as I know they should be
+appreciated, I intend to tear myself away from her and the children for
+at least three weeks. I shall tell her," I continued, turning to Harris,
+"that it is you who have shown me my duty in this respect; that it is to
+you we shall owe--"
+
+Harris put down his glass rather hurriedly.
+
+"If you don't mind, old man," he interrupted, "I'd really rather you
+didn't. She'll talk it over with my wife, and--well, I should not be
+happy, taking credit that I do not deserve."
+
+"But you do deserve it," I insisted; "it was your suggestion."
+
+"It was you gave me the idea," interrupted Harris again. "You know you
+said it was a mistake for a man to get into a groove, and that unbroken
+domesticity cloyed the brain."
+
+"I was speaking generally," I explained.
+
+"It struck me as very apt," said Harris. "I thought of repeating it to
+Clara; she has a great opinion of your sense, I know. I am sure that
+if--"
+
+"We won't risk it," I interrupted, in my turn; "it is a delicate matter,
+and I see a way out of it. We will say George suggested the idea."
+
+There is a lack of genial helpfulness about George that it sometimes
+vexes me to notice. You would have thought he would have welcomed the
+chance of assisting two old friends out of a dilemma; instead, he became
+disagreeable.
+
+"You do," said George, "and I shall tell them both that my original plan
+was that we should make a party--children and all; that I should bring my
+aunt, and that we should hire a charming old chateau I know of in
+Normandy, on the coast, where the climate is peculiarly adapted to
+delicate children, and the milk such as you do not get in England. I
+shall add that you over-rode that suggestion, arguing we should be
+happier by ourselves."
+
+With a man like George kindness is of no use; you have to be firm.
+
+"You do," said Harris, "and I, for one, will close with the offer. We
+will just take that chateau. You will bring your aunt--I will see to
+that,--and we will have a month of it. The children are all fond of you;
+J. and I will be nowhere. You've promised to teach Edgar fishing; and it
+is you who will have to play wild beasts. Since last Sunday Dick and
+Muriel have talked of nothing else but your hippopotamus. We will picnic
+in the woods--there will only be eleven of us,--and in the evenings we
+will have music and recitations. Muriel is master of six pieces already,
+as perhaps you know; and all the other children are quick studies."
+
+George climbed down--he has no real courage--but he did not do it
+gracefully. He said that if we were mean and cowardly and false-hearted
+enough to stoop to such a shabby trick, he supposed he couldn't help it;
+and that if I didn't intend to finish the whole bottle of claret myself,
+he would trouble me to spare him a glass. He also added, somewhat
+illogically, that it really did not matter, seeing both Ethelbertha and
+Mrs. Harris were women of sense who would judge him better than to
+believe for a moment that the suggestion emanated from him.
+
+This little point settled, the question was: What sort of a change?
+
+Harris, as usual, was for the sea. He said he knew a yacht, just the
+very thing--one that we could manage by ourselves; no skulking lot of
+lubbers loafing about, adding to the expense and taking away from the
+romance. Give him a handy boy, he would sail it himself. We knew that
+yacht, and we told him so; we had been on it with Harris before. It
+smells of bilge-water and greens to the exclusion of all other scents; no
+ordinary sea air can hope to head against it. So far as sense of smell
+is concerned, one might be spending a week in Limehouse Hole. There is
+no place to get out of the rain; the saloon is ten feet by four, and half
+of that is taken up by a stove, which falls to pieces when you go to
+light it. You have to take your bath on deck, and the towel blows
+overboard just as you step out of the tub. Harris and the boy do all the
+interesting work--the lugging and the reefing, the letting her go and the
+heeling her over, and all that sort of thing,--leaving George and myself
+to do the peeling of the potatoes and the washing up.
+
+"Very well, then," said Harris, "let's take a proper yacht, with a
+skipper, and do the thing in style."
+
+That also I objected to. I know that skipper; his notion of yachting is
+to lie in what he calls the "offing," where he can be well in touch with
+his wife and family, to say nothing of his favourite public-house.
+
+Years ago, when I was young and inexperienced, I hired a yacht myself.
+Three things had combined to lead me into this foolishness: I had had a
+stroke of unexpected luck; Ethelbertha had expressed a yearning for sea
+air; and the very next morning, in taking up casually at the club a copy
+of the _Sportsman_, I had come across the following advertisement:--
+
+
+
+
+
+TO YACHTSMEN.--Unique Opportunity.--"Rogue," 28-ton Yawl.--Owner, called
+away suddenly on business, is willing to let this superbly-fitted
+"greyhound of the sea" for any period short or long. Two cabins and
+saloon; pianette, by Woffenkoff; new copper. Terms, 10 guineas a
+week.--Apply Pertwee and Co., 3A Bucklersbury.
+
+
+It had seemed to me like the answer to a prayer. "The new copper" did
+not interest me; what little washing we might want could wait, I thought.
+But the "pianette by Woffenkoff" sounded alluring. I pictured
+Ethelbertha playing in the evening--something with a chorus, in which,
+perhaps, the crew, with a little training, might join--while our moving
+home bounded, "greyhound-like," over the silvery billows.
+
+I took a cab and drove direct to 3A Bucklersbury. Mr. Pertwee was an
+unpretentious-looking gentleman, who had an unostentatious office on the
+third floor. He showed me a picture in water-colours of the _Rogue_
+flying before the wind. The deck was at an angle of 95 to the ocean. In
+the picture no human beings were represented on the deck; I suppose they
+had slipped off. Indeed, I do not see how anyone could have kept on,
+unless nailed. I pointed out this disadvantage to the agent, who,
+however, explained to me that the picture represented the _Rogue_
+doubling something or other on the well-known occasion of her winning the
+Medway Challenge Shield. Mr. Pertwee assumed that I knew all about the
+event, so that I did not like to ask any questions. Two specks near the
+frame of the picture, which at first I had taken for moths, represented,
+it appeared, the second and third winners in this celebrated race. A
+photograph of the yacht at anchor off Gravesend was less impressive, but
+suggested more stability. All answers to my inquiries being
+satisfactory, I took the thing for a fortnight. Mr. Pertwee said it was
+fortunate I wanted it only for a fortnight--later on I came to agree with
+him,--the time fitting in exactly with another hiring. Had I required it
+for three weeks he would have been compelled to refuse me.
+
+The letting being thus arranged, Mr. Pertwee asked me if I had a skipper
+in my eye. That I had not was also fortunate--things seemed to be
+turning out luckily for me all round,--because Mr. Pertwee felt sure I
+could not do better than keep on Mr. Goyles, at present in charge--an
+excellent skipper, so Mr. Pertwee assured me, a man who knew the sea as a
+man knows his own wife, and who had never lost a life.
+
+It was still early in the day, and the yacht was lying off Harwich. I
+caught the ten forty-five from Liverpool Street, and by one o'clock was
+talking to Mr. Goyles on deck. He was a stout man, and had a fatherly
+way with him. I told him my idea, which was to take the outlying Dutch
+islands and then creep up to Norway. He said, "Aye, aye, sir," and
+appeared quite enthusiastic about the trip; said he should enjoy it
+himself. We came to the question of victualling, and he grew more
+enthusiastic. The amount of food suggested by Mr. Goyles, I confess,
+surprised me. Had we been living in the days of Drake and the Spanish
+Main, I should have feared he was arranging for something illegal.
+However, he laughed in his fatherly way, and assured me we were not
+overdoing it. Anything left the crew would divide and take home with
+them--it seemed this was the custom. It appeared to me that I was
+providing for this crew for the winter, but I did not like to appear
+stingy, and said no more. The amount of drink required also surprised
+me. I arranged for what I thought we should need for ourselves, and then
+Mr. Goyles spoke up for the crew. I must say that for him, he did think
+of his men.
+
+"We don't want anything in the nature of an orgie, Mr. Goyles," I
+suggested.
+
+"Orgie!" replied Mr. Goyles; "why they'll take that little drop in their
+tea."
+
+He explained to me that his motto was, Get good men and treat them well.
+
+"They work better for you," said Mr. Goyles; "and they come again."
+
+Personally, I didn't feel I wanted them to come again. I was beginning
+to take a dislike to them before I had seen them; I regarded them as a
+greedy and guzzling crew. But Mr. Goyles was so cheerfully emphatic, and
+I was so inexperienced, that again I let him have his way. He also
+promised that even in this department he would see to it personally that
+nothing was wasted.
+
+I also left him to engage the crew. He said he could do the thing, and
+would, for me, with the help two men and a boy. If he was alluding to
+the clearing up of the victuals and drink, I think he was making an under-
+estimate; but possibly he may have been speaking of the sailing of the
+yacht.
+
+I called at my tailors on the way home and ordered a yachting suit, with
+a white hat, which they promised to bustle up and have ready in time; and
+then I went home and told Ethelbertha all I had done. Her delight was
+clouded by only one reflection--would the dressmaker be able to finish a
+yachting costume for her in time? That is so like a woman.
+
+Our honeymoon, which had taken place not very long before, had been
+somewhat curtailed, so we decided we would invite nobody, but have the
+yacht to ourselves. And thankful I am to Heaven that we did so decide.
+On Monday we put on all our clothes and started. I forget what
+Ethelbertha wore, but, whatever it may have been, it looked very
+fetching. My own costume was a dark blue trimmed with a narrow white
+braid, which, I think, was rather effective.
+
+Mr. Goyles met us on deck, and told us that lunch was ready. I must
+admit Goyles had secured the services of a very fair cook. The
+capabilities of the other members of the crew I had no opportunity of
+judging. Speaking of them in a state of rest, however, I can say of them
+they appeared to be a cheerful crew.
+
+My idea had been that so soon as the men had finished their dinner we
+would weigh anchor, while I, smoking a cigar, with Ethelbertha by my
+side, would lean over the gunwale and watch the white cliffs of the
+Fatherland sink imperceptibly into the horizon. Ethelbertha and I
+carried out our part of the programme, and waited, with the deck to
+ourselves.
+
+"They seem to be taking their time," said Ethelbertha.
+
+"If, in the course of fourteen days," I said, "they eat half of what is
+on this yacht, they will want a fairly long time for every meal. We had
+better not hurry them, or they won't get through a quarter of it."
+
+"They must have gone to sleep," said Ethelbertha, later on. "It will be
+tea-time soon."
+
+They were certainly very quiet. I went for'ard, and hailed Captain
+Goyles down the ladder. I hailed him three times; then he came up
+slowly. He appeared to be a heavier and older man than when I had seen
+him last. He had a cold cigar in his mouth.
+
+"When you are ready, Captain Goyles," I said, "we'll start."
+
+Captain Goyles removed the cigar from his mouth.
+
+"Not to-day we won't, sir," he replied, "_with_ your permission."
+
+"Why, what's the matter with to-day?" I said. I know sailors are a
+superstitious folk; I thought maybe a Monday might be considered unlucky.
+
+"The day's all right," answered Captain Goyles, "it's the wind I'm
+a-thinking of. It don't look much like changing."
+
+"But do we want it to change?" I asked. "It seems to me to be just where
+it should be, dead behind us."
+
+"Aye, aye," said Captain Goyles, "dead's the right word to use, for dead
+we'd all be, bar Providence, if we was to put out in this. You see,
+sir," he explained, in answer to my look of surprise, "this is what we
+call a 'land wind,' that is, it's a-blowing, as one might say, direct off
+the land."
+
+When I came to think of it the man was right; the wind was blowing off
+the land.
+
+"It may change in the night," said Captain Goyles, more hopefully
+"anyhow, it's not violent, and she rides well."
+
+Captain Goyles resumed his cigar, and I returned aft, and explained to
+Ethelbertha the reason for the delay. Ethelbertha, who appeared to be
+less high spirited than when we first boarded, wanted to know _why_ we
+couldn't sail when the wind was off the land.
+
+"If it was not blowing off the land," said Ethelbertha, "it would be
+blowing off the sea, and that would send us back into the shore again. It
+seems to me this is just the very wind we want."
+
+I said: "That is your inexperience, love; it _seems_ to be the very wind
+we want, but it is not. It's what we call a land wind, and a land wind
+is always very dangerous."
+
+Ethelbertha wanted to know _why_ a land wind was very dangerous.
+
+Her argumentativeness annoyed me somewhat; maybe I was feeling a bit
+cross; the monotonous rolling heave of a small yacht at anchor depresses
+an ardent spirit.
+
+"I can't explain it to you," I replied, which was true, "but to set sail
+in this wind would be the height of foolhardiness, and I care for you too
+much, dear, to expose you to unnecessary risks."
+
+I thought this rather a neat conclusion, but Ethelbertha merely replied
+that she wished, under the circumstances, we hadn't come on board till
+Tuesday, and went below.
+
+In the morning the wind veered round to the north; I was up early, and
+observed this to Captain Goyles.
+
+"Aye, aye, sir," he remarked; "it's unfortunate, but it can't be helped."
+
+"You don't think it possible for us to start to-day?" I hazarded.
+
+He did not get angry with me, he only laughed.
+
+"Well, sir," said he, "if you was a-wanting to go to Ipswich, I should
+say as it couldn't be better for us, but our destination being, as you
+see, the Dutch coast--why there you are!"
+
+I broke the news to Ethelbertha, and we agreed to spend the day on shore.
+Harwich is not a merry town, towards evening you might call it dull. We
+had some tea and watercress at Dovercourt, and then returned to the quay
+to look for Captain Goyles and the boat. We waited an hour for him. When
+he came he was more cheerful than we were; if he had not told me himself
+that he never drank anything but one glass of hot grog before turning in
+for the night, I should have said he was drunk.
+
+The next morning the wind was in the south, which made Captain Goyles
+rather anxious, it appearing that it was equally unsafe to move or to
+stop where we were; our only hope was it would change before anything
+happened. By this time, Ethelbertha had taken a dislike to the yacht;
+she said that, personally, she would rather be spending a week in a
+bathing machine, seeing that a bathing machine was at least steady.
+
+We passed another day in Harwich, and that night and the next, the wind
+still continuing in the south, we slept at the "King's Head." On Friday
+the wind was blowing direct from the east. I met Captain Goyles on the
+quay, and suggested that, under these circumstances, we might start. He
+appeared irritated at my persistence.
+
+"If you knew a bit more, sir," he said, "you'd see for yourself that it's
+impossible. The wind's a-blowing direct off the sea."
+
+I said: "Captain Goyles, tell me what is this thing I have hired? Is it
+a yacht or a house-boat?"
+
+He seemed surprised at my question.
+
+He said: "It's a yawl."
+
+"What I mean is," I said, "can it be moved at all, or is it a fixture
+here? If it is a fixture," I continued, "tell me so frankly, then we
+will get some ivy in boxes and train over the port-holes, stick some
+flowers and an awning on deck, and make the thing look pretty. If, on
+the other hand, it can be moved--"
+
+"Moved!" interrupted Captain Goyles. "You get the right wind behind the
+_Rogue_--"
+
+I said: "What is the right wind?"
+
+Captain Goyles looked puzzled.
+
+"In the course of this week," I went on, "we have had wind from the
+north, from the south, from the east, from the west--with variations. If
+you can think of any other point of the compass from which it can blow,
+tell me, and I will wait for it. If not, and if that anchor has not
+grown into the bottom of the ocean, we will have it up to-day and see
+what happens."
+
+He grasped the fact that I was determined.
+
+"Very well, sir," he said, "you're master and I'm man. I've only got one
+child as is still dependent on me, thank God, and no doubt your executors
+will feel it their duty to do the right thing by the old woman."
+
+His solemnity impressed me.
+
+"Mr. Goyles," I said, "be honest with me. Is there any hope, in any
+weather, of getting away from this damned hole?"
+
+Captain Goyles's kindly geniality returned to him.
+
+"You see, sir," he said, "this is a very peculiar coast. We'd be all
+right if we were once out, but getting away from it in a cockle-shell
+like that--well, to be frank, sir, it wants doing."
+
+I left Captain Goyles with the assurance that he would watch the weather
+as a mother would her sleeping babe; it was his own simile, and it struck
+me as rather touching. I saw him again at twelve o'clock; he was
+watching it from the window of the "Chain and Anchor."
+
+At five o'clock that evening a stroke of luck occurred; in the middle of
+the High Street I met a couple of yachting friends, who had had to put in
+by reason of a strained rudder. I told them my story, and they appeared
+less surprised than amused. Captain Goyles and the two men were still
+watching the weather. I ran into the "King's Head," and prepared
+Ethelbertha. The four of us crept quietly down to the quay, where we
+found our boat. Only the boy was on board; my two friends took charge of
+the yacht, and by six o'clock we were scudding merrily up the coast.
+
+We put in that night at Aldborough, and the next day worked up to
+Yarmouth, where, as my friends had to leave, I decided to abandon the
+yacht. We sold the stores by auction on Yarmouth sands early in the
+morning. I made a loss, but had the satisfaction of "doing" Captain
+Goyles. I left the _Rogue_ in charge of a local mariner, who, for a
+couple of sovereigns, undertook to see to its return to Harwich; and we
+came back to London by train. There may be yachts other than the
+_Rogue_, and skippers other than Mr. Goyles, but that experience has
+prejudiced me against both.
+
+George also thought a yacht would be a good deal of responsibility, so we
+dismissed the idea.
+
+"What about the river?" suggested Harris.
+
+"We have had some pleasant times on that."
+
+George pulled in silence at his cigar, and I cracked another nut.
+
+"The river is not what it used to be," said I; "I don't know what, but
+there's a something--a dampness--about the river air that always starts
+my lumbago."
+
+"It's the same with me," said George. "I don't know how it is, but I
+never can sleep now in the neighbourhood of the river. I spent a week at
+Joe's place in the spring, and every night I woke up at seven o'clock and
+never got a wink afterwards."
+
+"I merely suggested it," observed Harris. "Personally, I don't think it
+good for me, either; it touches my gout."
+
+"What suits me best," I said, "is mountain air. What say you to a
+walking tour in Scotland?"
+
+"It's always wet in Scotland," said George. "I was three weeks in
+Scotland the year before last, and was never dry once all the time--not
+in that sense."
+
+"It's fine enough in Switzerland," said Harris.
+
+"They would never stand our going to Switzerland by ourselves," I
+objected. "You know what happened last time. It must be some place
+where no delicately nurtured woman or child could possibly live; a
+country of bad hotels and comfortless travelling; where we shall have to
+rough it, to work hard, to starve perhaps--"
+
+"Easy!" interrupted George, "easy, there! Don't forget I'm coming with
+you."
+
+"I have it!" exclaimed Harris; "a bicycle tour!"
+
+George looked doubtful.
+
+"There's a lot of uphill about a bicycle tour," said he, "and the wind is
+against you."
+
+"So there is downhill, and the wind behind you," said Harris.
+
+"I've never noticed it," said George.
+
+"You won't think of anything better than a bicycle tour," persisted
+Harris.
+
+I was inclined to agree with him.
+
+"And I'll tell you where," continued he; "through the Black Forest."
+
+"Why, that's _all_ uphill," said George.
+
+"Not all," retorted Harris; "say two-thirds. And there's one thing
+you've forgotten."
+
+He looked round cautiously, and sunk his voice to a whisper.
+
+"There are little railways going up those hills, little cogwheel things
+that--"
+
+The door opened, and Mrs. Harris appeared. She said that Ethelbertha was
+putting on her bonnet, and that Muriel, after waiting, had given "The Mad
+Hatter's Tea Party" without us.
+
+"Club, to-morrow, at four," whispered Harris to me, as he rose, and I
+passed it on to George as we went upstairs.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+A delicate business--What Ethelbertha might have said--What she did
+say--What Mrs. Harris said--What we told George--We will start on
+Wednesday--George suggests the possibility of improving our minds--Harris
+and I are doubtful--Which man on a tandem does the most work?--The
+opinion of the man in front--Views of the man behind--How Harris lost his
+wife--The luggage question--The wisdom of my late Uncle Podger--Beginning
+of story about a man who had a bag.
+
+I opened the ball with Ethelbertha that same evening. I commenced by
+being purposely a little irritable. My idea was that Ethelbertha would
+remark upon this. I should admit it, and account for it by over brain
+pressure. This would naturally lead to talk about my health in general,
+and the evident necessity there was for my taking prompt and vigorous
+measures. I thought that with a little tact I might even manage so that
+the suggestion should come from Ethelbertha herself. I imagined her
+saying: "No, dear, it is change you want; complete change. Now be
+persuaded by me, and go away for a month. No, do not ask me to come with
+you. I know you would rather that I did, but I will not. It is the
+society of other men you need. Try and persuade George and Harris to go
+with you. Believe me, a highly strung brain such as yours demands
+occasional relaxation from the strain of domestic surroundings. Forget
+for a little while that children want music lessons, and boots, and
+bicycles, with tincture of rhubarb three times a day; forget there are
+such things in life as cooks, and house decorators, and next-door dogs,
+and butchers' bills. Go away to some green corner of the earth, where
+all is new and strange to you, where your over-wrought mind will gather
+peace and fresh ideas. Go away for a space and give me time to miss you,
+and to reflect upon your goodness and virtue, which, continually present
+with me, I may, human-like, be apt to forget, as one, through use, grows
+indifferent to the blessing of the sun and the beauty of the moon. Go
+away, and come back refreshed in mind and body, a brighter, better man--if
+that be possible--than when you went away."
+
+But even when we obtain our desires they never come to us garbed as we
+would wish. To begin with, Ethelbertha did not seem to remark that I was
+irritable; I had to draw her attention to it. I said:
+
+"You must forgive me, I'm not feeling quite myself to-night."
+
+She said: "Oh! I have not noticed anything different; what's the matter
+with you?"
+
+"I can't tell you what it is," I said; "I've felt it coming on for
+weeks."
+
+"It's that whisky," said Ethelbertha. "You never touch it except when we
+go to the Harris's. You know you can't stand it; you have not a strong
+head."
+
+"It isn't the whisky," I replied; "it's deeper than that. I fancy it's
+more mental than bodily."
+
+"You've been reading those criticisms again," said Ethelbertha, more
+sympathetically; "why don't you take my advice and put them on the fire?"
+
+"And it isn't the criticisms," I answered; "they've been quite flattering
+of late--one or two of them."
+
+"Well, what is it?" said Ethelbertha; "there must be something to account
+for it."
+
+"No, there isn't," I replied; "that's the remarkable thing about it; I
+can only describe it as a strange feeling of unrest that seems to have
+taken possession of me."
+
+Ethelbertha glanced across at me with a somewhat curious expression, I
+thought; but as she said nothing, I continued the argument myself.
+
+"This aching monotony of life, these days of peaceful, uneventful
+felicity, they appall one."
+
+"I should not grumble at them," said Ethelbertha; "we might get some of
+the other sort, and like them still less."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that," I replied. "In a life of continuous joy, I
+can imagine even pain coming as a welcome variation. I wonder sometimes
+whether the saints in heaven do not occasionally feel the continual
+serenity a burden. To myself a life of endless bliss, uninterrupted by a
+single contrasting note, would, I feel, grow maddening. I suppose," I
+continued, "I am a strange sort of man; I can hardly understand myself at
+times. There are moments," I added, "when I hate myself."
+
+Often a little speech like this, hinting at hidden depths of
+indescribable emotion has touched Ethelbertha, but to-night she appeared
+strangely unsympathetic. With regard to heaven and its possible effect
+upon me, she suggested my not worrying myself about that, remarking it
+was always foolish to go half-way to meet trouble that might never come;
+while as to my being a strange sort of fellow, that, she supposed, I
+could not help, and if other people were willing to put up with me, there
+was an end of the matter. The monotony of life, she added, was a common
+experience; there she could sympathise with me.
+
+"You don't know I long," said Ethelbertha, "to get away occasionally,
+even from you; but I know it can never be, so I do not brood upon it."
+
+I had never heard Ethelbertha speak like this before; it astonished and
+grieved me beyond measure.
+
+"That's not a very kind remark to make," I said, "not a wifely remark."
+
+"I know it isn't," she replied; "that is why I have never said it before.
+You men never can understand," continued Ethelbertha, "that, however fond
+a woman may be of a man, there are times when he palls upon her. You
+don't know how I long to be able sometimes to put on my bonnet and go
+out, with nobody to ask me where I am going, why I am going, how long I
+am going to be, and when I shall be back. You don't know how I sometimes
+long to order a dinner that I should like and that the children would
+like, but at the sight of which you would put on your hat and be off to
+the Club. You don't know how much I feel inclined sometimes to invite
+some woman here that I like, and that I know you don't; to go and see the
+people that I want to see, to go to bed when _I_ am tired, and to get up
+when _I_ feel I want to get up. Two people living together are bound
+both to be continually sacrificing their own desires to the other one. It
+is sometimes a good thing to slacken the strain a bit."
+
+On thinking over Ethelbertha's words afterwards, have come to see their
+wisdom; but at the time I admit I was hurt and indignant.
+
+"If your desire," I said, "is to get rid of me--"
+
+"Now, don't be an old goose," said Ethelbertha; "I only want to get rid
+of you for a little while, just long enough to forget there are one or
+two corners about you that are not perfect, just long enough to let me
+remember what a dear fellow you are in other respects, and to look
+forward to your return, as I used to look forward to your coming in the
+old days when I did not see you so often as to become, perhaps, a little
+indifferent to you, as one grows indifferent to the glory of the sun,
+just because he is there every day."
+
+I did not like the tone that Ethelbertha took. There seemed to be a
+frivolity about her, unsuited to the theme into which we had drifted.
+That a woman should contemplate cheerfully an absence of three or four
+weeks from her husband appeared to me to be not altogether nice, not what
+I call womanly; it was not like Ethelbertha at all. I was worried, I
+felt I didn't want to go this trip at all. If it had not been for George
+and Harris, I would have abandoned it. As it was, I could not see how to
+change my mind with dignity.
+
+"Very well, Ethelbertha," I replied, "it shall be as you wish. If you
+desire a holiday from my presence, you shall enjoy it; but if it be not
+impertinent curiosity on the part of a husband, I should like to know
+what you propose doing in my absence?"
+
+"We will take that house at Folkestone," answered Ethelbertha, "and I'll
+go down there with Kate. And if you want to do Clara Harris a good
+turn," added Ethelbertha, "you'll persuade Harris to go with you, and
+then Clara can join us. We three used to have some very jolly times
+together before you men ever came along, and it would be just delightful
+to renew them. Do you think," continued Ethelbertha, "that you could
+persuade Mr. Harris to go with you?"
+
+I said I would try.
+
+"There's a dear boy," said Ethelbertha; "try hard. You might get George
+to join you."
+
+I replied there was not much advantage in George's coming, seeing he was
+a bachelor, and that therefore nobody would be much benefited by his
+absence. But a woman never understands satire. Ethelbertha merely
+remarked it would look unkind leaving him behind. I promised to put it
+to him.
+
+I met Harris at the Club in the afternoon, and asked him how he had got
+on.
+
+He said, "Oh, that's all right; there's no difficulty about getting
+away."
+
+But there was that about his tone that suggested incomplete satisfaction,
+so I pressed him for further details.
+
+"She was as sweet as milk about it," he continued; "said it was an
+excellent idea of George's, and that she thought it would do me good."
+
+"That seems all right," I said; "what's wrong about that?"
+
+"There's nothing wrong about that," he answered, "but that wasn't all.
+She went on to talk of other things."
+
+"I understand," I said.
+
+"There's that bathroom fad of hers," he continued.
+
+"I've heard of it," I said; "she has started Ethelbertha on the same
+idea."
+
+"Well, I've had to agree to that being put in hand at once; I couldn't
+argue any more when she was so nice about the other thing. That will
+cost me a hundred pounds, at the very least."
+
+"As much as that?" I asked.
+
+"Every penny of it," said Harris; "the estimate alone is sixty."
+
+I was sorry to hear him say this.
+
+"Then there's the kitchen stove," continued Harris; "everything that has
+gone wrong in the house for the last two years has been the fault of that
+kitchen stove."
+
+"I know," I said. "We have been in seven houses since we were married,
+and every kitchen stove has been worse than the last. Our present one is
+not only incompetent; it is spiteful. It knows when we are giving a
+party, and goes out of its way to do its worst."
+
+"_We_ are going to have a new one," said Harris, but he did not say it
+proudly. "Clara thought it would be such a saving of expense, having the
+two things done at the same time. I believe," said Harris, "if a woman
+wanted a diamond tiara, she would explain that it was to save the expense
+of a bonnet."
+
+"How much do you reckon the stove is going to cost you?" I asked. I felt
+interested in the subject.
+
+"I don't know," answered Harris; "another twenty, I suppose. Then we
+talked about the piano. Could you ever notice," said Harris, "any
+difference between one piano and another?"
+
+"Some of them seem to be a bit louder than others," I answered; "but one
+gets used to that."
+
+"Ours is all wrong about the treble," said Harris. "By the way, what
+_is_ the treble?"
+
+"It's the shrill end of the thing," I explained; "the part that sounds as
+if you'd trod on its tail. The brilliant selections always end up with a
+flourish on it."
+
+"They want more of it," said Harris; "our old one hasn't got enough of
+it. I'll have to put it in the nursery, and get a new one for the
+drawing-room."
+
+"Anything else?" I asked.
+
+"No," said Harris; "she didn't seem able to think of anything else."
+
+"You'll find when you get home," I said, "she has thought of one other
+thing."
+
+"What's that?" said Harris.
+
+"A house at Folkestone for the season."
+
+"What should she want a house at Folkestone for?" said Harris.
+
+"To live in," I suggested, "during the summer months."
+
+"She's going to her people in Wales," said Harris, "for the holidays,
+with the children; we've had an invitation."
+
+"Possibly," I said, "she'll go to Wales before she goes to Folkestone, or
+maybe she'll take Wales on her way home; but she'll want a house at
+Folkestone for the season, notwithstanding. I may be mistaken--I hope
+for your sake that I am--but I feel a presentiment that I'm not."
+
+"This trip," said Harris, "is going to be expensive."
+
+"It was an idiotic suggestion," I said, "from the beginning."
+
+"It was foolish of us to listen to him," said Harris; "he'll get us into
+real trouble one of these days."
+
+"He always was a muddler," I agreed.
+
+"So headstrong," added Harris.
+
+We heard his voice at that moment in the hall, asking for letters.
+
+"Better not say anything to him," I suggested; "it's too late to go back
+now."
+
+"There would be no advantage in doing so," replied Harris. "I should
+have to get that bathroom and piano in any case now."
+
+He came in looking very cheerful.
+
+"Well," he said, "is it all right? Have you managed it?"
+
+There was that about his tone I did not altogether like; I noticed Harris
+resented it also.
+
+"Managed what?" I said.
+
+"Why, to get off," said George.
+
+I felt the time was come to explain things to George.
+
+"In married life," I said, "the man proposes, the woman submits. It is
+her duty; all religion teaches it."
+
+George folded his hands and fixed his eyes on the ceiling.
+
+"We may chaff and joke a little about these things," I continued; "but
+when it comes to practice, that is what always happens. We have
+mentioned to our wives that we are going. Naturally, they are grieved;
+they would prefer to come with us; failing that, they would have us
+remain with them. But we have explained to them our wishes on the
+subject, and--there's an end of the matter."
+
+George said, "Forgive me; I did not understand. I am only a bachelor.
+People tell me this, that, and the other, and I listen."
+
+I said, "That is where you do wrong. When you want information come to
+Harris or myself; we will tell you the truth about these questions."
+
+George thanked us, and we proceeded with the business in hand.
+
+"When shall we start?" said George.
+
+"So far as I am concerned," replied Harris, "the sooner the better."
+
+His idea, I fancy, was to get away before Mrs. H. thought of other
+things. We fixed the following Wednesday.
+
+"What about route?" said Harris.
+
+"I have an idea," said George. "I take it you fellows are naturally
+anxious to improve your minds?"
+
+I said, "We don't want to become monstrosities. To a reasonable degree,
+yes, if it can be done without much expense and with little personal
+trouble."
+
+"It can," said George. "We know Holland and the Rhine. Very well, my
+suggestion is that we take the boat to Hamburg, see Berlin and Dresden,
+and work our way to the Schwarzwald, through Nuremberg and Stuttgart."
+
+"There are some pretty bits in Mesopotamia, so I've been told," murmured
+Harris.
+
+George said Mesopotamia was too much out of our way, but that the Berlin-
+Dresden route was quite practicable. For good or evil, he persuaded us
+into it.
+
+"The machines, I suppose," said George, "as before. Harris and I on the
+tandem, J.--"
+
+"I think not," interrupted Harris, firmly. "You and J. on the tandem, I
+on the single."
+
+"All the same to me," agreed George. "J. and I on the tandem, Harris--"
+
+"I do not mind taking my turn," I interrupted, "but I am not going to
+carry George _all_ the way; the burden should be divided."
+
+"Very well," agreed Harris, "we'll divide it. But it must be on the
+distinct understanding that he works."
+
+"That he what?" said George.
+
+"That he works," repeated Harris, firmly; "at all events, uphill."
+
+"Great Scott!" said George; "don't you want _any_ exercise?"
+
+There is always unpleasantness about this tandem. It is the theory of
+the man in front that the man behind does nothing; it is equally the
+theory of the man behind that he alone is the motive power, the man in
+front merely doing the puffing. The mystery will never be solved. It is
+annoying when Prudence is whispering to you on the one side not to overdo
+your strength and bring on heart disease; while Justice into the other
+ear is remarking, "Why should you do it all? This isn't a cab. He's not
+your passenger:" to hear him grunt out:
+
+"What's the matter--lost your pedals?"
+
+Harris, in his early married days, made much trouble for himself on one
+occasion, owing to this impossibility of knowing what the person behind
+is doing. He was riding with his wife through Holland. The roads were
+stony, and the machine jumped a good deal.
+
+"Sit tight," said Harris, without turning his head.
+
+What Mrs. Harris thought he said was, "Jump off." Why she should have
+thought he said "Jump off," when he said "Sit tight," neither of them can
+explain.
+
+Mrs. Harris puts it in this way, "If you had said, 'Sit tight,' why
+should I have jumped off?"
+
+Harris puts it, "If I had wanted you to jump off, why should I have said
+'Sit tight!'?"
+
+The bitterness is past, but they argue about the matter to this day.
+
+Be the explanation what it may, however, nothing alters the fact that
+Mrs. Harris did jump off, while Harris pedalled away hard, under the
+impression she was still behind him. It appears that at first she
+thought he was riding up the hill merely to show off. They were both
+young in those days, and he used to do that sort of thing. She expected
+him to spring to earth on reaching the summit, and lean in a careless and
+graceful attitude against the machine, waiting for her. When, on the
+contrary, she saw him pass the summit and proceed rapidly down a long and
+steep incline, she was seized, first with surprise, secondly with
+indignation, and lastly with alarm. She ran to the top of the hill and
+shouted, but he never turned his head. She watched him disappear into a
+wood a mile and a half distant, and then sat down and cried. They had
+had a slight difference that morning, and she wondered if he had taken it
+seriously and intended desertion. She had no money; she knew no Dutch.
+People passed, and seemed sorry for her; she tried to make them
+understand what had happened. They gathered that she had lost something,
+but could not grasp what. They took her to the nearest village, and
+found a policeman for her. He concluded from her pantomime that some man
+had stolen her bicycle. They put the telegraph into operation, and
+discovered in a village four miles off an unfortunate boy riding a lady's
+machine of an obsolete pattern. They brought him to her in a cart, but
+as she did not appear to want either him or his bicycle they let him go
+again, and resigned themselves to bewilderment.
+
+Meanwhile, Harris continued his ride with much enjoyment. It seemed to
+him that he had suddenly become a stronger, and in every way a more
+capable cyclist. Said he to what he thought was Mrs. Harris:
+
+"I haven't felt this machine so light for months. It's this air, I
+think; it's doing me good."
+
+Then he told her not to be afraid, and he would show her how fast he
+_could_ go. He bent down over the handles, and put his heart into his
+work. The bicycle bounded over the road like a thing of life; farmhouses
+and churches, dogs and chickens came to him and passed. Old folks stood
+and gazed at him, the children cheered him.
+
+In this way he sped merrily onward for about five miles. Then, as he
+explains it, the feeling began to grow upon him that something was wrong.
+He was not surprised at the silence; the wind was blowing strongly, and
+the machine was rattling a good deal. It was a sense of void that came
+upon him. He stretched out his hand behind him, and felt; there was
+nothing there but space. He jumped, or rather fell off, and looked back
+up the road; it stretched white and straight through the dark wood, and
+not a living soul could be seen upon it. He remounted, and rode back up
+the hill. In ten minutes he came to where the road broke into four;
+there he dismounted and tried to remember which fork he had come down.
+
+While he was deliberating a man passed, sitting sideways on a horse.
+Harris stopped him, and explained to him that he had lost his wife. The
+man appeared to be neither surprised nor sorry for him. While they were
+talking another farmer came along, to whom the first man explained the
+matter, not as an accident, but as a good story. What appeared to
+surprise the second man most was that Harris should be making a fuss
+about the thing. He could get no sense out of either of them, and
+cursing them he mounted his machine again, and took the middle road on
+chance. Half-way up, he came upon a party of two young women with one
+young man between them. They appeared to be making the most of him. He
+asked them if they had seen his wife. They asked him what she was like.
+He did not know enough Dutch to describe her properly; all he could tell
+them was she was a very beautiful woman, of medium size. Evidently this
+did not satisfy them, the description was too general; any man could say
+that, and by this means perhaps get possession of a wife that did not
+belong to him. They asked him how she was dressed; for the life of him
+he could not recollect.
+
+I doubt if any man could tell how any woman was dressed ten minutes after
+he had left her. He recollected a blue skirt, and then there was
+something that carried the dress on, as it were, up to the neck.
+Possibly, this may have been a blouse; he retained a dim vision of a
+belt; but what sort of a blouse? Was it green, or yellow, or blue? Had
+it a collar, or was it fastened with a bow? Were there feathers in her
+hat, or flowers? Or was it a hat at all? He dared not say, for fear of
+making a mistake and being sent miles after the wrong party. The two
+young women giggled, which in his then state of mind irritated Harris.
+The young man, who appeared anxious to get rid of him, suggested the
+police station at the next town. Harris made his way there. The police
+gave him a piece of paper, and told him to write down a full description
+of his wife, together with details of when and where he had lost her. He
+did not know where he had lost her; all he could tell them was the name
+of the village where he had lunched. He knew he had her with him then,
+and that they had started from there together.
+
+The police looked suspicious; they were doubtful about three matters:
+Firstly, was she really his wife? Secondly, had he really lost her?
+Thirdly, why had he lost her? With the aid of a hotel-keeper, however,
+who spoke a little English, he overcame their scruples. They promised to
+act, and in the evening they brought her to him in a covered wagon,
+together with a bill for expenses. The meeting was not a tender one.
+Mrs. Harris is not a good actress, and always has great difficulty in
+disguising her feelings. On this occasion, she frankly admits, she made
+no attempt to disguise them.
+
+The wheel business settled, there arose the ever-lasting luggage
+question.
+
+"The usual list, I suppose," said George, preparing to write.
+
+That was wisdom I had taught them; I had learned it myself years ago from
+my Uncle Podger.
+
+"Always before beginning to pack," my Uncle would say, "make a list."
+
+He was a methodical man.
+
+"Take a piece of paper"--he always began at the beginning--"put down on
+it everything you can possibly require, then go over it and see that it
+contains nothing you can possibly do without. Imagine yourself in bed;
+what have you got on? Very well, put it down--together with a change.
+You get up; what do you do? Wash yourself. What do you wash yourself
+with? Soap; put down soap. Go on till you have finished. Then take
+your clothes. Begin at your feet; what do you wear on your feet? Boots,
+shoes, socks; put them down. Work up till you get to your head. What
+else do you want besides clothes? A little brandy; put it down. A
+corkscrew, put it down. Put down everything, then you don't forget
+anything."
+
+That is the plan he always pursued himself. The list made, he would go
+over it carefully, as he always advised, to see that he had forgotten
+nothing. Then he would go over it again, and strike out everything it
+was possible to dispense with.
+
+Then he would lose the list.
+
+Said George: "Just sufficient for a day or two we will take with us on
+our bikes. The bulk of our luggage we must send on from town to town."
+
+"We must be careful," I said; "I knew a man once--"
+
+Harris looked at his watch.
+
+"We'll hear about him on the boat," said Harris; "I have got to meet
+Clara at Waterloo Station in half an hour."
+
+"It won't take half an hour," I said; "it's a true story, and--"
+
+"Don't waste it," said George: "I am told there are rainy evenings in the
+Black Forest; we may be glad of it. What we have to do now is to finish
+this list."
+
+Now I come to think of it, I never did get off that story; something
+always interrupted it. And it really was true.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+Harris's one fault--Harris and the Angel--A patent bicycle lamp--The
+ideal saddle--The "Overhauler"--His eagle eye--His method--His cheery
+confidence--His simple and inexpensive tastes--His appearance--How to get
+rid of him--George as prophet--The gentle art of making oneself
+disagreeable in a foreign tongue--George as a student of human nature--He
+proposes an experiment--His Prudence--Harris's support secured, upon
+conditions.
+
+On Monday afternoon Harris came round; he had a cycling paper in his
+hand.
+
+I said: "If you take my advice, you will leave it alone."
+
+Harris said: "Leave what alone?"
+
+I said: "That brand-new, patent, revolution in cycling, record-breaking,
+Tomfoolishness, whatever it may be, the advertisement of which you have
+there in your hand."
+
+He said: "Well, I don't know; there will be some steep hills for us to
+negotiate; I guess we shall want a good brake."
+
+I said: "We shall want a brake, I agree; what we shall not want is a
+mechanical surprise that we don't understand, and that never acts when it
+is wanted."
+
+"This thing," he said, "acts automatically."
+
+"You needn't tell me," I said. "I know exactly what it will do, by
+instinct. Going uphill it will jamb the wheel so effectively that we
+shall have to carry the machine bodily. The air at the top of the hill
+will do it good, and it will suddenly come right again. Going downhill
+it will start reflecting what a nuisance it has been. This will lead to
+remorse, and finally to despair. It will say to itself: 'I'm not fit to
+be a brake. I don't help these fellows; I only hinder them. I'm a
+curse, that's what I am;' and, without a word of warning, it will 'chuck'
+the whole business. That is what that brake will do. Leave it alone.
+You are a good fellow," I continued, "but you have one fault."
+
+"What?" he asked, indignantly.
+
+"You have too much faith," I answered. "If you read an advertisement,
+you go away and believe it. Every experiment that every fool has thought
+of in connection with cycling you have tried. Your guardian angel
+appears to be a capable and conscientious spirit, and hitherto she has
+seen you through; take my advice and don't try her too far. She must
+have had a busy time since you started cycling. Don't go on till you
+make her mad."
+
+He said: "If every man talked like that there would be no advancement
+made in any department of life. If nobody ever tried a new thing the
+world would come to a standstill. It is by--"
+
+"I know all that can be said on that side of the argument," I
+interrupted. "I agree in trying new experiments up to thirty-five;
+_after_ thirty-five I consider a man is entitled to think of himself. You
+and I have done our duty in this direction, you especially. You have
+been blown up by a patent gas lamp--"
+
+He said: "I really think, you know, that was my fault; I think I must
+have screwed it up too tight."
+
+I said: "I am quite willing to believe that if there was a wrong way of
+handling the thing that is the way you handle it. You should take that
+tendency of yours into consideration; it bears upon the argument. Myself,
+I did not notice what you did; I only know we were riding peacefully and
+pleasantly along the Whitby Road, discussing the Thirty Years' War, when
+your lamp went off like a pistol-shot. The start sent me into the ditch;
+and your wife's face, when I told her there was nothing the matter and
+that she was not to worry, because the two men would carry you upstairs,
+and the doctor would be round in a minute bringing the nurse with him,
+still lingers in my memory."
+
+He said: "I wish you had thought to pick up the lamp. I should like to
+have found out what was the cause of its going off like that."
+
+I said: "There was not time to pick up the lamp. I calculate it would
+have taken two hours to have collected it. As to its 'going off,' the
+mere fact of its being advertised as the safest lamp ever invented would
+of itself, to anyone but you, have suggested accident. Then there was
+that electric lamp," I continued.
+
+"Well, that really did give a fine light," he replied; "you said so
+yourself."
+
+I said: "It gave a brilliant light in the King's Road, Brighton, and
+frightened a horse. The moment we got into the dark beyond Kemp Town it
+went out, and you were summoned for riding without a light. You may
+remember that on sunny afternoons you used to ride about with that lamp
+shining for all it was worth. When lighting-up time came it was
+naturally tired, and wanted a rest."
+
+"It was a bit irritating, that lamp," he murmured; "I remember it."
+
+I said: "It irritated me; it must have been worse for you. Then there
+are saddles," I went on--I wished to get this lesson home to him. "Can
+you think of any saddle ever advertised that you have _not_ tried?"
+
+He said: "It has been an idea of mine that the right saddle is to be
+found."
+
+I said: "You give up that idea; this is an imperfect world of joy and
+sorrow mingled. There may be a better land where bicycle saddles are
+made out of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; in this world the simplest thing
+is to get used to something hard. There was that saddle you bought in
+Birmingham; it was divided in the middle, and looked like a pair of
+kidneys."
+
+He said: "You mean that one constructed on anatomical principles."
+
+"Very likely," I replied. "The box you bought it in had a picture on the
+cover, representing a sitting skeleton--or rather that part of a skeleton
+which does sit."
+
+He said: "It was quite correct; it showed you the true position of the--"
+
+I said: "We will not go into details; the picture always seemed to me
+indelicate."
+
+He said: "Medically speaking, it was right."
+
+"Possibly," I said, "for a man who rode in nothing but his bones. I only
+know that I tried it myself, and that to a man who wore flesh it was
+agony. Every time you went over a stone or a rut it nipped you; it was
+like riding on an irritable lobster. You rode that for a month."
+
+"I thought it only right to give it a fair trial," he answered.
+
+I said: "You gave your family a fair trial also; if you will allow me the
+use of slang. Your wife told me that never in the whole course of your
+married life had she known you so bad tempered, so un-Christian like, as
+you were that month. Then you remember that other saddle, the one with
+the spring under it."
+
+He said: "You mean 'the Spiral.'"
+
+I said: "I mean the one that jerked you up and down like a Jack-in-the-
+box; sometimes you came down again in the right place, and sometimes you
+didn't. I am not referring to these matters merely to recall painful
+memories, but I want to impress you with the folly of trying experiments
+at your time of life."
+
+He said. "I wish you wouldn't harp so much on my age. A man at thirty-
+four--"
+
+"A man at what?"
+
+He said: "If you don't want the thing, don't have it. If your machine
+runs away with you down a mountain, and you and George get flung through
+a church roof, don't blame me."
+
+"I cannot promise for George," I said; "a little thing will sometimes
+irritate him, as you know. If such an accident as you suggest happen, he
+may be cross, but I will undertake to explain to him that it was not your
+fault."
+
+"Is the thing all right?" he asked.
+
+"The tandem," I replied, "is well."
+
+He said: "Have you overhauled it?"
+
+I said: "I have not, nor is anyone else going to overhaul it. The thing
+is now in working order, and it is going to remain in working order till
+we start."
+
+I have had experience of this "overhauling." There was a man at
+Folkestone; I used to meet him on the Lees. He proposed one evening we
+should go for a long bicycle ride together on the following day, and I
+agreed. I got up early, for me; I made an effort, and was pleased with
+myself. He came half an hour late: I was waiting for him in the garden.
+It was a lovely day. He said:--
+
+"That's a good-looking machine of yours. How does it run?"
+
+"Oh, like most of them!" I answered; "easily enough in the morning; goes
+a little stiffly after lunch."
+
+He caught hold of it by the front wheel and the fork and shook it
+violently.
+
+I said: "Don't do that; you'll hurt it."
+
+I did not see why he should shake it; it had not done anything to him.
+Besides, if it wanted shaking, I was the proper person to shake it. I
+felt much as I should had he started whacking my dog.
+
+He said: "This front wheel wobbles."
+
+I said: "It doesn't if you don't wobble it." It didn't wobble, as a
+matter of fact--nothing worth calling a wobble.
+
+He said: "This is dangerous; have you got a screw-hammer?"
+
+I ought to have been firm, but I thought that perhaps he really did know
+something about the business. I went to the tool shed to see what I
+could find. When I came back he was sitting on the ground with the front
+wheel between his legs. He was playing with it, twiddling it round
+between his fingers; the remnant of the machine was lying on the gravel
+path beside him.
+
+He said: "Something has happened to this front wheel of yours."
+
+"It looks like it, doesn't it?" I answered. But he was the sort of man
+that never understands satire.
+
+He said: "It looks to me as if the bearings were all wrong."
+
+I said: "Don't you trouble about it any more; you will make yourself
+tired. Let us put it back and get off."
+
+He said: "We may as well see what is the matter with it, now it is out."
+He talked as though it had dropped out by accident.
+
+Before I could stop him he had unscrewed something somewhere, and out
+rolled all over the path some dozen or so little balls.
+
+"Catch 'em!" he shouted; "catch 'em! We mustn't lose any of them." He
+was quite excited about them.
+
+We grovelled round for half an hour, and found sixteen. He said he hoped
+we had got them all, because, if not, it would make a serious difference
+to the machine. He said there was nothing you should be more careful
+about in taking a bicycle to pieces than seeing you did not lose any of
+the balls. He explained that you ought to count them as you took them
+out, and see that exactly the same number went back in each place. I
+promised, if ever I took a bicycle to pieces I would remember his advice.
+
+I put the balls for safety in my hat, and I put my hat upon the doorstep.
+It was not a sensible thing to do, I admit. As a matter of fact, it was
+a silly thing to do. I am not as a rule addle-headed; his influence must
+have affected me.
+
+He then said that while he was about it he would see to the chain for me,
+and at once began taking off the gear-case. I did try to persuade him
+from that. I told him what an experienced friend of mine once said to me
+solemnly:--
+
+"If anything goes wrong with your gear-case, sell the machine and buy a
+new one; it comes cheaper."
+
+He said: "People talk like that who understand nothing about machines.
+Nothing is easier than taking off a gear-case."
+
+I had to confess he was right. In less than five minutes he had the gear-
+case in two pieces, lying on the path, and was grovelling for screws. He
+said it was always a mystery to him the way screws disappeared.
+
+We were still looking for the screws when Ethelbertha came out. She
+seemed surprised to find us there; she said she thought we had started
+hours ago.
+
+He said: "We shan't be long now. I'm just helping your husband to
+overhaul this machine of his. It's a good machine; but they all want
+going over occasionally."
+
+Ethelbertha said: "If you want to wash yourselves when you have done you
+might go into the back kitchen, if you don't mind; the girls have just
+finished the bedrooms."
+
+She told me that if she met Kate they would probably go for a sail; but
+that in any case she would be back to lunch. I would have given a
+sovereign to be going with her. I was getting heartily sick of standing
+about watching this fool breaking up my bicycle.
+
+Common sense continued to whisper to me: "Stop him, before he does any
+more mischief. You have a right to protect your own property from the
+ravages of a lunatic. Take him by the scruff of the neck, and kick him
+out of the gate!"
+
+But I am weak when it comes to hurting other people's feelings, and I let
+him muddle on.
+
+He gave up looking for the rest of the screws. He said screws had a
+knack of turning up when you least expected them; and that now he would
+see to the chain. He tightened it till it would not move; next he
+loosened it until it was twice as loose as it was before. Then he said
+we had better think about getting the front wheel back into its place
+again.
+
+I held the fork open, and he worried with the wheel. At the end of ten
+minutes I suggested he should hold the forks, and that I should handle
+the wheel; and we changed places. At the end of his first minute he
+dropped the machine, and took a short walk round the croquet lawn, with
+his hands pressed together between his thighs. He explained as he walked
+that the thing to be careful about was to avoid getting your fingers
+pinched between the forks and the spokes of the wheel. I replied I was
+convinced, from my own experience, that there was much truth in what he
+said. He wrapped himself up in a couple of dusters, and we commenced
+again. At length we did get the thing into position; and the moment it
+was in position he burst out laughing.
+
+I said: "What's the joke?"
+
+He said: "Well, I am an ass!"
+
+It was the first thing he had said that made me respect him. I asked him
+what had led him to the discovery.
+
+He said: "We've forgotten the balls!"
+
+I looked for my hat; it was lying topsy-turvy in the middle of the path,
+and Ethelbertha's favourite hound was swallowing the balls as fast as he
+could pick them up.
+
+"He will kill himself," said Ebbson--I have never met him since that day,
+thank the Lord; but I think his name was Ebbson--"they are solid steel."
+
+I said: "I am not troubling about the dog. He has had a bootlace and a
+packet of needles already this week. Nature's the best guide; puppies
+seem to require this kind of stimulant. What I am thinking about is my
+bicycle."
+
+He was of a cheerful disposition. He said: "Well, we must put back all
+we can find, and trust to Providence."
+
+We found eleven. We fixed six on one side and five on the other, and
+half an hour later the wheel was in its place again. It need hardly be
+added that it really did wobble now; a child might have noticed it.
+Ebbson said it would do for the present. He appeared to be getting a bit
+tired himself. If I had let him, he would, I believe, at this point have
+gone home. I was determined now, however, that he should stop and
+finish; I had abandoned all thoughts of a ride. My pride in the machine
+he had killed. My only interest lay now in seeing him scratch and bump
+and pinch himself. I revived his drooping spirits with a glass of beer
+and some judicious praise. I said:
+
+"Watching you do this is of real use to me. It is not only your skill
+and dexterity that fascinates me, it is your cheery confidence in
+yourself, your inexplicable hopefulness, that does me good."
+
+Thus encouraged, he set to work to refix the gear-case. He stood the
+bicycle against the house, and worked from the off side. Then he stood
+it against a tree, and worked from the near side. Then I held it for
+him, while he lay on the ground with his head between the wheels, and
+worked at it from below, and dropped oil upon himself. Then he took it
+away from me, and doubled himself across it like a pack-saddle, till he
+lost his balance and slid over on to his head. Three times he said:
+
+"Thank Heaven, that's right at last!"
+
+And twice he said:
+
+"No, I'm damned if it is after all!"
+
+What he said the third time I try to forget.
+
+Then he lost his temper and tried bullying the thing. The bicycle, I was
+glad to see, showed spirit; and the subsequent proceedings degenerated
+into little else than a rough-and-tumble fight between him and the
+machine. One moment the bicycle would be on the gravel path, and he on
+top of it; the next, the position would be reversed--he on the gravel
+path, the bicycle on him. Now he would be standing flushed with victory,
+the bicycle firmly fixed between his legs. But his triumph would be
+short-lived. By a sudden, quick movement it would free itself, and,
+turning upon him, hit him sharply over the head with one of its handles.
+
+At a quarter to one, dirty and dishevelled, cut and breeding, he said: "I
+think that will do;" and rose and wiped his brow.
+
+The bicycle looked as if it also had had enough of it. Which had
+received most punishment it would have been difficult to say. I took him
+into the back kitchen, where, so far as was possible without soda and
+proper tools, he cleaned himself, and sent him home.
+
+The bicycle I put into a cab and took round to the nearest repairing
+shop. The foreman of the works came up and looked at it.
+
+"What do you want me to do with that?" said he.
+
+"I want you," I said, "so far as is possible, to restore it."
+
+"It's a bit far gone," said he; "but I'll do my best."
+
+He did his best, which came to two pounds ten. But it was never the same
+machine again; and at the end of the season I left it in an agent's hands
+to sell. I wished to deceive nobody; I instructed the man to advertise
+it as a last year's machine. The agent advised me not to mention any
+date. He said:
+
+"In this business it isn't a question of what is true and what isn't;
+it's a question of what you can get people to believe. Now, between you
+and me, it don't look like a last year's machine; so far as looks are
+concerned, it might be a ten-year old. We'll say nothing about date;
+we'll just get what we can."
+
+I left the matter to him, and he got me five pounds, which he said was
+more than he had expected.
+
+There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can
+"overhaul" it, or you can ride it. On the whole, I am not sure that a
+man who takes his pleasure overhauling does not have the best of the
+bargain. He is independent of the weather and the wind; the state of the
+roads troubles him not. Give him a screw-hammer, a bundle of rags, an
+oil-can, and something to sit down upon, and he is happy for the day. He
+has to put up with certain disadvantages, of course; there is no joy
+without alloy. He himself always looks like a tinker, and his machine
+always suggests the idea that, having stolen it, he has tried to disguise
+it; but as he rarely gets beyond the first milestone with it, this,
+perhaps, does not much matter. The mistake some people make is in
+thinking they can get both forms of sport out of the same machine. This
+is impossible; no machine will stand the double strain. You must make up
+your mind whether you are going to be an "overhauler" or a rider.
+Personally, I prefer to ride, therefore I take care to have near me
+nothing that can tempt me to overhaul. When anything happens to my
+machine I wheel it to the nearest repairing shop. If I am too far from
+the town or village to walk, I sit by the roadside and wait till a cart
+comes along. My chief danger, I always find, is from the wandering
+overhauler. The sight of a broken-down machine is to the overhauler as a
+wayside corpse to a crow; he swoops down upon it with a friendly yell of
+triumph. At first I used to try politeness. I would say:
+
+"It is nothing; don't you trouble. You ride on, and enjoy yourself, I
+beg it of you as a favour; please go away."
+
+Experience has taught me, however, that courtesy is of no use in such an
+extremity. Now I say:
+
+"You go away and leave the thing alone, or I will knock your silly head
+off."
+
+And if you look determined, and have a good stout cudgel in your hand,
+you can generally drive him off.
+
+George came in later in the day. He said:
+
+"Well, do you think everything will be ready?"
+
+I said: "Everything will be ready by Wednesday, except, perhaps, you and
+Harris."
+
+He said: "Is the tandem all right?"
+
+"The tandem," I said, "is well."
+
+He said: "You don't think it wants overhauling?"
+
+I replied: "Age and experience have taught me that there are few matters
+concerning which a man does well to be positive. Consequently, there
+remain to me now but a limited number of questions upon which I feel any
+degree of certainty. Among such still-unshaken beliefs, however, is the
+conviction that that tandem does not want overhauling. I also feel a
+presentiment that, provided my life is spared, no human being between now
+and Wednesday morning is going to overhaul it."
+
+George said: "I should not show temper over the matter, if I were you.
+There will come a day, perhaps not far distant, when that bicycle, with a
+couple of mountains between it and the nearest repairing shop, will, in
+spite of your chronic desire for rest, _have_ to be overhauled. Then you
+will clamour for people to tell you where you put the oil-can, and what
+you have done with the screw-hammer. Then, while you exert yourself
+holding the thing steady against a tree, you will suggest that somebody
+else should clean the chain and pump the back wheel."
+
+I felt there was justice in George's rebuke--also a certain amount of
+prophetic wisdom. I said:
+
+"Forgive me if I seemed unresponsive. The truth is, Harris was round
+here this morning--"
+
+George said: "Say no more; I understand. Besides, what I came to talk to
+you about was another matter. Look at that."
+
+He handed me a small book bound in red cloth. It was a guide to English
+conversation for the use of German travellers. It commenced "On a Steam-
+boat," and terminated "At the Doctor's"; its longest chapter being
+devoted to conversation in a railway carriage, among, apparently, a
+compartment load of quarrelsome and ill-mannered lunatics: "Can you not
+get further away from me, sir?"--"It is impossible, madam; my neighbour,
+here, is very stout"--"Shall we not endeavour to arrange our
+legs?"--"Please have the goodness to keep your elbows down"--"Pray do not
+inconvenience yourself, madam, if my shoulder is of any accommodation to
+you," whether intended to be said sarcastically or not, there was nothing
+to indicate--"I really must request you to move a little, madam, I can
+hardly breathe," the author's idea being, presumably, that by this time
+the whole party was mixed up together on the floor. The chapter
+concluded with the phrase, "Here we are at our destination, God be
+thanked! (_Gott sei dank_!)" a pious exclamation, which under the
+circumstances must have taken the form of a chorus.
+
+At the end of the book was an appendix, giving the German traveller hints
+concerning the preservation of his health and comfort during his sojourn
+in English towns, chief among such hints being advice to him to always
+travel with a supply of disinfectant powder, to always lock his bedroom
+door at night, and to always carefully count his small change.
+
+"It is not a brilliant publication," I remarked, handing the book back to
+George; "it is not a book that personally I would recommend to any German
+about to visit England; I think it would get him disliked. But I have
+read books published in London for the use of English travellers abroad
+every whit as foolish. Some educated idiot, misunderstanding seven
+languages, would appear to go about writing these books for the
+misinformation and false guidance of modern Europe."
+
+"You cannot deny," said George, "that these books are in large request.
+They are bought by the thousand, I know. In every town in Europe there
+must be people going about talking this sort of thing."
+
+"Maybe," I replied; "but fortunately nobody understands them. I have
+noticed, myself, men standing on railway platforms and at street corners
+reading aloud from such books. Nobody knows what language they are
+speaking; nobody has the slightest knowledge of what they are saying.
+This is, perhaps, as well; were they understood they would probably be
+assaulted."
+
+George said: "Maybe you are right; my idea is to see what would happen if
+they were understood. My proposal is to get to London early on Wednesday
+morning, and spend an hour or two going about and shopping with the aid
+of this book. There are one or two little things I want--a hat and a
+pair of bedroom slippers, among other articles. Our boat does not leave
+Tilbury till twelve, and that just gives us time. I want to try this
+sort of talk where I can properly judge of its effect. I want to see how
+the foreigner feels when he is talked to in this way."
+
+It struck me as a sporting idea. In my enthusiasm I offered to accompany
+him, and wait outside the shop. I said I thought that Harris would like
+to be in it, too--or rather outside.
+
+George said that was not quite his scheme. His proposal was that Harris
+and I should accompany him into the shop. With Harris, who looks
+formidable, to support him, and myself at the door to call the police if
+necessary, he said he was willing to adventure the thing.
+
+We walked round to Harris's, and put the proposal before him. He
+examined the book, especially the chapters dealing with the purchase of
+shoes and hats. He said:
+
+"If George talks to any bootmaker or any hatter the things that are put
+down here, it is not support he will want; it is carrying to the hospital
+that he will need."
+
+That made George angry.
+
+"You talk," said George, "as though I were a foolhardy boy without any
+sense. I shall select from the more polite and less irritating speeches;
+the grosser insults I shall avoid."
+
+This being clearly understood, Harris gave in his adhesion; and our start
+was fixed for early Wednesday morning.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+Why Harris considers alarm clocks unnecessary in a family--Social
+instinct of the young--A child's thoughts about the morning--The
+sleepless watchman--The mystery of him--His over anxiety--Night
+thoughts--The sort of work one does before breakfast--The good sheep and
+the bad--Disadvantages of being virtuous--Harris's new stove begins
+badly--The daily out-going of my Uncle Podger--The elderly city man
+considered as a racer--We arrive in London--We talk the language of the
+traveller.
+
+George came down on Tuesday evening, and slept at Harris's place. We
+thought this a better arrangement than his own suggestion, which was that
+we should call for him on our way and "pick him up." Picking George up
+in the morning means picking him out of bed to begin with, and shaking
+him awake--in itself an exhausting effort with which to commence the day;
+helping him find his things and finish his packing; and then waiting for
+him while he eats his breakfast, a tedious entertainment from the
+spectator's point of view, full of wearisome repetition.
+
+I knew that if he slept at "Beggarbush" he would be up in time; I have
+slept there myself, and I know what happens. About the middle of the
+night, as you judge, though in reality it may be somewhat later, you are
+startled out of your first sleep by what sounds like a rush of cavalry
+along the passage, just outside your door. Your half-awakened
+intelligence fluctuates between burglars, the Day of Judgment, and a gas
+explosion. You sit up in bed and listen intently. You are not kept
+waiting long; the next moment a door is violently slammed, and somebody,
+or something, is evidently coming downstairs on a tea-tray.
+
+"I told you so," says a voice outside, and immediately some hard
+substance, a head one would say from the ring of it, rebounds against the
+panel of your door.
+
+By this time you are charging madly round the room for your clothes.
+Nothing is where you put it overnight, the articles most essential have
+disappeared entirely; and meanwhile the murder, or revolution, or
+whatever it is, continues unchecked. You pause for a moment, with your
+head under the wardrobe, where you think you can see your slippers, to
+listen to a steady, monotonous thumping upon a distant door. The victim,
+you presume, has taken refuge there; they mean to have him out and finish
+him. Will you be in time? The knocking ceases, and a voice, sweetly
+reassuring in its gentle plaintiveness, asks meekly:
+
+"Pa, may I get up?"
+
+You do not hear the other voice, but the responses are:
+
+"No, it was only the bath--no, she ain't really hurt,--only wet, you
+know. Yes, ma, I'll tell 'em what you say. No, it was a pure accident.
+Yes; good-night, papa."
+
+Then the same voice, exerting itself so as to be heard in a distant part
+of the house, remarks:
+
+"You've got to come upstairs again. Pa says it isn't time yet to get
+up."
+
+You return to bed, and lie listening to somebody being dragged upstairs,
+evidently against their will. By a thoughtful arrangement the spare
+rooms at "Beggarbush" are exactly underneath the nurseries. The same
+somebody, you conclude, still offering the most creditable opposition, is
+being put back into bed. You can follow the contest with much
+exactitude, because every time the body is flung down upon the spring
+mattress, the bedstead, just above your head, makes a sort of jump; while
+every time the body succeeds in struggling out again, you are aware by
+the thud upon the floor. After a time the struggle wanes, or maybe the
+bed collapses; and you drift back into sleep. But the next moment, or
+what seems to be the next moment, you again open your eyes under the
+consciousness of a presence. The door is being held ajar, and four
+solemn faces, piled one on top of the other, are peering at you, as
+though you were some natural curiosity kept in this particular room.
+Seeing you awake, the top face, walking calmly over the other three,
+comes in and sits on the bed in a friendly attitude.
+
+"Oh!" it says, "we didn't know you were awake. I've been awake some
+time."
+
+"So I gather," you reply, shortly.
+
+"Pa doesn't like us to get up too early," it continues. "He says
+everybody else in the house is liable to be disturbed if we get up. So,
+of course, we mustn't."
+
+The tone is that of gentle resignation. It is instinct with the spirit
+of virtuous pride, arising from the consciousness of self-sacrifice.
+
+"Don't you call this being up?" you suggest.
+
+"Oh, no; we're not really up, you know, because we're not properly
+dressed." The fact is self-evident. "Pa's always very tired in the
+morning," the voice continues; "of course, that's because he works hard
+all day. Are you ever tired in the morning?"
+
+At this point he turns and notices, for the first time, that the three
+other children have also entered, and are sitting in a semi-circle on the
+floor. From their attitude it is clear they have mistaken the whole
+thing for one of the slower forms of entertainment, some comic lecture or
+conjuring exhibition, and are waiting patiently for you to get out of bed
+and do something. It shocks him, the idea of their being in the guest's
+bedchamber. He peremptorily orders them out. They do not answer him,
+they do not argue; in dead silence, and with one accord they fall upon
+him. All you can see from the bed is a confused tangle of waving arms
+and legs, suggestive of an intoxicated octopus trying to find bottom. Not
+a word is spoken; that seems to be the etiquette of the thing. If you
+are sleeping in your pyjamas, you spring from the bed, and only add to
+the confusion; if you are wearing a less showy garment, you stop where
+you are and shout commands, which are utterly unheeded. The simplest
+plan is to leave it to the eldest boy. He does get them out after a
+while, and closes the door upon them. It re-opens immediately, and one,
+generally Muriel, is shot back into the room. She enters as from a
+catapult. She is handicapped by having long hair, which can be used as a
+convenient handle. Evidently aware of this natural disadvantage, she
+clutches it herself tightly in one hand, and punches with the other. He
+opens the door again, and cleverly uses her as a battering-ram against
+the wall of those without. You can hear the dull crash as her head
+enters among them, and scatters them. When the victory is complete, he
+comes back and resumes his seat on the bed. There is no bitterness about
+him; he has forgotten the whole incident.
+
+"I like the morning," he says, "don't you?"
+
+"Some mornings," you agree, "are all right; others are not so peaceful."
+
+He takes no notice of your exception; a far-away look steals over his
+somewhat ethereal face.
+
+"I should like to die in the morning," he says; "everything is so
+beautiful then."
+
+"Well," you answer, "perhaps you will, if your father ever invites an
+irritable man to come and sleep here, and doesn't warn him beforehand."
+
+He descends from his contemplative mood, and becomes himself again.
+
+"It's jolly in the garden," he suggests; "you wouldn't like to get up and
+have a game of cricket, would you?"
+
+It was not the idea with which you went to bed, but now, as things have
+turned out, it seems as good a plan as lying there hopelessly awake; and
+you agree.
+
+You learn, later in the day, that the explanation of the proceeding is
+that you, unable to sleep, woke up early in the morning, and thought you
+would like a game of cricket. The children, taught to be ever courteous
+to guests, felt it their duty to humour you. Mrs. Harris remarks at
+breakfast that at least you might have seen to it that the children were
+properly dressed before you took them out; while Harris points out to
+you, pathetically, how, by your one morning's example and encouragement,
+you have undone his labour of months.
+
+On this Wednesday morning, George, it seems, clamoured to get up at a
+quarter-past five, and persuaded them to let him teach them cycling
+tricks round the cucumber frames on Harris's new wheel. Even Mrs.
+Harris, however, did not blame George on this occasion; she felt
+intuitively the idea could not have been entirely his.
+
+It is not that the Harris children have the faintest notion of avoiding
+blame at the expense of a friend and comrade. One and all they are
+honesty itself in accepting responsibility for their own misdeeds. It
+simply is, that is how the thing presents itself to their understanding.
+When you explain to them that you had no original intention of getting up
+at five o'clock in the morning to play cricket on the croquet lawn, or to
+mimic the history of the early Church by shooting with a cross-bow at
+dolls tied to a tree; that as a matter of fact, left to your own
+initiative, you would have slept peacefully till roused in Christian
+fashion with a cup of tea at eight, they are firstly astonished, secondly
+apologetic, and thirdly sincerely contrite. In the present instance,
+waiving the purely academic question whether the awakening of George at a
+little before five was due to natural instinct on his part, or to the
+accidental passing of a home-made boomerang through his bedroom window,
+the dear children frankly admitted that the blame for his uprising was
+their own. As the eldest boy said:
+
+"We ought to have remembered that Uncle George had a long day, before
+him, and we ought to have dissuaded him from getting up. I blame myself
+entirely."
+
+But an occasional change of habit does nobody any harm; and besides, as
+Harris and I agreed, it was good training for George. In the Black
+Forest we should be up at five every morning; that we had determined on.
+Indeed, George himself had suggested half-past four, but Harris and I had
+argued that five would be early enough as an average; that would enable
+us to be on our machines by six, and to break the back of our journey
+before the heat of the day set in. Occasionally we might start a little
+earlier, but not as a habit.
+
+I myself was up that morning at five. This was earlier than I had
+intended. I had said to myself on going to sleep, "Six o'clock, sharp!"
+
+There are men I know who can wake themselves at any time to the minute.
+They say to themselves literally, as they lay their heads upon the
+pillow, "Four-thirty," "Four-forty-five," or "Five-fifteen," as the case
+may be; and as the clock strikes they open their eyes. It is very
+wonderful this; the more one dwells upon it, the greater the mystery
+grows. Some Ego within us, acting quite independently of our conscious
+self, must be capable of counting the hours while we sleep. Unaided by
+clock or sun, or any other medium known to our five senses, it keeps
+watch through the darkness. At the exact moment it whispers "Time!" and
+we awake. The work of an old riverside fellow I once talked with called
+him to be out of bed each morning half an hour before high tide. He told
+me that never once had he overslept himself by a minute. Latterly, he
+never even troubled to work out the tide for himself. He would lie down
+tired, and sleep a dreamless sleep, and each morning at a different hour
+this ghostly watchman, true as the tide itself, would silently call him.
+Did the man's spirit haunt through the darkness the muddy river stairs;
+or had it knowledge of the ways of Nature? Whatever the process, the man
+himself was unconscious of it.
+
+In my own case my inward watchman is, perhaps, somewhat out of practice.
+He does his best; but he is over-anxious; he worries himself, and loses
+count. I say to him, maybe, "Five-thirty, please;" and he wakes me with
+a start at half-past two. I look at my watch. He suggests that,
+perhaps, I forgot to wind it up. I put it to my ear; it is still going.
+He thinks, maybe, something has happened to it; he is confident himself
+it is half-past five, if not a little later. To satisfy him, I put on a
+pair of slippers and go downstairs to inspect the dining-room clock. What
+happens to a man when he wanders about the house in the middle of the
+night, clad in a dressing-gown and a pair of slippers, there is no need
+to recount; most men know by experience. Everything--especially
+everything with a sharp corner--takes a cowardly delight in hitting him.
+When you are wearing a pair of stout boots, things get out of your way;
+when you venture among furniture in woolwork slippers and no socks, it
+comes at you and kicks you. I return to bed bad tempered, and refusing
+to listen to his further absurd suggestion that all the clocks in the
+house have entered into a conspiracy against me, take half an hour to get
+to sleep again. From four to five he wakes me every ten minutes. I wish
+I had never said a word to him about the thing. At five o'clock he goes
+to sleep himself, worn out, and leaves it to the girl, who does it half
+an hour later than usual.
+
+On this particular Wednesday he worried me to such an extent, that I got
+up at five simply to be rid of him. I did not know what to do with
+myself. Our train did not leave till eight; all our luggage had been
+packed and sent on the night before, together with the bicycles, to
+Fenchurch Street Station. I went into my study; I thought I would put in
+an hour's writing. The early morning, before one has breakfasted, is
+not, I take it, a good season for literary effort. I wrote three
+paragraphs of a story, and then read them over to myself. Some unkind
+things have been said about my work; but nothing has yet been written
+which would have done justice to those three paragraphs. I threw them
+into the waste-paper basket, and sat trying to remember what, if any,
+charitable institutions provided pensions for decayed authors.
+
+To escape from this train of reflection, I put a golf-ball in my pocket,
+and selecting a driver, strolled out into the paddock. A couple of sheep
+were browsing there, and they followed and took a keen interest in my
+practice. The one was a kindly, sympathetic old party. I do not think
+she understood the game; I think it was my doing this innocent thing so
+early in the morning that appealed to her. At every stroke I made she
+bleated:
+
+"Go-o-o-d, go-o-o-d ind-e-e-d!"
+
+She seemed as pleased as if she had done it herself.
+
+As for the other one, she was a cantankerous, disagreeable old thing, as
+discouraging to me as her friend was helpful.
+
+"Ba-a-ad, da-a-a-m ba-a-a-d!" was her comment on almost every stroke. As
+a matter of fact, some were really excellent strokes; but she did it just
+to be contradictory, and for the sake of irritating. I could see that.
+
+By a most regrettable accident, one of my swiftest balls struck the good
+sheep on the nose. And at that the bad sheep laughed--laughed distinctly
+and undoubtedly, a husky, vulgar laugh; and, while her friend stood glued
+to the ground, too astonished to move, she changed her note for the first
+time and bleated:
+
+"Go-o-o-d, ve-e-ry go-o-o-d! Be-e-e-est sho-o-o-ot he-e-e's ma-a-a-de!"
+
+I would have given half-a-crown if it had been she I had hit instead of
+the other one. It is ever the good and amiable who suffer in this world.
+
+I had wasted more time than I had intended in the paddock, and when
+Ethelbertha came to tell me it was half-past seven, and the breakfast was
+on the table, I remembered that I had not shaved. It vexes Ethelbertha
+my shaving quickly. She fears that to outsiders it may suggest a poor-
+spirited attempt at suicide, and that in consequence it may get about the
+neighbourhood that we are not happy together. As a further argument, she
+has also hinted that my appearance is not of the kind that can be trifled
+with.
+
+On the whole, I was just as glad not to be able to take a long farewell
+of Ethelbertha; I did not want to risk her breaking down. But I should
+have liked more opportunity to say a few farewell words of advice to the
+children, especially as regards my fishing rod, which they will persist
+in using for cricket stumps; and I hate having to run for a train.
+Quarter of a mile from the station I overtook George and Harris; they
+were also running. In their case--so Harris informed me, jerkily, while
+we trotted side by side--it was the new kitchen stove that was to blame.
+This was the first morning they had tried it, and from some cause or
+other it had blown up the kidneys and scalded the cook. He said he hoped
+that by the time we returned they would have got more used to it.
+
+We caught the train by the skin of our teeth, as the saying is, and
+reflecting upon the events of the morning, as we sat gasping in the
+carriage, there passed vividly before my mind the panorama of my Uncle
+Podger, as on two hundred and fifty days in the year he would start from
+Ealing Common by the nine-thirteen train to Moorgate Street.
+
+From my Uncle Podger's house to the railway station was eight minutes'
+walk. What my uncle always said was:
+
+"Allow yourself a quarter of an hour, and take it easily."
+
+What he always did was to start five minutes before the time and run. I
+do not know why, but this was the custom of the suburb. Many stout City
+gentlemen lived at Ealing in those days--I believe some live there
+still--and caught early trains to Town. They all started late; they all
+carried a black bag and a newspaper in one hand, and an umbrella in the
+other; and for the last quarter of a mile to the station, wet or fine,
+they all ran.
+
+Folks with nothing else to do, nursemaids chiefly and errand boys, with
+now and then a perambulating costermonger added, would gather on the
+common of a fine morning to watch them pass, and cheer the most
+deserving. It was not a showy spectacle. They did not run well, they
+did not even run fast; but they were earnest, and they did their best.
+The exhibition appealed less to one's sense of art than to one's natural
+admiration for conscientious effort.
+
+Occasionally a little harmless betting would take place among the crowd.
+
+"Two to one agin the old gent in the white weskit!"
+
+"Ten to one on old Blowpipes, bar he don't roll over hisself 'fore 'e
+gets there!"
+
+"Heven money on the Purple Hemperor!"--a nickname bestowed by a youth of
+entomological tastes upon a certain retired military neighbour of my
+uncle's,--a gentleman of imposing appearance when stationary, but apt to
+colour highly under exercise.
+
+My uncle and the others would write to the _Ealing Press_ complaining
+bitterly concerning the supineness of the local police; and the editor
+would add spirited leaders upon the Decay of Courtesy among the Lower
+Orders, especially throughout the Western Suburbs. But no good ever
+resulted.
+
+It was not that my uncle did not rise early enough; it was that troubles
+came to him at the last moment. The first thing he would do after
+breakfast would be to lose his newspaper. We always knew when Uncle
+Podger had lost anything, by the expression of astonished indignation
+with which, on such occasions, he would regard the world in general. It
+never occurred to my Uncle Podger to say to himself:
+
+"I am a careless old man. I lose everything: I never know where I have
+put anything. I am quite incapable of finding it again for myself. In
+this respect I must be a perfect nuisance to everybody about me. I must
+set to work and reform myself."
+
+On the contrary, by some peculiar course of reasoning, he had convinced
+himself that whenever he lost a thing it was everybody else's fault in
+the house but his own.
+
+"I had it in my hand here not a minute ago!" he would exclaim.
+
+From his tone you would have thought he was living surrounded by
+conjurers, who spirited away things from him merely to irritate him.
+
+"Could you have left it in the garden?" my aunt would suggest.
+
+"What should I want to leave it in the garden for? I don't want a paper
+in the garden; I want the paper in the train with me."
+
+"You haven't put it in your pocket?"
+
+"God bless the woman! Do you think I should be standing here at five
+minutes to nine looking for it if I had it in my pocket all the while? Do
+you think I'm a fool?"
+
+Here somebody would explain, "What's this?" and hand him from somewhere a
+paper neatly folded.
+
+"I do wish people would leave my things alone," he would growl, snatching
+at it savagely.
+
+He would open his bag to put it in, and then glancing at it, he would
+pause, speechless with sense of injury.
+
+"What's the matter?" aunt would ask.
+
+"The day before yesterday's!" he would answer, too hurt even to shout,
+throwing the paper down upon the table.
+
+If only sometimes it had been yesterday's it would have been a change.
+But it was always the day before yesterday's; except on Tuesday; then it
+would be Saturday's.
+
+We would find it for him eventually; as often as not he was sitting on
+it. And then he would smile, not genially, but with the weariness that
+comes to a man who feels that fate has cast his lot among a band of
+hopeless idiots.
+
+"All the time, right in front of your noses--!" He would not finish the
+sentence; he prided himself on his self-control.
+
+This settled, he would start for the hall, where it was the custom of my
+Aunt Maria to have the children gathered, ready to say good-bye to him.
+
+My aunt never left the house herself, if only to make a call next door,
+without taking a tender farewell of every inmate. One never knew, she
+would say, what might happen.
+
+One of them, of course, was sure to be missing, and the moment this was
+noticed all the other six, without an instant's hesitation, would scatter
+with a whoop to find it. Immediately they were gone it would turn up by
+itself from somewhere quite near, always with the most reasonable
+explanation for its absence; and would at once start off after the others
+to explain to them that it was found. In this way, five minutes at least
+would be taken up in everybody's looking for everybody else, which was
+just sufficient time to allow my uncle to find his umbrella and lose his
+hat. Then, at last, the group reassembled in the hall, the drawing-room
+clock would commence to strike nine. It possessed a cold, penetrating
+chime that always had the effect of confusing my uncle. In his
+excitement he would kiss some of the children twice over, pass by others,
+forget whom he had kissed and whom he hadn't, and have to begin all over
+again. He used to say he believed they mixed themselves up on purpose,
+and I am not prepared to maintain that the charge was altogether false.
+To add to his troubles, one child always had a sticky face; and that
+child would always be the most affectionate.
+
+If things were going too smoothly, the eldest boy would come out with
+some tale about all the clocks in the house being five minutes slow, and
+of his having been late for school the previous day in consequence. This
+would send my uncle rushing impetuously down to the gate, where he would
+recollect that he had with him neither his bag nor his umbrella. All the
+children that my aunt could not stop would charge after him, two of them
+struggling for the umbrella, the others surging round the bag. And when
+they returned we would discover on the hall table the most important
+thing of all that he had forgotten, and wondered what he would say about
+it when he came home.
+
+We arrived at Waterloo a little after nine, and at once proceeded to put
+George's experiment into operation. Opening the book at the chapter
+entitled "At the Cab Rank," we walked up to a hansom, raised our hats,
+and wished the driver "Good-morning."
+
+This man was not to be outdone in politeness by any foreigner, real or
+imitation. Calling to a friend named "Charles" to "hold the steed," he
+sprang from his box, and returned to us a bow, that would have done
+credit to Mr. Turveydrop himself. Speaking apparently in the name of the
+nation, he welcomed us to England, adding a regret that Her Majesty was
+not at the moment in London.
+
+We could not reply to him in kind. Nothing of this sort had been
+anticipated by the book. We called him "coachman," at which he again
+bowed to the pavement, and asked him if he would have the goodness to
+drive us to the Westminster Bridge road.
+
+He laid his hand upon his heart, and said the pleasure would be his.
+
+Taking the third sentence in the chapter, George asked him what his fare
+would be.
+
+The question, as introducing a sordid element into the conversation,
+seemed to hurt his feelings. He said he never took money from
+distinguished strangers; he suggested a souvenir--a diamond scarf pin, a
+gold snuffbox, some little trifle of that sort by which he could remember
+us.
+
+As a small crowd had collected, and as the joke was drifting rather too
+far in the cabman's direction, we climbed in without further parley, and
+were driven away amid cheers. We stopped the cab at a boot shop a little
+past Astley's Theatre that looked the sort of place we wanted. It was
+one of those overfed shops that the moment their shutters are taken down
+in the morning disgorge their goods all round them. Boxes of boots stood
+piled on the pavement or in the gutter opposite. Boots hung in festoons
+about its doors and windows. Its sun-blind was as some grimy vine,
+bearing bunches of black and brown boots. Inside, the shop was a bower
+of boots. The man, when we entered, was busy with a chisel and hammer
+opening a new crate full of boots.
+
+George raised his hat, and said "Good-morning."
+
+The man did not even turn round. He struck me from the first as a
+disagreeable man. He grunted something which might have been
+"Good-morning," or might not, and went on with his work.
+
+George said: "I have been recommended to your shop by my friend, Mr. X."
+
+In response, the man should have said: "Mr. X. is a most worthy
+gentleman; it will give me the greatest pleasure to serve any friend of
+his."
+
+What he did say was: "Don't know him; never heard of him."
+
+This was disconcerting. The book gave three or four methods of buying
+boots; George had carefully selected the one centred round "Mr. X," as
+being of all the most courtly. You talked a good deal with the
+shopkeeper about this "Mr. X," and then, when by this means friendship
+and understanding had been established, you slid naturally and gracefully
+into the immediate object of your coming, namely, your desire for boots,
+"cheap and good." This gross, material man cared, apparently, nothing
+for the niceties of retail dealing. It was necessary with such an one to
+come to business with brutal directness. George abandoned "Mr. X," and
+turning back to a previous page, took a sentence at random. It was not a
+happy selection; it was a speech that would have been superfluous made to
+any bootmaker. Under the present circumstances, threatened and stifled
+as we were on every side by boots, it possessed the dignity of positive
+imbecility. It ran:--"One has told me that you have here boots for
+sale."
+
+For the first time the man put down his hammer and chisel, and looked at
+us. He spoke slowly, in a thick and husky voice. He said:
+
+"What d'ye think I keep boots for--to smell 'em?"
+
+He was one of those men that begin quietly and grow more angry as they
+proceed, their wrongs apparently working within them like yeast.
+
+"What d'ye think I am," he continued, "a boot collector? What d'ye think
+I'm running this shop for--my health? D'ye think I love the boots, and
+can't bear to part with a pair? D'ye think I hang 'em about here to look
+at 'em? Ain't there enough of 'em? Where d'ye think you are--in an
+international exhibition of boots? What d'ye think these boots are--a
+historical collection? Did you ever hear of a man keeping a boot shop
+and not selling boots? D'ye think I decorate the shop with 'em to make
+it look pretty? What d'ye take me for--a prize idiot?"
+
+I have always maintained that these conversation books are never of any
+real use. What we wanted was some English equivalent for the well-known
+German idiom: "Behalten Sie Ihr Haar auf."
+
+Nothing of the sort was to be found in the book from beginning to end.
+However, I will do George the credit to admit he chose the very best
+sentence that was to be found therein and applied it. He said:.
+
+"I will come again, when, perhaps, you will have some more boots to show
+me. Till then, adieu!"
+
+With that we returned to our cab and drove away, leaving the man standing
+in the centre of his boot-bedecked doorway addressing remarks to us. What
+he said, I did not hear, but the passers-by appeared to find it
+interesting.
+
+George was for stopping at another boot shop and trying the experiment
+afresh; he said he really did want a pair of bedroom slippers. But we
+persuaded him to postpone their purchase until our arrival in some
+foreign city, where the tradespeople are no doubt more inured to this
+sort of talk, or else more naturally amiable. On the subject of the hat,
+however, he was adamant. He maintained that without that he could not
+travel, and, accordingly, we pulled up at a small shop in the Blackfriars
+Road.
+
+The proprietor of this shop was a cheery, bright-eyed little man, and he
+helped us rather than hindered us.
+
+When George asked him in the words of the book, "Have you any hats?" he
+did not get angry; he just stopped and thoughtfully scratched his chin.
+
+"Hats," said he. "Let me think. Yes"--here a smile of positive pleasure
+broke over his genial countenance--"yes, now I come to think of it, I
+believe I have a hat. But, tell me, why do you ask me?"
+
+George explained to him that he wished to purchase a cap, a travelling
+cap, but the essence of the transaction was that it was to be a "good
+cap."
+
+The man's face fell.
+
+"Ah," he remarked, "there, I am afraid, you have me. Now, if you had
+wanted a bad cap, not worth the price asked for it; a cap good for
+nothing but to clean windows with, I could have found you the very thing.
+But a good cap--no; we don't keep them. But wait a minute," he
+continued,--on seeing the disappointment that spread over George's
+expressive countenance, "don't be in a hurry. I have a cap here"--he
+went to a drawer and opened it--"it is not a good cap, but it is not so
+bad as most of the caps I sell."
+
+He brought it forward, extended on his palm.
+
+"What do you think of that?" he asked. "Could you put up with that?"
+
+George fitted it on before the glass, and, choosing another remark from
+the book, said:
+
+"This hat fits me sufficiently well, but, tell me, do you consider that
+it becomes me?"
+
+The man stepped back and took a bird's-eye view.
+
+"Candidly," he replied, "I can't say that it does."
+
+He turned from George, and addressed himself to Harris and myself.
+
+"Your friend's beauty," said he, "I should describe as elusive. It is
+there, but you can easily miss it. Now, in that cap, to my mind, you do
+miss it."
+
+At that point it occurred to George that he had had sufficient fun with
+this particular man. He said:
+
+"That is all right. We don't want to lose the train. How much?"
+
+Answered the man: "The price of that cap, sir, which, in my opinion, is
+twice as much as it is worth, is four-and-six. Would you like it wrapped
+up in brown paper, sir, or in white?"
+
+George said he would take it as it was, paid the man four-and-six
+in-silver, and went out. Harris and I followed.
+
+At Fenchurch Street we compromised with our cabman for five shillings. He
+made us another courtly bow, and begged us to remember him to the Emperor
+of Austria.
+
+Comparing views in the train, we agreed that we had lost the game by two
+points to one; and George, who was evidently disappointed, threw the book
+out of window.
+
+We found our luggage and the bicycles safe on the boat, and with the tide
+at twelve dropped down the river.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+A necessary digression--Introduced by story containing moral--One of the
+charms of this book--The Journal that did not command success--Its boast:
+"Instruction combined with Amusement"--Problem: say what should be
+considered instructive and what amusing--A popular game--Expert opinion
+on English law--Another of the charms of this book--A hackneyed tune--Yet
+a third charm of this book--The sort of wood it was where the maiden
+lived--Description of the Black Forest.
+
+A story is told of a Scotchman who, loving a lassie, desired her for his
+wife. But he possessed the prudence of his race. He had noticed in his
+circle many an otherwise promising union result in disappointment and
+dismay, purely in consequence of the false estimate formed by bride or
+bridegroom concerning the imagined perfectability of the other. He
+determined that in his own case no collapsed ideal should be possible.
+Therefore, it was that his proposal took the following form:
+
+"I'm but a puir lad, Jennie; I hae nae siller to offer ye, and nae land."
+
+"Ah, but ye hae yoursel', Davie!"
+
+"An' I'm wishfu' it wa' onything else, lassie. I'm nae but a puir ill-
+seasoned loon, Jennie."
+
+"Na, na; there's mony a lad mair ill-looking than yoursel', Davie."
+
+"I hae na seen him, lass, and I'm just a-thinkin' I shouldna' care to."
+
+"Better a plain man, Davie, that ye can depend a' than ane that would be
+a speirin' at the lassies, a-bringin' trouble into the hame wi' his
+flouting ways."
+
+"Dinna ye reckon on that, Jennie; it's nae the bonniest Bubbly Jock that
+mak's the most feathers to fly in the kailyard. I was ever a lad to run
+after the petticoats, as is weel kent; an' it's a weary handfu' I'll be
+to ye, I'm thinkin'."
+
+"Ah, but ye hae a kind heart, Davie! an' ye love me weel. I'm sure
+on't."
+
+"I like ye weel enoo', Jennie, though I canna say how long the feeling
+may bide wi' me; an' I'm kind enoo' when I hae my ain way, an' naethin'
+happens to put me oot. But I hae the deevil's ain temper, as my mither
+call tell ye, an' like my puir fayther, I'm a-thinkin', I'll grow nae
+better as I grow mair auld."
+
+"Ay, but ye're sair hard upon yersel', Davie. Ye're an honest lad. I
+ken ye better than ye ken yersel', an' ye'll mak a guid hame for me."
+
+"Maybe, Jennie! But I hae my doots. It's a sair thing for wife an'
+bairns when the guid man canna keep awa' frae the glass; an' when the
+scent of the whusky comes to me it's just as though I hae'd the throat o'
+a Loch Tay salmon; it just gaes doon an' doon, an' there's nae filling o'
+me."
+
+"Ay, but ye're a guid man when ye're sober, Davie."
+
+"Maybe I'll be that, Jennie, if I'm nae disturbed."
+
+"An' ye'll bide wi' me, Davie, an' work for me?"
+
+"I see nae reason why I shouldna bide wi' yet Jennie; but dinna ye clack
+aboot work to me, for I just canna bear the thoct o't."
+
+"Anyhow, ye'll do your best, Davie? As the minister says, nae man can do
+mair than that."
+
+"An' it's a puir best that mine'll be, Jennie, and I'm nae sae sure ye'll
+hae ower muckle even o' that. We're a' weak, sinfu' creatures, Jennie,
+an' ye'd hae some deefficulty to find a man weaker or mair sinfu' than
+mysel'."
+
+"Weel, weel, ye hae a truthfu' tongue, Davie. Mony a lad will mak fine
+promises to a puir lassie, only to break 'em an' her heart wi' 'em. Ye
+speak me fair, Davie, and I'm thinkin' I'll just tak ye, an' see what
+comes o't."
+
+Concerning what did come of it, the story is silent, but one feels that
+under no circumstances had the lady any right to complain of her bargain.
+Whether she ever did or did not--for women do not invariably order their
+tongues according to logic, nor men either for the matter of that--Davie,
+himself, must have had the satisfaction of reflecting that all reproaches
+were undeserved.
+
+I wish to be equally frank with the reader of this book. I wish here
+conscientiously to let forth its shortcomings. I wish no one to read
+this book under a misapprehension.
+
+There will be no useful information in this book.
+
+Anyone who should think that with the aid of this book he would be able
+to make a tour through Germany and the Black Forest would probably lose
+himself before he got to the Nore. That, at all events, would be the
+best thing that could happen to him. The farther away from home he got,
+the greater only would be his difficulties.
+
+I do not regard the conveyance of useful information as my _forte_. This
+belief was not inborn with me; it has been driven home upon me by
+experience.
+
+In my early journalistic days, I served upon a paper, the forerunner of
+many very popular periodicals of the present day. Our boast was that we
+combined instruction with amusement; as to what should be regarded as
+affording amusement and what instruction, the reader judged for himself.
+We gave advice to people about to marry--long, earnest advice that would,
+had they followed it, have made our circle of readers the envy of the
+whole married world. We told our subscribers how to make fortunes by
+keeping rabbits, giving facts and figures. The thing that must have
+surprised them was that we ourselves did not give up journalism and start
+rabbit-farming. Often and often have I proved conclusively from
+authoritative sources how a man starting a rabbit farm with twelve
+selected rabbits and a little judgment must, at the end of three years,
+be in receipt of an income of two thousand a year, rising rapidly; he
+simply could not help himself. He might not want the money. He might
+not know what to do with it when he had it. But there it was for him. I
+have never met a rabbit farmer myself worth two thousand a year, though I
+have known many start with the twelve necessary, assorted rabbits.
+Something has always gone wrong somewhere; maybe the continued atmosphere
+of a rabbit farm saps the judgment.
+
+We told our readers how many bald-headed men there were in Iceland, and
+for all we knew our figures may have been correct; how many red herrings
+placed tail to mouth it would take to reach from London to Rome, which
+must have been useful to anyone desirous of laying down a line of red
+herrings from London to Rome, enabling him to order in the right quantity
+at the beginning; how many words the average woman spoke in a day; and
+other such like items of information calculated to make them wise and
+great beyond the readers of other journals.
+
+We told them how to cure fits in cats. Personally I do not believe, and
+I did not believe then, that you can cure fits in cats. If I had a cat
+subject to fits I should advertise it for sale, or even give it away. But
+our duty was to supply information when asked for. Some fool wrote,
+clamouring to know; and I spent the best part of a morning seeking
+knowledge on the subject. I found what I wanted at length at the end of
+an old cookery book. What it was doing there I have never been able to
+understand. It had nothing to do with the proper subject of the book
+whatever; there was no suggestion that you could make anything savoury
+out of a cat, even when you had cured it of its fits. The authoress had
+just thrown in this paragraph out of pure generosity. I can only say
+that I wish she had left it out; it was the cause of a deal of angry
+correspondence and of the loss of four subscribers to the paper, if not
+more. The man said the result of following our advice had been two
+pounds worth of damage to his kitchen crockery, to say nothing of a
+broken window and probable blood poisoning to himself; added to which the
+cat's fits were worse than before. And yet it was a simple enough
+recipe. You held the cat between your legs, gently, so as not to hurt
+it, and with a pair of scissors made a sharp, clean cut in its tail. You
+did not cut off any part of the tail; you were to be careful not to do
+that; you only made an incision.
+
+As we explained to the man, the garden or the coal cellar would have been
+the proper place for the operation; no one but an idiot would have
+attempted to perform it in a kitchen, and without help.
+
+We gave them hints on etiquette. We told them how to address peers and
+bishops; also how to eat soup. We instructed shy young men how to
+acquire easy grace in drawing-rooms. We taught dancing to both sexes by
+the aid of diagrams. We solved their religious doubts for them, and
+supplied them with a code of morals that would have done credit to a
+stained-glass window.
+
+The paper was not a financial success, it was some years before its time,
+and the consequence was that our staff was limited. My own department, I
+remember, included "Advice to Mothers"--I wrote that with the assistance
+of my landlady, who, having divorced one husband and buried four
+children, was, I considered, a reliable authority on all domestic
+matters; "Hints on Furnishing and Household Decorations--with Designs" a
+column of "Literary Counsel to Beginners"--I sincerely hope my guidance
+was of better service to them than it has ever proved to myself; and our
+weekly article, "Straight Talks to Young Men," signed "Uncle Henry." A
+kindly, genial old fellow was "Uncle Henry," with wide and varied
+experience, and a sympathetic attitude towards the rising generation. He
+had been through trouble himself in his far back youth, and knew most
+things. Even to this day I read of "Uncle Henry's" advice, and, though I
+say it who should not, it still seems to me good, sound advice. I often
+think that had I followed "Uncle Henry's" counsel closer I would have
+been wiser, made fewer mistakes, felt better satisfied with myself than
+is now the case.
+
+A quiet, weary little woman, who lived in a bed-sitting room off the
+Tottenham Court Road, and who had a husband in a lunatic asylum, did our
+"Cooking Column," "Hints on Education"--we were full of hints,--and a
+page and a half of "Fashionable Intelligence," written in the pertly
+personal style which even yet has not altogether disappeared, so I am
+informed, from modern journalism: "I must tell you about the _divine_
+frock I wore at 'Glorious Goodwood' last week. Prince C.--but there, I
+really must not repeat all the things the silly fellow says; he is _too_
+foolish--and the _dear_ Countess, I fancy, was just the _weeish_ bit
+jealous"--and so on.
+
+Poor little woman! I see her now in the shabby grey alpaca, with the
+inkstains on it. Perhaps a day at "Glorious Goodwood," or anywhere else
+in the fresh air, might have put some colour into her cheeks.
+
+Our proprietor--one of the most unashamedly ignorant men I ever met--I
+remember his gravely informing a correspondent once that Ben Jonson had
+written _Rabelais_ to pay for his mother's funeral, and only laughing
+good-naturedly when his mistakes were pointed out to him--wrote with the
+aid of a cheap encyclopedia the pages devoted to "General Information,"
+and did them on the whole remarkably well; while our office boy, with an
+excellent pair of scissors for his assistant, was responsible for our
+supply of "Wit and Humour."
+
+It was hard work, and the pay was poor, what sustained us was the
+consciousness that we were instructing and improving our fellow men and
+women. Of all games in the world, the one most universally and eternally
+popular is the game of school. You collect six children, and put them on
+a doorstep, while you walk up and down with the book and cane. We play
+it when babies, we play it when boys and girls, we play it when men and
+women, we play it as, lean and slippered, we totter towards the grave. It
+never palls upon, it never wearies us. Only one thing mars it: the
+tendency of one and all of the other six children to clamour for their
+turn with the book and the cane. The reason, I am sure, that journalism
+is so popular a calling, in spite of its many drawbacks, is this: each
+journalist feels he is the boy walking up and down with the cane. The
+Government, the Classes, and the Masses, Society, Art, and Literature,
+are the other children sitting on the doorstep. He instructs and
+improves them.
+
+But I digress. It was to excuse my present permanent disinclination to
+be the vehicle of useful information that I recalled these matters. Let
+us now return.
+
+Somebody, signing himself "Balloonist," had written to ask concerning the
+manufacture of hydrogen gas. It is an easy thing to manufacture--at
+least, so I gathered after reading up the subject at the British Museum;
+yet I did warn "Balloonist," whoever he might be, to take all necessary
+precaution against accident. What more could I have done? Ten days
+afterwards a florid-faced lady called at the office, leading by the hand
+what, she explained, was her son, aged twelve. The boy's face was
+unimpressive to a degree positively remarkable. His mother pushed him
+forward and took off his hat, and then I perceived the reason for this.
+He had no eyebrows whatever, and of his hair nothing remained but a
+scrubby dust, giving to his head the appearance of a hard-boiled egg,
+skinned and sprinkled with black pepper.
+
+"That was a handsome lad this time last week, with naturally curly hair,"
+remarked the lady. She spoke with a rising inflection, suggestive of the
+beginning of things.
+
+"What has happened to him?" asked our chief.
+
+"This is what's happened to him," retorted the lady. She drew from her
+muff a copy of our last week's issue, with my article on hydrogen gas
+scored in pencil, and flung it before his eyes. Our chief took it and
+read it through.
+
+"He was 'Balloonist'?" queried the chief.
+
+"He was 'Balloonist,'" admitted the lady, "the poor innocent child, and
+now look at him!"
+
+"Maybe it'll grow again," suggested our chief.
+
+"Maybe it will," retorted the lady, her key continuing to rise, "and
+maybe it won't. What I want to know is what you are going to do for
+him."
+
+Our chief suggested a hair wash. I thought at first she was going to fly
+at him; but for the moment she confined herself to words. It appears she
+was not thinking of a hair wash, but of compensation. She also made
+observations on the general character of our paper, its utility, its
+claim to public support, the sense and wisdom of its contributors.
+
+"I really don't see that it is our fault," urged the chief--he was a mild-
+mannered man; "he asked for information, and he got it."
+
+"Don't you try to be funny about it," said the lady (he had not meant to
+be funny, I am sure; levity was not his failing) "or you'll get something
+that _you_ haven't asked for. Why, for two pins," said the lady, with a
+suddenness that sent us both flying like scuttled chickens behind our
+respective chairs, "I'd come round and make your head like it!" I take
+it, she meant like the boy's. She also added observations upon our
+chief's personal appearance, that were distinctly in bad taste. She was
+not a nice woman by any means.
+
+Myself, I am of opinion that had she brought the action she threatened,
+she would have had no case; but our chief was a man who had had
+experience of the law, and his principle was always to avoid it. I have
+heard him say:
+
+"If a man stopped me in the street and demanded of me my watch, I should
+refuse to give it to him. If he threatened to take it by force, I feel I
+should, though not a fighting man, do my best to protect it. If, on the
+other hand, he should assert his intention of trying to obtain it by
+means of an action in any court of law, I should take it out of my pocket
+and hand it to him, and think I had got off cheaply."
+
+He squared the matter with the florid-faced lady for a five-pound note,
+which must have represented a month's profits on the paper; and she
+departed, taking her damaged offspring with her. After she was gone, our
+chief spoke kindly to me. He said:
+
+"Don't think I am blaming you in the least; it is not your fault, it is
+Fate. Keep to moral advice and criticism--there you are distinctly good;
+but don't try your hand any more on 'Useful Information.' As I have
+said, it is not your fault. Your information is correct enough--there is
+nothing to be said against that; it simply is that you are not lucky with
+it."
+
+I would that I had followed his advice always; I would have saved myself
+and other people much disaster. I see no reason why it should be, but so
+it is. If I instruct a man as to the best route between London and Rome,
+he loses his luggage in Switzerland, or is nearly shipwrecked off Dover.
+If I counsel him in the purchase of a camera, he gets run in by the
+German police for photographing fortresses. I once took a deal of
+trouble to explain to a man how to marry his deceased wife's sister at
+Stockholm. I found out for him the time the boat left Hull and the best
+hotels to stop at. There was not a single mistake from beginning to end
+in the information with which I supplied him; no hitch occurred anywhere;
+yet now he never speaks to me.
+
+Therefore it is that I have come to restrain my passion for the giving of
+information; therefore it is that nothing in the nature of practical
+instruction will be found, if I can help it, within these pages.
+
+There will be no description of towns, no historical reminiscences, no
+architecture, no morals.
+
+I once asked an intelligent foreigner what he thought of London.
+
+He said: "It is a very big town."
+
+I said: "What struck you most about it?"
+
+He replied: "The people."
+
+I said: "Compared with other towns--Paris, Rome, Berlin,--what did you
+think of it?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders. "It is bigger," he said; "what more can one
+say?"
+
+One anthill is very much like another. So many avenues, wide or narrow,
+where the little creatures swarm in strange confusion; these bustling by,
+important; these halting to pow-wow with one another. These struggling
+with big burdens; those but basking in the sun. So many granaries stored
+with food; so many cells where the little things sleep, and eat, and
+love; the corner where lie their little white bones. This hive is
+larger, the next smaller. This nest lies on the sand, and another under
+the stones. This was built but yesterday, while that was fashioned ages
+ago, some say even before the swallows came; who knows?
+
+Nor will there be found herein folk-lore or story.
+
+Every valley where lie homesteads has its song. I will tell you the
+plot; you can turn it into verse and set it to music of your own.
+
+There lived a lass, and there came a lad, who loved and rode away.
+
+It is a monotonous song, written in many languages; for the young man
+seems to have been a mighty traveller. Here in sentimental Germany they
+remember him well. So also the dwellers of the Blue Alsatian Mountains
+remember his coming among them; while, if my memory serves me truly, he
+likewise visited the Banks of Allan Water. A veritable Wandering Jew is
+he; for still the foolish girls listen, so they say, to the dying away of
+his hoof-beats.
+
+In this land of many ruins, that long while ago were voice-filled homes,
+linger many legends; and here again, giving you the essentials, I leave
+you to cook the dish for yourself. Take a human heart or two, assorted;
+a bundle of human passions--there are not many of them, half a dozen at
+the most; season with a mixture of good and evil; flavour the whole with
+the sauce of death, and serve up where and when you will. "The Saint's
+Cell," "The Haunted Keep," "The Dungeon Grave," "The Lover's Leap"--call
+it what you will, the stew's the same.
+
+Lastly, in this book there will be no scenery. This is not laziness on
+my part; it is self-control. Nothing is easier to write than scenery;
+nothing more difficult and unnecessary to read. When Gibbon had to trust
+to travellers' tales for a description of the Hellespont, and the Rhine
+was chiefly familiar to English students through the medium of _Caesar's
+Commentaries_, it behoved every globe-trotter, for whatever distance, to
+describe to the best of his ability the things that he had seen. Dr.
+Johnson, familiar with little else than the view down Fleet Street, could
+read the description of a Yorkshire moor with pleasure and with profit.
+To a cockney who had never seen higher ground than the Hog's Back in
+Surrey, an account of Snowdon must have appeared exciting. But we, or
+rather the steam-engine and the camera for us, have changed all that. The
+man who plays tennis every year at the foot of the Matterhorn, and
+billiards on the summit of the Rigi, does not thank you for an elaborate
+and painstaking description of the Grampian Hills. To the average man,
+who has seen a dozen oil paintings, a hundred photographs, a thousand
+pictures in the illustrated journals, and a couple of panoramas of
+Niagara, the word-painting of a waterfall is tedious.
+
+An American friend of mine, a cultured gentleman, who loved poetry well
+enough for its own sake, told me that he had obtained a more correct and
+more satisfying idea of the Lake district from an eighteenpenny book of
+photographic views than from all the works of Coleridge, Southey, and
+Wordsworth put together. I also remember his saying concerning this
+subject of scenery in literature, that he would thank an author as much
+for writing an eloquent description of what he had just had for dinner.
+But this was in reference to another argument; namely, the proper
+province of each art. My friend maintained that just as canvas and
+colour were the wrong mediums for story telling, so word-painting was, at
+its best, but a clumsy method of conveying impressions that could much
+better be received through the eye.
+
+As regards the question, there also lingers in my memory very distinctly
+a hot school afternoon. The class was for English literature, and the
+proceedings commenced with the reading of a certain lengthy, but
+otherwise unobjectionable, poem. The author's name, I am ashamed to say,
+I have forgotten, together with the title of the poem. The reading
+finished, we closed our books, and the Professor, a kindly, white-haired
+old gentleman, suggested our giving in our own words an account of what
+we had just read.
+
+"Tell me," said the Professor, encouragingly, "what it is all about."
+
+"Please, sir," said the first boy--he spoke with bowed head and evident
+reluctance, as though the subject were one which, left to himself, he
+would never have mentioned,--"it is about a maiden."
+
+"Yes," agreed the Professor; "but I want you to tell me in your own
+words. We do not speak of a maiden, you know; we say a girl. Yes, it is
+about a girl. Go on."
+
+"A girl," repeated the top boy, the substitution apparently increasing
+his embarrassment, "who lived in a wood."
+
+"What sort of a wood?" asked the Professor.
+
+The first boy examined his inkpot carefully, and then looked at the
+ceiling.
+
+"Come," urged the Professor, growing impatient, "you have been reading
+about this wood for the last ten minutes. Surely you can tell me
+something concerning it."
+
+"The gnarly trees, their twisted branches"--recommenced the top boy.
+
+"No, no," interrupted the Professor; "I do not want you to repeat the
+poem. I want you to tell me in your own words what sort of a wood it was
+where the girl lived."
+
+The Professor tapped his foot impatiently; the top boy made a dash for
+it.
+
+"Please, sir, it was the usual sort of a wood."
+
+"Tell him what sort of a wood," said he, pointing to the second lad.
+
+The second boy said it was a "green wood." This annoyed the Professor
+still more; he called the second boy a blockhead, though really I cannot
+see why, and passed on to the third, who, for the last minute, had been
+sitting apparently on hot plates, with his right arm waving up and down
+like a distracted semaphore signal. He would have had to say it the next
+second, whether the Professor had asked him or not; he was red in the
+face, holding his knowledge in.
+
+"A dark and gloomy wood," shouted the third boy, with much relief to his
+feelings.
+
+"A dark and gloomy wood," repeated the Professor, with evident approval.
+"And why was it dark and gloomy?"
+
+The third boy was still equal to the occasion.
+
+"Because the sun could not get inside it."
+
+The Professor felt he had discovered the poet of the class.
+
+"Because the sun could not get into it, or, better, because the sunbeams
+could not penetrate. And why could not the sunbeams penetrate there?"
+
+"Please, sir, because the leaves were too thick."
+
+"Very well," said the Professor. "The girl lived in a dark and gloomy
+wood, through the leafy canopy of which the sunbeams were unable to
+pierce. Now, what grew in this wood?" He pointed to the fourth boy.
+
+"Please, sir, trees, sir."
+
+"And what else?"
+
+"Toadstools, sir." This after a pause.
+
+The Professor was not quite sure about the toadstools, but on referring
+to the text he found that the boy was right; toadstools had been
+mentioned.
+
+"Quite right," admitted the Professor, "toadstools grew there. And what
+else? What do you find underneath trees in a wood?"
+
+"Please, sir, earth, sir."
+
+"No; no; what grows in a wood besides trees?"
+
+"Oh, please, sir, bushes, sir."
+
+"Bushes; very good. Now we are getting on. In this wood there were
+trees and bushes. And what else?"
+
+He pointed to a small boy near the bottom, who having decided that the
+wood was too far off to be of any annoyance to him, individually, was
+occupying his leisure playing noughts and crosses against himself. Vexed
+and bewildered, but feeling it necessary to add something to the
+inventory, he hazarded blackberries. This was a mistake; the poet had
+not mentioned blackberries.
+
+"Of course, Klobstock would think of something to eat," commented the
+Professor, who prided himself on his ready wit. This raised a laugh
+against Klobstock, and pleased the Professor.
+
+"You," continued he, pointing to a boy in the middle; "what else was
+there in this wood besides trees and bushes?"
+
+"Please, sir, there was a torrent there."
+
+"Quite right; and what did the torrent do?"
+
+"Please, sir, it gurgled."
+
+"No; no. Streams gurgle, torrents--?"
+
+"Roar, sir."
+
+"It roared. And what made it roar?"
+
+This was a poser. One boy--he was not our prize intellect, I
+admit--suggested the girl. To help us the Professor put his question in
+another form:
+
+"When did it roar?"
+
+Our third boy, again coming to the rescue, explained that it roared when
+it fell down among the rocks. I think some of us had a vague idea that
+it must have been a cowardly torrent to make such a noise about a little
+thing like this; a pluckier torrent, we felt, would have got up and gone
+on, saying nothing about it. A torrent that roared every time it fell
+upon a rock we deemed a poor spirited torrent; but the Professor seemed
+quite content with it.
+
+"And what lived in this wood beside the girl?" was the next question.
+
+"Please, sir, birds, sir."
+
+"Yes, birds lived in this wood. What else?"
+
+Birds seemed to have exhausted our ideas.
+
+"Come," said the Professor, "what are those animals with tails, that run
+up trees?"
+
+We thought for a while, then one of us suggested cats.
+
+This was an error; the poet had said nothing about cats; squirrels was
+what the Professor was trying to get.
+
+I do not recall much more about this wood in detail. I only recollect
+that the sky was introduced into it. In places where there occurred an
+opening among the trees you could by looking up see the sky above you;
+very often there were clouds in this sky, and occasionally, if I remember
+rightly, the girl got wet.
+
+I have dwelt upon this incident, because it seems to me suggestive of the
+whole question of scenery in literature. I could not at the time, I
+cannot now, understand why the top boy's summary was not sufficient. With
+all due deference to the poet, whoever he may have been, one cannot but
+acknowledge that his wood was, and could not be otherwise than, "the
+usual sort of a wood."
+
+I could describe the Black Forest to you at great length. I could
+translate to you Hebel, the poet of the Black Forest. I could write
+pages concerning its rocky gorges and its smiling valleys, its pine-clad
+slopes, its rock-crowned summits, its foaming rivulets (where the tidy
+German has not condemned them to flow respectably through wooden troughs
+or drainpipes), its white villages, its lonely farmsteads.
+
+But I am haunted by the suspicion you might skip all this. Were you
+sufficiently conscientious--or weak-minded enough--not to do so, I
+should, all said and done, succeed in conveying to you only an impression
+much better summed up in the simple words of the unpretentious guide
+book:
+
+"A picturesque, mountainous district, bounded on the south and the west
+by the plain of the Rhine, towards which its spurs descend precipitately.
+Its geological formation consists chiefly of variegated sandstone and
+granite; its lower heights being covered with extensive pine forests. It
+is well watered with numerous streams, while its populous valleys are
+fertile and well cultivated. The inns are good; but the local wines
+should be partaken of by the stranger with discretion."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+Why we went to Hanover--Something they do better abroad--The art of
+polite foreign conversation, as taught in English schools--A true
+history, now told for the first time--The French joke, as provided for
+the amusement of British youth--Fatherly instincts of Harris--The road-
+waterer, considered as an artist--Patriotism of George--What Harris ought
+to have done--What he did--We save Harris's life--A sleepless city--The
+cab-horse as a critic.
+
+We arrived in Hamburg on Friday after a smooth and uneventful voyage; and
+from Hamburg we travelled to Berlin by way of Hanover. It is not the
+most direct route. I can only account for our visit to Hanover as the
+nigger accounted to the magistrate for his appearance in the Deacon's
+poultry-yard.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Yes, sar, what the constable sez is quite true, sar; I was dar, sar."
+
+"Oh, so you admit it? And what were you doing with a sack, pray, in
+Deacon Abraham's poultry-yard at twelve o'clock at night?"
+
+"I'se gwine ter tell yer, sar; yes, sar. I'd been to Massa Jordan's wid
+a sack of melons. Yes, sar; an' Massa Jordan he wuz very 'greeable, an'
+axed me for ter come in."
+
+"Yes, sar, very 'greeable man is Massa Jordan. An' dar we sat a talking
+an' a talking--"
+
+"Very likely. What we want to know is what you were doing in the
+Deacon's poultry-yard?"
+
+"Yes, sar, dat's what I'se cumming to. It wuz ver' late 'fore I left
+Massa Jordan's, an' den I sez ter mysel', sez I, now yer jest step out
+with yer best leg foremost, Ulysses, case yer gets into trouble wid de
+ole woman. Ver' talkative woman she is, sar, very--"
+
+"Yes, never mind her; there are other people very talkative in this town
+besides your wife. Deacon Abraham's house is half a mile out of your way
+home from Mr. Jordan's. How did you get there?"
+
+"Dat's what I'm a-gwine ter explain, sar."
+
+"I am glad of that. And how do you propose to do it?"
+
+"Well, I'se thinkin', sar, I must ha' digressed."
+
+I take it we digressed a little.
+
+At first, from some reason or other, Hanover strikes you as an
+uninteresting town, but it grows upon you. It is in reality two towns; a
+place of broad, modern, handsome streets and tasteful gardens; side by
+side with a sixteenth-century town, where old timbered houses overhang
+the narrow lanes; where through low archways one catches glimpses of
+galleried courtyards, once often thronged, no doubt, with troops of
+horse, or blocked with lumbering coach and six, waiting its rich merchant
+owner, and his fat placid Frau, but where now children and chickens
+scuttle at their will; while over the carved balconies hang dingy clothes
+a-drying.
+
+A singularly English atmosphere hovers over Hanover, especially on
+Sundays, when its shuttered shops and clanging bells give to it the
+suggestion of a sunnier London. Nor was this British Sunday atmosphere
+apparent only to myself, else I might have attributed it to imagination;
+even George felt it. Harris and I, returning from a short stroll with
+our cigars after lunch on the Sunday afternoon, found him peacefully
+slumbering in the smoke-room's easiest chair.
+
+"After all," said Harris, "there is something about the British Sunday
+that appeals to the man with English blood in his veins. I should be
+sorry to see it altogether done away with, let the new generation say
+what it will."
+
+And taking one each end of the ample settee, we kept George company.
+
+To Hanover one should go, they say, to learn the best German. The
+disadvantage is that outside Hanover, which is only a small province,
+nobody understands this best German. Thus you have to decide whether to
+speak good German and remain in Hanover, or bad German and travel about.
+Germany being separated so many centuries into a dozen principalities, is
+unfortunate in possessing a variety of dialects. Germans from Posen
+wishful to converse with men of Wurtemburg, have to talk as often as not
+in French or English; and young ladies who have received an expensive
+education in Westphalia surprise and disappoint their parents by being
+unable to understand a word said to them in Mechlenberg. An
+English-speaking foreigner, it is true, would find himself equally
+nonplussed among the Yorkshire wolds, or in the purlieus of Whitechapel;
+but the cases are not on all fours. Throughout Germany it is not only in
+the country districts and among the uneducated that dialects are
+maintained. Every province has practically its own language, of which it
+is proud and retentive. An educated Bavarian will admit to you that,
+academically speaking, the North German is more correct; but he will
+continue to speak South German and to teach it to his children.
+
+In the course of the century, I am inclined to think that Germany will
+solve her difficulty in this respect by speaking English. Every boy and
+girl in Germany, above the peasant class, speaks English. Were English
+pronunciation less arbitrary, there is not the slightest doubt but that
+in the course of a very few years, comparatively speaking, it would
+become the language of the world. All foreigners agree that,
+grammatically, it is the easiest language of any to learn. A German,
+comparing it with his own language, where every word in every sentence is
+governed by at least four distinct and separate rules, tells you that
+English has no grammar. A good many English people would seem to have
+come to the same conclusion; but they are wrong. As a matter of fact,
+there is an English grammar, and one of these days our schools will
+recognise the fact, and it will be taught to our children, penetrating
+maybe even into literary and journalistic circles. But at present we
+appear to agree with the foreigner that it is a quantity neglectable.
+English pronunciation is the stumbling-block to our progress. English
+spelling would seem to have been designed chiefly as a disguise to
+pronunciation. It is a clever idea, calculated to check presumption on
+the part of the foreigner; but for that he would learn it in a year.
+
+For they have a way of teaching languages in Germany that is not our way,
+and the consequence is that when the German youth or maiden leaves the
+gymnasium or high school at fifteen, "it" (as in Germany one conveniently
+may say) can understand and speak the tongue it has been learning. In
+England we have a method that for obtaining the least possible result at
+the greatest possible expenditure of time and money is perhaps
+unequalled. An English boy who has been through a good middle-class
+school in England can talk to a Frenchman, slowly and with difficulty,
+about female gardeners and aunts; conversation which, to a man possessed
+perhaps of neither, is liable to pall. Possibly, if he be a bright
+exception, he may be able to tell the time, or make a few guarded
+observations concerning the weather. No doubt he could repeat a goodly
+number of irregular verbs by heart; only, as a matter of fact, few
+foreigners care to listen to their own irregular verbs, recited by young
+Englishmen. Likewise he might be able to remember a choice selection of
+grotesquely involved French idioms, such as no modern Frenchman has ever
+heard or understands when he does hear.
+
+The explanation is that, in nine cases out of ten, he has learnt French
+from an "Ahn's First-Course." The history of this famous work is
+remarkable and instructive. The book was originally written for a joke,
+by a witty Frenchman who had resided for some years in England. He
+intended it as a satire upon the conversational powers of British
+society. From this point of view it was distinctly good. He submitted
+it to a London publishing firm. The manager was a shrewd man. He read
+the book through. Then he sent for the author.
+
+"This book of yours," said he to the author, "is very clever. I have
+laughed over it myself till the tears came."
+
+"I am delighted to hear you say so," replied the pleased Frenchman. "I
+tried to be truthful without being unnecessarily offensive."
+
+"It is most amusing," concurred the manager; "and yet published as a
+harmless joke, I feel it would fail."
+
+The author's face fell.
+
+"Its humour," proceeded the manager, "would be denounced as forced and
+extravagant. It would amuse the thoughtful and intelligent, but from a
+business point of view that portion of the public are never worth
+considering. But I have an idea," continued the manager. He glanced
+round the room to be sure they were alone, and leaning forward sunk his
+voice to a whisper. "My notion is to publish it as a serious work for
+the use of schools!"
+
+The author stared, speechless.
+
+"I know the English schoolman," said the manager; "this book will appeal
+to him. It will exactly fit in with his method. Nothing sillier,
+nothing more useless for the purpose will he ever discover. He will
+smack his lips over the book, as a puppy licks up blacking."
+
+The author, sacrificing art to greed, consented. They altered the title
+and added a vocabulary, but left the book otherwise as it was.
+
+The result is known to every schoolboy. "Ahn" became the palladium of
+English philological education. If it no longer retains its ubiquity, it
+is because something even less adaptable to the object in view has been
+since invented.
+
+Lest, in spite of all, the British schoolboy should obtain, even from the
+like of "Ahn," some glimmering of French, the British educational method
+further handicaps him by bestowing upon him the assistance of, what is
+termed in the prospectus, "A native gentleman." This native French
+gentleman, who, by-the-by, is generally a Belgian, is no doubt a most
+worthy person, and can, it is true, understand and speak his own language
+with tolerable fluency. There his qualifications cease. Invariably he
+is a man with a quite remarkable inability to teach anybody anything.
+Indeed, he would seem to be chosen not so much as an instructor as an
+amuser of youth. He is always a comic figure. No Frenchman of a
+dignified appearance would be engaged for any English school. If he
+possess by nature a few harmless peculiarities, calculated to cause
+merriment, so much the more is he esteemed by his employers. The class
+naturally regards him as an animated joke. The two to four hours a week
+that are deliberately wasted on this ancient farce, are looked forward to
+by the boys as a merry interlude in an otherwise monotonous existence.
+And then, when the proud parent takes his son and heir to Dieppe merely
+to discover that the lad does not know enough to call a cab, he abuses
+not the system, but its innocent victim.
+
+I confine my remarks to French, because that is the only language we
+attempt to teach our youth. An English boy who could speak German would
+be looked down upon as unpatriotic. Why we waste time in teaching even
+French according to this method I have never been able to understand. A
+perfect unacquaintance with a language is respectable. But putting aside
+comic journalists and lady novelists, for whom it is a business
+necessity, this smattering of French which we are so proud to possess
+only serves to render us ridiculous.
+
+In the German school the method is somewhat different. One hour every
+day is devoted to the same language. The idea is not to give the lad
+time between each lesson to forget what he learned at the last; the idea
+is for him to get on. There is no comic foreigner provided for his
+amusement. The desired language is taught by a German school-master who
+knows it inside and out as thoroughly as he knows his own. Maybe this
+system does not provide the German youth with that perfection of foreign
+accent for which the British tourist is in every land remarkable, but it
+has other advantages. The boy does not call his master "froggy," or
+"sausage," nor prepare for the French or English hour any exhibition of
+homely wit whatever. He just sits there, and for his own sake tries to
+learn that foreign tongue with as little trouble to everybody concerned
+as possible. When he has left school he can talk, not about penknives
+and gardeners and aunts merely, but about European politics, history,
+Shakespeare, or the musical glasses, according to the turn the
+conversation may take.
+
+Viewing the German people from an Anglo-Saxon standpoint, it may be that
+in this book I shall find occasion to criticise them: but on the other
+hand there is much that we might learn from them; and in the matter of
+common sense, as applied to education, they can give us ninety-nine in a
+hundred and beat us with one hand.
+
+The beautiful wood of the Eilenriede bounds Hanover on the south and
+west, and here occurred a sad drama in which Harris took a prominent
+part.
+
+We were riding our machines through this wood on the Monday afternoon in
+the company of many other cyclists, for it is a favourite resort with the
+Hanoverians on a sunny afternoon, and its shady pathways are then filled
+with happy, thoughtless folk. Among them rode a young and beautiful girl
+on a machine that was new. She was evidently a novice on the bicycle.
+One felt instinctively that there would come a moment when she would
+require help, and Harris, with his accustomed chivalry, suggested we
+should keep near her. Harris, as he occasionally explains to George and
+to myself, has daughters of his own, or, to speak more correctly, a
+daughter, who as the years progress will no doubt cease practising
+catherine wheels in the front garden, and will grow up into a beautiful
+and respectable young lady. This naturally gives Harris an interest in
+all beautiful girls up to the age of thirty-five or thereabouts; they
+remind him, so he says, of home.
+
+We had ridden for about two miles, when we noticed, a little ahead of us
+in a space where five ways met, a man with a hose, watering the roads.
+The pipe, supported at each joint by a pair of tiny wheels, writhed after
+him as he moved, suggesting a gigantic-worm, from whose open neck, as the
+man, gripping it firmly in both hands, pointing it now this way, and now
+that, now elevating it, now depressing it, poured a strong stream of
+water at the rate of about a gallon a second.
+
+"What a much better method than ours," observed Harris, enthusiastically.
+Harris is inclined to be chronically severe on all British institutions.
+"How much simpler, quicker, and more economical! You see, one man by
+this method can in five minutes water a stretch of road that would take
+us with our clumsy lumbering cart half an hour to cover."
+
+George, who was riding behind me on the tandem, said, "Yes, and it is
+also a method by which with a little carelessness a man could cover a
+good many people in a good deal less time than they could get out of the
+way."
+
+George, the opposite to Harris, is British to the core. I remember
+George quite patriotically indignant with Harris once for suggesting the
+introduction of the guillotine into England.
+
+"It is so much neater," said Harris.
+
+"I don't care if it is," said George; "I'm an Englishman; hanging is good
+enough for me."
+
+"Our water-cart may have its disadvantages," continued George, "but it
+can only make you uncomfortable about the legs, and you can avoid it.
+This is the sort of machine with which a man can follow you round the
+corner and upstairs."
+
+"It fascinates me to watch them," said Harris. "They are so skilful. I
+have seen a man from the corner of a crowded square in Strassburg cover
+every inch of ground, and not so much as wet an apron string. It is
+marvellous how they judge their distance. They will send the water up to
+your toes, and then bring it over your head so that it falls around your
+heels. They can--"
+
+"Ease up a minute," said George. I said: "Why?"
+
+He said: "I am going to get off and watch the rest of this show from
+behind a tree. There may be great performers in this line, as Harris
+says; this particular artist appears to me to lack something. He has
+just soused a dog, and now he's busy watering a sign-post. I am going to
+wait till he has finished."
+
+"Nonsense," said Harris; "he won't wet you."
+
+"That is precisely what I am going to make sure of," answered George,
+saying which he jumped off, and, taking up a position behind a remarkably
+fine elm, pulled out and commenced filling his pipe.
+
+I did not care to take the tandem on by myself, so I stepped off and
+joined him, leaving the machine against a tree. Harris shouted something
+or other about our being a disgrace to the land that gave us birth, and
+rode on.
+
+The next moment I heard a woman's cry of distress. Glancing round the
+stem of the tree, I perceived that it proceeded from the young and
+elegant lady before mentioned, whom, in our interest concerning the road-
+waterer, we had forgotten. She was riding her machine steadily and
+straightly through a drenching shower of water from the hose. She
+appeared to be too paralysed either to get off or turn her wheel aside.
+Every instant she was becoming wetter, while the man with the hose, who
+was either drunk or blind, continued to pour water upon her with utter
+indifference. A dozen voices yelled imprecations upon him, but he took
+no heed whatever.
+
+Harris, his fatherly nature stirred to its depths, did at this point
+what, under the circumstances, was quite the right and proper thing to
+do. Had he acted throughout with the same coolness and judgment he then
+displayed, he would have emerged from that incident the hero of the hour,
+instead of, as happened, riding away followed by insult and threat.
+Without a moment's hesitation he spurted at the man, sprang to the
+ground, and, seizing the hose by the nozzle, attempted to wrest it away.
+
+What he ought to have done, what any man retaining his common sense would
+have done the moment he got his hands upon the thing, was to turn off the
+tap. Then he might have played foot-ball with the man, or battledore and
+shuttlecock as he pleased; and the twenty or thirty people who had rushed
+forward to assist would have only applauded. His idea, however, as he
+explained to us afterwards, was to take away the hose from the man, and,
+for punishment, turn it upon the fool himself. The waterman's idea
+appeared to be the same, namely, to retain the hose as a weapon with
+which to soak Harris. Of course, the result was that, between them, they
+soused every dead and living thing within fifty yards, except themselves.
+One furious man, too drenched to care what more happened to him, leapt
+into the arena and also took a hand. The three among them proceeded to
+sweep the compass with that hose. They pointed it to heaven, and the
+water descended upon the people in the form of an equinoctial storm. They
+pointed it downwards, and sent the water in rushing streams that took
+people off their feet, or caught them about the waist line, and doubled
+them up.
+
+Not one of them would loosen his grip upon the hose, not one of them
+thought to turn the water off. You might have concluded they were
+struggling with some primeval force of nature. In forty-five seconds, so
+George said, who was timing it, they had swept that circus bare of every
+living thing except one dog, who, dripping like a water nymph, rolled
+over by the force of water, now on this side, now on that, still
+gallantly staggered again and again to its feet to bark defiance at what
+it evidently regarded as the powers of hell let loose.
+
+Men and women left their machines upon the ground, and flew into the
+woods. From behind every tree of importance peeped out wet, angry heads.
+
+At last, there arrived upon the scene one man of sense. Braving all
+things, he crept to the hydrant, where still stood the iron key, and
+screwed it down. And then from forty trees began to creep more or less
+soaked human beings, each one with something to say.
+
+At first I fell to wondering whether a stretcher or a clothes basket
+would be the more useful for the conveyance of Harris's remains back to
+the hotel. I consider that George's promptness on that occasion saved
+Harris's life. Being dry, and therefore able to run quicker, he was
+there before the crowd. Harris was for explaining things, but George cut
+him short.
+
+"You get on that," said George, handing him his bicycle, "and go. They
+don't know we belong to you, and you may trust us implicitly not to
+reveal the secret. We'll hang about behind, and get in their way. Ride
+zig-zag in case they shoot."
+
+I wish this book to be a strict record of fact, unmarred by exaggeration,
+and therefore I have shown my description of this incident to Harris,
+lest anything beyond bald narrative may have crept into it. Harris
+maintains it is exaggerated, but admits that one or two people may have
+been "sprinkled." I have offered to turn a street hose on him at a
+distance of five-and-twenty yards, and take his opinion afterwards, as to
+whether "sprinkled" is the adequate term, but he has declined the test.
+Again, he insists there could not have been more than half a dozen
+people, at the outside, involved in the catastrophe, that forty is a
+ridiculous misstatement. I have offered to return with him to Hanover
+and make strict inquiry into the matter, and this offer he has likewise
+declined. Under these circumstances, I maintain that mine is a true and
+restrained narrative of an event that is, by a certain number of
+Hanoverians, remembered with bitterness unto this very day.
+
+We left Hanover that same evening, and arrived at Berlin in time for
+supper and an evening stroll. Berlin is a disappointing town; its centre
+over-crowded, its outlying parts lifeless; its one famous street, Unter
+den Linden, an attempt to combine Oxford Street with the Champs Elysee,
+singularly unimposing, being much too wide for its size; its theatres
+dainty and charming, where acting is considered of more importance than
+scenery or dress, where long runs are unknown, successful pieces being
+played again and again, but never consecutively, so that for a week
+running you may go to the same Berlin theatre, and see a fresh play every
+night; its opera house unworthy of it; its two music halls, with an
+unnecessary suggestion of vulgarity and commonness about them,
+ill-arranged and much too large for comfort. In the Berlin cafes and
+restaurants, the busy time is from midnight on till three. Yet most of
+the people who frequent them are up again at seven. Either the Berliner
+has solved the great problem of modern life, how to do without sleep, or,
+with Carlyle, he must be looking forward to eternity.
+
+Personally, I know of no other town where such late hours are the vogue,
+except St. Petersburg. But your St. Petersburger does not get up early
+in the morning. At St. Petersburg, the music halls, which it is the
+fashionable thing to attend _after_ the theatre--a drive to them taking
+half an hour in a swift sleigh--do not practically begin till twelve.
+Through the Neva at four o'clock in the morning you have to literally
+push your way; and the favourite trains for travellers are those starting
+about five o'clock in the morning. These trains save the Russian the
+trouble of getting up early. He wishes his friends "Good-night," and
+drives down to the station comfortably after supper, without putting the
+house to any inconvenience.
+
+Potsdam, the Versailles to Berlin, is a beautiful little town, situate
+among lakes and woods. Here in the shady ways of its quiet,
+far-stretching park of Sans Souci, it is easy to imagine lean, snuffy
+Frederick "bummeling" with shrill Voltaire.
+
+Acting on my advice, George and Harris consented not to stay long in
+Berlin; but to push on to Dresden. Most that Berlin has to show can be
+seen better elsewhere, and we decided to be content with a drive through
+the town. The hotel porter introduced us to a droschke driver, under
+whose guidance, so he assured us, we should see everything worth seeing
+in the shortest possible time. The man himself, who called for us at
+nine o'clock in the morning, was all that could be desired. He was
+bright, intelligent, and well-informed; his German was easy to
+understand, and he knew a little English with which to eke it out on
+occasion. With the man himself there was no fault to be found, but his
+horse was the most unsympathetic brute I have ever sat behind.
+
+He took a dislike to us the moment he saw us. I was the first to come
+out of the hotel. He turned his head, and looked me up and down with a
+cold, glassy eye; and then he looked across at another horse, a friend of
+his that was standing facing him. I knew what he said. He had an
+expressive head, and he made no attempt to disguise his thought.
+
+He said:
+
+"Funny things one does come across in the summer time, don't one?"
+
+George followed me out the next moment, and stood behind me. The horse
+again turned his head and looked. I have never known a horse that could
+twist himself as this horse did. I have seen a camelopard do trick's
+with his neck that compelled one's attention, but this animal was more
+like the thing one dreams of after a dusty days at Ascot, followed by a
+dinner with six old chums. If I had seen his eyes looking at me from
+between his own hind legs, I doubt if I should have been surprised. He
+seemed more amused with George if anything, than with myself. He turned
+to his friend again.
+
+"Extraordinary, isn't it?" he remarked; "I suppose there must be some
+place where they grow them"; and then he commenced licking flies off his
+own left shoulder. I began to wonder whether he had lost his mother when
+young, and had been brought up by a cat.
+
+George and I climbed in, and sat waiting for Harris. He came a moment
+later. Myself, I thought he looked rather neat. He wore a white flannel
+knickerbocker suit, which he had had made specially for bicycling in hot
+weather; his hat may have been a trifle out of the common, but it did
+keep the sun off.
+
+The horse gave one look at him, said "Gott in Himmel!" as plainly as ever
+horse spoke, and started off down Friedrich Strasse at a brisk walk,
+leaving Harris and the driver standing on the pavement. His owner called
+to him to stop, but he took no notice. They ran after us, and overtook
+us at the corner of the Dorotheen Strasse. I could not catch what the
+man said to the horse, he spoke quickly and excitedly; but I gathered a
+few phrases, such as:
+
+"Got to earn my living somehow, haven't I? Who asked for your opinion?
+Aye, little you care so long as you can guzzle."
+
+The horse cut the conversation short by turning up the Dorotheen Strasse
+on his own account. I think what he said was:
+
+"Come on then; don't talk so much. Let's get the job over, and, where
+possible, let's keep to the back streets."
+
+Opposite the Brandenburger Thor our driver hitched the reins to the whip,
+climbed down, and came round to explain things to us. He pointed out the
+Thiergarten, and then descanted to us of the Reichstag House. He
+informed us of its exact height, length, and breadth, after the manner of
+guides. Then he turned his attention to the Gate. He said it was
+constructed of sandstone, in imitation of the "Properleer" in Athens.
+
+At this point the horse, which had been occupying its leisure licking its
+own legs, turned round its head. It did not say anything, it just
+looked.
+
+The man began again nervously. This time he said it was an imitation of
+the "Propeyedliar."
+
+Here the horse proceeded up the Linden, and nothing would persuade him
+not to proceed up the Linden. His owner expostulated with him, but he
+continued to trot on. From the way he hitched his shoulders as he moved,
+I somehow felt he was saying:
+
+"They've seen the Gate, haven't they? Very well, that's enough. As for
+the rest, you don't know what you are talking about, and they wouldn't
+understand you if you did. You talk German."
+
+It was the same throughout the length of the Linden. The horse consented
+to stand still sufficiently long to enable us to have a good look at each
+sight, and to hear the name of it. All explanation and description he
+cut short by the simple process of moving on.
+
+"What these fellows want," he seemed to say to himself, "is to go home
+and tell people they have seen these things. If I am doing them an
+injustice, if they are more intelligent than they look, they can get
+better information than this old fool of mine is giving them from the
+guide book. Who wants to know how high a steeple is? You don't remember
+it the next five minutes when you are told, and if you do it is because
+you have got nothing else in your head. He just tires me with his talk.
+Why doesn't he hurry up, and let us all get home to lunch?"
+
+Upon reflection, I am not sure that wall-eyed old brute had not sense on
+its side. Anyhow, I know there have been occasions, with a guide, when I
+would have been glad of its interference.
+
+But one is apt to "sin one's mercies," as the Scotch say, and at the time
+we cursed that horse instead of blessing it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+George wonders--German love of order--"The Band of the Schwarzwald
+Blackbirds will perform at seven"--The china dog--Its superiority over
+all other dogs--The German and the solar system--A tidy country--The
+mountain valley as it ought to be, according to the German idea--How the
+waters come down in Germany--The scandal of Dresden--Harris gives an
+entertainment--It is unappreciated--George and the aunt of him--George, a
+cushion, and three damsels.
+
+At a point between Berlin and Dresden, George, who had, for the last
+quarter of an hour or so, been looking very attentively out of the
+window, said:
+
+"Why, in Germany, is it the custom to put the letter-box up a tree? Why
+do they not fix it to the front door as we do? I should hate having to
+climb up a tree to get my letters. Besides, it is not fair to the
+postman. In addition to being most exhausting, the delivery of letters
+must to a heavy man, on windy nights, be positively dangerous work. If
+they will fix it to a tree, why not fix it lower down, why always among
+the topmost branches? But, maybe, I am misjudging the country," he
+continued, a new idea occurring to him. "Possibly the Germans, who are
+in many matters ahead of us, have perfected a pigeon post. Even so, I
+cannot help thinking they would have been wiser to train the birds, while
+they were about it, to deliver the letters nearer the ground. Getting
+your letters out of those boxes must be tricky work even to the average
+middle-aged German."
+
+I followed his gaze out of window. I said:
+
+"Those are not letter-boxes, they are birds' nests. You must understand
+this nation. The German loves birds, but he likes tidy birds. A bird
+left to himself builds his nest just anywhere. It is not a pretty
+object, according to the German notion of prettiness. There is not a bit
+of paint on it anywhere, not a plaster image all round, not even a flag.
+The nest finished, the bird proceeds to live outside it. He drops things
+on the grass; twigs, ends of worms, all sorts of things. He is
+indelicate. He makes love, quarrels with his wife, and feeds the
+children quite in public. The German householder is shocked. He says to
+the bird:
+
+"'For many things I like you. I like to look at you. I like to hear you
+sing. But I don't like your ways. Take this little box, and put your
+rubbish inside where I can't see it. Come out when you want to sing; but
+let your domestic arrangements be confined to the interior. Keep to the
+box, and don't make the garden untidy.'"
+
+In Germany one breathes in love of order with the air, in Germany the
+babies beat time with their rattles, and the German bird has come to
+prefer the box, and to regard with contempt the few uncivilised outcasts
+who continue to build their nests in trees and hedges. In course of time
+every German bird, one is confident, will have his proper place in a full
+chorus. This promiscuous and desultory warbling of his must, one feels,
+be irritating to the precise German mind; there is no method in it. The
+music-loving German will organise him. Some stout bird with a specially
+well-developed crop will be trained to conduct him, and, instead of
+wasting himself in a wood at four o'clock in the morning, he will, at the
+advertised time, sing in a beer garden, accompanied by a piano. Things
+are drifting that way.
+
+Your German likes nature, but his idea of nature is a glorified Welsh
+Harp. He takes great interest in his garden. He plants seven rose trees
+on the north side and seven on the south, and if they do not grow up all
+the same size and shape it worries him so that he cannot sleep of nights.
+Every flower he ties to a stick. This interferes with his view of the
+flower, but he has the satisfaction of knowing it is there, and that it
+is behaving itself. The lake is lined with zinc, and once a week he
+takes it up, carries it into the kitchen, and scours it. In the
+geometrical centre of the grass plot, which is sometimes as large as a
+tablecloth and is generally railed round, he places a china dog. The
+Germans are very fond of dogs, but as a rule they prefer them of china.
+The china dog never digs holes in the lawn to bury bones, and never
+scatters a flower-bed to the winds with his hind legs. From the German
+point of view, he is the ideal dog. He stops where you put him, and he
+is never where you do not want him. You can have him perfect in all
+points, according to the latest requirements of the Kennel Club; or you
+can indulge your own fancy and have something unique. You are not, as
+with other dogs, limited to breed. In china, you can have a blue dog or
+a pink dog. For a little extra, you can have a double-headed dog.
+
+On a certain fixed date in the autumn the German stakes his flowers and
+bushes to the earth, and covers them with Chinese matting; and on a
+certain fixed date in the spring he uncovers them, and stands them up
+again. If it happens to be an exceptionally fine autumn, or an
+exceptionally late spring, so much the worse for the unfortunate
+vegetable. No true German would allow his arrangements to be interfered
+with by so unruly a thing as the solar system. Unable to regulate the
+weather, he ignores it.
+
+Among trees, your German's favourite is the poplar. Other disorderly
+nations may sing the charms of the rugged oak, the spreading chestnut, or
+the waving elm. To the German all such, with their wilful, untidy ways,
+are eyesores. The poplar grows where it is planted, and how it is
+planted. It has no improper rugged ideas of its own. It does not want
+to wave or to spread itself. It just grows straight and upright as a
+German tree should grow; and so gradually the German is rooting out all
+other trees, and replacing them with poplars.
+
+Your German likes the country, but he prefers it as the lady thought she
+would the noble savage--more dressed. He likes his walk through the
+wood--to a restaurant. But the pathway must not be too steep, it must
+have a brick gutter running down one side of it to drain it, and every
+twenty yards or so it must have its seat on which he can rest and mop his
+brow; for your German would no more think of sitting on the grass than
+would an English bishop dream of rolling down One Tree Hill. He likes
+his view from the summit of the hill, but he likes to find there a stone
+tablet telling him what to look at, find a table and bench at which he
+can sit to partake of the frugal beer and "belegte Semmel" he has been
+careful to bring with him. If, in addition, he can find a police notice
+posted on a tree, forbidding him to do something or other, that gives him
+an extra sense of comfort and security.
+
+Your German is not averse even to wild scenery, provided it be not too
+wild. But if he consider it too savage, he sets to work to tame it. I
+remember, in the neighbourhood of Dresden, discovering a picturesque and
+narrow valley leading down towards the Elbe. The winding roadway ran
+beside a mountain torrent, which for a mile or so fretted and foamed over
+rocks and boulders between wood-covered banks. I followed it enchanted
+until, turning a corner, I suddenly came across a gang of eighty or a
+hundred workmen. They were busy tidying up that valley, and making that
+stream respectable. All the stones that were impeding the course of the
+water they were carefully picking out and carting away. The bank on
+either side they were bricking up and cementing. The overhanging trees
+and bushes, the tangled vines and creepers they were rooting up and
+trimming down. A little further I came upon the finished work--the
+mountain valley as it ought to be, according to German ideas. The water,
+now a broad, sluggish stream, flowed over a level, gravelly bed, between
+two walls crowned with stone coping. At every hundred yards it gently
+descended down three shallow wooden platforms. For a space on either
+side the ground had been cleared, and at regular intervals young poplars
+planted. Each sapling was protected by a shield of wickerwork and bossed
+by an iron rod. In the course of a couple of years it is the hope of the
+local council to have "finished" that valley throughout its entire
+length, and made it fit for a tidy-minded lover of German nature to walk
+in. There will be a seat every fifty yards, a police notice every
+hundred, and a restaurant every half-mile.
+
+They are doing the same from the Memel to the Rhine. They are just
+tidying up the country. I remember well the Wehrthal. It was once the
+most romantic ravine to be found in the Black Forest. The last time I
+walked down it some hundreds of Italian workmen were encamped there hard
+at work, training the wild little Wehr the way it should go, bricking the
+banks for it here, blasting the rocks for it there, making cement steps
+for it down which it can travel soberly and without fuss.
+
+For in Germany there is no nonsense talked about untrammelled nature. In
+Germany nature has got to behave herself, and not set a bad example to
+the children. A German poet, noticing waters coming down as Southey
+describes, somewhat inexactly, the waters coming down at Lodore, would be
+too shocked to stop and write alliterative verse about them. He would
+hurry away, and at once report them to the police. Then their foaming
+and their shrieking would be of short duration.
+
+"Now then, now then, what's all this about?" the voice of German
+authority would say severely to the waters. "We can't have this sort of
+thing, you know. Come down quietly, can't you? Where do you think you
+are?"
+
+And the local German council would provide those waters with zinc pipes
+and wooden troughs, and a corkscrew staircase, and show them how to come
+down sensibly, in the German manner.
+
+It is a tidy land is Germany.
+
+We reached Dresden on the Wednesday evening, and stayed there over the
+Sunday.
+
+Taking one consideration with another, Dresden, perhaps, is the most
+attractive town in Germany; but it is a place to be lived in for a while
+rather than visited. Its museums and galleries, its palaces and gardens,
+its beautiful and historically rich environment, provide pleasure for a
+winter, but bewilder for a week. It has not the gaiety of Paris or
+Vienna, which quickly palls; its charms are more solidly German, and more
+lasting. It is the Mecca of the musician. For five shillings, in
+Dresden, you can purchase a stall at the opera house, together,
+unfortunately, with a strong disinclination ever again to take the
+trouble of sitting out a performance in any English, French, or, American
+opera house.
+
+The chief scandal of Dresden still centres round August the Strong, "the
+Man of Sin," as Carlyle always called him, who is popularly reputed to
+have cursed Europe with over a thousand children. Castles where he
+imprisoned this discarded mistress or that--one of them, who persisted in
+her claim to a better title, for forty years, it is said, poor lady! The
+narrow rooms where she ate her heart out and died are still shown.
+Chateaux, shameful for this deed of infamy or that, lie scattered round
+the neighbourhood like bones about a battlefield; and most of your
+guide's stories are such as the "young person" educated in Germany had
+best not hear. His life-sized portrait hangs in the fine Zwinger, which
+he built as an arena for his wild beast fights when the people grew tired
+of them in the market-place; a beetle-browed, frankly animal man, but
+with the culture and taste that so often wait upon animalism. Modern
+Dresden undoubtedly owes much to him.
+
+But what the stranger in Dresden stares at most is, perhaps, its electric
+trams. These huge vehicles flash through the streets at from ten to
+twenty miles an hour, taking curves and corners after the manner of an
+Irish car driver. Everybody travels by them, excepting only officers in
+uniform, who must not. Ladies in evening dress, going to ball or opera,
+porters with their baskets, sit side by side. They are all-important in
+the streets, and everything and everybody makes haste to get out of their
+way. If you do not get out of their way, and you still happen to be
+alive when picked up, then on your recovery you are fined for having been
+in their way. This teaches you to be wary of them.
+
+One afternoon Harris took a "bummel" by himself. In the evening, as we
+sat listening to the band at the Belvedere, Harris said, _a propos_ of
+nothing in particular, "These Germans have no sense of humour."
+
+"What makes you think that?" I asked.
+
+"Why, this afternoon," he answered, "I jumped on one of those electric
+tramcars. I wanted to see the town, so I stood outside on the little
+platform--what do you call it?"
+
+"The Stehplatz," I suggested.
+
+"That's it," said Harris. "Well, you know the way they shake you about,
+and how you have to look out for the corners, and mind yourself when they
+stop and when they start?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"There were about half a dozen of us standing there," he continued, "and,
+of course, I am not experienced. The thing started suddenly, and that
+jerked me backwards. I fell against a stout gentleman, just behind me.
+He could not have been standing very firmly himself, and he, in his turn,
+fell back against a boy who was carrying a trumpet in a green baize case.
+They never smiled, neither the man nor the boy with the trumpet; they
+just stood there and looked sulky. I was going to say I was sorry, but
+before I could get the words out the tram eased up, for some reason or
+other, and that, of course, shot me forward again, and I butted into a
+white-haired old chap, who looked to me like a professor. Well, _he_
+never smiled, never moved a muscle."
+
+"Maybe, he was thinking of something else," I suggested.
+
+"That could not have been the case with them all," replied Harris, "and
+in the course of that journey, I must have fallen against every one of
+them at least three times. You see," explained Harris, "they knew when
+the corners were coming, and in which direction to brace themselves. I,
+as a stranger, was naturally at a disadvantage. The way I rolled and
+staggered about that platform, clutching wildly now at this man and now
+at that, must have been really comic. I don't say it was high-class
+humour, but it would have amused most people. Those Germans seemed to
+see no fun in it whatever--just seemed anxious, that was all. There was
+one man, a little man, who stood with his back against the brake; I fell
+against him five times, I counted them. You would have expected the
+fifth time would have dragged a laugh out of him, but it didn't; he
+merely looked tired. They are a dull lot."
+
+George also had an adventure at Dresden. There was a shop near the
+Altmarkt, in the window of which were exhibited some cushions for sale.
+The proper business of the shop was handling of glass and china; the
+cushions appeared to be in the nature of an experiment. They were very
+beautiful cushions, hand-embroidered on satin. We often passed the shop,
+and every time George paused and examined those cushions. He said he
+thought his aunt would like one.
+
+George has been very attentive to this aunt of his during the journey. He
+has written her quite a long letter every day, and from every town we
+stop at he sends her off a present. To my mind, he is overdoing the
+business, and more than once I have expostulated with him. His aunt will
+be meeting other aunts, and talking to them; the whole class will become
+disorganised and unruly. As a nephew, I object to the impossible
+standard that George is setting up. But he will not listen.
+
+Therefore it was that on the Saturday he left us after lunch, saying he
+would go round to that shop and get one of those cushions for his aunt.
+He said he would not be long, and suggested our waiting for him.
+
+We waited for what seemed to me rather a long time. When he rejoined us
+he was empty handed, and looked worried. We asked him where his cushion
+was. He said he hadn't got a cushion, said he had changed his mind, said
+he didn't think his aunt would care for a cushion. Evidently something
+was amiss. We tried to get at the bottom of it, but he was not
+communicative. Indeed, his answers after our twentieth question or
+thereabouts became quite short.
+
+In the evening, however, when he and I happened to be alone, he broached
+the subject himself. He said:
+
+"They are somewhat peculiar in some things, these Germans."
+
+I said: "What has happened?"
+
+"Well," he answered, "there was that cushion I wanted."
+
+"For your aunt," I remarked.
+
+"Why not?" he returned. He was huffy in a moment; I never knew a man so
+touchy about an aunt. "Why shouldn't I send a cushion to my aunt?"
+
+"Don't get excited," I replied. "I am not objecting; I respect you for
+it."
+
+He recovered his temper, and went on:
+
+"There were four in the window, if you remember, all very much alike, and
+each one labelled in plain figures twenty marks. I don't pretend to
+speak German fluently, but I can generally make myself understood with a
+little effort, and gather the sense of what is said to me, provided they
+don't gabble. I went into the shop. A young girl came up to me; she was
+a pretty, quiet little soul, one might almost say, demure; not at all the
+sort of girl from whom you would have expected such a thing. I was never
+more surprised in all my life."
+
+"Surprised about what?" I said.
+
+George always assumes you know the end of the story while he is telling
+you the beginning; it is an annoying method.
+
+"At what happened," replied George; "at what I am telling you. She
+smiled and asked me what I wanted. I understood that all right; there
+could have been no mistake about that. I put down a twenty mark piece on
+the counter and said:
+
+"Please give me a cushion."
+
+"She stared at me as if I had asked for a feather bed. I thought, maybe,
+she had not heard, so I repeated it louder. If I had chucked her under
+the chin she could not have looked more surprised or indignant.
+
+"She said she thought I must be making a mistake.
+
+"I did not want to begin a long conversation and find myself stranded. I
+said there was no mistake. I pointed to my twenty mark piece, and
+repeated for the third time that I wanted a cushion, 'a twenty mark
+cushion.'
+
+"Another girl came up, an elder girl; and the first girl repeated to her
+what I had just said: she seemed quite excited about it. The second girl
+did not believe her--did not think I looked the sort of man who would
+want a cushion. To make sure, she put the question to me herself.
+
+"'Did you say you wanted a cushion?' she asked.
+
+"'I have said it three times,' I answered. 'I will say it again--I want
+a cushion.'
+
+"She said: 'Then you can't have one.'
+
+"I was getting angry by this time. If I hadn't really wanted the thing I
+should have walked out of the shop; but there the cushions were in the
+window, evidently for sale. I didn't see _why_ I couldn't have one.
+
+"I said: 'I will have one!' It is a simple sentence. I said it with
+determination.
+
+"A third girl came up at this point, the three representing, I fancy, the
+whole force of the shop. She was a bright-eyed, saucy-looking little
+wench, this last one. On any other occasion I might have been pleased to
+see her; now, her coming only irritated me. I didn't see the need of
+three girls for this business.
+
+"The first two girls started explaining the thing to the third girl, and
+before they were half-way through the third girl began to giggle--she was
+the sort of girl who would giggle at anything. That done, they fell to
+chattering like Jenny Wrens, all three together; and between every half-
+dozen words they looked across at me; and the more they looked at me the
+more the third girl giggled; and before they had finished they were all
+three giggling, the little idiots; you might have thought I was a clown,
+giving a private performance.
+
+"When she was steady enough to move, the third girl came up to me; she
+was still giggling. She said:
+
+"'If you get it, will you go?'
+
+"I did not quite understand her at first, and she repeated it.
+
+"'This cushion. When you've got it, will you go--away--at once?'
+
+"I was only too anxious to go. I told her so. But, I added I was not
+going without it. I had made up my mind to have that cushion now if I
+stopped in the shop all night for it.
+
+"She rejoined the other two girls. I thought they were going to get me
+the cushion and have done with the business. Instead of that, the
+strangest thing possible happened. The two other girls got behind the
+first girl, all three still giggling, Heaven knows what about, and pushed
+her towards me. They pushed her close up to me, and then, before I knew
+what was happening, she put her hands on my shoulders, stood up on
+tiptoe, and kissed me. After which, burying her face in her apron, she
+ran off, followed by the second girl. The third girl opened the door for
+me, and so evidently expected me to go, that in my confusion I went,
+leaving my twenty marks behind me. I don't say I minded the kiss, though
+I did not particularly want it, while I did want the cushion. I don't
+like to go back to the shop. I cannot understand the thing at all."
+
+I said: "What did you ask for?"
+
+He said: "A cushion"
+
+I said: "That is what you wanted, I know. What I mean is, what was the
+actual German word you said."
+
+He replied: "A kuss."
+
+I said: "You have nothing to complain of. It is somewhat confusing. A
+'kuss' sounds as if it ought to be a cushion, but it is not; it is a
+kiss, while a 'kissen' is a cushion. You muddled up the two words--people
+have done it before. I don't know much about this sort of thing myself;
+but you asked for a twenty mark kiss, and from your description of the
+girl some people might consider the price reasonable. Anyhow, I should
+not tell Harris. If I remember rightly, he also has an aunt."
+
+George agreed with me it would be better not.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+Mr. and Miss Jones, of Manchester--The benefits of cocoa--A hint to the
+Peace Society--The window as a mediaeval argument--The favourite
+Christian recreation--The language of the guide--How to repair the
+ravages of time--George tries a bottle--The fate of the German beer
+drinker--Harris and I resolve to do a good action--The usual sort of
+statue--Harris and his friends--A pepperless Paradise--Women and towns.
+
+We were on our way to Prague, and were waiting in the great hall of the
+Dresden Station until such time as the powers-that-be should permit us on
+to the platform. George, who had wandered to the bookstall, returned to
+us with a wild look in his eyes. He said:
+
+"I've seen it."
+
+I said, "Seen what?"
+
+He was too excited to answer intelligently. He said
+
+"It's here. It's coming this way, both of them. If you wait, you'll see
+it for yourselves. I'm not joking; it's the real thing."
+
+As is usual about this period, some paragraphs, more or less serious, had
+been appearing in the papers concerning the sea-serpent, and I thought
+for the moment he must be referring to this. A moment's reflection,
+however, told me that here, in the middle of Europe, three hundred miles
+from the coast, such a thing was impossible. Before I could question him
+further, he seized me by the arm.
+
+"Look!" he said; "now am I exaggerating?"
+
+I turned my head and saw what, I suppose, few living Englishmen have ever
+seen before--the travelling Britisher according to the Continental idea,
+accompanied by his daughter. They were coming towards us in the flesh
+and blood, unless we were dreaming, alive and concrete--the English
+"Milor" and the English "Mees," as for generations they have been
+portrayed in the Continental comic press and upon the Continental stage.
+They were perfect in every detail. The man was tall and thin, with sandy
+hair, a huge nose, and long Dundreary whiskers. Over a pepper-and-salt
+suit he wore a light overcoat, reaching almost to his heels. His white
+helmet was ornamented with a green veil; a pair of opera-glasses hung at
+his side, and in his lavender-gloved hand he carried an alpenstock a
+little taller than himself. His daughter was long and angular. Her
+dress I cannot describe: my grandfather, poor gentleman, might have been
+able to do so; it would have been more familiar to him. I can only say
+that it appeared to me unnecessarily short, exhibiting a pair of
+ankles--if I may be permitted to refer to such points--that, from an
+artistic point of view, called rather for concealment. Her hat made me
+think of Mrs. Hemans; but why I cannot explain. She wore side-spring
+boots--"prunella," I believe, used to be the trade name--mittens, and
+pince-nez. She also carried an alpenstock (there is not a mountain
+within a hundred miles of Dresden) and a black bag strapped to her waist.
+Her teeth stuck out like a rabbit's, and her figure was that of a bolster
+on stilts.
+
+Harris rushed for his camera, and of course could not find it; he never
+can when he wants it. Whenever we see Harris scuttling up and down like
+a lost dog, shouting, "Where's my camera? What the dickens have I done
+with my camera? Don't either of you remember where I put my
+camera?"--then we know that for the first time that day he has come
+across something worth photographing. Later on, he remembered it was in
+his bag; that is where it would be on an occasion like this.
+
+They were not content with appearance; they acted the thing to the
+letter. They walked gaping round them at every step. The gentleman had
+an open Baedeker in his hand, and the lady carried a phrase book. They
+talked French that nobody could understand, and German that they could
+not translate themselves! The man poked at officials with his alpenstock
+to attract their attention, and the lady, her eye catching sight of an
+advertisement of somebody's cocoa, said "Shocking!" and turned the other
+way.
+
+Really, there was some excuse for her. One notices, even in England, the
+home of the proprieties, that the lady who drinks cocoa appears,
+according to the poster, to require very little else in this world; a
+yard or so of art muslin at the most. On the Continent she dispenses, so
+far as one can judge, with every other necessity of life. Not only is
+cocoa food and drink to her, it should be clothes also, according to the
+idea of the cocoa manufacturer. But this by the way.
+
+Of course, they immediately became the centre of attraction. By being
+able to render them some slight assistance, I gained the advantage of
+five minutes' conversation with them. They were very affable. The
+gentleman told me his name was Jones, and that he came from Manchester,
+but he did not seem to know what part of Manchester, or where Manchester
+was. I asked him where he was going to, but he evidently did not know.
+He said it depended. I asked him if he did not find an alpenstock a
+clumsy thing to walk about with through a crowded town; he admitted that
+occasionally it did get in the way. I asked him if he did not find a
+veil interfere with his view of things; he explained that you only wore
+it when the flies became troublesome. I enquired of the lady if she did
+not find the wind blow cold; she said she had noticed it, especially at
+the corners. I did not ask these questions one after another as I have
+here put them down; I mixed them up with general conversation, and we
+parted on good terms.
+
+I have pondered much upon the apparition, and have come to a definite
+opinion. A man I met later at Frankfort, and to whom I described the
+pair, said he had seen them himself in Paris, three weeks after the
+termination of the Fashoda incident; while a traveller for some English
+steel works whom we met in Strassburg remembered having seen them in
+Berlin during the excitement caused by the Transvaal question. My
+conclusion is that they were actors out of work, hired to do this thing
+in the interest of international peace. The French Foreign Office,
+wishful to allay the anger of the Parisian mob clamouring for war with
+England, secured this admirable couple and sent them round the town. You
+cannot be amused at a thing, and at the same time want to kill it. The
+French nation saw the English citizen and citizeness--no caricature, but
+the living reality--and their indignation exploded in laughter. The
+success of the stratagem prompted them later on to offer their services
+to the German Government, with the beneficial results that we all know.
+
+Our own Government might learn the lesson. It might be as well to keep
+near Downing Street a few small, fat Frenchmen, to be sent round the
+country when occasion called for it, shrugging their shoulders and eating
+frog sandwiches; or a file of untidy, lank-haired Germans might be
+retained, to walk about, smoking long pipes, saying "So." The public
+would laugh and exclaim, "War with such? It would be too absurd."
+Failing the Government, I recommend the scheme to the Peace Society.
+
+Our visit to Prague we were compelled to lengthen somewhat. Prague is
+one of the most interesting towns in Europe. Its stones are saturated
+with history and romance; its every suburb must have been a battlefield.
+It is the town that conceived the Reformation and hatched the Thirty
+Years' War. But half Prague's troubles, one imagines, might have been
+saved to it, had it possessed windows less large and temptingly
+convenient. The first of these mighty catastrophes it set rolling by
+throwing the seven Catholic councillors from the windows of its Rathhaus
+on to the pikes of the Hussites below. Later, it gave the signal for the
+second by again throwing the Imperial councillors from the windows of the
+old Burg in the Hradschin--Prague's second "Fenstersturz." Since, other
+fateful questions have been decide in Prague, one assumes from their
+having been concluded without violence that such must have been discussed
+in cellars. The window, as an argument, one feels, would always have
+proved too strong a temptation to any true-born Praguer.
+
+In the Teynkirche stands the worm-eaten pulpit from which preached John
+Huss. One may hear from the selfsame desk to-day the voice of a Papist
+priest, while in far-off Constance a rude block of stone, half ivy
+hidden, marks the spot where Huss and Jerome died burning at the stake.
+History is fond of her little ironies. In this same Teynkirche lies
+buried Tycho Brahe, the astronomer, who made the common mistake of
+thinking the earth, with its eleven hundred creeds and one humanity, the
+centre of the universe; but who otherwise observed the stars clearly.
+
+Through Prague's dirty, palace-bordered alleys must have pressed often in
+hot haste blind Ziska and open-minded Wallenstein--they have dubbed him
+"The Hero" in Prague; and the town is honestly proud of having owned him
+for citizen. In his gloomy palace in the Waldstein-Platz they show as a
+sacred spot the cabinet where he prayed, and seem to have persuaded
+themselves he really had a soul. Its steep, winding ways must have been
+choked a dozen times, now by Sigismund's flying legions, followed by
+fierce-killing Tarborites, and now by pale Protestants pursued by the
+victorious Catholics of Maximilian. Now Saxons, now Bavarians, and now
+French; now the saints of Gustavus Adolphus, and now the steel fighting
+machines of Frederick the Great, have thundered at its gates and fought
+upon its bridges.
+
+The Jews have always been an important feature of Prague. Occasionally
+they have assisted the Christians in their favourite occupation of
+slaughtering one another, and the great flag suspended from the vaulting
+of the Altneuschule testifies to the courage with which they helped
+Catholic Ferdinand to resist the Protestant Swedes. The Prague Ghetto
+was one of the first to be established in Europe, and in the tiny
+synagogue, still standing, the Jew of Prague has worshipped for eight
+hundred years, his women folk devoutly listening, without, at the ear
+holes provided for them in the massive walls. A Jewish cemetery
+adjacent, "Bethchajim, or the House of Life," seems as though it were
+bursting with its dead. Within its narrow acre it was the law of
+centuries that here or nowhere must the bones of Israel rest. So the
+worn and broken tombstones lie piled in close confusion, as though tossed
+and tumbled by the struggling host beneath.
+
+The Ghetto walls have long been levelled, but the living Jews of Prague
+still cling to their foetid lanes, though these are being rapidly
+replaced by fine new streets that promise to eventually transform this
+quarter into the handsomest part of the town.
+
+At Dresden they advised us not to talk German in Prague. For years
+racial animosity between the German minority and the Czech majority has
+raged throughout Bohemia, and to be mistaken for a German in certain
+streets of Prague is inconvenient to a man whose staying powers in a race
+are not what once they were. However, we did talk German in certain
+streets in Prague; it was a case of talking German or nothing. The Czech
+dialect is said to be of great antiquity and of highly scientific
+cultivation. Its alphabet contains forty-two letters, suggestive to a
+stranger of Chinese. It is not a language to be picked up in a hurry. We
+decided that on the whole there would be less risk to our constitution in
+keeping to German, and as a matter of fact no harm came to us. The
+explanation I can only surmise. The Praguer is an exceedingly acute
+person; some subtle falsity of accent, some slight grammatical
+inaccuracy, may have crept into our German, revealing to him the fact
+that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary, we were no true-born
+Deutscher. I do not assert this; I put it forward as a possibility.
+
+To avoid unnecessary danger, however, we did our sight-seeing with the
+aid of a guide. No guide I have ever come across is perfect. This one
+had two distinct failings. His English was decidedly weak. Indeed, it
+was not English at all. I do not know what you would call it. It was
+not altogether his fault; he had learnt English from a Scotch lady. I
+understand Scotch fairly well--to keep abreast of modern English
+literature this is necessary,--but to understand broad Scotch talked with
+a Sclavonic accent, occasionally relieved by German modifications, taxes
+the intelligence. For the first hour it was difficult to rid one's self
+of the conviction that the man was choking. Every moment we expected him
+to die on our hands. In the course of the morning we grew accustomed to
+him, and rid ourselves of the instinct to throw him on his back every
+time he opened his mouth, and tear his clothes from him. Later, we came
+to understand a part of what he said, and this led to the discovery of
+his second failing.
+
+It would seem he had lately invented a hair-restorer, which he had
+persuaded a local chemist to take up and advertise. Half his time he had
+been pointing out to us, not the beauties of Prague, but the benefits
+likely to accrue to the human race from the use of this concoction; and
+the conventional agreement with which, under the impression he was waxing
+eloquent concerning views and architecture, we had met his enthusiasm he
+had attributed to sympathetic interest in this wretched wash of his.
+
+The result was that now there was no keeping him away from the subject.
+Ruined palaces and crumbling churches he dismissed with curt reference as
+mere frivolities, encouraging a morbid taste for the decadent. His duty,
+as he saw it, was not to lead us to dwell upon the ravages of time, but
+rather to direct our attention to the means of repairing them. What had
+we to do with broken-headed heroes, or bald-headed saints? Our interest
+should be surely in the living world; in the maidens with their flowing
+tresses, or the flowing tresses they might have, by judicious use of
+"Kophkeo," in the young men with their fierce moustaches--as pictured on
+the label.
+
+Unconsciously, in his own mind, he had divided the world into two
+sections. The Past ("Before Use"), a sickly, disagreeable-looking,
+uninteresting world. The Future ("After Use") a fat, jolly, God-bless-
+everybody sort of world; and this unfitted him as a guide to scenes of
+mediaeval history.
+
+He sent us each a bottle of the stuff to our hotel. It appeared that in
+the early part of our converse with him we had, unwittingly, clamoured
+for it. Personally, I can neither praise it nor condemn it. A long
+series of disappointments has disheartened me; added to which a permanent
+atmosphere of paraffin, however faint, is apt to cause remark, especially
+in the case of a married man. Now, I never try even the sample.
+
+I gave my bottle to George. He asked for it to send to a man he knew in
+Leeds. I learnt later that Harris had given him his bottle also, to send
+to the same man.
+
+A suggestion of onions has clung to this tour since we left Prague.
+George has noticed it himself. He attributes it to the prevalence of
+garlic in European cooking.
+
+It was in Prague that Harris and I did a kind and friendly thing to
+George. We had noticed for some time past that George was getting too
+fond of Pilsener beer. This German beer is an insidious drink,
+especially in hot weather; but it does not do to imbibe too freely of it.
+It does not get into your head, but after a time it spoils your waist. I
+always say to myself on entering Germany:
+
+"Now, I will drink no German beer. The white wine of the country, with a
+little soda-water; perhaps occasionally a glass of Ems or potash. But
+beer, never--or, at all events, hardly ever."
+
+It is a good and useful resolution, which I recommend to all travellers.
+I only wish I could keep to it myself. George, although I urged him,
+refused to bind himself by any such hard and fast limit. He said that in
+moderation German beer was good.
+
+"One glass in the morning," said George, "one in the evening, or even
+two. That will do no harm to anyone."
+
+Maybe he was right. It was his half-dozen glasses that troubled Harris
+and myself.
+
+"We ought to do something to stop it," said Harris; "it is becoming
+serious."
+
+"It's hereditary, so he has explained to me," I answered. "It seems his
+family have always been thirsty."
+
+"There is Apollinaris water," replied Harris, "which, I believe, with a
+little lemon squeezed into it, is practically harmless. What I am
+thinking about is his figure. He will lose all his natural elegance."
+
+We talked the matter over, and, Providence aiding us, we fixed upon a
+plan. For the ornamentation of the town a new statue had just been cast.
+I forget of whom it was a statue. I only remember that in the essentials
+it was the usual sort of street statue, representing the usual sort of
+gentleman, with the usual stiff neck, riding the usual sort of horse--the
+horse that always walks on its hind legs, keeping its front paws for
+beating time. But in detail it possessed individuality. Instead of the
+usual sword or baton, the man was holding, stretched out in his hand, his
+own plumed hat; and the horse, instead of the usual waterfall for a tail,
+possessed a somewhat attenuated appendage that somehow appeared out of
+keeping with his ostentatious behaviour. One felt that a horse with a
+tail like that would not have pranced so much.
+
+It stood in a small square not far from the further end of the
+Karlsbrucke, but it stood there only temporarily. Before deciding
+finally where to fix it, the town authorities had resolved, very
+sensibly, to judge by practical test where it would look best.
+Accordingly, they had made three rough copies of the statue--mere wooden
+profiles, things that would not bear looking at closely, but which,
+viewed from a little distance, produced all the effect that was
+necessary. One of these they had set up at the approach to the Franz-
+Josefsbrucke, a second stood in the open space behind the theatre, and
+the third in the centre of the Wenzelsplatz.
+
+"If George is not in the secret of this thing," said Harris--we were
+walking by ourselves for an hour, he having remained behind in the hotel
+to write a letter to his aunt,--"if he has not observed these statues,
+then by their aid we will make a better and a thinner man of him, and
+that this very evening."
+
+So during dinner we sounded him, judiciously; and finding him ignorant of
+the matter, we took him out, and led him by side-streets to the place
+where stood the real statue. George was for looking at it and passing
+on, as is his way with statues, but we insisted on his pulling up and
+viewing the thing conscientiously. We walked him round that statue four
+times, and showed it to him from every possible point of view. I think,
+on the whole, we rather bored him with the thing, but our object was to
+impress it upon him. We told him the history of the man who rode upon
+the horse, the name of the artist who had made the statue, how much it
+weighed, how much it measured. We worked that statue into his system. By
+the time we had done with him he knew more about that statue, for the
+time being, than he knew about anything else. We soaked him in that
+statue, and only let him go at last on the condition that he would come
+again with us in the morning, when we could all see it better, and for
+such purpose we saw to it that he made a note in his pocket-book of the
+place where the statue stood.
+
+Then we accompanied him to his favourite beer hall, and sat beside him,
+telling him anecdotes of men who, unaccustomed to German beer, and
+drinking too much of it, had gone mad and developed homicidal mania; of
+men who had died young through drinking German beer; of lovers that
+German beer had been the means of parting for ever from beautiful girls.
+
+At ten o'clock we started to walk back to the hotel. It was a stormy-
+looking night, with heavy clouds drifting over a light moon. Harris
+said:
+
+"We won't go back the same way we came; we'll walk back by the river. It
+is lovely in the moonlight."
+
+Harris told a sad history, as we walked, about a man he once knew, who is
+now in a home for harmless imbeciles. He said he recalled the story
+because it was on just such another night as this that he was walking
+with that man the very last time he ever saw the poor fellow. They were
+strolling down the Thames Embankment, Harris said, and the man frightened
+him then by persisting that he saw the statue of the Duke of Wellington
+at the corner of Westminster Bridge, when, as everybody knows, it stands
+in Piccadilly.
+
+It was at this exact instant that we came in sight of the first of these
+wooden copies. It occupied the centre of a small, railed-in square a
+little above us on the opposite side of the way. George suddenly stood
+still and leant against the wall of the quay.
+
+"What's the matter?" I said; "feeling giddy?"
+
+He said: "I do, a little. Let's rest here a moment."
+
+He stood there with his eyes glued to the thing.
+
+He said, speaking huskily:
+
+"Talking of statues, what always strikes me is how very much one statue
+is like another statue."
+
+Harris said: "I cannot agree with you there--pictures, if you like. Some
+pictures are very like other pictures, but with a statue there is always
+something distinctive. Take that statue we saw early in the evening,"
+continued Harris, "before we went into the concert hall. It represented
+a man sitting on a horse. In Prague you will see other statues of men on
+horses, but nothing at all like that one."
+
+"Yes they are," said George; "they are all alike. It's always the same
+horse, and it's always the same man. They are all exactly alike. It's
+idiotic nonsense to say they are not."
+
+He appeared to be angry with Harris.
+
+"What makes you think so?" I asked.
+
+"What makes me think so?" retorted George, now turning upon me. "Why,
+look at that damned thing over there!"
+
+I said: "What damned thing?"
+
+"Why, that thing," said George; "look at it! There is the same horse
+with half a tail, standing on its hind legs; the same man without his
+hat; the same--"
+
+Harris said: "You are talking now about the statue we saw in the
+Ringplatz."
+
+"No, I'm not," replied George; "I'm talking about the statue over there."
+
+"What statue?" said Harris.
+
+George looked at Harris; but Harris is a man who might, with care, have
+been a fair amateur actor. His face merely expressed friendly sorrow,
+mingled with alarm. Next, George turned his gaze on me. I endeavoured,
+so far as lay with me, to copy Harris's expression, adding to it on my
+own account a touch of reproof.
+
+"Will you have a cab?" I said as kindly as I could to George. "I'll run
+and get one."
+
+"What the devil do I want with a cab?" he answered, ungraciously. "Can't
+you fellows understand a joke? It's like being out with a couple of
+confounded old women," saying which, he started off across the bridge,
+leaving us to follow.
+
+"I am so glad that was only a joke of yours," said Harris, on our
+overtaking him. "I knew a case of softening of the brain that began--"
+
+"Oh, you're a silly ass!" said George, cutting him short; "you know
+everything."
+
+He was really most unpleasant in his manner.
+
+We took him round by the riverside of the theatre. We told him it was
+the shortest way, and, as a matter of fact, it was. In the open space
+behind the theatre stood the second of these wooden apparitions. George
+looked at it, and again stood still.
+
+"What's the matter?" said Harris, kindly. "You are not ill, are you?"
+
+"I don't believe this is the shortest way," said George.
+
+"I assure you it is," persisted Harris.
+
+"Well, I'm going the other," said George; and he turned and went, we, as
+before, following him.
+
+Along the Ferdinand Strasse Harris and I talked about private lunatic
+asylums, which, Harris said, were not well managed in England. He said a
+friend of his, a patient in a lunatic asylum--
+
+George said, interrupting: "You appear to have a large number of friends
+in lunatic asylums."
+
+He said it in a most insulting tone, as though to imply that that is
+where one would look for the majority of Harris's friends. But Harris
+did not get angry; he merely replied, quite mildly:
+
+"Well, it really is extraordinary, when one comes to think of it, how
+many of them have gone that way sooner or later. I get quite nervous
+sometimes, now."
+
+At the corner of the Wenzelsplatz, Harris, who was a few steps ahead of
+us, paused.
+
+"It's a fine street, isn't it?" he said, sticking his hands in his
+pockets, and gazing up at it admiringly.
+
+George and I followed suit. Two hundred yards away from us, in its very
+centre, was the third of these ghostly statues. I think it was the best
+of the three--the most like, the most deceptive. It stood boldly
+outlined against the wild sky: the horse on its hind legs, with its
+curiously attenuated tail; the man bareheaded, pointing with his plumed
+hat to the now entirely visible moon.
+
+"I think, if you don't mind," said George--he spoke with almost a
+pathetic ring in his voice, his aggressiveness had completely fallen from
+him,--"that I will have that cab, if there's one handy."
+
+"I thought you were looking queer," said Harris, kindly. "It's your
+head, isn't it?"
+
+"Perhaps it is," answered George.
+
+"I have noticed it coming on," said Harris; "but I didn't like to say
+anything to you. You fancy you see things, don't you?"
+
+"No, no; it isn't that," replied George, rather quickly. "I don't know
+what it is."
+
+"I do," said Harris, solemnly, "and I'll tell you. It's this German beer
+that you are drinking. I have known a case where a man--"
+
+"Don't tell me about him just now," said George. "I dare say it's true,
+but somehow I don't feel I want to hear about him."
+
+"You are not used to it," said Harris.
+
+"I shall give it up from to-night," said George. "I think you must be
+right; it doesn't seem to agree with me."
+
+We took him home, and saw him to bed. He was very gentle and quite
+grateful.
+
+One evening later on, after a long day's ride, followed by a most
+satisfactory dinner, we started him on a big cigar, and, removing things
+from his reach, told him of this stratagem that for his good we had
+planned.
+
+"How many copies of that statue did you say we saw?" asked George, after
+we had finished.
+
+"Three," replied Harris.
+
+"Only three?" said George. "Are you sure?"
+
+"Positive," replied Harris. "Why?"
+
+"Oh, nothing!" answered George.
+
+But I don't think he quite believed Harris.
+
+From Prague we travelled to Nuremberg, through Carlsbad. Good Germans,
+when they die, go, they say, to Carlsbad, as good Americans to Paris.
+This I doubt, seeing that it is a small place with no convenience for a
+crowd. In Carlsbad, you rise at five, the fashionable hour for
+promenade, when the band plays under the Colonnade, and the Sprudel is
+filled with a packed throng over a mile long, being from six to eight in
+the morning. Here you may hear more languages spoken than the Tower of
+Babel could have echoed. Polish Jews and Russian princes, Chinese
+mandarins and Turkish pashas, Norwegians looking as if they had stepped
+out of Ibsen's plays, women from the Boulevards, Spanish grandees and
+English countesses, mountaineers from Montenegro and millionaires from
+Chicago, you will find every dozen yards. Every luxury in the world
+Carlsbad provides for its visitors, with the one exception of pepper.
+That you cannot get within five miles of the town for money; what you can
+get there for love is not worth taking away. Pepper, to the liver
+brigade that forms four-fifths of Carlsbad's customers, is poison; and,
+prevention being better than cure, it is carefully kept out of the
+neighbourhood. "Pepper parties" are formed in Carlsbad to journey to
+some place without the boundary, and there indulge in pepper orgies.
+
+Nuremberg, if one expects a town of mediaeval appearance, disappoints.
+Quaint corners, picturesque glimpses, there are in plenty; but everywhere
+they are surrounded and intruded upon by the modern, and even what is
+ancient is not nearly so ancient as one thought it was. After all, a
+town, like a woman, is only as old as it looks; and Nuremberg is still a
+comfortable-looking dame, its age somewhat difficult to conceive under
+its fresh paint and stucco in the blaze of the gas and the electric
+light. Still, looking closely, you may see its wrinkled walls and grey
+towers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+Harris breaks the law--The helpful man: The dangers that beset him--George
+sets forth upon a career of crime--Those to whom Germany would come as a
+boon and a blessing--The English Sinner: His disappointments--The German
+Sinner: His exceptional advantages--What you may not do with your bed--An
+inexpensive vice--The German dog: His simple goodness--The misbehaviour
+of the beetle--A people that go the way they ought to go--The German
+small boy: His love of legality--How to go astray with a perambulator--The
+German student: His chastened wilfulness.
+
+All three of us, by some means or another, managed, between Nuremberg and
+the Black Forest, to get into trouble.
+
+Harris led off at Stuttgart by insulting an official. Stuttgart is a
+charming town, clean and bright, a smaller Dresden. It has the
+additional attraction of containing little that one need to go out of
+one's way to see: a medium-sized picture gallery, a small museum of
+antiquities, and half a palace, and you are through with the entire thing
+and can enjoy yourself. Harris did not know it was an official he was
+insulting. He took it for a fireman (it looked like a fireman), and he
+called it a "dummer Esel."
+
+In German you are not permitted to call an official a "silly ass," but
+undoubtedly this particular man was one. What had happened was this:
+Harris in the Stadgarten, anxious to get out, and seeing a gate open
+before him, had stepped over a wire into the street. Harris maintains he
+never saw it, but undoubtedly there was hanging to the wire a notice,
+"Durchgang Verboten!" The man, who was standing near the gates stopped
+Harris, and pointed out to him this notice. Harris thanked him, and
+passed on. The man came after him, and explained that treatment of the
+matter in such off-hand way could not be allowed; what was necessary to
+put the business right was that Harris should step back over the wire
+into the garden. Harris pointed out to the man that the notice said
+"going through forbidden," and that, therefore, by re-entering the garden
+that way he would be infringing the law a second time. The man saw this
+for himself, and suggested that to get over the difficulty Harris should
+go back into the garden by the proper entrance, which was round the
+corner, and afterwards immediately come out again by the same gate. Then
+it was that Harris called the man a silly ass. That delayed us a day,
+and cost Harris forty marks.
+
+I followed suit at Carlsruhe, by stealing a bicycle. I did not mean to
+steal the bicycle; I was merely trying to be useful. The train was on
+the point of starting when I noticed, as I thought, Harris's bicycle
+still in the goods van. No one was about to help me. I jumped into the
+van and hauled it out, only just in time. Wheeling it down the platform
+in triumph, I came across Harris's bicycle, standing against a wall
+behind some milk-cans. The bicycle I had secured was not Harris's, but
+some other man's.
+
+It was an awkward situation. In England, I should have gone to the
+stationmaster and explained my mistake. But in Germany they are not
+content with your explaining a little matter of this sort to one man:
+they take you round and get you to explain it to about half a dozen; and
+if any one of the half dozen happens not to be handy, or not to have time
+just then to listen to you, they have a habit of leaving you over for the
+night to finish your explanation the next morning. I thought I would
+just put the thing out of sight, and then, without making any fuss or
+show, take a short walk. I found a wood shed, which seemed just the very
+place, and was wheeling the bicycle into it when, unfortunately, a red-
+hatted railway official, with the airs of a retired field-marshal, caught
+sight of me and came up. He said:
+
+"What are you doing with that bicycle?"
+
+I said: "I am going to put it in this wood shed out of the way." I tried
+to convey by my tone that I was performing a kind and thoughtful action,
+for which the railway officials ought to thank me; but he was
+unresponsive.
+
+"Is it your bicycle?" he said.
+
+"Well, not exactly," I replied.
+
+"Whose is it?" he asked, quite sharply.
+
+"I can't tell you," I answered. "I don't know whose bicycle it is."
+
+"Where did you get it from?" was his next question. There was a
+suspiciousness about his tone that was almost insulting.
+
+"I got it," I answered, with as much calm dignity as at the moment I
+could assume, "out of the train."
+
+"The fact is," I continued, frankly, "I have made a mistake."
+
+He did not allow me time to finish. He merely said he thought so too,
+and blew a whistle.
+
+Recollection of the subsequent proceedings is not, so far as I am
+concerned, amusing. By a miracle of good luck--they say Providence
+watches over certain of us--the incident happened in Carlsruhe, where I
+possess a German friend, an official of some importance. Upon what would
+have been my fate had the station not been at Carlsruhe, or had my friend
+been from home, I do not care to dwell; as it was I got off, as the
+saying is, by the skin of my teeth. I should like to add that I left
+Carlsruhe without a stain upon my character, but that would not be the
+truth. My going scot free is regarded in police circles there to this
+day as a grave miscarriage of justice.
+
+But all lesser sin sinks into insignificance beside the lawlessness of
+George. The bicycle incident had thrown us all into confusion, with the
+result that we lost George altogether. It transpired subsequently that
+he was waiting for us outside the police court; but this at the time we
+did not know. We thought, maybe, he had gone on to Baden by himself; and
+anxious to get away from Carlsruhe, and not, perhaps, thinking out things
+too clearly, we jumped into the next train that came up and proceeded
+thither. When George, tired of waiting, returned to the station, he
+found us gone and he found his luggage gone. Harris had his ticket; I
+was acting as banker to the party, so that he had in his pocket only some
+small change. Excusing himself upon these grounds, he thereupon
+commenced deliberately a career of crime that, reading it later, as set
+forth baldly in the official summons, made the hair of Harris and myself
+almost to stand on end.
+
+German travelling, it may be explained, is somewhat complicated. You buy
+a ticket at the station you start from for the place you want to go to.
+You might think this would enable you to get there, but it does not. When
+your train comes up, you attempt to swarm into it; but the guard
+magnificently waves you away. Where are your credentials? You show him
+your ticket. He explains to you that by itself that is of no service
+whatever; you have only taken the first step towards travelling; you must
+go back to the booking-office and get in addition what is called a
+"schnellzug ticket." With this you return, thinking your troubles over.
+You are allowed to get in, so far so good. But you must not sit down
+anywhere, and you must not stand still, and you must not wander about.
+You must take another ticket, this time what is called a "platz ticket,"
+which entitles you to a place for a certain distance.
+
+What a man could do who persisted in taking nothing but the one ticket, I
+have often wondered. Would he be entitled to run behind the train on the
+six-foot way? Or could he stick a label on himself and get into the
+goods van? Again, what could be done with the man who, having taken his
+schnellzug ticket, obstinately refused, or had not the money to take a
+platz ticket: would they let him lie in the umbrella rack, or allow him
+to hang himself out of the window?
+
+To return to George, he had just sufficient money to take a third-class
+slow train ticket to Baden, and that was all. To avoid the
+inquisitiveness of the guard, he waited till the train was moving, and
+then jumped in.
+
+That was his first sin:
+
+(a) Entering a train in motion;
+
+(b) After being warned not to do so by an official.
+
+Second sin:
+
+(a) Travelling in train of superior class to that for which ticket was
+held.
+
+(b) Refusing to pay difference when demanded by an official. (George
+says he did not "refuse"; he simply told the man he had not got it.)
+
+Third sin:
+
+(a) Travelling in carriage of superior class to that for which ticket
+was held.
+
+(b) Refusing to pay difference when demanded by an official. (Again
+George disputes the accuracy of the report. He turned his pockets out,
+and offered the man all he had, which was about eightpence in German
+money. He offered to go into a third class, but there was no third
+class. He offered to go into the goods van, but they would not hear of
+it.)
+
+Fourth sin:
+
+(a) Occupying seat, and not paying for same.
+
+(b) Loitering about corridor. (As they would not let him sit down
+without paying, and as he could not pay, it was difficult to see what
+else he could do.)
+
+But explanations are held as no excuse in Germany; and his journey from
+Carlsruhe to Baden was one of the most expensive perhaps on record.
+
+Reflecting upon the case and frequency with which one gets into trouble
+here in Germany, one is led to the conclusion that this country would
+come as a boon and a blessing to the average young Englishman. To the
+medical student, to the eater of dinners at the Temple, to the subaltern
+on leave, life in London is a wearisome proceeding. The healthy Briton
+takes his pleasure lawlessly, or it is no pleasure to him. Nothing that
+he may do affords to him any genuine satisfaction. To be in trouble of
+some sort is his only idea of bliss. Now, England affords him small
+opportunity in this respect; to get himself into a scrape requires a good
+deal of persistence on the part of the young Englishman.
+
+I spoke on this subject one day with our senior churchwarden. It was the
+morning of the 10th of November, and we were both of us glancing,
+somewhat anxiously, through the police reports. The usual batch of young
+men had been summoned for creating the usual disturbance the night before
+at the Criterion. My friend the churchwarden has boys of his own, and a
+nephew of mine, upon whom I am keeping a fatherly eye, is by a fond
+mother supposed to be in London for the sole purpose of studying
+engineering. No names we knew happened, by fortunate chance, to be in
+the list of those detained in custody, and, relieved, we fell to
+moralising upon the folly and depravity of youth.
+
+"It is very remarkable," said my friend the churchwarden, "how the
+Criterion retains its position in this respect. It was just so when I
+was young; the evening always wound up with a row at the Criterion."
+
+"So meaningless," I remarked.
+
+"So monotonous," he replied. "You have no idea," he continued, a dreamy
+expression stealing over his furrowed face, "how unutterably tired one
+can become of the walk from Piccadilly Circus to the Vine Street Police
+Court. Yet, what else was there for us to do? Simply nothing. Sometimes
+we would put out a street lamp, and a man would come round and light it
+again. If one insulted a policeman, he simply took no notice. He did
+not even know he was being insulted; or, if he did, he seemed not to
+care. You could fight a Covent Garden porter, if you fancied yourself at
+that sort of thing. Generally speaking, the porter got the best of it;
+and when he did it cost you five shillings, and when he did not the price
+was half a sovereign. I could never see much excitement in that
+particular sport. I tried driving a hansom cab once. That has always
+been regarded as the acme of modern Tom and Jerryism. I stole it late
+one night from outside a public-house in Dean Street, and the first thing
+that happened to me was that I was hailed in Golden Square by an old lady
+surrounded by three children, two of them crying and the third one half
+asleep. Before I could get away she had shot the brats into the cab,
+taken my number, paid me, so she said, a shilling over the legal fare,
+and directed me to an address a little beyond what she called North
+Kensington. As a matter of fact, the place turned out to be the other
+side of Willesden. The horse was tired, and the journey took us well
+over two hours. It was the slowest lark I ever remember being concerned
+in. I tried once or twice to persuade the children to let me take them
+back to the old lady: but every time I opened the trap-door to speak to
+them the youngest one, a boy, started screaming; and when I offered other
+drivers to transfer the job to them, most of them replied in the words of
+a song popular about that period: 'Oh, George, don't you think you're
+going just a bit too far?' One man offered to take home to my wife any
+last message I might be thinking of, while another promised to organise a
+party to come and dig me out in the spring. When I mounted the dickey I
+had imagined myself driving a peppery old colonel to some lonesome and
+cabless region, half a dozen miles from where he wanted to go, and there
+leaving him upon the kerbstone to swear. About that there might have
+been good sport or there might not, according to circumstances and the
+colonel. The idea of a trip to an outlying suburb in charge of a nursery
+full of helpless infants had never occurred to me. No, London,"
+concluded my friend the churchwarden with a sigh, "affords but limited
+opportunity to the lover of the illegal."
+
+Now, in Germany, on the other hand, trouble is to be had for the asking.
+There are many things in Germany that you must not do that are quite easy
+to do. To any young Englishman yearning to get himself into a scrape,
+and finding himself hampered in his own country, I would advise a single
+ticket to Germany; a return, lasting as it does only a month, might prove
+a waste.
+
+In the Police Guide of the Fatherland he will find set forth a list of
+the things the doing of which will bring to him interest and excitement.
+In Germany you must not hang your bed out of window. He might begin with
+that. By waving his bed out of window he could get into trouble before
+he had his breakfast. At home he might hang himself out of window, and
+nobody would mind much, provided he did not obstruct anybody's ancient
+lights or break away and injure any passer underneath.
+
+In Germany you must not wear fancy dress in the streets. A Highlander of
+my acquaintance who came to pass the winter in Dresden spent the first
+few days of his residence there in arguing this question with the Saxon
+Government. They asked him what he was doing in those clothes. He was
+not an amiable man. He answered, he was wearing them. They asked him
+why he was wearing them. He replied, to keep himself warm. They told
+him frankly that they did not believe him, and sent him back to his
+lodgings in a closed landau. The personal testimony of the English
+Minister was necessary to assure the authorities that the Highland garb
+was the customary dress of many respectable, law-abiding British
+subjects. They accepted the statement, as diplomatically bound, but
+retain their private opinion to this day. The English tourist they have
+grown accustomed to; but a Leicestershire gentleman, invited to hunt with
+some German officers, on appearing outside his hotel, was promptly
+marched off, horse and all, to explain his frivolity at the police court.
+
+Another thing you must not do in the streets of German towns is to feed
+horses, mules, or donkeys, whether your own or those belonging to other
+people. If a passion seizes you to feed somebody else's horse, you must
+make an appointment with the animal, and the meal must take place in some
+properly authorised place. You must not break glass or china in the
+street, nor, in fact, in any public resort whatever; and if you do, you
+must pick up all the pieces. What you are to do with the pieces when you
+have gathered them together I cannot say. The only thing I know for
+certain is that you are not permitted to throw them anywhere, to leave
+them anywhere, or apparently to part with them in any way whatever.
+Presumably, you are expected to carry them about with you until you die,
+and then be buried with them; or, maybe, you are allowed to swallow them.
+
+In German streets you must not shoot with a crossbow. The German law-
+maker does not content himself with the misdeeds of the average man--the
+crime one feels one wants to do, but must not: he worries himself
+imagining all the things a wandering maniac might do. In Germany there
+is no law against a man standing on his head in the middle of the road;
+the idea has not occurred to them. One of these days a German statesman,
+visiting a circus and seeing acrobats, will reflect upon this omission.
+Then he will straightway set to work and frame a clause forbidding people
+from standing on their heads in the middle of the road, and fixing a
+fine. This is the charm of German law: misdemeanour in Germany has its
+fixed price. You are not kept awake all night, as in England, wondering
+whether you will get off with a caution, be fined forty shillings, or,
+catching the magistrate in an unhappy moment for yourself, get seven
+days. You know exactly what your fun is going to cost you. You can
+spread out your money on the table, open your Police Guide, and plan out
+your holiday to a fifty pfennig piece. For a really cheap evening, I
+would recommend walking on the wrong side of the pavement after being
+cautioned not to do so. I calculate that by choosing your district and
+keeping to the quiet side streets you could walk for a whole evening on
+the wrong side of the pavement at a cost of little over three marks.
+
+In German towns you must not ramble about after dark "in droves." I am
+not quite sure how many constitute a "drove," and no official to whom I
+have spoken on this subject has felt himself competent to fix the exact
+number. I once put it to a German friend who was starting for the
+theatre with his wife, his mother-in-law, five children of his own, his
+sister and her _fiance_, and two nieces, if he did not think he was
+running a risk under this by-law. He did not take my suggestion as a
+joke. He cast an eye over the group.
+
+"Oh, I don't think so," he said; "you see, we are all one family."
+
+"The paragraph says nothing about its being a family drove or not," I
+replied; "it simply says 'drove.' I do not mean it in any
+uncomplimentary sense, but, speaking etymologically, I am inclined
+personally to regard your collection as a 'drove.' Whether the police
+will take the same view or not remains to be seen. I am merely warning
+you."
+
+My friend himself was inclined to pooh-pooh my fears; but his wife
+thinking it better not to run any risk of having the party broken up by
+the police at the very beginning of the evening, they divided, arranging
+to come together again in the theatre lobby.
+
+Another passion you must restrain in Germany is that prompting you to
+throw things out of window. Cats are no excuse. During the first week
+of my residence in Germany I was awakened incessantly by cats. One night
+I got mad. I collected a small arsenal--two or three pieces of coal, a
+few hard pears, a couple of candle ends, an odd egg I found on the
+kitchen table, an empty soda-water bottle, and a few articles of that
+sort,--and, opening the window, bombarded the spot from where the noise
+appeared to come. I do not suppose I hit anything; I never knew a man
+who did hit a cat, even when he could see it, except, maybe, by accident
+when aiming at something else. I have known crack shots, winners of
+Queen's prizes--those sort of men,--shoot with shot-guns at cats fifty
+yards away, and never hit a hair. I have often thought that, instead of
+bull's-eyes, running deer, and that rubbish, the really superior marksman
+would be he who could boast that he had shot the cat.
+
+But, anyhow, they moved off; maybe the egg annoyed them. I had noticed
+when I picked it up that it did not look a good egg; and I went back to
+bed again, thinking the incident closed. Ten minutes afterwards there
+came a violent ringing of the electric bell. I tried to ignore it, but
+it was too persistent, and, putting on my dressing gown, I went down to
+the gate. A policeman was standing there. He had all the things I had
+been throwing out of the window in a little heap in front of him, all
+except the egg. He had evidently been collecting them. He said:
+
+"Are these things yours?"
+
+I said: "They were mine, but personally I have done with them. Anybody
+can have them--you can have them."
+
+He ignored my offer. He said:
+
+"You threw these things out of window."
+
+"You are right," I admitted; "I did."
+
+"Why did you throw them out of window?" he asked. A German policeman has
+his code of questions arranged for him; he never varies them, and he
+never omits one.
+
+"I threw them out of the window at some cats," I answered.
+
+"What cats?" he asked.
+
+It was the sort of question a German policeman would ask. I replied with
+as much sarcasm as I could put into my accent that I was ashamed to say I
+could not tell him what cats. I explained that, personally, they were
+strangers to me; but I offered, if the police would call all the cats in
+the district together, to come round and see if I could recognise them by
+their yaul.
+
+The German policeman does not understand a joke, which is perhaps on the
+whole just as well, for I believe there is a heavy fine for joking with
+any German uniform; they call it "treating an official with contumely."
+He merely replied that it was not the duty of the police to help me
+recognise the cats; their duty was merely to fine me for throwing things
+out of window.
+
+I asked what a man was supposed to do in Germany when woke up night after
+night by cats, and he explained that I could lodge an information against
+the owner of the cat, when the police would proceed to caution him, and,
+if necessary, order the cat to be destroyed. Who was going to destroy
+the cat, and what the cat would be doing during the process, he did not
+explain.
+
+I asked him how he proposed I should discover the owner of the cat. He
+thought for a while, and then suggested that I might follow it home. I
+did not feel inclined to argue with him any more after that; I should
+only have said things that would have made the matter worse. As it was,
+that night's sport cost me twelve marks; and not a single one of the four
+German officials who interviewed me on the subject could see anything
+ridiculous in the proceedings from beginning to end.
+
+But in Germany most human faults and follies sink into comparative
+insignificance beside the enormity of walking on the grass. Nowhere, and
+under no circumstances, may you at any time in Germany walk on the grass.
+Grass in Germany is quite a fetish. To put your foot on German grass
+would be as great a sacrilege as to dance a hornpipe on a Mohammedan's
+praying-mat. The very dogs respect German grass; no German dog would
+dream of putting a paw on it. If you see a dog scampering across the
+grass in Germany, you may know for certain that it is the dog of some
+unholy foreigner. In England, when we want to keep dogs out of places,
+we put up wire netting, six feet high, supported by buttresses, and
+defended on the top by spikes. In Germany, they put a notice-board in
+the middle of the place, "Hunden verboten," and a dog that has German
+blood in its veins looks at that notice-board and walks away. In a
+German park I have seen a gardener step gingerly with felt boots on to
+grass-plot, and removing therefrom a beetle, place it gravely but firmly
+on the gravel; which done, he stood sternly watching the beetle, to see
+that it did not try to get back on the grass; and the beetle, looking
+utterly ashamed of itself, walked hurriedly down the gutter, and turned
+up the path marked "Ausgang."
+
+In German parks separate roads are devoted to the different orders of the
+community, and no one person, at peril of liberty and fortune, may go
+upon another person's road. There are special paths for "wheel-riders"
+and special paths for "foot-goers," avenues for "horse-riders," roads for
+people in light vehicles, and roads for people in heavy vehicles; ways
+for children and for "alone ladies." That no particular route has yet
+been set aside for bald-headed men or "new women" has always struck me as
+an omission.
+
+In the Grosse Garten in Dresden I once came across an old lady, standing,
+helpless and bewildered, in the centre of seven tracks. Each was guarded
+by a threatening notice, warning everybody off it but the person for whom
+it was intended.
+
+"I am sorry to trouble you," said the old lady, on learning I could speak
+English and read German, "but would you mind telling me what I am and
+where I have to go?"
+
+I inspected her carefully. I came to the conclusion that she was a
+"grown-up" and a "foot-goer," and pointed out her path. She looked at
+it, and seemed disappointed.
+
+"But I don't want to go down there," she said; "mayn't I go this way?"
+
+"Great heavens, no, madam!" I replied. "That path is reserved for
+children."
+
+"But I wouldn't do them any harm," said the old lady, with a smile. She
+did not look the sort of old lady who would have done them any harm.
+
+"Madam," I replied, "if it rested with me, I would trust you down that
+path, though my own first-born were at the other end; but I can only
+inform you of the laws of this country. For you, a full-grown woman, to
+venture down that path is to go to certain fine, if not imprisonment.
+There is your path, marked plainly--_Nur fur Fussganger_, and if you will
+follow my advice, you will hasten down it; you are not allowed to stand
+here and hesitate."
+
+"It doesn't lead a bit in the direction I want to go," said the old lady.
+
+"It leads in the direction you _ought_ to want to go," I replied, and we
+parted.
+
+In the German parks there are special seats labelled, "Only for grown-
+ups" (_Nur fur Erwachsene_), and the German small boy, anxious to sit
+down, and reading that notice, passes by, and hunts for a seat on which
+children are permitted to rest; and there he seats himself, careful not
+to touch the woodwork with his muddy boots. Imagine a seat in Regent's
+or St. James's Park labelled "Only for grown-ups!" Every child for five
+miles round would be trying to get on that seat, and hauling other
+children off who were on. As for any "grown-up," he would never be able
+to get within half a mile of that seat for the crowd. The German small
+boy, who has accidentally sat down on such without noticing, rises with a
+start when his error is pointed out to him, and goes away with down-cast
+head, brushing to the roots of his hair with shame and regret.
+
+Not that the German child is neglected by a paternal Government. In
+German parks and public gardens special places (_Spielplatze_) are
+provided for him, each one supplied with a heap of sand. There he can
+play to his heart's content at making mud pies and building sand castles.
+To the German child a pie made of any other mud than this would appear an
+immoral pie. It would give to him no satisfaction: his soul would revolt
+against it.
+
+"That pie," he would say to himself, "was not, as it should have been,
+made of Government mud specially set apart for the purpose; it was nor
+manufactured in the place planned and maintained by the Government for
+the making of mud pies. It can bring no real blessing with it; it is a
+lawless pie." And until his father had paid the proper fine, and he had
+received his proper licking, his conscience would continue to trouble
+him.
+
+Another excellent piece of material for obtaining excitement in Germany
+is the simple domestic perambulator. What you may do with a
+"kinder-wagen," as it is called, and what you may not, covers pages of
+German law; after the reading of which, you conclude that the man who can
+push a perambulator through a German town without breaking the law was
+meant for a diplomatist. You must not loiter with a perambulator, and
+you must not go too fast. You must not get in anybody's way with a
+perambulator, and if anybody gets in your way you must get out of their
+way. If you want to stop with a perambulator, you must go to a place
+specially appointed where perambulators may stop; and when you get there
+you _must_ stop. You must not cross the road with a perambulator; if you
+and the baby happen to live on the other side, that is your fault. You
+must not leave your perambulator anywhere, and only in certain places can
+you take it with you. I should say that in Germany you could go out with
+a perambulator and get into enough trouble in half an hour to last you
+for a month. Any young Englishman anxious for a row with the police
+could not do better than come over to Germany and bring his perambulator
+with him.
+
+In Germany you must not leave your front door unlocked after ten o'clock
+at night, and you must not play the piano in your own house after eleven.
+In England I have never felt I wanted to play the piano myself, or to
+hear anyone else play it, after eleven o'clock at night; but that is a
+very different thing to being told that you must not play it. Here, in
+Germany, I never feel that I really care for the piano until eleven
+o'clock, then I could sit and listen to the "Maiden's Prayer," or the
+Overture to "Zampa," with pleasure. To the law-loving German, on the
+other hand, music after eleven o'clock at night ceases to be music; it
+becomes sin, and as such gives him no satisfaction.
+
+The only individual throughout Germany who ever dreams of taking
+liberties with the law is the German student, and he only to a certain
+well-defined point. By custom, certain privileges are permitted to him,
+but even these are strictly limited and clearly understood. For
+instance, the German student may get drunk and fall asleep in the gutter
+with no other penalty than that of having the next morning to tip the
+policeman who has found him and brought him home. But for this purpose
+he must choose the gutters of side-streets. The German student,
+conscious of the rapid approach of oblivion, uses all his remaining
+energy to get round the corner, where he may collapse without anxiety. In
+certain districts he may ring bells. The rent of flats in these
+localities is lower than in other quarters of the town; while the
+difficulty is further met by each family preparing for itself a secret
+code of bell-ringing by means of which it is known whether the summons is
+genuine or not. When visiting such a household late at night it is well
+to be acquainted with this code, or you may, if persistent, get a bucket
+of water thrown over you.
+
+Also the German student is allowed to put out lights at night, but there
+is a prejudice against his putting out too many. The larky German
+student generally keeps count, contenting himself with half a dozen
+lights per night. Likewise, he may shout and sing as he walks home, up
+till half-past two; and at certain restaurants it is permitted to him to
+put his arm round the Fraulein's waist. To prevent any suggestion of
+unseemliness, the waitresses at restaurants frequented by students are
+always carefully selected from among a staid and elderly classy of women,
+by reason of which the German student can enjoy the delights of
+flirtation without fear and without reproach to anyone.
+
+They are a law-abiding people, the Germans.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+Baden from the visitor's point of view--Beauty of the early morning, as
+viewed from the preceding afternoon--Distance, as measured by the
+compass--Ditto, as measured by the leg--George in account with his
+conscience--A lazy machine--Bicycling, according to the poster: its
+restfulness--The poster cyclist: its costume; its method--The griffin as
+a household pet--A dog with proper self-respect--The horse that was
+abused.
+
+From Baden, about which it need only be said that it is a pleasure resort
+singularly like other pleasure resorts of the same description, we
+started bicycling in earnest. We planned a ten days' tour, which, while
+completing the Black Forest, should include a spin down the Donau-Thal,
+which for the twenty miles from Tuttlingen to Sigmaringen is, perhaps,
+the finest valley in Germany; the Danube stream here winding its narrow
+way past old-world unspoilt villages; past ancient monasteries, nestling
+in green pastures, where still the bare-footed and bare-headed friar, his
+rope girdle tight about his loins, shepherds, with crook in hand, his
+sheep upon the hill sides; through rocky woods; between sheer walls of
+cliff, whose every towering crag stands crowned with ruined fortress,
+church, or castle; together with a blick at the Vosges mountains, where
+half the population is bitterly pained if you speak to them in French,
+the other half being insulted when you address them in German, and the
+whole indignantly contemptuous at the first sound of English; a state of
+things that renders conversation with the stranger somewhat nervous work.
+
+We did not succeed in carrying out our programme in its entirety, for the
+reason that human performance lags ever behind human intention. It is
+easy to say and believe at three o'clock in the afternoon that: "We will
+rise at five, breakfast lightly at half-past, and start away at six."
+
+"Then we shall be well on our way before the heat of the day sets in,"
+remarks one.
+
+"This time of the year, the early morning is really the best part of the
+day. Don't you think so?" adds another.
+
+"Oh, undoubtedly."
+
+"So cool and fresh."
+
+"And the half-lights are so exquisite."
+
+The first morning one maintains one's vows. The party assembles at half-
+past five. It is very silent; individually, somewhat snappy; inclined to
+grumble with its food, also with most other things; the atmosphere
+charged with compressed irritability seeking its vent. In the evening
+the Tempter's voice is heard:
+
+"I think if we got off by half-past six, sharp, that would be time
+enough?"
+
+The voice of Virtue protests, faintly: "It will be breaking our
+resolution."
+
+The Tempter replies: "Resolutions were made for man, not man for
+resolutions." The devil can paraphrase Scripture for his own purpose.
+"Besides, it is disturbing the whole hotel; think of the poor servants."
+
+The voice of Virtue continues, but even feebler: "But everybody gets up
+early in these parts."
+
+"They would not if they were not obliged to, poor things! Say breakfast
+at half-past six, punctual; that will be disturbing nobody."
+
+Thus Sin masquerades under the guise of Good, and one sleeps till six,
+explaining to one's conscience, who, however, doesn't believe it, that
+one does this because of unselfish consideration for others. I have
+known such consideration extend until seven of the clock.
+
+Likewise, distance measured with a pair of compasses is not precisely the
+same as when measured by the leg.
+
+"Ten miles an hour for seven hours, seventy miles. A nice easy day's
+work."
+
+"There are some stiff hills to climb?"
+
+"The other side to come down. Say, eight miles an hour, and call it
+sixty miles. Gott in Himmel! if we can't average eight miles an hour, we
+had better go in bath-chairs." It does seem somewhat impossible to do
+less, on paper.
+
+But at four o'clock in the afternoon the voice of Duty rings less trumpet-
+toned:
+
+"Well, I suppose we ought to be getting on."
+
+"Oh, there's no hurry! don't fuss. Lovely view from here, isn't it?"
+
+"Very. Don't forget we are twenty-five miles from St. Blasien."
+
+"How far?"
+
+"Twenty-five miles, a little over if anything."
+
+"Do you mean to say we have only come thirty-five miles?"
+
+"That's all."
+
+"Nonsense. I don't believe that map of yours."
+
+"It is impossible, you know. We have been riding steadily ever since the
+first thing this morning."
+
+"No, we haven't. We didn't get away till eight, to begin with."
+
+"Quarter to eight."
+
+"Well, quarter to eight; and every half-dozen miles we have stopped."
+
+"We have only stopped to look at the view. It's no good coming to see a
+country, and then not seeing it."
+
+"And we have had to pull up some stiff hills."
+
+"Besides, it has been an exceptionally hot day to-day."
+
+"Well, don't forget St. Blasien is twenty-five miles off, that's all."
+
+"Any more hills?"
+
+"Yes, two; up and down."
+
+"I thought you said it was downhill into St. Blasien?"
+
+"So it is for the last ten miles. We are twenty-five miles from St.
+Blasien here."
+
+"Isn't there anywhere between here and St. Blasien? What's that little
+place there on the lake?"
+
+"It isn't St. Blasien, or anywhere near it. There's a danger in
+beginning that sort of thing."
+
+"There's a danger in overworking oneself. One should study moderation in
+all things. Pretty little place, that Titisee, according to the map;
+looks as if there would be good air there."
+
+"All right, I'm agreeable. It was you fellows who suggested our making
+for St. Blasien."
+
+"Oh, I'm not so keen on St. Blasien! poky little place, down in a valley.
+This Titisee, I should say, was ever so much nicer."
+
+"Quite near, isn't it?"
+
+"Five miles."
+
+General chorus: "We'll stop at Titisee."
+
+George made discovery of this difference between theory and practice on
+the very first day of our ride.
+
+"I thought," said George--he was riding the single, Harris and I being a
+little ahead on the tandem--"that the idea was to train up the hills and
+ride down them."
+
+"So it is," answered Harris, "as a general rule. But the trains don't go
+up _every_ hill in the Black Forest."
+
+"Somehow, I felt a suspicion that they wouldn't," growled George; and for
+awhile silence reigned.
+
+"Besides," remarked Harris, who had evidently been ruminating the
+subject, "you would not wish to have nothing but downhill, surely. It
+would not be playing the game. One must take a little rough with one's
+smooth."
+
+Again there returned silence, broken after awhile by George, this time.
+
+"Don't you two fellows over-exert yourselves merely on my account," said
+George.
+
+"How do you mean?" asked Harris.
+
+"I mean," answered George, "that where a train does happen to be going up
+these hills, don't you put aside the idea of taking it for fear of
+outraging my finer feelings. Personally, I am prepared to go up all
+these hills in a railway train, even if it's not playing the game. I'll
+square the thing with my conscience; I've been up at seven every day for
+a week now, and I calculate it owes me a bit. Don't you consider me in
+the matter at all."
+
+We promised to bear this in mind, and again the ride continued in dogged
+dumbness, until it was again broken by George.
+
+"What bicycle did you say this was of yours?" asked George.
+
+Harris told him. I forget of what particular manufacture it happened to
+be; it is immaterial.
+
+"Are you sure?" persisted George.
+
+"Of course I am sure," answered Harris. "Why, what's the matter with
+it?"
+
+"Well, it doesn't come up to the poster," said George, "that's all."
+
+"What poster?" asked Harris.
+
+"The poster advertising this particular brand of cycle," explained
+George. "I was looking at one on a hoarding in Sloane Street only a day
+or two before we started. A man was riding this make of machine, a man
+with a banner in his hand: he wasn't doing any work, that was clear as
+daylight; he was just sitting on the thing and drinking in the air. The
+cycle was going of its own accord, and going well. This thing of yours
+leaves all the work to me. It is a lazy brute of a machine; if you don't
+shove, it simply does nothing: I should complain about it, if I were
+you."
+
+When one comes to think of it, few bicycles do realise the poster. On
+only one poster that I can recollect have I seen the rider represented as
+doing any work. But then this man was being pursued by a bull. In
+ordinary cases the object of the artist is to convince the hesitating
+neophyte that the sport of bicycling consists in sitting on a luxurious
+saddle, and being moved rapidly in the direction you wish to go by unseen
+heavenly powers.
+
+Generally speaking, the rider is a lady, and then one feels that, for
+perfect bodily rest combined with entire freedom from mental anxiety,
+slumber upon a water-bed cannot compare with bicycle-riding upon a hilly
+road. No fairy travelling on a summer cloud could take things more
+easily than does the bicycle girl, according to the poster. Her costume
+for cycling in hot weather is ideal. Old-fashioned landladies might
+refuse her lunch, it is true; and a narrowminded police force might
+desire to secure her, and wrap her in a rug preliminary to summonsing
+her. But such she heeds not. Uphill and downhill, through traffic that
+might tax the ingenuity of a cat, over road surfaces calculated to break
+the average steam roller she passes, a vision of idle loveliness; her
+fair hair streaming to the wind, her sylph-like form poised airily, one
+foot upon the saddle, the other resting lightly upon the lamp. Sometimes
+she condescends to sit down on the saddle; then she puts her feet on the
+rests, lights a cigarette, and waves above her head a Chinese lantern.
+
+Less often, it is a mere male thing that rides the machine. He is not so
+accomplished an acrobat as is the lady; but simple tricks, such as
+standing on the saddle and waving flags, drinking beer or beef-tea while
+riding, he can and does perform. Something, one supposes, he must do to
+occupy his mind: sitting still hour after hour on this machine, having no
+work to do, nothing to think about, must pall upon any man of active
+temperament. Thus it is that we see him rising on his pedals as he nears
+the top of some high hill to apostrophise the sun, or address poetry to
+the surrounding scenery.
+
+Occasionally the poster pictures a pair of cyclists; and then one grasps
+the fact how much superior for purposes of flirtation is the modern
+bicycle to the old-fashioned parlour or the played-out garden gate. He
+and she mount their bicycles, being careful, of course, that such are of
+the right make. After that they have nothing to think about but the old
+sweet tale. Down shady lanes, through busy towns on market days, merrily
+roll the wheels of the "Bermondsey Company's Bottom Bracket Britain's
+Best," or of the "Camberwell Company's Jointless Eureka." They need no
+pedalling; they require no guiding. Give them their heads, and tell them
+what time you want to get home, and that is all they ask. While Edwin
+leans from his saddle to whisper the dear old nothings in Angelina's ear,
+while Angelina's face, to hide its blushes, is turned towards the horizon
+at the back, the magic bicycles pursue their even course.
+
+And the sun is always shining and the roads are always dry. No stern
+parent rides behind, no interfering aunt beside, no demon small boy
+brother is peeping round the corner, there never comes a skid. Ah me!
+Why were there no "Britain's Best" nor "Camberwell Eurekas" to be hired
+when _we_ were young?
+
+Or maybe the "Britain's Best" or the "Camberwell Eureka" stands leaning
+against a gate; maybe it is tired. It has worked hard all the afternoon,
+carrying these young people. Mercifully minded, they have dismounted, to
+give the machine a rest. They sit upon the grass beneath the shade of
+graceful boughs; it is long and dry grass. A stream flows by their feet.
+All is rest and peace.
+
+That is ever the idea the cycle poster artist sets himself to convey--rest
+and peace.
+
+But I am wrong in saying that no cyclist, according to the poster, ever
+works. Now I come to reflect, I have seen posters representing gentlemen
+on cycles working very hard--over-working themselves, one might almost
+say. They are thin and haggard with the toil, the perspiration stands
+upon their brow in beads; you feel that if there is another hill beyond
+the poster they must either get off or die. But this is the result of
+their own folly. This happens because they will persist in riding a
+machine of an inferior make. Were they riding a "Putney Popular" or
+"Battersea Bounder," such as the sensible young man in the centre of the
+poster rides, then all this unnecessary labour would be saved to them.
+Then all required of them would be, as in gratitude bound, to look happy;
+perhaps, occasionally to back-pedal a little when the machine in its
+youthful buoyancy loses its head for a moment and dashes on too swiftly.
+
+You tired young men, sitting dejectedly on milestones, too spent to heed
+the steady rain that soaks you through; you weary maidens, with the
+straight, damp hair, anxious about the time, longing to swear, not
+knowing how; you stout bald men, vanishing visibly as you pant and grunt
+along the endless road; you purple, dejected matrons, plying with pain
+the slow unwilling wheel; why did you not see to it that you bought a
+"Britain's Best" or a "Camberwell Eureka"? Why are these bicycles of
+inferior make so prevalent throughout the land
+
+Or is it with bicycling as with all other things: does Life at no point
+realise the Poster?
+
+The one thing in Germany that never fails to charm and fascinate me is
+the German dog. In England one grows tired of the old breeds, one knows
+them all so well: the mastiff, the plum-pudding dog, the terrier (black,
+white or rough-haired, as the case may be, but always quarrelsome), the
+collie, the bulldog; never anything new. Now in Germany you get variety.
+You come across dogs the like of which you have never seen before: that
+until you hear them bark you do not know are dogs. It is all so fresh,
+so interesting. George stopped a dog in Sigmaringen and drew our
+attention to it. It suggested a cross between a codfish and a poodle. I
+would not like to be positive it was _not_ a cross between a codfish and
+a poodle. Harris tried to photograph it, but it ran up a fence and
+disappeared through some bushes.
+
+I do not know what the German breeder's idea is; at present he retains
+his secret. George suggests he is aiming at a griffin. There is much to
+bear out this theory, and indeed in one or two cases I have come across
+success on these lines would seem to have been almost achieved. Yet I
+cannot bring myself to believe that such are anything more than mere
+accidents. The German is practical, and I fail to see the object of a
+griffin. If mere quaintness of design be desired, is there not already
+the Dachshund! What more is needed? Besides, about a house, a griffin
+would be so inconvenient: people would be continually treading on its
+tail. My own idea is that what the Germans are trying for is a mermaid,
+which they will then train to catch fish.
+
+For your German does not encourage laziness in any living thing. He
+likes to see his dogs work, and the German dog loves work; of that there
+can be no doubt. The life of the English dog must be a misery to him.
+Imagine a strong, active, and intelligent being, of exceptionally
+energetic temperament, condemned to spend twenty-four hours a day in
+absolute idleness! How would you like it yourself? No wonder he feels
+misunderstood, yearns for the unattainable, and gets himself into trouble
+generally.
+
+Now the German dog, on the other hand, has plenty to occupy his mind. He
+is busy and important. Watch him as he walks along harnessed to his milk
+cart. No churchwarden at collection time could feel or look more pleased
+with himself. He does not do any real work; the human being does the
+pushing, he does the barking; that is his idea of division of labour.
+What he says to himself is:
+
+"The old man can't bark, but he can shove. Very well."
+
+The interest and the pride he takes in the business is quite beautiful to
+see. Another dog passing by makes, maybe, some jeering remark, casting
+discredit upon the creaminess of the milk. He stops suddenly, quite
+regardless of the traffic.
+
+"I beg your pardon, what was that you said about our milk?"
+
+"I said nothing about your milk," retorts the other dog, in a tone of
+gentle innocence. "I merely said it was a fine day, and asked the price
+of chalk."
+
+"Oh, you asked the price of chalk, did you? Would you like to know?"
+
+"Yes, thanks; somehow I thought you would be able to tell me."
+
+"You are quite right, I can. It's worth--"
+
+"Oh, do come along!" says the old lady, who is tired and hot, and anxious
+to finish her round.
+
+"Yes, but hang it all; did you hear what he hinted about our milk?"
+
+"Oh, never mind him! There's a tram coming round the corner: we shall
+all get run over."
+
+"Yes, but I do mind him; one has one's proper pride. He asked the price
+of chalk, and he's going to know it! It's worth just twenty times as
+much--"
+
+"You'll have the whole thing over, I know you will," cries the old lady,
+pathetically, struggling with all her feeble strength to haul him back.
+"Oh dear, oh dear! I do wish I had left you at home."
+
+The tram is bearing down upon them; a cab-driver is shouting at them;
+another huge brute, hoping to be in time to take a hand, is dragging a
+bread cart, followed by a screaming child, across the road from the
+opposite side; a small crowd is collecting; and a policeman is hastening
+to the scene.
+
+"It's worth," says the milk dog, "just twenty-times as much as you'll be
+worth before I've done with you."
+
+"Oh, you think so, do you?"
+
+"Yes, I do, you grandson of a French poodle, you cabbage-eating--"
+
+"There! I knew you'd have it over," says the poor milk-woman. "I told
+him he'd have it over."
+
+But he is busy, and heeds her not. Five minutes later, when the traffic
+is renewed, when the bread girl has collected her muddy rolls, and the
+policeman has gone off with the name and address of everybody in the
+street, he consents to look behind him.
+
+"It _is_ a bit of an upset," he admits. Then shaking himself free of
+care, he adds, cheerfully, "But I guess I taught him the price of chalk.
+He won't interfere with us again, I'm thinking."
+
+"I'm sure I hope not," says the old lady, regarding dejectedly the milky
+road.
+
+But his favourite sport is to wait at the top of the hill for another
+dog, and then race down. On these occasions the chief occupation of the
+other fellow is to run about behind, picking up the scattered articles,
+loaves, cabbages, or shirts, as they are jerked out. At the bottom of
+the hill, he stops and waits for his friend.
+
+"Good race, wasn't it?" he remarks, panting, as the Human comes up, laden
+to the chin. "I believe I'd have won it, too, if it hadn't been for that
+fool of a small boy. He was right in my way just as I turned the corner.
+_You noticed him_? Wish I had, beastly brat! What's he yelling like
+that for? _Because I knocked him down and ran over him_? Well, why
+didn't he get out of the way? It's disgraceful, the way people leave
+their children about for other people to tumble over. Halloa! did all
+those things come out? You couldn't have packed them very carefully; you
+should see to a thing like that. _You did not dream of my tearing down
+the hill twenty miles an hour_? Surely, you knew me better than to
+expect I'd let that old Schneider's dog pass me without an effort. But
+there, you never think. You're sure you've got them all? _You believe
+so_? I shouldn't 'believe' if I were you; I should run back up the hill
+again and make sure. _You feel too tired_? Oh, all right! don't blame
+me if anything is missing, that's all."
+
+He is so self-willed. He is cock-sure that the correct turning is the
+second on the right, and nothing will persuade him that it is the third.
+He is positive he can get across the road in time, and will not be
+convinced until he sees the cart smashed up. Then he is very apologetic,
+it is true. But of what use is that? As he is usually of the size and
+strength of a young bull, and his human companion is generally a weak-
+kneed old man or woman, or a small child, he has his way. The greatest
+punishment his proprietor can inflict upon him is to leave him at home,
+and take the cart out alone. But your German is too kind-hearted to do
+this often.
+
+That he is harnessed to the cart for anybody's pleasure but his own it is
+impossible to believe; and I am confident that the German peasant plans
+the tiny harness and fashions the little cart purely with the hope of
+gratifying his dog. In other countries--in Belgium, Holland and France--I
+have seen these draught dogs ill-treated and over-worked; but in Germany,
+never. Germans abuse animals shockingly. I have seen a German stand in
+front of his horse and call it every name he could lay his tongue to. But
+the horse did not mind it. I have seen a German, weary with abusing his
+horse, call to his wife to come out and assist him. When she came, he
+told her what the horse had done. The recital roused the woman's temper
+to almost equal heat with his own; and standing one each side of the poor
+beast, they both abused it. They abused its dead mother, they insulted
+its father; they made cutting remarks about its personal appearance, its
+intelligence, its moral sense, its general ability as a horse. The
+animal bore the torrent with exemplary patience for awhile; then it did
+the best thing possible to do under the circumstances. Without losing
+its own temper, it moved quietly away. The lady returned to her washing,
+and the man followed it up the street, still abusing it.
+
+A kinder-hearted people than the Germans there is no need for. Cruelty
+to animal or child is a thing almost unknown in the land. The whip with
+them is a musical instrument; its crack is heard from morning to night,
+but an Italian coachman that in the streets of Dresden I once saw use it
+was very nearly lynched by the indignant crowd. Germany is the only
+country in Europe where the traveller can settle himself comfortably in
+his hired carriage, confident that his gentle, willing friend between the
+shafts will be neither over-worked nor cruelly treated.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+Black Forest House: and the sociability therein--Its perfume--George
+positively declines to remain in bed after four o'clock in the
+morning--The road one cannot miss--My peculiar extra instinct--An
+ungrateful party--Harris as a scientist--His cheery confidence--The
+village: where it was, and where it ought to have been--George: his
+plan--We promenade a la Francais--The German coachman asleep and
+awake--The man who spreads the English language abroad.
+
+There was one night when, tired out and far from town or village, we
+slept in a Black Forest farmhouse. The great charm about the Black
+Forest house is its sociability. The cows are in the next room, the
+horses are upstairs, the geese and ducks are in the kitchen, while the
+pigs, the children, and the chickens live all over the place.
+
+You are dressing, when you hear a grunt behind you.
+
+"Good-morning! Don't happen to have any potato peelings in here? No, I
+see you haven't; good-bye."
+
+Next there is a cackle, and you see the neck of an old hen stretched
+round the corner.
+
+"Fine morning, isn't it? You don't mind my bringing this worm of mine in
+here, do you? It is so difficult in this house to find a room where one
+can enjoy one's food with any quietness. From a chicken I have always
+been a slow eater, and when a dozen--there, I thought they wouldn't leave
+me alone. Now they'll all want a bit. You don't mind my getting on the
+bed, do you? Perhaps here they won't notice me."
+
+While you are dressing various shock heads peer in at the door; they
+evidently regard the room as a temporary menagerie. You cannot tell
+whether the heads belong to boys or girls; you can only hope they are all
+male. It is of no use shutting the door, because there is nothing to
+fasten it by, and the moment you are gone they push it open again. You
+breakfast as the Prodigal Son is generally represented feeding: a pig or
+two drop in to keep you company; a party of elderly geese criticise you
+from the door; you gather from their whispers, added to their shocked
+expression, that they are talking scandal about you. Maybe a cow will
+condescend to give a glance in.
+
+This Noah's Ark arrangement it is, I suppose, that gives to the Black
+Forest home its distinctive scent. It is not a scent you can liken to
+any one thing. It is as if you took roses and Limburger cheese and hair
+oil, some heather and onions, peaches and soapsuds, together with a dash
+of sea air and a corpse, and mixed them up together. You cannot define
+any particular odour, but you feel they are all there--all the odours
+that the world has yet discovered. People who live in these houses are
+fond of this mixture. They do not open the window and lose any of it;
+they keep it carefully bottled up. If you want any other scent, you can
+go outside and smell the wood violets and the pines; inside there is the
+house; and after a while, I am told, you get used to it, so that you miss
+it, and are unable to go to sleep in any other atmosphere.
+
+We had a long walk before us the next day, and it was our desire,
+therefore, to get up early, even so early as six o'clock, if that could
+be managed without disturbing the whole household. We put it to our
+hostess whether she thought this could be done. She said she thought it
+could. She might not be about herself at that time; it was her morning
+for going into the town, some eight miles off, and she rarely got back
+much before seven; but, possibly, her husband or one of the boys would be
+returning home to lunch about that hour. Anyhow, somebody should be sent
+back to wake us and get our breakfast.
+
+As it turned out, we did not need any waking. We got up at four, all by
+ourselves. We got up at four in order to get away from the noise and the
+din that was making our heads ache. What time the Black Forest peasant
+rises in the summer time I am unable to say; to us they appeared to be
+getting up all night. And the first thing the Black Forester does when
+he gets up is to put on a pair of stout boots with wooden soles, and take
+a constitutional round the house. Until he has been three times up and
+down the stairs, he does not feel he is up. Once fully awake himself,
+the next thing he does is to go upstairs to the stables, and wake up a
+horse. (The Black Forest house being built generally on the side of a
+steep hill, the ground floor is at the top, and the hay-loft at the
+bottom.) Then the horse, it would seem, must also have its
+constitutional round the house; and this seen to, the man goes downstairs
+into the kitchen and begins to chop wood, and when he has chopped
+sufficient wood he feels pleased with himself and begins to sing. All
+things considered, we came to the conclusion we could not do better than
+follow the excellent example set us. Even George was quite eager to get
+up that morning.
+
+We had a frugal breakfast at half-past four, and started away at five.
+Our road lay over a mountain, and from enquiries made in the village it
+appeared to be one of those roads you cannot possibly miss. I suppose
+everybody knows this sort of road. Generally, it leads you back to where
+you started from; and when it doesn't, you wish it did, so that at all
+events you might know where you were. I foresaw evil from the very
+first, and before we had accomplished a couple of miles we came up with
+it. The road divided into three. A worm-eaten sign-post indicated that
+the path to the left led to a place that we had never heard of--that was
+on no map. Its other arm, pointing out the direction of the middle road,
+had disappeared. The road to the right, so we all agreed, clearly led
+back again to the village.
+
+"The old man said distinctly," so Harris reminded us, "keep straight on
+round the hill."
+
+"Which hill?" George asked, pertinently.
+
+We were confronted by half a dozen, some of them big, some of them
+little.
+
+"He told us," continued Harris, "that we should come to a wood."
+
+"I see no reason to doubt him," commented George, "whichever road we
+take."
+
+As a matter of fact, a dense wood covered every hill.
+
+"And he said," murmured Harris, "that we should reach the top in about an
+hour and a half."
+
+"There it is," said George, "that I begin to disbelieve him."
+
+"Well, what shall we do?" said Harris.
+
+Now I happen to possess the bump of locality. It is not a virtue; I make
+no boast of it. It is merely an animal instinct that I cannot help. That
+things occasionally get in my way--mountains, precipices, rivers, and
+such like obstructions--is no fault of mine. My instinct is correct
+enough; it is the earth that is wrong. I led them by the middle road.
+That the middle road had not character enough to continue for any quarter
+of a mile in the same direction; that after three miles up and down hill
+it ended abruptly in a wasps' nest, was not a thing that should have been
+laid to my door. If the middle road had gone in the direction it ought
+to have done, it would have taken us to where we wanted to go, of that I
+am convinced.
+
+Even as it was, I would have continued to use this gift of mine to
+discover a fresh way had a proper spirit been displayed towards me. But
+I am not an angel--I admit this frankly,--and I decline to exert myself
+for the ungrateful and the ribald. Besides, I doubt if George and Harris
+would have followed me further in any event. Therefore it was that I
+washed my hands of the whole affair, and that Harris entered upon the
+vacancy.
+
+"Well," said Harris. "I suppose you are satisfied with what you have
+done?"
+
+"I am quite satisfied," I replied from the heap of stones where I was
+sitting. "So far, I have brought you with safety. I would continue to
+lead you further, but no artist can work without encouragement. You
+appear dissatisfied with me because you do not know where you are. For
+all you know, you may be just where you want to be. But I say nothing as
+to that; I expect no thanks. Go your own way; I have done with you
+both."
+
+I spoke, perhaps, with bitterness, but I could not help it. Not a word
+of kindness had I had all the weary way.
+
+"Do not misunderstand us," said Harris; "both George and myself feel that
+without your assistance we should never be where we now are. For that we
+give you every credit. But instinct is liable to error. What I propose
+to do is to substitute for it Science, which is exact. Now, where's the
+sun?"
+
+"Don't you think," said George, "that if we made our way back to the
+village, and hired a boy for a mark to guide us, it would save time in
+the end?"
+
+"It would be wasting hours," said Harris, with decision. "You leave this
+to me. I have been reading about this thing, and it has interested me."
+He took out his watch, and began turning himself round and round.
+
+"It's as simple as A B C," he continued. "You point the short hand at
+the sun, then you bisect the segment between the short hand and the
+twelve, and thus you get the north."
+
+He worried up and down for a while, then he fixed it.
+
+"Now I've got it," he said; "that's the north, where that wasps' nest is.
+Now give me the map."
+
+We handed it to him, and seating himself facing the wasps, he examined
+it.
+
+"Todtmoos from here," he said, "is south by south-west."
+
+"How do you mean, from here?" asked George.
+
+"Why, from here, where we are," returned Harris.
+
+"But where are we?" said George.
+
+This worried Harris for a time, but at length he cheered up.
+
+"It doesn't matter where we are," he said. "Wherever we are, Todtmoos is
+south by south-west. Come on, we are only wasting time."
+
+"I don't quite see how you make it out," said George, as he rose and
+shouldered his knapsack; "but I suppose it doesn't matter. We are out
+for our health, and it's all pretty!"
+
+"We shall be all right," said Harris, with cheery confidence. "We shall
+be in at Todtmoos before ten, don't you worry. And at Todtmoos we will
+have something to eat."
+
+He said that he, himself, fancied a beefsteak, followed by an omelette.
+George said that, personally, he intended to keep his mind off the
+subject until he saw Todtmoos.
+
+We walked for half an hour, then emerging upon an opening, we saw below
+us, about two miles away, the village through which we had passed that
+morning. It had a quaint church with an outside staircase, a somewhat
+unusual arrangement.
+
+The sight of it made me sad. We had been walking hard for three hours
+and a half, and had accomplished, apparently, about four miles. But
+Harris was delighted.
+
+"Now, at last," said Harris, "we know where we are."
+
+"I thought you said it didn't matter," George reminded him.
+
+"No more it does, practically," replied Harris, "but it is just as well
+to be certain. Now I feel more confidence in myself."
+
+"I'm not so sure about that being an advantage," muttered George. But I
+do not think Harris heard him.
+
+"We are now," continued Harris, "east of the sun, and Todtmoos is south-
+west of where we are. So that if--"
+
+He broke off. "By-the-by," he said, "do you remember whether I said the
+bisecting line of that segment pointed to the north or to the south?"
+
+"You said it pointed to the north," replied George.
+
+"Are you positive?" persisted Harris.
+
+"Positive," answered George "but don't let that influence your
+calculations. In all probability you were wrong."
+
+Harris thought for a while; then his brow cleared.
+
+"That's all right," he said; "of course, it's the north. It must be the
+north. How could it be the south? Now we must make for the west. Come
+on."
+
+"I am quite willing to make for the west," said George; "any point of the
+compass is the same to me. I only wish to remark that, at the present
+moment, we are going dead east."
+
+"No we are not," returned Harris; "we are going west."
+
+"We are going east, I tell you," said George.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't keep saying that," said Harris, "you confuse me."
+
+"I don't mind if I do," returned George; "I would rather do that than go
+wrong. I tell you we are going dead east."
+
+"What nonsense!" retorted Harris; "there's the sun."
+
+"I can see the sun," answered George, "quite distinctly. It may be where
+it ought to be, according to you and Science, or it may not. All I know
+is, that when we were down in the village, that particular hill with that
+particular lump of rock upon it was due north of us. At the present
+moment we are facing due east."
+
+"You are quite right," said Harris; "I forgot for the moment that we had
+turned round."
+
+"I should get into the habit of making a note of it, if I were you,"
+grumbled George; "it's a manoeuvre that will probably occur again more
+than once."
+
+We faced about, and walked in the other direction. At the end of forty
+minutes' climbing we again emerged upon an opening, and again the village
+lay just under our feet. On this occasion it was south of us.
+
+"This is very extraordinary," said Harris.
+
+"I see nothing remarkable about it," said George. "If you walk steadily
+round a village it is only natural that now and then you get a glimpse of
+it. Myself, I am glad to see it. It proves to me that we are not
+utterly lost."
+
+"It ought to be the other side of us," said Harris.
+
+"It will be in another hour or so," said George, "if we keep on."
+
+I said little myself; I was vexed with both of them; but I was glad to
+notice George evidently growing cross with Harris. It was absurd of
+Harris to fancy he could find the way by the sun.
+
+"I wish I knew," said Harris, thoughtfully, "for certain whether that
+bisecting line points to the north or to the south."
+
+"I should make up my mind about it," said George; "it's an important
+point."
+
+"It's impossible it can be the north," said Harris, "and I'll tell you
+why."
+
+"You needn't trouble," said George; "I am quite prepared to believe it
+isn't."
+
+"You said just now it was," said Harris, reproachfully.
+
+"I said nothing of the sort," retorted George. "I said you said it was--a
+very different thing. If you think it isn't, let's go the other way.
+It'll be a change, at all events."
+
+So Harris worked things out according to the contrary calculation, and
+again we plunged into the wood; and again after half an hour's stiff
+climbing we came in view of that same village. True, we were a little
+higher, and this time it lay between us and the sun.
+
+"I think," said George, as he stood looking down at it, "this is the best
+view we've had of it, as yet. There is only one other point from which
+we can see it. After that, I propose we go down into it and get some
+rest."
+
+"I don't believe it's the same village," said Harris; "it can't be."
+
+"There's no mistaking that church," said George. "But maybe it is a case
+on all fours with that Prague statue. Possibly, the authorities
+hereabout have had made some life-sized models of that village, and have
+stuck them about the Forest to see where the thing would look best.
+Anyhow, which way do we go now?"
+
+"I don't know," said Harris, "and I don't care. I have done my best;
+you've done nothing but grumble, and confuse me."
+
+"I may have been critical," admitted George "but look at the thing from
+my point of view. One of you says he's got an instinct, and leads me to
+a wasps' nest in the middle of a wood."
+
+"I can't help wasps building in a wood," I replied.
+
+"I don't say you can," answered George. "I am not arguing; I am merely
+stating incontrovertible facts. The other one, who leads me up and down
+hill for hours on scientific principles, doesn't know the north from the
+south, and is never quite sure whether he's turned round or whether he
+hasn't. Personally, I profess to no instincts beyond the ordinary, nor
+am I a scientist. But two fields off I can see a man. I am going to
+offer him the worth of the hay he is cutting, which I estimate at one
+mark fifty pfennig, to leave his work, and lead me to within sight of
+Todtmoos. If you two fellows like to follow, you can. If not, you can
+start another system and work it out by yourselves."
+
+George's plan lacked both originality and aplomb, but at the moment it
+appealed to us. Fortunately, we had worked round to a very short
+distance away from the spot where we had originally gone wrong; with the
+result that, aided by the gentleman of the scythe, we recovered the road,
+and reached Todtmoos four hours later than we had calculated to reach it,
+with an appetite that took forty-five minutes' steady work in silence to
+abate.
+
+From Todtmoos we had intended to walk down to the Rhine; but having
+regard to our extra exertions of the morning, we decided to promenade in
+a carriage, as the French would say: and for this purpose hired a
+picturesque-looking vehicle, drawn by a horse that I should have called
+barrel-bodied but for contrast with his driver, in comparison with whom
+he was angular. In Germany every vehicle is arranged for a pair of
+horses, but drawn generally by one. This gives to the equipage a lop-
+sided appearance, according to our notions, but it is held here to
+indicate style. The idea to be conveyed is that you usually drive a pair
+of horses, but that for the moment you have mislaid the other one. The
+German driver is not what we should call a first-class whip. He is at
+his best when he is asleep. Then, at all events, he is harmless; and the
+horse being, generally speaking, intelligent and experienced, progress
+under these conditions is comparatively safe. If in Germany they could
+only train the horse to collect the money at the end of the journey,
+there would be no need for a coachman at all. This would be a distinct
+relief to the passenger, for when the German coachman is awake and not
+cracking his whip he is generally occupied in getting himself into
+trouble or out of it. He is better at the former. Once I recollect
+driving down a steep Black Forest hill with a couple of ladies. It was
+one of those roads winding corkscrew-wise down the slope. The hill rose
+at an angle of seventy-five on the off-side, and fell away at an angle of
+seventy-five on the near-side. We were proceeding very comfortably, the
+driver, we were happy to notice, with his eyes shut, when suddenly
+something, a bad dream or indigestion, awoke him. He seized the reins,
+and, by an adroit movement, pulled the near-side horse over the edge,
+where it clung, half supported by the traces. Our driver did not appear
+in the least annoyed or surprised; both horses, I also, noticed, seemed
+equally used to the situation. We got out, and he got down. He took
+from under the seat a huge clasp-knife, evidently kept there for the
+purpose, and deftly cut the traces. The horse, thus released, rolled
+over and over until he struck the road again some fifty feet below. There
+he regained his feet and stood waiting for us. We re-entered the
+carriage and descended with the single horse until we came to him. There,
+with the help of some bits of string, our driver harnessed him again, and
+we continued on our way. What impressed me was the evident
+accustomedness of both driver and horses to this method of working down a
+hill.
+
+Evidently to them it appeared a short and convenient cut. I should not
+have been surprised had the man suggested our strapping ourselves in, and
+then rolling over and over, carriage and all, to the bottom.
+
+Another peculiarity of the German coachman is that he never attempts to
+pull in or to pull up. He regulates his rate of speed, not by the pace
+of the horse, but by manipulation of the brake. For eight miles an hour
+he puts it on slightly, so that it only scrapes the wheel, producing a
+continuous sound as of the sharpening of a saw; for four miles an hour he
+screws it down harder, and you travel to an accompaniment of groans and
+shrieks, suggestive of a symphony of dying pigs. When he desires to come
+to a full stop, he puts it on to its full. If his brake be a good one,
+he calculates he can stop his carriage, unless the horse be an extra
+powerful animal, in less than twice its own length. Neither the German
+driver nor the German horse knows, apparently, that you can stop a
+carriage by any other method. The German horse continues to pull with
+his full strength until he finds it impossible to move the vehicle
+another inch; then he rests. Horses of other countries are quite willing
+to stop when the idea is suggested to them. I have known horses content
+to go even quite slowly. But your German horse, seemingly, is built for
+one particular speed, and is unable to depart from it. I am stating
+nothing but the literal, unadorned truth, when I say I have seen a German
+coachman, with the reins lying loose over the splash-board, working his
+brake with both hands, in terror lest he would not be in time to avoid a
+collision.
+
+At Waldshut, one of those little sixteenth-century towns through which
+the Rhine flows during its earlier course, we came across that
+exceedingly common object of the Continent: the travelling Briton grieved
+and surprised at the unacquaintance of the foreigner with the subtleties
+of the English language. When we entered the station he was, in very
+fair English, though with a slight Somersetshire accent, explaining to a
+porter for the tenth time, as he informed us, the simple fact that though
+he himself had a ticket for Donaueschingen, and wanted to go to
+Donaueschingen, to see the source of the Danube, which is not there,
+though they tell you it is, he wished his bicycle to be sent on to Engen
+and his bag to Constance, there to await his arrival. He was hot and
+angry with the effort of the thing. The porter was a young man in years,
+but at the moment looked old and miserable. I offered my services. I
+wish now I had not--though not so fervently, I expect, as he, the
+speechless one, came subsequently to wish this. All three routes, so the
+porter explained to us, were complicated, necessitating changing and re-
+changing. There was not much time for calm elucidation, as our own train
+was starting in a few minutes. The man himself was voluble--always a
+mistake when anything entangled has to be made clear; while the porter
+was only too eager to get the job done with and so breathe again. It
+dawned upon me ten minutes later, when thinking the matter over in the
+train, that though I had agreed with the porter that it would be best for
+the bicycle to go by way of Immendingen, and had agreed to his booking it
+to Immendingen, I had neglected to give instructions for its departure
+from Immendingen. Were I of a despondent temperament I should be
+worrying myself at the present moment with the reflection that in all
+probability that bicycle is still at Immendingen to this day. But I
+regard it as good philosophy to endeavour always to see the brighter side
+of things. Possibly the porter corrected my omission on his own account,
+or some simple miracle may have happened to restore that bicycle to its
+owner some time before the end of his tour. The bag we sent to
+Radolfzell: but here I console myself with the recollection that it was
+labelled Constance; and no doubt after a while the railway authorities,
+finding it unclaimed at Radolfzell, forwarded it on to Constance.
+
+But all this is apart from the moral I wished to draw from the incident.
+The true inwardness of the situation lay in the indignation of this
+Britisher at finding a German railway porter unable to comprehend
+English. The moment we spoke to him he expressed this indignation in no
+measured terms.
+
+"Thank you very much indeed," he said; "it's simple enough. I want to go
+to Donaueschingen myself by train; from Donaueschingen I am going to walk
+to Geisengen; from Geisengen I am going to take the train to Engen, and
+from Engen I am going to bicycle to Constance. But I don't want to take
+my bag with me; I want to find it at Constance when I get there. I have
+been trying to explain the thing to this fool for the last ten minutes;
+but I can't get it into him."
+
+"It is very disgraceful," I agreed. "Some of these German workmen know
+hardly any other language than their own."
+
+"I have gone over it with him," continued the man, "on the time table,
+and explained it by pantomime. Even then I could not knock it into him."
+
+"I can hardly believe you," I again remarked; "you would think the thing
+explained itself."
+
+Harris was angry with the man; he wished to reprove him for his folly in
+journeying through the outlying portions of a foreign clime, and seeking
+in such to accomplish complicated railway tricks without knowing a word
+of the language of the country. But I checked the impulsiveness of
+Harris, and pointed out to him the great and good work at which the man
+was unconsciously assisting.
+
+Shakespeare and Milton may have done their little best to spread
+acquaintance with the English tongue among the less favoured inhabitants
+of Europe. Newton and Darwin may have rendered their language a
+necessity among educated and thoughtful foreigners. Dickens and Ouida
+(for your folk who imagine that the literary world is bounded by the
+prejudices of New Grub Street, would be surprised and grieved at the
+position occupied abroad by this at-home-sneered-at lady) may have helped
+still further to popularise it. But the man who has spread the knowledge
+of English from Cape St. Vincent to the Ural Mountains is the Englishman
+who, unable or unwilling to learn a single word of any language but his
+own, travels purse in hand into every corner of the Continent. One may
+be shocked at his ignorance, annoyed at his stupidity, angry at his
+presumption. But the practical fact remains; he it is that is
+anglicising Europe. For him the Swiss peasant tramps through the snow on
+winter evenings to attend the English class open in every village. For
+him the coachman and the guard, the chambermaid and the laundress, pore
+over their English grammars and colloquial phrase books. For him the
+foreign shopkeeper and merchant send their sons and daughters in their
+thousands to study in every English town. For him it is that every
+foreign hotel- and restaurant-keeper adds to his advertisement: "Only
+those with fair knowledge of English need apply."
+
+Did the English-speaking races make it their rule to speak anything else
+than English, the marvellous progress of the English tongue throughout
+the world would stop. The English-speaking man stands amid the strangers
+and jingles his gold.
+
+"Here," cries, "is payment for all such as can speak English."
+
+He it is who is the great educator. Theoretically we may scold him;
+practically we should take our hats off to him. He is the missionary of
+the English tongue.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+We are grieved at the earthly instincts of the German--A superb view, but
+no restaurant--Continental opinion of the Englishman--That he does not
+know enough to come in out of the rain--There comes a weary traveller
+with a brick--The hurting of the dog--An undesirable family residence--A
+fruitful region--A merry old soul comes up the hill--George, alarmed at
+the lateness of the hour, hastens down the other side--Harris follows
+him, to show him the way--I hate being alone, and follow
+Harris--Pronunciation specially designed for use of foreigners.
+
+A thing that vexes much the high-class Anglo-Saxon soul is the earthly
+instinct prompting the German to fix a restaurant at the goal of every
+excursion. On mountain summit, in fairy glen, on lonely pass, by
+waterfall or winding stream, stands ever the busy Wirtschaft. How can
+one rhapsodise over a view when surrounded by beer-stained tables? How
+lose one's self in historical reverie amid the odour of roast veal and
+spinach?
+
+One day, on elevating thoughts intent, we climbed through tangled woods.
+
+"And at the top," said Harris, bitterly, as we paused to breathe a space
+and pull our belts a hole tighter, "there will be a gaudy restaurant,
+where people will be guzzling beefsteaks and plum tarts and drinking
+white wine."
+
+"Do you think so?" said George.
+
+"Sure to be," answered Harris; "you know their way. Not one grove will
+they consent to dedicate to solitude and contemplation; not one height
+will they leave to the lover of nature unpolluted by the gross and the
+material."
+
+"I calculate," I remarked, "that we shall be there a little before one
+o'clock, provided we don't dawdle."
+
+"The 'mittagstisch' will be just ready," groaned Harris, "with possibly
+some of those little blue trout they catch about here. In Germany one
+never seems able to get away from food and drink. It is maddening!"
+
+We pushed on, and in the beauty of the walk forgot our indignation. My
+estimate proved to be correct.
+
+At a quarter to one, said Harris, who was leading:
+
+"Here we are; I can see the summit."
+
+"Any sign of that restaurant?" said George.
+
+"I don't notice it," replied Harris; "but it's there, you may be sure;
+confound it!"
+
+Five minutes later we stood upon the top. We looked north, south, east
+and west; then we looked at one another.
+
+"Grand view, isn't it?" said Harris.
+
+"Magnificent," I agreed.
+
+"Superb," remarked George.
+
+"They have had the good sense for once," said Harris, "to put that
+restaurant out of sight."
+
+"They do seem to have hidden it," said George. "One doesn't mind the
+thing so much when it is not forced under one's nose," said Harris.
+
+"Of course, in its place," I observed, "a restaurant is right enough."
+
+"I should like to know where they have put it," said George.
+
+"Suppose we look for it?" said Harris, with inspiration.
+
+It seemed a good idea. I felt curious myself. We agreed to explore in
+different directions, returning to the summit to report progress. In
+half an hour we stood together once again. There was no need for words.
+The face of one and all of us announced plainly that at last we had
+discovered a recess of German nature untarnished by the sordid suggestion
+of food or drink.
+
+"I should never have believed it possible," said Harris: "would you?"
+
+"I should say," I replied, "that this is the only square quarter of a
+mile in the entire Fatherland unprovided with one."
+
+"And we three strangers have struck it," said George, "without an
+effort."
+
+"True," I observed. "By pure good fortune we are now enabled to feast
+our finer senses undisturbed by appeal to our lower nature. Observe the
+light upon those distant peaks; is it not ravishing?"
+
+"Talking of nature," said George, "which should you say was the nearest
+way down?"
+
+"The road to the left," I replied, after consulting the guide book,
+"takes us to Sonnensteig--where, by-the-by, I observe the 'Goldener
+Adler' is well spoken of--in about two hours. The road to the right,
+though somewhat longer, commands more extensive prospects."
+
+"One prospect," said Harris, "is very much like another prospect; don't
+you think so?"
+
+"Personally," said George, "I am going by the left-hand road." And
+Harris and I went after him.
+
+But we were not to get down so soon as we had anticipated. Storms come
+quickly in these regions, and before we had walked for quarter of an hour
+it became a question of seeking shelter or living for the rest of the day
+in soaked clothes. We decided on the former alternative, and selected a
+tree that, under ordinary circumstances, should have been ample
+protection. But a Black Forest thunderstorm is not an ordinary
+circumstance. We consoled ourselves at first by telling each other that
+at such a rate it could not last long. Next, we endeavoured to comfort
+ourselves with the reflection that if it did we should soon be too wet to
+fear getting wetter.
+
+"As it turned out," said Harris, "I should have been almost glad if there
+had been a restaurant up here."
+
+"I see no advantage in being both wet _and_ hungry," said George. "I
+shall give it another five minutes, then I am going on."
+
+"These mountain solitudes," I remarked, "are very attractive in fine
+weather. On a rainy day, especially if you happen to be past the age
+when--"
+
+At this point there hailed us a voice, proceeding from a stout gentleman,
+who stood some fifty feet away from us under a big umbrella.
+
+"Won't you come inside?" asked the stout gentleman.
+
+"Inside where?" I called back. I thought at first he was one of those
+fools that will try to be funny when there is nothing to be funny about.
+
+"Inside the restaurant," he answered.
+
+We left our shelter and made for him. We wished for further information
+about this thing.
+
+"I did call to you from the window," said the stout gentleman, as we drew
+near to him, "but I suppose you did not hear me. This storm may last for
+another hour; you will get _so_ wet."
+
+He was a kindly old gentleman; he seemed quite anxious about us.
+
+I said: "It is very kind of you to have come out. We are not lunatics.
+We have not been standing under that tree for the last half-hour knowing
+all the time there was a restaurant, hidden by the trees, within twenty
+yards of us. We had no idea we were anywhere near a restaurant."
+
+"I thought maybe you hadn't," said the old gentleman; "that is why I
+came."
+
+It appeared that all the people in the inn had been watching us from the
+windows also, wondering why we stood there looking miserable. If it had
+not been for this nice old gentleman the fools would have remained
+watching us, I suppose, for the rest of the afternoon. The landlord
+excused himself by saying he thought we looked like English. It is no
+figure of speech. On the Continent they do sincerely believe that every
+Englishman is mad. They are as convinced of it as is every English
+peasant that Frenchmen live on frogs. Even when one makes a direct
+personal effort to disabuse them of the impression one is not always
+successful.
+
+It was a comfortable little restaurant, where they cooked well, while the
+Tischwein was really most passable. We stopped there for a couple of
+hours, and dried ourselves and fed ourselves, and talked about the view;
+and just before we left an incident occurred that shows how much more
+stirring in this world are the influences of evil compared with those of
+good.
+
+A traveller entered. He seemed a careworn man. He carried a brick in
+his hand, tied to a piece of rope. He entered nervously and hurriedly,
+closed the door carefully behind him, saw to it that it was fastened,
+peered out of the window long and earnestly, and then, with a sigh of
+relief, laid his brick upon the bench beside him and called for food and
+drink.
+
+There was something mysterious about the whole affair. One wondered what
+he was going to do with the brick, why he had closed the door so
+carefully, why he had looked so anxiously from the window; but his aspect
+was too wretched to invite conversation, and we forbore, therefore, to
+ask him questions. As he ate and drank he grew more cheerful, sighed
+less often. Later he stretched his legs, lit an evil-smelling cigar, and
+puffed in calm contentment.
+
+Then it happened. It happened too suddenly for any detailed explanation
+of the thing to be possible. I recollect a Fraulein entering the room
+from the kitchen with a pan in her hand. I saw her cross to the outer
+door. The next moment the whole room was in an uproar. One was reminded
+of those pantomime transformation scenes where, from among floating
+clouds, slow music, waving flowers, and reclining fairies, one is
+suddenly transported into the midst of shouting policemen tumbling
+yelling babies, swells fighting pantaloons, sausages and harlequins,
+buttered slides and clowns. As the Fraulein of the pan touched the door
+it flew open, as though all the spirits of sin had been pressed against
+it, waiting. Two pigs and a chicken rushed into the room; a cat that had
+been sleeping on a beer-barrel spluttered into fiery life. The Fraulein
+threw her pan into the air and lay down on the floor. The gentleman with
+the brick sprang to his feet, upsetting the table before him with
+everything upon it.
+
+One looked to see the cause of this disaster: one discovered it at once
+in the person of a mongrel terrier with pointed ears and a squirrel's
+tail. The landlord rushed out from another door, and attempted to kick
+him out of the room. Instead, he kicked one of the pigs, the fatter of
+the two. It was a vigorous, well-planted kick, and the pig got the whole
+of it; none of it was wasted. One felt sorry for the poor animal; but no
+amount of sorrow anyone else might feel for him could compare with the
+sorrow he felt for himself. He stopped running about; he sat down in the
+middle of the room, and appealed to the solar system generally to observe
+this unjust thing that had come upon him. They must have heard his
+complaint in the valleys round about, and have wondered what upheaval of
+nature was taking place among the hills.
+
+As for the hen it scuttled, screaming, every way at once. It was a
+marvellous bird: it seemed to be able to run up a straight wall quite
+easily; and it and the cat between them fetched down mostly everything
+that was not already on the floor. In less than forty seconds there were
+nine people in that room, all trying to kick one dog. Possibly, now and
+again, one or another may have succeeded, for occasionally the dog would
+stop barking in order to howl. But it did not discourage him. Everything
+has to be paid for, he evidently argued, even a pig and chicken hunt;
+and, on the whole, the game was worth it.
+
+Besides, he had the satisfaction of observing that, for every kick he
+received, most other living things in the room got two. As for the
+unfortunate pig--the stationary one, the one that still sat lamenting in
+the centre of the room--he must have averaged a steady four. Trying to
+kick this dog was like playing football with a ball that was never
+there--not when you went to kick it, but after you had started to kick
+it, and had gone too far to stop yourself, so that the kick had to go on
+in any case, your only hope being that your foot would find something or
+another solid to stop it, and so save you from sitting down on the floor
+noisily and completely. When anybody did kick the dog it was by pure
+accident, when they were not expecting to kick him; and, generally
+speaking, this took them so unawares that, after kicking him, they fell
+over him. And everybody, every half-minute, would be certain to fall
+over the pig the sitting pig, the one incapable of getting out of
+anybody's way.
+
+How long the scrimmage might have lasted it is impossible to say. It was
+ended by the judgment of George. For a while he had been seeking to
+catch, not the dog but the remaining pig, the one still capable of
+activity. Cornering it at last, he persuaded it to cease running round
+and round the room, and instead to take a spin outside. It shot through
+the door with one long wail.
+
+We always desire the thing we have not. One pig, a chicken, nine people,
+and a cat, were as nothing in that dog's opinion compared with the quarry
+that was disappearing. Unwisely, he darted after it, and George closed
+the door upon him and shot the bolt.
+
+Then the landlord stood up, and surveyed all the things that were lying
+on the floor.
+
+"That's a playful dog of yours," said he to the man who had come in with
+the brick.
+
+"He is not my dog," replied the man sullenly.
+
+"Whose dog is it then?" said the landlord.
+
+"I don't know whose dog it is," answered the man.
+
+"That won't do for me, you know," said the landlord, picking up a picture
+of the German Emperor, and wiping beer from it with his sleeve.
+
+"I know it won't," replied the man; "I never expected it would. I'm
+tired of telling people it isn't my dog. They none of them believe me."
+
+"What do you want to go about with him for, if he's not your dog?" said
+the landlord. "What's the attraction about him?"
+
+"I don't go about with him," replied the man; "he goes about with me. He
+picked me up this morning at ten o'clock, and he won't leave me. I
+thought I had got rid of him when I came in here. I left him busy
+killing a duck more than a quarter of an hour away. I'll have to pay for
+that, I expect, on my way back."
+
+"Have you tried throwing stones at him?" asked Harris.
+
+"Have I tried throwing stones at him!" replied the man, contemptuously.
+"I've been throwing stones at him till my arm aches with throwing stones;
+and he thinks it's a game, and brings them back to me. I've been
+carrying this beastly brick about with me for over an hour, in the hope
+of being able to drown him, but he never comes near enough for me to get
+hold of him. He just sits six inches out of reach with his mouth open,
+and looks at me."
+
+"It's the funniest story I've heard for a long while," said the landlord.
+
+"Glad it amuses somebody," said the man.
+
+We left him helping the landlord to pick up the broken things, and went
+our way. A dozen yards outside the door the faithful animal was waiting
+for his friend. He looked tired, but contented. He was evidently a dog
+of strange and sudden fancies, and we feared for the moment lest he might
+take a liking to us. But he let us pass with indifference. His loyalty
+to this unresponsive man was touching; and we made no attempt to
+undermine it.
+
+Having completed to our satisfaction the Black Forest, we journeyed on
+our wheels through Alt Breisach and Colmar to Munster; whence we started
+a short exploration of the Vosges range, where, according to the present
+German Emperor, humanity stops. Of old, Alt Breisach, a rocky fortress
+with the river now on one side of it and now on the other--for in its
+inexperienced youth the Rhine never seems to have been quite sure of its
+way,--must, as a place of residence, have appealed exclusively to the
+lover of change and excitement. Whoever the war was between, and
+whatever it was about, Alt Breisach was bound to be in it. Everybody
+besieged it, most people captured it; the majority of them lost it again;
+nobody seemed able to keep it. Whom he belonged to, and what he was, the
+dweller in Alt Breisach could never have been quite sure. One day he
+would be a Frenchman, and then before he could learn enough French to pay
+his taxes he would be an Austrian. While trying to discover what you did
+in order to be a good Austrian, he would find he was no longer an
+Austrian, but a German, though what particular German out of the dozen
+must always have been doubtful to him. One day he would discover that he
+was a Catholic, the next an ardent Protestant. The only thing that could
+have given any stability to his existence must have been the monotonous
+necessity of paying heavily for the privilege of being whatever for the
+moment he was. But when one begins to think of these things one finds
+oneself wondering why anybody in the Middle Ages, except kings and tax
+collectors, ever took the trouble to live at all.
+
+For variety and beauty, the Vosges will not compare with the hills of the
+Schwarzwald. The advantage about them from the tourist's point of view
+is their superior poverty. The Vosges peasant has not the unromantic air
+of contented prosperity that spoils his _vis-a-vis_ across the Rhine. The
+villages and farms possess more the charm of decay. Another point
+wherein the Vosges district excels is its ruins. Many of its numerous
+castles are perched where you might think only eagles would care to
+build. In others, commenced by the Romans and finished by the
+Troubadours, covering acres with the maze of their still standing walls,
+one may wander for hours.
+
+The fruiterer and greengrocer is a person unknown in the Vosges. Most
+things of that kind grow wild, and are to be had for the picking. It is
+difficult to keep to any programme when walking through the Vosges, the
+temptation on a hot day to stop and eat fruit generally being too strong
+for resistance. Raspberries, the most delicious I have ever tasted, wild
+strawberries, currants, and gooseberries, grow upon the hill-sides as
+black-berries by English lanes. The Vosges small boy is not called upon
+to rob an orchard; he can make himself ill without sin. Orchards exist
+in the Vosges mountains in plenty; but to trespass into one for the
+purpose of stealing fruit would be as foolish as for a fish to try and
+get into a swimming bath without paying. Still, of course, mistakes do
+occur.
+
+One afternoon in the course of a climb we emerged upon a plateau, where
+we lingered perhaps too long, eating more fruit than may have been good
+for us; it was so plentiful around us, so varied. We commenced with a
+few late strawberries, and from those we passed to raspberries. Then
+Harris found a greengage-tree with some early fruit upon it, just
+perfect.
+
+"This is about the best thing we have struck," said George; "we had
+better make the most of this." Which was good advice, on the face of it.
+
+"It is a pity," said Harris, "that the pears are still so hard."
+
+He grieved about this for a while, but later on came across some
+remarkably fine yellow plums and these consoled him somewhat.
+
+"I suppose we are still a bit too far north for pineapples," said George.
+"I feel I could just enjoy a fresh pineapple. This commonplace fruit
+palls upon one after a while."
+
+"Too much bush fruit and not enough tree, is the fault I find," said
+Harris. "Myself, I should have liked a few more greengages."
+
+"Here is a man coming up the hill," I observed, "who looks like a native.
+Maybe, he will know where we can find some more greengages."
+
+"He walks well for an old chap," remarked Harris.
+
+He certainly was climbing the hill at a remarkable pace. Also, so far as
+we were able to judge at that distance, he appeared to be in a remarkably
+cheerful mood, singing and shouting at the top of his voice,
+gesticulating, and waving his arms.
+
+"What a merry old soul it is," said Harris; "it does one good to watch
+him. But why does he carry his stick over his shoulder? Why doesn't he
+use it to help him up the hill?"
+
+"Do you know, I don't think it is a stick," said George.
+
+"What can it be, then?" asked Harris.
+
+"Well, it looks to me," said George, "more like a gun."
+
+"You don't think we can have made a mistake?" suggested Harris. "You
+don't think this can be anything in the nature of a private orchard?"
+
+I said: "Do you remember the sad thing that happened in the South of
+France some two years ago? A soldier picked some cherries as he passed a
+house, and the French peasant to whom the cherries belonged came out, and
+without a word of warning shot him dead."
+
+"But surely you are not allowed to shoot a man dead for picking fruit,
+even in France?" said George.
+
+"Of course not," I answered. "It was quite illegal. The only excuse
+offered by his counsel was that he was of a highly excitable disposition,
+and especially keen about these particular cherries."
+
+"I recollect something about the case," said Harris, "now you mention it.
+I believe the district in which it happened--the 'Commune,' as I think it
+is called--had to pay heavy compensation to the relatives of the deceased
+soldier; which was only fair."
+
+George said: "I am tired of this place. Besides, it's getting late."
+
+Harris said: "If he goes at that rate he will fall and hurt himself.
+Besides, I don't believe he knows the way."
+
+I felt lonesome up there all by myself, with nobody to speak to. Besides,
+not since I was a boy, I reflected, had I enjoyed a run down a really
+steep hill. I thought I would see if I could revive the sensation. It
+is a jerky exercise, but good, I should say, for the liver.
+
+We slept that night at Barr, a pleasant little town on the way to St.
+Ottilienberg, an interesting old convent among the mountains, where you
+are waited upon by real nuns, and your bill made out by a priest. At
+Barr, just before supper a tourist entered. He looked English, but spoke
+a language the like of which I have never heard before. Yet it was an
+elegant and fine-sounding language. The landlord stared at him blankly;
+the landlady shook her head. He sighed, and tried another, which somehow
+recalled to me forgotten memories, though, at the time, I could not fix
+it. But again nobody understood him.
+
+"This is damnable," he said aloud to himself.
+
+"Ah, you are English!" exclaimed the landlord, brightening up.
+
+"And Monsieur looks tired," added the bright little landlady. "Monsieur
+will have supper."
+
+They both spoke English excellently, nearly as well as they spoke French
+and German; and they bustled about and made him comfortable. At supper
+he sat next to me, and I talked to him.
+
+"Tell me," I said--I was curious on the subject--"what language was it
+you spoke when you first came in?"
+
+"German," he explained.
+
+"Oh," I replied, "I beg your pardon."
+
+"You did not understand it?" he continued.
+
+"It must have been my fault," I answered; "my knowledge is extremely
+limited. One picks up a little here and there as one goes about, but of
+course that is a different thing."
+
+"But _they_ did not understand it," he replied, "the landlord and his
+wife; and it is their own language."
+
+"I do not think so," I said. "The children hereabout speak German, it is
+true, and our landlord and landlady know German to a certain point. But
+throughout Alsace and Lorraine the old people still talk French."
+
+"And I spoke to them in French also," he added, "and they understood that
+no better."
+
+"It is certainly very curious," I agreed.
+
+"It is more than curious," he replied; "in my case it is
+incomprehensible. I possess a diploma for modern languages. I won my
+scholarship purely on the strength of my French and German. The
+correctness of my construction, the purity of my pronunciation, was
+considered at my college to be quite remarkable. Yet, when I come abroad
+hardly anybody understands a word I say. Can you explain it?"
+
+"I think I can," I replied. "Your pronunciation is too faultless. You
+remember what the Scotsman said when for the first time in his life he
+tasted real whisky: 'It may be puir, but I canna drink it'; so it is with
+your German. It strikes one less as a language than as an exhibition. If
+I might offer advice, I should say: Mispronounce as much as possible, and
+throw in as many mistakes as you can think of."
+
+It is the same everywhere. Each country keeps a special pronunciation
+exclusively for the use of foreigners--a pronunciation they never dream
+of using themselves, that they cannot understand when it is used. I once
+heard an English lady explaining to a Frenchman how to pronounce the word
+Have.
+
+"You will pronounce it," said the lady reproachfully, "as if it were
+spelt H-a-v. It isn't. There is an 'e' at the end."
+
+"But I thought," said the pupil, "that you did not sound the 'e' at the
+end of h-a-v-e."
+
+"No more you do," explained his teacher. "It is what we call a mute 'e';
+but it exercises a modifying influence on the preceding vowel."
+
+Before that, he used to say "have" quite intelligently. Afterwards, when
+he came to the word he would stop dead, collect his thoughts, and give
+expression to a sound that only the context could explain.
+
+Putting aside the sufferings of the early martyrs, few men, I suppose,
+have gone through more than I myself went through in trying to I attain
+the correct pronunciation of the German word for church--"Kirche." Long
+before I had done with it I had determined never to go to church in
+Germany, rather than be bothered with it.
+
+"No, no," my teacher would explain--he was a painstaking gentleman; "you
+say it as if it were spelt K-i-r-c-h-k-e. There is no k. It is--." And
+he would illustrate to me again, for the twentieth time that morning, how
+it should be pronounced; the sad thing being that I could never for the
+life of me detect any difference between the way he said it and the way I
+said it. So he would try a new method.
+
+"You say it from your throat," he would explain. He was quite right; I
+did. "I want you to say it from down here," and with a fat forefinger he
+would indicate the region from where I was to start. After painful
+efforts, resulting in sounds suggestive of anything rather than a place
+of worship, I would excuse myself.
+
+"I really fear it is impossible," I would say. "You see, for years I
+have always talked with my mouth, as it were; I never knew a man could
+talk with his stomach. I doubt if it is not too late now for me to
+learn."
+
+By spending hours in dark corners, and practising in silent streets, to
+the terror of chance passers-by, I came at last to pronounce this word
+correctly. My teacher was delighted with me, and until I came to Germany
+I was pleased with myself. In Germany I found that nobody understood
+what I meant by it. I never got near a church with it. I had to drop
+the correct pronunciation, and painstakingly go back to my first wrong
+pronunciation. Then they would brighten up, and tell me it was round the
+corner, or down the next street, as the case might be.
+
+I also think pronunciation of a foreign tongue could be better taught
+than by demanding from the pupil those internal acrobatic feats that are
+generally impossible and always useless. This is the sort of instruction
+one receives:
+
+"Press your tonsils against the underside of your larynx. Then with the
+convex part of the septum curved upwards so as almost--but not quite--to
+touch the uvula, try with the tip of your tongue to reach your thyroid.
+Take a deep breath, and compress your glottis. Now, without opening your
+lips, say 'Garoo.'"
+
+And when you have done it they are not satisfied.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+An examination into the character and behaviour of the German student--The
+German Mensur--Uses and abuses of use--Views of an impressionist--The
+humour of the thing--Recipe for making savages--The Jungfrau: her
+peculiar taste in laces--The Kneipe--How to rub a Salamander--Advice to
+the stranger--A story that might have ended sadly--Of two men and two
+wives--Together with a bachelor.
+
+On our way home we included a German University town, being wishful to
+obtain an insight into the ways of student life, a curiosity that the
+courtesy of German friends enabled us to gratify.
+
+The English boy plays till he is fifteen, and works thence till twenty.
+In Germany it is the child that works; the young man that plays. The
+German boy goes to school at seven o'clock in the summer, at eight in the
+winter, and at school he studies. The result is that at sixteen he has a
+thorough knowledge of the classics and mathematics, knows as much history
+as any man compelled to belong to a political party is wise in knowing,
+together with a thorough grounding in modern languages. Therefore his
+eight College Semesters, extending over four years, are, except for the
+young man aiming at a professorship, unnecessarily ample. He is not a
+sportsman, which is a pity, for he should make good one. He plays
+football a little, bicycles still less; plays French billiards in stuffy
+cafes more. But generally speaking he, or the majority of him, lays out
+his time bummeling, beer drinking, and fighting. If he be the son of a
+wealthy father he joins a Korps--to belong to a crack Korps costs about
+four hundred pounds a year. If he be a middle-class young man, he enrols
+himself in a Burschenschaft, or a Landsmannschaft, which is a little
+cheaper. These companies are again broken up into smaller circles, in
+which attempt is made to keep to nationality. There are the Swabians,
+from Swabia; the Frankonians, descendants of the Franks; the Thuringians,
+and so forth. In practice, of course, this results as all such attempts
+do result--I believe half our Gordon Highlanders are Cockneys--but the
+picturesque object is obtained of dividing each University into some
+dozen or so separate companies of students, each one with its distinctive
+cap and colours, and, quite as important, its own particular beer hall,
+into which no other student wearing his colours may come.
+
+The chief work of these student companies is to fight among themselves,
+or with some rival Korps or Schaft, the celebrated German Mensur.
+
+The Mensur has been described so often and so thoroughly that I do not
+intend to bore my readers with any detailed account of it. I merely come
+forward as an impressionist, and I write purposely the impression of my
+first Mensur, because I believe that first impressions are more true and
+useful than opinions blunted by intercourse, or shaped by influence.
+
+A Frenchman or a Spaniard will seek to persuade you that the bull-ring is
+an institution got up chiefly for the benefit of the bull. The horse
+which you imagined to be screaming with pain was only laughing at the
+comical appearance presented by its own inside. Your French or Spanish
+friend contrasts its glorious and exciting death in the ring with the
+cold-blooded brutality of the knacker's yard. If you do not keep a tight
+hold of your head, you come away with the desire to start an agitation
+for the inception of the bull-ring in England as an aid to chivalry. No
+doubt Torquemada was convinced of the humanity of the Inquisition. To a
+stout gentleman, suffering, perhaps, from cramp or rheumatism, an hour or
+so on the rack was really a physical benefit. He would rise feeling more
+free in his joints--more elastic, as one might say, than he had felt for
+years. English huntsmen regard the fox as an animal to be envied. A
+day's excellent sport is provided for him free of charge, during which he
+is the centre of attraction.
+
+Use blinds one to everything one does not wish to see. Every third
+German gentleman you meet in the street still bears, and will bear to his
+grave, marks of the twenty to a hundred duels he has fought in his
+student days. The German children play at the Mensur in the nursery,
+rehearse it in the gymnasium. The Germans have come to persuade
+themselves there is no brutality in it--nothing offensive, nothing
+degrading. Their argument is that it schools the German youth to
+coolness and courage. If this could be proved, the argument,
+particularly in a country where every man is a soldier, would be
+sufficiently one-sided. But is the virtue of the prize-fighter the
+virtue of the soldier? One doubts it. Nerve and dash are surely of more
+service in the field than a temperament of unreasoning indifference as to
+what is happening to one. As a matter of fact, the German student would
+have to be possessed of much more courage not to fight. He fights not to
+please himself, but to satisfy a public opinion that is two hundred years
+behind the times.
+
+All the Mensur does is to brutalise him. There may be skill displayed--I
+am told there is,--but it is not apparent. The mere fighting is like
+nothing so much as a broadsword combat at a Richardson's show; the
+display as a whole a successful attempt to combine the ludicrous with the
+unpleasant. In aristocratic Bonn, where style is considered, and in
+Heidelberg, where visitors from other nations are more common, the affair
+is perhaps more formal. I am told that there the contests take place in
+handsome rooms; that grey-haired doctors wait upon the wounded, and
+liveried servants upon the hungry, and that the affair is conducted
+throughout with a certain amount of picturesque ceremony. In the more
+essentially German Universities, where strangers are rare and not much
+encouraged, the simple essentials are the only things kept in view, and
+these are not of an inviting nature.
+
+Indeed, so distinctly uninviting are they, that I strongly advise the
+sensitive reader to avoid even this description of them. The subject
+cannot be made pretty, and I do not intend to try.
+
+The room is bare and sordid; its walls splashed with mixed stains of
+beer, blood, and candle-grease; its ceiling, smoky; its floor, sawdust
+covered. A crowd of students, laughing, smoking, talking, some sitting
+on the floor, others perched upon chairs and benches form the framework.
+
+In the centre, facing one another, stand the combatants, resembling
+Japanese warriors, as made familiar to us by the Japanese tea-tray.
+Quaint and rigid, with their goggle-covered eyes, their necks tied up in
+comforters, their bodies smothered in what looks like dirty bed quilts,
+their padded arms stretched straight above their heads, they might be a
+pair of ungainly clockwork figures. The seconds, also more or less
+padded--their heads and faces protected by huge leather-peaked caps,--drag
+them out into their proper position. One almost listens to hear the
+sound of the castors. The umpire takes his place, the word is given, and
+immediately there follow five rapid clashes of the long straight swords.
+There is no interest in watching the fight: there is no movement, no
+skill, no grace (I am speaking of my own impressions.) The strongest man
+wins; the man who, with his heavily-padded arm, always in an unnatural
+position, can hold his huge clumsy sword longest without growing too weak
+to be able either to guard or to strike.
+
+The whole interest is centred in watching the wounds. They come always
+in one of two places--on the top of the head or the left side of the
+face. Sometimes a portion of hairy scalp or section of cheek flies up
+into the air, to be carefully preserved in an envelope by its proud
+possessor, or, strictly speaking, its proud former possessor, and shown
+round on convivial evenings; and from every wound, of course, flows a
+plentiful stream of blood. It splashes doctors, seconds, and spectators;
+it sprinkles ceiling and walls; it saturates the fighters, and makes
+pools for itself in the sawdust. At the end of each round the doctors
+rush up, and with hands already dripping with blood press together the
+gaping wounds, dabbing them with little balls of wet cotton wool, which
+an attendant carries ready on a plate. Naturally, the moment the men
+stand up again and commence work, the blood gushes out again, half
+blinding them, and rendering the ground beneath them slippery. Now and
+then you see a man's teeth laid bare almost to the ear, so that for the
+rest of the duel he appears to be grinning at one half of the spectators,
+his other side, remaining serious; and sometimes a man's nose gets slit,
+which gives to him as he fights a singularly supercilious air.
+
+As the object of each student is to go away from the University bearing
+as many scars as possible, I doubt if any particular pains are taken to
+guard, even to the small extent such method of fighting can allow. The
+real victor is he who comes out with the greatest number of wounds; he
+who then, stitched and patched almost to unrecognition as a human being,
+can promenade for the next month, the envy of the German youth, the
+admiration of the German maiden. He who obtains only a few unimportant
+wounds retires sulky and disappointed.
+
+But the actual fighting is only the beginning of the fun. The second act
+of the spectacle takes place in the dressing-room. The doctors are
+generally mere medical students--young fellows who, having taken their
+degree, are anxious for practice. Truth compels me to say that those
+with whom I came in contact were coarse-looking men who seemed rather to
+relish their work. Perhaps they are not to be blamed for this. It is
+part of the system that as much further punishment as possible must be
+inflicted by the doctor, and the ideal medical man might hardly care for
+such job. How the student bears the dressing of his wounds is as
+important as how he receives them. Every operation has to be performed
+as brutally as may be, and his companions carefully watch him during the
+process to see that he goes through it with an appearance of peace and
+enjoyment. A clean-cut wound that gapes wide is most desired by all
+parties. On purpose it is sewn up clumsily, with the hope that by this
+means the scar will last a lifetime. Such a wound, judiciously mauled
+and interfered with during the week afterwards, can generally be reckoned
+on to secure its fortunate possessor a wife with a dowry of five figures
+at the least.
+
+These are the general bi-weekly Mensurs, of which the average student
+fights some dozen a year. There are others to which visitors are not
+admitted. When a student is considered to have disgraced himself by some
+slight involuntary movement of the head or body while fighting, then he
+can only regain his position by standing up to the best swordsman in his
+Korps. He demands and is accorded, not a contest, but a punishment. His
+opponent then proceeds to inflict as many and as bloody wounds as can be
+taken. The object of the victim is to show his comrades that he can
+stand still while his head is half sliced from his skull.
+
+Whether anything can properly be said in favour of the German Mensur I am
+doubtful; but if so it concerns only the two combatants. Upon the
+spectators it can and does, I am convinced, exercise nothing but evil. I
+know myself sufficiently well to be sure I am not of an unusually
+bloodthirsty disposition. The effect it had upon me can only be the
+usual effect. At first, before the actual work commenced, my sensation
+was curiosity mingled with anxiety as to how the sight would trouble me,
+though some slight acquaintance with dissecting-rooms and operating
+tables left me less doubt on that point than I might otherwise have felt.
+As the blood began to flow, and nerves and muscles to be laid bare, I
+experienced a mingling of disgust and pity. But with the second duel, I
+must confess, my finer feelings began to disappear; and by the time the
+third was well upon its way, and the room heavy with the curious hot
+odour of blood, I began, as the American expression is, to see things
+red.
+
+I wanted more. I looked from face to face surrounding me, and in most of
+them I found reflected undoubtedly my own sensations. If it be a good
+thing to excite this blood thirst in the modern man, then the Mensur is a
+useful institution. But is it a good thing? We prate about our
+civilisation and humanity, but those of us who do not carry hypocrisy to
+the length of self-deception know that underneath our starched shirts
+there lurks the savage, with all his savage instincts untouched.
+Occasionally he may be wanted, but we never need fear his dying out. On
+the other hand, it seems unwise to over-nourish him.
+
+In favour of the duel, seriously considered, there are many points to be
+urged. But the Mensur serves no good purpose whatever. It is
+childishness, and the fact of its being a cruel and brutal game makes it
+none the less childish. Wounds have no intrinsic value of their own; it
+is the cause that dignifies them, not their size. William Tell is
+rightly one of the heroes of the world; but what should we think of the
+members of a club of fathers, formed with the object of meeting twice a
+week to shoot apples from their sons' heads with cross-bows? These young
+German gentlemen could obtain all the results of which they are so proud
+by teasing a wild cat! To join a society for the mere purpose of getting
+yourself hacked about reduces a man to the intellectual level of a
+dancing Dervish. Travellers tell us of savages in Central Africa who
+express their feelings on festive occasions by jumping about and slashing
+themselves. But there is no need for Europe to imitate them. The Mensur
+is, in fact, the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the duel; and if the Germans
+themselves cannot see that it is funny, one can only regret their lack of
+humour.
+
+But though one may be unable to agree with the public opinion that
+supports and commands the Mensur, it at least is possible to understand.
+The University code that, if it does not encourage it, at least condones
+drunkenness, is more difficult to treat argumentatively. All German
+students do not get drunk; in fact, the majority are sober, if not
+industrious. But the minority, whose claim to be representative is
+freely admitted, are only saved from perpetual inebriety by ability,
+acquired at some cost, to swill half the day and all the night, while
+retaining to some extent their five senses. It does not affect all
+alike, but it is common in any University town to see a young man not yet
+twenty with the figure of a Falstaff and the complexion of a Rubens
+Bacchus. That the German maiden can be fascinated with a face, cut and
+gashed till it suggests having been made out of odd materials that never
+could have fitted, is a proved fact. But surely there can be no
+attraction about a blotched and bloated skin and a "bay window" thrown
+out to an extent threatening to overbalance the whole structure. Yet
+what else can be expected, when the youngster starts his beer-drinking
+with a "Fruhschoppen" at 10 a.m., and closes it with a "Kneipe" at four
+in the morning?
+
+The Kneipe is what we should call a stag party, and can be very harmless
+or very rowdy, according to its composition. One man invites his fellow-
+students, a dozen or a hundred, to a cafe, and provides them with as much
+beer and as many cheap cigars as their own sense of health and comfort
+may dictate, or the host may be the Korps itself. Here, as everywhere,
+you observe the German sense of discipline and order. As each new comer
+enters all those sitting round the table rise, and with heels close
+together salute. When the table is complete, a chairman is chosen, whose
+duty it is to give out the number of the songs. Printed books of these
+songs, one to each two men, lie round the table. The chairman gives out
+number twenty-nine. "First verse," he cries, and away all go, each two
+men holding a book between them exactly as two people might hold a hymn-
+book in church. There is a pause at the end of each verse until the
+chairman starts the company on the next. As every German is a trained
+singer, and as most of them have fair voices, the general effect is
+striking.
+
+Although the manner may be suggestive of the singing of hymns in church,
+the words of the songs are occasionally such as to correct this
+impression. But whether it be a patriotic song, a sentimental ballad, or
+a ditty of a nature that would shock the average young Englishman, all
+are sung through with stern earnestness, without a laugh, without a false
+note. At the end, the chairman calls "Prosit!" Everyone answers
+"Prosit!" and the next moment every glass is empty. The pianist rises
+and bows, and is bowed to in return; and then the Fraulein enters to
+refill the glasses.
+
+Between the songs, toasts are proposed and responded to; but there is
+little cheering, and less laughter. Smiles and grave nods of approval
+are considered as more seeming among German students.
+
+A particular toast, called a Salamander, accorded to some guest as a
+special distinction, is drunk with exceptional solemnity.
+
+"We will now," says the chairman, "a Salamander rub" ("Einen Salamander
+reiben"). We all rise, and stand like a regiment at attention.
+
+"Is the stuff prepared?" ("Sind die stoffe parat?") demands the
+chairman.
+
+"Sunt," we answer, with one voice.
+
+"Ad exercitium Salamandri," says the chairman, and we are ready.
+
+"Eins!" We rub our glasses with a circular motion on the table.
+
+"Zwei!" Again the glasses growl; also at "Drei!"
+
+"Drink!" ("Bibite!")
+
+And with mechanical unison every glass is emptied and held on high.
+
+"Eins!" says the chairman. The foot of every empty glass twirls upon the
+table, producing a sound as of the dragging back of a stony beach by a
+receding wave.
+
+"Zwei!" The roll swells and sinks again.
+
+"Drei!" The glasses strike the table with a single crash, and we are in
+our seats again.
+
+The sport at the Kneipe is for two students to insult each other (in
+play, of course), and to then challenge each other to a drinking duel. An
+umpire is appointed, two huge glasses are filled, and the men sit
+opposite each other with their hands upon the handles, all eyes fixed
+upon them. The umpire gives the word to go, and in an instant the beer
+is gurgling down their throats. The man who bangs his perfectly finished
+glass upon the table first is victor.
+
+Strangers who are going through a Kneipe, and who wish to do the thing in
+German style, will do well, before commencing proceedings, to pin their
+name and address upon their coats. The German student is courtesy
+itself, and whatever his own state may be, he will see to it that, by
+some means or another, his guest gets safely home before the morning.
+But, of course, he cannot be expected to remember addresses.
+
+A story was told me of three guests to a Berlin Kneipe which might have
+had tragic results. The strangers determined to do the thing thoroughly.
+They explained their intention, and were applauded, and each proceeded to
+write his address upon his card, and pin it to the tablecloth in front of
+him. That was the mistake they made. They should, as I have advised,
+have pinned it carefully to their coats. A man may change his place at a
+table, quite unconsciously he may come out the other side of it; but
+wherever he goes he takes his coat with him.
+
+Some time in the small hours, the chairman suggested that to make things
+more comfortable for those still upright, all the gentlemen unable to
+keep their heads off the table should be sent home. Among those to whom
+the proceedings had become uninteresting were the three Englishmen. It
+was decided to put them into a cab in charge of a comparatively speaking
+sober student, and return them. Had they retained their original seats
+throughout the evening all would have been well; but, unfortunately, they
+had gone walking about, and which gentleman belonged to which card nobody
+knew--least of all the guests themselves. In the then state of general
+cheerfulness, this did not to anybody appear to much matter. There were
+three gentlemen and three addresses. I suppose the idea was that even if
+a mistake were made, the parties could be sorted out in the morning.
+Anyhow, the three gentlemen were put into a cab, the comparatively
+speaking sober student took the three cards in his hand, and the party
+started amid the cheers and good wishes of the company.
+
+There is this advantage about German beer: it does not make a man drunk
+as the word drunk is understood in England. There is nothing
+objectionable about him; he is simply tired. He does not want to talk;
+he wants to be let alone, to go to sleep; it does not matter
+where--anywhere.
+
+The conductor of the party stopped his cab at the nearest address. He
+took out his worst case; it was a natural instinct to get rid of that
+first. He and the cabman carried it upstairs, and rang the bell of the
+Pension. A sleepy porter answered it. They carried their burden in, and
+looked for a place to drop it. A bedroom door happened to be open; the
+room was empty; could anything be better?--they took it in there. They
+relieved it of such things as came off easily, and laid it in the bed.
+This done, both men, pleased with themselves, returned to the cab.
+
+At the next address they stopped again. This time, in answer to their
+summons, a lady appeared, dressed in a tea gown, with a book in her hand.
+The German student looked at the top one of two cards remaining in his
+hand, and enquired if he had the pleasure of addressing Frau Y. It
+happened that he had, though so far as any pleasure was concerned that
+appeared to be entirely on his side. He explained to Frau Y. that the
+gentleman at that moment asleep against the wall was her husband. The
+reunion moved her to no enthusiasm; she simply opened the bedroom door,
+and then walked away. The cabman and the student took him in, and laid
+him on the bed. They did not trouble to undress him, they were feeling
+tired! They did not see the lady of the house again, and retired
+therefore without adieus.
+
+The last card was that of a bachelor stopping at an hotel. They took
+their last man, therefore, to that hotel, passed him over to the night
+porter, and left him.
+
+To return to the address at which the first delivery was made, what had
+happened there was this. Some eight hours previously had said Mr. X. to
+Mrs. X.: "I think I told you, my dear, that I had an invitation for this
+evening to what, I believe, is called a Kneipe?"
+
+"You did mention something of the sort," replied Mrs. X. "What is a
+Kneipe?"
+
+"Well, it's a sort of bachelor party, my dear, where the students meet to
+sing and talk and--and smoke, and all that sort of thing, you know."
+
+"Oh, well, I hope you will enjoy yourself!" said Mrs. X., who was a nice
+woman and sensible.
+
+"It will be interesting," observed Mr. X. "I have often had a curiosity
+to see one. I may," continued Mr. X.,--"I mean it is possible, that I
+may be home a little late."
+
+"What do you call late?" asked Mrs. X.
+
+"It is somewhat difficult to say," returned Mr. X. "You see these
+students, they are a wild lot, and when they get together--And then, I
+believe, a good many toasts are drunk. I don't know how it will affect
+me. If I can see an opportunity I shall come away early, that is if I
+can do so without giving offence; but if not--"
+
+Said Mrs. X., who, as I remarked before, was a sensible woman: "You had
+better get the people here to lend you a latchkey. I shall sleep with
+Dolly, and then you won't disturb me whatever time it may be."
+
+"I think that an excellent idea of yours," agreed Mr. X. "I should hate
+disturbing you. I shall just come in quietly, and slip into bed."
+
+Some time in the middle of the night, or maybe towards the early morning,
+Dolly, who was Mrs. X.'s sister, sat up in bed and listened.
+
+"Jenny," said Dolly, "are you awake?"
+
+"Yes, dear," answered Mrs. X. "It's all right. You go to sleep again."
+
+"But whatever is it?" asked Dolly. "Do you think it's fire?"
+
+"I expect," replied Mrs. X., "that it's Percy. Very possibly he has
+stumbled over something in the dark. Don't you worry, dear; you go to
+sleep."
+
+But so soon as Dolly had dozed off again, Mrs. X., who was a good wife,
+thought she would steal off softly and see to it that Percy was all
+right. So, putting on a dressing-gown and slippers, she crept along the
+passage and into her own room. To awake the gentleman on the bed would
+have required an earthquake. She lit a candle and stole over to the
+bedside.
+
+It was not Percy; it was not anyone like Percy. She felt it was not the
+man that ever could have been her husband, under any circumstances. In
+his present condition her sentiment towards him was that of positive
+dislike. Her only desire was to get rid of him.
+
+But something there was about him which seemed familiar to her. She went
+nearer, and took a closer view. Then she remembered. Surely it was Mr.
+Y., a gentleman at whose flat she and Percy had dined the day they first
+arrived in Berlin.
+
+But what was he doing here? She put the candle on the table, and taking
+her head between her hands sat down to think. The explanation of the
+thing came to her with a rush. It was with this Mr. Y. that Percy had
+gone to the Kneipe. A mistake had been made. Mr. Y. had been brought
+back to Percy's address. Percy at this very moment--
+
+The terrible possibilities of the situation swam before her. Returning
+to Dolly's room, she dressed herself hastily, and silently crept
+downstairs. Finding, fortunately, a passing night-cab, she drove to the
+address of Mrs. Y. Telling the man to wait, she flew upstairs and rang
+persistently at the bell. It was opened as before by Mrs. Y., still in
+her tea-gown, and with her book still in her hand.
+
+"Mrs. X.!" exclaimed Mrs. Y. "Whatever brings you here?"
+
+"My husband!" was all poor Mrs. X. could think to say at the moment, "is
+he here?"
+
+"Mrs. X.," returned Mrs. Y., drawing herself up to her full height, "how
+dare you?"
+
+"Oh, please don't misunderstand me!" pleaded Mrs. X. "It's all a
+terrible mistake. They must have brought poor Percy here instead of to
+our place, I'm sure they must. Do please look and see."
+
+"My dear," said Mrs. Y., who was a much older woman, and more motherly,
+"don't excite yourself. They brought him here about half an hour ago,
+and, to tell you the truth, I never looked at him. He is in here. I
+don't think they troubled to take off even his boots. If you keep cool,
+we will get him downstairs and home without a soul beyond ourselves being
+any the wiser.
+
+Indeed, Mrs. Y. seemed quite eager to help Mrs. X.
+
+She pushed open the door, and Mrs. X, went in. The next moment she came
+out with a white, scared face.
+
+"It isn't Percy," she said. "Whatever am I to do?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't make these mistakes," said Mrs. Y., moving to enter
+the room herself.
+
+Mrs. X. stopped her. "And it isn't your husband either."
+
+"Nonsense," said Mrs. Y.
+
+"It isn't really," persisted Mrs. X. "I know, because I have just left
+him, asleep on Percy's bed."
+
+"What's he doing there?" thundered Mrs. Y.
+
+"They brought him there, and put him there," explained Mrs. X., beginning
+to cry. "That's what made me think Percy must be here."
+
+The two women stood and looked at one another; and there was silence for
+awhile, broken only by the snoring of the gentleman the other side of the
+half-open door.
+
+"Then who is that, in there?" demanded Mrs. Y., who was the first to
+recover herself.
+
+"I don't know," answered Mrs. X., "I have never seen him before. Do you
+think it is anybody you know?"
+
+But Mrs. Y. only banged to the door.
+
+"What are we to do?" said Mrs. X.
+
+"I know what _I_ am going to do," said Mrs. Y. "I'm coming back with you
+to fetch my husband."
+
+"He's very sleepy," explained Mrs. X.
+
+"I've known him to be that before," replied Mrs. Y., as she fastened on
+her cloak.
+
+"But where's Percy?" sobbed poor little Mrs. X., as they descended the
+stairs together.
+
+"That my dear," said Mrs. Y., "will be a question for you to ask _him_."
+
+"If they go about making mistakes like this," said Mrs. X., "it is
+impossible to say what they may not have done with him."
+
+"We will make enquiries in the morning, my dear," said Mrs. Y.,
+consolingly.
+
+"I think these Kneipes are disgraceful affairs," said Mrs. X. "I shall
+never let Percy go to another, never--so long as I live."
+
+"My dear," remarked Mrs. Y., "if you know your duty, he will never want
+to." And rumour has it that he never did.
+
+But, as I have said, the mistake was in pinning the card to the
+tablecloth instead of to the coat. And error in this world is always
+severely punished.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+Which is serious: as becomes a parting chapter--The German from the Anglo-
+Saxon's point of view--Providence in buttons and a helmet--Paradise of
+the helpless idiot--German conscience: its aggressiveness--How they hang
+in Germany, very possibly--What happens to good Germans when they
+die?--The military instinct: is it all-sufficient?--The German as a
+shopkeeper--How he supports life--The New Woman, here as everywhere--What
+can be said against the Germans, as a people--The Bummel is over and
+done.
+
+"Anybody could rule this country," said George; "_I_ could rule it."
+
+We were seated in the garden of the Kaiser Hof at Bonn, looking down upon
+the Rhine. It was the last evening of our Bummel; the early morning
+train would be the beginning of the end.
+
+"I should write down all I wanted the people to do on a piece of paper,"
+continued George; "get a good firm to print off so many copies, have them
+posted about the towns and villages; and the thing would be done."
+
+In the placid, docile German of to-day, whose only ambition appears to be
+to pay his taxes, and do what he is told to do by those whom it has
+pleased Providence to place in authority over him, it is difficult, one
+must confess, to detect any trace of his wild ancestor, to whom
+individual liberty was as the breath of his nostrils; who appointed his
+magistrates to advise, but retained the right of execution for the tribe;
+who followed his chief, but would have scorned to obey him. In Germany
+to-day one hears a good deal concerning Socialism, but it is a Socialism
+that would only be despotism under another name. Individualism makes no
+appeal to the German voter. He is willing, nay, anxious, to be
+controlled and regulated in all things. He disputes, not government, but
+the form of it. The policeman is to him a religion, and, one feels, will
+always remain so. In England we regard our man in blue as a harmless
+necessity. By the average citizen he is employed chiefly as a signpost,
+though in busy quarters of the town he is considered useful for taking
+old ladies across the road. Beyond feeling thankful to him for these
+services, I doubt if we take much thought of him. In Germany, on the
+other hand, he is worshipped as a little god and loved as a guardian
+angel. To the German child he is a combination of Santa Claus and the
+Bogie Man. All good things come from him: Spielplatze to play in,
+furnished with swings and giant-strides, sand heaps to fight around,
+swimming baths, and fairs. All misbehaviour is punished by him. It is
+the hope of every well-meaning German boy and girl to please the police.
+To be smiled at by a policeman makes it conceited. A German child that
+has been patted on the head by a policeman is not fit to live with; its
+self-importance is unbearable.
+
+The German citizen is a soldier, and the policeman is his officer. The
+policeman directs him where in the street to walk, and how fast to walk.
+At the end of each bridge stands a policeman to tell the German how to
+cross it. Were there no policeman there, he would probably sit down and
+wait till the river had passed by. At the railway station the policeman
+locks him up in the waiting-room, where he can do no harm to himself.
+When the proper time arrives, he fetches him out and hands him over to
+the guard of the train, who is only a policeman in another uniform. The
+guard tells him where to sit in the train, and when to get out, and sees
+that he does get out. In Germany you take no responsibility upon
+yourself whatever. Everything is done for you, and done well. You are
+not supposed to look after yourself; you are not blamed for being
+incapable of looking after yourself; it is the duty of the German
+policeman to look after you. That you may be a helpless idiot does not
+excuse him should anything happen to you. Wherever you are and whatever
+you are doing you are in his charge, and he takes care of you--good care
+of you; there is no denying this.
+
+If you lose yourself, he finds you; and if you lose anything belonging to
+you, he recovers it for you. If you don't know what you want, he tells
+you. If you want anything that is good for you to have, he gets it for
+you. Private lawyers are not needed in Germany. If you want to buy or
+sell a house or field, the State makes out the conveyance. If you have
+been swindled, the State takes up the case for you. The State marries
+you, insures you, will even gamble with you for a trifle.
+
+"You get yourself born," says the German Government to the German
+citizen, "we do the rest. Indoors and out of doors, in sickness and in
+health, in pleasure and in work, we will tell you what to do, and we will
+see to it that you do it. Don't you worry yourself about anything."
+
+And the German doesn't. Where there is no policeman to be found, he
+wanders about till he comes to a police notice posted on a wall. This he
+reads; then he goes and does what it says.
+
+I remember in one German town--I forget which; it is immaterial; the
+incident could have happened in any--noticing an open gate leading to a
+garden in which a concert was being given. There was nothing to prevent
+anyone who chose from walking through that gate, and thus gaining
+admittance to the concert without paying. In fact, of the two gates
+quarter of a mile apart it was the more convenient. Yet of the crowds
+that passed, not one attempted to enter by that gate. They plodded
+steadily on under a blazing sun to the other gate, at which a man stood
+to collect the entrance money. I have seen German youngsters stand
+longingly by the margin of a lonely sheet of ice. They could have skated
+on that ice for hours, and nobody have been the wiser. The crowd and the
+police were at the other end, more than half a mile away, and round the
+corner. Nothing stopped their going on but the knowledge that they ought
+not. Things such as these make one pause to seriously wonder whether the
+Teuton be a member of the sinful human family or not. Is it not possible
+that these placid, gentle folk may in reality be angels, come down to
+earth for the sake of a glass of beer, which, as they must know, can only
+in Germany be obtained worth the drinking?
+
+In Germany the country roads are lined with fruit trees. There is no
+voice to stay man or boy from picking and eating the fruit, except
+conscience. In England such a state of things would cause public
+indignation. Children would die of cholera by the hundred. The medical
+profession would be worked off its legs trying to cope with the natural
+results of over-indulgence in sour apples and unripe walnuts. Public
+opinion would demand that these fruit trees should be fenced about, and
+thus rendered harmless. Fruit growers, to save themselves the expense of
+walls and palings, would not be allowed in this manner to spread sickness
+and death throughout the community.
+
+But in Germany a boy will walk for miles down a lonely road, hedged with
+fruit trees, to buy a pennyworth of pears in the village at the other
+end. To pass these unprotected fruit trees, drooping under their burden
+of ripe fruit, strikes the Anglo-Saxon mind as a wicked waste of
+opportunity, a flouting of the blessed gifts of Providence.
+
+I do not know if it be so, but from what I have observed of the German
+character I should not be surprised to hear that when a man in Germany is
+condemned to death he is given a piece of rope, and told to go and hang
+himself. It would save the State much trouble and expense, and I can see
+that German criminal taking that piece of rope home with him, reading up
+carefully the police instructions, and proceeding to carry them out in
+his own back kitchen.
+
+The Germans are a good people. On the whole, the best people perhaps in
+the world; an amiable, unselfish, kindly people. I am positive that the
+vast majority of them go to Heaven. Indeed, comparing them with the
+other Christian nations of the earth, one is forced to the conclusion
+that Heaven will be chiefly of German manufacture. But I cannot
+understand how they get there. That the soul of any single individual
+German has sufficient initiative to fly up by itself and knock at St.
+Peter's door, I cannot believe. My own opinion is that they are taken
+there in small companies, and passed in under the charge of a dead
+policeman.
+
+Carlyle said of the Prussians, and it is true of the whole German nation,
+that one of their chief virtues was their power of being drilled. Of the
+Germans you might say they are a people who will go anywhere, and do
+anything, they are told. Drill him for the work and send him out to
+Africa or Asia under charge of somebody in uniform, and he is bound to
+make an excellent colonist, facing difficulties as he would face the
+devil himself, if ordered. But it is not easy to conceive of him as a
+pioneer. Left to run himself, one feels he would soon fade away and die,
+not from any lack of intelligence, but from sheer want of presumption.
+
+The German has so long been the soldier of Europe, that the military
+instinct has entered into his blood. The military virtues he possesses
+in abundance; but he also suffers from the drawbacks of the military
+training. It was told me of a German servant, lately released from the
+barracks, that he was instructed by his master to deliver a letter to a
+certain house, and to wait there for the answer. The hours passed by,
+and the man did not return. His master, anxious and surprised, followed.
+He found the man where he had been sent, the answer in his hand. He was
+waiting for further orders. The story sounds exaggerated, but personally
+I can credit it.
+
+The curious thing is that the same man, who as an individual is as
+helpless as a child, becomes, the moment he puts on the uniform, an
+intelligent being, capable of responsibility and initiative. The German
+can rule others, and be ruled by others, but he cannot rule himself. The
+cure would appear to be to train every German for an officer, and then
+put him under himself. It is certain he would order himself about with
+discretion and judgment, and see to it that he himself obeyed himself
+with smartness and precision.
+
+For the direction of German character into these channels, the schools,
+of course, are chiefly responsible. Their everlasting teaching is duty.
+It is a fine ideal for any people; but before buckling to it, one would
+wish to have a clear understanding as to what this "duty" is. The German
+idea of it would appear to be: "blind obedience to everything in
+buttons." It is the antithesis of the Anglo-Saxon scheme; but as both
+the Anglo-Saxon and the Teuton are prospering, there must be good in both
+methods. Hitherto, the German has had the blessed fortune to be
+exceptionally well governed; if this continue, it will go well with him.
+When his troubles will begin will be when by any chance something goes
+wrong with the governing machine. But maybe his method has the advantage
+of producing a continuous supply of good governors; it would certainly
+seem so.
+
+As a trader, I am inclined to think the German will, unless his
+temperament considerably change, remain always a long way behind his
+Anglo-Saxon competitor; and this by reason of his virtues. To him life
+is something more important than a mere race for wealth. A country that
+closes its banks and post-offices for two hours in the middle of the day,
+while it goes home and enjoys a comfortable meal in the bosom of its
+family, with, perhaps, forty winks by way of dessert, cannot hope, and
+possibly has no wish, to compete with a people that takes its meals
+standing, and sleeps with a telephone over its bed. In Germany there is
+not, at all events as yet, sufficient distinction between the classes to
+make the struggle for position the life and death affair it is in
+England. Beyond the landed aristocracy, whose boundaries are
+impregnable, grade hardly counts. Frau Professor and Frau
+Candlestickmaker meet at the Weekly Kaffee-Klatsch and exchange scandal
+on terms of mutual equality. The livery-stable keeper and the doctor
+hobnob together at their favourite beer hall. The wealthy master
+builder, when he prepares his roomy waggon for an excursion into the
+country, invites his foreman and his tailor to join him with their
+families. Each brings his share of drink and provisions, and returning
+home they sing in chorus the same songs. So long as this state of things
+endures, a man is not induced to sacrifice the best years of his life to
+win a fortune for his dotage. His tastes, and, more to the point still,
+his wife's, remain inexpensive. He likes to see his flat or villa
+furnished with much red plush upholstery and a profusion of gilt and
+lacquer. But that is his idea; and maybe it is in no worse taste than is
+a mixture of bastard Elizabethan with imitation Louis XV, the whole lit
+by electric light, and smothered with photographs. Possibly, he will
+have his outer walls painted by the local artist: a sanguinary battle, a
+good deal interfered with by the front door, taking place below, while
+Bismarck, as an angel, flutters vaguely about the bedroom windows. But
+for his Old Masters he is quite content to go to the public galleries;
+and "the Celebrity at Home" not having as yet taken its place amongst the
+institutions of the Fatherland, he is not impelled to waste his, money
+turning his house into an old curiosity shop.
+
+The German is a gourmand. There are still English farmers who, while
+telling you that farming spells starvation, enjoy their seven solid meals
+a day. Once a year there comes a week's feast throughout Russia, during
+which many deaths occur from the over-eating of pancakes; but this is a
+religious festival, and an exception. Taking him all round, the German
+as a trencherman stands pre-eminent among the nations of the earth. He
+rises early, and while dressing tosses off a few cups of coffee, together
+with half a dozen hot buttered rolls. But it is not until ten o'clock
+that he sits down to anything that can properly be called a meal. At one
+or half-past takes place his chief dinner. Of this he makes a business,
+sitting at it for a couple of hours. At four o'clock he goes to the
+cafe, and eats cakes and drinks chocolate. The evening he devotes to
+eating generally--not a set meal, or rarely, but a series of snacks,--a
+bottle of beer and a Belegete-semmel or two at seven, say; another bottle
+of beer and an Aufschnitt at the theatre between the acts; a small bottle
+of white wine and a Spiegeleier before going home; then a piece of cheese
+or sausage, washed down by more beer, previous to turning in for the
+night.
+
+But he is no gourmet. French cooks and French prices are not the rule at
+his restaurant. His beer or his inexpensive native white wine he prefers
+to the most costly clarets or champagnes. And, indeed, it is well for
+him he does; for one is inclined to think that every time a French grower
+sells a bottle of wine to a German hotel- or shop-keeper, Sedan is
+rankling in his mind. It is a foolish revenge, seeing that it is not the
+German who as a rule drinks it; the punishment falls upon some innocent
+travelling Englishman. Maybe, however, the French dealer remembers also
+Waterloo, and feels that in any event he scores.
+
+In Germany expensive entertainments are neither offered nor expected.
+Everything throughout the Fatherland is homely and friendly. The German
+has no costly sports to pay for, no showy establishment to maintain, no
+purse-proud circle to dress for. His chief pleasure, a seat at the opera
+or concert, can be had for a few marks; and his wife and daughters walk
+there in home-made dresses, with shawls over their heads. Indeed,
+throughout the country the absence of all ostentation is to English eyes
+quite refreshing. Private carriages are few and far between, and even
+the droschke is made use of only when the quicker and cleaner electric
+car is not available.
+
+By such means the German retains his independence. The shopkeeper in
+Germany does not fawn upon his customers. I accompanied an English lady
+once on a shopping excursion in Munich. She had been accustomed to
+shopping in London and New York, and she grumbled at everything the man
+showed her. It was not that she was really dissatisfied; this was her
+method. She explained that she could get most things cheaper and better
+elsewhere; not that she really thought she could, merely she held it good
+for the shopkeeper to say this. She told him that his stock lacked
+taste--she did not mean to be offensive; as I have explained, it was her
+method;--that there was no variety about it; that it was not up to date;
+that it was commonplace; that it looked as if it would not wear. He did
+not argue with her; he did not contradict her. He put the things back
+into their respective boxes, replaced the boxes on their respective
+shelves, walked into the little parlour behind the shop, and closed the
+door.
+
+"Isn't he ever coming back?" asked the lady, after a couple of minutes
+had elapsed.
+
+Her tone did not imply a question, so much as an exclamation of mere
+impatience.
+
+"I doubt it," I replied.
+
+"Why not?" she asked, much astonished.
+
+"I expect," I answered, "you have bored him. In all probability he is at
+this moment behind that door smoking a pipe and reading the paper."
+
+"What an extraordinary shopkeeper!" said my friend, as she gathered her
+parcels together and indignantly walked out.
+
+"It is their way," I explained. "There are the goods; if you want them,
+you can have them. If you do not want them, they would almost rather
+that you did not come and talk about them."
+
+On another occasion I listened in the smoke-room of a German hotel to a
+small Englishman telling a tale which, had I been in his place, I should
+have kept to myself.
+
+"It doesn't do," said the little Englishman, "to try and beat a German
+down. They don't seem to understand it. I saw a first edition of _The
+Robbers_ in a shop in the Georg Platz. I went in and asked the price. It
+was a rum old chap behind the counter. He said: 'Twenty-five marks,' and
+went on reading. I told him I had seen a better copy only a few days
+before for twenty--one talks like that when one is bargaining; it is
+understood. He asked me 'Where?' I told him in a shop at Leipsig. He
+suggested my returning there and getting it; he did not seem to care
+whether I bought the book or whether I didn't. I said:
+
+"'What's the least you will take for it?'
+
+"'I have told you once,' he answered; 'twenty-five marks.' He was an
+irritable old chap.
+
+"I said: 'It's not worth it.'
+
+"'I never said it was, did I?' he snapped.
+
+"I said: 'I'll give you ten marks for it.' I thought, maybe, he would
+end by taking twenty.
+
+"He rose. I took it he was coming round the counter to get the book out.
+Instead, he came straight up to me. He was a biggish sort of man. He
+took me by the two shoulders, walked me out into the street, and closed
+the door behind me with a bang. I was never more surprised in all my
+life.
+
+"Maybe the book was worth twenty-five marks," I suggested.
+
+"Of course it was," he replied; "well worth it. But what a notion of
+business!"
+
+If anything change the German character, it will be the German woman. She
+herself is changing rapidly--advancing, as we call it. Ten years ago no
+German woman caring for her reputation, hoping for a husband, would have
+dared to ride a bicycle: to-day they spin about the country in their
+thousands. The old folks shake their heads at them; but the young men, I
+notice, overtake them and ride beside them. Not long ago it was
+considered unwomanly in Germany for a lady to be able to do the outside
+edge. Her proper skating attitude was thought to be that of clinging
+limpness to some male relative. Now she practises eights in a corner by
+herself, until some young man comes along to help her. She plays tennis,
+and, from a point of safety, I have even noticed her driving a dog-cart.
+
+Brilliantly educated she always has been. At eighteen she speaks two or
+three languages, and has forgotten more than the average Englishwoman has
+ever read. Hitherto, this education has been utterly useless to her. On
+marriage she has retired into the kitchen, and made haste to clear her
+brain of everything else, in order to leave room for bad cooking. But
+suppose it begins to dawn upon her that a woman need not sacrifice her
+whole existence to household drudgery any more than a man need make
+himself nothing else than a business machine. Suppose she develop an
+ambition to take part in the social and national life. Then the
+influence of such a partner, healthy in body and therefore vigorous in
+mind, is bound to be both lasting and far-reaching.
+
+For it must be borne in mind that the German man is exceptionally
+sentimental, and most easily influenced by his women folk. It is said of
+him, he is the best of lovers, the worst of husbands. This has been the
+woman's fault. Once married, the German woman has done more than put
+romance behind her; she has taken a carpet-beater and driven it out of
+the house. As a girl, she never understood dressing; as a wife, she
+takes off such clothes even as she had, and proceeds to wrap herself up
+in any odd articles she may happen to find about the house; at all
+events, this is the impression she produces. The figure that might often
+be that of a Juno, the complexion that would sometimes do credit to a
+healthy angel, she proceeds of malice and intent to spoil. She sells her
+birth-right of admiration and devotion for a mess of sweets. Every
+afternoon you may see her at the cafe, loading herself with rich cream-
+covered cakes, washed down by copious draughts of chocolate. In a short
+time she becomes fat, pasty, placid, and utterly uninteresting.
+
+When the German woman gives up her afternoon coffee and her evening beer,
+takes sufficient exercise to retain her shape, and continues to read
+after marriage something else than the cookery-book, the German
+Government will find it has a new and unknown force to deal with. And
+everywhere throughout Germany one is confronted by unmistakable signs
+that the old German Frauen are giving place to the newer Damen.
+
+Concerning what will then happen one feels curious. For the German
+nation is still young, and its maturity is of importance to the world.
+They are a good people, a lovable people, who should help much to make
+the world better.
+
+The worst that can be said against them is that they have their failings.
+They themselves do not know this; they consider themselves perfect, which
+is foolish of them. They even go so far as to think themselves superior
+to the Anglo-Saxon: this is incomprehensible. One feels they must be
+pretending.
+
+"They have their points," said George; "but their tobacco is a national
+sin. I'm going to bed."
+
+We rose, and leaning over the low stone parapet, watched the dancing
+lights upon the soft, dark river.
+
+"It has been a pleasant Bummel, on the whole," said Harris; "I shall be
+glad to get back, and yet I am sorry it is over, if you understand me."
+
+"What is a 'Bummel'?" said George. "How would you translate it?"
+
+"A 'Bummel'," I explained, "I should describe as a journey, long or
+short, without an end; the only thing regulating it being the necessity
+of getting back within a given time to the point from which one started.
+Sometimes it is through busy streets, and sometimes through the fields
+and lanes; sometimes we can be spared for a few hours, and sometimes for
+a few days. But long or short, but here or there, our thoughts are ever
+on the running of the sand. We nod and smile to many as we pass; with
+some we stop and talk awhile; and with a few we walk a little way. We
+have been much interested, and often a little tired. But on the whole we
+have had a pleasant time, and are sorry when 'tis over."
+
+
+
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE MEN ON THE BUMMEL ***
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+<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Three Men on the Bummel, by Jerome K. Jerome</div>
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+</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Three Men on the Bummel</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Jerome K. Jerome</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: May, 2000 [eBook #2183]<br />
+[Most recently updated: June 8, 2021]</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
+<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: David Price</div>
+<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE MEN ON THE BUMMEL ***</div>
+
+<h1>THREE MEN ON THE BUMMEL<br />
+by JEROME K. JEROME</h1>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Illustrated by L. Raven Hill</i></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">A NEW EDITION</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">BRISTOL<br />
+<span class="smcap">J. W. Arrowsmith Ltd., Quay Street</span><br />
+LONDON<br />
+<span class="smcap">Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Co. Limited</span><br />
+1914</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">to the gentle</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">GUIDE</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">who lets me ever go
+my own way, yet brings me right</span>&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">to the laughter-loving</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">PHILOSOPHER</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">who, if he has not
+reconciled me to bearing the toothache</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">patently, at least has taught me the comfort that</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">this even will also pass</span>&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">to the good</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">FRIEND</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">who smiles when i
+tell him of my troubles, and who</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">when i ask for help, answers only</span> &ldquo;<span class="smcap">wait</span>!&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">to the grave-faced</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">JESTER</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">to whom all life is
+but a volume of old humour</span>&mdash;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">to good master</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><b>Time</b></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">THIS LITTLE WORK OF A POOR</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">PUPIL</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">IS DEDICATED</p>
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER I</h2>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Three men need change&mdash;Anecdote showing evil result of deception&mdash;Moral
+cowardice of George&mdash;Harris has ideas&mdash;Yarn of the Ancient
+Mariner and the Inexperienced Yachtsman&mdash;A hearty crew&mdash;Danger
+of sailing when the wind is off the land&mdash;Impossibility of sailing
+when the wind is off the sea&mdash;The argumentativeness of Ethelbertha&mdash;The
+dampness of the river&mdash;Harris suggests a bicycle tour&mdash;George
+thinks of the wind&mdash;Harris suggests the Black Forest&mdash;George
+thinks of the hills&mdash;Plan adopted by Harris for ascent of hills&mdash;Interruption
+by Mrs. Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What we want,&rdquo; said Harris, &ldquo;is a change.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At this moment the door opened, and Mrs. Harris put her head in to
+say that Ethelbertha had sent her to remind me that we must not be late
+getting home because of Clarence. Ethelbertha, I am inclined to
+think, is unnecessarily nervous about the children. As a matter
+of fact, there was nothing wrong with the child whatever. He had
+been out with his aunt that morning; and if he looks wistfully at a
+pastrycook&rsquo;s window she takes him inside and buys him cream buns
+and &ldquo;maids-of-honour&rdquo; until he insists that he has had enough,
+and politely, but firmly, refuses to eat another anything. Then,
+of course, he wants only one helping of pudding at lunch, and Ethelbertha
+thinks he is sickening for something. Mrs. Harris added that it
+would be as well for us to come upstairs soon, on our own account also,
+as otherwise we should miss Muriel&rsquo;s rendering of &ldquo;The Mad
+Hatter&rsquo;s Tea Party,&rdquo; out of <i>Alice in Wonderland</i>.
+Muriel is Harris&rsquo;s second, age eight: she is a bright, intelligent
+child; but I prefer her myself in serious pieces. We said we would
+finish our cigarettes and follow almost immediately; we also begged
+her not to let Muriel begin until we arrived. She promised to
+hold the child back as long as possible, and went. Harris, as
+soon as the door was closed, resumed his interrupted sentence.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You know what I mean,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;a complete change.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The question was how to get it.</p>
+
+<p>George suggested &ldquo;business.&rdquo; It was the sort of
+suggestion George would make. A bachelor thinks a married woman
+doesn&rsquo;t know enough to get out of the way of a steam-roller.
+I knew a young fellow once, an engineer, who thought he would go to
+Vienna &ldquo;on business.&rdquo; His wife wanted to know &ldquo;what
+business?&rdquo; He told her it would be his duty to visit the
+mines in the neighbourhood of the Austrian capital, and to make reports.
+She said she would go with him; she was that sort of woman. He
+tried to dissuade her: he told her that a mine was no place for a beautiful
+woman. She said she felt that herself, and that therefore she
+did not intend to accompany him down the shafts; she would see him off
+in the morning, and then amuse herself until his return, looking round
+the Vienna shops, and buying a few things she might want. Having
+started the idea, he did not see very well how to get out of it; and
+for ten long summer days he did visit the mines in the neighbourhood
+of Vienna, and in the evening wrote reports about them, which she posted
+for him to his firm, who didn&rsquo;t want them.</p>
+
+<p>I should be grieved to think that either Ethelbertha or Mrs. Harris
+belonged to that class of wife, but it is as well not to overdo &ldquo;business&rdquo;&mdash;it
+should be kept for cases of real emergency.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;the thing is to be frank and manly.
+I shall tell Ethelbertha that I have come to the conclusion a man never
+values happiness that is always with him. I shall tell her that,
+for the sake of learning to appreciate my own advantages as I know they
+should be appreciated, I intend to tear myself away from her and the
+children for at least three weeks. I shall tell her,&rdquo; I
+continued, turning to Harris, &ldquo;that it is you who have shown me
+my duty in this respect; that it is to you we shall owe&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Harris put down his glass rather hurriedly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t mind, old man,&rdquo; he interrupted, &ldquo;I&rsquo;d
+really rather you didn&rsquo;t. She&rsquo;ll talk it over with
+my wife, and&mdash;well, I should not be happy, taking credit that I
+do not deserve.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But you do deserve it,&rdquo; I insisted; &ldquo;it was your
+suggestion.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was you gave me the idea,&rdquo; interrupted Harris again.
+&ldquo;You know you said it was a mistake for a man to get into a groove,
+and that unbroken domesticity cloyed the brain.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was speaking generally,&rdquo; I explained.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It struck me as very apt,&rdquo; said Harris. &ldquo;I
+thought of repeating it to Clara; she has a great opinion of your sense,
+I know. I am sure that if&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We won&rsquo;t risk it,&rdquo; I interrupted, in my turn;
+&ldquo;it is a delicate matter, and I see a way out of it. We
+will say George suggested the idea.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There is a lack of genial helpfulness about George that it sometimes
+vexes me to notice. You would have thought he would have welcomed
+the chance of assisting two old friends out of a dilemma; instead, he
+became disagreeable.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You do,&rdquo; said George, &ldquo;and I shall tell them both
+that my original plan was that we should make a party&mdash;children
+and all; that I should bring my aunt, and that we should hire a charming
+old ch&acirc;teau I know of in Normandy, on the coast, where the climate
+is peculiarly adapted to delicate children, and the milk such as you
+do not get in England. I shall add that you over-rode that suggestion,
+arguing we should be happier by ourselves.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With a man like George kindness is of no use; you have to be firm.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You do,&rdquo; said Harris, &ldquo;and I, for one, will close
+with the offer. We will just take that ch&acirc;teau. You
+will bring your aunt&mdash;I will see to that,&mdash;and we will have
+a month of it. The children are all fond of you; J. and I will
+be nowhere. You&rsquo;ve promised to teach Edgar fishing; and
+it is you who will have to play wild beasts. Since last Sunday
+Dick and Muriel have talked of nothing else but your hippopotamus.
+We will picnic in the woods&mdash;there will only be eleven of us,&mdash;and
+in the evenings we will have music and recitations. Muriel is
+master of six pieces already, as perhaps you know; and all the other
+children are quick studies.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George climbed down&mdash;he has no real courage&mdash;but he did
+not do it gracefully. He said that if we were mean and cowardly
+and false-hearted enough to stoop to such a shabby trick, he supposed
+he couldn&rsquo;t help it; and that if I didn&rsquo;t intend to finish
+the whole bottle of claret myself, he would trouble me to spare him
+a glass. He also added, somewhat illogically, that it really did
+not matter, seeing both Ethelbertha and Mrs. Harris were women of sense
+who would judge him better than to believe for a moment that the suggestion
+emanated from him.</p>
+
+<p>This little point settled, the question was: What sort of a change?</p>
+
+<p>Harris, as usual, was for the sea. He said he knew a yacht,
+just the very thing&mdash;one that we could manage by ourselves; no
+skulking lot of lubbers loafing about, adding to the expense and taking
+away from the romance. Give him a handy boy, he would sail it
+himself. We knew that yacht, and we told him so; we had been on
+it with Harris before. It smells of bilge-water and greens to
+the exclusion of all other scents; no ordinary sea air can hope to head
+against it. So far as sense of smell is concerned, one might be
+spending a week in Limehouse Hole. There is no place to get out
+of the rain; the saloon is ten feet by four, and half of that is taken
+up by a stove, which falls to pieces when you go to light it.
+You have to take your bath on deck, and the towel blows overboard just
+as you step out of the tub. Harris and the boy do all the interesting
+work&mdash;the lugging and the reefing, the letting her go and the heeling
+her over, and all that sort of thing,&mdash;leaving George and myself
+to do the peeling of the potatoes and the washing up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very well, then,&rdquo; said Harris, &ldquo;let&rsquo;s take
+a proper yacht, with a skipper, and do the thing in style.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That also I objected to. I know that skipper; his notion of
+yachting is to lie in what he calls the &ldquo;offing,&rdquo; where
+he can be well in touch with his wife and family, to say nothing of
+his favourite public-house.</p>
+
+<p>Years ago, when I was young and inexperienced, I hired a yacht myself.
+Three things had combined to lead me into this foolishness: I had had
+a stroke of unexpected luck; Ethelbertha had expressed a yearning for
+sea air; and the very next morning, in taking up casually at the club
+a copy of the <i>Sportsman</i>, I had come across the following advertisement:&mdash;</p>
+<blockquote><p>TO YACHTSMEN.&mdash;Unique Opportunity.&mdash;&ldquo;Rogue,&rdquo;
+28-ton Yawl.&mdash;Owner, called away suddenly on business, is willing
+to let this superbly-fitted &ldquo;greyhound of the sea&rdquo; for any
+period short or long. Two cabins and saloon; pianette, by Woffenkoff;
+new copper. Terms, 10 guineas a week.&mdash;Apply Pertwee and
+Co., 3A Bucklersbury.</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>It had seemed to me like the answer to a prayer. &ldquo;The
+new copper&rdquo; did not interest me; what little washing we might
+want could wait, I thought. But the &ldquo;pianette by Woffenkoff&rdquo;
+sounded alluring. I pictured Ethelbertha playing in the evening&mdash;something
+with a chorus, in which, perhaps, the crew, with a little training,
+might join&mdash;while our moving home bounded, &ldquo;greyhound-like,&rdquo;
+over the silvery billows.</p>
+
+<p>I took a cab and drove direct to 3A Bucklersbury. Mr. Pertwee
+was an unpretentious-looking gentleman, who had an unostentatious office
+on the third floor. He showed me a picture in water-colours of
+the <i>Rogue</i> flying before the wind. The deck was at an angle
+of 95 to the ocean. In the picture no human beings were represented
+on the deck; I suppose they had slipped off. Indeed, I do not
+see how anyone could have kept on, unless nailed. I pointed out
+this disadvantage to the agent, who, however, explained to me that the
+picture represented the <i>Rogue</i> doubling something or other on
+the well-known occasion of her winning the Medway Challenge Shield.
+Mr. Pertwee assumed that I knew all about the event, so that I did not
+like to ask any questions. Two specks near the frame of the picture,
+which at first I had taken for moths, represented, it appeared, the
+second and third winners in this celebrated race. A photograph
+of the yacht at anchor off Gravesend was less impressive, but suggested
+more stability. All answers to my inquiries being satisfactory,
+I took the thing for a fortnight. Mr. Pertwee said it was fortunate
+I wanted it only for a fortnight&mdash;later on I came to agree with
+him,&mdash;the time fitting in exactly with another hiring. Had
+I required it for three weeks he would have been compelled to refuse
+me.</p>
+
+<p>The letting being thus arranged, Mr. Pertwee asked me if I had a
+skipper in my eye. That I had not was also fortunate&mdash;things
+seemed to be turning out luckily for me all round,&mdash;because Mr.
+Pertwee felt sure I could not do better than keep on Mr. Goyles, at
+present in charge&mdash;an excellent skipper, so Mr. Pertwee assured
+me, a man who knew the sea as a man knows his own wife, and who had
+never lost a life.</p>
+
+<p>It was still early in the day, and the yacht was lying off Harwich.
+I caught the ten forty-five from Liverpool Street, and by one o&rsquo;clock
+was talking to Mr. Goyles on deck. He was a stout man, and had
+a fatherly way with him. I told him my idea, which was to take
+the outlying Dutch islands and then creep up to Norway. He said,
+&ldquo;Aye, aye, sir,&rdquo; and appeared quite enthusiastic about the
+trip; said he should enjoy it himself. We came to the question
+of victualling, and he grew more enthusiastic. The amount of food
+suggested by Mr. Goyles, I confess, surprised me. Had we been
+living in the days of Drake and the Spanish Main, I should have feared
+he was arranging for something illegal. However, he laughed in
+his fatherly way, and assured me we were not overdoing it. Anything
+left the crew would divide and take home with them&mdash;it seemed this
+was the custom. It appeared to me that I was providing for this
+crew for the winter, but I did not like to appear stingy, and said no
+more. The amount of drink required also surprised me. I
+arranged for what I thought we should need for ourselves, and then Mr.
+Goyles spoke up for the crew. I must say that for him, he did
+think of his men.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We don&rsquo;t want anything in the nature of an orgie, Mr.
+Goyles,&rdquo; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Orgie!&rdquo; replied Mr. Goyles; &ldquo;why they&rsquo;ll
+take that little drop in their tea.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He explained to me that his motto was, Get good men and treat them
+well.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They work better for you,&rdquo; said Mr. Goyles; &ldquo;and
+they come again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Personally, I didn&rsquo;t feel I wanted them to come again.
+I was beginning to take a dislike to them before I had seen them; I
+regarded them as a greedy and guzzling crew. But Mr. Goyles was
+so cheerfully emphatic, and I was so inexperienced, that again I let
+him have his way. He also promised that even in this department
+he would see to it personally that nothing was wasted.</p>
+
+<p>I also left him to engage the crew. He said he could do the
+thing, and would, for me, with the help two men and a boy. If
+he was alluding to the clearing up of the victuals and drink, I think
+he was making an under-estimate; but possibly he may have been speaking
+of the sailing of the yacht.</p>
+
+<p>I called at my tailors on the way home and ordered a yachting suit,
+with a white hat, which they promised to bustle up and have ready in
+time; and then I went home and told Ethelbertha all I had done.
+Her delight was clouded by only one reflection&mdash;would the dressmaker
+be able to finish a yachting costume for her in time? That is
+so like a woman.</p>
+
+<p>Our honeymoon, which had taken place not very long before, had been
+somewhat curtailed, so we decided we would invite nobody, but have the
+yacht to ourselves. And thankful I am to Heaven that we did so
+decide. On Monday we put on all our clothes and started.
+I forget what Ethelbertha wore, but, whatever it may have been, it looked
+very fetching. My own costume was a dark blue trimmed with a narrow
+white braid, which, I think, was rather effective.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Goyles met us on deck, and told us that lunch was ready.
+I must admit Goyles had secured the services of a very fair cook.
+The capabilities of the other members of the crew I had no opportunity
+of judging. Speaking of them in a state of rest, however, I can
+say of them they appeared to be a cheerful crew.</p>
+
+<p>My idea had been that so soon as the men had finished their dinner
+we would weigh anchor, while I, smoking a cigar, with Ethelbertha by
+my side, would lean over the gunwale and watch the white cliffs of the
+Fatherland sink imperceptibly into the horizon. Ethelbertha and
+I carried out our part of the programme, and waited, with the deck to
+ourselves.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They seem to be taking their time,&rdquo; said Ethelbertha.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If, in the course of fourteen days,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;they
+eat half of what is on this yacht, they will want a fairly long time
+for every meal. We had better not hurry them, or they won&rsquo;t
+get through a quarter of it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They must have gone to sleep,&rdquo; said Ethelbertha, later
+on. &ldquo;It will be tea-time soon.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They were certainly very quiet. I went for&rsquo;ard, and hailed
+Captain Goyles down the ladder. I hailed him three times; then
+he came up slowly. He appeared to be a heavier and older man than
+when I had seen him last. He had a cold cigar in his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When you are ready, Captain Goyles,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ll
+start.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Captain Goyles removed the cigar from his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not to-day we won&rsquo;t, sir,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;<i>with</i>
+your permission.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, what&rsquo;s the matter with to-day?&rdquo; I said.
+I know sailors are a superstitious folk; I thought maybe a Monday might
+be considered unlucky.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The day&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; answered Captain Goyles,
+&ldquo;it&rsquo;s the wind I&rsquo;m a-thinking of. It don&rsquo;t
+look much like changing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But do we want it to change?&rdquo; I asked. &ldquo;It
+seems to me to be just where it should be, dead behind us.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aye, aye,&rdquo; said Captain Goyles, &ldquo;dead&rsquo;s
+the right word to use, for dead we&rsquo;d all be, bar Providence, if
+we was to put out in this. You see, sir,&rdquo; he explained,
+in answer to my look of surprise, &ldquo;this is what we call a &lsquo;land
+wind,&rsquo; that is, it&rsquo;s a-blowing, as one might say, direct
+off the land.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When I came to think of it the man was right; the wind was blowing
+off the land.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It may change in the night,&rdquo; said Captain Goyles, more
+hopefully &ldquo;anyhow, it&rsquo;s not violent, and she rides well.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Captain Goyles resumed his cigar, and I returned aft, and explained
+to Ethelbertha the reason for the delay. Ethelbertha, who appeared
+to be less high spirited than when we first boarded, wanted to know
+<i>why</i> we couldn&rsquo;t sail when the wind was off the land.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If it was not blowing off the land,&rdquo; said Ethelbertha,
+&ldquo;it would be blowing off the sea, and that would send us back
+into the shore again. It seems to me this is just the very wind
+we want.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;That is your inexperience, love; it <i>seems</i> to
+be the very wind we want, but it is not. It&rsquo;s what we call
+a land wind, and a land wind is always very dangerous.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Ethelbertha wanted to know <i>why</i> a land wind was very dangerous.</p>
+
+<p>Her argumentativeness annoyed me somewhat; maybe I was feeling a
+bit cross; the monotonous rolling heave of a small yacht at anchor depresses
+an ardent spirit.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t explain it to you,&rdquo; I replied, which was
+true, &ldquo;but to set sail in this wind would be the height of foolhardiness,
+and I care for you too much, dear, to expose you to unnecessary risks.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I thought this rather a neat conclusion, but Ethelbertha merely replied
+that she wished, under the circumstances, we hadn&rsquo;t come on board
+till Tuesday, and went below.</p>
+
+<p>In the morning the wind veered round to the north; I was up early,
+and observed this to Captain Goyles.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Aye, aye, sir,&rdquo; he remarked; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s unfortunate,
+but it can&rsquo;t be helped.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think it possible for us to start to-day?&rdquo;
+I hazarded.</p>
+
+<p>He did not get angry with me, he only laughed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, sir,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;if you was a-wanting to
+go to Ipswich, I should say as it couldn&rsquo;t be better for us, but
+our destination being, as you see, the Dutch coast&mdash;why there you
+are!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I broke the news to Ethelbertha, and we agreed to spend the day on
+shore. Harwich is not a merry town, towards evening you might
+call it dull. We had some tea and watercress at Dovercourt, and
+then returned to the quay to look for Captain Goyles and the boat.
+We waited an hour for him. When he came he was more cheerful than
+we were; if he had not told me himself that he never drank anything
+but one glass of hot grog before turning in for the night, I should
+have said he was drunk.</p>
+
+<p>The next morning the wind was in the south, which made Captain Goyles
+rather anxious, it appearing that it was equally unsafe to move or to
+stop where we were; our only hope was it would change before anything
+happened. By this time, Ethelbertha had taken a dislike to the
+yacht; she said that, personally, she would rather be spending a week
+in a bathing machine, seeing that a bathing machine was at least steady.</p>
+
+<p>We passed another day in Harwich, and that night and the next, the
+wind still continuing in the south, we slept at the &ldquo;King&rsquo;s
+Head.&rdquo; On Friday the wind was blowing direct from the east.
+I met Captain Goyles on the quay, and suggested that, under these circumstances,
+we might start. He appeared irritated at my persistence.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If you knew a bit more, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you&rsquo;d
+see for yourself that it&rsquo;s impossible. The wind&rsquo;s
+a-blowing direct off the sea.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;Captain Goyles, tell me what is this thing I have
+hired? Is it a yacht or a house-boat?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He seemed surprised at my question.</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;It&rsquo;s a yawl.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What I mean is,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;can it be moved at all,
+or is it a fixture here? If it is a fixture,&rdquo; I continued,
+&ldquo;tell me so frankly, then we will get some ivy in boxes and train
+over the port-holes, stick some flowers and an awning on deck, and make
+the thing look pretty. If, on the other hand, it can be moved&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Moved!&rdquo; interrupted Captain Goyles. &ldquo;You
+get the right wind behind the <i>Rogue</i>&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;What is the right wind?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Captain Goyles looked puzzled.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In the course of this week,&rdquo; I went on, &ldquo;we have
+had wind from the north, from the south, from the east, from the west&mdash;with
+variations. If you can think of any other point of the compass
+from which it can blow, tell me, and I will wait for it. If not,
+and if that anchor has not grown into the bottom of the ocean, we will
+have it up to-day and see what happens.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He grasped the fact that I was determined.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very well, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;you&rsquo;re master
+and I&rsquo;m man. I&rsquo;ve only got one child as is still dependent
+on me, thank God, and no doubt your executors will feel it their duty
+to do the right thing by the old woman.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>His solemnity impressed me.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mr. Goyles,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;be honest with me.
+Is there any hope, in any weather, of getting away from this damned
+hole?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Captain Goyles&rsquo;s kindly geniality returned to him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You see, sir,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;this is a very peculiar
+coast. We&rsquo;d be all right if we were once out, but getting
+away from it in a cockle-shell like that&mdash;well, to be frank, sir,
+it wants doing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I left Captain Goyles with the assurance that he would watch the
+weather as a mother would her sleeping babe; it was his own simile,
+and it struck me as rather touching. I saw him again at twelve
+o&rsquo;clock; he was watching it from the window of the &ldquo;Chain
+and Anchor.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At five o&rsquo;clock that evening a stroke of luck occurred; in
+the middle of the High Street I met a couple of yachting friends, who
+had had to put in by reason of a strained rudder. I told them
+my story, and they appeared less surprised than amused. Captain
+Goyles and the two men were still watching the weather. I ran
+into the &ldquo;King&rsquo;s Head,&rdquo; and prepared Ethelbertha.
+The four of us crept quietly down to the quay, where we found our boat.
+Only the boy was on board; my two friends took charge of the yacht,
+and by six o&rsquo;clock we were scudding merrily up the coast.</p>
+
+<p>We put in that night at Aldborough, and the next day worked up to
+Yarmouth, where, as my friends had to leave, I decided to abandon the
+yacht. We sold the stores by auction on Yarmouth sands early in
+the morning. I made a loss, but had the satisfaction of &ldquo;doing&rdquo;
+Captain Goyles. I left the <i>Rogue</i> in charge of a local mariner,
+who, for a couple of sovereigns, undertook to see to its return to Harwich;
+and we came back to London by train. There may be yachts other
+than the <i>Rogue</i>, and skippers other than Mr. Goyles, but that
+experience has prejudiced me against both.</p>
+
+<p>George also thought a yacht would be a good deal of responsibility,
+so we dismissed the idea.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What about the river?&rdquo; suggested Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We have had some pleasant times on that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George pulled in silence at his cigar, and I cracked another nut.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The river is not what it used to be,&rdquo; said I; &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t know what, but there&rsquo;s a something&mdash;a dampness&mdash;about
+the river air that always starts my lumbago.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the same with me,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t know how it is, but I never can sleep now in the neighbourhood
+of the river. I spent a week at Joe&rsquo;s place in the spring,
+and every night I woke up at seven o&rsquo;clock and never got a wink
+afterwards.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I merely suggested it,&rdquo; observed Harris. &ldquo;Personally,
+I don&rsquo;t think it good for me, either; it touches my gout.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What suits me best,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;is mountain air.
+What say you to a walking tour in Scotland?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s always wet in Scotland,&rdquo; said George.
+&ldquo;I was three weeks in Scotland the year before last, and was never
+dry once all the time&mdash;not in that sense.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s fine enough in Switzerland,&rdquo; said Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They would never stand our going to Switzerland by ourselves,&rdquo;
+I objected. &ldquo;You know what happened last time. It
+must be some place where no delicately nurtured woman or child could
+possibly live; a country of bad hotels and comfortless travelling; where
+we shall have to rough it, to work hard, to starve perhaps&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Easy!&rdquo; interrupted George, &ldquo;easy, there!
+Don&rsquo;t forget I&rsquo;m coming with you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have it!&rdquo; exclaimed Harris; &ldquo;a bicycle tour!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George looked doubtful.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a lot of uphill about a bicycle tour,&rdquo;
+said he, &ldquo;and the wind is against you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So there is downhill, and the wind behind you,&rdquo; said
+Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve never noticed it,&rdquo; said George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You won&rsquo;t think of anything better than a bicycle tour,&rdquo;
+persisted Harris.</p>
+
+<p>I was inclined to agree with him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And I&rsquo;ll tell you where,&rdquo; continued he; &ldquo;through
+the Black Forest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, that&rsquo;s <i>all</i> uphill,&rdquo; said George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Not all,&rdquo; retorted Harris; &ldquo;say two-thirds.
+And there&rsquo;s one thing you&rsquo;ve forgotten.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He looked round cautiously, and sunk his voice to a whisper.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There are little railways going up those hills, little cogwheel
+things that&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The door opened, and Mrs. Harris appeared. She said that Ethelbertha
+was putting on her bonnet, and that Muriel, after waiting, had given
+&ldquo;The Mad Hatter&rsquo;s Tea Party&rdquo; without us.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Club, to-morrow, at four,&rdquo; whispered Harris to me, as
+he rose, and I passed it on to George as we went upstairs.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER II</h2>
+
+<p class="letter">
+A delicate business&mdash;What Ethelbertha might have said&mdash;What
+she did say&mdash;What Mrs. Harris said&mdash;What we told George&mdash;We
+will start on Wednesday&mdash;George suggests the possibility of improving
+our minds&mdash;Harris and I are doubtful&mdash;Which man on a tandem
+does the most work?&mdash;The opinion of the man in front&mdash;Views
+of the man behind&mdash;How Harris lost his wife&mdash;The luggage question&mdash;The
+wisdom of my late Uncle Podger&mdash;Beginning of story about a man
+who had a bag.</p>
+
+<p>I opened the ball with Ethelbertha that same evening. I commenced
+by being purposely a little irritable. My idea was that Ethelbertha
+would remark upon this. I should admit it, and account for it
+by over brain pressure. This would naturally lead to talk about
+my health in general, and the evident necessity there was for my taking
+prompt and vigorous measures. I thought that with a little tact
+I might even manage so that the suggestion should come from Ethelbertha
+herself. I imagined her saying: &ldquo;No, dear, it is change
+you want; complete change. Now be persuaded by me, and go away
+for a month. No, do not ask me to come with you. I know
+you would rather that I did, but I will not. It is the society
+of other men you need. Try and persuade George and Harris to go
+with you. Believe me, a highly strung brain such as yours demands
+occasional relaxation from the strain of domestic surroundings.
+Forget for a little while that children want music lessons, and boots,
+and bicycles, with tincture of rhubarb three times a day; forget there
+are such things in life as cooks, and house decorators, and next-door
+dogs, and butchers&rsquo; bills. Go away to some green corner
+of the earth, where all is new and strange to you, where your over-wrought
+mind will gather peace and fresh ideas. Go away for a space and
+give me time to miss you, and to reflect upon your goodness and virtue,
+which, continually present with me, I may, human-like, be apt to forget,
+as one, through use, grows indifferent to the blessing of the sun and
+the beauty of the moon. Go away, and come back refreshed in mind
+and body, a brighter, better man&mdash;if that be possible&mdash;than
+when you went away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But even when we obtain our desires they never come to us garbed
+as we would wish. To begin with, Ethelbertha did not seem to remark
+that I was irritable; I had to draw her attention to it. I said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You must forgive me, I&rsquo;m not feeling quite myself to-night.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She said: &ldquo;Oh! I have not noticed anything different;
+what&rsquo;s the matter with you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you what it is,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve
+felt it coming on for weeks.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s that whisky,&rdquo; said Ethelbertha. &ldquo;You
+never touch it except when we go to the Harris&rsquo;s. You know
+you can&rsquo;t stand it; you have not a strong head.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t the whisky,&rdquo; I replied; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s
+deeper than that. I fancy it&rsquo;s more mental than bodily.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve been reading those criticisms again,&rdquo; said
+Ethelbertha, more sympathetically; &ldquo;why don&rsquo;t you take my
+advice and put them on the fire?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And it isn&rsquo;t the criticisms,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;they&rsquo;ve
+been quite flattering of late&mdash;one or two of them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, what is it?&rdquo; said Ethelbertha; &ldquo;there must
+be something to account for it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, there isn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; I replied; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s
+the remarkable thing about it; I can only describe it as a strange feeling
+of unrest that seems to have taken possession of me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Ethelbertha glanced across at me with a somewhat curious expression,
+I thought; but as she said nothing, I continued the argument myself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This aching monotony of life, these days of peaceful, uneventful
+felicity, they appall one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I should not grumble at them,&rdquo; said Ethelbertha; &ldquo;we
+might get some of the other sort, and like them still less.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so sure of that,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;In
+a life of continuous joy, I can imagine even pain coming as a welcome
+variation. I wonder sometimes whether the saints in heaven do
+not occasionally feel the continual serenity a burden. To myself
+a life of endless bliss, uninterrupted by a single contrasting note,
+would, I feel, grow maddening. I suppose,&rdquo; I continued,
+&ldquo;I am a strange sort of man; I can hardly understand myself at
+times. There are moments,&rdquo; I added, &ldquo;when I hate myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Often a little speech like this, hinting at hidden depths of indescribable
+emotion has touched Ethelbertha, but to-night she appeared strangely
+unsympathetic. With regard to heaven and its possible effect upon
+me, she suggested my not worrying myself about that, remarking it was
+always foolish to go half-way to meet trouble that might never come;
+while as to my being a strange sort of fellow, that, she supposed, I
+could not help, and if other people were willing to put up with me,
+there was an end of the matter. The monotony of life, she added,
+was a common experience; there she could sympathise with me.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t know I long,&rdquo; said Ethelbertha, &ldquo;to
+get away occasionally, even from you; but I know it can never be, so
+I do not brood upon it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I had never heard Ethelbertha speak like this before; it astonished
+and grieved me beyond measure.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s not a very kind remark to make,&rdquo; I said,
+&ldquo;not a wifely remark.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know it isn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; she replied; &ldquo;that is
+why I have never said it before. You men never can understand,&rdquo;
+continued Ethelbertha, &ldquo;that, however fond a woman may be of a
+man, there are times when he palls upon her. You don&rsquo;t know
+how I long to be able sometimes to put on my bonnet and go out, with
+nobody to ask me where I am going, why I am going, how long I am going
+to be, and when I shall be back. You don&rsquo;t know how I sometimes
+long to order a dinner that I should like and that the children would
+like, but at the sight of which you would put on your hat and be off
+to the Club. You don&rsquo;t know how much I feel inclined sometimes
+to invite some woman here that I like, and that I know you don&rsquo;t;
+to go and see the people that I want to see, to go to bed when <i>I</i>
+am tired, and to get up when <i>I</i> feel I want to get up. Two
+people living together are bound both to be continually sacrificing
+their own desires to the other one. It is sometimes a good thing
+to slacken the strain a bit.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>On thinking over Ethelbertha&rsquo;s words afterwards, have come
+to see their wisdom; but at the time I admit I was hurt and indignant.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If your desire,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;is to get rid of me&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, don&rsquo;t be an old goose,&rdquo; said Ethelbertha;
+&ldquo;I only want to get rid of you for a little while, just long enough
+to forget there are one or two corners about you that are not perfect,
+just long enough to let me remember what a dear fellow you are in other
+respects, and to look forward to your return, as I used to look forward
+to your coming in the old days when I did not see you so often as to
+become, perhaps, a little indifferent to you, as one grows indifferent
+to the glory of the sun, just because he is there every day.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I did not like the tone that Ethelbertha took. There seemed
+to be a frivolity about her, unsuited to the theme into which we had
+drifted. That a woman should contemplate cheerfully an absence
+of three or four weeks from her husband appeared to me to be not altogether
+nice, not what I call womanly; it was not like Ethelbertha at all.
+I was worried, I felt I didn&rsquo;t want to go this trip at all.
+If it had not been for George and Harris, I would have abandoned it.
+As it was, I could not see how to change my mind with dignity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very well, Ethelbertha,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;it shall
+be as you wish. If you desire a holiday from my presence, you
+shall enjoy it; but if it be not impertinent curiosity on the part of
+a husband, I should like to know what you propose doing in my absence?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We will take that house at Folkestone,&rdquo; answered Ethelbertha,
+&ldquo;and I&rsquo;ll go down there with Kate. And if you want
+to do Clara Harris a good turn,&rdquo; added Ethelbertha, &ldquo;you&rsquo;ll
+persuade Harris to go with you, and then Clara can join us. We
+three used to have some very jolly times together before you men ever
+came along, and it would be just delightful to renew them. Do
+you think,&rdquo; continued Ethelbertha, &ldquo;that you could persuade
+Mr. Harris to go with you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said I would try.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a dear boy,&rdquo; said Ethelbertha; &ldquo;try
+hard. You might get George to join you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I replied there was not much advantage in George&rsquo;s coming,
+seeing he was a bachelor, and that therefore nobody would be much benefited
+by his absence. But a woman never understands satire. Ethelbertha
+merely remarked it would look unkind leaving him behind. I promised
+to put it to him.</p>
+
+<p>I met Harris at the Club in the afternoon, and asked him how he had
+got on.</p>
+
+<p>He said, &ldquo;Oh, that&rsquo;s all right; there&rsquo;s no difficulty
+about getting away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But there was that about his tone that suggested incomplete satisfaction,
+so I pressed him for further details.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She was as sweet as milk about it,&rdquo; he continued; &ldquo;said
+it was an excellent idea of George&rsquo;s, and that she thought it
+would do me good.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That seems all right,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;what&rsquo;s wrong
+about that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s nothing wrong about that,&rdquo; he answered,
+&ldquo;but that wasn&rsquo;t all. She went on to talk of other
+things.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I understand,&rdquo; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s that bathroom fad of hers,&rdquo; he continued.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve heard of it,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;she has started
+Ethelbertha on the same idea.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;ve had to agree to that being put in hand at
+once; I couldn&rsquo;t argue any more when she was so nice about the
+other thing. That will cost me a hundred pounds, at the very least.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As much as that?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Every penny of it,&rdquo; said Harris; &ldquo;the estimate
+alone is sixty.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I was sorry to hear him say this.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then there&rsquo;s the kitchen stove,&rdquo; continued Harris;
+&ldquo;everything that has gone wrong in the house for the last two
+years has been the fault of that kitchen stove.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;We have been in seven
+houses since we were married, and every kitchen stove has been worse
+than the last. Our present one is not only incompetent; it is
+spiteful. It knows when we are giving a party, and goes out of
+its way to do its worst.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;<i>We</i> are going to have a new one,&rdquo; said Harris,
+but he did not say it proudly. &ldquo;Clara thought it would be
+such a saving of expense, having the two things done at the same time.
+I believe,&rdquo; said Harris, &ldquo;if a woman wanted a diamond tiara,
+she would explain that it was to save the expense of a bonnet.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How much do you reckon the stove is going to cost you?&rdquo;
+I asked. I felt interested in the subject.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; answered Harris; &ldquo;another
+twenty, I suppose. Then we talked about the piano. Could
+you ever notice,&rdquo; said Harris, &ldquo;any difference between one
+piano and another?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Some of them seem to be a bit louder than others,&rdquo; I
+answered; &ldquo;but one gets used to that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ours is all wrong about the treble,&rdquo; said Harris.
+&ldquo;By the way, what <i>is</i> the treble?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the shrill end of the thing,&rdquo; I explained;
+&ldquo;the part that sounds as if you&rsquo;d trod on its tail.
+The brilliant selections always end up with a flourish on it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They want more of it,&rdquo; said Harris; &ldquo;our old one
+hasn&rsquo;t got enough of it. I&rsquo;ll have to put it in the
+nursery, and get a new one for the drawing-room.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Anything else?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No,&rdquo; said Harris; &ldquo;she didn&rsquo;t seem able
+to think of anything else.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll find when you get home,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;she
+has thought of one other thing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s that?&rdquo; said Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A house at Folkestone for the season.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What should she want a house at Folkestone for?&rdquo; said
+Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;To live in,&rdquo; I suggested, &ldquo;during the summer months.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She&rsquo;s going to her people in Wales,&rdquo; said Harris,
+&ldquo;for the holidays, with the children; we&rsquo;ve had an invitation.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Possibly,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;she&rsquo;ll go to Wales before
+she goes to Folkestone, or maybe she&rsquo;ll take Wales on her way
+home; but she&rsquo;ll want a house at Folkestone for the season, notwithstanding.
+I may be mistaken&mdash;I hope for your sake that I am&mdash;but I feel
+a presentiment that I&rsquo;m not.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This trip,&rdquo; said Harris, &ldquo;is going to be expensive.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was an idiotic suggestion,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;from the
+beginning.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was foolish of us to listen to him,&rdquo; said Harris;
+&ldquo;he&rsquo;ll get us into real trouble one of these days.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He always was a muddler,&rdquo; I agreed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So headstrong,&rdquo; added Harris.</p>
+
+<p>We heard his voice at that moment in the hall, asking for letters.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Better not say anything to him,&rdquo; I suggested; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s
+too late to go back now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There would be no advantage in doing so,&rdquo; replied Harris.
+&ldquo;I should have to get that bathroom and piano in any case now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He came in looking very cheerful.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is it all right? Have you
+managed it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There was that about his tone I did not altogether like; I noticed
+Harris resented it also.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Managed what?&rdquo; I said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, to get off,&rdquo; said George.</p>
+
+<p>I felt the time was come to explain things to George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In married life,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;the man proposes, the
+woman submits. It is her duty; all religion teaches it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George folded his hands and fixed his eyes on the ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We may chaff and joke a little about these things,&rdquo;
+I continued; &ldquo;but when it comes to practice, that is what always
+happens. We have mentioned to our wives that we are going.
+Naturally, they are grieved; they would prefer to come with us; failing
+that, they would have us remain with them. But we have explained
+to them our wishes on the subject, and&mdash;there&rsquo;s an end of
+the matter.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George said, &ldquo;Forgive me; I did not understand. I am
+only a bachelor. People tell me this, that, and the other, and
+I listen.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said, &ldquo;That is where you do wrong. When you want information
+come to Harris or myself; we will tell you the truth about these questions.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George thanked us, and we proceeded with the business in hand.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When shall we start?&rdquo; said George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So far as I am concerned,&rdquo; replied Harris, &ldquo;the
+sooner the better.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>His idea, I fancy, was to get away before Mrs. H. thought of other
+things. We fixed the following Wednesday.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What about route?&rdquo; said Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have an idea,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;I take it
+you fellows are naturally anxious to improve your minds?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said, &ldquo;We don&rsquo;t want to become monstrosities.
+To a reasonable degree, yes, if it can be done without much expense
+and with little personal trouble.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It can,&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;We know Holland and
+the Rhine. Very well, my suggestion is that we take the boat to
+Hamburg, see Berlin and Dresden, and work our way to the Schwarzwald,
+through Nuremberg and Stuttgart.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There are some pretty bits in Mesopotamia, so I&rsquo;ve been
+told,&rdquo; murmured Harris.</p>
+
+<p>George said Mesopotamia was too much out of our way, but that the
+Berlin-Dresden route was quite practicable. For good or evil,
+he persuaded us into it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The machines, I suppose,&rdquo; said George, &ldquo;as before.
+Harris and I on the tandem, J.&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think not,&rdquo; interrupted Harris, firmly. &ldquo;You
+and J. on the tandem, I on the single.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All the same to me,&rdquo; agreed George. &ldquo;J.
+and I on the tandem, Harris&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do not mind taking my turn,&rdquo; I interrupted, &ldquo;but
+I am not going to carry George <i>all</i> the way; the burden should
+be divided.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; agreed Harris, &ldquo;we&rsquo;ll divide
+it. But it must be on the distinct understanding that he works.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That he what?&rdquo; said George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That he works,&rdquo; repeated Harris, firmly; &ldquo;at all
+events, uphill.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Great Scott!&rdquo; said George; &ldquo;don&rsquo;t you want
+<i>any</i> exercise?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There is always unpleasantness about this tandem. It is the
+theory of the man in front that the man behind does nothing; it is equally
+the theory of the man behind that he alone is the motive power, the
+man in front merely doing the puffing. The mystery will never
+be solved. It is annoying when Prudence is whispering to you on
+the one side not to overdo your strength and bring on heart disease;
+while Justice into the other ear is remarking, &ldquo;Why should you
+do it all? This isn&rsquo;t a cab. He&rsquo;s not your passenger:&rdquo;
+to hear him grunt out:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter&mdash;lost your pedals?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Harris, in his early married days, made much trouble for himself
+on one occasion, owing to this impossibility of knowing what the person
+behind is doing. He was riding with his wife through Holland.
+The roads were stony, and the machine jumped a good deal.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sit tight,&rdquo; said Harris, without turning his head.</p>
+
+<p>What Mrs. Harris thought he said was, &ldquo;Jump off.&rdquo;
+Why she should have thought he said &ldquo;Jump off,&rdquo; when he
+said &ldquo;Sit tight,&rdquo; neither of them can explain.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Harris puts it in this way, &ldquo;If you had said, &lsquo;Sit
+tight,&rsquo; why should I have jumped off?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Harris puts it, &ldquo;If I had wanted you to jump off, why should
+I have said &lsquo;Sit tight!&rsquo;?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The bitterness is past, but they argue about the matter to this day.</p>
+
+<p>Be the explanation what it may, however, nothing alters the fact
+that Mrs. Harris did jump off, while Harris pedalled away hard, under
+the impression she was still behind him. It appears that at first
+she thought he was riding up the hill merely to show off. They
+were both young in those days, and he used to do that sort of thing.
+She expected him to spring to earth on reaching the summit, and lean
+in a careless and graceful attitude against the machine, waiting for
+her. When, on the contrary, she saw him pass the summit and proceed
+rapidly down a long and steep incline, she was seized, first with surprise,
+secondly with indignation, and lastly with alarm. She ran to the
+top of the hill and shouted, but he never turned his head. She
+watched him disappear into a wood a mile and a half distant, and then
+sat down and cried. They had had a slight difference that morning,
+and she wondered if he had taken it seriously and intended desertion.
+She had no money; she knew no Dutch. People passed, and seemed
+sorry for her; she tried to make them understand what had happened.
+They gathered that she had lost something, but could not grasp what.
+They took her to the nearest village, and found a policeman for her.
+He concluded from her pantomime that some man had stolen her bicycle.
+They put the telegraph into operation, and discovered in a village four
+miles off an unfortunate boy riding a lady&rsquo;s machine of an obsolete
+pattern. They brought him to her in a cart, but as she did not
+appear to want either him or his bicycle they let him go again, and
+resigned themselves to bewilderment.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Harris continued his ride with much enjoyment. It
+seemed to him that he had suddenly become a stronger, and in every way
+a more capable cyclist. Said he to what he thought was Mrs. Harris:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t felt this machine so light for months.
+It&rsquo;s this air, I think; it&rsquo;s doing me good.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then he told her not to be afraid, and he would show her how fast
+he <i>could</i> go. He bent down over the handles, and put his
+heart into his work. The bicycle bounded over the road like a
+thing of life; farmhouses and churches, dogs and chickens came to him
+and passed. Old folks stood and gazed at him, the children cheered
+him.</p>
+
+<p>In this way he sped merrily onward for about five miles. Then,
+as he explains it, the feeling began to grow upon him that something
+was wrong. He was not surprised at the silence; the wind was blowing
+strongly, and the machine was rattling a good deal. It was a sense
+of void that came upon him. He stretched out his hand behind him,
+and felt; there was nothing there but space. He jumped, or rather
+fell off, and looked back up the road; it stretched white and straight
+through the dark wood, and not a living soul could be seen upon it.
+He remounted, and rode back up the hill. In ten minutes he came
+to where the road broke into four; there he dismounted and tried to
+remember which fork he had come down.</p>
+
+<p>While he was deliberating a man passed, sitting sideways on a horse.
+Harris stopped him, and explained to him that he had lost his wife.
+The man appeared to be neither surprised nor sorry for him. While
+they were talking another farmer came along, to whom the first man explained
+the matter, not as an accident, but as a good story. What appeared
+to surprise the second man most was that Harris should be making a fuss
+about the thing. He could get no sense out of either of them,
+and cursing them he mounted his machine again, and took the middle road
+on chance. Half-way up, he came upon a party of two young women
+with one young man between them. They appeared to be making the
+most of him. He asked them if they had seen his wife. They
+asked him what she was like. He did not know enough Dutch to describe
+her properly; all he could tell them was she was a very beautiful woman,
+of medium size. Evidently this did not satisfy them, the description
+was too general; any man could say that, and by this means perhaps get
+possession of a wife that did not belong to him. They asked him
+how she was dressed; for the life of him he could not recollect.</p>
+
+<p>I doubt if any man could tell how any woman was dressed ten minutes
+after he had left her. He recollected a blue skirt, and then there
+was something that carried the dress on, as it were, up to the neck.
+Possibly, this may have been a blouse; he retained a dim vision of a
+belt; but what sort of a blouse? Was it green, or yellow, or blue?
+Had it a collar, or was it fastened with a bow? Were there feathers
+in her hat, or flowers? Or was it a hat at all? He dared
+not say, for fear of making a mistake and being sent miles after the
+wrong party. The two young women giggled, which in his then state
+of mind irritated Harris. The young man, who appeared anxious
+to get rid of him, suggested the police station at the next town.
+Harris made his way there. The police gave him a piece of paper,
+and told him to write down a full description of his wife, together
+with details of when and where he had lost her. He did not know
+where he had lost her; all he could tell them was the name of the village
+where he had lunched. He knew he had her with him then, and that
+they had started from there together.</p>
+
+<p>The police looked suspicious; they were doubtful about three matters:
+Firstly, was she really his wife? Secondly, had he really lost
+her? Thirdly, why had he lost her? With the aid of a hotel-keeper,
+however, who spoke a little English, he overcame their scruples.
+They promised to act, and in the evening they brought her to him in
+a covered wagon, together with a bill for expenses. The meeting
+was not a tender one. Mrs. Harris is not a good actress, and always
+has great difficulty in disguising her feelings. On this occasion,
+she frankly admits, she made no attempt to disguise them.</p>
+
+<p>The wheel business settled, there arose the ever-lasting luggage
+question.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The usual list, I suppose,&rdquo; said George, preparing to
+write.</p>
+
+<p>That was wisdom I had taught them; I had learned it myself years
+ago from my Uncle Podger.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Always before beginning to pack,&rdquo; my Uncle would say,
+&ldquo;make a list.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He was a methodical man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Take a piece of paper&rdquo;&mdash;he always began at the
+beginning&mdash;&ldquo;put down on it everything you can possibly require,
+then go over it and see that it contains nothing you can possibly do
+without. Imagine yourself in bed; what have you got on?
+Very well, put it down&mdash;together with a change. You get up;
+what do you do? Wash yourself. What do you wash yourself
+with? Soap; put down soap. Go on till you have finished.
+Then take your clothes. Begin at your feet; what do you wear on
+your feet? Boots, shoes, socks; put them down. Work up till
+you get to your head. What else do you want besides clothes?
+A little brandy; put it down. A corkscrew, put it down.
+Put down everything, then you don&rsquo;t forget anything.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That is the plan he always pursued himself. The list made,
+he would go over it carefully, as he always advised, to see that he
+had forgotten nothing. Then he would go over it again, and strike
+out everything it was possible to dispense with.</p>
+
+<p>Then he would lose the list.</p>
+
+<p>Said George: &ldquo;Just sufficient for a day or two we will take
+with us on our bikes. The bulk of our luggage we must send on
+from town to town.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We must be careful,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;I knew a man once&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Harris looked at his watch.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We&rsquo;ll hear about him on the boat,&rdquo; said Harris;
+&ldquo;I have got to meet Clara at Waterloo Station in half an hour.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It won&rsquo;t take half an hour,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s
+a true story, and&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t waste it,&rdquo; said George: &ldquo;I am told
+there are rainy evenings in the Black Forest; we may be glad of it.
+What we have to do now is to finish this list.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now I come to think of it, I never did get off that story; something
+always interrupted it. And it really was true.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER III</h2>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Harris&rsquo;s one fault&mdash;Harris and the Angel&mdash;A patent
+bicycle lamp&mdash;The ideal saddle&mdash;The &ldquo;Overhauler&rdquo;&mdash;His
+eagle eye&mdash;His method&mdash;His cheery confidence&mdash;His simple
+and inexpensive tastes&mdash;His appearance&mdash;How to get rid of
+him&mdash;George as prophet&mdash;The gentle art of making oneself disagreeable
+in a foreign tongue&mdash;George as a student of human nature&mdash;He
+proposes an experiment&mdash;His Prudence&mdash;Harris&rsquo;s support
+secured, upon conditions.</p>
+
+<p>On Monday afternoon Harris came round; he had a cycling paper in
+his hand.</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;If you take my advice, you will leave it alone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Harris said: &ldquo;Leave what alone?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;That brand-new, patent, revolution in cycling, record-breaking,
+Tomfoolishness, whatever it may be, the advertisement of which you have
+there in your hand.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;Well, I don&rsquo;t know; there will be some steep
+hills for us to negotiate; I guess we shall want a good brake.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;We shall want a brake, I agree; what we shall not
+want is a mechanical surprise that we don&rsquo;t understand, and that
+never acts when it is wanted.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This thing,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;acts automatically.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t tell me,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;I know
+exactly what it will do, by instinct. Going uphill it will jamb
+the wheel so effectively that we shall have to carry the machine bodily.
+The air at the top of the hill will do it good, and it will suddenly
+come right again. Going downhill it will start reflecting what
+a nuisance it has been. This will lead to remorse, and finally
+to despair. It will say to itself: &lsquo;I&rsquo;m not fit to
+be a brake. I don&rsquo;t help these fellows; I only hinder them.
+I&rsquo;m a curse, that&rsquo;s what I am;&rsquo; and, without a word
+of warning, it will &lsquo;chuck&rsquo; the whole business. That
+is what that brake will do. Leave it alone. You are a good
+fellow,&rdquo; I continued, &ldquo;but you have one fault.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What?&rdquo; he asked, indignantly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You have too much faith,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;If
+you read an advertisement, you go away and believe it. Every experiment
+that every fool has thought of in connection with cycling you have tried.
+Your guardian angel appears to be a capable and conscientious spirit,
+and hitherto she has seen you through; take my advice and don&rsquo;t
+try her too far. She must have had a busy time since you started
+cycling. Don&rsquo;t go on till you make her mad.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;If every man talked like that there would be no advancement
+made in any department of life. If nobody ever tried a new thing
+the world would come to a standstill. It is by&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know all that can be said on that side of the argument,&rdquo;
+I interrupted. &ldquo;I agree in trying new experiments up to
+thirty-five; <i>after</i> thirty-five I consider a man is entitled to
+think of himself. You and I have done our duty in this direction,
+you especially. You have been blown up by a patent gas lamp&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;I really think, you know, that was my fault; I think
+I must have screwed it up too tight.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;I am quite willing to believe that if there was a
+wrong way of handling the thing that is the way you handle it.
+You should take that tendency of yours into consideration; it bears
+upon the argument. Myself, I did not notice what you did; I only
+know we were riding peacefully and pleasantly along the Whitby Road,
+discussing the Thirty Years&rsquo; War, when your lamp went off like
+a pistol-shot. The start sent me into the ditch; and your wife&rsquo;s
+face, when I told her there was nothing the matter and that she was
+not to worry, because the two men would carry you upstairs, and the
+doctor would be round in a minute bringing the nurse with him, still
+lingers in my memory.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;I wish you had thought to pick up the lamp.
+I should like to have found out what was the cause of its going off
+like that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;There was not time to pick up the lamp. I calculate
+it would have taken two hours to have collected it. As to its
+&lsquo;going off,&rsquo; the mere fact of its being advertised as the
+safest lamp ever invented would of itself, to anyone but you, have suggested
+accident. Then there was that electric lamp,&rdquo; I continued.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, that really did give a fine light,&rdquo; he replied;
+&ldquo;you said so yourself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;It gave a brilliant light in the King&rsquo;s Road,
+Brighton, and frightened a horse. The moment we got into the dark
+beyond Kemp Town it went out, and you were summoned for riding without
+a light. You may remember that on sunny afternoons you used to
+ride about with that lamp shining for all it was worth. When lighting-up
+time came it was naturally tired, and wanted a rest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It was a bit irritating, that lamp,&rdquo; he murmured; &ldquo;I
+remember it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;It irritated me; it must have been worse for you.
+Then there are saddles,&rdquo; I went on&mdash;I wished to get this
+lesson home to him. &ldquo;Can you think of any saddle ever advertised
+that you have <i>not</i> tried?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;It has been an idea of mine that the right saddle
+is to be found.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;You give up that idea; this is an imperfect world
+of joy and sorrow mingled. There may be a better land where bicycle
+saddles are made out of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; in this world the
+simplest thing is to get used to something hard. There was that
+saddle you bought in Birmingham; it was divided in the middle, and looked
+like a pair of kidneys.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;You mean that one constructed on anatomical principles.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very likely,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;The box you bought
+it in had a picture on the cover, representing a sitting skeleton&mdash;or
+rather that part of a skeleton which does sit.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;It was quite correct; it showed you the true position
+of the&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;We will not go into details; the picture always seemed
+to me indelicate.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;Medically speaking, it was right.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Possibly,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;for a man who rode in nothing
+but his bones. I only know that I tried it myself, and that to
+a man who wore flesh it was agony. Every time you went over a
+stone or a rut it nipped you; it was like riding on an irritable lobster.
+You rode that for a month.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought it only right to give it a fair trial,&rdquo; he
+answered.</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;You gave your family a fair trial also; if you will
+allow me the use of slang. Your wife told me that never in the
+whole course of your married life had she known you so bad tempered,
+so un-Christian like, as you were that month. Then you remember
+that other saddle, the one with the spring under it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;You mean &lsquo;the Spiral.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;I mean the one that jerked you up and down like a
+Jack-in-the-box; sometimes you came down again in the right place, and
+sometimes you didn&rsquo;t. I am not referring to these matters
+merely to recall painful memories, but I want to impress you with the
+folly of trying experiments at your time of life.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said. &ldquo;I wish you wouldn&rsquo;t harp so much on my
+age. A man at thirty-four&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A man at what?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;If you don&rsquo;t want the thing, don&rsquo;t have
+it. If your machine runs away with you down a mountain, and you
+and George get flung through a church roof, don&rsquo;t blame me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I cannot promise for George,&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;a little
+thing will sometimes irritate him, as you know. If such an accident
+as you suggest happen, he may be cross, but I will undertake to explain
+to him that it was not your fault.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is the thing all right?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The tandem,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;is well.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;Have you overhauled it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;I have not, nor is anyone else going to overhaul it.
+The thing is now in working order, and it is going to remain in working
+order till we start.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I have had experience of this &ldquo;overhauling.&rdquo; There
+was a man at Folkestone; I used to meet him on the Lees. He proposed
+one evening we should go for a long bicycle ride together on the following
+day, and I agreed. I got up early, for me; I made an effort, and
+was pleased with myself. He came half an hour late: I was waiting
+for him in the garden. It was a lovely day. He said:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a good-looking machine of yours. How does
+it run?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, like most of them!&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;easily enough
+in the morning; goes a little stiffly after lunch.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He caught hold of it by the front wheel and the fork and shook it
+violently.</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t do that; you&rsquo;ll hurt it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I did not see why he should shake it; it had not done anything to
+him. Besides, if it wanted shaking, I was the proper person to
+shake it. I felt much as I should had he started whacking my dog.</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;This front wheel wobbles.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t if you don&rsquo;t wobble it.&rdquo;
+It didn&rsquo;t wobble, as a matter of fact&mdash;nothing worth calling
+a wobble.</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;This is dangerous; have you got a screw-hammer?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I ought to have been firm, but I thought that perhaps he really did
+know something about the business. I went to the tool shed to
+see what I could find. When I came back he was sitting on the
+ground with the front wheel between his legs. He was playing with
+it, twiddling it round between his fingers; the remnant of the machine
+was lying on the gravel path beside him.</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;Something has happened to this front wheel of yours.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It looks like it, doesn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; I answered.
+But he was the sort of man that never understands satire.</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;It looks to me as if the bearings were all wrong.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you trouble about it any more; you will
+make yourself tired. Let us put it back and get off.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;We may as well see what is the matter with it, now
+it is out.&rdquo; He talked as though it had dropped out by accident.</p>
+
+<p>Before I could stop him he had unscrewed something somewhere, and
+out rolled all over the path some dozen or so little balls.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Catch &rsquo;em!&rdquo; he shouted; &ldquo;catch &rsquo;em!
+We mustn&rsquo;t lose any of them.&rdquo; He was quite excited
+about them.</p>
+
+<p>We grovelled round for half an hour, and found sixteen. He
+said he hoped we had got them all, because, if not, it would make a
+serious difference to the machine. He said there was nothing you
+should be more careful about in taking a bicycle to pieces than seeing
+you did not lose any of the balls. He explained that you ought
+to count them as you took them out, and see that exactly the same number
+went back in each place. I promised, if ever I took a bicycle
+to pieces I would remember his advice.</p>
+
+<p>I put the balls for safety in my hat, and I put my hat upon the doorstep.
+It was not a sensible thing to do, I admit. As a matter of fact,
+it was a silly thing to do. I am not as a rule addle-headed; his
+influence must have affected me.</p>
+
+<p>He then said that while he was about it he would see to the chain
+for me, and at once began taking off the gear-case. I did try
+to persuade him from that. I told him what an experienced friend
+of mine once said to me solemnly:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If anything goes wrong with your gear-case, sell the machine
+and buy a new one; it comes cheaper.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;People talk like that who understand nothing about
+machines. Nothing is easier than taking off a gear-case.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I had to confess he was right. In less than five minutes he
+had the gear-case in two pieces, lying on the path, and was grovelling
+for screws. He said it was always a mystery to him the way screws
+disappeared.</p>
+
+<p>We were still looking for the screws when Ethelbertha came out.
+She seemed surprised to find us there; she said she thought we had started
+hours ago.</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;We shan&rsquo;t be long now. I&rsquo;m just
+helping your husband to overhaul this machine of his. It&rsquo;s
+a good machine; but they all want going over occasionally.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Ethelbertha said: &ldquo;If you want to wash yourselves when you
+have done you might go into the back kitchen, if you don&rsquo;t mind;
+the girls have just finished the bedrooms.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She told me that if she met Kate they would probably go for a sail;
+but that in any case she would be back to lunch. I would have
+given a sovereign to be going with her. I was getting heartily
+sick of standing about watching this fool breaking up my bicycle.</p>
+
+<p>Common sense continued to whisper to me: &ldquo;Stop him, before
+he does any more mischief. You have a right to protect your own
+property from the ravages of a lunatic. Take him by the scruff
+of the neck, and kick him out of the gate!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But I am weak when it comes to hurting other people&rsquo;s feelings,
+and I let him muddle on.</p>
+
+<p>He gave up looking for the rest of the screws. He said screws
+had a knack of turning up when you least expected them; and that now
+he would see to the chain. He tightened it till it would not move;
+next he loosened it until it was twice as loose as it was before.
+Then he said we had better think about getting the front wheel back
+into its place again.</p>
+
+<p>I held the fork open, and he worried with the wheel. At the
+end of ten minutes I suggested he should hold the forks, and that I
+should handle the wheel; and we changed places. At the end of
+his first minute he dropped the machine, and took a short walk round
+the croquet lawn, with his hands pressed together between his thighs.
+He explained as he walked that the thing to be careful about was to
+avoid getting your fingers pinched between the forks and the spokes
+of the wheel. I replied I was convinced, from my own experience,
+that there was much truth in what he said. He wrapped himself
+up in a couple of dusters, and we commenced again. At length we
+did get the thing into position; and the moment it was in position he
+burst out laughing.</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the joke?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;Well, I am an ass!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was the first thing he had said that made me respect him.
+I asked him what had led him to the discovery.</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;We&rsquo;ve forgotten the balls!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I looked for my hat; it was lying topsy-turvy in the middle of the
+path, and Ethelbertha&rsquo;s favourite hound was swallowing the balls
+as fast as he could pick them up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He will kill himself,&rdquo; said Ebbson&mdash;I have never
+met him since that day, thank the Lord; but I think his name was Ebbson&mdash;&ldquo;they
+are solid steel.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;I am not troubling about the dog. He has had
+a bootlace and a packet of needles already this week. Nature&rsquo;s
+the best guide; puppies seem to require this kind of stimulant.
+What I am thinking about is my bicycle.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He was of a cheerful disposition. He said: &ldquo;Well, we
+must put back all we can find, and trust to Providence.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We found eleven. We fixed six on one side and five on the other,
+and half an hour later the wheel was in its place again. It need
+hardly be added that it really did wobble now; a child might have noticed
+it. Ebbson said it would do for the present. He appeared
+to be getting a bit tired himself. If I had let him, he would,
+I believe, at this point have gone home. I was determined now,
+however, that he should stop and finish; I had abandoned all thoughts
+of a ride. My pride in the machine he had killed. My only
+interest lay now in seeing him scratch and bump and pinch himself.
+I revived his drooping spirits with a glass of beer and some judicious
+praise. I said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Watching you do this is of real use to me. It is not
+only your skill and dexterity that fascinates me, it is your cheery
+confidence in yourself, your inexplicable hopefulness, that does me
+good.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Thus encouraged, he set to work to refix the gear-case. He
+stood the bicycle against the house, and worked from the off side.
+Then he stood it against a tree, and worked from the near side.
+Then I held it for him, while he lay on the ground with his head between
+the wheels, and worked at it from below, and dropped oil upon himself.
+Then he took it away from me, and doubled himself across it like a pack-saddle,
+till he lost his balance and slid over on to his head. Three times
+he said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank Heaven, that&rsquo;s right at last!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And twice he said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m damned if it is after all!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>What he said the third time I try to forget.</p>
+
+<p>Then he lost his temper and tried bullying the thing. The bicycle,
+I was glad to see, showed spirit; and the subsequent proceedings degenerated
+into little else than a rough-and-tumble fight between him and the machine.
+One moment the bicycle would be on the gravel path, and he on top of
+it; the next, the position would be reversed&mdash;he on the gravel
+path, the bicycle on him. Now he would be standing flushed with
+victory, the bicycle firmly fixed between his legs. But his triumph
+would be short-lived. By a sudden, quick movement it would free
+itself, and, turning upon him, hit him sharply over the head with one
+of its handles.</p>
+
+<p>At a quarter to one, dirty and dishevelled, cut and breeding, he
+said: &ldquo;I think that will do;&rdquo; and rose and wiped his brow.</p>
+
+<p>The bicycle looked as if it also had had enough of it. Which
+had received most punishment it would have been difficult to say.
+I took him into the back kitchen, where, so far as was possible without
+soda and proper tools, he cleaned himself, and sent him home.</p>
+
+<p>The bicycle I put into a cab and took round to the nearest repairing
+shop. The foreman of the works came up and looked at it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you want me to do with that?&rdquo; said he.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I want you,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;so far as is possible, to
+restore it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a bit far gone,&rdquo; said he; &ldquo;but I&rsquo;ll
+do my best.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He did his best, which came to two pounds ten. But it was never
+the same machine again; and at the end of the season I left it in an
+agent&rsquo;s hands to sell. I wished to deceive nobody; I instructed
+the man to advertise it as a last year&rsquo;s machine. The agent
+advised me not to mention any date. He said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;In this business it isn&rsquo;t a question of what is true
+and what isn&rsquo;t; it&rsquo;s a question of what you can get people
+to believe. Now, between you and me, it don&rsquo;t look like
+a last year&rsquo;s machine; so far as looks are concerned, it might
+be a ten-year old. We&rsquo;ll say nothing about date; we&rsquo;ll
+just get what we can.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I left the matter to him, and he got me five pounds, which he said
+was more than he had expected.</p>
+
+<p>There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle: you can
+&ldquo;overhaul&rdquo; it, or you can ride it. On the whole, I
+am not sure that a man who takes his pleasure overhauling does not have
+the best of the bargain. He is independent of the weather and
+the wind; the state of the roads troubles him not. Give him a
+screw-hammer, a bundle of rags, an oil-can, and something to sit down
+upon, and he is happy for the day. He has to put up with certain
+disadvantages, of course; there is no joy without alloy. He himself
+always looks like a tinker, and his machine always suggests the idea
+that, having stolen it, he has tried to disguise it; but as he rarely
+gets beyond the first milestone with it, this, perhaps, does not much
+matter. The mistake some people make is in thinking they can get
+both forms of sport out of the same machine. This is impossible;
+no machine will stand the double strain. You must make up your
+mind whether you are going to be an &ldquo;overhauler&rdquo; or a rider.
+Personally, I prefer to ride, therefore I take care to have near me
+nothing that can tempt me to overhaul. When anything happens to
+my machine I wheel it to the nearest repairing shop. If I am too
+far from the town or village to walk, I sit by the roadside and wait
+till a cart comes along. My chief danger, I always find, is from
+the wandering overhauler. The sight of a broken-down machine is
+to the overhauler as a wayside corpse to a crow; he swoops down upon
+it with a friendly yell of triumph. At first I used to try politeness.
+I would say:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is nothing; don&rsquo;t you trouble. You ride on,
+and enjoy yourself, I beg it of you as a favour; please go away.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Experience has taught me, however, that courtesy is of no use in
+such an extremity. Now I say:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You go away and leave the thing alone, or I will knock your
+silly head off.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And if you look determined, and have a good stout cudgel in your
+hand, you can generally drive him off.</p>
+
+<p>George came in later in the day. He said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, do you think everything will be ready?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;Everything will be ready by Wednesday, except, perhaps,
+you and Harris.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;Is the tandem all right?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The tandem,&rdquo; I said, &ldquo;is well.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think it wants overhauling?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I replied: &ldquo;Age and experience have taught me that there are
+few matters concerning which a man does well to be positive. Consequently,
+there remain to me now but a limited number of questions upon which
+I feel any degree of certainty. Among such still-unshaken beliefs,
+however, is the conviction that that tandem does not want overhauling.
+I also feel a presentiment that, provided my life is spared, no human
+being between now and Wednesday morning is going to overhaul it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George said: &ldquo;I should not show temper over the matter, if
+I were you. There will come a day, perhaps not far distant, when
+that bicycle, with a couple of mountains between it and the nearest
+repairing shop, will, in spite of your chronic desire for rest, <i>have</i>
+to be overhauled. Then you will clamour for people to tell you
+where you put the oil-can, and what you have done with the screw-hammer.
+Then, while you exert yourself holding the thing steady against a tree,
+you will suggest that somebody else should clean the chain and pump
+the back wheel.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I felt there was justice in George&rsquo;s rebuke&mdash;also a certain
+amount of prophetic wisdom. I said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Forgive me if I seemed unresponsive. The truth is, Harris
+was round here this morning&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George said: &ldquo;Say no more; I understand. Besides, what
+I came to talk to you about was another matter. Look at that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He handed me a small book bound in red cloth. It was a guide
+to English conversation for the use of German travellers. It commenced
+&ldquo;On a Steam-boat,&rdquo; and terminated &ldquo;At the Doctor&rsquo;s&rdquo;;
+its longest chapter being devoted to conversation in a railway carriage,
+among, apparently, a compartment load of quarrelsome and ill-mannered
+lunatics: &ldquo;Can you not get further away from me, sir?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;It
+is impossible, madam; my neighbour, here, is very stout&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Shall
+we not endeavour to arrange our legs?&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Please have
+the goodness to keep your elbows down&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Pray do not
+inconvenience yourself, madam, if my shoulder is of any accommodation
+to you,&rdquo; whether intended to be said sarcastically or not, there
+was nothing to indicate&mdash;&ldquo;I really must request you to move
+a little, madam, I can hardly breathe,&rdquo; the author&rsquo;s idea
+being, presumably, that by this time the whole party was mixed up together
+on the floor. The chapter concluded with the phrase, &ldquo;Here
+we are at our destination, God be thanked! (<i>Gott sei dank</i>!)&rdquo;
+a pious exclamation, which under the circumstances must have taken the
+form of a chorus.</p>
+
+<p>At the end of the book was an appendix, giving the German traveller
+hints concerning the preservation of his health and comfort during his
+sojourn in English towns, chief among such hints being advice to him
+to always travel with a supply of disinfectant powder, to always lock
+his bedroom door at night, and to always carefully count his small change.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is not a brilliant publication,&rdquo; I remarked, handing
+the book back to George; &ldquo;it is not a book that personally I would
+recommend to any German about to visit England; I think it would get
+him disliked. But I have read books published in London for the
+use of English travellers abroad every whit as foolish. Some educated
+idiot, misunderstanding seven languages, would appear to go about writing
+these books for the misinformation and false guidance of modern Europe.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You cannot deny,&rdquo; said George, &ldquo;that these books
+are in large request. They are bought by the thousand, I know.
+In every town in Europe there must be people going about talking this
+sort of thing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe,&rdquo; I replied; &ldquo;but fortunately nobody understands
+them. I have noticed, myself, men standing on railway platforms
+and at street corners reading aloud from such books. Nobody knows
+what language they are speaking; nobody has the slightest knowledge
+of what they are saying. This is, perhaps, as well; were they
+understood they would probably be assaulted.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George said: &ldquo;Maybe you are right; my idea is to see what would
+happen if they were understood. My proposal is to get to London
+early on Wednesday morning, and spend an hour or two going about and
+shopping with the aid of this book. There are one or two little
+things I want&mdash;a hat and a pair of bedroom slippers, among other
+articles. Our boat does not leave Tilbury till twelve, and that
+just gives us time. I want to try this sort of talk where I can
+properly judge of its effect. I want to see how the foreigner
+feels when he is talked to in this way.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It struck me as a sporting idea. In my enthusiasm I offered
+to accompany him, and wait outside the shop. I said I thought
+that Harris would like to be in it, too&mdash;or rather outside.</p>
+
+<p>George said that was not quite his scheme. His proposal was
+that Harris and I should accompany him into the shop. With Harris,
+who looks formidable, to support him, and myself at the door to call
+the police if necessary, he said he was willing to adventure the thing.</p>
+
+<p>We walked round to Harris&rsquo;s, and put the proposal before him.
+He examined the book, especially the chapters dealing with the purchase
+of shoes and hats. He said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If George talks to any bootmaker or any hatter the things
+that are put down here, it is not support he will want; it is carrying
+to the hospital that he will need.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>That made George angry.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You talk,&rdquo; said George, &ldquo;as though I were a foolhardy
+boy without any sense. I shall select from the more polite and
+less irritating speeches; the grosser insults I shall avoid.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This being clearly understood, Harris gave in his adhesion; and our
+start was fixed for early Wednesday morning.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Why Harris considers alarm clocks unnecessary in a family&mdash;Social
+instinct of the young&mdash;A child&rsquo;s thoughts about the morning&mdash;The
+sleepless watchman&mdash;The mystery of him&mdash;His over anxiety&mdash;Night
+thoughts&mdash;The sort of work one does before breakfast&mdash;The
+good sheep and the bad&mdash;Disadvantages of being virtuous&mdash;Harris&rsquo;s
+new stove begins badly&mdash;The daily out-going of my Uncle Podger&mdash;The
+elderly city man considered as a racer&mdash;We arrive in London&mdash;We
+talk the language of the traveller.</p>
+
+<p>George came down on Tuesday evening, and slept at Harris&rsquo;s
+place. We thought this a better arrangement than his own suggestion,
+which was that we should call for him on our way and &ldquo;pick him
+up.&rdquo; Picking George up in the morning means picking him
+out of bed to begin with, and shaking him awake&mdash;in itself an exhausting
+effort with which to commence the day; helping him find his things and
+finish his packing; and then waiting for him while he eats his breakfast,
+a tedious entertainment from the spectator&rsquo;s point of view, full
+of wearisome repetition.</p>
+
+<p>I knew that if he slept at &ldquo;Beggarbush&rdquo; he would be up
+in time; I have slept there myself, and I know what happens. About
+the middle of the night, as you judge, though in reality it may be somewhat
+later, you are startled out of your first sleep by what sounds like
+a rush of cavalry along the passage, just outside your door. Your
+half-awakened intelligence fluctuates between burglars, the Day of Judgment,
+and a gas explosion. You sit up in bed and listen intently.
+You are not kept waiting long; the next moment a door is violently slammed,
+and somebody, or something, is evidently coming downstairs on a tea-tray.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I told you so,&rdquo; says a voice outside, and immediately
+some hard substance, a head one would say from the ring of it, rebounds
+against the panel of your door.</p>
+
+<p>By this time you are charging madly round the room for your clothes.
+Nothing is where you put it overnight, the articles most essential have
+disappeared entirely; and meanwhile the murder, or revolution, or whatever
+it is, continues unchecked. You pause for a moment, with your
+head under the wardrobe, where you think you can see your slippers,
+to listen to a steady, monotonous thumping upon a distant door.
+The victim, you presume, has taken refuge there; they mean to have him
+out and finish him. Will you be in time? The knocking ceases,
+and a voice, sweetly reassuring in its gentle plaintiveness, asks meekly:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pa, may I get up?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>You do not hear the other voice, but the responses are:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, it was only the bath&mdash;no, she ain&rsquo;t really
+hurt,&mdash;only wet, you know. Yes, ma, I&rsquo;ll tell &rsquo;em
+what you say. No, it was a pure accident. Yes; good-night,
+papa.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Then the same voice, exerting itself so as to be heard in a distant
+part of the house, remarks:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ve got to come upstairs again. Pa says it
+isn&rsquo;t time yet to get up.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>You return to bed, and lie listening to somebody being dragged upstairs,
+evidently against their will. By a thoughtful arrangement the
+spare rooms at &ldquo;Beggarbush&rdquo; are exactly underneath the nurseries.
+The same somebody, you conclude, still offering the most creditable
+opposition, is being put back into bed. You can follow the contest
+with much exactitude, because every time the body is flung down upon
+the spring mattress, the bedstead, just above your head, makes a sort
+of jump; while every time the body succeeds in struggling out again,
+you are aware by the thud upon the floor. After a time the struggle
+wanes, or maybe the bed collapses; and you drift back into sleep.
+But the next moment, or what seems to be the next moment, you again
+open your eyes under the consciousness of a presence. The door
+is being held ajar, and four solemn faces, piled one on top of the other,
+are peering at you, as though you were some natural curiosity kept in
+this particular room. Seeing you awake, the top face, walking
+calmly over the other three, comes in and sits on the bed in a friendly
+attitude.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh!&rdquo; it says, &ldquo;we didn&rsquo;t know you were awake.
+I&rsquo;ve been awake some time.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So I gather,&rdquo; you reply, shortly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Pa doesn&rsquo;t like us to get up too early,&rdquo; it continues.
+&ldquo;He says everybody else in the house is liable to be disturbed
+if we get up. So, of course, we mustn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The tone is that of gentle resignation. It is instinct with
+the spirit of virtuous pride, arising from the consciousness of self-sacrifice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you call this being up?&rdquo; you suggest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, no; we&rsquo;re not really up, you know, because we&rsquo;re
+not properly dressed.&rdquo; The fact is self-evident. &ldquo;Pa&rsquo;s
+always very tired in the morning,&rdquo; the voice continues; &ldquo;of
+course, that&rsquo;s because he works hard all day. Are you ever
+tired in the morning?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At this point he turns and notices, for the first time, that the
+three other children have also entered, and are sitting in a semi-circle
+on the floor. From their attitude it is clear they have mistaken
+the whole thing for one of the slower forms of entertainment, some comic
+lecture or conjuring exhibition, and are waiting patiently for you to
+get out of bed and do something. It shocks him, the idea of their
+being in the guest&rsquo;s bedchamber. He peremptorily orders
+them out. They do not answer him, they do not argue; in dead silence,
+and with one accord they fall upon him. All you can see from the
+bed is a confused tangle of waving arms and legs, suggestive of an intoxicated
+octopus trying to find bottom. Not a word is spoken; that seems
+to be the etiquette of the thing. If you are sleeping in your
+pyjamas, you spring from the bed, and only add to the confusion; if
+you are wearing a less showy garment, you stop where you are and shout
+commands, which are utterly unheeded. The simplest plan is to
+leave it to the eldest boy. He does get them out after a while,
+and closes the door upon them. It re-opens immediately, and one,
+generally Muriel, is shot back into the room. She enters as from
+a catapult. She is handicapped by having long hair, which can
+be used as a convenient handle. Evidently aware of this natural
+disadvantage, she clutches it herself tightly in one hand, and punches
+with the other. He opens the door again, and cleverly uses her
+as a battering-ram against the wall of those without. You can
+hear the dull crash as her head enters among them, and scatters them.
+When the victory is complete, he comes back and resumes his seat on
+the bed. There is no bitterness about him; he has forgotten the
+whole incident.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I like the morning,&rdquo; he says, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Some mornings,&rdquo; you agree, &ldquo;are all right; others
+are not so peaceful.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He takes no notice of your exception; a far-away look steals over
+his somewhat ethereal face.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I should like to die in the morning,&rdquo; he says; &ldquo;everything
+is so beautiful then.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; you answer, &ldquo;perhaps you will, if your
+father ever invites an irritable man to come and sleep here, and doesn&rsquo;t
+warn him beforehand.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He descends from his contemplative mood, and becomes himself again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s jolly in the garden,&rdquo; he suggests; &ldquo;you
+wouldn&rsquo;t like to get up and have a game of cricket, would you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was not the idea with which you went to bed, but now, as things
+have turned out, it seems as good a plan as lying there hopelessly awake;
+and you agree.</p>
+
+<p>You learn, later in the day, that the explanation of the proceeding
+is that you, unable to sleep, woke up early in the morning, and thought
+you would like a game of cricket. The children, taught to be ever
+courteous to guests, felt it their duty to humour you. Mrs. Harris
+remarks at breakfast that at least you might have seen to it that the
+children were properly dressed before you took them out; while Harris
+points out to you, pathetically, how, by your one morning&rsquo;s example
+and encouragement, you have undone his labour of months.</p>
+
+<p>On this Wednesday morning, George, it seems, clamoured to get up
+at a quarter-past five, and persuaded them to let him teach them cycling
+tricks round the cucumber frames on Harris&rsquo;s new wheel.
+Even Mrs. Harris, however, did not blame George on this occasion; she
+felt intuitively the idea could not have been entirely his.</p>
+
+<p>It is not that the Harris children have the faintest notion of avoiding
+blame at the expense of a friend and comrade. One and all they
+are honesty itself in accepting responsibility for their own misdeeds.
+It simply is, that is how the thing presents itself to their understanding.
+When you explain to them that you had no original intention of getting
+up at five o&rsquo;clock in the morning to play cricket on the croquet
+lawn, or to mimic the history of the early Church by shooting with a
+cross-bow at dolls tied to a tree; that as a matter of fact, left to
+your own initiative, you would have slept peacefully till roused in
+Christian fashion with a cup of tea at eight, they are firstly astonished,
+secondly apologetic, and thirdly sincerely contrite. In the present
+instance, waiving the purely academic question whether the awakening
+of George at a little before five was due to natural instinct on his
+part, or to the accidental passing of a home-made boomerang through
+his bedroom window, the dear children frankly admitted that the blame
+for his uprising was their own. As the eldest boy said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We ought to have remembered that Uncle George had a long day,
+before him, and we ought to have dissuaded him from getting up.
+I blame myself entirely.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But an occasional change of habit does nobody any harm; and besides,
+as Harris and I agreed, it was good training for George. In the
+Black Forest we should be up at five every morning; that we had determined
+on. Indeed, George himself had suggested half-past four, but Harris
+and I had argued that five would be early enough as an average; that
+would enable us to be on our machines by six, and to break the back
+of our journey before the heat of the day set in. Occasionally
+we might start a little earlier, but not as a habit.</p>
+
+<p>I myself was up that morning at five. This was earlier than
+I had intended. I had said to myself on going to sleep, &ldquo;Six
+o&rsquo;clock, sharp!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>There are men I know who can wake themselves at any time to the minute.
+They say to themselves literally, as they lay their heads upon the pillow,
+&ldquo;Four-thirty,&rdquo; &ldquo;Four-forty-five,&rdquo; or &ldquo;Five-fifteen,&rdquo;
+as the case may be; and as the clock strikes they open their eyes.
+It is very wonderful this; the more one dwells upon it, the greater
+the mystery grows. Some Ego within us, acting quite independently
+of our conscious self, must be capable of counting the hours while we
+sleep. Unaided by clock or sun, or any other medium known to our
+five senses, it keeps watch through the darkness. At the exact
+moment it whispers &ldquo;Time!&rdquo; and we awake. The work
+of an old riverside fellow I once talked with called him to be out of
+bed each morning half an hour before high tide. He told me that
+never once had he overslept himself by a minute. Latterly, he
+never even troubled to work out the tide for himself. He would
+lie down tired, and sleep a dreamless sleep, and each morning at a different
+hour this ghostly watchman, true as the tide itself, would silently
+call him. Did the man&rsquo;s spirit haunt through the darkness
+the muddy river stairs; or had it knowledge of the ways of Nature?
+Whatever the process, the man himself was unconscious of it.</p>
+
+<p>In my own case my inward watchman is, perhaps, somewhat out of practice.
+He does his best; but he is over-anxious; he worries himself, and loses
+count. I say to him, maybe, &ldquo;Five-thirty, please;&rdquo;
+and he wakes me with a start at half-past two. I look at my watch.
+He suggests that, perhaps, I forgot to wind it up. I put it to
+my ear; it is still going. He thinks, maybe, something has happened
+to it; he is confident himself it is half-past five, if not a little
+later. To satisfy him, I put on a pair of slippers and go downstairs
+to inspect the dining-room clock. What happens to a man when he
+wanders about the house in the middle of the night, clad in a dressing-gown
+and a pair of slippers, there is no need to recount; most men know by
+experience. Everything&mdash;especially everything with a sharp
+corner&mdash;takes a cowardly delight in hitting him. When you
+are wearing a pair of stout boots, things get out of your way; when
+you venture among furniture in woolwork slippers and no socks, it comes
+at you and kicks you. I return to bed bad tempered, and refusing
+to listen to his further absurd suggestion that all the clocks in the
+house have entered into a conspiracy against me, take half an hour to
+get to sleep again. From four to five he wakes me every ten minutes.
+I wish I had never said a word to him about the thing. At five
+o&rsquo;clock he goes to sleep himself, worn out, and leaves it to the
+girl, who does it half an hour later than usual.</p>
+
+<p>On this particular Wednesday he worried me to such an extent, that
+I got up at five simply to be rid of him. I did not know what
+to do with myself. Our train did not leave till eight; all our
+luggage had been packed and sent on the night before, together with
+the bicycles, to Fenchurch Street Station. I went into my study;
+I thought I would put in an hour&rsquo;s writing. The early morning,
+before one has breakfasted, is not, I take it, a good season for literary
+effort. I wrote three paragraphs of a story, and then read them
+over to myself. Some unkind things have been said about my work;
+but nothing has yet been written which would have done justice to those
+three paragraphs. I threw them into the waste-paper basket, and
+sat trying to remember what, if any, charitable institutions provided
+pensions for decayed authors.</p>
+
+<p>To escape from this train of reflection, I put a golf-ball in my
+pocket, and selecting a driver, strolled out into the paddock.
+A couple of sheep were browsing there, and they followed and took a
+keen interest in my practice. The one was a kindly, sympathetic
+old party. I do not think she understood the game; I think it
+was my doing this innocent thing so early in the morning that appealed
+to her. At every stroke I made she bleated:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go-o-o-d, go-o-o-d ind-e-e-d!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>She seemed as pleased as if she had done it herself.</p>
+
+<p>As for the other one, she was a cantankerous, disagreeable old thing,
+as discouraging to me as her friend was helpful.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ba-a-ad, da-a-a-m ba-a-a-d!&rdquo; was her comment on almost
+every stroke. As a matter of fact, some were really excellent
+strokes; but she did it just to be contradictory, and for the sake of
+irritating. I could see that.</p>
+
+<p>By a most regrettable accident, one of my swiftest balls struck the
+good sheep on the nose. And at that the bad sheep laughed&mdash;laughed
+distinctly and undoubtedly, a husky, vulgar laugh; and, while her friend
+stood glued to the ground, too astonished to move, she changed her note
+for the first time and bleated:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Go-o-o-d, ve-e-ry go-o-o-d! Be-e-e-est sho-o-o-ot he-e-e&rsquo;s
+ma-a-a-de!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I would have given half-a-crown if it had been she I had hit instead
+of the other one. It is ever the good and amiable who suffer in
+this world.</p>
+
+<p>I had wasted more time than I had intended in the paddock, and when
+Ethelbertha came to tell me it was half-past seven, and the breakfast
+was on the table, I remembered that I had not shaved. It vexes
+Ethelbertha my shaving quickly. She fears that to outsiders it
+may suggest a poor-spirited attempt at suicide, and that in consequence
+it may get about the neighbourhood that we are not happy together.
+As a further argument, she has also hinted that my appearance is not
+of the kind that can be trifled with.</p>
+
+<p>On the whole, I was just as glad not to be able to take a long farewell
+of Ethelbertha; I did not want to risk her breaking down. But
+I should have liked more opportunity to say a few farewell words of
+advice to the children, especially as regards my fishing rod, which
+they will persist in using for cricket stumps; and I hate having to
+run for a train. Quarter of a mile from the station I overtook
+George and Harris; they were also running. In their case&mdash;so
+Harris informed me, jerkily, while we trotted side by side&mdash;it
+was the new kitchen stove that was to blame. This was the first
+morning they had tried it, and from some cause or other it had blown
+up the kidneys and scalded the cook. He said he hoped that by
+the time we returned they would have got more used to it.</p>
+
+<p>We caught the train by the skin of our teeth, as the saying is, and
+reflecting upon the events of the morning, as we sat gasping in the
+carriage, there passed vividly before my mind the panorama of my Uncle
+Podger, as on two hundred and fifty days in the year he would start
+from Ealing Common by the nine-thirteen train to Moorgate Street.</p>
+
+<p>From my Uncle Podger&rsquo;s house to the railway station was eight
+minutes&rsquo; walk. What my uncle always said was:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Allow yourself a quarter of an hour, and take it easily.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>What he always did was to start five minutes before the time and
+run. I do not know why, but this was the custom of the suburb.
+Many stout City gentlemen lived at Ealing in those days&mdash;I believe
+some live there still&mdash;and caught early trains to Town. They
+all started late; they all carried a black bag and a newspaper in one
+hand, and an umbrella in the other; and for the last quarter of a mile
+to the station, wet or fine, they all ran.</p>
+
+<p>Folks with nothing else to do, nursemaids chiefly and errand boys,
+with now and then a perambulating costermonger added, would gather on
+the common of a fine morning to watch them pass, and cheer the most
+deserving. It was not a showy spectacle. They did not run
+well, they did not even run fast; but they were earnest, and they did
+their best. The exhibition appealed less to one&rsquo;s sense
+of art than to one&rsquo;s natural admiration for conscientious effort.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally a little harmless betting would take place among the
+crowd.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Two to one agin the old gent in the white weskit!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ten to one on old Blowpipes, bar he don&rsquo;t roll over
+hisself &rsquo;fore &rsquo;e gets there!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Heven money on the Purple Hemperor!&rdquo;&mdash;a nickname
+bestowed by a youth of entomological tastes upon a certain retired military
+neighbour of my uncle&rsquo;s,&mdash;a gentleman of imposing appearance
+when stationary, but apt to colour highly under exercise.</p>
+
+<p>My uncle and the others would write to the <i>Ealing Press</i> complaining
+bitterly concerning the supineness of the local police; and the editor
+would add spirited leaders upon the Decay of Courtesy among the Lower
+Orders, especially throughout the Western Suburbs. But no good
+ever resulted.</p>
+
+<p>It was not that my uncle did not rise early enough; it was that troubles
+came to him at the last moment. The first thing he would do after
+breakfast would be to lose his newspaper. We always knew when
+Uncle Podger had lost anything, by the expression of astonished indignation
+with which, on such occasions, he would regard the world in general.
+It never occurred to my Uncle Podger to say to himself:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am a careless old man. I lose everything: I never
+know where I have put anything. I am quite incapable of finding
+it again for myself. In this respect I must be a perfect nuisance
+to everybody about me. I must set to work and reform myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>On the contrary, by some peculiar course of reasoning, he had convinced
+himself that whenever he lost a thing it was everybody else&rsquo;s
+fault in the house but his own.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I had it in my hand here not a minute ago!&rdquo; he would
+exclaim.</p>
+
+<p>From his tone you would have thought he was living surrounded by
+conjurers, who spirited away things from him merely to irritate him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Could you have left it in the garden?&rdquo; my aunt would
+suggest.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What should I want to leave it in the garden for? I
+don&rsquo;t want a paper in the garden; I want the paper in the train
+with me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You haven&rsquo;t put it in your pocket?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;God bless the woman! Do you think I should be standing
+here at five minutes to nine looking for it if I had it in my pocket
+all the while? Do you think I&rsquo;m a fool?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Here somebody would explain, &ldquo;What&rsquo;s this?&rdquo; and
+hand him from somewhere a paper neatly folded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do wish people would leave my things alone,&rdquo; he would
+growl, snatching at it savagely.</p>
+
+<p>He would open his bag to put it in, and then glancing at it, he would
+pause, speechless with sense of injury.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; aunt would ask.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The day before yesterday&rsquo;s!&rdquo; he would answer,
+too hurt even to shout, throwing the paper down upon the table.</p>
+
+<p>If only sometimes it had been yesterday&rsquo;s it would have been
+a change. But it was always the day before yesterday&rsquo;s;
+except on Tuesday; then it would be Saturday&rsquo;s.</p>
+
+<p>We would find it for him eventually; as often as not he was sitting
+on it. And then he would smile, not genially, but with the weariness
+that comes to a man who feels that fate has cast his lot among a band
+of hopeless idiots.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All the time, right in front of your noses&mdash;!&rdquo;
+He would not finish the sentence; he prided himself on his self-control.</p>
+
+<p>This settled, he would start for the hall, where it was the custom
+of my Aunt Maria to have the children gathered, ready to say good-bye
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>My aunt never left the house herself, if only to make a call next
+door, without taking a tender farewell of every inmate. One never
+knew, she would say, what might happen.</p>
+
+<p>One of them, of course, was sure to be missing, and the moment this
+was noticed all the other six, without an instant&rsquo;s hesitation,
+would scatter with a whoop to find it. Immediately they were gone
+it would turn up by itself from somewhere quite near, always with the
+most reasonable explanation for its absence; and would at once start
+off after the others to explain to them that it was found. In
+this way, five minutes at least would be taken up in everybody&rsquo;s
+looking for everybody else, which was just sufficient time to allow
+my uncle to find his umbrella and lose his hat. Then, at last,
+the group reassembled in the hall, the drawing-room clock would commence
+to strike nine. It possessed a cold, penetrating chime that always
+had the effect of confusing my uncle. In his excitement he would
+kiss some of the children twice over, pass by others, forget whom he
+had kissed and whom he hadn&rsquo;t, and have to begin all over again.
+He used to say he believed they mixed themselves up on purpose, and
+I am not prepared to maintain that the charge was altogether false.
+To add to his troubles, one child always had a sticky face; and that
+child would always be the most affectionate.</p>
+
+<p>If things were going too smoothly, the eldest boy would come out
+with some tale about all the clocks in the house being five minutes
+slow, and of his having been late for school the previous day in consequence.
+This would send my uncle rushing impetuously down to the gate, where
+he would recollect that he had with him neither his bag nor his umbrella.
+All the children that my aunt could not stop would charge after him,
+two of them struggling for the umbrella, the others surging round the
+bag. And when they returned we would discover on the hall table
+the most important thing of all that he had forgotten, and wondered
+what he would say about it when he came home.</p>
+
+<p>We arrived at Waterloo a little after nine, and at once proceeded
+to put George&rsquo;s experiment into operation. Opening the book
+at the chapter entitled &ldquo;At the Cab Rank,&rdquo; we walked up
+to a hansom, raised our hats, and wished the driver &ldquo;Good-morning.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This man was not to be outdone in politeness by any foreigner, real
+or imitation. Calling to a friend named &ldquo;Charles&rdquo;
+to &ldquo;hold the steed,&rdquo; he sprang from his box, and returned
+to us a bow, that would have done credit to Mr. Turveydrop himself.
+Speaking apparently in the name of the nation, he welcomed us to England,
+adding a regret that Her Majesty was not at the moment in London.</p>
+
+<p>We could not reply to him in kind. Nothing of this sort had
+been anticipated by the book. We called him &ldquo;coachman,&rdquo;
+at which he again bowed to the pavement, and asked him if he would have
+the goodness to drive us to the Westminster Bridge road.</p>
+
+<p>He laid his hand upon his heart, and said the pleasure would be his.</p>
+
+<p>Taking the third sentence in the chapter, George asked him what his
+fare would be.</p>
+
+<p>The question, as introducing a sordid element into the conversation,
+seemed to hurt his feelings. He said he never took money from
+distinguished strangers; he suggested a souvenir&mdash;a diamond scarf
+pin, a gold snuffbox, some little trifle of that sort by which he could
+remember us.</p>
+
+<p>As a small crowd had collected, and as the joke was drifting rather
+too far in the cabman&rsquo;s direction, we climbed in without further
+parley, and were driven away amid cheers. We stopped the cab at
+a boot shop a little past Astley&rsquo;s Theatre that looked the sort
+of place we wanted. It was one of those overfed shops that the
+moment their shutters are taken down in the morning disgorge their goods
+all round them. Boxes of boots stood piled on the pavement or
+in the gutter opposite. Boots hung in festoons about its doors
+and windows. Its sun-blind was as some grimy vine, bearing bunches
+of black and brown boots. Inside, the shop was a bower of boots.
+The man, when we entered, was busy with a chisel and hammer opening
+a new crate full of boots.</p>
+
+<p>George raised his hat, and said &ldquo;Good-morning.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The man did not even turn round. He struck me from the first
+as a disagreeable man. He grunted something which might have been
+&ldquo;Good-morning,&rdquo; or might not, and went on with his work.</p>
+
+<p>George said: &ldquo;I have been recommended to your shop by my friend,
+Mr. X.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In response, the man should have said: &ldquo;Mr. X. is a most worthy
+gentleman; it will give me the greatest pleasure to serve any friend
+of his.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>What he did say was: &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t know him; never heard of
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This was disconcerting. The book gave three or four methods
+of buying boots; George had carefully selected the one centred round
+&ldquo;Mr. X,&rdquo; as being of all the most courtly. You talked
+a good deal with the shopkeeper about this &ldquo;Mr. X,&rdquo; and
+then, when by this means friendship and understanding had been established,
+you slid naturally and gracefully into the immediate object of your
+coming, namely, your desire for boots, &ldquo;cheap and good.&rdquo;
+This gross, material man cared, apparently, nothing for the niceties
+of retail dealing. It was necessary with such an one to come to
+business with brutal directness. George abandoned &ldquo;Mr. X,&rdquo;
+and turning back to a previous page, took a sentence at random.
+It was not a happy selection; it was a speech that would have been superfluous
+made to any bootmaker. Under the present circumstances, threatened
+and stifled as we were on every side by boots, it possessed the dignity
+of positive imbecility. It ran:&mdash;&ldquo;One has told me
+that you have here boots for sale.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>For the first time the man put down his hammer and chisel, and looked
+at us. He spoke slowly, in a thick and husky voice. He said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What d&rsquo;ye think I keep boots for&mdash;to smell &rsquo;em?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He was one of those men that begin quietly and grow more angry as
+they proceed, their wrongs apparently working within them like yeast.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What d&rsquo;ye think I am,&rdquo; he continued, &ldquo;a
+boot collector? What d&rsquo;ye think I&rsquo;m running this shop
+for&mdash;my health? D&rsquo;ye think I love the boots, and can&rsquo;t
+bear to part with a pair? D&rsquo;ye think I hang &rsquo;em about
+here to look at &rsquo;em? Ain&rsquo;t there enough of &rsquo;em?
+Where d&rsquo;ye think you are&mdash;in an international exhibition
+of boots? What d&rsquo;ye think these boots are&mdash;a historical
+collection? Did you ever hear of a man keeping a boot shop and
+not selling boots? D&rsquo;ye think I decorate the shop with &rsquo;em
+to make it look pretty? What d&rsquo;ye take me for&mdash;a prize
+idiot?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I have always maintained that these conversation books are never
+of any real use. What we wanted was some English equivalent for
+the well-known German idiom: &ldquo;Behalten Sie Ihr Haar auf.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Nothing of the sort was to be found in the book from beginning to
+end. However, I will do George the credit to admit he chose the
+very best sentence that was to be found therein and applied it.
+He said:.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I will come again, when, perhaps, you will have some more
+boots to show me. Till then, adieu!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>With that we returned to our cab and drove away, leaving the man
+standing in the centre of his boot-bedecked doorway addressing remarks
+to us. What he said, I did not hear, but the passers-by appeared
+to find it interesting.</p>
+
+<p>George was for stopping at another boot shop and trying the experiment
+afresh; he said he really did want a pair of bedroom slippers.
+But we persuaded him to postpone their purchase until our arrival in
+some foreign city, where the tradespeople are no doubt more inured to
+this sort of talk, or else more naturally amiable. On the subject
+of the hat, however, he was adamant. He maintained that without
+that he could not travel, and, accordingly, we pulled up at a small
+shop in the Blackfriars Road.</p>
+
+<p>The proprietor of this shop was a cheery, bright-eyed little man,
+and he helped us rather than hindered us.</p>
+
+<p>When George asked him in the words of the book, &ldquo;Have you any
+hats?&rdquo; he did not get angry; he just stopped and thoughtfully
+scratched his chin.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Hats,&rdquo; said he. &ldquo;Let me think. Yes&rdquo;&mdash;here
+a smile of positive pleasure broke over his genial countenance&mdash;&ldquo;yes,
+now I come to think of it, I believe I have a hat. But, tell me,
+why do you ask me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George explained to him that he wished to purchase a cap, a travelling
+cap, but the essence of the transaction was that it was to be a &ldquo;good
+cap.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The man&rsquo;s face fell.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah,&rdquo; he remarked, &ldquo;there, I am afraid, you have
+me. Now, if you had wanted a bad cap, not worth the price asked
+for it; a cap good for nothing but to clean windows with, I could have
+found you the very thing. But a good cap&mdash;no; we don&rsquo;t
+keep them. But wait a minute,&rdquo; he continued,&mdash;on seeing
+the disappointment that spread over George&rsquo;s expressive countenance,
+&ldquo;don&rsquo;t be in a hurry. I have a cap here&rdquo;&mdash;he
+went to a drawer and opened it&mdash;&ldquo;it is not a good cap, but
+it is not so bad as most of the caps I sell.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He brought it forward, extended on his palm.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you think of that?&rdquo; he asked. &ldquo;Could
+you put up with that?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George fitted it on before the glass, and, choosing another remark
+from the book, said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This hat fits me sufficiently well, but, tell me, do you consider
+that it becomes me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The man stepped back and took a bird&rsquo;s-eye view.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Candidly,&rdquo; he replied, &ldquo;I can&rsquo;t say that
+it does.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He turned from George, and addressed himself to Harris and myself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Your friend&rsquo;s beauty,&rdquo; said he, &ldquo;I should
+describe as elusive. It is there, but you can easily miss it.
+Now, in that cap, to my mind, you do miss it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At that point it occurred to George that he had had sufficient fun
+with this particular man. He said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is all right. We don&rsquo;t want to lose the train.
+How much?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Answered the man: &ldquo;The price of that cap, sir, which, in my
+opinion, is twice as much as it is worth, is four-and-six. Would
+you like it wrapped up in brown paper, sir, or in white?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George said he would take it as it was, paid the man four-and-six
+in-silver, and went out. Harris and I followed.</p>
+
+<p>At Fenchurch Street we compromised with our cabman for five shillings.
+He made us another courtly bow, and begged us to remember him to the
+Emperor of Austria.</p>
+
+<p>Comparing views in the train, we agreed that we had lost the game
+by two points to one; and George, who was evidently disappointed, threw
+the book out of window.</p>
+
+<p>We found our luggage and the bicycles safe on the boat, and with
+the tide at twelve dropped down the river.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER V</h2>
+
+<p class="letter">
+A necessary digression&mdash;Introduced by story containing moral&mdash;One
+of the charms of this book&mdash;The Journal that did not command success&mdash;Its
+boast: &ldquo;Instruction combined with Amusement&rdquo;&mdash;Problem:
+say what should be considered instructive and what amusing&mdash;A popular
+game&mdash;Expert opinion on English law&mdash;Another of the charms
+of this book&mdash;A hackneyed tune&mdash;Yet a third charm of this
+book&mdash;The sort of wood it was where the maiden lived&mdash;Description
+of the Black Forest.</p>
+
+<p>A story is told of a Scotchman who, loving a lassie, desired her
+for his wife. But he possessed the prudence of his race.
+He had noticed in his circle many an otherwise promising union result
+in disappointment and dismay, purely in consequence of the false estimate
+formed by bride or bridegroom concerning the imagined perfectability
+of the other. He determined that in his own case no collapsed
+ideal should be possible. Therefore, it was that his proposal
+took the following form:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m but a puir lad, Jennie; I hae nae siller to offer
+ye, and nae land.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, but ye hae yoursel&rsquo;, Davie!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;An&rsquo; I&rsquo;m wishfu&rsquo; it wa&rsquo; onything else,
+lassie. I&rsquo;m nae but a puir ill-seasoned loon, Jennie.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Na, na; there&rsquo;s mony a lad mair ill-looking than yoursel&rsquo;,
+Davie.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I hae na seen him, lass, and I&rsquo;m just a-thinkin&rsquo;
+I shouldna&rsquo; care to.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Better a plain man, Davie, that ye can depend a&rsquo; than
+ane that would be a speirin&rsquo; at the lassies, a-bringin&rsquo;
+trouble into the hame wi&rsquo; his flouting ways.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dinna ye reckon on that, Jennie; it&rsquo;s nae the bonniest
+Bubbly Jock that mak&rsquo;s the most feathers to fly in the kailyard.
+I was ever a lad to run after the petticoats, as is weel kent; an&rsquo;
+it&rsquo;s a weary handfu&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll be to ye, I&rsquo;m thinkin&rsquo;.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, but ye hae a kind heart, Davie! an&rsquo; ye love me weel.
+I&rsquo;m sure on&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I like ye weel enoo&rsquo;, Jennie, though I canna say how
+long the feeling may bide wi&rsquo; me; an&rsquo; I&rsquo;m kind enoo&rsquo;
+when I hae my ain way, an&rsquo; naethin&rsquo; happens to put me oot.
+But I hae the deevil&rsquo;s ain temper, as my mither call tell ye,
+an&rsquo; like my puir fayther, I&rsquo;m a-thinkin&rsquo;, I&rsquo;ll
+grow nae better as I grow mair auld.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ay, but ye&rsquo;re sair hard upon yersel&rsquo;, Davie.
+Ye&rsquo;re an honest lad. I ken ye better than ye ken yersel&rsquo;,
+an&rsquo; ye&rsquo;ll mak a guid hame for me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe, Jennie! But I hae my doots. It&rsquo;s
+a sair thing for wife an&rsquo; bairns when the guid man canna keep
+awa&rsquo; frae the glass; an&rsquo; when the scent of the whusky comes
+to me it&rsquo;s just as though I hae&rsquo;d the throat o&rsquo; a
+Loch Tay salmon; it just gaes doon an&rsquo; doon, an&rsquo; there&rsquo;s
+nae filling o&rsquo; me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ay, but ye&rsquo;re a guid man when ye&rsquo;re sober, Davie.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe I&rsquo;ll be that, Jennie, if I&rsquo;m nae disturbed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;An&rsquo; ye&rsquo;ll bide wi&rsquo; me, Davie, an&rsquo;
+work for me?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see nae reason why I shouldna bide wi&rsquo; yet Jennie;
+but dinna ye clack aboot work to me, for I just canna bear the thoct
+o&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Anyhow, ye&rsquo;ll do your best, Davie? As the minister
+says, nae man can do mair than that.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;An&rsquo; it&rsquo;s a puir best that mine&rsquo;ll be, Jennie,
+and I&rsquo;m nae sae sure ye&rsquo;ll hae ower muckle even o&rsquo;
+that. We&rsquo;re a&rsquo; weak, sinfu&rsquo; creatures, Jennie,
+an&rsquo; ye&rsquo;d hae some deefficulty to find a man weaker or mair
+sinfu&rsquo; than mysel&rsquo;.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Weel, weel, ye hae a truthfu&rsquo; tongue, Davie. Mony
+a lad will mak fine promises to a puir lassie, only to break &rsquo;em
+an&rsquo; her heart wi&rsquo; &rsquo;em. Ye speak me fair, Davie,
+and I&rsquo;m thinkin&rsquo; I&rsquo;ll just tak ye, an&rsquo; see what
+comes o&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Concerning what did come of it, the story is silent, but one feels
+that under no circumstances had the lady any right to complain of her
+bargain. Whether she ever did or did not&mdash;for women do not
+invariably order their tongues according to logic, nor men either for
+the matter of that&mdash;Davie, himself, must have had the satisfaction
+of reflecting that all reproaches were undeserved.</p>
+
+<p>I wish to be equally frank with the reader of this book. I
+wish here conscientiously to let forth its shortcomings. I wish
+no one to read this book under a misapprehension.</p>
+
+<p>There will be no useful information in this book.</p>
+
+<p>Anyone who should think that with the aid of this book he would be
+able to make a tour through Germany and the Black Forest would probably
+lose himself before he got to the Nore. That, at all events, would
+be the best thing that could happen to him. The farther away from
+home he got, the greater only would be his difficulties.</p>
+
+<p>I do not regard the conveyance of useful information as my <i>forte</i>.
+This belief was not inborn with me; it has been driven home upon me
+by experience.</p>
+
+<p>In my early journalistic days, I served upon a paper, the forerunner
+of many very popular periodicals of the present day. Our boast
+was that we combined instruction with amusement; as to what should be
+regarded as affording amusement and what instruction, the reader judged
+for himself. We gave advice to people about to marry&mdash;long,
+earnest advice that would, had they followed it, have made our circle
+of readers the envy of the whole married world. We told our subscribers
+how to make fortunes by keeping rabbits, giving facts and figures.
+The thing that must have surprised them was that we ourselves did not
+give up journalism and start rabbit-farming. Often and often have
+I proved conclusively from authoritative sources how a man starting
+a rabbit farm with twelve selected rabbits and a little judgment must,
+at the end of three years, be in receipt of an income of two thousand
+a year, rising rapidly; he simply could not help himself. He might
+not want the money. He might not know what to do with it when
+he had it. But there it was for him. I have never met a
+rabbit farmer myself worth two thousand a year, though I have known
+many start with the twelve necessary, assorted rabbits. Something
+has always gone wrong somewhere; maybe the continued atmosphere of a
+rabbit farm saps the judgment.</p>
+
+<p>We told our readers how many bald-headed men there were in Iceland,
+and for all we knew our figures may have been correct; how many red
+herrings placed tail to mouth it would take to reach from London to
+Rome, which must have been useful to anyone desirous of laying down
+a line of red herrings from London to Rome, enabling him to order in
+the right quantity at the beginning; how many words the average woman
+spoke in a day; and other such like items of information calculated
+to make them wise and great beyond the readers of other journals.</p>
+
+<p>We told them how to cure fits in cats. Personally I do not
+believe, and I did not believe then, that you can cure fits in cats.
+If I had a cat subject to fits I should advertise it for sale, or even
+give it away. But our duty was to supply information when asked
+for. Some fool wrote, clamouring to know; and I spent the best
+part of a morning seeking knowledge on the subject. I found what
+I wanted at length at the end of an old cookery book. What it
+was doing there I have never been able to understand. It had nothing
+to do with the proper subject of the book whatever; there was no suggestion
+that you could make anything savoury out of a cat, even when you had
+cured it of its fits. The authoress had just thrown in this paragraph
+out of pure generosity. I can only say that I wish she had left
+it out; it was the cause of a deal of angry correspondence and of the
+loss of four subscribers to the paper, if not more. The man said
+the result of following our advice had been two pounds worth of damage
+to his kitchen crockery, to say nothing of a broken window and probable
+blood poisoning to himself; added to which the cat&rsquo;s fits were
+worse than before. And yet it was a simple enough recipe.
+You held the cat between your legs, gently, so as not to hurt it, and
+with a pair of scissors made a sharp, clean cut in its tail. You
+did not cut off any part of the tail; you were to be careful not to
+do that; you only made an incision.</p>
+
+<p>As we explained to the man, the garden or the coal cellar would have
+been the proper place for the operation; no one but an idiot would have
+attempted to perform it in a kitchen, and without help.</p>
+
+<p>We gave them hints on etiquette. We told them how to address
+peers and bishops; also how to eat soup. We instructed shy young
+men how to acquire easy grace in drawing-rooms. We taught dancing
+to both sexes by the aid of diagrams. We solved their religious
+doubts for them, and supplied them with a code of morals that would
+have done credit to a stained-glass window.</p>
+
+<p>The paper was not a financial success, it was some years before its
+time, and the consequence was that our staff was limited. My own
+department, I remember, included &ldquo;Advice to Mothers&rdquo;&mdash;I
+wrote that with the assistance of my landlady, who, having divorced
+one husband and buried four children, was, I considered, a reliable
+authority on all domestic matters; &ldquo;Hints on Furnishing and Household
+Decorations&mdash;with Designs&rdquo; a column of &ldquo;Literary Counsel
+to Beginners&rdquo;&mdash;I sincerely hope my guidance was of better
+service to them than it has ever proved to myself; and our weekly article,
+&ldquo;Straight Talks to Young Men,&rdquo; signed &ldquo;Uncle Henry.&rdquo;
+A kindly, genial old fellow was &ldquo;Uncle Henry,&rdquo; with wide
+and varied experience, and a sympathetic attitude towards the rising
+generation. He had been through trouble himself in his far back
+youth, and knew most things. Even to this day I read of &ldquo;Uncle
+Henry&rsquo;s&rdquo; advice, and, though I say it who should not, it
+still seems to me good, sound advice. I often think that had I
+followed &ldquo;Uncle Henry&rsquo;s&rdquo; counsel closer I would have
+been wiser, made fewer mistakes, felt better satisfied with myself than
+is now the case.</p>
+
+<p>A quiet, weary little woman, who lived in a bed-sitting room off
+the Tottenham Court Road, and who had a husband in a lunatic asylum,
+did our &ldquo;Cooking Column,&rdquo; &ldquo;Hints on Education&rdquo;&mdash;we
+were full of hints,&mdash;and a page and a half of &ldquo;Fashionable
+Intelligence,&rdquo; written in the pertly personal style which even
+yet has not altogether disappeared, so I am informed, from modern journalism:
+&ldquo;I must tell you about the <i>divine</i> frock I wore at &lsquo;Glorious
+Goodwood&rsquo; last week. Prince C.&mdash;but there, I really
+must not repeat all the things the silly fellow says; he is <i>too</i>
+foolish&mdash;and the <i>dear</i> Countess, I fancy, was just the <i>weeish</i>
+bit jealous&rdquo;&mdash;and so on.</p>
+
+<p>Poor little woman! I see her now in the shabby grey alpaca,
+with the inkstains on it. Perhaps a day at &ldquo;Glorious Goodwood,&rdquo;
+or anywhere else in the fresh air, might have put some colour into her
+cheeks.</p>
+
+<p>Our proprietor&mdash;one of the most unashamedly ignorant men I ever
+met&mdash;I remember his gravely informing a correspondent once that
+Ben Jonson had written <i>Rabelais</i> to pay for his mother&rsquo;s
+funeral, and only laughing good-naturedly when his mistakes were pointed
+out to him&mdash;wrote with the aid of a cheap encyclopedia the pages
+devoted to &ldquo;General Information,&rdquo; and did them on the whole
+remarkably well; while our office boy, with an excellent pair of scissors
+for his assistant, was responsible for our supply of &ldquo;Wit and
+Humour.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was hard work, and the pay was poor, what sustained us was the
+consciousness that we were instructing and improving our fellow men
+and women. Of all games in the world, the one most universally
+and eternally popular is the game of school. You collect six children,
+and put them on a doorstep, while you walk up and down with the book
+and cane. We play it when babies, we play it when boys and girls,
+we play it when men and women, we play it as, lean and slippered, we
+totter towards the grave. It never palls upon, it never wearies
+us. Only one thing mars it: the tendency of one and all of the
+other six children to clamour for their turn with the book and the cane.
+The reason, I am sure, that journalism is so popular a calling, in spite
+of its many drawbacks, is this: each journalist feels he is the boy
+walking up and down with the cane. The Government, the Classes,
+and the Masses, Society, Art, and Literature, are the other children
+sitting on the doorstep. He instructs and improves them.</p>
+
+<p>But I digress. It was to excuse my present permanent disinclination
+to be the vehicle of useful information that I recalled these matters.
+Let us now return.</p>
+
+<p>Somebody, signing himself &ldquo;Balloonist,&rdquo; had written to
+ask concerning the manufacture of hydrogen gas. It is an easy
+thing to manufacture&mdash;at least, so I gathered after reading up
+the subject at the British Museum; yet I did warn &ldquo;Balloonist,&rdquo;
+whoever he might be, to take all necessary precaution against accident.
+What more could I have done? Ten days afterwards a florid-faced
+lady called at the office, leading by the hand what, she explained,
+was her son, aged twelve. The boy&rsquo;s face was unimpressive
+to a degree positively remarkable. His mother pushed him forward
+and took off his hat, and then I perceived the reason for this.
+He had no eyebrows whatever, and of his hair nothing remained but a
+scrubby dust, giving to his head the appearance of a hard-boiled egg,
+skinned and sprinkled with black pepper.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That was a handsome lad this time last week, with naturally
+curly hair,&rdquo; remarked the lady. She spoke with a rising
+inflection, suggestive of the beginning of things.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What has happened to him?&rdquo; asked our chief.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is what&rsquo;s happened to him,&rdquo; retorted the
+lady. She drew from her muff a copy of our last week&rsquo;s issue,
+with my article on hydrogen gas scored in pencil, and flung it before
+his eyes. Our chief took it and read it through.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He was &lsquo;Balloonist&rsquo;?&rdquo; queried the chief.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He was &lsquo;Balloonist,&rsquo;&rdquo; admitted the lady,
+&ldquo;the poor innocent child, and now look at him!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe it&rsquo;ll grow again,&rdquo; suggested our chief.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe it will,&rdquo; retorted the lady, her key continuing
+to rise, &ldquo;and maybe it won&rsquo;t. What I want to know
+is what you are going to do for him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Our chief suggested a hair wash. I thought at first she was
+going to fly at him; but for the moment she confined herself to words.
+It appears she was not thinking of a hair wash, but of compensation.
+She also made observations on the general character of our paper, its
+utility, its claim to public support, the sense and wisdom of its contributors.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I really don&rsquo;t see that it is our fault,&rdquo; urged
+the chief&mdash;he was a mild-mannered man; &ldquo;he asked for information,
+and he got it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you try to be funny about it,&rdquo; said the
+lady (he had not meant to be funny, I am sure; levity was not his failing)
+&ldquo;or you&rsquo;ll get something that <i>you</i> haven&rsquo;t asked
+for. Why, for two pins,&rdquo; said the lady, with a suddenness
+that sent us both flying like scuttled chickens behind our respective
+chairs, &ldquo;I&rsquo;d come round and make your head like it!&rdquo;
+I take it, she meant like the boy&rsquo;s. She also added observations
+upon our chief&rsquo;s personal appearance, that were distinctly in
+bad taste. She was not a nice woman by any means.</p>
+
+<p>Myself, I am of opinion that had she brought the action she threatened,
+she would have had no case; but our chief was a man who had had experience
+of the law, and his principle was always to avoid it. I have heard
+him say:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If a man stopped me in the street and demanded of me my watch,
+I should refuse to give it to him. If he threatened to take it
+by force, I feel I should, though not a fighting man, do my best to
+protect it. If, on the other hand, he should assert his intention
+of trying to obtain it by means of an action in any court of law, I
+should take it out of my pocket and hand it to him, and think I had
+got off cheaply.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He squared the matter with the florid-faced lady for a five-pound
+note, which must have represented a month&rsquo;s profits on the paper;
+and she departed, taking her damaged offspring with her. After
+she was gone, our chief spoke kindly to me. He said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t think I am blaming you in the least; it is not
+your fault, it is Fate. Keep to moral advice and criticism&mdash;there
+you are distinctly good; but don&rsquo;t try your hand any more on &lsquo;Useful
+Information.&rsquo; As I have said, it is not your fault.
+Your information is correct enough&mdash;there is nothing to be said
+against that; it simply is that you are not lucky with it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I would that I had followed his advice always; I would have saved
+myself and other people much disaster. I see no reason why it
+should be, but so it is. If I instruct a man as to the best route
+between London and Rome, he loses his luggage in Switzerland, or is
+nearly shipwrecked off Dover. If I counsel him in the purchase
+of a camera, he gets run in by the German police for photographing fortresses.
+I once took a deal of trouble to explain to a man how to marry his deceased
+wife&rsquo;s sister at Stockholm. I found out for him the time
+the boat left Hull and the best hotels to stop at. There was not
+a single mistake from beginning to end in the information with which
+I supplied him; no hitch occurred anywhere; yet now he never speaks
+to me.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore it is that I have come to restrain my passion for the giving
+of information; therefore it is that nothing in the nature of practical
+instruction will be found, if I can help it, within these pages.</p>
+
+<p>There will be no description of towns, no historical reminiscences,
+no architecture, no morals.</p>
+
+<p>I once asked an intelligent foreigner what he thought of London.</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;It is a very big town.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;What struck you most about it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He replied: &ldquo;The people.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;Compared with other towns&mdash;Paris, Rome, Berlin,&mdash;what
+did you think of it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He shrugged his shoulders. &ldquo;It is bigger,&rdquo; he said;
+&ldquo;what more can one say?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>One anthill is very much like another. So many avenues, wide
+or narrow, where the little creatures swarm in strange confusion; these
+bustling by, important; these halting to pow-wow with one another.
+These struggling with big burdens; those but basking in the sun.
+So many granaries stored with food; so many cells where the little things
+sleep, and eat, and love; the corner where lie their little white bones.
+This hive is larger, the next smaller. This nest lies on the sand,
+and another under the stones. This was built but yesterday, while
+that was fashioned ages ago, some say even before the swallows came;
+who knows?</p>
+
+<p>Nor will there be found herein folk-lore or story.</p>
+
+<p>Every valley where lie homesteads has its song. I will tell
+you the plot; you can turn it into verse and set it to music of your
+own.</p>
+
+<p>There lived a lass, and there came a lad, who loved and rode away.</p>
+
+<p>It is a monotonous song, written in many languages; for the young
+man seems to have been a mighty traveller. Here in sentimental
+Germany they remember him well. So also the dwellers of the Blue
+Alsatian Mountains remember his coming among them; while, if my memory
+serves me truly, he likewise visited the Banks of Allan Water.
+A veritable Wandering Jew is he; for still the foolish girls listen,
+so they say, to the dying away of his hoof-beats.</p>
+
+<p>In this land of many ruins, that long while ago were voice-filled
+homes, linger many legends; and here again, giving you the essentials,
+I leave you to cook the dish for yourself. Take a human heart
+or two, assorted; a bundle of human passions&mdash;there are not many
+of them, half a dozen at the most; season with a mixture of good and
+evil; flavour the whole with the sauce of death, and serve up where
+and when you will. &ldquo;The Saint&rsquo;s Cell,&rdquo; &ldquo;The
+Haunted Keep,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Dungeon Grave,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Lover&rsquo;s
+Leap&rdquo;&mdash;call it what you will, the stew&rsquo;s the same.</p>
+
+<p>Lastly, in this book there will be no scenery. This is not
+laziness on my part; it is self-control. Nothing is easier to
+write than scenery; nothing more difficult and unnecessary to read.
+When Gibbon had to trust to travellers&rsquo; tales for a description
+of the Hellespont, and the Rhine was chiefly familiar to English students
+through the medium of <i>Caesar&rsquo;s Commentaries</i>, it behoved
+every globe-trotter, for whatever distance, to describe to the best
+of his ability the things that he had seen. Dr. Johnson, familiar
+with little else than the view down Fleet Street, could read the description
+of a Yorkshire moor with pleasure and with profit. To a cockney
+who had never seen higher ground than the Hog&rsquo;s Back in Surrey,
+an account of Snowdon must have appeared exciting. But we, or
+rather the steam-engine and the camera for us, have changed all that.
+The man who plays tennis every year at the foot of the Matterhorn, and
+billiards on the summit of the Rigi, does not thank you for an elaborate
+and painstaking description of the Grampian Hills. To the average
+man, who has seen a dozen oil paintings, a hundred photographs, a thousand
+pictures in the illustrated journals, and a couple of panoramas of Niagara,
+the word-painting of a waterfall is tedious.</p>
+
+<p>An American friend of mine, a cultured gentleman, who loved poetry
+well enough for its own sake, told me that he had obtained a more correct
+and more satisfying idea of the Lake district from an eighteenpenny
+book of photographic views than from all the works of Coleridge, Southey,
+and Wordsworth put together. I also remember his saying concerning
+this subject of scenery in literature, that he would thank an author
+as much for writing an eloquent description of what he had just had
+for dinner. But this was in reference to another argument; namely,
+the proper province of each art. My friend maintained that just
+as canvas and colour were the wrong mediums for story telling, so word-painting
+was, at its best, but a clumsy method of conveying impressions that
+could much better be received through the eye.</p>
+
+<p>As regards the question, there also lingers in my memory very distinctly
+a hot school afternoon. The class was for English literature,
+and the proceedings commenced with the reading of a certain lengthy,
+but otherwise unobjectionable, poem. The author&rsquo;s name,
+I am ashamed to say, I have forgotten, together with the title of the
+poem. The reading finished, we closed our books, and the Professor,
+a kindly, white-haired old gentleman, suggested our giving in our own
+words an account of what we had just read.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; said the Professor, encouragingly, &ldquo;what
+it is all about.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Please, sir,&rdquo; said the first boy&mdash;he spoke with
+bowed head and evident reluctance, as though the subject were one which,
+left to himself, he would never have mentioned,&mdash;&ldquo;it is about
+a maiden.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes,&rdquo; agreed the Professor; &ldquo;but I want you to
+tell me in your own words. We do not speak of a maiden, you know;
+we say a girl. Yes, it is about a girl. Go on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A girl,&rdquo; repeated the top boy, the substitution apparently
+increasing his embarrassment, &ldquo;who lived in a wood.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What sort of a wood?&rdquo; asked the Professor.</p>
+
+<p>The first boy examined his inkpot carefully, and then looked at the
+ceiling.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; urged the Professor, growing impatient, &ldquo;you
+have been reading about this wood for the last ten minutes. Surely
+you can tell me something concerning it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The gnarly trees, their twisted branches&rdquo;&mdash;recommenced
+the top boy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; interrupted the Professor; &ldquo;I do not
+want you to repeat the poem. I want you to tell me in your own
+words what sort of a wood it was where the girl lived.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The Professor tapped his foot impatiently; the top boy made a dash
+for it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Please, sir, it was the usual sort of a wood.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tell him what sort of a wood,&rdquo; said he, pointing to
+the second lad.</p>
+
+<p>The second boy said it was a &ldquo;green wood.&rdquo; This
+annoyed the Professor still more; he called the second boy a blockhead,
+though really I cannot see why, and passed on to the third, who, for
+the last minute, had been sitting apparently on hot plates, with his
+right arm waving up and down like a distracted semaphore signal.
+He would have had to say it the next second, whether the Professor had
+asked him or not; he was red in the face, holding his knowledge in.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A dark and gloomy wood,&rdquo; shouted the third boy, with
+much relief to his feelings.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A dark and gloomy wood,&rdquo; repeated the Professor, with
+evident approval. &ldquo;And why was it dark and gloomy?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The third boy was still equal to the occasion.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Because the sun could not get inside it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The Professor felt he had discovered the poet of the class.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Because the sun could not get into it, or, better, because
+the sunbeams could not penetrate. And why could not the sunbeams
+penetrate there?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Please, sir, because the leaves were too thick.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very well,&rdquo; said the Professor. &ldquo;The girl
+lived in a dark and gloomy wood, through the leafy canopy of which the
+sunbeams were unable to pierce. Now, what grew in this wood?&rdquo;
+He pointed to the fourth boy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Please, sir, trees, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And what else?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Toadstools, sir.&rdquo; This after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>The Professor was not quite sure about the toadstools, but on referring
+to the text he found that the boy was right; toadstools had been mentioned.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quite right,&rdquo; admitted the Professor, &ldquo;toadstools
+grew there. And what else? What do you find underneath trees
+in a wood?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Please, sir, earth, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No; no; what grows in a wood besides trees?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, please, sir, bushes, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Bushes; very good. Now we are getting on. In this
+wood there were trees and bushes. And what else?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He pointed to a small boy near the bottom, who having decided that
+the wood was too far off to be of any annoyance to him, individually,
+was occupying his leisure playing noughts and crosses against himself.
+Vexed and bewildered, but feeling it necessary to add something to the
+inventory, he hazarded blackberries. This was a mistake; the poet
+had not mentioned blackberries.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course, Klobstock would think of something to eat,&rdquo;
+commented the Professor, who prided himself on his ready wit.
+This raised a laugh against Klobstock, and pleased the Professor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You,&rdquo; continued he, pointing to a boy in the middle;
+&ldquo;what else was there in this wood besides trees and bushes?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Please, sir, there was a torrent there.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quite right; and what did the torrent do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Please, sir, it gurgled.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No; no. Streams gurgle, torrents&mdash;?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Roar, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It roared. And what made it roar?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>This was a poser. One boy&mdash;he was not our prize intellect,
+I admit&mdash;suggested the girl. To help us the Professor put
+his question in another form:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When did it roar?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Our third boy, again coming to the rescue, explained that it roared
+when it fell down among the rocks. I think some of us had a vague
+idea that it must have been a cowardly torrent to make such a noise
+about a little thing like this; a pluckier torrent, we felt, would have
+got up and gone on, saying nothing about it. A torrent that roared
+every time it fell upon a rock we deemed a poor spirited torrent; but
+the Professor seemed quite content with it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And what lived in this wood beside the girl?&rdquo; was the
+next question.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Please, sir, birds, sir.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, birds lived in this wood. What else?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Birds seemed to have exhausted our ideas.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come,&rdquo; said the Professor, &ldquo;what are those animals
+with tails, that run up trees?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We thought for a while, then one of us suggested cats.</p>
+
+<p>This was an error; the poet had said nothing about cats; squirrels
+was what the Professor was trying to get.</p>
+
+<p>I do not recall much more about this wood in detail. I only
+recollect that the sky was introduced into it. In places where
+there occurred an opening among the trees you could by looking up see
+the sky above you; very often there were clouds in this sky, and occasionally,
+if I remember rightly, the girl got wet.</p>
+
+<p>I have dwelt upon this incident, because it seems to me suggestive
+of the whole question of scenery in literature. I could not at
+the time, I cannot now, understand why the top boy&rsquo;s summary was
+not sufficient. With all due deference to the poet, whoever he
+may have been, one cannot but acknowledge that his wood was, and could
+not be otherwise than, &ldquo;the usual sort of a wood.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I could describe the Black Forest to you at great length. I
+could translate to you Hebel, the poet of the Black Forest. I
+could write pages concerning its rocky gorges and its smiling valleys,
+its pine-clad slopes, its rock-crowned summits, its foaming rivulets
+(where the tidy German has not condemned them to flow respectably through
+wooden troughs or drainpipes), its white villages, its lonely farmsteads.</p>
+
+<p>But I am haunted by the suspicion you might skip all this.
+Were you sufficiently conscientious&mdash;or weak-minded enough&mdash;not
+to do so, I should, all said and done, succeed in conveying to you only
+an impression much better summed up in the simple words of the unpretentious
+guide book:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A picturesque, mountainous district, bounded on the south
+and the west by the plain of the Rhine, towards which its spurs descend
+precipitately. Its geological formation consists chiefly of variegated
+sandstone and granite; its lower heights being covered with extensive
+pine forests. It is well watered with numerous streams, while
+its populous valleys are fertile and well cultivated. The inns
+are good; but the local wines should be partaken of by the stranger
+with discretion.&rdquo;</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Why we went to Hanover&mdash;Something they do better abroad&mdash;The
+art of polite foreign conversation, as taught in English schools&mdash;A
+true history, now told for the first time&mdash;The French joke, as
+provided for the amusement of British youth&mdash;Fatherly instincts
+of Harris&mdash;The road-waterer, considered as an artist&mdash;Patriotism
+of George&mdash;What Harris ought to have done&mdash;What he did&mdash;We
+save Harris&rsquo;s life&mdash;A sleepless city&mdash;The cab-horse
+as a critic.</p>
+
+<p>We arrived in Hamburg on Friday after a smooth and uneventful voyage;
+and from Hamburg we travelled to Berlin by way of Hanover. It
+is not the most direct route. I can only account for our visit
+to Hanover as the nigger accounted to the magistrate for his appearance
+in the Deacon&rsquo;s poultry-yard.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sar, what the constable sez is quite true, sar; I was
+dar, sar.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, so you admit it? And what were you doing with a
+sack, pray, in Deacon Abraham&rsquo;s poultry-yard at twelve o&rsquo;clock
+at night?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;se gwine ter tell yer, sar; yes, sar. I&rsquo;d
+been to Massa Jordan&rsquo;s wid a sack of melons. Yes, sar; an&rsquo;
+Massa Jordan he wuz very &rsquo;greeable, an&rsquo; axed me for ter
+come in.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sar, very &rsquo;greeable man is Massa Jordan.
+An&rsquo; dar we sat a talking an&rsquo; a talking&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very likely. What we want to know is what you were doing
+in the Deacon&rsquo;s poultry-yard?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, sar, dat&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;se cumming to. It
+wuz ver&rsquo; late &rsquo;fore I left Massa Jordan&rsquo;s, an&rsquo;
+den I sez ter mysel&rsquo;, sez I, now yer jest step out with yer best
+leg foremost, Ulysses, case yer gets into trouble wid de ole woman.
+Ver&rsquo; talkative woman she is, sar, very&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, never mind her; there are other people very talkative
+in this town besides your wife. Deacon Abraham&rsquo;s house is
+half a mile out of your way home from Mr. Jordan&rsquo;s. How
+did you get there?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Dat&rsquo;s what I&rsquo;m a-gwine ter explain, sar.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am glad of that. And how do you propose to do it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;se thinkin&rsquo;, sar, I must ha&rsquo; digressed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I take it we digressed a little.</p>
+
+<p>At first, from some reason or other, Hanover strikes you as an uninteresting
+town, but it grows upon you. It is in reality two towns; a place
+of broad, modern, handsome streets and tasteful gardens; side by side
+with a sixteenth-century town, where old timbered houses overhang the
+narrow lanes; where through low archways one catches glimpses of galleried
+courtyards, once often thronged, no doubt, with troops of horse, or
+blocked with lumbering coach and six, waiting its rich merchant owner,
+and his fat placid Frau, but where now children and chickens scuttle
+at their will; while over the carved balconies hang dingy clothes a-drying.</p>
+
+<p>A singularly English atmosphere hovers over Hanover, especially on
+Sundays, when its shuttered shops and clanging bells give to it the
+suggestion of a sunnier London. Nor was this British Sunday atmosphere
+apparent only to myself, else I might have attributed it to imagination;
+even George felt it. Harris and I, returning from a short stroll
+with our cigars after lunch on the Sunday afternoon, found him peacefully
+slumbering in the smoke-room&rsquo;s easiest chair.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;After all,&rdquo; said Harris, &ldquo;there is something about
+the British Sunday that appeals to the man with English blood in his
+veins. I should be sorry to see it altogether done away with,
+let the new generation say what it will.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And taking one each end of the ample settee, we kept George company.</p>
+
+<p>To Hanover one should go, they say, to learn the best German.
+The disadvantage is that outside Hanover, which is only a small province,
+nobody understands this best German. Thus you have to decide whether
+to speak good German and remain in Hanover, or bad German and travel
+about. Germany being separated so many centuries into a dozen
+principalities, is unfortunate in possessing a variety of dialects.
+Germans from Posen wishful to converse with men of Wurtemburg, have
+to talk as often as not in French or English; and young ladies who have
+received an expensive education in Westphalia surprise and disappoint
+their parents by being unable to understand a word said to them in Mechlenberg.
+An English-speaking foreigner, it is true, would find himself equally
+nonplussed among the Yorkshire wolds, or in the purlieus of Whitechapel;
+but the cases are not on all fours. Throughout Germany it is not
+only in the country districts and among the uneducated that dialects
+are maintained. Every province has practically its own language,
+of which it is proud and retentive. An educated Bavarian will
+admit to you that, academically speaking, the North German is more correct;
+but he will continue to speak South German and to teach it to his children.</p>
+
+<p>In the course of the century, I am inclined to think that Germany
+will solve her difficulty in this respect by speaking English.
+Every boy and girl in Germany, above the peasant class, speaks English.
+Were English pronunciation less arbitrary, there is not the slightest
+doubt but that in the course of a very few years, comparatively speaking,
+it would become the language of the world. All foreigners agree
+that, grammatically, it is the easiest language of any to learn.
+A German, comparing it with his own language, where every word in every
+sentence is governed by at least four distinct and separate rules, tells
+you that English has no grammar. A good many English people would
+seem to have come to the same conclusion; but they are wrong.
+As a matter of fact, there is an English grammar, and one of these days
+our schools will recognise the fact, and it will be taught to our children,
+penetrating maybe even into literary and journalistic circles.
+But at present we appear to agree with the foreigner that it is a quantity
+neglectable. English pronunciation is the stumbling-block to our
+progress. English spelling would seem to have been designed chiefly
+as a disguise to pronunciation. It is a clever idea, calculated
+to check presumption on the part of the foreigner; but for that he would
+learn it in a year.</p>
+
+<p>For they have a way of teaching languages in Germany that is not
+our way, and the consequence is that when the German youth or maiden
+leaves the gymnasium or high school at fifteen, &ldquo;it&rdquo; (as
+in Germany one conveniently may say) can understand and speak the tongue
+it has been learning. In England we have a method that for obtaining
+the least possible result at the greatest possible expenditure of time
+and money is perhaps unequalled. An English boy who has been through
+a good middle-class school in England can talk to a Frenchman, slowly
+and with difficulty, about female gardeners and aunts; conversation
+which, to a man possessed perhaps of neither, is liable to pall.
+Possibly, if he be a bright exception, he may be able to tell the time,
+or make a few guarded observations concerning the weather. No
+doubt he could repeat a goodly number of irregular verbs by heart; only,
+as a matter of fact, few foreigners care to listen to their own irregular
+verbs, recited by young Englishmen. Likewise he might be able
+to remember a choice selection of grotesquely involved French idioms,
+such as no modern Frenchman has ever heard or understands when he does
+hear.</p>
+
+<p>The explanation is that, in nine cases out of ten, he has learnt
+French from an &ldquo;Ahn&rsquo;s First-Course.&rdquo; The history
+of this famous work is remarkable and instructive. The book was
+originally written for a joke, by a witty Frenchman who had resided
+for some years in England. He intended it as a satire upon the
+conversational powers of British society. From this point of view
+it was distinctly good. He submitted it to a London publishing
+firm. The manager was a shrewd man. He read the book through.
+Then he sent for the author.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This book of yours,&rdquo; said he to the author, &ldquo;is
+very clever. I have laughed over it myself till the tears came.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am delighted to hear you say so,&rdquo; replied the pleased
+Frenchman. &ldquo;I tried to be truthful without being unnecessarily
+offensive.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is most amusing,&rdquo; concurred the manager; &ldquo;and
+yet published as a harmless joke, I feel it would fail.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The author&rsquo;s face fell.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Its humour,&rdquo; proceeded the manager, &ldquo;would be
+denounced as forced and extravagant. It would amuse the thoughtful
+and intelligent, but from a business point of view that portion of the
+public are never worth considering. But I have an idea,&rdquo;
+continued the manager. He glanced round the room to be sure they
+were alone, and leaning forward sunk his voice to a whisper. &ldquo;My
+notion is to publish it as a serious work for the use of schools!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The author stared, speechless.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know the English schoolman,&rdquo; said the manager; &ldquo;this
+book will appeal to him. It will exactly fit in with his method.
+Nothing sillier, nothing more useless for the purpose will he ever discover.
+He will smack his lips over the book, as a puppy licks up blacking.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The author, sacrificing art to greed, consented. They altered
+the title and added a vocabulary, but left the book otherwise as it
+was.</p>
+
+<p>The result is known to every schoolboy. &ldquo;Ahn&rdquo; became
+the palladium of English philological education. If it no longer
+retains its ubiquity, it is because something even less adaptable to
+the object in view has been since invented.</p>
+
+<p>Lest, in spite of all, the British schoolboy should obtain, even
+from the like of &ldquo;Ahn,&rdquo; some glimmering of French, the British
+educational method further handicaps him by bestowing upon him the assistance
+of, what is termed in the prospectus, &ldquo;A native gentleman.&rdquo;
+This native French gentleman, who, by-the-by, is generally a Belgian,
+is no doubt a most worthy person, and can, it is true, understand and
+speak his own language with tolerable fluency. There his qualifications
+cease. Invariably he is a man with a quite remarkable inability
+to teach anybody anything. Indeed, he would seem to be chosen
+not so much as an instructor as an amuser of youth. He is always
+a comic figure. No Frenchman of a dignified appearance would be
+engaged for any English school. If he possess by nature a few
+harmless peculiarities, calculated to cause merriment, so much the more
+is he esteemed by his employers. The class naturally regards him
+as an animated joke. The two to four hours a week that are deliberately
+wasted on this ancient farce, are looked forward to by the boys as a
+merry interlude in an otherwise monotonous existence. And then,
+when the proud parent takes his son and heir to Dieppe merely to discover
+that the lad does not know enough to call a cab, he abuses not the system,
+but its innocent victim.</p>
+
+<p>I confine my remarks to French, because that is the only language
+we attempt to teach our youth. An English boy who could speak
+German would be looked down upon as unpatriotic. Why we waste
+time in teaching even French according to this method I have never been
+able to understand. A perfect unacquaintance with a language is
+respectable. But putting aside comic journalists and lady novelists,
+for whom it is a business necessity, this smattering of French which
+we are so proud to possess only serves to render us ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>In the German school the method is somewhat different. One
+hour every day is devoted to the same language. The idea is not
+to give the lad time between each lesson to forget what he learned at
+the last; the idea is for him to get on. There is no comic foreigner
+provided for his amusement. The desired language is taught by
+a German school-master who knows it inside and out as thoroughly as
+he knows his own. Maybe this system does not provide the German
+youth with that perfection of foreign accent for which the British tourist
+is in every land remarkable, but it has other advantages. The
+boy does not call his master &ldquo;froggy,&rdquo; or &ldquo;sausage,&rdquo;
+nor prepare for the French or English hour any exhibition of homely
+wit whatever. He just sits there, and for his own sake tries to
+learn that foreign tongue with as little trouble to everybody concerned
+as possible. When he has left school he can talk, not about penknives
+and gardeners and aunts merely, but about European politics, history,
+Shakespeare, or the musical glasses, according to the turn the conversation
+may take.</p>
+
+<p>Viewing the German people from an Anglo-Saxon standpoint, it may
+be that in this book I shall find occasion to criticise them: but on
+the other hand there is much that we might learn from them; and in the
+matter of common sense, as applied to education, they can give us ninety-nine
+in a hundred and beat us with one hand.</p>
+
+<p>The beautiful wood of the Eilenriede bounds Hanover on the south
+and west, and here occurred a sad drama in which Harris took a prominent
+part.</p>
+
+<p>We were riding our machines through this wood on the Monday afternoon
+in the company of many other cyclists, for it is a favourite resort
+with the Hanoverians on a sunny afternoon, and its shady pathways are
+then filled with happy, thoughtless folk. Among them rode a young
+and beautiful girl on a machine that was new. She was evidently
+a novice on the bicycle. One felt instinctively that there would
+come a moment when she would require help, and Harris, with his accustomed
+chivalry, suggested we should keep near her. Harris, as he occasionally
+explains to George and to myself, has daughters of his own, or, to speak
+more correctly, a daughter, who as the years progress will no doubt
+cease practising catherine wheels in the front garden, and will grow
+up into a beautiful and respectable young lady. This naturally
+gives Harris an interest in all beautiful girls up to the age of thirty-five
+or thereabouts; they remind him, so he says, of home.</p>
+
+<p>We had ridden for about two miles, when we noticed, a little ahead
+of us in a space where five ways met, a man with a hose, watering the
+roads. The pipe, supported at each joint by a pair of tiny wheels,
+writhed after him as he moved, suggesting a gigantic-worm, from whose
+open neck, as the man, gripping it firmly in both hands, pointing it
+now this way, and now that, now elevating it, now depressing it, poured
+a strong stream of water at the rate of about a gallon a second.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What a much better method than ours,&rdquo; observed Harris,
+enthusiastically. Harris is inclined to be chronically severe
+on all British institutions. &ldquo;How much simpler, quicker,
+and more economical! You see, one man by this method can in five
+minutes water a stretch of road that would take us with our clumsy lumbering
+cart half an hour to cover.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George, who was riding behind me on the tandem, said, &ldquo;Yes,
+and it is also a method by which with a little carelessness a man could
+cover a good many people in a good deal less time than they could get
+out of the way.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George, the opposite to Harris, is British to the core. I remember
+George quite patriotically indignant with Harris once for suggesting
+the introduction of the guillotine into England.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is so much neater,&rdquo; said Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t care if it is,&rdquo; said George; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+an Englishman; hanging is good enough for me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Our water-cart may have its disadvantages,&rdquo; continued
+George, &ldquo;but it can only make you uncomfortable about the legs,
+and you can avoid it. This is the sort of machine with which a
+man can follow you round the corner and upstairs.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It fascinates me to watch them,&rdquo; said Harris.
+&ldquo;They are so skilful. I have seen a man from the corner
+of a crowded square in Strassburg cover every inch of ground, and not
+so much as wet an apron string. It is marvellous how they judge
+their distance. They will send the water up to your toes, and
+then bring it over your head so that it falls around your heels.
+They can&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ease up a minute,&rdquo; said George. I said: &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;I am going to get off and watch the rest of this
+show from behind a tree. There may be great performers in this
+line, as Harris says; this particular artist appears to me to lack something.
+He has just soused a dog, and now he&rsquo;s busy watering a sign-post.
+I am going to wait till he has finished.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nonsense,&rdquo; said Harris; &ldquo;he won&rsquo;t wet you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That is precisely what I am going to make sure of,&rdquo;
+answered George, saying which he jumped off, and, taking up a position
+behind a remarkably fine elm, pulled out and commenced filling his pipe.</p>
+
+<p>I did not care to take the tandem on by myself, so I stepped off
+and joined him, leaving the machine against a tree. Harris shouted
+something or other about our being a disgrace to the land that gave
+us birth, and rode on.</p>
+
+<p>The next moment I heard a woman&rsquo;s cry of distress. Glancing
+round the stem of the tree, I perceived that it proceeded from the young
+and elegant lady before mentioned, whom, in our interest concerning
+the road-waterer, we had forgotten. She was riding her machine
+steadily and straightly through a drenching shower of water from the
+hose. She appeared to be too paralysed either to get off or turn
+her wheel aside. Every instant she was becoming wetter, while
+the man with the hose, who was either drunk or blind, continued to pour
+water upon her with utter indifference. A dozen voices yelled
+imprecations upon him, but he took no heed whatever.</p>
+
+<p>Harris, his fatherly nature stirred to its depths, did at this point
+what, under the circumstances, was quite the right and proper thing
+to do. Had he acted throughout with the same coolness and judgment
+he then displayed, he would have emerged from that incident the hero
+of the hour, instead of, as happened, riding away followed by insult
+and threat. Without a moment&rsquo;s hesitation he spurted at
+the man, sprang to the ground, and, seizing the hose by the nozzle,
+attempted to wrest it away.</p>
+
+<p>What he ought to have done, what any man retaining his common sense
+would have done the moment he got his hands upon the thing, was to turn
+off the tap. Then he might have played foot-ball with the man,
+or battledore and shuttlecock as he pleased; and the twenty or thirty
+people who had rushed forward to assist would have only applauded.
+His idea, however, as he explained to us afterwards, was to take away
+the hose from the man, and, for punishment, turn it upon the fool himself.
+The waterman&rsquo;s idea appeared to be the same, namely, to retain
+the hose as a weapon with which to soak Harris. Of course, the
+result was that, between them, they soused every dead and living thing
+within fifty yards, except themselves. One furious man, too drenched
+to care what more happened to him, leapt into the arena and also took
+a hand. The three among them proceeded to sweep the compass with
+that hose. They pointed it to heaven, and the water descended
+upon the people in the form of an equinoctial storm. They pointed
+it downwards, and sent the water in rushing streams that took people
+off their feet, or caught them about the waist line, and doubled them
+up.</p>
+
+<p>Not one of them would loosen his grip upon the hose, not one of them
+thought to turn the water off. You might have concluded they were
+struggling with some primeval force of nature. In forty-five seconds,
+so George said, who was timing it, they had swept that circus bare of
+every living thing except one dog, who, dripping like a water nymph,
+rolled over by the force of water, now on this side, now on that, still
+gallantly staggered again and again to its feet to bark defiance at
+what it evidently regarded as the powers of hell let loose.</p>
+
+<p>Men and women left their machines upon the ground, and flew into
+the woods. From behind every tree of importance peeped out wet,
+angry heads.</p>
+
+<p>At last, there arrived upon the scene one man of sense. Braving
+all things, he crept to the hydrant, where still stood the iron key,
+and screwed it down. And then from forty trees began to creep
+more or less soaked human beings, each one with something to say.</p>
+
+<p>At first I fell to wondering whether a stretcher or a clothes basket
+would be the more useful for the conveyance of Harris&rsquo;s remains
+back to the hotel. I consider that George&rsquo;s promptness on
+that occasion saved Harris&rsquo;s life. Being dry, and therefore
+able to run quicker, he was there before the crowd. Harris was
+for explaining things, but George cut him short.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You get on that,&rdquo; said George, handing him his bicycle,
+&ldquo;and go. They don&rsquo;t know we belong to you, and you
+may trust us implicitly not to reveal the secret. We&rsquo;ll
+hang about behind, and get in their way. Ride zig-zag in case
+they shoot.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I wish this book to be a strict record of fact, unmarred by exaggeration,
+and therefore I have shown my description of this incident to Harris,
+lest anything beyond bald narrative may have crept into it. Harris
+maintains it is exaggerated, but admits that one or two people may have
+been &ldquo;sprinkled.&rdquo; I have offered to turn a street
+hose on him at a distance of five-and-twenty yards, and take his opinion
+afterwards, as to whether &ldquo;sprinkled&rdquo; is the adequate term,
+but he has declined the test. Again, he insists there could not
+have been more than half a dozen people, at the outside, involved in
+the catastrophe, that forty is a ridiculous misstatement. I have
+offered to return with him to Hanover and make strict inquiry into the
+matter, and this offer he has likewise declined. Under these circumstances,
+I maintain that mine is a true and restrained narrative of an event
+that is, by a certain number of Hanoverians, remembered with bitterness
+unto this very day.</p>
+
+<p>We left Hanover that same evening, and arrived at Berlin in time
+for supper and an evening stroll. Berlin is a disappointing town;
+its centre over-crowded, its outlying parts lifeless; its one famous
+street, Unter den Linden, an attempt to combine Oxford Street with the
+Champs Elys&eacute;e, singularly unimposing, being much too wide for
+its size; its theatres dainty and charming, where acting is considered
+of more importance than scenery or dress, where long runs are unknown,
+successful pieces being played again and again, but never consecutively,
+so that for a week running you may go to the same Berlin theatre, and
+see a fresh play every night; its opera house unworthy of it; its two
+music halls, with an unnecessary suggestion of vulgarity and commonness
+about them, ill-arranged and much too large for comfort. In the
+Berlin caf&eacute;s and restaurants, the busy time is from midnight
+on till three. Yet most of the people who frequent them are up
+again at seven. Either the Berliner has solved the great problem
+of modern life, how to do without sleep, or, with Carlyle, he must be
+looking forward to eternity.</p>
+
+<p>Personally, I know of no other town where such late hours are the
+vogue, except St. Petersburg. But your St. Petersburger does not
+get up early in the morning. At St. Petersburg, the music halls,
+which it is the fashionable thing to attend <i>after</i> the theatre&mdash;a
+drive to them taking half an hour in a swift sleigh&mdash;do not practically
+begin till twelve. Through the Neva at four o&rsquo;clock in the
+morning you have to literally push your way; and the favourite trains
+for travellers are those starting about five o&rsquo;clock in the morning.
+These trains save the Russian the trouble of getting up early.
+He wishes his friends &ldquo;Good-night,&rdquo; and drives down to the
+station comfortably after supper, without putting the house to any inconvenience.</p>
+
+<p>Potsdam, the Versailles to Berlin, is a beautiful little town, situate
+among lakes and woods. Here in the shady ways of its quiet, far-stretching
+park of Sans Souci, it is easy to imagine lean, snuffy Frederick &ldquo;bummeling&rdquo;
+with shrill Voltaire.</p>
+
+<p>Acting on my advice, George and Harris consented not to stay long
+in Berlin; but to push on to Dresden. Most that Berlin has to
+show can be seen better elsewhere, and we decided to be content with
+a drive through the town. The hotel porter introduced us to a
+droschke driver, under whose guidance, so he assured us, we should see
+everything worth seeing in the shortest possible time. The man
+himself, who called for us at nine o&rsquo;clock in the morning, was
+all that could be desired. He was bright, intelligent, and well-informed;
+his German was easy to understand, and he knew a little English with
+which to eke it out on occasion. With the man himself there was
+no fault to be found, but his horse was the most unsympathetic brute
+I have ever sat behind.</p>
+
+<p>He took a dislike to us the moment he saw us. I was the first
+to come out of the hotel. He turned his head, and looked me up
+and down with a cold, glassy eye; and then he looked across at another
+horse, a friend of his that was standing facing him. I knew what
+he said. He had an expressive head, and he made no attempt to
+disguise his thought.</p>
+
+<p>He said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Funny things one does come across in the summer time, don&rsquo;t
+one?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George followed me out the next moment, and stood behind me.
+The horse again turned his head and looked. I have never known
+a horse that could twist himself as this horse did. I have seen
+a camelopard do trick&rsquo;s with his neck that compelled one&rsquo;s
+attention, but this animal was more like the thing one dreams of after
+a dusty days at Ascot, followed by a dinner with six old chums.
+If I had seen his eyes looking at me from between his own hind legs,
+I doubt if I should have been surprised. He seemed more amused
+with George if anything, than with myself. He turned to his friend
+again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Extraordinary, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; he remarked; &ldquo;I
+suppose there must be some place where they grow them&rdquo;; and then
+he commenced licking flies off his own left shoulder. I began
+to wonder whether he had lost his mother when young, and had been brought
+up by a cat.</p>
+
+<p>George and I climbed in, and sat waiting for Harris. He came
+a moment later. Myself, I thought he looked rather neat.
+He wore a white flannel knickerbocker suit, which he had had made specially
+for bicycling in hot weather; his hat may have been a trifle out of
+the common, but it did keep the sun off.</p>
+
+<p>The horse gave one look at him, said &ldquo;Gott in Himmel!&rdquo;
+as plainly as ever horse spoke, and started off down Friedrich Strasse
+at a brisk walk, leaving Harris and the driver standing on the pavement.
+His owner called to him to stop, but he took no notice. They ran
+after us, and overtook us at the corner of the Dorotheen Strasse.
+I could not catch what the man said to the horse, he spoke quickly and
+excitedly; but I gathered a few phrases, such as:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Got to earn my living somehow, haven&rsquo;t I? Who
+asked for your opinion? Aye, little you care so long as you can
+guzzle.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The horse cut the conversation short by turning up the Dorotheen
+Strasse on his own account. I think what he said was:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Come on then; don&rsquo;t talk so much. Let&rsquo;s
+get the job over, and, where possible, let&rsquo;s keep to the back
+streets.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Opposite the Brandenburger Thor our driver hitched the reins to the
+whip, climbed down, and came round to explain things to us. He
+pointed out the Thiergarten, and then descanted to us of the Reichstag
+House. He informed us of its exact height, length, and breadth,
+after the manner of guides. Then he turned his attention to the
+Gate. He said it was constructed of sandstone, in imitation of
+the &ldquo;Properleer&rdquo; in Athens.</p>
+
+<p>At this point the horse, which had been occupying its leisure licking
+its own legs, turned round its head. It did not say anything,
+it just looked.</p>
+
+<p>The man began again nervously. This time he said it was an
+imitation of the &ldquo;Propeyedliar.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Here the horse proceeded up the Linden, and nothing would persuade
+him not to proceed up the Linden. His owner expostulated with
+him, but he continued to trot on. From the way he hitched his
+shoulders as he moved, I somehow felt he was saying:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They&rsquo;ve seen the Gate, haven&rsquo;t they? Very
+well, that&rsquo;s enough. As for the rest, you don&rsquo;t know
+what you are talking about, and they wouldn&rsquo;t understand you if
+you did. You talk German.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It was the same throughout the length of the Linden. The horse
+consented to stand still sufficiently long to enable us to have a good
+look at each sight, and to hear the name of it. All explanation
+and description he cut short by the simple process of moving on.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What these fellows want,&rdquo; he seemed to say to himself,
+&ldquo;is to go home and tell people they have seen these things.
+If I am doing them an injustice, if they are more intelligent than they
+look, they can get better information than this old fool of mine is
+giving them from the guide book. Who wants to know how high a
+steeple is? You don&rsquo;t remember it the next five minutes
+when you are told, and if you do it is because you have got nothing
+else in your head. He just tires me with his talk. Why doesn&rsquo;t
+he hurry up, and let us all get home to lunch?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Upon reflection, I am not sure that wall-eyed old brute had not sense
+on its side. Anyhow, I know there have been occasions, with a
+guide, when I would have been glad of its interference.</p>
+
+<p>But one is apt to &ldquo;sin one&rsquo;s mercies,&rdquo; as the Scotch
+say, and at the time we cursed that horse instead of blessing it.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2>
+
+<p class="letter">
+George wonders&mdash;German love of order&mdash;&ldquo;The Band of
+the Schwarzwald Blackbirds will perform at seven&rdquo;&mdash;The china
+dog&mdash;Its superiority over all other dogs&mdash;The German and the
+solar system&mdash;A tidy country&mdash;The mountain valley as it ought
+to be, according to the German idea&mdash;How the waters come down in
+Germany&mdash;The scandal of Dresden&mdash;Harris gives an entertainment&mdash;It
+is unappreciated&mdash;George and the aunt of him&mdash;George, a cushion,
+and three damsels.</p>
+
+<p>At a point between Berlin and Dresden, George, who had, for the last
+quarter of an hour or so, been looking very attentively out of the window,
+said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, in Germany, is it the custom to put the letter-box up
+a tree? Why do they not fix it to the front door as we do?
+I should hate having to climb up a tree to get my letters. Besides,
+it is not fair to the postman. In addition to being most exhausting,
+the delivery of letters must to a heavy man, on windy nights, be positively
+dangerous work. If they will fix it to a tree, why not fix it
+lower down, why always among the topmost branches? But, maybe,
+I am misjudging the country,&rdquo; he continued, a new idea occurring
+to him. &ldquo;Possibly the Germans, who are in many matters ahead
+of us, have perfected a pigeon post. Even so, I cannot help thinking
+they would have been wiser to train the birds, while they were about
+it, to deliver the letters nearer the ground. Getting your letters
+out of those boxes must be tricky work even to the average middle-aged
+German.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I followed his gaze out of window. I said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Those are not letter-boxes, they are birds&rsquo; nests.
+You must understand this nation. The German loves birds, but he
+likes tidy birds. A bird left to himself builds his nest just
+anywhere. It is not a pretty object, according to the German notion
+of prettiness. There is not a bit of paint on it anywhere, not
+a plaster image all round, not even a flag. The nest finished,
+the bird proceeds to live outside it. He drops things on the grass;
+twigs, ends of worms, all sorts of things. He is indelicate.
+He makes love, quarrels with his wife, and feeds the children quite
+in public. The German householder is shocked. He says to
+the bird:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;For many things I like you. I like to look at
+you. I like to hear you sing. But I don&rsquo;t like your
+ways. Take this little box, and put your rubbish inside where
+I can&rsquo;t see it. Come out when you want to sing; but let
+your domestic arrangements be confined to the interior. Keep to
+the box, and don&rsquo;t make the garden untidy.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In Germany one breathes in love of order with the air, in Germany
+the babies beat time with their rattles, and the German bird has come
+to prefer the box, and to regard with contempt the few uncivilised outcasts
+who continue to build their nests in trees and hedges. In course
+of time every German bird, one is confident, will have his proper place
+in a full chorus. This promiscuous and desultory warbling of his
+must, one feels, be irritating to the precise German mind; there is
+no method in it. The music-loving German will organise him.
+Some stout bird with a specially well-developed crop will be trained
+to conduct him, and, instead of wasting himself in a wood at four o&rsquo;clock
+in the morning, he will, at the advertised time, sing in a beer garden,
+accompanied by a piano. Things are drifting that way.</p>
+
+<p>Your German likes nature, but his idea of nature is a glorified Welsh
+Harp. He takes great interest in his garden. He plants seven
+rose trees on the north side and seven on the south, and if they do
+not grow up all the same size and shape it worries him so that he cannot
+sleep of nights. Every flower he ties to a stick. This interferes
+with his view of the flower, but he has the satisfaction of knowing
+it is there, and that it is behaving itself. The lake is lined
+with zinc, and once a week he takes it up, carries it into the kitchen,
+and scours it. In the geometrical centre of the grass plot, which
+is sometimes as large as a tablecloth and is generally railed round,
+he places a china dog. The Germans are very fond of dogs, but
+as a rule they prefer them of china. The china dog never digs
+holes in the lawn to bury bones, and never scatters a flower-bed to
+the winds with his hind legs. From the German point of view, he
+is the ideal dog. He stops where you put him, and he is never
+where you do not want him. You can have him perfect in all points,
+according to the latest requirements of the Kennel Club; or you can
+indulge your own fancy and have something unique. You are not,
+as with other dogs, limited to breed. In china, you can have a
+blue dog or a pink dog. For a little extra, you can have a double-headed
+dog.</p>
+
+<p>On a certain fixed date in the autumn the German stakes his flowers
+and bushes to the earth, and covers them with Chinese matting; and on
+a certain fixed date in the spring he uncovers them, and stands them
+up again. If it happens to be an exceptionally fine autumn, or
+an exceptionally late spring, so much the worse for the unfortunate
+vegetable. No true German would allow his arrangements to be interfered
+with by so unruly a thing as the solar system. Unable to regulate
+the weather, he ignores it.</p>
+
+<p>Among trees, your German&rsquo;s favourite is the poplar. Other
+disorderly nations may sing the charms of the rugged oak, the spreading
+chestnut, or the waving elm. To the German all such, with their
+wilful, untidy ways, are eyesores. The poplar grows where it is
+planted, and how it is planted. It has no improper rugged ideas
+of its own. It does not want to wave or to spread itself.
+It just grows straight and upright as a German tree should grow; and
+so gradually the German is rooting out all other trees, and replacing
+them with poplars.</p>
+
+<p>Your German likes the country, but he prefers it as the lady thought
+she would the noble savage&mdash;more dressed. He likes his walk
+through the wood&mdash;to a restaurant. But the pathway must not
+be too steep, it must have a brick gutter running down one side of it
+to drain it, and every twenty yards or so it must have its seat on which
+he can rest and mop his brow; for your German would no more think of
+sitting on the grass than would an English bishop dream of rolling down
+One Tree Hill. He likes his view from the summit of the hill,
+but he likes to find there a stone tablet telling him what to look at,
+find a table and bench at which he can sit to partake of the frugal
+beer and &ldquo;belegte Semmel&rdquo; he has been careful to bring with
+him. If, in addition, he can find a police notice posted on a
+tree, forbidding him to do something or other, that gives him an extra
+sense of comfort and security.</p>
+
+<p>Your German is not averse even to wild scenery, provided it be not
+too wild. But if he consider it too savage, he sets to work to
+tame it. I remember, in the neighbourhood of Dresden, discovering
+a picturesque and narrow valley leading down towards the Elbe.
+The winding roadway ran beside a mountain torrent, which for a mile
+or so fretted and foamed over rocks and boulders between wood-covered
+banks. I followed it enchanted until, turning a corner, I suddenly
+came across a gang of eighty or a hundred workmen. They were busy
+tidying up that valley, and making that stream respectable. All
+the stones that were impeding the course of the water they were carefully
+picking out and carting away. The bank on either side they were
+bricking up and cementing. The overhanging trees and bushes, the
+tangled vines and creepers they were rooting up and trimming down.
+A little further I came upon the finished work&mdash;the mountain valley
+as it ought to be, according to German ideas. The water, now a
+broad, sluggish stream, flowed over a level, gravelly bed, between two
+walls crowned with stone coping. At every hundred yards it gently
+descended down three shallow wooden platforms. For a space on
+either side the ground had been cleared, and at regular intervals young
+poplars planted. Each sapling was protected by a shield of wickerwork
+and bossed by an iron rod. In the course of a couple of years
+it is the hope of the local council to have &ldquo;finished&rdquo; that
+valley throughout its entire length, and made it fit for a tidy-minded
+lover of German nature to walk in. There will be a seat every
+fifty yards, a police notice every hundred, and a restaurant every half-mile.</p>
+
+<p>They are doing the same from the Memel to the Rhine. They are
+just tidying up the country. I remember well the Wehrthal.
+It was once the most romantic ravine to be found in the Black Forest.
+The last time I walked down it some hundreds of Italian workmen were
+encamped there hard at work, training the wild little Wehr the way it
+should go, bricking the banks for it here, blasting the rocks for it
+there, making cement steps for it down which it can travel soberly and
+without fuss.</p>
+
+<p>For in Germany there is no nonsense talked about untrammelled nature.
+In Germany nature has got to behave herself, and not set a bad example
+to the children. A German poet, noticing waters coming down as
+Southey describes, somewhat inexactly, the waters coming down at Lodore,
+would be too shocked to stop and write alliterative verse about them.
+He would hurry away, and at once report them to the police. Then
+their foaming and their shrieking would be of short duration.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now then, now then, what&rsquo;s all this about?&rdquo; the
+voice of German authority would say severely to the waters. &ldquo;We
+can&rsquo;t have this sort of thing, you know. Come down quietly,
+can&rsquo;t you? Where do you think you are?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And the local German council would provide those waters with zinc
+pipes and wooden troughs, and a corkscrew staircase, and show them how
+to come down sensibly, in the German manner.</p>
+
+<p>It is a tidy land is Germany.</p>
+
+<p>We reached Dresden on the Wednesday evening, and stayed there over
+the Sunday.</p>
+
+<p>Taking one consideration with another, Dresden, perhaps, is the most
+attractive town in Germany; but it is a place to be lived in for a while
+rather than visited. Its museums and galleries, its palaces and
+gardens, its beautiful and historically rich environment, provide pleasure
+for a winter, but bewilder for a week. It has not the gaiety of
+Paris or Vienna, which quickly palls; its charms are more solidly German,
+and more lasting. It is the Mecca of the musician. For five
+shillings, in Dresden, you can purchase a stall at the opera house,
+together, unfortunately, with a strong disinclination ever again to
+take the trouble of sitting out a performance in any English, French,
+or, American opera house.</p>
+
+<p>The chief scandal of Dresden still centres round August the Strong,
+&ldquo;the Man of Sin,&rdquo; as Carlyle always called him, who is popularly
+reputed to have cursed Europe with over a thousand children. Castles
+where he imprisoned this discarded mistress or that&mdash;one of them,
+who persisted in her claim to a better title, for forty years, it is
+said, poor lady! The narrow rooms where she ate her heart out
+and died are still shown. Chateaux, shameful for this deed of
+infamy or that, lie scattered round the neighbourhood like bones about
+a battlefield; and most of your guide&rsquo;s stories are such as the
+&ldquo;young person&rdquo; educated in Germany had best not hear.
+His life-sized portrait hangs in the fine Zwinger, which he built as
+an arena for his wild beast fights when the people grew tired of them
+in the market-place; a beetle-browed, frankly animal man, but with the
+culture and taste that so often wait upon animalism. Modern Dresden
+undoubtedly owes much to him.</p>
+
+<p>But what the stranger in Dresden stares at most is, perhaps, its
+electric trams. These huge vehicles flash through the streets
+at from ten to twenty miles an hour, taking curves and corners after
+the manner of an Irish car driver. Everybody travels by them,
+excepting only officers in uniform, who must not. Ladies in evening
+dress, going to ball or opera, porters with their baskets, sit side
+by side. They are all-important in the streets, and everything
+and everybody makes haste to get out of their way. If you do not
+get out of their way, and you still happen to be alive when picked up,
+then on your recovery you are fined for having been in their way.
+This teaches you to be wary of them.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon Harris took a &ldquo;bummel&rdquo; by himself.
+In the evening, as we sat listening to the band at the Belvedere, Harris
+said, <i>&agrave; propos</i> of nothing in particular, &ldquo;These
+Germans have no sense of humour.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What makes you think that?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, this afternoon,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;I jumped on
+one of those electric tramcars. I wanted to see the town, so I
+stood outside on the little platform&mdash;what do you call it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The Stehplatz,&rdquo; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s it,&rdquo; said Harris. &ldquo;Well, you
+know the way they shake you about, and how you have to look out for
+the corners, and mind yourself when they stop and when they start?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I nodded.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There were about half a dozen of us standing there,&rdquo;
+he continued, &ldquo;and, of course, I am not experienced. The
+thing started suddenly, and that jerked me backwards. I fell against
+a stout gentleman, just behind me. He could not have been standing
+very firmly himself, and he, in his turn, fell back against a boy who
+was carrying a trumpet in a green baize case. They never smiled,
+neither the man nor the boy with the trumpet; they just stood there
+and looked sulky. I was going to say I was sorry, but before I
+could get the words out the tram eased up, for some reason or other,
+and that, of course, shot me forward again, and I butted into a white-haired
+old chap, who looked to me like a professor. Well, <i>he</i> never
+smiled, never moved a muscle.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe, he was thinking of something else,&rdquo; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That could not have been the case with them all,&rdquo; replied
+Harris, &ldquo;and in the course of that journey, I must have fallen
+against every one of them at least three times. You see,&rdquo;
+explained Harris, &ldquo;they knew when the corners were coming, and
+in which direction to brace themselves. I, as a stranger, was
+naturally at a disadvantage. The way I rolled and staggered about
+that platform, clutching wildly now at this man and now at that, must
+have been really comic. I don&rsquo;t say it was high-class humour,
+but it would have amused most people. Those Germans seemed to
+see no fun in it whatever&mdash;just seemed anxious, that was all.
+There was one man, a little man, who stood with his back against the
+brake; I fell against him five times, I counted them. You would
+have expected the fifth time would have dragged a laugh out of him,
+but it didn&rsquo;t; he merely looked tired. They are a dull lot.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George also had an adventure at Dresden. There was a shop near
+the Altmarkt, in the window of which were exhibited some cushions for
+sale. The proper business of the shop was handling of glass and
+china; the cushions appeared to be in the nature of an experiment.
+They were very beautiful cushions, hand-embroidered on satin.
+We often passed the shop, and every time George paused and examined
+those cushions. He said he thought his aunt would like one.</p>
+
+<p>George has been very attentive to this aunt of his during the journey.
+He has written her quite a long letter every day, and from every town
+we stop at he sends her off a present. To my mind, he is overdoing
+the business, and more than once I have expostulated with him.
+His aunt will be meeting other aunts, and talking to them; the whole
+class will become disorganised and unruly. As a nephew, I object
+to the impossible standard that George is setting up. But he will
+not listen.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore it was that on the Saturday he left us after lunch, saying
+he would go round to that shop and get one of those cushions for his
+aunt. He said he would not be long, and suggested our waiting
+for him.</p>
+
+<p>We waited for what seemed to me rather a long time. When he
+rejoined us he was empty handed, and looked worried. We asked
+him where his cushion was. He said he hadn&rsquo;t got a cushion,
+said he had changed his mind, said he didn&rsquo;t think his aunt would
+care for a cushion. Evidently something was amiss. We tried
+to get at the bottom of it, but he was not communicative. Indeed,
+his answers after our twentieth question or thereabouts became quite
+short.</p>
+
+<p>In the evening, however, when he and I happened to be alone, he broached
+the subject himself. He said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They are somewhat peculiar in some things, these Germans.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;What has happened?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; he answered, &ldquo;there was that cushion I
+wanted.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;For your aunt,&rdquo; I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; he returned. He was huffy in a moment;
+I never knew a man so touchy about an aunt. &ldquo;Why shouldn&rsquo;t
+I send a cushion to my aunt?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t get excited,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;I
+am not objecting; I respect you for it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He recovered his temper, and went on:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There were four in the window, if you remember, all very much
+alike, and each one labelled in plain figures twenty marks. I
+don&rsquo;t pretend to speak German fluently, but I can generally make
+myself understood with a little effort, and gather the sense of what
+is said to me, provided they don&rsquo;t gabble. I went into the
+shop. A young girl came up to me; she was a pretty, quiet little
+soul, one might almost say, demure; not at all the sort of girl from
+whom you would have expected such a thing. I was never more surprised
+in all my life.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Surprised about what?&rdquo; I said.</p>
+
+<p>George always assumes you know the end of the story while he is telling
+you the beginning; it is an annoying method.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;At what happened,&rdquo; replied George; &ldquo;at what I
+am telling you. She smiled and asked me what I wanted. I
+understood that all right; there could have been no mistake about that.
+I put down a twenty mark piece on the counter and said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Please give me a cushion.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She stared at me as if I had asked for a feather bed.
+I thought, maybe, she had not heard, so I repeated it louder.
+If I had chucked her under the chin she could not have looked more surprised
+or indignant.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She said she thought I must be making a mistake.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I did not want to begin a long conversation and find myself
+stranded. I said there was no mistake. I pointed to my twenty
+mark piece, and repeated for the third time that I wanted a cushion,
+&lsquo;a twenty mark cushion.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Another girl came up, an elder girl; and the first girl repeated
+to her what I had just said: she seemed quite excited about it.
+The second girl did not believe her&mdash;did not think I looked the
+sort of man who would want a cushion. To make sure, she put the
+question to me herself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;Did you say you wanted a cushion?&rsquo; she asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;I have said it three times,&rsquo; I answered.
+&lsquo;I will say it again&mdash;I want a cushion.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She said: &lsquo;Then you can&rsquo;t have one.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was getting angry by this time. If I hadn&rsquo;t
+really wanted the thing I should have walked out of the shop; but there
+the cushions were in the window, evidently for sale. I didn&rsquo;t
+see <i>why</i> I couldn&rsquo;t have one.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I said: &lsquo;I will have one!&rsquo; It is a simple
+sentence. I said it with determination.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A third girl came up at this point, the three representing,
+I fancy, the whole force of the shop. She was a bright-eyed, saucy-looking
+little wench, this last one. On any other occasion I might have
+been pleased to see her; now, her coming only irritated me. I
+didn&rsquo;t see the need of three girls for this business.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The first two girls started explaining the thing to the third
+girl, and before they were half-way through the third girl began to
+giggle&mdash;she was the sort of girl who would giggle at anything.
+That done, they fell to chattering like Jenny Wrens, all three together;
+and between every half-dozen words they looked across at me; and the
+more they looked at me the more the third girl giggled; and before they
+had finished they were all three giggling, the little idiots; you might
+have thought I was a clown, giving a private performance.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;When she was steady enough to move, the third girl came up
+to me; she was still giggling. She said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;If you get it, will you go?&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I did not quite understand her at first, and she repeated
+it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;This cushion. When you&rsquo;ve got it, will
+you go&mdash;away&mdash;at once?&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I was only too anxious to go. I told her so. But,
+I added I was not going without it. I had made up my mind to have
+that cushion now if I stopped in the shop all night for it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;She rejoined the other two girls. I thought they were
+going to get me the cushion and have done with the business. Instead
+of that, the strangest thing possible happened. The two other
+girls got behind the first girl, all three still giggling, Heaven knows
+what about, and pushed her towards me. They pushed her close up
+to me, and then, before I knew what was happening, she put her hands
+on my shoulders, stood up on tiptoe, and kissed me. After which,
+burying her face in her apron, she ran off, followed by the second girl.
+The third girl opened the door for me, and so evidently expected me
+to go, that in my confusion I went, leaving my twenty marks behind me.
+I don&rsquo;t say I minded the kiss, though I did not particularly want
+it, while I did want the cushion. I don&rsquo;t like to go back
+to the shop. I cannot understand the thing at all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;What did you ask for?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;A cushion&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;That is what you wanted, I know. What I mean
+is, what was the actual German word you said.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He replied: &ldquo;A kuss.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;You have nothing to complain of. It is somewhat
+confusing. A &lsquo;kuss&rsquo; sounds as if it ought to be a
+cushion, but it is not; it is a kiss, while a &lsquo;kissen&rsquo; is
+a cushion. You muddled up the two words&mdash;people have done
+it before. I don&rsquo;t know much about this sort of thing myself;
+but you asked for a twenty mark kiss, and from your description of the
+girl some people might consider the price reasonable. Anyhow,
+I should not tell Harris. If I remember rightly, he also has an
+aunt.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George agreed with me it would be better not.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Mr. and Miss Jones, of Manchester&mdash;The benefits of cocoa&mdash;A
+hint to the Peace Society&mdash;The window as a mediaeval argument&mdash;The
+favourite Christian recreation&mdash;The language of the guide&mdash;How
+to repair the ravages of time&mdash;George tries a bottle&mdash;The
+fate of the German beer drinker&mdash;Harris and I resolve to do a good
+action&mdash;The usual sort of statue&mdash;Harris and his friends&mdash;A
+pepperless Paradise&mdash;Women and towns.</p>
+
+<p>We were on our way to Prague, and were waiting in the great hall
+of the Dresden Station until such time as the powers-that-be should
+permit us on to the platform. George, who had wandered to the
+bookstall, returned to us with a wild look in his eyes. He said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve seen it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said, &ldquo;Seen what?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He was too excited to answer intelligently. He said</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s here. It&rsquo;s coming this way, both of
+them. If you wait, you&rsquo;ll see it for yourselves. I&rsquo;m
+not joking; it&rsquo;s the real thing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As is usual about this period, some paragraphs, more or less serious,
+had been appearing in the papers concerning the sea-serpent, and I thought
+for the moment he must be referring to this. A moment&rsquo;s
+reflection, however, told me that here, in the middle of Europe, three
+hundred miles from the coast, such a thing was impossible. Before
+I could question him further, he seized me by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Look!&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;now am I exaggerating?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I turned my head and saw what, I suppose, few living Englishmen have
+ever seen before&mdash;the travelling Britisher according to the Continental
+idea, accompanied by his daughter. They were coming towards us
+in the flesh and blood, unless we were dreaming, alive and concrete&mdash;the
+English &ldquo;Milor&rdquo; and the English &ldquo;Mees,&rdquo; as for
+generations they have been portrayed in the Continental comic press
+and upon the Continental stage. They were perfect in every detail.
+The man was tall and thin, with sandy hair, a huge nose, and long Dundreary
+whiskers. Over a pepper-and-salt suit he wore a light overcoat,
+reaching almost to his heels. His white helmet was ornamented
+with a green veil; a pair of opera-glasses hung at his side, and in
+his lavender-gloved hand he carried an alpenstock a little taller than
+himself. His daughter was long and angular. Her dress I
+cannot describe: my grandfather, poor gentleman, might have been able
+to do so; it would have been more familiar to him. I can only
+say that it appeared to me unnecessarily short, exhibiting a pair of
+ankles&mdash;if I may be permitted to refer to such points&mdash;that,
+from an artistic point of view, called rather for concealment.
+Her hat made me think of Mrs. Hemans; but why I cannot explain.
+She wore side-spring boots&mdash;&ldquo;prunella,&rdquo; I believe,
+used to be the trade name&mdash;mittens, and pince-nez. She also
+carried an alpenstock (there is not a mountain within a hundred miles
+of Dresden) and a black bag strapped to her waist. Her teeth stuck
+out like a rabbit&rsquo;s, and her figure was that of a bolster on stilts.</p>
+
+<p>Harris rushed for his camera, and of course could not find it; he
+never can when he wants it. Whenever we see Harris scuttling up
+and down like a lost dog, shouting, &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s my camera?
+What the dickens have I done with my camera? Don&rsquo;t either
+of you remember where I put my camera?&rdquo;&mdash;then we know that
+for the first time that day he has come across something worth photographing.
+Later on, he remembered it was in his bag; that is where it would be
+on an occasion like this.</p>
+
+<p>They were not content with appearance; they acted the thing to the
+letter. They walked gaping round them at every step. The
+gentleman had an open Baedeker in his hand, and the lady carried a phrase
+book. They talked French that nobody could understand, and German
+that they could not translate themselves! The man poked at officials
+with his alpenstock to attract their attention, and the lady, her eye
+catching sight of an advertisement of somebody&rsquo;s cocoa, said &ldquo;Shocking!&rdquo;
+and turned the other way.</p>
+
+<p>Really, there was some excuse for her. One notices, even in
+England, the home of the proprieties, that the lady who drinks cocoa
+appears, according to the poster, to require very little else in this
+world; a yard or so of art muslin at the most. On the Continent
+she dispenses, so far as one can judge, with every other necessity of
+life. Not only is cocoa food and drink to her, it should be clothes
+also, according to the idea of the cocoa manufacturer. But this
+by the way.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, they immediately became the centre of attraction.
+By being able to render them some slight assistance, I gained the advantage
+of five minutes&rsquo; conversation with them. They were very
+affable. The gentleman told me his name was Jones, and that he
+came from Manchester, but he did not seem to know what part of Manchester,
+or where Manchester was. I asked him where he was going to, but
+he evidently did not know. He said it depended. I asked
+him if he did not find an alpenstock a clumsy thing to walk about with
+through a crowded town; he admitted that occasionally it did get in
+the way. I asked him if he did not find a veil interfere with
+his view of things; he explained that you only wore it when the flies
+became troublesome. I enquired of the lady if she did not find
+the wind blow cold; she said she had noticed it, especially at the corners.
+I did not ask these questions one after another as I have here put them
+down; I mixed them up with general conversation, and we parted on good
+terms.</p>
+
+<p>I have pondered much upon the apparition, and have come to a definite
+opinion. A man I met later at Frankfort, and to whom I described
+the pair, said he had seen them himself in Paris, three weeks after
+the termination of the Fashoda incident; while a traveller for some
+English steel works whom we met in Strassburg remembered having seen
+them in Berlin during the excitement caused by the Transvaal question.
+My conclusion is that they were actors out of work, hired to do this
+thing in the interest of international peace. The French Foreign
+Office, wishful to allay the anger of the Parisian mob clamouring for
+war with England, secured this admirable couple and sent them round
+the town. You cannot be amused at a thing, and at the same time
+want to kill it. The French nation saw the English citizen and
+citizeness&mdash;no caricature, but the living reality&mdash;and their
+indignation exploded in laughter. The success of the stratagem
+prompted them later on to offer their services to the German Government,
+with the beneficial results that we all know.</p>
+
+<p>Our own Government might learn the lesson. It might be as well
+to keep near Downing Street a few small, fat Frenchmen, to be sent round
+the country when occasion called for it, shrugging their shoulders and
+eating frog sandwiches; or a file of untidy, lank-haired Germans might
+be retained, to walk about, smoking long pipes, saying &ldquo;So.&rdquo;
+The public would laugh and exclaim, &ldquo;War with such? It would
+be too absurd.&rdquo; Failing the Government, I recommend the
+scheme to the Peace Society.</p>
+
+<p>Our visit to Prague we were compelled to lengthen somewhat.
+Prague is one of the most interesting towns in Europe. Its stones
+are saturated with history and romance; its every suburb must have been
+a battlefield. It is the town that conceived the Reformation and
+hatched the Thirty Years&rsquo; War. But half Prague&rsquo;s troubles,
+one imagines, might have been saved to it, had it possessed windows
+less large and temptingly convenient. The first of these mighty
+catastrophes it set rolling by throwing the seven Catholic councillors
+from the windows of its Rathhaus on to the pikes of the Hussites below.
+Later, it gave the signal for the second by again throwing the Imperial
+councillors from the windows of the old Burg in the Hradschin&mdash;Prague&rsquo;s
+second &ldquo;Fenstersturz.&rdquo; Since, other fateful questions
+have been decide in Prague, one assumes from their having been concluded
+without violence that such must have been discussed in cellars.
+The window, as an argument, one feels, would always have proved too
+strong a temptation to any true-born Praguer.</p>
+
+<p>In the Teynkirche stands the worm-eaten pulpit from which preached
+John Huss. One may hear from the selfsame desk to-day the voice
+of a Papist priest, while in far-off Constance a rude block of stone,
+half ivy hidden, marks the spot where Huss and Jerome died burning at
+the stake. History is fond of her little ironies. In this
+same Teynkirche lies buried Tycho Brahe, the astronomer, who made the
+common mistake of thinking the earth, with its eleven hundred creeds
+and one humanity, the centre of the universe; but who otherwise observed
+the stars clearly.</p>
+
+<p>Through Prague&rsquo;s dirty, palace-bordered alleys must have pressed
+often in hot haste blind Ziska and open-minded Wallenstein&mdash;they
+have dubbed him &ldquo;The Hero&rdquo; in Prague; and the town is honestly
+proud of having owned him for citizen. In his gloomy palace in
+the Waldstein-Platz they show as a sacred spot the cabinet where he
+prayed, and seem to have persuaded themselves he really had a soul.
+Its steep, winding ways must have been choked a dozen times, now by
+Sigismund&rsquo;s flying legions, followed by fierce-killing Tarborites,
+and now by pale Protestants pursued by the victorious Catholics of Maximilian.
+Now Saxons, now Bavarians, and now French; now the saints of Gustavus
+Adolphus, and now the steel fighting machines of Frederick the Great,
+have thundered at its gates and fought upon its bridges.</p>
+
+<p>The Jews have always been an important feature of Prague. Occasionally
+they have assisted the Christians in their favourite occupation of slaughtering
+one another, and the great flag suspended from the vaulting of the Altneuschule
+testifies to the courage with which they helped Catholic Ferdinand to
+resist the Protestant Swedes. The Prague Ghetto was one of the
+first to be established in Europe, and in the tiny synagogue, still
+standing, the Jew of Prague has worshipped for eight hundred years,
+his women folk devoutly listening, without, at the ear holes provided
+for them in the massive walls. A Jewish cemetery adjacent, &ldquo;Bethchajim,
+or the House of Life,&rdquo; seems as though it were bursting with its
+dead. Within its narrow acre it was the law of centuries that
+here or nowhere must the bones of Israel rest. So the worn and
+broken tombstones lie piled in close confusion, as though tossed and
+tumbled by the struggling host beneath.</p>
+
+<p>The Ghetto walls have long been levelled, but the living Jews of
+Prague still cling to their foetid lanes, though these are being rapidly
+replaced by fine new streets that promise to eventually transform this
+quarter into the handsomest part of the town.</p>
+
+<p>At Dresden they advised us not to talk German in Prague. For
+years racial animosity between the German minority and the Czech majority
+has raged throughout Bohemia, and to be mistaken for a German in certain
+streets of Prague is inconvenient to a man whose staying powers in a
+race are not what once they were. However, we did talk German
+in certain streets in Prague; it was a case of talking German or nothing.
+The Czech dialect is said to be of great antiquity and of highly scientific
+cultivation. Its alphabet contains forty-two letters, suggestive
+to a stranger of Chinese. It is not a language to be picked up
+in a hurry. We decided that on the whole there would be less risk
+to our constitution in keeping to German, and as a matter of fact no
+harm came to us. The explanation I can only surmise. The
+Praguer is an exceedingly acute person; some subtle falsity of accent,
+some slight grammatical inaccuracy, may have crept into our German,
+revealing to him the fact that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary,
+we were no true-born Deutscher. I do not assert this; I put it
+forward as a possibility.</p>
+
+<p>To avoid unnecessary danger, however, we did our sight-seeing with
+the aid of a guide. No guide I have ever come across is perfect.
+This one had two distinct failings. His English was decidedly
+weak. Indeed, it was not English at all. I do not know what
+you would call it. It was not altogether his fault; he had learnt
+English from a Scotch lady. I understand Scotch fairly well&mdash;to
+keep abreast of modern English literature this is necessary,&mdash;but
+to understand broad Scotch talked with a Sclavonic accent, occasionally
+relieved by German modifications, taxes the intelligence. For
+the first hour it was difficult to rid one&rsquo;s self of the conviction
+that the man was choking. Every moment we expected him to die
+on our hands. In the course of the morning we grew accustomed
+to him, and rid ourselves of the instinct to throw him on his back every
+time he opened his mouth, and tear his clothes from him. Later,
+we came to understand a part of what he said, and this led to the discovery
+of his second failing.</p>
+
+<p>It would seem he had lately invented a hair-restorer, which he had
+persuaded a local chemist to take up and advertise. Half his time
+he had been pointing out to us, not the beauties of Prague, but the
+benefits likely to accrue to the human race from the use of this concoction;
+and the conventional agreement with which, under the impression he was
+waxing eloquent concerning views and architecture, we had met his enthusiasm
+he had attributed to sympathetic interest in this wretched wash of his.</p>
+
+<p>The result was that now there was no keeping him away from the subject.
+Ruined palaces and crumbling churches he dismissed with curt reference
+as mere frivolities, encouraging a morbid taste for the decadent.
+His duty, as he saw it, was not to lead us to dwell upon the ravages
+of time, but rather to direct our attention to the means of repairing
+them. What had we to do with broken-headed heroes, or bald-headed
+saints? Our interest should be surely in the living world; in
+the maidens with their flowing tresses, or the flowing tresses they
+might have, by judicious use of &ldquo;Kophkeo,&rdquo; in the young
+men with their fierce moustaches&mdash;as pictured on the label.</p>
+
+<p>Unconsciously, in his own mind, he had divided the world into two
+sections. The Past (&ldquo;Before Use&rdquo;), a sickly, disagreeable-looking,
+uninteresting world. The Future (&ldquo;After Use&rdquo;) a fat,
+jolly, God-bless-everybody sort of world; and this unfitted him as a
+guide to scenes of mediaeval history.</p>
+
+<p>He sent us each a bottle of the stuff to our hotel. It appeared
+that in the early part of our converse with him we had, unwittingly,
+clamoured for it. Personally, I can neither praise it nor condemn
+it. A long series of disappointments has disheartened me; added
+to which a permanent atmosphere of paraffin, however faint, is apt to
+cause remark, especially in the case of a married man. Now, I
+never try even the sample.</p>
+
+<p>I gave my bottle to George. He asked for it to send to a man
+he knew in Leeds. I learnt later that Harris had given him his
+bottle also, to send to the same man.</p>
+
+<p>A suggestion of onions has clung to this tour since we left Prague.
+George has noticed it himself. He attributes it to the prevalence
+of garlic in European cooking.</p>
+
+<p>It was in Prague that Harris and I did a kind and friendly thing
+to George. We had noticed for some time past that George was getting
+too fond of Pilsener beer. This German beer is an insidious drink,
+especially in hot weather; but it does not do to imbibe too freely of
+it. It does not get into your head, but after a time it spoils
+your waist. I always say to myself on entering Germany:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, I will drink no German beer. The white wine of
+the country, with a little soda-water; perhaps occasionally a glass
+of Ems or potash. But beer, never&mdash;or, at all events, hardly
+ever.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It is a good and useful resolution, which I recommend to all travellers.
+I only wish I could keep to it myself. George, although I urged
+him, refused to bind himself by any such hard and fast limit.
+He said that in moderation German beer was good.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One glass in the morning,&rdquo; said George, &ldquo;one in
+the evening, or even two. That will do no harm to anyone.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Maybe he was right. It was his half-dozen glasses that troubled
+Harris and myself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We ought to do something to stop it,&rdquo; said Harris; &ldquo;it
+is becoming serious.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s hereditary, so he has explained to me,&rdquo; I
+answered. &ldquo;It seems his family have always been thirsty.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There is Apollinaris water,&rdquo; replied Harris, &ldquo;which,
+I believe, with a little lemon squeezed into it, is practically harmless.
+What I am thinking about is his figure. He will lose all his natural
+elegance.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We talked the matter over, and, Providence aiding us, we fixed upon
+a plan. For the ornamentation of the town a new statue had just
+been cast. I forget of whom it was a statue. I only remember
+that in the essentials it was the usual sort of street statue, representing
+the usual sort of gentleman, with the usual stiff neck, riding the usual
+sort of horse&mdash;the horse that always walks on its hind legs, keeping
+its front paws for beating time. But in detail it possessed individuality.
+Instead of the usual sword or baton, the man was holding, stretched
+out in his hand, his own plumed hat; and the horse, instead of the usual
+waterfall for a tail, possessed a somewhat attenuated appendage that
+somehow appeared out of keeping with his ostentatious behaviour.
+One felt that a horse with a tail like that would not have pranced so
+much.</p>
+
+<p>It stood in a small square not far from the further end of the Karlsbr&uuml;cke,
+but it stood there only temporarily. Before deciding finally where
+to fix it, the town authorities had resolved, very sensibly, to judge
+by practical test where it would look best. Accordingly, they
+had made three rough copies of the statue&mdash;mere wooden profiles,
+things that would not bear looking at closely, but which, viewed from
+a little distance, produced all the effect that was necessary.
+One of these they had set up at the approach to the Franz-Josefsbr&uuml;cke,
+a second stood in the open space behind the theatre, and the third in
+the centre of the Wenzelsplatz.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If George is not in the secret of this thing,&rdquo; said
+Harris&mdash;we were walking by ourselves for an hour, he having remained
+behind in the hotel to write a letter to his aunt,&mdash;&ldquo;if he
+has not observed these statues, then by their aid we will make a better
+and a thinner man of him, and that this very evening.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So during dinner we sounded him, judiciously; and finding him ignorant
+of the matter, we took him out, and led him by side-streets to the place
+where stood the real statue. George was for looking at it and
+passing on, as is his way with statues, but we insisted on his pulling
+up and viewing the thing conscientiously. We walked him round
+that statue four times, and showed it to him from every possible point
+of view. I think, on the whole, we rather bored him with the thing,
+but our object was to impress it upon him. We told him the history
+of the man who rode upon the horse, the name of the artist who had made
+the statue, how much it weighed, how much it measured. We worked
+that statue into his system. By the time we had done with him
+he knew more about that statue, for the time being, than he knew about
+anything else. We soaked him in that statue, and only let him
+go at last on the condition that he would come again with us in the
+morning, when we could all see it better, and for such purpose we saw
+to it that he made a note in his pocket-book of the place where the
+statue stood.</p>
+
+<p>Then we accompanied him to his favourite beer hall, and sat beside
+him, telling him anecdotes of men who, unaccustomed to German beer,
+and drinking too much of it, had gone mad and developed homicidal mania;
+of men who had died young through drinking German beer; of lovers that
+German beer had been the means of parting for ever from beautiful girls.</p>
+
+<p>At ten o&rsquo;clock we started to walk back to the hotel.
+It was a stormy-looking night, with heavy clouds drifting over a light
+moon. Harris said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We won&rsquo;t go back the same way we came; we&rsquo;ll walk
+back by the river. It is lovely in the moonlight.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Harris told a sad history, as we walked, about a man he once knew,
+who is now in a home for harmless imbeciles. He said he recalled
+the story because it was on just such another night as this that he
+was walking with that man the very last time he ever saw the poor fellow.
+They were strolling down the Thames Embankment, Harris said, and the
+man frightened him then by persisting that he saw the statue of the
+Duke of Wellington at the corner of Westminster Bridge, when, as everybody
+knows, it stands in Piccadilly.</p>
+
+<p>It was at this exact instant that we came in sight of the first of
+these wooden copies. It occupied the centre of a small, railed-in
+square a little above us on the opposite side of the way. George
+suddenly stood still and leant against the wall of the quay.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; I said; &ldquo;feeling giddy?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said: &ldquo;I do, a little. Let&rsquo;s rest here a moment.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He stood there with his eyes glued to the thing.</p>
+
+<p>He said, speaking huskily:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Talking of statues, what always strikes me is how very much
+one statue is like another statue.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Harris said: &ldquo;I cannot agree with you there&mdash;pictures,
+if you like. Some pictures are very like other pictures, but with
+a statue there is always something distinctive. Take that statue
+we saw early in the evening,&rdquo; continued Harris, &ldquo;before
+we went into the concert hall. It represented a man sitting on
+a horse. In Prague you will see other statues of men on horses,
+but nothing at all like that one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes they are,&rdquo; said George; &ldquo;they are all alike.
+It&rsquo;s always the same horse, and it&rsquo;s always the same man.
+They are all exactly alike. It&rsquo;s idiotic nonsense to say
+they are not.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He appeared to be angry with Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What makes you think so?&rdquo; I asked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What makes me think so?&rdquo; retorted George, now turning
+upon me. &ldquo;Why, look at that damned thing over there!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;What damned thing?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, that thing,&rdquo; said George; &ldquo;look at it!
+There is the same horse with half a tail, standing on its hind legs;
+the same man without his hat; the same&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Harris said: &ldquo;You are talking now about the statue we saw in
+the Ringplatz.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, I&rsquo;m not,&rdquo; replied George; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m
+talking about the statue over there.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What statue?&rdquo; said Harris.</p>
+
+<p>George looked at Harris; but Harris is a man who might, with care,
+have been a fair amateur actor. His face merely expressed friendly
+sorrow, mingled with alarm. Next, George turned his gaze on me.
+I endeavoured, so far as lay with me, to copy Harris&rsquo;s expression,
+adding to it on my own account a touch of reproof.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Will you have a cab?&rdquo; I said as kindly as I could to
+George. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ll run and get one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What the devil do I want with a cab?&rdquo; he answered, ungraciously.
+&ldquo;Can&rsquo;t you fellows understand a joke? It&rsquo;s like
+being out with a couple of confounded old women,&rdquo; saying which,
+he started off across the bridge, leaving us to follow.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am so glad that was only a joke of yours,&rdquo; said Harris,
+on our overtaking him. &ldquo;I knew a case of softening of the
+brain that began&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you&rsquo;re a silly ass!&rdquo; said George, cutting
+him short; &ldquo;you know everything.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He was really most unpleasant in his manner.</p>
+
+<p>We took him round by the riverside of the theatre. We told
+him it was the shortest way, and, as a matter of fact, it was.
+In the open space behind the theatre stood the second of these wooden
+apparitions. George looked at it, and again stood still.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s the matter?&rdquo; said Harris, kindly.
+&ldquo;You are not ill, are you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe this is the shortest way,&rdquo; said
+George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I assure you it is,&rdquo; persisted Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I&rsquo;m going the other,&rdquo; said George; and he
+turned and went, we, as before, following him.</p>
+
+<p>Along the Ferdinand Strasse Harris and I talked about private lunatic
+asylums, which, Harris said, were not well managed in England.
+He said a friend of his, a patient in a lunatic asylum&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>George said, interrupting: &ldquo;You appear to have a large number
+of friends in lunatic asylums.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said it in a most insulting tone, as though to imply that that
+is where one would look for the majority of Harris&rsquo;s friends.
+But Harris did not get angry; he merely replied, quite mildly:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, it really is extraordinary, when one comes to think
+of it, how many of them have gone that way sooner or later. I
+get quite nervous sometimes, now.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At the corner of the Wenzelsplatz, Harris, who was a few steps ahead
+of us, paused.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s a fine street, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; he said,
+sticking his hands in his pockets, and gazing up at it admiringly.</p>
+
+<p>George and I followed suit. Two hundred yards away from us,
+in its very centre, was the third of these ghostly statues. I
+think it was the best of the three&mdash;the most like, the most deceptive.
+It stood boldly outlined against the wild sky: the horse on its hind
+legs, with its curiously attenuated tail; the man bareheaded, pointing
+with his plumed hat to the now entirely visible moon.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think, if you don&rsquo;t mind,&rdquo; said George&mdash;he
+spoke with almost a pathetic ring in his voice, his aggressiveness had
+completely fallen from him,&mdash;&ldquo;that I will have that cab,
+if there&rsquo;s one handy.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought you were looking queer,&rdquo; said Harris, kindly.
+&ldquo;It&rsquo;s your head, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Perhaps it is,&rdquo; answered George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have noticed it coming on,&rdquo; said Harris; &ldquo;but
+I didn&rsquo;t like to say anything to you. You fancy you see
+things, don&rsquo;t you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no; it isn&rsquo;t that,&rdquo; replied George, rather
+quickly. &ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know what it is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do,&rdquo; said Harris, solemnly, &ldquo;and I&rsquo;ll
+tell you. It&rsquo;s this German beer that you are drinking.
+I have known a case where a man&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t tell me about him just now,&rdquo; said George.
+&ldquo;I dare say it&rsquo;s true, but somehow I don&rsquo;t feel I
+want to hear about him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are not used to it,&rdquo; said Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I shall give it up from to-night,&rdquo; said George.
+&ldquo;I think you must be right; it doesn&rsquo;t seem to agree with
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We took him home, and saw him to bed. He was very gentle and
+quite grateful.</p>
+
+<p>One evening later on, after a long day&rsquo;s ride, followed by
+a most satisfactory dinner, we started him on a big cigar, and, removing
+things from his reach, told him of this stratagem that for his good
+we had planned.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How many copies of that statue did you say we saw?&rdquo;
+asked George, after we had finished.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Three,&rdquo; replied Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Only three?&rdquo; said George. &ldquo;Are you sure?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Positive,&rdquo; replied Harris. &ldquo;Why?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, nothing!&rdquo; answered George.</p>
+
+<p>But I don&rsquo;t think he quite believed Harris.</p>
+
+<p>From Prague we travelled to Nuremberg, through Carlsbad. Good
+Germans, when they die, go, they say, to Carlsbad, as good Americans
+to Paris. This I doubt, seeing that it is a small place with no
+convenience for a crowd. In Carlsbad, you rise at five, the fashionable
+hour for promenade, when the band plays under the Colonnade, and the
+Sprudel is filled with a packed throng over a mile long, being from
+six to eight in the morning. Here you may hear more languages
+spoken than the Tower of Babel could have echoed. Polish Jews
+and Russian princes, Chinese mandarins and Turkish pashas, Norwegians
+looking as if they had stepped out of Ibsen&rsquo;s plays, women from
+the Boulevards, Spanish grandees and English countesses, mountaineers
+from Montenegro and millionaires from Chicago, you will find every dozen
+yards. Every luxury in the world Carlsbad provides for its visitors,
+with the one exception of pepper. That you cannot get within five
+miles of the town for money; what you can get there for love is not
+worth taking away. Pepper, to the liver brigade that forms four-fifths
+of Carlsbad&rsquo;s customers, is poison; and, prevention being better
+than cure, it is carefully kept out of the neighbourhood. &ldquo;Pepper
+parties&rdquo; are formed in Carlsbad to journey to some place without
+the boundary, and there indulge in pepper orgies.</p>
+
+<p>Nuremberg, if one expects a town of mediaeval appearance, disappoints.
+Quaint corners, picturesque glimpses, there are in plenty; but everywhere
+they are surrounded and intruded upon by the modern, and even what is
+ancient is not nearly so ancient as one thought it was. After
+all, a town, like a woman, is only as old as it looks; and Nuremberg
+is still a comfortable-looking dame, its age somewhat difficult to conceive
+under its fresh paint and stucco in the blaze of the gas and the electric
+light. Still, looking closely, you may see its wrinkled walls
+and grey towers.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Harris breaks the law&mdash;The helpful man: The dangers that beset
+him&mdash;George sets forth upon a career of crime&mdash;Those to whom
+Germany would come as a boon and a blessing&mdash;The English Sinner:
+His disappointments&mdash;The German Sinner: His exceptional advantages&mdash;What
+you may not do with your bed&mdash;An inexpensive vice&mdash;The German
+dog: His simple goodness&mdash;The misbehaviour of the beetle&mdash;A
+people that go the way they ought to go&mdash;The German small boy:
+His love of legality&mdash;How to go astray with a perambulator&mdash;The
+German student: His chastened wilfulness.</p>
+
+<p>All three of us, by some means or another, managed, between Nuremberg
+and the Black Forest, to get into trouble.</p>
+
+<p>Harris led off at Stuttgart by insulting an official. Stuttgart
+is a charming town, clean and bright, a smaller Dresden. It has
+the additional attraction of containing little that one need to go out
+of one&rsquo;s way to see: a medium-sized picture gallery, a small museum
+of antiquities, and half a palace, and you are through with the entire
+thing and can enjoy yourself. Harris did not know it was an official
+he was insulting. He took it for a fireman (it looked like a
+fireman), and he called it a &ldquo;dummer Esel.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In German you are not permitted to call an official a &ldquo;silly
+ass,&rdquo; but undoubtedly this particular man was one. What
+had happened was this: Harris in the Stadgarten, anxious to get out,
+and seeing a gate open before him, had stepped over a wire into the
+street. Harris maintains he never saw it, but undoubtedly there
+was hanging to the wire a notice, &ldquo;Durchgang Verboten!&rdquo;
+The man, who was standing near the gates stopped Harris, and pointed
+out to him this notice. Harris thanked him, and passed on.
+The man came after him, and explained that treatment of the matter in
+such off-hand way could not be allowed; what was necessary to put the
+business right was that Harris should step back over the wire into the
+garden. Harris pointed out to the man that the notice said &ldquo;going
+through forbidden,&rdquo; and that, therefore, by re-entering the garden
+that way he would be infringing the law a second time. The man
+saw this for himself, and suggested that to get over the difficulty
+Harris should go back into the garden by the proper entrance, which
+was round the corner, and afterwards immediately come out again by the
+same gate. Then it was that Harris called the man a silly ass.
+That delayed us a day, and cost Harris forty marks.</p>
+
+<p>I followed suit at Carlsruhe, by stealing a bicycle. I did
+not mean to steal the bicycle; I was merely trying to be useful.
+The train was on the point of starting when I noticed, as I thought,
+Harris&rsquo;s bicycle still in the goods van. No one was about
+to help me. I jumped into the van and hauled it out, only just
+in time. Wheeling it down the platform in triumph, I came across
+Harris&rsquo;s bicycle, standing against a wall behind some milk-cans.
+The bicycle I had secured was not Harris&rsquo;s, but some other man&rsquo;s.</p>
+
+<p>It was an awkward situation. In England, I should have gone
+to the stationmaster and explained my mistake. But in Germany
+they are not content with your explaining a little matter of this sort
+to one man: they take you round and get you to explain it to about half
+a dozen; and if any one of the half dozen happens not to be handy, or
+not to have time just then to listen to you, they have a habit of leaving
+you over for the night to finish your explanation the next morning.
+I thought I would just put the thing out of sight, and then, without
+making any fuss or show, take a short walk. I found a wood shed,
+which seemed just the very place, and was wheeling the bicycle into
+it when, unfortunately, a red-hatted railway official, with the airs
+of a retired field-marshal, caught sight of me and came up. He
+said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What are you doing with that bicycle?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;I am going to put it in this wood shed out of the
+way.&rdquo; I tried to convey by my tone that I was performing
+a kind and thoughtful action, for which the railway officials ought
+to thank me; but he was unresponsive.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is it your bicycle?&rdquo; he said.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, not exactly,&rdquo; I replied.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Whose is it?&rdquo; he asked, quite sharply.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t tell you,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;I
+don&rsquo;t know whose bicycle it is.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Where did you get it from?&rdquo; was his next question.
+There was a suspiciousness about his tone that was almost insulting.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I got it,&rdquo; I answered, with as much calm dignity as
+at the moment I could assume, &ldquo;out of the train.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The fact is,&rdquo; I continued, frankly, &ldquo;I have made
+a mistake.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He did not allow me time to finish. He merely said he thought
+so too, and blew a whistle.</p>
+
+<p>Recollection of the subsequent proceedings is not, so far as I am
+concerned, amusing. By a miracle of good luck&mdash;they say Providence
+watches over certain of us&mdash;the incident happened in Carlsruhe,
+where I possess a German friend, an official of some importance.
+Upon what would have been my fate had the station not been at Carlsruhe,
+or had my friend been from home, I do not care to dwell; as it was I
+got off, as the saying is, by the skin of my teeth. I should like
+to add that I left Carlsruhe without a stain upon my character, but
+that would not be the truth. My going scot free is regarded in
+police circles there to this day as a grave miscarriage of justice.</p>
+
+<p>But all lesser sin sinks into insignificance beside the lawlessness
+of George. The bicycle incident had thrown us all into confusion,
+with the result that we lost George altogether. It transpired
+subsequently that he was waiting for us outside the police court; but
+this at the time we did not know. We thought, maybe, he had gone
+on to Baden by himself; and anxious to get away from Carlsruhe, and
+not, perhaps, thinking out things too clearly, we jumped into the next
+train that came up and proceeded thither. When George, tired of
+waiting, returned to the station, he found us gone and he found his
+luggage gone. Harris had his ticket; I was acting as banker to
+the party, so that he had in his pocket only some small change.
+Excusing himself upon these grounds, he thereupon commenced deliberately
+a career of crime that, reading it later, as set forth baldly in the
+official summons, made the hair of Harris and myself almost to stand
+on end.</p>
+
+<p>German travelling, it may be explained, is somewhat complicated.
+You buy a ticket at the station you start from for the place you want
+to go to. You might think this would enable you to get there,
+but it does not. When your train comes up, you attempt to swarm
+into it; but the guard magnificently waves you away. Where are
+your credentials? You show him your ticket. He explains
+to you that by itself that is of no service whatever; you have only
+taken the first step towards travelling; you must go back to the booking-office
+and get in addition what is called a &ldquo;schnellzug ticket.&rdquo;
+With this you return, thinking your troubles over. You are allowed
+to get in, so far so good. But you must not sit down anywhere,
+and you must not stand still, and you must not wander about. You
+must take another ticket, this time what is called a &ldquo;platz ticket,&rdquo;
+which entitles you to a place for a certain distance.</p>
+
+<p>What a man could do who persisted in taking nothing but the one ticket,
+I have often wondered. Would he be entitled to run behind the
+train on the six-foot way? Or could he stick a label on himself
+and get into the goods van? Again, what could be done with the
+man who, having taken his schnellzug ticket, obstinately refused, or
+had not the money to take a platz ticket: would they let him lie in
+the umbrella rack, or allow him to hang himself out of the window?</p>
+
+<p>To return to George, he had just sufficient money to take a third-class
+slow train ticket to Baden, and that was all. To avoid the inquisitiveness
+of the guard, he waited till the train was moving, and then jumped in.</p>
+
+<p>That was his first sin:</p>
+
+<p>(a) Entering a train in motion;</p>
+
+<p>(b) After being warned not to do so by an official.</p>
+
+<p>Second sin:</p>
+
+<p>(a) Travelling in train of superior class to that for which
+ticket was held.</p>
+
+<p>(b) Refusing to pay difference when demanded by an official.
+(George says he did not &ldquo;refuse&rdquo;; he simply told the man
+he had not got it.)</p>
+
+<p>Third sin:</p>
+
+<p>(a) Travelling in carriage of superior class to that for which
+ticket was held.</p>
+
+<p>(b) Refusing to pay difference when demanded by an official.
+(Again George disputes the accuracy of the report. He turned his
+pockets out, and offered the man all he had, which was about eightpence
+in German money. He offered to go into a third class, but there
+was no third class. He offered to go into the goods van, but they
+would not hear of it.)</p>
+
+<p>Fourth sin:</p>
+
+<p>(a) Occupying seat, and not paying for same.</p>
+
+<p>(b) Loitering about corridor. (As they would not let
+him sit down without paying, and as he could not pay, it was difficult
+to see what else he could do.)</p>
+
+<p>But explanations are held as no excuse in Germany; and his journey
+from Carlsruhe to Baden was one of the most expensive perhaps on record.</p>
+
+<p>Reflecting upon the case and frequency with which one gets into trouble
+here in Germany, one is led to the conclusion that this country would
+come as a boon and a blessing to the average young Englishman.
+To the medical student, to the eater of dinners at the Temple, to the
+subaltern on leave, life in London is a wearisome proceeding.
+The healthy Briton takes his pleasure lawlessly, or it is no pleasure
+to him. Nothing that he may do affords to him any genuine satisfaction.
+To be in trouble of some sort is his only idea of bliss. Now,
+England affords him small opportunity in this respect; to get himself
+into a scrape requires a good deal of persistence on the part of the
+young Englishman.</p>
+
+<p>I spoke on this subject one day with our senior churchwarden.
+It was the morning of the 10th of November, and we were both of us glancing,
+somewhat anxiously, through the police reports. The usual batch
+of young men had been summoned for creating the usual disturbance the
+night before at the Criterion. My friend the churchwarden has
+boys of his own, and a nephew of mine, upon whom I am keeping a fatherly
+eye, is by a fond mother supposed to be in London for the sole purpose
+of studying engineering. No names we knew happened, by fortunate
+chance, to be in the list of those detained in custody, and, relieved,
+we fell to moralising upon the folly and depravity of youth.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is very remarkable,&rdquo; said my friend the churchwarden,
+&ldquo;how the Criterion retains its position in this respect.
+It was just so when I was young; the evening always wound up with a
+row at the Criterion.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So meaningless,&rdquo; I remarked.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So monotonous,&rdquo; he replied. &ldquo;You have no
+idea,&rdquo; he continued, a dreamy expression stealing over his furrowed
+face, &ldquo;how unutterably tired one can become of the walk from Piccadilly
+Circus to the Vine Street Police Court. Yet, what else was there
+for us to do? Simply nothing. Sometimes we would put out
+a street lamp, and a man would come round and light it again.
+If one insulted a policeman, he simply took no notice. He did
+not even know he was being insulted; or, if he did, he seemed not to
+care. You could fight a Covent Garden porter, if you fancied yourself
+at that sort of thing. Generally speaking, the porter got the
+best of it; and when he did it cost you five shillings, and when he
+did not the price was half a sovereign. I could never see much
+excitement in that particular sport. I tried driving a hansom
+cab once. That has always been regarded as the acme of modern
+Tom and Jerryism. I stole it late one night from outside a public-house
+in Dean Street, and the first thing that happened to me was that I was
+hailed in Golden Square by an old lady surrounded by three children,
+two of them crying and the third one half asleep. Before I could
+get away she had shot the brats into the cab, taken my number, paid
+me, so she said, a shilling over the legal fare, and directed me to
+an address a little beyond what she called North Kensington. As
+a matter of fact, the place turned out to be the other side of Willesden.
+The horse was tired, and the journey took us well over two hours.
+It was the slowest lark I ever remember being concerned in. I
+tried once or twice to persuade the children to let me take them back
+to the old lady: but every time I opened the trap-door to speak to them
+the youngest one, a boy, started screaming; and when I offered other
+drivers to transfer the job to them, most of them replied in the words
+of a song popular about that period: &lsquo;Oh, George, don&rsquo;t
+you think you&rsquo;re going just a bit too far?&rsquo; One man
+offered to take home to my wife any last message I might be thinking
+of, while another promised to organise a party to come and dig me out
+in the spring. When I mounted the dickey I had imagined myself
+driving a peppery old colonel to some lonesome and cabless region, half
+a dozen miles from where he wanted to go, and there leaving him upon
+the kerbstone to swear. About that there might have been good
+sport or there might not, according to circumstances and the colonel.
+The idea of a trip to an outlying suburb in charge of a nursery full
+of helpless infants had never occurred to me. No, London,&rdquo;
+concluded my friend the churchwarden with a sigh, &ldquo;affords but
+limited opportunity to the lover of the illegal.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Now, in Germany, on the other hand, trouble is to be had for the
+asking. There are many things in Germany that you must not do
+that are quite easy to do. To any young Englishman yearning to
+get himself into a scrape, and finding himself hampered in his own country,
+I would advise a single ticket to Germany; a return, lasting as it does
+only a month, might prove a waste.</p>
+
+<p>In the Police Guide of the Fatherland he will find set forth a list
+of the things the doing of which will bring to him interest and excitement.
+In Germany you must not hang your bed out of window. He might
+begin with that. By waving his bed out of window he could get
+into trouble before he had his breakfast. At home he might hang
+himself out of window, and nobody would mind much, provided he did not
+obstruct anybody&rsquo;s ancient lights or break away and injure any
+passer underneath.</p>
+
+<p>In Germany you must not wear fancy dress in the streets. A
+Highlander of my acquaintance who came to pass the winter in Dresden
+spent the first few days of his residence there in arguing this question
+with the Saxon Government. They asked him what he was doing in
+those clothes. He was not an amiable man. He answered, he
+was wearing them. They asked him why he was wearing them.
+He replied, to keep himself warm. They told him frankly that they
+did not believe him, and sent him back to his lodgings in a closed landau.
+The personal testimony of the English Minister was necessary to assure
+the authorities that the Highland garb was the customary dress of many
+respectable, law-abiding British subjects. They accepted the statement,
+as diplomatically bound, but retain their private opinion to this day.
+The English tourist they have grown accustomed to; but a Leicestershire
+gentleman, invited to hunt with some German officers, on appearing outside
+his hotel, was promptly marched off, horse and all, to explain his frivolity
+at the police court.</p>
+
+<p>Another thing you must not do in the streets of German towns is to
+feed horses, mules, or donkeys, whether your own or those belonging
+to other people. If a passion seizes you to feed somebody else&rsquo;s
+horse, you must make an appointment with the animal, and the meal must
+take place in some properly authorised place. You must not break
+glass or china in the street, nor, in fact, in any public resort whatever;
+and if you do, you must pick up all the pieces. What you are to
+do with the pieces when you have gathered them together I cannot say.
+The only thing I know for certain is that you are not permitted to throw
+them anywhere, to leave them anywhere, or apparently to part with them
+in any way whatever. Presumably, you are expected to carry them
+about with you until you die, and then be buried with them; or, maybe,
+you are allowed to swallow them.</p>
+
+<p>In German streets you must not shoot with a crossbow. The German
+law-maker does not content himself with the misdeeds of the average
+man&mdash;the crime one feels one wants to do, but must not: he worries
+himself imagining all the things a wandering maniac might do.
+In Germany there is no law against a man standing on his head in the
+middle of the road; the idea has not occurred to them. One of
+these days a German statesman, visiting a circus and seeing acrobats,
+will reflect upon this omission. Then he will straightway set
+to work and frame a clause forbidding people from standing on their
+heads in the middle of the road, and fixing a fine. This is the
+charm of German law: misdemeanour in Germany has its fixed price.
+You are not kept awake all night, as in England, wondering whether you
+will get off with a caution, be fined forty shillings, or, catching
+the magistrate in an unhappy moment for yourself, get seven days.
+You know exactly what your fun is going to cost you. You can spread
+out your money on the table, open your Police Guide, and plan out your
+holiday to a fifty pfennig piece. For a really cheap evening,
+I would recommend walking on the wrong side of the pavement after being
+cautioned not to do so. I calculate that by choosing your district
+and keeping to the quiet side streets you could walk for a whole evening
+on the wrong side of the pavement at a cost of little over three marks.</p>
+
+<p>In German towns you must not ramble about after dark &ldquo;in droves.&rdquo;
+I am not quite sure how many constitute a &ldquo;drove,&rdquo; and no
+official to whom I have spoken on this subject has felt himself competent
+to fix the exact number. I once put it to a German friend who
+was starting for the theatre with his wife, his mother-in-law, five
+children of his own, his sister and her <i>fianc&eacute;</i>, and two
+nieces, if he did not think he was running a risk under this by-law.
+He did not take my suggestion as a joke. He cast an eye over the
+group.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I don&rsquo;t think so,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;you see,
+we are all one family.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The paragraph says nothing about its being a family drove
+or not,&rdquo; I replied; &ldquo;it simply says &lsquo;drove.&rsquo;
+I do not mean it in any uncomplimentary sense, but, speaking etymologically,
+I am inclined personally to regard your collection as a &lsquo;drove.&rsquo;
+Whether the police will take the same view or not remains to be seen.
+I am merely warning you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>My friend himself was inclined to pooh-pooh my fears; but his wife
+thinking it better not to run any risk of having the party broken up
+by the police at the very beginning of the evening, they divided, arranging
+to come together again in the theatre lobby.</p>
+
+<p>Another passion you must restrain in Germany is that prompting you
+to throw things out of window. Cats are no excuse. During
+the first week of my residence in Germany I was awakened incessantly
+by cats. One night I got mad. I collected a small arsenal&mdash;two
+or three pieces of coal, a few hard pears, a couple of candle ends,
+an odd egg I found on the kitchen table, an empty soda-water bottle,
+and a few articles of that sort,&mdash;and, opening the window, bombarded
+the spot from where the noise appeared to come. I do not suppose
+I hit anything; I never knew a man who did hit a cat, even when he could
+see it, except, maybe, by accident when aiming at something else.
+I have known crack shots, winners of Queen&rsquo;s prizes&mdash;those
+sort of men,&mdash;shoot with shot-guns at cats fifty yards away, and
+never hit a hair. I have often thought that, instead of bull&rsquo;s-eyes,
+running deer, and that rubbish, the really superior marksman would be
+he who could boast that he had shot the cat.</p>
+
+<p>But, anyhow, they moved off; maybe the egg annoyed them. I
+had noticed when I picked it up that it did not look a good egg; and
+I went back to bed again, thinking the incident closed. Ten minutes
+afterwards there came a violent ringing of the electric bell.
+I tried to ignore it, but it was too persistent, and, putting on my
+dressing gown, I went down to the gate. A policeman was standing
+there. He had all the things I had been throwing out of the window
+in a little heap in front of him, all except the egg. He had evidently
+been collecting them. He said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are these things yours?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;They were mine, but personally I have done with them.
+Anybody can have them&mdash;you can have them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He ignored my offer. He said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You threw these things out of window.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are right,&rdquo; I admitted; &ldquo;I did.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why did you throw them out of window?&rdquo; he asked.
+A German policeman has his code of questions arranged for him; he never
+varies them, and he never omits one.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I threw them out of the window at some cats,&rdquo; I answered.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What cats?&rdquo; he asked.</p>
+
+<p>It was the sort of question a German policeman would ask. I
+replied with as much sarcasm as I could put into my accent that I was
+ashamed to say I could not tell him what cats. I explained that,
+personally, they were strangers to me; but I offered, if the police
+would call all the cats in the district together, to come round and
+see if I could recognise them by their yaul.</p>
+
+<p>The German policeman does not understand a joke, which is perhaps
+on the whole just as well, for I believe there is a heavy fine for joking
+with any German uniform; they call it &ldquo;treating an official with
+contumely.&rdquo; He merely replied that it was not the duty of
+the police to help me recognise the cats; their duty was merely to fine
+me for throwing things out of window.</p>
+
+<p>I asked what a man was supposed to do in Germany when woke up night
+after night by cats, and he explained that I could lodge an information
+against the owner of the cat, when the police would proceed to caution
+him, and, if necessary, order the cat to be destroyed. Who was
+going to destroy the cat, and what the cat would be doing during the
+process, he did not explain.</p>
+
+<p>I asked him how he proposed I should discover the owner of the cat.
+He thought for a while, and then suggested that I might follow it home.
+I did not feel inclined to argue with him any more after that; I should
+only have said things that would have made the matter worse. As
+it was, that night&rsquo;s sport cost me twelve marks; and not a single
+one of the four German officials who interviewed me on the subject could
+see anything ridiculous in the proceedings from beginning to end.</p>
+
+<p>But in Germany most human faults and follies sink into comparative
+insignificance beside the enormity of walking on the grass. Nowhere,
+and under no circumstances, may you at any time in Germany walk on the
+grass. Grass in Germany is quite a fetish. To put your foot
+on German grass would be as great a sacrilege as to dance a hornpipe
+on a Mohammedan&rsquo;s praying-mat. The very dogs respect German
+grass; no German dog would dream of putting a paw on it. If you
+see a dog scampering across the grass in Germany, you may know for certain
+that it is the dog of some unholy foreigner. In England, when
+we want to keep dogs out of places, we put up wire netting, six feet
+high, supported by buttresses, and defended on the top by spikes.
+In Germany, they put a notice-board in the middle of the place, &ldquo;Hunden
+verboten,&rdquo; and a dog that has German blood in its veins looks
+at that notice-board and walks away. In a German park I have seen
+a gardener step gingerly with felt boots on to grass-plot, and removing
+therefrom a beetle, place it gravely but firmly on the gravel; which
+done, he stood sternly watching the beetle, to see that it did not try
+to get back on the grass; and the beetle, looking utterly ashamed of
+itself, walked hurriedly down the gutter, and turned up the path marked
+&ldquo;Ausgang.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In German parks separate roads are devoted to the different orders
+of the community, and no one person, at peril of liberty and fortune,
+may go upon another person&rsquo;s road. There are special paths
+for &ldquo;wheel-riders&rdquo; and special paths for &ldquo;foot-goers,&rdquo;
+avenues for &ldquo;horse-riders,&rdquo; roads for people in light vehicles,
+and roads for people in heavy vehicles; ways for children and for &ldquo;alone
+ladies.&rdquo; That no particular route has yet been set aside
+for bald-headed men or &ldquo;new women&rdquo; has always struck me
+as an omission.</p>
+
+<p>In the Grosse Garten in Dresden I once came across an old lady, standing,
+helpless and bewildered, in the centre of seven tracks. Each was
+guarded by a threatening notice, warning everybody off it but the person
+for whom it was intended.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am sorry to trouble you,&rdquo; said the old lady, on learning
+I could speak English and read German, &ldquo;but would you mind telling
+me what I am and where I have to go?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I inspected her carefully. I came to the conclusion that she
+was a &ldquo;grown-up&rdquo; and a &ldquo;foot-goer,&rdquo; and pointed
+out her path. She looked at it, and seemed disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I don&rsquo;t want to go down there,&rdquo; she said;
+&ldquo;mayn&rsquo;t I go this way?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Great heavens, no, madam!&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;That
+path is reserved for children.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I wouldn&rsquo;t do them any harm,&rdquo; said the old
+lady, with a smile. She did not look the sort of old lady who
+would have done them any harm.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Madam,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;if it rested with me, I would
+trust you down that path, though my own first-born were at the other
+end; but I can only inform you of the laws of this country. For
+you, a full-grown woman, to venture down that path is to go to certain
+fine, if not imprisonment. There is your path, marked plainly&mdash;<i>Nur
+f&uuml;r Fussg&auml;nger</i>, and if you will follow my advice, you
+will hasten down it; you are not allowed to stand here and hesitate.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t lead a bit in the direction I want to go,&rdquo;
+said the old lady.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It leads in the direction you <i>ought</i> to want to go,&rdquo;
+I replied, and we parted.</p>
+
+<p>In the German parks there are special seats labelled, &ldquo;Only
+for grown-ups&rdquo; (<i>Nur f&uuml;r Erwachsene</i>), and the German
+small boy, anxious to sit down, and reading that notice, passes by,
+and hunts for a seat on which children are permitted to rest; and there
+he seats himself, careful not to touch the woodwork with his muddy boots.
+Imagine a seat in Regent&rsquo;s or St. James&rsquo;s Park labelled
+&ldquo;Only for grown-ups!&rdquo; Every child for five miles round
+would be trying to get on that seat, and hauling other children off
+who were on. As for any &ldquo;grown-up,&rdquo; he would never
+be able to get within half a mile of that seat for the crowd.
+The German small boy, who has accidentally sat down on such without
+noticing, rises with a start when his error is pointed out to him, and
+goes away with down-cast head, brushing to the roots of his hair with
+shame and regret.</p>
+
+<p>Not that the German child is neglected by a paternal Government.
+In German parks and public gardens special places (<i>Spielpl&auml;tze</i>)
+are provided for him, each one supplied with a heap of sand. There
+he can play to his heart&rsquo;s content at making mud pies and building
+sand castles. To the German child a pie made of any other mud
+than this would appear an immoral pie. It would give to him no
+satisfaction: his soul would revolt against it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That pie,&rdquo; he would say to himself, &ldquo;was not,
+as it should have been, made of Government mud specially set apart for
+the purpose; it was nor manufactured in the place planned and maintained
+by the Government for the making of mud pies. It can bring no
+real blessing with it; it is a lawless pie.&rdquo; And until his
+father had paid the proper fine, and he had received his proper licking,
+his conscience would continue to trouble him.</p>
+
+<p>Another excellent piece of material for obtaining excitement in Germany
+is the simple domestic perambulator. What you may do with a &ldquo;kinder-wagen,&rdquo;
+as it is called, and what you may not, covers pages of German law; after
+the reading of which, you conclude that the man who can push a perambulator
+through a German town without breaking the law was meant for a diplomatist.
+You must not loiter with a perambulator, and you must not go too fast.
+You must not get in anybody&rsquo;s way with a perambulator, and if
+anybody gets in your way you must get out of their way. If you
+want to stop with a perambulator, you must go to a place specially appointed
+where perambulators may stop; and when you get there you <i>must</i>
+stop. You must not cross the road with a perambulator; if you
+and the baby happen to live on the other side, that is your fault.
+You must not leave your perambulator anywhere, and only in certain places
+can you take it with you. I should say that in Germany you could
+go out with a perambulator and get into enough trouble in half an hour
+to last you for a month. Any young Englishman anxious for a row
+with the police could not do better than come over to Germany and bring
+his perambulator with him.</p>
+
+<p>In Germany you must not leave your front door unlocked after ten
+o&rsquo;clock at night, and you must not play the piano in your own
+house after eleven. In England I have never felt I wanted to play
+the piano myself, or to hear anyone else play it, after eleven o&rsquo;clock
+at night; but that is a very different thing to being told that you
+must not play it. Here, in Germany, I never feel that I really
+care for the piano until eleven o&rsquo;clock, then I could sit and
+listen to the &ldquo;Maiden&rsquo;s Prayer,&rdquo; or the Overture to
+&ldquo;Zampa,&rdquo; with pleasure. To the law-loving German,
+on the other hand, music after eleven o&rsquo;clock at night ceases
+to be music; it becomes sin, and as such gives him no satisfaction.</p>
+
+<p>The only individual throughout Germany who ever dreams of taking
+liberties with the law is the German student, and he only to a certain
+well-defined point. By custom, certain privileges are permitted
+to him, but even these are strictly limited and clearly understood.
+For instance, the German student may get drunk and fall asleep in the
+gutter with no other penalty than that of having the next morning to
+tip the policeman who has found him and brought him home. But
+for this purpose he must choose the gutters of side-streets. The
+German student, conscious of the rapid approach of oblivion, uses all
+his remaining energy to get round the corner, where he may collapse
+without anxiety. In certain districts he may ring bells.
+The rent of flats in these localities is lower than in other quarters
+of the town; while the difficulty is further met by each family preparing
+for itself a secret code of bell-ringing by means of which it is known
+whether the summons is genuine or not. When visiting such a household
+late at night it is well to be acquainted with this code, or you may,
+if persistent, get a bucket of water thrown over you.</p>
+
+<p>Also the German student is allowed to put out lights at night, but
+there is a prejudice against his putting out too many. The larky
+German student generally keeps count, contenting himself with half a
+dozen lights per night. Likewise, he may shout and sing as he
+walks home, up till half-past two; and at certain restaurants it is
+permitted to him to put his arm round the Fraulein&rsquo;s waist.
+To prevent any suggestion of unseemliness, the waitresses at restaurants
+frequented by students are always carefully selected from among a staid
+and elderly classy of women, by reason of which the German student can
+enjoy the delights of flirtation without fear and without reproach to
+anyone.</p>
+
+<p>They are a law-abiding people, the Germans.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER X</h2>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Baden from the visitor&rsquo;s point of view&mdash;Beauty of the
+early morning, as viewed from the preceding afternoon&mdash;Distance,
+as measured by the compass&mdash;Ditto, as measured by the leg&mdash;George
+in account with his conscience&mdash;A lazy machine&mdash;Bicycling,
+according to the poster: its restfulness&mdash;The poster cyclist: its
+costume; its method&mdash;The griffin as a household pet&mdash;A dog
+with proper self-respect&mdash;The horse that was abused.</p>
+
+<p>From Baden, about which it need only be said that it is a pleasure
+resort singularly like other pleasure resorts of the same description,
+we started bicycling in earnest. We planned a ten days&rsquo;
+tour, which, while completing the Black Forest, should include a spin
+down the Donau-Thal, which for the twenty miles from Tuttlingen to Sigmaringen
+is, perhaps, the finest valley in Germany; the Danube stream here winding
+its narrow way past old-world unspoilt villages; past ancient monasteries,
+nestling in green pastures, where still the bare-footed and bare-headed
+friar, his rope girdle tight about his loins, shepherds, with crook
+in hand, his sheep upon the hill sides; through rocky woods; between
+sheer walls of cliff, whose every towering crag stands crowned with
+ruined fortress, church, or castle; together with a blick at the Vosges
+mountains, where half the population is bitterly pained if you speak
+to them in French, the other half being insulted when you address them
+in German, and the whole indignantly contemptuous at the first sound
+of English; a state of things that renders conversation with the stranger
+somewhat nervous work.</p>
+
+<p>We did not succeed in carrying out our programme in its entirety,
+for the reason that human performance lags ever behind human intention.
+It is easy to say and believe at three o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon
+that: &ldquo;We will rise at five, breakfast lightly at half-past, and
+start away at six.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then we shall be well on our way before the heat of the day
+sets in,&rdquo; remarks one.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This time of the year, the early morning is really the best
+part of the day. Don&rsquo;t you think so?&rdquo; adds another.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, undoubtedly.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So cool and fresh.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And the half-lights are so exquisite.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The first morning one maintains one&rsquo;s vows. The party
+assembles at half-past five. It is very silent; individually,
+somewhat snappy; inclined to grumble with its food, also with most other
+things; the atmosphere charged with compressed irritability seeking
+its vent. In the evening the Tempter&rsquo;s voice is heard:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think if we got off by half-past six, sharp, that would
+be time enough?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The voice of Virtue protests, faintly: &ldquo;It will be breaking
+our resolution.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The Tempter replies: &ldquo;Resolutions were made for man, not man
+for resolutions.&rdquo; The devil can paraphrase Scripture for
+his own purpose. &ldquo;Besides, it is disturbing the whole hotel;
+think of the poor servants.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The voice of Virtue continues, but even feebler: &ldquo;But everybody
+gets up early in these parts.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They would not if they were not obliged to, poor things!
+Say breakfast at half-past six, punctual; that will be disturbing nobody.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Thus Sin masquerades under the guise of Good, and one sleeps till
+six, explaining to one&rsquo;s conscience, who, however, doesn&rsquo;t
+believe it, that one does this because of unselfish consideration for
+others. I have known such consideration extend until seven of
+the clock.</p>
+
+<p>Likewise, distance measured with a pair of compasses is not precisely
+the same as when measured by the leg.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ten miles an hour for seven hours, seventy miles. A
+nice easy day&rsquo;s work.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There are some stiff hills to climb?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The other side to come down. Say, eight miles an hour,
+and call it sixty miles. Gott in Himmel! if we can&rsquo;t average
+eight miles an hour, we had better go in bath-chairs.&rdquo; It
+does seem somewhat impossible to do less, on paper.</p>
+
+<p>But at four o&rsquo;clock in the afternoon the voice of Duty rings
+less trumpet-toned:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, I suppose we ought to be getting on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, there&rsquo;s no hurry! don&rsquo;t fuss. Lovely
+view from here, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Very. Don&rsquo;t forget we are twenty-five miles from
+St. Blasien.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How far?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Twenty-five miles, a little over if anything.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you mean to say we have only come thirty-five miles?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nonsense. I don&rsquo;t believe that map of yours.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is impossible, you know. We have been riding steadily
+ever since the first thing this morning.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, we haven&rsquo;t. We didn&rsquo;t get away till
+eight, to begin with.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quarter to eight.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, quarter to eight; and every half-dozen miles we have
+stopped.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We have only stopped to look at the view. It&rsquo;s
+no good coming to see a country, and then not seeing it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And we have had to pull up some stiff hills.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Besides, it has been an exceptionally hot day to-day.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, don&rsquo;t forget St. Blasien is twenty-five miles
+off, that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Any more hills?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, two; up and down.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought you said it was downhill into St. Blasien?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So it is for the last ten miles. We are twenty-five
+miles from St. Blasien here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t there anywhere between here and St. Blasien?
+What&rsquo;s that little place there on the lake?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t St. Blasien, or anywhere near it. There&rsquo;s
+a danger in beginning that sort of thing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s a danger in overworking oneself. One should
+study moderation in all things. Pretty little place, that Titisee,
+according to the map; looks as if there would be good air there.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;All right, I&rsquo;m agreeable. It was you fellows who
+suggested our making for St. Blasien.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, I&rsquo;m not so keen on St. Blasien! poky little place,
+down in a valley. This Titisee, I should say, was ever so much
+nicer.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Quite near, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Five miles.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>General chorus: &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll stop at Titisee.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George made discovery of this difference between theory and practice
+on the very first day of our ride.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought,&rdquo; said George&mdash;he was riding the single,
+Harris and I being a little ahead on the tandem&mdash;&ldquo;that the
+idea was to train up the hills and ride down them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;So it is,&rdquo; answered Harris, &ldquo;as a general rule.
+But the trains don&rsquo;t go up <i>every</i> hill in the Black Forest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Somehow, I felt a suspicion that they wouldn&rsquo;t,&rdquo;
+growled George; and for awhile silence reigned.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Besides,&rdquo; remarked Harris, who had evidently been ruminating
+the subject, &ldquo;you would not wish to have nothing but downhill,
+surely. It would not be playing the game. One must take
+a little rough with one&rsquo;s smooth.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Again there returned silence, broken after awhile by George, this
+time.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you two fellows over-exert yourselves merely on
+my account,&rdquo; said George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How do you mean?&rdquo; asked Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I mean,&rdquo; answered George, &ldquo;that where a train
+does happen to be going up these hills, don&rsquo;t you put aside the
+idea of taking it for fear of outraging my finer feelings. Personally,
+I am prepared to go up all these hills in a railway train, even if it&rsquo;s
+not playing the game. I&rsquo;ll square the thing with my conscience;
+I&rsquo;ve been up at seven every day for a week now, and I calculate
+it owes me a bit. Don&rsquo;t you consider me in the matter at
+all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We promised to bear this in mind, and again the ride continued in
+dogged dumbness, until it was again broken by George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What bicycle did you say this was of yours?&rdquo; asked George.</p>
+
+<p>Harris told him. I forget of what particular manufacture it
+happened to be; it is immaterial.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you sure?&rdquo; persisted George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course I am sure,&rdquo; answered Harris. &ldquo;Why,
+what&rsquo;s the matter with it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, it doesn&rsquo;t come up to the poster,&rdquo; said
+George, &ldquo;that&rsquo;s all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What poster?&rdquo; asked Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The poster advertising this particular brand of cycle,&rdquo;
+explained George. &ldquo;I was looking at one on a hoarding in
+Sloane Street only a day or two before we started. A man was riding
+this make of machine, a man with a banner in his hand: he wasn&rsquo;t
+doing any work, that was clear as daylight; he was just sitting on the
+thing and drinking in the air. The cycle was going of its own
+accord, and going well. This thing of yours leaves all the work
+to me. It is a lazy brute of a machine; if you don&rsquo;t shove,
+it simply does nothing: I should complain about it, if I were you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>When one comes to think of it, few bicycles do realise the poster.
+On only one poster that I can recollect have I seen the rider represented
+as doing any work. But then this man was being pursued by a bull.
+In ordinary cases the object of the artist is to convince the hesitating
+neophyte that the sport of bicycling consists in sitting on a luxurious
+saddle, and being moved rapidly in the direction you wish to go by unseen
+heavenly powers.</p>
+
+<p>Generally speaking, the rider is a lady, and then one feels that,
+for perfect bodily rest combined with entire freedom from mental anxiety,
+slumber upon a water-bed cannot compare with bicycle-riding upon a hilly
+road. No fairy travelling on a summer cloud could take things
+more easily than does the bicycle girl, according to the poster.
+Her costume for cycling in hot weather is ideal. Old-fashioned
+landladies might refuse her lunch, it is true; and a narrowminded police
+force might desire to secure her, and wrap her in a rug preliminary
+to summonsing her. But such she heeds not. Uphill and downhill,
+through traffic that might tax the ingenuity of a cat, over road surfaces
+calculated to break the average steam roller she passes, a vision of
+idle loveliness; her fair hair streaming to the wind, her sylph-like
+form poised airily, one foot upon the saddle, the other resting lightly
+upon the lamp. Sometimes she condescends to sit down on the saddle;
+then she puts her feet on the rests, lights a cigarette, and waves above
+her head a Chinese lantern.</p>
+
+<p>Less often, it is a mere male thing that rides the machine.
+He is not so accomplished an acrobat as is the lady; but simple tricks,
+such as standing on the saddle and waving flags, drinking beer or beef-tea
+while riding, he can and does perform. Something, one supposes,
+he must do to occupy his mind: sitting still hour after hour on this
+machine, having no work to do, nothing to think about, must pall upon
+any man of active temperament. Thus it is that we see him rising
+on his pedals as he nears the top of some high hill to apostrophise
+the sun, or address poetry to the surrounding scenery.</p>
+
+<p>Occasionally the poster pictures a pair of cyclists; and then one
+grasps the fact how much superior for purposes of flirtation is the
+modern bicycle to the old-fashioned parlour or the played-out garden
+gate. He and she mount their bicycles, being careful, of course,
+that such are of the right make. After that they have nothing
+to think about but the old sweet tale. Down shady lanes, through
+busy towns on market days, merrily roll the wheels of the &ldquo;Bermondsey
+Company&rsquo;s Bottom Bracket Britain&rsquo;s Best,&rdquo; or of the
+&ldquo;Camberwell Company&rsquo;s Jointless Eureka.&rdquo; They
+need no pedalling; they require no guiding. Give them their heads,
+and tell them what time you want to get home, and that is all they ask.
+While Edwin leans from his saddle to whisper the dear old nothings in
+Angelina&rsquo;s ear, while Angelina&rsquo;s face, to hide its blushes,
+is turned towards the horizon at the back, the magic bicycles pursue
+their even course.</p>
+
+<p>And the sun is always shining and the roads are always dry.
+No stern parent rides behind, no interfering aunt beside, no demon small
+boy brother is peeping round the corner, there never comes a skid.
+Ah me! Why were there no &ldquo;Britain&rsquo;s Best&rdquo; nor
+&ldquo;Camberwell Eurekas&rdquo; to be hired when <i>we</i> were young?</p>
+
+<p>Or maybe the &ldquo;Britain&rsquo;s Best&rdquo; or the &ldquo;Camberwell
+Eureka&rdquo; stands leaning against a gate; maybe it is tired.
+It has worked hard all the afternoon, carrying these young people.
+Mercifully minded, they have dismounted, to give the machine a rest.
+They sit upon the grass beneath the shade of graceful boughs; it is
+long and dry grass. A stream flows by their feet. All is
+rest and peace.</p>
+
+<p>That is ever the idea the cycle poster artist sets himself to convey&mdash;rest
+and peace.</p>
+
+<p>But I am wrong in saying that no cyclist, according to the poster,
+ever works. Now I come to reflect, I have seen posters representing
+gentlemen on cycles working very hard&mdash;over-working themselves,
+one might almost say. They are thin and haggard with the toil,
+the perspiration stands upon their brow in beads; you feel that if there
+is another hill beyond the poster they must either get off or die.
+But this is the result of their own folly. This happens because
+they will persist in riding a machine of an inferior make. Were
+they riding a &ldquo;Putney Popular&rdquo; or &ldquo;Battersea Bounder,&rdquo;
+such as the sensible young man in the centre of the poster rides, then
+all this unnecessary labour would be saved to them. Then all required
+of them would be, as in gratitude bound, to look happy; perhaps, occasionally
+to back-pedal a little when the machine in its youthful buoyancy loses
+its head for a moment and dashes on too swiftly.</p>
+
+<p>You tired young men, sitting dejectedly on milestones, too spent
+to heed the steady rain that soaks you through; you weary maidens, with
+the straight, damp hair, anxious about the time, longing to swear, not
+knowing how; you stout bald men, vanishing visibly as you pant and grunt
+along the endless road; you purple, dejected matrons, plying with pain
+the slow unwilling wheel; why did you not see to it that you bought
+a &ldquo;Britain&rsquo;s Best&rdquo; or a &ldquo;Camberwell Eureka&rdquo;?
+Why are these bicycles of inferior make so prevalent throughout the
+land</p>
+
+<p>Or is it with bicycling as with all other things: does Life at no
+point realise the Poster?</p>
+
+<p>The one thing in Germany that never fails to charm and fascinate
+me is the German dog. In England one grows tired of the old breeds,
+one knows them all so well: the mastiff, the plum-pudding dog, the terrier
+(black, white or rough-haired, as the case may be, but always quarrelsome),
+the collie, the bulldog; never anything new. Now in Germany you
+get variety. You come across dogs the like of which you have never
+seen before: that until you hear them bark you do not know are dogs.
+It is all so fresh, so interesting. George stopped a dog in Sigmaringen
+and drew our attention to it. It suggested a cross between a codfish
+and a poodle. I would not like to be positive it was <i>not</i>
+a cross between a codfish and a poodle. Harris tried to photograph
+it, but it ran up a fence and disappeared through some bushes.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know what the German breeder&rsquo;s idea is; at present
+he retains his secret. George suggests he is aiming at a griffin.
+There is much to bear out this theory, and indeed in one or two cases
+I have come across success on these lines would seem to have been almost
+achieved. Yet I cannot bring myself to believe that such are anything
+more than mere accidents. The German is practical, and I fail
+to see the object of a griffin. If mere quaintness of design be
+desired, is there not already the Dachshund! What more is needed?
+Besides, about a house, a griffin would be so inconvenient: people would
+be continually treading on its tail. My own idea is that what
+the Germans are trying for is a mermaid, which they will then train
+to catch fish.</p>
+
+<p>For your German does not encourage laziness in any living thing.
+He likes to see his dogs work, and the German dog loves work; of that
+there can be no doubt. The life of the English dog must be a misery
+to him. Imagine a strong, active, and intelligent being, of exceptionally
+energetic temperament, condemned to spend twenty-four hours a day in
+absolute idleness! How would you like it yourself? No wonder
+he feels misunderstood, yearns for the unattainable, and gets himself
+into trouble generally.</p>
+
+<p>Now the German dog, on the other hand, has plenty to occupy his mind.
+He is busy and important. Watch him as he walks along harnessed
+to his milk cart. No churchwarden at collection time could feel
+or look more pleased with himself. He does not do any real work;
+the human being does the pushing, he does the barking; that is his idea
+of division of labour. What he says to himself is:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The old man can&rsquo;t bark, but he can shove. Very
+well.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The interest and the pride he takes in the business is quite beautiful
+to see. Another dog passing by makes, maybe, some jeering remark,
+casting discredit upon the creaminess of the milk. He stops suddenly,
+quite regardless of the traffic.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I beg your pardon, what was that you said about our milk?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I said nothing about your milk,&rdquo; retorts the other dog,
+in a tone of gentle innocence. &ldquo;I merely said it was a fine
+day, and asked the price of chalk.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you asked the price of chalk, did you? Would you
+like to know?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, thanks; somehow I thought you would be able to tell me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are quite right, I can. It&rsquo;s worth&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, do come along!&rdquo; says the old lady, who is tired
+and hot, and anxious to finish her round.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, but hang it all; did you hear what he hinted about our
+milk?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, never mind him! There&rsquo;s a tram coming round
+the corner: we shall all get run over.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, but I do mind him; one has one&rsquo;s proper pride.
+He asked the price of chalk, and he&rsquo;s going to know it!
+It&rsquo;s worth just twenty times as much&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You&rsquo;ll have the whole thing over, I know you will,&rdquo;
+cries the old lady, pathetically, struggling with all her feeble strength
+to haul him back. &ldquo;Oh dear, oh dear! I do wish I had
+left you at home.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The tram is bearing down upon them; a cab-driver is shouting at them;
+another huge brute, hoping to be in time to take a hand, is dragging
+a bread cart, followed by a screaming child, across the road from the
+opposite side; a small crowd is collecting; and a policeman is hastening
+to the scene.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s worth,&rdquo; says the milk dog, &ldquo;just twenty-times
+as much as you&rsquo;ll be worth before I&rsquo;ve done with you.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, you think so, do you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, I do, you grandson of a French poodle, you cabbage-eating&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There! I knew you&rsquo;d have it over,&rdquo; says
+the poor milk-woman. &ldquo;I told him he&rsquo;d have it over.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But he is busy, and heeds her not. Five minutes later, when
+the traffic is renewed, when the bread girl has collected her muddy
+rolls, and the policeman has gone off with the name and address of everybody
+in the street, he consents to look behind him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It <i>is</i> a bit of an upset,&rdquo; he admits. Then
+shaking himself free of care, he adds, cheerfully, &ldquo;But I guess
+I taught him the price of chalk. He won&rsquo;t interfere with
+us again, I&rsquo;m thinking.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m sure I hope not,&rdquo; says the old lady, regarding
+dejectedly the milky road.</p>
+
+<p>But his favourite sport is to wait at the top of the hill for another
+dog, and then race down. On these occasions the chief occupation
+of the other fellow is to run about behind, picking up the scattered
+articles, loaves, cabbages, or shirts, as they are jerked out.
+At the bottom of the hill, he stops and waits for his friend.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good race, wasn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; he remarks, panting, as
+the Human comes up, laden to the chin. &ldquo;I believe I&rsquo;d
+have won it, too, if it hadn&rsquo;t been for that fool of a small boy.
+He was right in my way just as I turned the corner. <i>You noticed
+him</i>? Wish I had, beastly brat! What&rsquo;s he yelling
+like that for? <i>Because I knocked him down and ran over him</i>?
+Well, why didn&rsquo;t he get out of the way? It&rsquo;s disgraceful,
+the way people leave their children about for other people to tumble
+over. Halloa! did all those things come out? You couldn&rsquo;t
+have packed them very carefully; you should see to a thing like that.
+<i>You did not dream of my tearing down the hill twenty miles an hour</i>?
+Surely, you knew me better than to expect I&rsquo;d let that old Schneider&rsquo;s
+dog pass me without an effort. But there, you never think.
+You&rsquo;re sure you&rsquo;ve got them all? <i>You believe so</i>?
+I shouldn&rsquo;t &lsquo;believe&rsquo; if I were you; I should run
+back up the hill again and make sure. <i>You feel too tired</i>?
+Oh, all right! don&rsquo;t blame me if anything is missing, that&rsquo;s
+all.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He is so self-willed. He is cock-sure that the correct turning
+is the second on the right, and nothing will persuade him that it is
+the third. He is positive he can get across the road in time,
+and will not be convinced until he sees the cart smashed up. Then
+he is very apologetic, it is true. But of what use is that?
+As he is usually of the size and strength of a young bull, and his human
+companion is generally a weak-kneed old man or woman, or a small child,
+he has his way. The greatest punishment his proprietor can inflict
+upon him is to leave him at home, and take the cart out alone.
+But your German is too kind-hearted to do this often.</p>
+
+<p>That he is harnessed to the cart for anybody&rsquo;s pleasure but
+his own it is impossible to believe; and I am confident that the German
+peasant plans the tiny harness and fashions the little cart purely with
+the hope of gratifying his dog. In other countries&mdash;in Belgium,
+Holland and France&mdash;I have seen these draught dogs ill-treated
+and over-worked; but in Germany, never. Germans abuse animals
+shockingly. I have seen a German stand in front of his horse and
+call it every name he could lay his tongue to. But the horse did
+not mind it. I have seen a German, weary with abusing his horse,
+call to his wife to come out and assist him. When she came, he
+told her what the horse had done. The recital roused the woman&rsquo;s
+temper to almost equal heat with his own; and standing one each side
+of the poor beast, they both abused it. They abused its dead mother,
+they insulted its father; they made cutting remarks about its personal
+appearance, its intelligence, its moral sense, its general ability as
+a horse. The animal bore the torrent with exemplary patience for
+awhile; then it did the best thing possible to do under the circumstances.
+Without losing its own temper, it moved quietly away. The lady
+returned to her washing, and the man followed it up the street, still
+abusing it.</p>
+
+<p>A kinder-hearted people than the Germans there is no need for.
+Cruelty to animal or child is a thing almost unknown in the land.
+The whip with them is a musical instrument; its crack is heard from
+morning to night, but an Italian coachman that in the streets of Dresden
+I once saw use it was very nearly lynched by the indignant crowd.
+Germany is the only country in Europe where the traveller can settle
+himself comfortably in his hired carriage, confident that his gentle,
+willing friend between the shafts will be neither over-worked nor cruelly
+treated.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XI</h2>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Black Forest House: and the sociability therein&mdash;Its perfume&mdash;George
+positively declines to remain in bed after four o&rsquo;clock in the
+morning&mdash;The road one cannot miss&mdash;My peculiar extra instinct&mdash;An
+ungrateful party&mdash;Harris as a scientist&mdash;His cheery confidence&mdash;The
+village: where it was, and where it ought to have been&mdash;George:
+his plan&mdash;We promenade &agrave; la Fran&ccedil;ais&mdash;The German
+coachman asleep and awake&mdash;The man who spreads the English language
+abroad.</p>
+
+<p>There was one night when, tired out and far from town or village,
+we slept in a Black Forest farmhouse. The great charm about the
+Black Forest house is its sociability. The cows are in the next
+room, the horses are upstairs, the geese and ducks are in the kitchen,
+while the pigs, the children, and the chickens live all over the place.</p>
+
+<p>You are dressing, when you hear a grunt behind you.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Good-morning! Don&rsquo;t happen to have any potato
+peelings in here? No, I see you haven&rsquo;t; good-bye.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Next there is a cackle, and you see the neck of an old hen stretched
+round the corner.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Fine morning, isn&rsquo;t it? You don&rsquo;t mind my
+bringing this worm of mine in here, do you? It is so difficult
+in this house to find a room where one can enjoy one&rsquo;s food with
+any quietness. From a chicken I have always been a slow eater,
+and when a dozen&mdash;there, I thought they wouldn&rsquo;t leave me
+alone. Now they&rsquo;ll all want a bit. You don&rsquo;t
+mind my getting on the bed, do you? Perhaps here they won&rsquo;t
+notice me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>While you are dressing various shock heads peer in at the door; they
+evidently regard the room as a temporary menagerie. You cannot
+tell whether the heads belong to boys or girls; you can only hope they
+are all male. It is of no use shutting the door, because there
+is nothing to fasten it by, and the moment you are gone they push it
+open again. You breakfast as the Prodigal Son is generally represented
+feeding: a pig or two drop in to keep you company; a party of elderly
+geese criticise you from the door; you gather from their whispers, added
+to their shocked expression, that they are talking scandal about you.
+Maybe a cow will condescend to give a glance in.</p>
+
+<p>This Noah&rsquo;s Ark arrangement it is, I suppose, that gives to
+the Black Forest home its distinctive scent. It is not a scent
+you can liken to any one thing. It is as if you took roses and
+Limburger cheese and hair oil, some heather and onions, peaches and
+soapsuds, together with a dash of sea air and a corpse, and mixed them
+up together. You cannot define any particular odour, but you feel
+they are all there&mdash;all the odours that the world has yet discovered.
+People who live in these houses are fond of this mixture. They
+do not open the window and lose any of it; they keep it carefully bottled
+up. If you want any other scent, you can go outside and smell
+the wood violets and the pines; inside there is the house; and after
+a while, I am told, you get used to it, so that you miss it, and are
+unable to go to sleep in any other atmosphere.</p>
+
+<p>We had a long walk before us the next day, and it was our desire,
+therefore, to get up early, even so early as six o&rsquo;clock, if that
+could be managed without disturbing the whole household. We put
+it to our hostess whether she thought this could be done. She
+said she thought it could. She might not be about herself at that
+time; it was her morning for going into the town, some eight miles off,
+and she rarely got back much before seven; but, possibly, her husband
+or one of the boys would be returning home to lunch about that hour.
+Anyhow, somebody should be sent back to wake us and get our breakfast.</p>
+
+<p>As it turned out, we did not need any waking. We got up at
+four, all by ourselves. We got up at four in order to get away
+from the noise and the din that was making our heads ache. What
+time the Black Forest peasant rises in the summer time I am unable to
+say; to us they appeared to be getting up all night. And the first
+thing the Black Forester does when he gets up is to put on a pair of
+stout boots with wooden soles, and take a constitutional round the house.
+Until he has been three times up and down the stairs, he does not feel
+he is up. Once fully awake himself, the next thing he does is
+to go upstairs to the stables, and wake up a horse. (The Black
+Forest house being built generally on the side of a steep hill, the
+ground floor is at the top, and the hay-loft at the bottom.) Then
+the horse, it would seem, must also have its constitutional round the
+house; and this seen to, the man goes downstairs into the kitchen and
+begins to chop wood, and when he has chopped sufficient wood he feels
+pleased with himself and begins to sing. All things considered,
+we came to the conclusion we could not do better than follow the excellent
+example set us. Even George was quite eager to get up that morning.</p>
+
+<p>We had a frugal breakfast at half-past four, and started away at
+five. Our road lay over a mountain, and from enquiries made in
+the village it appeared to be one of those roads you cannot possibly
+miss. I suppose everybody knows this sort of road. Generally,
+it leads you back to where you started from; and when it doesn&rsquo;t,
+you wish it did, so that at all events you might know where you were.
+I foresaw evil from the very first, and before we had accomplished a
+couple of miles we came up with it. The road divided into three.
+A worm-eaten sign-post indicated that the path to the left led to a
+place that we had never heard of&mdash;that was on no map. Its
+other arm, pointing out the direction of the middle road, had disappeared.
+The road to the right, so we all agreed, clearly led back again to the
+village.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The old man said distinctly,&rdquo; so Harris reminded us,
+&ldquo;keep straight on round the hill.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Which hill?&rdquo; George asked, pertinently.</p>
+
+<p>We were confronted by half a dozen, some of them big, some of them
+little.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He told us,&rdquo; continued Harris, &ldquo;that we should
+come to a wood.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see no reason to doubt him,&rdquo; commented George, &ldquo;whichever
+road we take.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>As a matter of fact, a dense wood covered every hill.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And he said,&rdquo; murmured Harris, &ldquo;that we should
+reach the top in about an hour and a half.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There it is,&rdquo; said George, &ldquo;that I begin to disbelieve
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, what shall we do?&rdquo; said Harris.</p>
+
+<p>Now I happen to possess the bump of locality. It is not a virtue;
+I make no boast of it. It is merely an animal instinct that I
+cannot help. That things occasionally get in my way&mdash;mountains,
+precipices, rivers, and such like obstructions&mdash;is no fault of
+mine. My instinct is correct enough; it is the earth that is wrong.
+I led them by the middle road. That the middle road had not character
+enough to continue for any quarter of a mile in the same direction;
+that after three miles up and down hill it ended abruptly in a wasps&rsquo;
+nest, was not a thing that should have been laid to my door. If
+the middle road had gone in the direction it ought to have done, it
+would have taken us to where we wanted to go, of that I am convinced.</p>
+
+<p>Even as it was, I would have continued to use this gift of mine to
+discover a fresh way had a proper spirit been displayed towards me.
+But I am not an angel&mdash;I admit this frankly,&mdash;and I decline
+to exert myself for the ungrateful and the ribald. Besides, I
+doubt if George and Harris would have followed me further in any event.
+Therefore it was that I washed my hands of the whole affair, and that
+Harris entered upon the vacancy.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well,&rdquo; said Harris. &ldquo;I suppose you are satisfied
+with what you have done?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am quite satisfied,&rdquo; I replied from the heap of stones
+where I was sitting. &ldquo;So far, I have brought you with safety.
+I would continue to lead you further, but no artist can work without
+encouragement. You appear dissatisfied with me because you do
+not know where you are. For all you know, you may be just where
+you want to be. But I say nothing as to that; I expect no thanks.
+Go your own way; I have done with you both.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I spoke, perhaps, with bitterness, but I could not help it.
+Not a word of kindness had I had all the weary way.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do not misunderstand us,&rdquo; said Harris; &ldquo;both George
+and myself feel that without your assistance we should never be where
+we now are. For that we give you every credit. But instinct
+is liable to error. What I propose to do is to substitute for
+it Science, which is exact. Now, where&rsquo;s the sun?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Don&rsquo;t you think,&rdquo; said George, &ldquo;that if
+we made our way back to the village, and hired a boy for a mark to guide
+us, it would save time in the end?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It would be wasting hours,&rdquo; said Harris, with decision.
+&ldquo;You leave this to me. I have been reading about this thing,
+and it has interested me.&rdquo; He took out his watch, and began
+turning himself round and round.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s as simple as A B C,&rdquo; he continued.
+&ldquo;You point the short hand at the sun, then you bisect the segment
+between the short hand and the twelve, and thus you get the north.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He worried up and down for a while, then he fixed it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now I&rsquo;ve got it,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;that&rsquo;s
+the north, where that wasps&rsquo; nest is. Now give me the map.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We handed it to him, and seating himself facing the wasps, he examined
+it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Todtmoos from here,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;is south by south-west.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;How do you mean, from here?&rdquo; asked George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why, from here, where we are,&rdquo; returned Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But where are we?&rdquo; said George.</p>
+
+<p>This worried Harris for a time, but at length he cheered up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t matter where we are,&rdquo; he said.
+&ldquo;Wherever we are, Todtmoos is south by south-west. Come
+on, we are only wasting time.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t quite see how you make it out,&rdquo; said George,
+as he rose and shouldered his knapsack; &ldquo;but I suppose it doesn&rsquo;t
+matter. We are out for our health, and it&rsquo;s all pretty!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We shall be all right,&rdquo; said Harris, with cheery confidence.
+&ldquo;We shall be in at Todtmoos before ten, don&rsquo;t you worry.
+And at Todtmoos we will have something to eat.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He said that he, himself, fancied a beefsteak, followed by an omelette.
+George said that, personally, he intended to keep his mind off the subject
+until he saw Todtmoos.</p>
+
+<p>We walked for half an hour, then emerging upon an opening, we saw
+below us, about two miles away, the village through which we had passed
+that morning. It had a quaint church with an outside staircase,
+a somewhat unusual arrangement.</p>
+
+<p>The sight of it made me sad. We had been walking hard for three
+hours and a half, and had accomplished, apparently, about four miles.
+But Harris was delighted.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Now, at last,&rdquo; said Harris, &ldquo;we know where we
+are.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought you said it didn&rsquo;t matter,&rdquo; George reminded
+him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No more it does, practically,&rdquo; replied Harris, &ldquo;but
+it is just as well to be certain. Now I feel more confidence in
+myself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;m not so sure about that being an advantage,&rdquo;
+muttered George. But I do not think Harris heard him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We are now,&rdquo; continued Harris, &ldquo;east of the sun,
+and Todtmoos is south-west of where we are. So that if&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He broke off. &ldquo;By-the-by,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;do you
+remember whether I said the bisecting line of that segment pointed to
+the north or to the south?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You said it pointed to the north,&rdquo; replied George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Are you positive?&rdquo; persisted Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Positive,&rdquo; answered George &ldquo;but don&rsquo;t let
+that influence your calculations. In all probability you were
+wrong.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Harris thought for a while; then his brow cleared.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s all right,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;of course,
+it&rsquo;s the north. It must be the north. How could it
+be the south? Now we must make for the west. Come on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I am quite willing to make for the west,&rdquo; said George;
+&ldquo;any point of the compass is the same to me. I only wish
+to remark that, at the present moment, we are going dead east.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No we are not,&rdquo; returned Harris; &ldquo;we are going
+west.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We are going east, I tell you,&rdquo; said George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wish you wouldn&rsquo;t keep saying that,&rdquo; said Harris,
+&ldquo;you confuse me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t mind if I do,&rdquo; returned George; &ldquo;I
+would rather do that than go wrong. I tell you we are going dead
+east.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What nonsense!&rdquo; retorted Harris; &ldquo;there&rsquo;s
+the sun.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can see the sun,&rdquo; answered George, &ldquo;quite distinctly.
+It may be where it ought to be, according to you and Science, or it
+may not. All I know is, that when we were down in the village,
+that particular hill with that particular lump of rock upon it was due
+north of us. At the present moment we are facing due east.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You are quite right,&rdquo; said Harris; &ldquo;I forgot for
+the moment that we had turned round.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I should get into the habit of making a note of it, if I were
+you,&rdquo; grumbled George; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s a manoeuvre that will
+probably occur again more than once.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We faced about, and walked in the other direction. At the end
+of forty minutes&rsquo; climbing we again emerged upon an opening, and
+again the village lay just under our feet. On this occasion it
+was south of us.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is very extraordinary,&rdquo; said Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see nothing remarkable about it,&rdquo; said George.
+&ldquo;If you walk steadily round a village it is only natural that
+now and then you get a glimpse of it. Myself, I am glad to see
+it. It proves to me that we are not utterly lost.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It ought to be the other side of us,&rdquo; said Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It will be in another hour or so,&rdquo; said George, &ldquo;if
+we keep on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said little myself; I was vexed with both of them; but I was glad
+to notice George evidently growing cross with Harris. It was absurd
+of Harris to fancy he could find the way by the sun.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wish I knew,&rdquo; said Harris, thoughtfully, &ldquo;for
+certain whether that bisecting line points to the north or to the south.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I should make up my mind about it,&rdquo; said George; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s
+an important point.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s impossible it can be the north,&rdquo; said Harris,
+&ldquo;and I&rsquo;ll tell you why.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You needn&rsquo;t trouble,&rdquo; said George; &ldquo;I am
+quite prepared to believe it isn&rsquo;t.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You said just now it was,&rdquo; said Harris, reproachfully.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I said nothing of the sort,&rdquo; retorted George.
+&ldquo;I said you said it was&mdash;a very different thing. If
+you think it isn&rsquo;t, let&rsquo;s go the other way. It&rsquo;ll
+be a change, at all events.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>So Harris worked things out according to the contrary calculation,
+and again we plunged into the wood; and again after half an hour&rsquo;s
+stiff climbing we came in view of that same village. True, we
+were a little higher, and this time it lay between us and the sun.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think,&rdquo; said George, as he stood looking down at it,
+&ldquo;this is the best view we&rsquo;ve had of it, as yet. There
+is only one other point from which we can see it. After that,
+I propose we go down into it and get some rest.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t believe it&rsquo;s the same village,&rdquo;
+said Harris; &ldquo;it can&rsquo;t be.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;There&rsquo;s no mistaking that church,&rdquo; said George.
+&ldquo;But maybe it is a case on all fours with that Prague statue.
+Possibly, the authorities hereabout have had made some life-sized models
+of that village, and have stuck them about the Forest to see where the
+thing would look best. Anyhow, which way do we go now?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; said Harris, &ldquo;and I don&rsquo;t
+care. I have done my best; you&rsquo;ve done nothing but grumble,
+and confuse me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I may have been critical,&rdquo; admitted George &ldquo;but
+look at the thing from my point of view. One of you says he&rsquo;s
+got an instinct, and leads me to a wasps&rsquo; nest in the middle of
+a wood.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can&rsquo;t help wasps building in a wood,&rdquo; I replied.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t say you can,&rdquo; answered George. &ldquo;I
+am not arguing; I am merely stating incontrovertible facts. The
+other one, who leads me up and down hill for hours on scientific principles,
+doesn&rsquo;t know the north from the south, and is never quite sure
+whether he&rsquo;s turned round or whether he hasn&rsquo;t. Personally,
+I profess to no instincts beyond the ordinary, nor am I a scientist.
+But two fields off I can see a man. I am going to offer him the
+worth of the hay he is cutting, which I estimate at one mark fifty pfennig,
+to leave his work, and lead me to within sight of Todtmoos. If
+you two fellows like to follow, you can. If not, you can start
+another system and work it out by yourselves.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George&rsquo;s plan lacked both originality and aplomb, but at the
+moment it appealed to us. Fortunately, we had worked round to
+a very short distance away from the spot where we had originally gone
+wrong; with the result that, aided by the gentleman of the scythe, we
+recovered the road, and reached Todtmoos four hours later than we had
+calculated to reach it, with an appetite that took forty-five minutes&rsquo;
+steady work in silence to abate.</p>
+
+<p>From Todtmoos we had intended to walk down to the Rhine; but having
+regard to our extra exertions of the morning, we decided to promenade
+in a carriage, as the French would say: and for this purpose hired a
+picturesque-looking vehicle, drawn by a horse that I should have called
+barrel-bodied but for contrast with his driver, in comparison with whom
+he was angular. In Germany every vehicle is arranged for a pair
+of horses, but drawn generally by one. This gives to the equipage
+a lop-sided appearance, according to our notions, but it is held here
+to indicate style. The idea to be conveyed is that you usually
+drive a pair of horses, but that for the moment you have mislaid the
+other one. The German driver is not what we should call a first-class
+whip. He is at his best when he is asleep. Then, at all
+events, he is harmless; and the horse being, generally speaking, intelligent
+and experienced, progress under these conditions is comparatively safe.
+If in Germany they could only train the horse to collect the money at
+the end of the journey, there would be no need for a coachman at all.
+This would be a distinct relief to the passenger, for when the German
+coachman is awake and not cracking his whip he is generally occupied
+in getting himself into trouble or out of it. He is better at
+the former. Once I recollect driving down a steep Black Forest
+hill with a couple of ladies. It was one of those roads winding
+corkscrew-wise down the slope. The hill rose at an angle of seventy-five
+on the off-side, and fell away at an angle of seventy-five on the near-side.
+We were proceeding very comfortably, the driver, we were happy to notice,
+with his eyes shut, when suddenly something, a bad dream or indigestion,
+awoke him. He seized the reins, and, by an adroit movement, pulled
+the near-side horse over the edge, where it clung, half supported by
+the traces. Our driver did not appear in the least annoyed or
+surprised; both horses, I also, noticed, seemed equally used to the
+situation. We got out, and he got down. He took from under
+the seat a huge clasp-knife, evidently kept there for the purpose, and
+deftly cut the traces. The horse, thus released, rolled over and
+over until he struck the road again some fifty feet below. There
+he regained his feet and stood waiting for us. We re-entered the
+carriage and descended with the single horse until we came to him.
+There, with the help of some bits of string, our driver harnessed him
+again, and we continued on our way. What impressed me was the
+evident accustomedness of both driver and horses to this method of working
+down a hill.</p>
+
+<p>Evidently to them it appeared a short and convenient cut. I
+should not have been surprised had the man suggested our strapping ourselves
+in, and then rolling over and over, carriage and all, to the bottom.</p>
+
+<p>Another peculiarity of the German coachman is that he never attempts
+to pull in or to pull up. He regulates his rate of speed, not
+by the pace of the horse, but by manipulation of the brake. For
+eight miles an hour he puts it on slightly, so that it only scrapes
+the wheel, producing a continuous sound as of the sharpening of a saw;
+for four miles an hour he screws it down harder, and you travel to an
+accompaniment of groans and shrieks, suggestive of a symphony of dying
+pigs. When he desires to come to a full stop, he puts it on to
+its full. If his brake be a good one, he calculates he can stop
+his carriage, unless the horse be an extra powerful animal, in less
+than twice its own length. Neither the German driver nor the German
+horse knows, apparently, that you can stop a carriage by any other method.
+The German horse continues to pull with his full strength until he finds
+it impossible to move the vehicle another inch; then he rests.
+Horses of other countries are quite willing to stop when the idea is
+suggested to them. I have known horses content to go even quite
+slowly. But your German horse, seemingly, is built for one particular
+speed, and is unable to depart from it. I am stating nothing but
+the literal, unadorned truth, when I say I have seen a German coachman,
+with the reins lying loose over the splash-board, working his brake
+with both hands, in terror lest he would not be in time to avoid a collision.</p>
+
+<p>At Waldshut, one of those little sixteenth-century towns through
+which the Rhine flows during its earlier course, we came across that
+exceedingly common object of the Continent: the travelling Briton grieved
+and surprised at the unacquaintance of the foreigner with the subtleties
+of the English language. When we entered the station he was, in
+very fair English, though with a slight Somersetshire accent, explaining
+to a porter for the tenth time, as he informed us, the simple fact that
+though he himself had a ticket for Donaueschingen, and wanted to go
+to Donaueschingen, to see the source of the Danube, which is not there,
+though they tell you it is, he wished his bicycle to be sent on to Engen
+and his bag to Constance, there to await his arrival. He was hot
+and angry with the effort of the thing. The porter was a young
+man in years, but at the moment looked old and miserable. I offered
+my services. I wish now I had not&mdash;though not so fervently,
+I expect, as he, the speechless one, came subsequently to wish this.
+All three routes, so the porter explained to us, were complicated, necessitating
+changing and re-changing. There was not much time for calm elucidation,
+as our own train was starting in a few minutes. The man himself
+was voluble&mdash;always a mistake when anything entangled has to be
+made clear; while the porter was only too eager to get the job done
+with and so breathe again. It dawned upon me ten minutes later,
+when thinking the matter over in the train, that though I had agreed
+with the porter that it would be best for the bicycle to go by way of
+Immendingen, and had agreed to his booking it to Immendingen, I had
+neglected to give instructions for its departure from Immendingen.
+Were I of a despondent temperament I should be worrying myself at the
+present moment with the reflection that in all probability that bicycle
+is still at Immendingen to this day. But I regard it as good philosophy
+to endeavour always to see the brighter side of things. Possibly
+the porter corrected my omission on his own account, or some simple
+miracle may have happened to restore that bicycle to its owner some
+time before the end of his tour. The bag we sent to Radolfzell:
+but here I console myself with the recollection that it was labelled
+Constance; and no doubt after a while the railway authorities, finding
+it unclaimed at Radolfzell, forwarded it on to Constance.</p>
+
+<p>But all this is apart from the moral I wished to draw from the incident.
+The true inwardness of the situation lay in the indignation of this
+Britisher at finding a German railway porter unable to comprehend English.
+The moment we spoke to him he expressed this indignation in no measured
+terms.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Thank you very much indeed,&rdquo; he said; &ldquo;it&rsquo;s
+simple enough. I want to go to Donaueschingen myself by train;
+from Donaueschingen I am going to walk to Geisengen; from Geisengen
+I am going to take the train to Engen, and from Engen I am going to
+bicycle to Constance. But I don&rsquo;t want to take my bag with
+me; I want to find it at Constance when I get there. I have been
+trying to explain the thing to this fool for the last ten minutes; but
+I can&rsquo;t get it into him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is very disgraceful,&rdquo; I agreed. &ldquo;Some
+of these German workmen know hardly any other language than their own.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I have gone over it with him,&rdquo; continued the man, &ldquo;on
+the time table, and explained it by pantomime. Even then I could
+not knock it into him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I can hardly believe you,&rdquo; I again remarked; &ldquo;you
+would think the thing explained itself.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Harris was angry with the man; he wished to reprove him for his folly
+in journeying through the outlying portions of a foreign clime, and
+seeking in such to accomplish complicated railway tricks without knowing
+a word of the language of the country. But I checked the impulsiveness
+of Harris, and pointed out to him the great and good work at which the
+man was unconsciously assisting.</p>
+
+<p>Shakespeare and Milton may have done their little best to spread
+acquaintance with the English tongue among the less favoured inhabitants
+of Europe. Newton and Darwin may have rendered their language
+a necessity among educated and thoughtful foreigners. Dickens
+and Ouida (for your folk who imagine that the literary world is bounded
+by the prejudices of New Grub Street, would be surprised and grieved
+at the position occupied abroad by this at-home-sneered-at lady) may
+have helped still further to popularise it. But the man who has
+spread the knowledge of English from Cape St. Vincent to the Ural Mountains
+is the Englishman who, unable or unwilling to learn a single word of
+any language but his own, travels purse in hand into every corner of
+the Continent. One may be shocked at his ignorance, annoyed at
+his stupidity, angry at his presumption. But the practical fact
+remains; he it is that is anglicising Europe. For him the Swiss
+peasant tramps through the snow on winter evenings to attend the English
+class open in every village. For him the coachman and the guard,
+the chambermaid and the laundress, pore over their English grammars
+and colloquial phrase books. For him the foreign shopkeeper and
+merchant send their sons and daughters in their thousands to study in
+every English town. For him it is that every foreign hotel- and
+restaurant-keeper adds to his advertisement: &ldquo;Only those with
+fair knowledge of English need apply.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Did the English-speaking races make it their rule to speak anything
+else than English, the marvellous progress of the English tongue throughout
+the world would stop. The English-speaking man stands amid the
+strangers and jingles his gold.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here,&rdquo; cries, &ldquo;is payment for all such as can
+speak English.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He it is who is the great educator. Theoretically we may scold
+him; practically we should take our hats off to him. He is the
+missionary of the English tongue.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XII</h2>
+
+<p class="letter">
+We are grieved at the earthly instincts of the German&mdash;A superb
+view, but no restaurant&mdash;Continental opinion of the Englishman&mdash;That
+he does not know enough to come in out of the rain&mdash;There comes
+a weary traveller with a brick&mdash;The hurting of the dog&mdash;An
+undesirable family residence&mdash;A fruitful region&mdash;A merry old
+soul comes up the hill&mdash;George, alarmed at the lateness of the
+hour, hastens down the other side&mdash;Harris follows him, to show
+him the way&mdash;I hate being alone, and follow Harris&mdash;Pronunciation
+specially designed for use of foreigners.</p>
+
+<p>A thing that vexes much the high-class Anglo-Saxon soul is the earthly
+instinct prompting the German to fix a restaurant at the goal of every
+excursion. On mountain summit, in fairy glen, on lonely pass,
+by waterfall or winding stream, stands ever the busy Wirtschaft.
+How can one rhapsodise over a view when surrounded by beer-stained tables?
+How lose one&rsquo;s self in historical reverie amid the odour of roast
+veal and spinach?</p>
+
+<p>One day, on elevating thoughts intent, we climbed through tangled
+woods.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And at the top,&rdquo; said Harris, bitterly, as we paused
+to breathe a space and pull our belts a hole tighter, &ldquo;there will
+be a gaudy restaurant, where people will be guzzling beefsteaks and
+plum tarts and drinking white wine.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you think so?&rdquo; said George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sure to be,&rdquo; answered Harris; &ldquo;you know their
+way. Not one grove will they consent to dedicate to solitude and
+contemplation; not one height will they leave to the lover of nature
+unpolluted by the gross and the material.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I calculate,&rdquo; I remarked, &ldquo;that we shall be there
+a little before one o&rsquo;clock, provided we don&rsquo;t dawdle.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The &lsquo;mittagstisch&rsquo; will be just ready,&rdquo;
+groaned Harris, &ldquo;with possibly some of those little blue trout
+they catch about here. In Germany one never seems able to get
+away from food and drink. It is maddening!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We pushed on, and in the beauty of the walk forgot our indignation.
+My estimate proved to be correct.</p>
+
+<p>At a quarter to one, said Harris, who was leading:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here we are; I can see the summit.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Any sign of that restaurant?&rdquo; said George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t notice it,&rdquo; replied Harris; &ldquo;but
+it&rsquo;s there, you may be sure; confound it!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Five minutes later we stood upon the top. We looked north,
+south, east and west; then we looked at one another.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Grand view, isn&rsquo;t it?&rdquo; said Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Magnificent,&rdquo; I agreed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Superb,&rdquo; remarked George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They have had the good sense for once,&rdquo; said Harris,
+&ldquo;to put that restaurant out of sight.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They do seem to have hidden it,&rdquo; said George.
+&ldquo;One doesn&rsquo;t mind the thing so much when it is not forced
+under one&rsquo;s nose,&rdquo; said Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course, in its place,&rdquo; I observed, &ldquo;a restaurant
+is right enough.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I should like to know where they have put it,&rdquo; said
+George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Suppose we look for it?&rdquo; said Harris, with inspiration.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed a good idea. I felt curious myself. We agreed
+to explore in different directions, returning to the summit to report
+progress. In half an hour we stood together once again.
+There was no need for words. The face of one and all of us announced
+plainly that at last we had discovered a recess of German nature untarnished
+by the sordid suggestion of food or drink.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I should never have believed it possible,&rdquo; said Harris:
+&ldquo;would you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I should say,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;that this is the only
+square quarter of a mile in the entire Fatherland unprovided with one.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And we three strangers have struck it,&rdquo; said George,
+&ldquo;without an effort.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;True,&rdquo; I observed. &ldquo;By pure good fortune
+we are now enabled to feast our finer senses undisturbed by appeal to
+our lower nature. Observe the light upon those distant peaks;
+is it not ravishing?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Talking of nature,&rdquo; said George, &ldquo;which should
+you say was the nearest way down?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;The road to the left,&rdquo; I replied, after consulting the
+guide book, &ldquo;takes us to Sonnensteig&mdash;where, by-the-by, I
+observe the &lsquo;Goldener Adler&rsquo; is well spoken of&mdash;in
+about two hours. The road to the right, though somewhat longer,
+commands more extensive prospects.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;One prospect,&rdquo; said Harris, &ldquo;is very much like
+another prospect; don&rsquo;t you think so?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Personally,&rdquo; said George, &ldquo;I am going by the left-hand
+road.&rdquo; And Harris and I went after him.</p>
+
+<p>But we were not to get down so soon as we had anticipated.
+Storms come quickly in these regions, and before we had walked for quarter
+of an hour it became a question of seeking shelter or living for the
+rest of the day in soaked clothes. We decided on the former alternative,
+and selected a tree that, under ordinary circumstances, should have
+been ample protection. But a Black Forest thunderstorm is not
+an ordinary circumstance. We consoled ourselves at first by telling
+each other that at such a rate it could not last long. Next, we
+endeavoured to comfort ourselves with the reflection that if it did
+we should soon be too wet to fear getting wetter.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;As it turned out,&rdquo; said Harris, &ldquo;I should have
+been almost glad if there had been a restaurant up here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I see no advantage in being both wet <i>and</i> hungry,&rdquo;
+said George. &ldquo;I shall give it another five minutes, then
+I am going on.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;These mountain solitudes,&rdquo; I remarked, &ldquo;are very
+attractive in fine weather. On a rainy day, especially if you
+happen to be past the age when&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>At this point there hailed us a voice, proceeding from a stout gentleman,
+who stood some fifty feet away from us under a big umbrella.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Won&rsquo;t you come inside?&rdquo; asked the stout gentleman.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Inside where?&rdquo; I called back. I thought at first
+he was one of those fools that will try to be funny when there is nothing
+to be funny about.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Inside the restaurant,&rdquo; he answered.</p>
+
+<p>We left our shelter and made for him. We wished for further
+information about this thing.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I did call to you from the window,&rdquo; said the stout gentleman,
+as we drew near to him, &ldquo;but I suppose you did not hear me.
+This storm may last for another hour; you will get <i>so</i> wet.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He was a kindly old gentleman; he seemed quite anxious about us.</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;It is very kind of you to have come out. We
+are not lunatics. We have not been standing under that tree for
+the last half-hour knowing all the time there was a restaurant, hidden
+by the trees, within twenty yards of us. We had no idea we were
+anywhere near a restaurant.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I thought maybe you hadn&rsquo;t,&rdquo; said the old gentleman;
+&ldquo;that is why I came.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It appeared that all the people in the inn had been watching us from
+the windows also, wondering why we stood there looking miserable.
+If it had not been for this nice old gentleman the fools would have
+remained watching us, I suppose, for the rest of the afternoon.
+The landlord excused himself by saying he thought we looked like English.
+It is no figure of speech. On the Continent they do sincerely
+believe that every Englishman is mad. They are as convinced of
+it as is every English peasant that Frenchmen live on frogs. Even
+when one makes a direct personal effort to disabuse them of the impression
+one is not always successful.</p>
+
+<p>It was a comfortable little restaurant, where they cooked well, while
+the Tischwein was really most passable. We stopped there for a
+couple of hours, and dried ourselves and fed ourselves, and talked about
+the view; and just before we left an incident occurred that shows how
+much more stirring in this world are the influences of evil compared
+with those of good.</p>
+
+<p>A traveller entered. He seemed a careworn man. He carried
+a brick in his hand, tied to a piece of rope. He entered nervously
+and hurriedly, closed the door carefully behind him, saw to it that
+it was fastened, peered out of the window long and earnestly, and then,
+with a sigh of relief, laid his brick upon the bench beside him and
+called for food and drink.</p>
+
+<p>There was something mysterious about the whole affair. One
+wondered what he was going to do with the brick, why he had closed the
+door so carefully, why he had looked so anxiously from the window; but
+his aspect was too wretched to invite conversation, and we forbore,
+therefore, to ask him questions. As he ate and drank he grew more
+cheerful, sighed less often. Later he stretched his legs, lit
+an evil-smelling cigar, and puffed in calm contentment.</p>
+
+<p>Then it happened. It happened too suddenly for any detailed
+explanation of the thing to be possible. I recollect a Fr&auml;ulein
+entering the room from the kitchen with a pan in her hand. I saw
+her cross to the outer door. The next moment the whole room was
+in an uproar. One was reminded of those pantomime transformation
+scenes where, from among floating clouds, slow music, waving flowers,
+and reclining fairies, one is suddenly transported into the midst of
+shouting policemen tumbling yelling babies, swells fighting pantaloons,
+sausages and harlequins, buttered slides and clowns. As the Fr&auml;ulein
+of the pan touched the door it flew open, as though all the spirits
+of sin had been pressed against it, waiting. Two pigs and a chicken
+rushed into the room; a cat that had been sleeping on a beer-barrel
+spluttered into fiery life. The Fr&auml;ulein threw her pan into
+the air and lay down on the floor. The gentleman with the brick
+sprang to his feet, upsetting the table before him with everything upon
+it.</p>
+
+<p>One looked to see the cause of this disaster: one discovered it at
+once in the person of a mongrel terrier with pointed ears and a squirrel&rsquo;s
+tail. The landlord rushed out from another door, and attempted
+to kick him out of the room. Instead, he kicked one of the pigs,
+the fatter of the two. It was a vigorous, well-planted kick, and
+the pig got the whole of it; none of it was wasted. One felt sorry
+for the poor animal; but no amount of sorrow anyone else might feel
+for him could compare with the sorrow he felt for himself. He
+stopped running about; he sat down in the middle of the room, and appealed
+to the solar system generally to observe this unjust thing that had
+come upon him. They must have heard his complaint in the valleys
+round about, and have wondered what upheaval of nature was taking place
+among the hills.</p>
+
+<p>As for the hen it scuttled, screaming, every way at once. It
+was a marvellous bird: it seemed to be able to run up a straight wall
+quite easily; and it and the cat between them fetched down mostly everything
+that was not already on the floor. In less than forty seconds
+there were nine people in that room, all trying to kick one dog.
+Possibly, now and again, one or another may have succeeded, for occasionally
+the dog would stop barking in order to howl. But it did not discourage
+him. Everything has to be paid for, he evidently argued, even
+a pig and chicken hunt; and, on the whole, the game was worth it.</p>
+
+<p>Besides, he had the satisfaction of observing that, for every kick
+he received, most other living things in the room got two. As
+for the unfortunate pig&mdash;the stationary one, the one that still
+sat lamenting in the centre of the room&mdash;he must have averaged
+a steady four. Trying to kick this dog was like playing football
+with a ball that was never there&mdash;not when you went to kick it,
+but after you had started to kick it, and had gone too far to stop yourself,
+so that the kick had to go on in any case, your only hope being that
+your foot would find something or another solid to stop it, and so save
+you from sitting down on the floor noisily and completely. When
+anybody did kick the dog it was by pure accident, when they were not
+expecting to kick him; and, generally speaking, this took them so unawares
+that, after kicking him, they fell over him. And everybody, every
+half-minute, would be certain to fall over the pig the sitting pig,
+the one incapable of getting out of anybody&rsquo;s way.</p>
+
+<p>How long the scrimmage might have lasted it is impossible to say.
+It was ended by the judgment of George. For a while he had been
+seeking to catch, not the dog but the remaining pig, the one still capable
+of activity. Cornering it at last, he persuaded it to cease running
+round and round the room, and instead to take a spin outside.
+It shot through the door with one long wail.</p>
+
+<p>We always desire the thing we have not. One pig, a chicken,
+nine people, and a cat, were as nothing in that dog&rsquo;s opinion
+compared with the quarry that was disappearing. Unwisely, he darted
+after it, and George closed the door upon him and shot the bolt.</p>
+
+<p>Then the landlord stood up, and surveyed all the things that were
+lying on the floor.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That&rsquo;s a playful dog of yours,&rdquo; said he to the
+man who had come in with the brick.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He is not my dog,&rdquo; replied the man sullenly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Whose dog is it then?&rdquo; said the landlord.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know whose dog it is,&rdquo; answered the man.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That won&rsquo;t do for me, you know,&rdquo; said the landlord,
+picking up a picture of the German Emperor, and wiping beer from it
+with his sleeve.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know it won&rsquo;t,&rdquo; replied the man; &ldquo;I never
+expected it would. I&rsquo;m tired of telling people it isn&rsquo;t
+my dog. They none of them believe me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you want to go about with him for, if he&rsquo;s not
+your dog?&rdquo; said the landlord. &ldquo;What&rsquo;s the attraction
+about him?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t go about with him,&rdquo; replied the man; &ldquo;he
+goes about with me. He picked me up this morning at ten o&rsquo;clock,
+and he won&rsquo;t leave me. I thought I had got rid of him when
+I came in here. I left him busy killing a duck more than a quarter
+of an hour away. I&rsquo;ll have to pay for that, I expect, on
+my way back.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have you tried throwing stones at him?&rdquo; asked Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Have I tried throwing stones at him!&rdquo; replied the man,
+contemptuously. &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve been throwing stones at him
+till my arm aches with throwing stones; and he thinks it&rsquo;s a game,
+and brings them back to me. I&rsquo;ve been carrying this beastly
+brick about with me for over an hour, in the hope of being able to drown
+him, but he never comes near enough for me to get hold of him.
+He just sits six inches out of reach with his mouth open, and looks
+at me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It&rsquo;s the funniest story I&rsquo;ve heard for a long
+while,&rdquo; said the landlord.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Glad it amuses somebody,&rdquo; said the man.</p>
+
+<p>We left him helping the landlord to pick up the broken things, and
+went our way. A dozen yards outside the door the faithful animal
+was waiting for his friend. He looked tired, but contented.
+He was evidently a dog of strange and sudden fancies, and we feared
+for the moment lest he might take a liking to us. But he let us
+pass with indifference. His loyalty to this unresponsive man was
+touching; and we made no attempt to undermine it.</p>
+
+<p>Having completed to our satisfaction the Black Forest, we journeyed
+on our wheels through Alt Breisach and Colmar to M&uuml;nster; whence
+we started a short exploration of the Vosges range, where, according
+to the present German Emperor, humanity stops. Of old, Alt Breisach,
+a rocky fortress with the river now on one side of it and now on the
+other&mdash;for in its inexperienced youth the Rhine never seems to
+have been quite sure of its way,&mdash;must, as a place of residence,
+have appealed exclusively to the lover of change and excitement.
+Whoever the war was between, and whatever it was about, Alt Breisach
+was bound to be in it. Everybody besieged it, most people captured
+it; the majority of them lost it again; nobody seemed able to keep it.
+Whom he belonged to, and what he was, the dweller in Alt Breisach could
+never have been quite sure. One day he would be a Frenchman, and
+then before he could learn enough French to pay his taxes he would be
+an Austrian. While trying to discover what you did in order to
+be a good Austrian, he would find he was no longer an Austrian, but
+a German, though what particular German out of the dozen must always
+have been doubtful to him. One day he would discover that he was
+a Catholic, the next an ardent Protestant. The only thing that
+could have given any stability to his existence must have been the monotonous
+necessity of paying heavily for the privilege of being whatever for
+the moment he was. But when one begins to think of these things
+one finds oneself wondering why anybody in the Middle Ages, except kings
+and tax collectors, ever took the trouble to live at all.</p>
+
+<p>For variety and beauty, the Vosges will not compare with the hills
+of the Schwarzwald. The advantage about them from the tourist&rsquo;s
+point of view is their superior poverty. The Vosges peasant has
+not the unromantic air of contented prosperity that spoils his <i>vis-a-vis</i>
+across the Rhine. The villages and farms possess more the charm
+of decay. Another point wherein the Vosges district excels is
+its ruins. Many of its numerous castles are perched where you
+might think only eagles would care to build. In others, commenced
+by the Romans and finished by the Troubadours, covering acres with the
+maze of their still standing walls, one may wander for hours.</p>
+
+<p>The fruiterer and greengrocer is a person unknown in the Vosges.
+Most things of that kind grow wild, and are to be had for the picking.
+It is difficult to keep to any programme when walking through the Vosges,
+the temptation on a hot day to stop and eat fruit generally being too
+strong for resistance. Raspberries, the most delicious I have
+ever tasted, wild strawberries, currants, and gooseberries, grow upon
+the hill-sides as black-berries by English lanes. The Vosges small
+boy is not called upon to rob an orchard; he can make himself ill without
+sin. Orchards exist in the Vosges mountains in plenty; but to
+trespass into one for the purpose of stealing fruit would be as foolish
+as for a fish to try and get into a swimming bath without paying.
+Still, of course, mistakes do occur.</p>
+
+<p>One afternoon in the course of a climb we emerged upon a plateau,
+where we lingered perhaps too long, eating more fruit than may have
+been good for us; it was so plentiful around us, so varied. We
+commenced with a few late strawberries, and from those we passed to
+raspberries. Then Harris found a greengage-tree with some early
+fruit upon it, just perfect.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is about the best thing we have struck,&rdquo; said George;
+&ldquo;we had better make the most of this.&rdquo; Which was good
+advice, on the face of it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is a pity,&rdquo; said Harris, &ldquo;that the pears are
+still so hard.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>He grieved about this for a while, but later on came across some
+remarkably fine yellow plums and these consoled him somewhat.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I suppose we are still a bit too far north for pineapples,&rdquo;
+said George. &ldquo;I feel I could just enjoy a fresh pineapple.
+This commonplace fruit palls upon one after a while.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Too much bush fruit and not enough tree, is the fault I find,&rdquo;
+said Harris. &ldquo;Myself, I should have liked a few more greengages.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Here is a man coming up the hill,&rdquo; I observed, &ldquo;who
+looks like a native. Maybe, he will know where we can find some
+more greengages.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He walks well for an old chap,&rdquo; remarked Harris.</p>
+
+<p>He certainly was climbing the hill at a remarkable pace. Also,
+so far as we were able to judge at that distance, he appeared to be
+in a remarkably cheerful mood, singing and shouting at the top of his
+voice, gesticulating, and waving his arms.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What a merry old soul it is,&rdquo; said Harris; &ldquo;it
+does one good to watch him. But why does he carry his stick over
+his shoulder? Why doesn&rsquo;t he use it to help him up the hill?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Do you know, I don&rsquo;t think it is a stick,&rdquo; said
+George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What can it be, then?&rdquo; asked Harris.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, it looks to me,&rdquo; said George, &ldquo;more like
+a gun.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think we can have made a mistake?&rdquo; suggested
+Harris. &ldquo;You don&rsquo;t think this can be anything in the
+nature of a private orchard?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I said: &ldquo;Do you remember the sad thing that happened in the
+South of France some two years ago? A soldier picked some cherries
+as he passed a house, and the French peasant to whom the cherries belonged
+came out, and without a word of warning shot him dead.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But surely you are not allowed to shoot a man dead for picking
+fruit, even in France?&rdquo; said George.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course not,&rdquo; I answered. &ldquo;It was quite
+illegal. The only excuse offered by his counsel was that he was
+of a highly excitable disposition, and especially keen about these particular
+cherries.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I recollect something about the case,&rdquo; said Harris,
+&ldquo;now you mention it. I believe the district in which it
+happened&mdash;the &lsquo;Commune,&rsquo; as I think it is called&mdash;had
+to pay heavy compensation to the relatives of the deceased soldier;
+which was only fair.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>George said: &ldquo;I am tired of this place. Besides, it&rsquo;s
+getting late.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Harris said: &ldquo;If he goes at that rate he will fall and hurt
+himself. Besides, I don&rsquo;t believe he knows the way.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>I felt lonesome up there all by myself, with nobody to speak to.
+Besides, not since I was a boy, I reflected, had I enjoyed a run down
+a really steep hill. I thought I would see if I could revive the
+sensation. It is a jerky exercise, but good, I should say, for
+the liver.</p>
+
+<p>We slept that night at Barr, a pleasant little town on the way to
+St. Ottilienberg, an interesting old convent among the mountains, where
+you are waited upon by real nuns, and your bill made out by a priest.
+At Barr, just before supper a tourist entered. He looked English,
+but spoke a language the like of which I have never heard before.
+Yet it was an elegant and fine-sounding language. The landlord
+stared at him blankly; the landlady shook her head. He sighed,
+and tried another, which somehow recalled to me forgotten memories,
+though, at the time, I could not fix it. But again nobody understood
+him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;This is damnable,&rdquo; he said aloud to himself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ah, you are English!&rdquo; exclaimed the landlord, brightening
+up.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And Monsieur looks tired,&rdquo; added the bright little landlady.
+&ldquo;Monsieur will have supper.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>They both spoke English excellently, nearly as well as they spoke
+French and German; and they bustled about and made him comfortable.
+At supper he sat next to me, and I talked to him.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Tell me,&rdquo; I said&mdash;I was curious on the subject&mdash;&ldquo;what
+language was it you spoke when you first came in?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;German,&rdquo; he explained.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh,&rdquo; I replied, &ldquo;I beg your pardon.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You did not understand it?&rdquo; he continued.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It must have been my fault,&rdquo; I answered; &ldquo;my knowledge
+is extremely limited. One picks up a little here and there as
+one goes about, but of course that is a different thing.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But <i>they</i> did not understand it,&rdquo; he replied,
+&ldquo;the landlord and his wife; and it is their own language.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I do not think so,&rdquo; I said. &ldquo;The children
+hereabout speak German, it is true, and our landlord and landlady know
+German to a certain point. But throughout Alsace and Lorraine
+the old people still talk French.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;And I spoke to them in French also,&rdquo; he added, &ldquo;and
+they understood that no better.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is certainly very curious,&rdquo; I agreed.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is more than curious,&rdquo; he replied; &ldquo;in my case
+it is incomprehensible. I possess a diploma for modern languages.
+I won my scholarship purely on the strength of my French and German.
+The correctness of my construction, the purity of my pronunciation,
+was considered at my college to be quite remarkable. Yet, when
+I come abroad hardly anybody understands a word I say. Can you
+explain it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think I can,&rdquo; I replied. &ldquo;Your pronunciation
+is too faultless. You remember what the Scotsman said when for
+the first time in his life he tasted real whisky: &lsquo;It may be puir,
+but I canna drink it&rsquo;; so it is with your German. It strikes
+one less as a language than as an exhibition. If I might offer
+advice, I should say: Mispronounce as much as possible, and throw in
+as many mistakes as you can think of.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>It is the same everywhere. Each country keeps a special pronunciation
+exclusively for the use of foreigners&mdash;a pronunciation they never
+dream of using themselves, that they cannot understand when it is used.
+I once heard an English lady explaining to a Frenchman how to pronounce
+the word Have.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You will pronounce it,&rdquo; said the lady reproachfully,
+&ldquo;as if it were spelt H-a-v. It isn&rsquo;t. There
+is an &lsquo;e&rsquo; at the end.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But I thought,&rdquo; said the pupil, &ldquo;that you did
+not sound the &lsquo;e&rsquo; at the end of h-a-v-e.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No more you do,&rdquo; explained his teacher. &ldquo;It
+is what we call a mute &lsquo;e&rsquo;; but it exercises a modifying
+influence on the preceding vowel.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Before that, he used to say &ldquo;have&rdquo; quite intelligently.
+Afterwards, when he came to the word he would stop dead, collect his
+thoughts, and give expression to a sound that only the context could
+explain.</p>
+
+<p>Putting aside the sufferings of the early martyrs, few men, I suppose,
+have gone through more than I myself went through in trying to I attain
+the correct pronunciation of the German word for church&mdash;&ldquo;Kirche.&rdquo;
+Long before I had done with it I had determined never to go to church
+in Germany, rather than be bothered with it.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;No, no,&rdquo; my teacher would explain&mdash;he was a painstaking
+gentleman; &ldquo;you say it as if it were spelt K-i-r-c-h-k-e.
+There is no k. It is&mdash;.&rdquo; And he would illustrate
+to me again, for the twentieth time that morning, how it should be pronounced;
+the sad thing being that I could never for the life of me detect any
+difference between the way he said it and the way I said it. So
+he would try a new method.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You say it from your throat,&rdquo; he would explain.
+He was quite right; I did. &ldquo;I want you to say it from down
+here,&rdquo; and with a fat forefinger he would indicate the region
+from where I was to start. After painful efforts, resulting in
+sounds suggestive of anything rather than a place of worship, I would
+excuse myself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I really fear it is impossible,&rdquo; I would say.
+&ldquo;You see, for years I have always talked with my mouth, as it
+were; I never knew a man could talk with his stomach. I doubt
+if it is not too late now for me to learn.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>By spending hours in dark corners, and practising in silent streets,
+to the terror of chance passers-by, I came at last to pronounce this
+word correctly. My teacher was delighted with me, and until I
+came to Germany I was pleased with myself. In Germany I found
+that nobody understood what I meant by it. I never got near a
+church with it. I had to drop the correct pronunciation, and painstakingly
+go back to my first wrong pronunciation. Then they would brighten
+up, and tell me it was round the corner, or down the next street, as
+the case might be.</p>
+
+<p>I also think pronunciation of a foreign tongue could be better taught
+than by demanding from the pupil those internal acrobatic feats that
+are generally impossible and always useless. This is the sort
+of instruction one receives:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Press your tonsils against the underside of your larynx.
+Then with the convex part of the septum curved upwards so as almost&mdash;but
+not quite&mdash;to touch the uvula, try with the tip of your tongue
+to reach your thyroid. Take a deep breath, and compress your glottis.
+Now, without opening your lips, say &lsquo;Garoo.&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And when you have done it they are not satisfied.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIII</h2>
+
+<p class="letter">
+An examination into the character and behaviour of the German student&mdash;The
+German Mensur&mdash;Uses and abuses of use&mdash;Views of an impressionist&mdash;The
+humour of the thing&mdash;Recipe for making savages&mdash;The Jungfrau:
+her peculiar taste in laces&mdash;The Kneipe&mdash;How to rub a Salamander&mdash;Advice
+to the stranger&mdash;A story that might have ended sadly&mdash;Of two
+men and two wives&mdash;Together with a bachelor.</p>
+
+<p>On our way home we included a German University town, being wishful
+to obtain an insight into the ways of student life, a curiosity that
+the courtesy of German friends enabled us to gratify.</p>
+
+<p>The English boy plays till he is fifteen, and works thence till twenty.
+In Germany it is the child that works; the young man that plays.
+The German boy goes to school at seven o&rsquo;clock in the summer,
+at eight in the winter, and at school he studies. The result is
+that at sixteen he has a thorough knowledge of the classics and mathematics,
+knows as much history as any man compelled to belong to a political
+party is wise in knowing, together with a thorough grounding in modern
+languages. Therefore his eight College Semesters, extending over
+four years, are, except for the young man aiming at a professorship,
+unnecessarily ample. He is not a sportsman, which is a pity, for
+he should make good one. He plays football a little, bicycles
+still less; plays French billiards in stuffy caf&eacute;s more.
+But generally speaking he, or the majority of him, lays out his time
+bummeling, beer drinking, and fighting. If he be the son of a
+wealthy father he joins a Korps&mdash;to belong to a crack Korps costs
+about four hundred pounds a year. If he be a middle-class young
+man, he enrols himself in a Burschenschaft, or a Landsmannschaft, which
+is a little cheaper. These companies are again broken up into
+smaller circles, in which attempt is made to keep to nationality.
+There are the Swabians, from Swabia; the Frankonians, descendants of
+the Franks; the Thuringians, and so forth. In practice, of course,
+this results as all such attempts do result&mdash;I believe half our
+Gordon Highlanders are Cockneys&mdash;but the picturesque object is
+obtained of dividing each University into some dozen or so separate
+companies of students, each one with its distinctive cap and colours,
+and, quite as important, its own particular beer hall, into which no
+other student wearing his colours may come.</p>
+
+<p>The chief work of these student companies is to fight among themselves,
+or with some rival Korps or Schaft, the celebrated German Mensur.</p>
+
+<p>The Mensur has been described so often and so thoroughly that I do
+not intend to bore my readers with any detailed account of it.
+I merely come forward as an impressionist, and I write purposely the
+impression of my first Mensur, because I believe that first impressions
+are more true and useful than opinions blunted by intercourse, or shaped
+by influence.</p>
+
+<p>A Frenchman or a Spaniard will seek to persuade you that the bull-ring
+is an institution got up chiefly for the benefit of the bull.
+The horse which you imagined to be screaming with pain was only laughing
+at the comical appearance presented by its own inside. Your French
+or Spanish friend contrasts its glorious and exciting death in the ring
+with the cold-blooded brutality of the knacker&rsquo;s yard. If
+you do not keep a tight hold of your head, you come away with the desire
+to start an agitation for the inception of the bull-ring in England
+as an aid to chivalry. No doubt Torquemada was convinced of the
+humanity of the Inquisition. To a stout gentleman, suffering,
+perhaps, from cramp or rheumatism, an hour or so on the rack was really
+a physical benefit. He would rise feeling more free in his joints&mdash;more
+elastic, as one might say, than he had felt for years. English
+huntsmen regard the fox as an animal to be envied. A day&rsquo;s
+excellent sport is provided for him free of charge, during which he
+is the centre of attraction.</p>
+
+<p>Use blinds one to everything one does not wish to see. Every
+third German gentleman you meet in the street still bears, and will
+bear to his grave, marks of the twenty to a hundred duels he has fought
+in his student days. The German children play at the Mensur in
+the nursery, rehearse it in the gymnasium. The Germans have come
+to persuade themselves there is no brutality in it&mdash;nothing offensive,
+nothing degrading. Their argument is that it schools the German
+youth to coolness and courage. If this could be proved, the argument,
+particularly in a country where every man is a soldier, would be sufficiently
+one-sided. But is the virtue of the prize-fighter the virtue of
+the soldier? One doubts it. Nerve and dash are surely of
+more service in the field than a temperament of unreasoning indifference
+as to what is happening to one. As a matter of fact, the German
+student would have to be possessed of much more courage not to fight.
+He fights not to please himself, but to satisfy a public opinion that
+is two hundred years behind the times.</p>
+
+<p>All the Mensur does is to brutalise him. There may be skill
+displayed&mdash;I am told there is,&mdash;but it is not apparent.
+The mere fighting is like nothing so much as a broadsword combat at
+a Richardson&rsquo;s show; the display as a whole a successful attempt
+to combine the ludicrous with the unpleasant. In aristocratic
+Bonn, where style is considered, and in Heidelberg, where visitors from
+other nations are more common, the affair is perhaps more formal.
+I am told that there the contests take place in handsome rooms; that
+grey-haired doctors wait upon the wounded, and liveried servants upon
+the hungry, and that the affair is conducted throughout with a certain
+amount of picturesque ceremony. In the more essentially German
+Universities, where strangers are rare and not much encouraged, the
+simple essentials are the only things kept in view, and these are not
+of an inviting nature.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, so distinctly uninviting are they, that I strongly advise
+the sensitive reader to avoid even this description of them. The
+subject cannot be made pretty, and I do not intend to try.</p>
+
+<p>The room is bare and sordid; its walls splashed with mixed stains
+of beer, blood, and candle-grease; its ceiling, smoky; its floor, sawdust
+covered. A crowd of students, laughing, smoking, talking, some
+sitting on the floor, others perched upon chairs and benches form the
+framework.</p>
+
+<p>In the centre, facing one another, stand the combatants, resembling
+Japanese warriors, as made familiar to us by the Japanese tea-tray.
+Quaint and rigid, with their goggle-covered eyes, their necks tied up
+in comforters, their bodies smothered in what looks like dirty bed quilts,
+their padded arms stretched straight above their heads, they might be
+a pair of ungainly clockwork figures. The seconds, also more or
+less padded&mdash;their heads and faces protected by huge leather-peaked
+caps,&mdash;drag them out into their proper position. One almost
+listens to hear the sound of the castors. The umpire takes his
+place, the word is given, and immediately there follow five rapid clashes
+of the long straight swords. There is no interest in watching
+the fight: there is no movement, no skill, no grace (I am speaking of
+my own impressions.) The strongest man wins; the man who, with
+his heavily-padded arm, always in an unnatural position, can hold his
+huge clumsy sword longest without growing too weak to be able either
+to guard or to strike.</p>
+
+<p>The whole interest is centred in watching the wounds. They
+come always in one of two places&mdash;on the top of the head or the
+left side of the face. Sometimes a portion of hairy scalp or section
+of cheek flies up into the air, to be carefully preserved in an envelope
+by its proud possessor, or, strictly speaking, its proud former possessor,
+and shown round on convivial evenings; and from every wound, of course,
+flows a plentiful stream of blood. It splashes doctors, seconds,
+and spectators; it sprinkles ceiling and walls; it saturates the fighters,
+and makes pools for itself in the sawdust. At the end of each
+round the doctors rush up, and with hands already dripping with blood
+press together the gaping wounds, dabbing them with little balls of
+wet cotton wool, which an attendant carries ready on a plate.
+Naturally, the moment the men stand up again and commence work, the
+blood gushes out again, half blinding them, and rendering the ground
+beneath them slippery. Now and then you see a man&rsquo;s teeth
+laid bare almost to the ear, so that for the rest of the duel he appears
+to be grinning at one half of the spectators, his other side, remaining
+serious; and sometimes a man&rsquo;s nose gets slit, which gives to
+him as he fights a singularly supercilious air.</p>
+
+<p>As the object of each student is to go away from the University bearing
+as many scars as possible, I doubt if any particular pains are taken
+to guard, even to the small extent such method of fighting can allow.
+The real victor is he who comes out with the greatest number of wounds;
+he who then, stitched and patched almost to unrecognition as a human
+being, can promenade for the next month, the envy of the German youth,
+the admiration of the German maiden. He who obtains only a few
+unimportant wounds retires sulky and disappointed.</p>
+
+<p>But the actual fighting is only the beginning of the fun. The
+second act of the spectacle takes place in the dressing-room.
+The doctors are generally mere medical students&mdash;young fellows
+who, having taken their degree, are anxious for practice. Truth
+compels me to say that those with whom I came in contact were coarse-looking
+men who seemed rather to relish their work. Perhaps they are not
+to be blamed for this. It is part of the system that as much further
+punishment as possible must be inflicted by the doctor, and the ideal
+medical man might hardly care for such job. How the student bears
+the dressing of his wounds is as important as how he receives them.
+Every operation has to be performed as brutally as may be, and his companions
+carefully watch him during the process to see that he goes through it
+with an appearance of peace and enjoyment. A clean-cut wound that
+gapes wide is most desired by all parties. On purpose it is sewn
+up clumsily, with the hope that by this means the scar will last a lifetime.
+Such a wound, judiciously mauled and interfered with during the week
+afterwards, can generally be reckoned on to secure its fortunate possessor
+a wife with a dowry of five figures at the least.</p>
+
+<p>These are the general bi-weekly Mensurs, of which the average student
+fights some dozen a year. There are others to which visitors are
+not admitted. When a student is considered to have disgraced himself
+by some slight involuntary movement of the head or body while fighting,
+then he can only regain his position by standing up to the best swordsman
+in his Korps. He demands and is accorded, not a contest, but a
+punishment. His opponent then proceeds to inflict as many and
+as bloody wounds as can be taken. The object of the victim is
+to show his comrades that he can stand still while his head is half
+sliced from his skull.</p>
+
+<p>Whether anything can properly be said in favour of the German Mensur
+I am doubtful; but if so it concerns only the two combatants.
+Upon the spectators it can and does, I am convinced, exercise nothing
+but evil. I know myself sufficiently well to be sure I am not
+of an unusually bloodthirsty disposition. The effect it had upon
+me can only be the usual effect. At first, before the actual work
+commenced, my sensation was curiosity mingled with anxiety as to how
+the sight would trouble me, though some slight acquaintance with dissecting-rooms
+and operating tables left me less doubt on that point than I might otherwise
+have felt. As the blood began to flow, and nerves and muscles
+to be laid bare, I experienced a mingling of disgust and pity.
+But with the second duel, I must confess, my finer feelings began to
+disappear; and by the time the third was well upon its way, and the
+room heavy with the curious hot odour of blood, I began, as the American
+expression is, to see things red.</p>
+
+<p>I wanted more. I looked from face to face surrounding me, and
+in most of them I found reflected undoubtedly my own sensations.
+If it be a good thing to excite this blood thirst in the modern man,
+then the Mensur is a useful institution. But is it a good thing?
+We prate about our civilisation and humanity, but those of us who do
+not carry hypocrisy to the length of self-deception know that underneath
+our starched shirts there lurks the savage, with all his savage instincts
+untouched. Occasionally he may be wanted, but we never need fear
+his dying out. On the other hand, it seems unwise to over-nourish
+him.</p>
+
+<p>In favour of the duel, seriously considered, there are many points
+to be urged. But the Mensur serves no good purpose whatever.
+It is childishness, and the fact of its being a cruel and brutal game
+makes it none the less childish. Wounds have no intrinsic value
+of their own; it is the cause that dignifies them, not their size.
+William Tell is rightly one of the heroes of the world; but what should
+we think of the members of a club of fathers, formed with the object
+of meeting twice a week to shoot apples from their sons&rsquo; heads
+with cross-bows? These young German gentlemen could obtain all
+the results of which they are so proud by teasing a wild cat!
+To join a society for the mere purpose of getting yourself hacked about
+reduces a man to the intellectual level of a dancing Dervish.
+Travellers tell us of savages in Central Africa who express their feelings
+on festive occasions by jumping about and slashing themselves.
+But there is no need for Europe to imitate them. The Mensur is,
+in fact, the <i>reductio ad absurdum</i> of the duel; and if the Germans
+themselves cannot see that it is funny, one can only regret their lack
+of humour.</p>
+
+<p>But though one may be unable to agree with the public opinion that
+supports and commands the Mensur, it at least is possible to understand.
+The University code that, if it does not encourage it, at least condones
+drunkenness, is more difficult to treat argumentatively. All German
+students do not get drunk; in fact, the majority are sober, if not industrious.
+But the minority, whose claim to be representative is freely admitted,
+are only saved from perpetual inebriety by ability, acquired at some
+cost, to swill half the day and all the night, while retaining to some
+extent their five senses. It does not affect all alike, but it
+is common in any University town to see a young man not yet twenty with
+the figure of a Falstaff and the complexion of a Rubens Bacchus.
+That the German maiden can be fascinated with a face, cut and gashed
+till it suggests having been made out of odd materials that never could
+have fitted, is a proved fact. But surely there can be no attraction
+about a blotched and bloated skin and a &ldquo;bay window&rdquo; thrown
+out to an extent threatening to overbalance the whole structure.
+Yet what else can be expected, when the youngster starts his beer-drinking
+with a &ldquo;Fruhschoppen&rdquo; at 10 a.m., and closes it with a &ldquo;Kneipe&rdquo;
+at four in the morning?</p>
+
+<p>The Kneipe is what we should call a stag party, and can be very harmless
+or very rowdy, according to its composition. One man invites his
+fellow-students, a dozen or a hundred, to a caf&eacute;, and provides
+them with as much beer and as many cheap cigars as their own sense of
+health and comfort may dictate, or the host may be the Korps itself.
+Here, as everywhere, you observe the German sense of discipline and
+order. As each new comer enters all those sitting round the table
+rise, and with heels close together salute. When the table is
+complete, a chairman is chosen, whose duty it is to give out the number
+of the songs. Printed books of these songs, one to each two men,
+lie round the table. The chairman gives out number twenty-nine.
+&ldquo;First verse,&rdquo; he cries, and away all go, each two men holding
+a book between them exactly as two people might hold a hymn-book in
+church. There is a pause at the end of each verse until the chairman
+starts the company on the next. As every German is a trained singer,
+and as most of them have fair voices, the general effect is striking.</p>
+
+<p>Although the manner may be suggestive of the singing of hymns in
+church, the words of the songs are occasionally such as to correct this
+impression. But whether it be a patriotic song, a sentimental
+ballad, or a ditty of a nature that would shock the average young Englishman,
+all are sung through with stern earnestness, without a laugh, without
+a false note. At the end, the chairman calls &ldquo;Prosit!&rdquo;
+Everyone answers &ldquo;Prosit!&rdquo; and the next moment every glass
+is empty. The pianist rises and bows, and is bowed to in return;
+and then the Fr&auml;ulein enters to refill the glasses.</p>
+
+<p>Between the songs, toasts are proposed and responded to; but there
+is little cheering, and less laughter. Smiles and grave nods of
+approval are considered as more seeming among German students.</p>
+
+<p>A particular toast, called a Salamander, accorded to some guest as
+a special distinction, is drunk with exceptional solemnity.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We will now,&rdquo; says the chairman, &ldquo;a Salamander
+rub&rdquo; (&ldquo;Einen Salamander reiben&rdquo;). We all
+rise, and stand like a regiment at attention.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Is the stuff prepared?&rdquo; (&ldquo;Sind die stoffe
+parat?&rdquo;) demands the chairman.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Sunt,&rdquo; we answer, with one voice.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Ad exercitium Salamandri,&rdquo; says the chairman, and we
+are ready.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Eins!&rdquo; We rub our glasses with a circular motion
+on the table.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Zwei!&rdquo; Again the glasses growl; also at &ldquo;Drei!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Drink!&rdquo; (&ldquo;Bibite!&rdquo;)</p>
+
+<p>And with mechanical unison every glass is emptied and held on high.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Eins!&rdquo; says the chairman. The foot of every empty
+glass twirls upon the table, producing a sound as of the dragging back
+of a stony beach by a receding wave.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Zwei!&rdquo; The roll swells and sinks again.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Drei!&rdquo; The glasses strike the table with a single
+crash, and we are in our seats again.</p>
+
+<p>The sport at the Kneipe is for two students to insult each other
+(in play, of course), and to then challenge each other to a drinking
+duel. An umpire is appointed, two huge glasses are filled, and
+the men sit opposite each other with their hands upon the handles, all
+eyes fixed upon them. The umpire gives the word to go, and in
+an instant the beer is gurgling down their throats. The man who
+bangs his perfectly finished glass upon the table first is victor.</p>
+
+<p>Strangers who are going through a Kneipe, and who wish to do the
+thing in German style, will do well, before commencing proceedings,
+to pin their name and address upon their coats. The German student
+is courtesy itself, and whatever his own state may be, he will see to
+it that, by some means or another, his guest gets safely home before
+the morning. But, of course, he cannot be expected to remember
+addresses.</p>
+
+<p>A story was told me of three guests to a Berlin Kneipe which might
+have had tragic results. The strangers determined to do the thing
+thoroughly. They explained their intention, and were applauded,
+and each proceeded to write his address upon his card, and pin it to
+the tablecloth in front of him. That was the mistake they made.
+They should, as I have advised, have pinned it carefully to their coats.
+A man may change his place at a table, quite unconsciously he may come
+out the other side of it; but wherever he goes he takes his coat with
+him.</p>
+
+<p>Some time in the small hours, the chairman suggested that to make
+things more comfortable for those still upright, all the gentlemen unable
+to keep their heads off the table should be sent home. Among those
+to whom the proceedings had become uninteresting were the three Englishmen.
+It was decided to put them into a cab in charge of a comparatively speaking
+sober student, and return them. Had they retained their original
+seats throughout the evening all would have been well; but, unfortunately,
+they had gone walking about, and which gentleman belonged to which card
+nobody knew&mdash;least of all the guests themselves. In the then
+state of general cheerfulness, this did not to anybody appear to much
+matter. There were three gentlemen and three addresses.
+I suppose the idea was that even if a mistake were made, the parties
+could be sorted out in the morning. Anyhow, the three gentlemen
+were put into a cab, the comparatively speaking sober student took the
+three cards in his hand, and the party started amid the cheers and good
+wishes of the company.</p>
+
+<p>There is this advantage about German beer: it does not make a man
+drunk as the word drunk is understood in England. There is nothing
+objectionable about him; he is simply tired. He does not want
+to talk; he wants to be let alone, to go to sleep; it does not matter
+where&mdash;anywhere.</p>
+
+<p>The conductor of the party stopped his cab at the nearest address.
+He took out his worst case; it was a natural instinct to get rid of
+that first. He and the cabman carried it upstairs, and rang the
+bell of the Pension. A sleepy porter answered it. They carried
+their burden in, and looked for a place to drop it. A bedroom
+door happened to be open; the room was empty; could anything be better?&mdash;they
+took it in there. They relieved it of such things as came off
+easily, and laid it in the bed. This done, both men, pleased with
+themselves, returned to the cab.</p>
+
+<p>At the next address they stopped again. This time, in answer
+to their summons, a lady appeared, dressed in a tea gown, with a book
+in her hand. The German student looked at the top one of two cards
+remaining in his hand, and enquired if he had the pleasure of addressing
+Frau Y. It happened that he had, though so far as any pleasure
+was concerned that appeared to be entirely on his side. He explained
+to Frau Y. that the gentleman at that moment asleep against the wall
+was her husband. The reunion moved her to no enthusiasm; she simply
+opened the bedroom door, and then walked away. The cabman and
+the student took him in, and laid him on the bed. They did not
+trouble to undress him, they were feeling tired! They did not
+see the lady of the house again, and retired therefore without adieus.</p>
+
+<p>The last card was that of a bachelor stopping at an hotel.
+They took their last man, therefore, to that hotel, passed him over
+to the night porter, and left him.</p>
+
+<p>To return to the address at which the first delivery was made, what
+had happened there was this. Some eight hours previously had said
+Mr. X. to Mrs. X.: &ldquo;I think I told you, my dear, that I had an
+invitation for this evening to what, I believe, is called a Kneipe?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You did mention something of the sort,&rdquo; replied Mrs.
+X. &ldquo;What is a Kneipe?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Well, it&rsquo;s a sort of bachelor party, my dear, where
+the students meet to sing and talk and&mdash;and smoke, and all that
+sort of thing, you know.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, well, I hope you will enjoy yourself!&rdquo; said Mrs.
+X., who was a nice woman and sensible.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It will be interesting,&rdquo; observed Mr. X. &ldquo;I
+have often had a curiosity to see one. I may,&rdquo; continued
+Mr. X.,&mdash;&ldquo;I mean it is possible, that I may be home a little
+late.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What do you call late?&rdquo; asked Mrs. X.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is somewhat difficult to say,&rdquo; returned Mr. X.
+&ldquo;You see these students, they are a wild lot, and when they get
+together&mdash;And then, I believe, a good many toasts are drunk.
+I don&rsquo;t know how it will affect me. If I can see an opportunity
+I shall come away early, that is if I can do so without giving offence;
+but if not&mdash;&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Said Mrs. X., who, as I remarked before, was a sensible woman: &ldquo;You
+had better get the people here to lend you a latchkey. I shall
+sleep with Dolly, and then you won&rsquo;t disturb me whatever time
+it may be.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think that an excellent idea of yours,&rdquo; agreed Mr.
+X. &ldquo;I should hate disturbing you. I shall just come
+in quietly, and slip into bed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>Some time in the middle of the night, or maybe towards the early
+morning, Dolly, who was Mrs. X.&rsquo;s sister, sat up in bed and listened.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Jenny,&rdquo; said Dolly, &ldquo;are you awake?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Yes, dear,&rdquo; answered Mrs. X. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s
+all right. You go to sleep again.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But whatever is it?&rdquo; asked Dolly. &ldquo;Do you
+think it&rsquo;s fire?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I expect,&rdquo; replied Mrs. X., &ldquo;that it&rsquo;s Percy.
+Very possibly he has stumbled over something in the dark. Don&rsquo;t
+you worry, dear; you go to sleep.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But so soon as Dolly had dozed off again, Mrs. X., who was a good
+wife, thought she would steal off softly and see to it that Percy was
+all right. So, putting on a dressing-gown and slippers, she crept
+along the passage and into her own room. To awake the gentleman
+on the bed would have required an earthquake. She lit a candle
+and stole over to the bedside.</p>
+
+<p>It was not Percy; it was not anyone like Percy. She felt it
+was not the man that ever could have been her husband, under any circumstances.
+In his present condition her sentiment towards him was that of positive
+dislike. Her only desire was to get rid of him.</p>
+
+<p>But something there was about him which seemed familiar to her.
+She went nearer, and took a closer view. Then she remembered.
+Surely it was Mr. Y., a gentleman at whose flat she and Percy had dined
+the day they first arrived in Berlin.</p>
+
+<p>But what was he doing here? She put the candle on the table,
+and taking her head between her hands sat down to think. The explanation
+of the thing came to her with a rush. It was with this Mr. Y.
+that Percy had gone to the Kneipe. A mistake had been made.
+Mr. Y. had been brought back to Percy&rsquo;s address. Percy at
+this very moment&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The terrible possibilities of the situation swam before her.
+Returning to Dolly&rsquo;s room, she dressed herself hastily, and silently
+crept downstairs. Finding, fortunately, a passing night-cab, she
+drove to the address of Mrs. Y. Telling the man to wait, she flew
+upstairs and rang persistently at the bell. It was opened as before
+by Mrs. Y., still in her tea-gown, and with her book still in her hand.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mrs. X.!&rdquo; exclaimed Mrs. Y. &ldquo;Whatever brings
+you here?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My husband!&rdquo; was all poor Mrs. X. could think to say
+at the moment, &ldquo;is he here?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Mrs. X.,&rdquo; returned Mrs. Y., drawing herself up to her
+full height, &ldquo;how dare you?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Oh, please don&rsquo;t misunderstand me!&rdquo; pleaded Mrs.
+X. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s all a terrible mistake. They must have
+brought poor Percy here instead of to our place, I&rsquo;m sure they
+must. Do please look and see.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; said Mrs. Y., who was a much older woman,
+and more motherly, &ldquo;don&rsquo;t excite yourself. They brought
+him here about half an hour ago, and, to tell you the truth, I never
+looked at him. He is in here. I don&rsquo;t think they troubled
+to take off even his boots. If you keep cool, we will get him
+downstairs and home without a soul beyond ourselves being any the wiser.</p>
+
+<p>Indeed, Mrs. Y. seemed quite eager to help Mrs. X.</p>
+
+<p>She pushed open the door, and Mrs. X, went in. The next moment
+she came out with a white, scared face.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t Percy,&rdquo; she said. &ldquo;Whatever
+am I to do?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I wish you wouldn&rsquo;t make these mistakes,&rdquo; said
+Mrs. Y., moving to enter the room herself.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. X. stopped her. &ldquo;And it isn&rsquo;t your husband
+either.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Nonsense,&rdquo; said Mrs. Y.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It isn&rsquo;t really,&rdquo; persisted Mrs. X. &ldquo;I
+know, because I have just left him, asleep on Percy&rsquo;s bed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What&rsquo;s he doing there?&rdquo; thundered Mrs. Y.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They brought him there, and put him there,&rdquo; explained
+Mrs. X., beginning to cry. &ldquo;That&rsquo;s what made me think
+Percy must be here.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>The two women stood and looked at one another; and there was silence
+for awhile, broken only by the snoring of the gentleman the other side
+of the half-open door.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Then who is that, in there?&rdquo; demanded Mrs. Y., who was
+the first to recover herself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I don&rsquo;t know,&rdquo; answered Mrs. X., &ldquo;I have
+never seen him before. Do you think it is anybody you know?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>But Mrs. Y. only banged to the door.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What are we to do?&rdquo; said Mrs. X.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I know what <i>I</i> am going to do,&rdquo; said Mrs. Y.
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;m coming back with you to fetch my husband.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He&rsquo;s very sleepy,&rdquo; explained Mrs. X.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve known him to be that before,&rdquo; replied Mrs.
+Y., as she fastened on her cloak.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;But where&rsquo;s Percy?&rdquo; sobbed poor little Mrs. X.,
+as they descended the stairs together.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;That my dear,&rdquo; said Mrs. Y., &ldquo;will be a question
+for you to ask <i>him</i>.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;If they go about making mistakes like this,&rdquo; said Mrs.
+X., &ldquo;it is impossible to say what they may not have done with
+him.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;We will make enquiries in the morning, my dear,&rdquo; said
+Mrs. Y., consolingly.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I think these Kneipes are disgraceful affairs,&rdquo; said
+Mrs. X. &ldquo;I shall never let Percy go to another, never&mdash;so
+long as I live.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;My dear,&rdquo; remarked Mrs. Y., &ldquo;if you know your
+duty, he will never want to.&rdquo; And rumour has it that he
+never did.</p>
+
+<p>But, as I have said, the mistake was in pinning the card to the tablecloth
+instead of to the coat. And error in this world is always severely
+punished.</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<h2>CHAPTER XIV</h2>
+
+<p class="letter">
+Which is serious: as becomes a parting chapter&mdash;The German from
+the Anglo-Saxon&rsquo;s point of view&mdash;Providence in buttons and
+a helmet&mdash;Paradise of the helpless idiot&mdash;German conscience:
+its aggressiveness&mdash;How they hang in Germany, very possibly&mdash;What
+happens to good Germans when they die?&mdash;The military instinct:
+is it all-sufficient?&mdash;The German as a shopkeeper&mdash;How he
+supports life&mdash;The New Woman, here as everywhere&mdash;What can
+be said against the Germans, as a people&mdash;The Bummel is over and
+done.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Anybody could rule this country,&rdquo; said George; &ldquo;<i>I</i>
+could rule it.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We were seated in the garden of the Kaiser Hof at Bonn, looking down
+upon the Rhine. It was the last evening of our Bummel; the early
+morning train would be the beginning of the end.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I should write down all I wanted the people to do on a piece
+of paper,&rdquo; continued George; &ldquo;get a good firm to print off
+so many copies, have them posted about the towns and villages; and the
+thing would be done.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>In the placid, docile German of to-day, whose only ambition appears
+to be to pay his taxes, and do what he is told to do by those whom it
+has pleased Providence to place in authority over him, it is difficult,
+one must confess, to detect any trace of his wild ancestor, to whom
+individual liberty was as the breath of his nostrils; who appointed
+his magistrates to advise, but retained the right of execution for the
+tribe; who followed his chief, but would have scorned to obey him.
+In Germany to-day one hears a good deal concerning Socialism, but it
+is a Socialism that would only be despotism under another name.
+Individualism makes no appeal to the German voter. He is willing,
+nay, anxious, to be controlled and regulated in all things. He
+disputes, not government, but the form of it. The policeman is
+to him a religion, and, one feels, will always remain so. In England
+we regard our man in blue as a harmless necessity. By the average
+citizen he is employed chiefly as a signpost, though in busy quarters
+of the town he is considered useful for taking old ladies across the
+road. Beyond feeling thankful to him for these services, I doubt
+if we take much thought of him. In Germany, on the other hand,
+he is worshipped as a little god and loved as a guardian angel.
+To the German child he is a combination of Santa Claus and the Bogie
+Man. All good things come from him: Spielpl&auml;tze to play in,
+furnished with swings and giant-strides, sand heaps to fight around,
+swimming baths, and fairs. All misbehaviour is punished by him.
+It is the hope of every well-meaning German boy and girl to please the
+police. To be smiled at by a policeman makes it conceited.
+A German child that has been patted on the head by a policeman is not
+fit to live with; its self-importance is unbearable.</p>
+
+<p>The German citizen is a soldier, and the policeman is his officer.
+The policeman directs him where in the street to walk, and how fast
+to walk. At the end of each bridge stands a policeman to tell
+the German how to cross it. Were there no policeman there, he
+would probably sit down and wait till the river had passed by.
+At the railway station the policeman locks him up in the waiting-room,
+where he can do no harm to himself. When the proper time arrives,
+he fetches him out and hands him over to the guard of the train, who
+is only a policeman in another uniform. The guard tells him where
+to sit in the train, and when to get out, and sees that he does get
+out. In Germany you take no responsibility upon yourself whatever.
+Everything is done for you, and done well. You are not supposed
+to look after yourself; you are not blamed for being incapable of looking
+after yourself; it is the duty of the German policeman to look after
+you. That you may be a helpless idiot does not excuse him should
+anything happen to you. Wherever you are and whatever you are
+doing you are in his charge, and he takes care of you&mdash;good care
+of you; there is no denying this.</p>
+
+<p>If you lose yourself, he finds you; and if you lose anything belonging
+to you, he recovers it for you. If you don&rsquo;t know what you
+want, he tells you. If you want anything that is good for you
+to have, he gets it for you. Private lawyers are not needed in
+Germany. If you want to buy or sell a house or field, the State
+makes out the conveyance. If you have been swindled, the State
+takes up the case for you. The State marries you, insures you,
+will even gamble with you for a trifle.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;You get yourself born,&rdquo; says the German Government to
+the German citizen, &ldquo;we do the rest. Indoors and out of
+doors, in sickness and in health, in pleasure and in work, we will tell
+you what to do, and we will see to it that you do it. Don&rsquo;t
+you worry yourself about anything.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>And the German doesn&rsquo;t. Where there is no policeman to
+be found, he wanders about till he comes to a police notice posted on
+a wall. This he reads; then he goes and does what it says.</p>
+
+<p>I remember in one German town&mdash;I forget which; it is immaterial;
+the incident could have happened in any&mdash;noticing an open gate
+leading to a garden in which a concert was being given. There
+was nothing to prevent anyone who chose from walking through that gate,
+and thus gaining admittance to the concert without paying. In
+fact, of the two gates quarter of a mile apart it was the more convenient.
+Yet of the crowds that passed, not one attempted to enter by that gate.
+They plodded steadily on under a blazing sun to the other gate, at which
+a man stood to collect the entrance money. I have seen German
+youngsters stand longingly by the margin of a lonely sheet of ice.
+They could have skated on that ice for hours, and nobody have been the
+wiser. The crowd and the police were at the other end, more than
+half a mile away, and round the corner. Nothing stopped their
+going on but the knowledge that they ought not. Things such as
+these make one pause to seriously wonder whether the Teuton be a member
+of the sinful human family or not. Is it not possible that these
+placid, gentle folk may in reality be angels, come down to earth for
+the sake of a glass of beer, which, as they must know, can only in Germany
+be obtained worth the drinking?</p>
+
+<p>In Germany the country roads are lined with fruit trees. There
+is no voice to stay man or boy from picking and eating the fruit, except
+conscience. In England such a state of things would cause public
+indignation. Children would die of cholera by the hundred.
+The medical profession would be worked off its legs trying to cope with
+the natural results of over-indulgence in sour apples and unripe walnuts.
+Public opinion would demand that these fruit trees should be fenced
+about, and thus rendered harmless. Fruit growers, to save themselves
+the expense of walls and palings, would not be allowed in this manner
+to spread sickness and death throughout the community.</p>
+
+<p>But in Germany a boy will walk for miles down a lonely road, hedged
+with fruit trees, to buy a pennyworth of pears in the village at the
+other end. To pass these unprotected fruit trees, drooping under
+their burden of ripe fruit, strikes the Anglo-Saxon mind as a wicked
+waste of opportunity, a flouting of the blessed gifts of Providence.</p>
+
+<p>I do not know if it be so, but from what I have observed of the German
+character I should not be surprised to hear that when a man in Germany
+is condemned to death he is given a piece of rope, and told to go and
+hang himself. It would save the State much trouble and expense,
+and I can see that German criminal taking that piece of rope home with
+him, reading up carefully the police instructions, and proceeding to
+carry them out in his own back kitchen.</p>
+
+<p>The Germans are a good people. On the whole, the best people
+perhaps in the world; an amiable, unselfish, kindly people. I
+am positive that the vast majority of them go to Heaven. Indeed,
+comparing them with the other Christian nations of the earth, one is
+forced to the conclusion that Heaven will be chiefly of German manufacture.
+But I cannot understand how they get there. That the soul of any
+single individual German has sufficient initiative to fly up by itself
+and knock at St. Peter&rsquo;s door, I cannot believe. My own
+opinion is that they are taken there in small companies, and passed
+in under the charge of a dead policeman.</p>
+
+<p>Carlyle said of the Prussians, and it is true of the whole German
+nation, that one of their chief virtues was their power of being drilled.
+Of the Germans you might say they are a people who will go anywhere,
+and do anything, they are told. Drill him for the work and send
+him out to Africa or Asia under charge of somebody in uniform, and he
+is bound to make an excellent colonist, facing difficulties as he would
+face the devil himself, if ordered. But it is not easy to conceive
+of him as a pioneer. Left to run himself, one feels he would soon
+fade away and die, not from any lack of intelligence, but from sheer
+want of presumption.</p>
+
+<p>The German has so long been the soldier of Europe, that the military
+instinct has entered into his blood. The military virtues he possesses
+in abundance; but he also suffers from the drawbacks of the military
+training. It was told me of a German servant, lately released
+from the barracks, that he was instructed by his master to deliver a
+letter to a certain house, and to wait there for the answer. The
+hours passed by, and the man did not return. His master, anxious
+and surprised, followed. He found the man where he had been sent,
+the answer in his hand. He was waiting for further orders.
+The story sounds exaggerated, but personally I can credit it.</p>
+
+<p>The curious thing is that the same man, who as an individual is as
+helpless as a child, becomes, the moment he puts on the uniform, an
+intelligent being, capable of responsibility and initiative. The
+German can rule others, and be ruled by others, but he cannot rule himself.
+The cure would appear to be to train every German for an officer, and
+then put him under himself. It is certain he would order himself
+about with discretion and judgment, and see to it that he himself obeyed
+himself with smartness and precision.</p>
+
+<p>For the direction of German character into these channels, the schools,
+of course, are chiefly responsible. Their everlasting teaching
+is duty. It is a fine ideal for any people; but before buckling
+to it, one would wish to have a clear understanding as to what this
+&ldquo;duty&rdquo; is. The German idea of it would appear to be:
+&ldquo;blind obedience to everything in buttons.&rdquo; It is
+the antithesis of the Anglo-Saxon scheme; but as both the Anglo-Saxon
+and the Teuton are prospering, there must be good in both methods.
+Hitherto, the German has had the blessed fortune to be exceptionally
+well governed; if this continue, it will go well with him. When
+his troubles will begin will be when by any chance something goes wrong
+with the governing machine. But maybe his method has the advantage
+of producing a continuous supply of good governors; it would certainly
+seem so.</p>
+
+<p>As a trader, I am inclined to think the German will, unless his temperament
+considerably change, remain always a long way behind his Anglo-Saxon
+competitor; and this by reason of his virtues. To him life is
+something more important than a mere race for wealth. A country
+that closes its banks and post-offices for two hours in the middle of
+the day, while it goes home and enjoys a comfortable meal in the bosom
+of its family, with, perhaps, forty winks by way of dessert, cannot
+hope, and possibly has no wish, to compete with a people that takes
+its meals standing, and sleeps with a telephone over its bed.
+In Germany there is not, at all events as yet, sufficient distinction
+between the classes to make the struggle for position the life and death
+affair it is in England. Beyond the landed aristocracy, whose
+boundaries are impregnable, grade hardly counts. Frau Professor
+and Frau Candlestickmaker meet at the Weekly Kaffee-Klatsch and exchange
+scandal on terms of mutual equality. The livery-stable keeper
+and the doctor hobnob together at their favourite beer hall. The
+wealthy master builder, when he prepares his roomy waggon for an excursion
+into the country, invites his foreman and his tailor to join him with
+their families. Each brings his share of drink and provisions,
+and returning home they sing in chorus the same songs. So long
+as this state of things endures, a man is not induced to sacrifice the
+best years of his life to win a fortune for his dotage. His tastes,
+and, more to the point still, his wife&rsquo;s, remain inexpensive.
+He likes to see his flat or villa furnished with much red plush upholstery
+and a profusion of gilt and lacquer. But that is his idea; and
+maybe it is in no worse taste than is a mixture of bastard Elizabethan
+with imitation Louis XV, the whole lit by electric light, and smothered
+with photographs. Possibly, he will have his outer walls painted
+by the local artist: a sanguinary battle, a good deal interfered with
+by the front door, taking place below, while Bismarck, as an angel,
+flutters vaguely about the bedroom windows. But for his Old Masters
+he is quite content to go to the public galleries; and &ldquo;the Celebrity
+at Home&rdquo; not having as yet taken its place amongst the institutions
+of the Fatherland, he is not impelled to waste his, money turning his
+house into an old curiosity shop.</p>
+
+<p>The German is a gourmand. There are still English farmers who,
+while telling you that farming spells starvation, enjoy their seven
+solid meals a day. Once a year there comes a week&rsquo;s feast
+throughout Russia, during which many deaths occur from the over-eating
+of pancakes; but this is a religious festival, and an exception.
+Taking him all round, the German as a trencherman stands pre-eminent
+among the nations of the earth. He rises early, and while dressing
+tosses off a few cups of coffee, together with half a dozen hot buttered
+rolls. But it is not until ten o&rsquo;clock that he sits down
+to anything that can properly be called a meal. At one or half-past
+takes place his chief dinner. Of this he makes a business, sitting
+at it for a couple of hours. At four o&rsquo;clock he goes to
+the caf&eacute;, and eats cakes and drinks chocolate. The evening
+he devotes to eating generally&mdash;not a set meal, or rarely, but
+a series of snacks,&mdash;a bottle of beer and a Belegete-semmel or
+two at seven, say; another bottle of beer and an Aufschnitt at the theatre
+between the acts; a small bottle of white wine and a Spiegeleier before
+going home; then a piece of cheese or sausage, washed down by more beer,
+previous to turning in for the night.</p>
+
+<p>But he is no gourmet. French cooks and French prices are not
+the rule at his restaurant. His beer or his inexpensive native
+white wine he prefers to the most costly clarets or champagnes.
+And, indeed, it is well for him he does; for one is inclined to think
+that every time a French grower sells a bottle of wine to a German hotel-
+or shop-keeper, Sedan is rankling in his mind. It is a foolish
+revenge, seeing that it is not the German who as a rule drinks it; the
+punishment falls upon some innocent travelling Englishman. Maybe,
+however, the French dealer remembers also Waterloo, and feels that in
+any event he scores.</p>
+
+<p>In Germany expensive entertainments are neither offered nor expected.
+Everything throughout the Fatherland is homely and friendly. The
+German has no costly sports to pay for, no showy establishment to maintain,
+no purse-proud circle to dress for. His chief pleasure, a seat
+at the opera or concert, can be had for a few marks; and his wife and
+daughters walk there in home-made dresses, with shawls over their heads.
+Indeed, throughout the country the absence of all ostentation is to
+English eyes quite refreshing. Private carriages are few and far
+between, and even the droschke is made use of only when the quicker
+and cleaner electric car is not available.</p>
+
+<p>By such means the German retains his independence. The shopkeeper
+in Germany does not fawn upon his customers. I accompanied an
+English lady once on a shopping excursion in Munich. She had been
+accustomed to shopping in London and New York, and she grumbled at everything
+the man showed her. It was not that she was really dissatisfied;
+this was her method. She explained that she could get most things
+cheaper and better elsewhere; not that she really thought she could,
+merely she held it good for the shopkeeper to say this. She told
+him that his stock lacked taste&mdash;she did not mean to be offensive;
+as I have explained, it was her method;&mdash;that there was no variety
+about it; that it was not up to date; that it was commonplace; that
+it looked as if it would not wear. He did not argue with her;
+he did not contradict her. He put the things back into their respective
+boxes, replaced the boxes on their respective shelves, walked into the
+little parlour behind the shop, and closed the door.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Isn&rsquo;t he ever coming back?&rdquo; asked the lady, after
+a couple of minutes had elapsed.</p>
+
+<p>Her tone did not imply a question, so much as an exclamation of mere
+impatience.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I doubt it,&rdquo; I replied.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Why not?&rdquo; she asked, much astonished.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I expect,&rdquo; I answered, &ldquo;you have bored him.
+In all probability he is at this moment behind that door smoking a pipe
+and reading the paper.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What an extraordinary shopkeeper!&rdquo; said my friend, as
+she gathered her parcels together and indignantly walked out.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It is their way,&rdquo; I explained. &ldquo;There are
+the goods; if you want them, you can have them. If you do not
+want them, they would almost rather that you did not come and talk about
+them.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>On another occasion I listened in the smoke-room of a German hotel
+to a small Englishman telling a tale which, had I been in his place,
+I should have kept to myself.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It doesn&rsquo;t do,&rdquo; said the little Englishman, &ldquo;to
+try and beat a German down. They don&rsquo;t seem to understand
+it. I saw a first edition of <i>The Robbers</i> in a shop in the
+Georg Platz. I went in and asked the price. It was a rum
+old chap behind the counter. He said: &lsquo;Twenty-five marks,&rsquo;
+and went on reading. I told him I had seen a better copy only
+a few days before for twenty&mdash;one talks like that when one is bargaining;
+it is understood. He asked me &lsquo;Where?&rsquo; I told
+him in a shop at Leipsig. He suggested my returning there and
+getting it; he did not seem to care whether I bought the book or whether
+I didn&rsquo;t. I said:</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;What&rsquo;s the least you will take for it?&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;I have told you once,&rsquo; he answered; &lsquo;twenty-five
+marks.&rsquo; He was an irritable old chap.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I said: &lsquo;It&rsquo;s not worth it.&rsquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;&lsquo;I never said it was, did I?&rsquo; he snapped.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;I said: &lsquo;I&rsquo;ll give you ten marks for it.&rsquo;
+I thought, maybe, he would end by taking twenty.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;He rose. I took it he was coming round the counter to
+get the book out. Instead, he came straight up to me. He
+was a biggish sort of man. He took me by the two shoulders, walked
+me out into the street, and closed the door behind me with a bang.
+I was never more surprised in all my life.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Maybe the book was worth twenty-five marks,&rdquo; I suggested.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;Of course it was,&rdquo; he replied; &ldquo;well worth it.
+But what a notion of business!&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>If anything change the German character, it will be the German woman.
+She herself is changing rapidly&mdash;advancing, as we call it.
+Ten years ago no German woman caring for her reputation, hoping for
+a husband, would have dared to ride a bicycle: to-day they spin about
+the country in their thousands. The old folks shake their heads
+at them; but the young men, I notice, overtake them and ride beside
+them. Not long ago it was considered unwomanly in Germany for
+a lady to be able to do the outside edge. Her proper skating attitude
+was thought to be that of clinging limpness to some male relative.
+Now she practises eights in a corner by herself, until some young man
+comes along to help her. She plays tennis, and, from a point of
+safety, I have even noticed her driving a dog-cart.</p>
+
+<p>Brilliantly educated she always has been. At eighteen she speaks
+two or three languages, and has forgotten more than the average Englishwoman
+has ever read. Hitherto, this education has been utterly useless
+to her. On marriage she has retired into the kitchen, and made
+haste to clear her brain of everything else, in order to leave room
+for bad cooking. But suppose it begins to dawn upon her that a
+woman need not sacrifice her whole existence to household drudgery any
+more than a man need make himself nothing else than a business machine.
+Suppose she develop an ambition to take part in the social and national
+life. Then the influence of such a partner, healthy in body and
+therefore vigorous in mind, is bound to be both lasting and far-reaching.</p>
+
+<p>For it must be borne in mind that the German man is exceptionally
+sentimental, and most easily influenced by his women folk. It
+is said of him, he is the best of lovers, the worst of husbands.
+This has been the woman&rsquo;s fault. Once married, the German
+woman has done more than put romance behind her; she has taken a carpet-beater
+and driven it out of the house. As a girl, she never understood
+dressing; as a wife, she takes off such clothes even as she had, and
+proceeds to wrap herself up in any odd articles she may happen to find
+about the house; at all events, this is the impression she produces.
+The figure that might often be that of a Juno, the complexion that would
+sometimes do credit to a healthy angel, she proceeds of malice and intent
+to spoil. She sells her birth-right of admiration and devotion
+for a mess of sweets. Every afternoon you may see her at the caf&eacute;,
+loading herself with rich cream-covered cakes, washed down by copious
+draughts of chocolate. In a short time she becomes fat, pasty,
+placid, and utterly uninteresting.</p>
+
+<p>When the German woman gives up her afternoon coffee and her evening
+beer, takes sufficient exercise to retain her shape, and continues to
+read after marriage something else than the cookery-book, the German
+Government will find it has a new and unknown force to deal with.
+And everywhere throughout Germany one is confronted by unmistakable
+signs that the old German Frauen are giving place to the newer Damen.</p>
+
+<p>Concerning what will then happen one feels curious. For the
+German nation is still young, and its maturity is of importance to the
+world. They are a good people, a lovable people, who should help
+much to make the world better.</p>
+
+<p>The worst that can be said against them is that they have their failings.
+They themselves do not know this; they consider themselves perfect,
+which is foolish of them. They even go so far as to think themselves
+superior to the Anglo-Saxon: this is incomprehensible. One feels
+they must be pretending.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;They have their points,&rdquo; said George; &ldquo;but their
+tobacco is a national sin. I&rsquo;m going to bed.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>We rose, and leaning over the low stone parapet, watched the dancing
+lights upon the soft, dark river.</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;It has been a pleasant Bummel, on the whole,&rdquo; said Harris;
+&ldquo;I shall be glad to get back, and yet I am sorry it is over, if
+you understand me.&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;What is a &lsquo;Bummel&rsquo;?&rdquo; said George.
+&ldquo;How would you translate it?&rdquo;</p>
+
+<p>&ldquo;A &lsquo;Bummel&rsquo;,&rdquo; I explained, &ldquo;I should
+describe as a journey, long or short, without an end; the only thing
+regulating it being the necessity of getting back within a given time
+to the point from which one started. Sometimes it is through busy
+streets, and sometimes through the fields and lanes; sometimes we can
+be spared for a few hours, and sometimes for a few days. But long
+or short, but here or there, our thoughts are ever on the running of
+the sand. We nod and smile to many as we pass; with some we stop
+and talk awhile; and with a few we walk a little way. We have
+been much interested, and often a little tired. But on the whole
+we have had a pleasant time, and are sorry when &rsquo;tis over.&rdquo;</p>
+
+</div><!--end chapter-->
+
+<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THREE MEN ON THE BUMMEL ***</div>
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+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1914 J. W. Arrowsmith edition.
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+
+
+
+THREE MEN ON THE BUMMEL
+
+by Jerome K. Jerome
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+
+
+Three men need change--Anecdote showing evil result of deception--
+Moral cowardice of George--Harris has ideas--Yarn of the Ancient
+Mariner and the Inexperienced Yachtsman--A hearty crew--Danger of
+sailing when the wind is off the land--Impossibility of sailing
+when the wind is off the sea--The argumentativeness of Ethelbertha-
+-The dampness of the river--Harris suggests a bicycle tour--George
+thinks of the wind--Harris suggests the Black Forest--George thinks
+of the hills--Plan adopted by Harris for ascent of hills--
+Interruption by Mrs. Harris.
+
+"What we want," said Harris, "is a change."
+
+At this moment the door opened, and Mrs. Harris put her head in to
+say that Ethelbertha had sent her to remind me that we must not be
+late getting home because of Clarence.  Ethelbertha, I am inclined
+to think, is unnecessarily nervous about the children.  As a matter
+of fact, there was nothing wrong with the child whatever.  He had
+been out with his aunt that morning; and if he looks wistfully at a
+pastrycook's window she takes him inside and buys him cream buns
+and "maids-of-honour" until he insists that he has had enough, and
+politely, but firmly, refuses to eat another anything.  Then, of
+course, he wants only one helping of pudding at lunch, and
+Ethelbertha thinks he is sickening for something.  Mrs. Harris
+added that it would be as well for us to come upstairs soon, on our
+own account also, as otherwise we should miss Muriel's rendering of
+"The Mad Hatter's Tea Party," out of Alice in Wonderland.  Muriel
+is Harris's second, age eight:  she is a bright, intelligent child;
+but I prefer her myself in serious pieces.  We said we would finish
+our cigarettes and follow almost immediately; we also begged her
+not to let Muriel begin until we arrived.  She promised to hold the
+child back as long as possible, and went.  Harris, as soon as the
+door was closed, resumed his interrupted sentence.
+
+"You know what I mean," he said, "a complete change."
+
+The question was how to get it.
+
+George suggested "business."  It was the sort of suggestion George
+would make.  A bachelor thinks a married woman doesn't know enough
+to get out of the way of a steam-roller.  I knew a young fellow
+once, an engineer, who thought he would go to Vienna "on business."
+His wife wanted to know "what business?"  He told her it would be
+his duty to visit the mines in the neighbourhood of the Austrian
+capital, and to make reports.  She said she would go with him; she
+was that sort of woman.  He tried to dissuade her:  he told her
+that a mine was no place for a beautiful woman.  She said she felt
+that herself, and that therefore she did not intend to accompany
+him down the shafts; she would see him off in the morning, and then
+amuse herself until his return, looking round the Vienna shops, and
+buying a few things she might want.  Having started the idea, he
+did not see very well how to get out of it; and for ten long summer
+days he did visit the mines in the neighbourhood of Vienna, and in
+the evening wrote reports about them, which she posted for him to
+his firm, who didn't want them.
+
+I should be grieved to think that either Ethelbertha or Mrs. Harris
+belonged to that class of wife, but it is as well not to overdo
+"business"--it should be kept for cases of real emergency.
+
+"No," I said, "the thing is to be frank and manly.  I shall tell
+Ethelbertha that I have come to the conclusion a man never values
+happiness that is always with him.  I shall tell her that, for the
+sake of learning to appreciate my own advantages as I know they
+should be appreciated, I intend to tear myself away from her and
+the children for at least three weeks.  I shall tell her," I
+continued, turning to Harris, "that it is you who have shown me my
+duty in this respect; that it is to you we shall owe--"
+
+Harris put down his glass rather hurriedly.
+
+"If you don't mind, old man," he interrupted, "I'd really rather
+you didn't.  She'll talk it over with my wife, and--well, I should
+not be happy, taking credit that I do not deserve."
+
+"But you do deserve it," I insisted; "it was your suggestion."
+
+"It was you gave me the idea," interrupted Harris again.  "You know
+you said it was a mistake for a man to get into a groove, and that
+unbroken domesticity cloyed the brain."
+
+"I was speaking generally," I explained.
+
+"It struck me as very apt," said Harris.  "I thought of repeating
+it to Clara; she has a great opinion of your sense, I know.  I am
+sure that if--"
+
+"We won't risk it," I interrupted, in my turn; "it is a delicate
+matter, and I see a way out of it.  We will say George suggested
+the idea."
+
+There is a lack of genial helpfulness about George that it
+sometimes vexes me to notice.  You would have thought he would have
+welcomed the chance of assisting two old friends out of a dilemma;
+instead, he became disagreeable.
+
+"You do," said George, "and I shall tell them both that my original
+plan was that we should make a party--children and all; that I
+should bring my aunt, and that we should hire a charming old
+chateau I know of in Normandy, on the coast, where the climate is
+peculiarly adapted to delicate children, and the milk such as you
+do not get in England.  I shall add that you over-rode that
+suggestion, arguing we should be happier by ourselves."
+
+With a man like George kindness is of no use; you have to be firm.
+
+"You do," said Harris, "and I, for one, will close with the offer.
+We will just take that chateau.  You will bring your aunt--I will
+see to that,--and we will have a month of it.  The children are all
+fond of you; J. and I will be nowhere.  You've promised to teach
+Edgar fishing; and it is you who will have to play wild beasts.
+Since last Sunday Dick and Muriel have talked of nothing else but
+your hippopotamus.  We will picnic in the woods--there will only be
+eleven of us,--and in the evenings we will have music and
+recitations.  Muriel is master of six pieces already, as perhaps
+you know; and all the other children are quick studies."
+
+George climbed down--he has no real courage--but he did not do it
+gracefully.  He said that if we were mean and cowardly and false-
+hearted enough to stoop to such a shabby trick, he supposed he
+couldn't help it; and that if I didn't intend to finish the whole
+bottle of claret myself, he would trouble me to spare him a glass.
+He also added, somewhat illogically, that it really did not matter,
+seeing both Ethelbertha and Mrs. Harris were women of sense who
+would judge him better than to believe for a moment that the
+suggestion emanated from him.
+
+This little point settled, the question was:  What sort of a
+change?
+
+Harris, as usual, was for the sea.  He said he knew a yacht, just
+the very thing--one that we could manage by ourselves; no skulking
+lot of lubbers loafing about, adding to the expense and taking away
+from the romance.  Give him a handy boy, he would sail it himself.
+We knew that yacht, and we told him so; we had been on it with
+Harris before.  It smells of bilge-water and greens to the
+exclusion of all other scents; no ordinary sea air can hope to head
+against it.  So far as sense of smell is concerned, one might be
+spending a week in Limehouse Hole.  There is no place to get out of
+the rain; the saloon is ten feet by four, and half of that is taken
+up by a stove, which falls to pieces when you go to light it.  You
+have to take your bath on deck, and the towel blows overboard just
+as you step out of the tub.  Harris and the boy do all the
+interesting work--the lugging and the reefing, the letting her go
+and the heeling her over, and all that sort of thing,--leaving
+George and myself to do the peeling of the potatoes and the washing
+up.
+
+"Very well, then," said Harris, "let's take a proper yacht, with a
+skipper, and do the thing in style."
+
+That also I objected to.  I know that skipper; his notion of
+yachting is to lie in what he calls the "offing," where he can be
+well in touch with his wife and family, to say nothing of his
+favourite public-house.
+
+Years ago, when I was young and inexperienced, I hired a yacht
+myself.  Three things had combined to lead me into this
+foolishness:  I had had a stroke of unexpected luck; Ethelbertha
+had expressed a yearning for sea air; and the very next morning, in
+taking up casually at the club a copy of the Sportsman, I had come
+across the following advertisement:-
+
+
+TO YACHTSMEN.--Unique Opportunity.--"Rogue," 28-ton Yawl.--Owner,
+called away suddenly on business, is willing to let this superbly-
+fitted "greyhound of the sea" for any period short or long.  Two
+cabins and saloon; pianette, by Woffenkoff; new copper.  Terms, 10
+guineas a week.--Apply Pertwee and Co., 3A Bucklersbury.
+
+
+It had seemed to me like the answer to a prayer.  "The new copper"
+did not interest me; what little washing we might want could wait,
+I thought.  But the "pianette by Woffenkoff" sounded alluring.  I
+pictured Ethelbertha playing in the evening--something with a
+chorus, in which, perhaps, the crew, with a little training, might
+join--while our moving home bounded, "greyhound-like," over the
+silvery billows.
+
+I took a cab and drove direct to 3A Bucklersbury.  Mr. Pertwee was
+an unpretentious-looking gentleman, who had an unostentatious
+office on the third floor.  He showed me a picture in water-colours
+of the Rogue flying before the wind.  The deck was at an angle of
+95 to the ocean.  In the picture no human beings were represented
+on the deck; I suppose they had slipped off.  Indeed, I do not see
+how anyone could have kept on, unless nailed.  I pointed out this
+disadvantage to the agent, who, however, explained to me that the
+picture represented the Rogue doubling something or other on the
+well-known occasion of her winning the Medway Challenge Shield.
+Mr. Pertwee assumed that I knew all about the event, so that I did
+not like to ask any questions.  Two specks near the frame of the
+picture, which at first I had taken for moths, represented, it
+appeared, the second and third winners in this celebrated race.  A
+photograph of the yacht at anchor off Gravesend was less
+impressive, but suggested more stability.  All answers to my
+inquiries being satisfactory, I took the thing for a fortnight.
+Mr. Pertwee said it was fortunate I wanted it only for a fortnight-
+-later on I came to agree with him,--the time fitting in exactly
+with another hiring.  Had I required it for three weeks he would
+have been compelled to refuse me.
+
+The letting being thus arranged, Mr. Pertwee asked me if I had a
+skipper in my eye.  That I had not was also fortunate--things
+seemed to be turning out luckily for me all round,--because Mr.
+Pertwee felt sure I could not do better than keep on Mr. Goyles, at
+present in charge--an excellent skipper, so Mr. Pertwee assured me,
+a man who knew the sea as a man knows his own wife, and who had
+never lost a life.
+
+It was still early in the day, and the yacht was lying off Harwich.
+I caught the ten forty-five from Liverpool Street, and by one
+o'clock was talking to Mr. Goyles on deck.  He was a stout man, and
+had a fatherly way with him.  I told him my idea, which was to take
+the outlying Dutch islands and then creep up to Norway.  He said,
+"Aye, aye, sir," and appeared quite enthusiastic about the trip;
+said he should enjoy it himself.  We came to the question of
+victualling, and he grew more enthusiastic.  The amount of food
+suggested by Mr. Goyles, I confess, surprised me.  Had we been
+living in the days of Drake and the Spanish Main, I should have
+feared he was arranging for something illegal.  However, he laughed
+in his fatherly way, and assured me we were not overdoing it.
+Anything left the crew would divide and take home with them--it
+seemed this was the custom.  It appeared to me that I was providing
+for this crew for the winter, but I did not like to appear stingy,
+and said no more.  The amount of drink required also surprised me.
+I arranged for what I thought we should need for ourselves, and
+then Mr. Goyles spoke up for the crew.  I must say that for him, he
+did think of his men.
+
+"We don't want anything in the nature of an orgie, Mr. Goyles," I
+suggested.
+
+"Orgie!" replied Mr. Goyles; "why they'll take that little drop in
+their tea."
+
+He explained to me that his motto was, Get good men and treat them
+well.
+
+"They work better for you," said Mr. Goyles; "and they come again."
+
+Personally, I didn't feel I wanted them to come again.  I was
+beginning to take a dislike to them before I had seen them; I
+regarded them as a greedy and guzzling crew.  But Mr. Goyles was so
+cheerfully emphatic, and I was so inexperienced, that again I let
+him have his way.  He also promised that even in this department he
+would see to it personally that nothing was wasted.
+
+I also left him to engage the crew.  He said he could do the thing,
+and would, for me, with the help two men and a boy.  If he was
+alluding to the clearing up of the victuals and drink, I think he
+was making an under-estimate; but possibly he may have been
+speaking of the sailing of the yacht.
+
+I called at my tailors on the way home and ordered a yachting suit,
+with a white hat, which they promised to bustle up and have ready
+in time; and then I went home and told Ethelbertha all I had done.
+Her delight was clouded by only one reflection--would the
+dressmaker be able to finish a yachting costume for her in time?
+That is so like a woman.
+
+Our honeymoon, which had taken place not very long before, had been
+somewhat curtailed, so we decided we would invite nobody, but have
+the yacht to ourselves.  And thankful I am to Heaven that we did so
+decide.  On Monday we put on all our clothes and started.  I forget
+what Ethelbertha wore, but, whatever it may have been, it looked
+very fetching.  My own costume was a dark blue trimmed with a
+narrow white braid, which, I think, was rather effective.
+
+Mr. Goyles met us on deck, and told us that lunch was ready.  I
+must admit Goyles had secured the services of a very fair cook.
+The capabilities of the other members of the crew I had no
+opportunity of judging.  Speaking of them in a state of rest,
+however, I can say of them they appeared to be a cheerful crew.
+
+My idea had been that so soon as the men had finished their dinner
+we would weigh anchor, while I, smoking a cigar, with Ethelbertha
+by my side, would lean over the gunwale and watch the white cliffs
+of the Fatherland sink imperceptibly into the horizon.  Ethelbertha
+and I carried out our part of the programme, and waited, with the
+deck to ourselves.
+
+"They seem to be taking their time," said Ethelbertha.
+
+"If, in the course of fourteen days," I said, "they eat half of
+what is on this yacht, they will want a fairly long time for every
+meal.  We had better not hurry them, or they won't get through a
+quarter of it."
+
+"They must have gone to sleep," said Ethelbertha, later on.  "It
+will be tea-time soon."
+
+They were certainly very quiet.  I went for'ard, and hailed Captain
+Goyles down the ladder.  I hailed him three times; then he came up
+slowly.  He appeared to be a heavier and older man than when I had
+seen him last.  He had a cold cigar in his mouth.
+
+"When you are ready, Captain Goyles," I said, "we'll start."
+
+Captain Goyles removed the cigar from his mouth.
+
+"Not to-day we won't, sir," he replied, "WITH your permission."
+
+"Why, what's the matter with to-day?" I said.  I know sailors are a
+superstitious folk; I thought maybe a Monday might be considered
+unlucky.
+
+"The day's all right," answered Captain Goyles, "it's the wind I'm
+a-thinking of.  It don't look much like changing."
+
+"But do we want it to change?" I asked.  "It seems to me to be just
+where it should be, dead behind us."
+
+"Aye, aye," said Captain Goyles, "dead's the right word to use, for
+dead we'd all be, bar Providence, if we was to put out in this.
+You see, sir," he explained, in answer to my look of surprise,
+"this is what we call a 'land wind,' that is, it's a-blowing, as
+one might say, direct off the land."
+
+When I came to think of it the man was right; the wind was blowing
+off the land.
+
+"It may change in the night," said Captain Goyles, more hopefully
+"anyhow, it's not violent, and she rides well."
+
+Captain Goyles resumed his cigar, and I returned aft, and explained
+to Ethelbertha the reason for the delay.  Ethelbertha, who appeared
+to be less high spirited than when we first boarded, wanted to know
+WHY we couldn't sail when the wind was off the land.
+
+"If it was not blowing off the land," said Ethelbertha, "it would
+be blowing off the sea, and that would send us back into the shore
+again.  It seems to me this is just the very wind we want."
+
+I said:  "That is your inexperience, love; it SEEMS to be the very
+wind we want, but it is not.  It's what we call a land wind, and a
+land wind is always very dangerous."
+
+Ethelbertha wanted to know WHY a land wind was very dangerous.
+
+Her argumentativeness annoyed me somewhat; maybe I was feeling a
+bit cross; the monotonous rolling heave of a small yacht at anchor
+depresses an ardent spirit.
+
+"I can't explain it to you," I replied, which was true, "but to set
+sail in this wind would be the height of foolhardiness, and I care
+for you too much, dear, to expose you to unnecessary risks."
+
+I thought this rather a neat conclusion, but Ethelbertha merely
+replied that she wished, under the circumstances, we hadn't come on
+board till Tuesday, and went below.
+
+In the morning the wind veered round to the north; I was up early,
+and observed this to Captain Goyles.
+
+"Aye, aye, sir," he remarked; "it's unfortunate, but it can't be
+helped."
+
+"You don't think it possible for us to start to-day?" I hazarded.
+
+He did not get angry with me, he only laughed.
+
+"Well, sir," said he, "if you was a-wanting to go to Ipswich, I
+should say as it couldn't be better for us, but our destination
+being, as you see, the Dutch coast--why there you are!"
+
+I broke the news to Ethelbertha, and we agreed to spend the day on
+shore.  Harwich is not a merry town, towards evening you might call
+it dull.  We had some tea and watercress at Dovercourt, and then
+returned to the quay to look for Captain Goyles and the boat.  We
+waited an hour for him.  When he came he was more cheerful than we
+were; if he had not told me himself that he never drank anything
+but one glass of hot grog before turning in for the night, I should
+have said he was drunk.
+
+The next morning the wind was in the south, which made Captain
+Goyles rather anxious, it appearing that it was equally unsafe to
+move or to stop where we were; our only hope was it would change
+before anything happened.  By this time, Ethelbertha had taken a
+dislike to the yacht; she said that, personally, she would rather
+be spending a week in a bathing machine, seeing that a bathing
+machine was at least steady.
+
+We passed another day in Harwich, and that night and the next, the
+wind still continuing in the south, we slept at the "King's Head."
+On Friday the wind was blowing direct from the east.  I met Captain
+Goyles on the quay, and suggested that, under these circumstances,
+we might start.  He appeared irritated at my persistence.
+
+"If you knew a bit more, sir," he said, "you'd see for yourself
+that it's impossible.  The wind's a-blowing direct off the sea."
+
+I said:  "Captain Goyles, tell me what is this thing I have hired?
+Is it a yacht or a house-boat?"
+
+He seemed surprised at my question.
+
+He said:  "It's a yawl."
+
+"What I mean is," I said, "can it be moved at all, or is it a
+fixture here?  If it is a fixture," I continued, "tell me so
+frankly, then we will get some ivy in boxes and train over the
+port-holes, stick some flowers and an awning on deck, and make the
+thing look pretty.  If, on the other hand, it can be moved--"
+
+"Moved!" interrupted Captain Goyles.  "You get the right wind
+behind the Rogue--"
+
+I said:  "What is the right wind?"
+
+Captain Goyles looked puzzled.
+
+"In the course of this week," I went on, "we have had wind from the
+north, from the south, from the east, from the west--with
+variations.  If you can think of any other point of the compass
+from which it can blow, tell me, and I will wait for it.  If not,
+and if that anchor has not grown into the bottom of the ocean, we
+will have it up to-day and see what happens."
+
+He grasped the fact that I was determined.
+
+"Very well, sir," he said, "you're master and I'm man.  I've only
+got one child as is still dependent on me, thank God, and no doubt
+your executors will feel it their duty to do the right thing by the
+old woman."
+
+His solemnity impressed me.
+
+"Mr. Goyles," I said, "be honest with me.  Is there any hope, in
+any weather, of getting away from this damned hole?"
+
+Captain Goyles's kindly geniality returned to him.
+
+"You see, sir," he said, "this is a very peculiar coast.  We'd be
+all right if we were once out, but getting away from it in a
+cockle-shell like that--well, to be frank, sir, it wants doing."
+
+I left Captain Goyles with the assurance that he would watch the
+weather as a mother would her sleeping babe; it was his own simile,
+and it struck me as rather touching.  I saw him again at twelve
+o'clock; he was watching it from the window of the "Chain and
+Anchor."
+
+At five o'clock that evening a stroke of luck occurred; in the
+middle of the High Street I met a couple of yachting friends, who
+had had to put in by reason of a strained rudder.  I told them my
+story, and they appeared less surprised than amused.  Captain
+Goyles and the two men were still watching the weather.  I ran into
+the "King's Head," and prepared Ethelbertha.  The four of us crept
+quietly down to the quay, where we found our boat.  Only the boy
+was on board; my two friends took charge of the yacht, and by six
+o'clock we were scudding merrily up the coast.
+
+We put in that night at Aldborough, and the next day worked up to
+Yarmouth, where, as my friends had to leave, I decided to abandon
+the yacht.  We sold the stores by auction on Yarmouth sands early
+in the morning.  I made a loss, but had the satisfaction of "doing"
+Captain Goyles.  I left the Rogue in charge of a local mariner,
+who, for a couple of sovereigns, undertook to see to its return to
+Harwich; and we came back to London by train.  There may be yachts
+other than the Rogue, and skippers other than Mr. Goyles, but that
+experience has prejudiced me against both.
+
+George also thought a yacht would be a good deal of responsibility,
+so we dismissed the idea.
+
+"What about the river?" suggested Harris.
+
+"We have had some pleasant times on that."
+
+George pulled in silence at his cigar, and I cracked another nut.
+
+"The river is not what it used to be," said I; "I don't know what,
+but there's a something--a dampness--about the river air that
+always starts my lumbago."
+
+"It's the same with me," said George.  "I don't know how it is, but
+I never can sleep now in the neighbourhood of the river.  I spent a
+week at Joe's place in the spring, and every night I woke up at
+seven o'clock and never got a wink afterwards."
+
+"I merely suggested it," observed Harris.  "Personally, I don't
+think it good for me, either; it touches my gout."
+
+"What suits me best," I said, "is mountain air.  What say you to a
+walking tour in Scotland?"
+
+"It's always wet in Scotland," said George.  "I was three weeks in
+Scotland the year before last, and was never dry once all the time-
+-not in that sense."
+
+"It's fine enough in Switzerland," said Harris.
+
+"They would never stand our going to Switzerland by ourselves," I
+objected.  "You know what happened last time.  It must be some
+place where no delicately nurtured woman or child could possibly
+live; a country of bad hotels and comfortless travelling; where we
+shall have to rough it, to work hard, to starve perhaps--"
+
+"Easy!" interrupted George, "easy, there!  Don't forget I'm coming
+with you."
+
+"I have it!" exclaimed Harris; "a bicycle tour!"
+
+George looked doubtful.
+
+"There's a lot of uphill about a bicycle tour," said he, "and the
+wind is against you."
+
+"So there is downhill, and the wind behind you," said Harris.
+
+"I've never noticed it," said George.
+
+"You won't think of anything better than a bicycle tour," persisted
+Harris.
+
+I was inclined to agree with him.
+
+"And I'll tell you where," continued he; "through the Black
+Forest."
+
+"Why, that's ALL uphill," said George.
+
+"Not all," retorted Harris; "say two-thirds.  And there's one thing
+you've forgotten."
+
+He looked round cautiously, and sunk his voice to a whisper.
+
+"There are little railways going up those hills, little cogwheel
+things that--"
+
+The door opened, and Mrs. Harris appeared.  She said that
+Ethelbertha was putting on her bonnet, and that Muriel, after
+waiting, had given "The Mad Hatter's Tea Party" without us.
+
+"Club, to-morrow, at four," whispered Harris to me, as he rose, and
+I passed it on to George as we went upstairs
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+
+
+A delicate business--What Ethelbertha might have said--What she did
+say--What Mrs. Harris said--What we told George--We will start on
+Wednesday--George suggests the possibility of improving our minds--
+Harris and I are doubtful--Which man on a tandem does the most
+work?--The opinion of the man in front--Views of the man behind--
+How Harris lost his wife--The luggage question--The wisdom of my
+late Uncle Podger--Beginning of story about a man who had a bag.
+
+I opened the ball with Ethelbertha that same evening.  I commenced
+by being purposely a little irritable.  My idea was that
+Ethelbertha would remark upon this.  I should admit it, and account
+for it by over brain pressure.  This would naturally lead to talk
+about my health in general, and the evident necessity there was for
+my taking prompt and vigorous measures.  I thought that with a
+little tact I might even manage so that the suggestion should come
+from Ethelbertha herself.  I imagined her saying:  "No, dear, it is
+change you want; complete change.  Now be persuaded by me, and go
+away for a month.  No, do not ask me to come with you.  I know you
+would rather that I did, but I will not.  It is the society of
+other men you need.  Try and persuade George and Harris to go with
+you.  Believe me, a highly strung brain such as yours demands
+occasional relaxation from the strain of domestic surroundings.
+Forget for a little while that children want music lessons, and
+boots, and bicycles, with tincture of rhubarb three times a day;
+forget there are such things in life as cooks, and house
+decorators, and next-door dogs, and butchers' bills.  Go away to
+some green corner of the earth, where all is new and strange to
+you, where your over-wrought mind will gather peace and fresh
+ideas.  Go away for a space and give me time to miss you, and to
+reflect upon your goodness and virtue, which, continually present
+with me, I may, human-like, be apt to forget, as one, through use,
+grows indifferent to the blessing of the sun and the beauty of the
+moon.  Go away, and come back refreshed in mind and body, a
+brighter, better man--if that be possible--than when you went
+away."
+
+But even when we obtain our desires they never come to us garbed as
+we would wish.  To begin with, Ethelbertha did not seem to remark
+that I was irritable; I had to draw her attention to it.  I said:
+
+"You must forgive me, I'm not feeling quite myself to-night."
+
+She said:  "Oh!  I have not noticed anything different; what's the
+matter with you?"
+
+"I can't tell you what it is," I said; "I've felt it coming on for
+weeks."
+
+"It's that whisky," said Ethelbertha.  "You never touch it except
+when we go to the Harris's.  You know you can't stand it; you have
+not a strong head."
+
+"It isn't the whisky," I replied; "it's deeper than that.  I fancy
+it's more mental than bodily."
+
+"You've been reading those criticisms again," said Ethelbertha,
+more sympathetically; "why don't you take my advice and put them on
+the fire?"
+
+"And it isn't the criticisms," I answered; "they've been quite
+flattering of late--one or two of them."
+
+"Well, what is it?" said Ethelbertha; "there must be something to
+account for it."
+
+"No, there isn't," I replied; "that's the remarkable thing about
+it; I can only describe it as a strange feeling of unrest that
+seems to have taken possession of me."
+
+Ethelbertha glanced across at me with a somewhat curious
+expression, I thought; but as she said nothing, I continued the
+argument myself.
+
+"This aching monotony of life, these days of peaceful, uneventful
+felicity, they appal one."
+
+"I should not grumble at them," said Ethelbertha; "we might get
+some of the other sort, and like them still less."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that," I replied.  "In a life of continuous
+joy, I can imagine even pain coming as a welcome variation.  I
+wonder sometimes whether the saints in heaven do not occasionally
+feel the continual serenity a burden.  To myself a life of endless
+bliss, uninterrupted by a single contrasting note, would, I feel,
+grow maddening.  I suppose," I continued, "I am a strange sort of
+man; I can hardly understand myself at times.  There are moments,"
+I added, "when I hate myself."
+
+Often a little speech like this, hinting at hidden depths of
+indescribable emotion has touched Ethelbertha, but to-night she
+appeared strangely unsympathetic.  With regard to heaven and its
+possible effect upon me, she suggested my not worrying myself about
+that, remarking it was always foolish to go half-way to meet
+trouble that might never come; while as to my being a strange sort
+of fellow, that, she supposed, I could not help, and if other
+people were willing to put up with me, there was an end of the
+matter.  The monotony of life, she added, was a common experience;
+there she could sympathise with me.
+
+"You don't know I long," said Ethelbertha, "to get away
+occasionally, even from you; but I know it can never be, so I do
+not brood upon it."
+
+I had never heard Ethelbertha speak like this before; it astonished
+and grieved me beyond measure.
+
+"That's not a very kind remark to make," I said, "not a wifely
+remark."
+
+"I know it isn't," she replied; "that is why I have never said it
+before.  You men never can understand," continued Ethelbertha,
+"that, however fond a woman may be of a man, there are times when
+he palls upon her.  You don't know how I long to be able sometimes
+to put on my bonnet and go out, with nobody to ask me where I am
+going, why I am going, how long I am going to be, and when I shall
+be back.  You don't know how I sometimes long to order a dinner
+that I should like and that the children would like, but at the
+sight of which you would put on your hat and be off to the Club.
+You don't know how much I feel inclined sometimes to invite some
+woman here that I like, and that I know you don't; to go and see
+the people that I want to see, to go to bed when _I_ am tired, and
+to get up when _I_ feel I want to get up.  Two people living
+together are bound both to be continually sacrificing their own
+desires to the other one.  It is sometimes a good thing to slacken
+the strain a bit."
+
+On thinking over Ethelbertha's words afterwards, have come to see
+their wisdom; but at the time I admit I was hurt and indignant.
+
+"If your desire," I said, "is to get rid of me--"
+
+"Now, don't be an old goose," said Ethelbertha; "I only want to get
+rid of you for a little while, just long enough to forget there are
+one or two corners about you that are not perfect, just long enough
+to let me remember what a dear fellow you are in other respects,
+and to look forward to your return, as I used to look forward to
+your coming in the old days when I did not see you so often as to
+become, perhaps, a little indifferent to you, as one grows
+indifferent to the glory of the sun, just because he is there every
+day."
+
+I did not like the tone that Ethelbertha took.  There seemed to be
+a frivolity about her, unsuited to the theme into which we had
+drifted.  That a woman should contemplate cheerfully an absence of
+three or four weeks from her husband appeared to me to be not
+altogether nice, not what I call womanly; it was not like
+Ethelbertha at all.  I was worried, I felt I didn't want to go this
+trip at all.  If it had not been for George and Harris, I would
+have abandoned it.  As it was, I could not see how to change my
+mind with dignity.
+
+"Very well, Ethelbertha," I replied, "it shall be as you wish.  If
+you desire a holiday from my presence, you shall enjoy it; but if
+it be not impertinent curiosity on the part of a husband, I should
+like to know what you propose doing in my absence?"
+
+"We will take that house at Folkestone," answered Ethelbertha, "and
+I'll go down there with Kate.  And if you want to do Clara Harris a
+good turn," added Ethelbertha, "you'll persuade Harris to go with
+you, and then Clara can join us.  We three used to have some very
+jolly times together before you men ever came along, and it would
+be just delightful to renew them.  Do you think," continued
+Ethelbertha, "that you could persuade Mr. Harris to go with you?"
+
+I said I would try.
+
+"There's a dear boy," said Ethelbertha; "try hard.  You might get
+George to join you."
+
+I replied there was not much advantage in George's coming, seeing
+he was a bachelor, and that therefore nobody would be much
+benefited by his absence.  But a woman never understands satire.
+Ethelbertha merely remarked it would look unkind leaving him
+behind.  I promised to put it to him.
+
+I met Harris at the Club in the afternoon, and asked him how he had
+got on.
+
+He said, "Oh, that's all right; there's no difficulty about getting
+away."
+
+But there was that about his tone that suggested incomplete
+satisfaction, so I pressed him for further details.
+
+"She was as sweet as milk about it," he continued; "said it was an
+excellent idea of George's, and that she thought it would do me
+good."
+
+"That seems all right," I said; "what's wrong about that?"
+
+"There's nothing wrong about that," he answered, "but that wasn't
+all.  She went on to talk of other things."
+
+"I understand," I said.
+
+"There's that bathroom fad of hers," he continued.
+
+"I've heard of it," I said; "she has started Ethelbertha on the
+same idea."
+
+"Well, I've had to agree to that being put in hand at once; I
+couldn't argue any more when she was so nice about the other thing.
+That will cost me a hundred pounds, at the very least."
+
+"As much as that?" I asked.
+
+"Every penny of it," said Harris; "the estimate alone is sixty."
+
+I was sorry to hear him say this.
+
+"Then there's the kitchen stove," continued Harris; "everything
+that has gone wrong in the house for the last two years has been
+the fault of that kitchen stove."
+
+"I know," I said.  "We have been in seven houses since we were
+married, and every kitchen stove has been worse than the last.  Our
+present one is not only incompetent; it is spiteful.  It knows when
+we are giving a party, and goes out of its way to do its worst."
+
+"WE are going to have a new one," said Harris, but he did not say
+it proudly.  "Clara thought it would be such a saving of expense,
+having the two things done at the same time.  I believe," said
+Harris, "if a woman wanted a diamond tiara, she would explain that
+it was to save the expense of a bonnet."
+
+"How much do you reckon the stove is going to cost you?" I asked.
+I felt interested in the subject.
+
+"I don't know," answered Harris; "another twenty, I suppose.  Then
+we talked about the piano.  Could you ever notice," said Harris,
+"any difference between one piano and another?"
+
+"Some of them seem to be a bit louder than others," I answered;
+"but one gets used to that."
+
+"Ours is all wrong about the treble," said Harris.  "By the way,
+what IS the treble?"
+
+"It's the shrill end of the thing," I explained; "the part that
+sounds as if you'd trod on its tail.  The brilliant selections
+always end up with a flourish on it."
+
+"They want more of it," said Harris; "our old one hasn't got enough
+of it.  I'll have to put it in the nursery, and get a new one for
+the drawing-room."
+
+"Anything else?" I asked.
+
+"No," said Harris; "she didn't seem able to think of anything
+else."
+
+"You'll find when you get home," I said, "she has thought of one
+other thing."
+
+"What's that?" said Harris.
+
+"A house at Folkestone for the season."
+
+"What should she want a house at Folkestone for?" said Harris.
+
+"To live in," I suggested, "during the summer months."
+
+"She's going to her people in Wales," said Harris, "for the
+holidays, with the children; we've had an invitation."
+
+"Possibly," I said, "she'll go to Wales before she goes to
+Folkestone, or maybe she'll take Wales on her way home; but she'll
+want a house at Folkestone for the season, notwithstanding.  I may
+be mistaken--I hope for your sake that I am--but I feel a
+presentiment that I'm not."
+
+"This trip," said Harris, "is going to be expensive."
+
+"It was an idiotic suggestion," I said, "from the beginning."
+
+"It was foolish of us to listen to him," said Harris; "he'll get us
+into real trouble one of these days."
+
+"He always was a muddler," I agreed.
+
+"So headstrong," added Harris.
+
+We heard his voice at that moment in the hall, asking for letters.
+
+"Better not say anything to him," I suggested; "it's too late to go
+back now."
+
+"There would be no advantage in doing so," replied Harris.  "I
+should have to get that bathroom and piano in any case now."
+
+He came in looking very cheerful.
+
+"Well," he said, "is it all right?  Have you managed it?"
+
+There was that about his tone I did not altogether like; I noticed
+Harris resented it also.
+
+"Managed what?" I said.
+
+"Why, to get off," said George.
+
+I felt the time was come to explain things to George.
+
+"In married life," I said, "the man proposes, the woman submits.
+It is her duty; all religion teaches it."
+
+George folded his hands and fixed his eyes on the ceiling.
+
+"We may chaff and joke a little about these things," I continued;
+"but when it comes to practice, that is what always happens.  We
+have mentioned to our wives that we are going.  Naturally, they are
+grieved; they would prefer to come with us; failing that, they
+would have us remain with them.  But we have explained to them our
+wishes on the subject, and--there's an end of the matter."
+
+George said, "Forgive me; I did not understand.  I am only a
+bachelor.  People tell me this, that, and the other, and I listen."
+
+I said, "That is where you do wrong.  When you want information
+come to Harris or myself; we will tell you the truth about these
+questions."
+
+George thanked us, and we proceeded with the business in hand.
+
+"When shall we start?" said George.
+
+"So far as I am concerned," replied Harris, "the sooner the
+better."
+
+His idea, I fancy, was to get away before Mrs. H. thought of other
+things.  We fixed the following Wednesday.
+
+"What about route?" said Harris.
+
+"I have an idea," said George.  "I take it you fellows are
+naturally anxious to improve your minds?"
+
+I said, "We don't want to become monstrosities.  To a reasonable
+degree, yes, if it can be done without much expense and with little
+personal trouble."
+
+"It can," said George.  "We know Holland and the Rhine.  Very well,
+my suggestion is that we take the boat to Hamburg, see Berlin and
+Dresden, and work our way to the Schwarzwald, through Nuremberg and
+Stuttgart."
+
+"There are some pretty bits in Mesopotamia, so I've been told,"
+murmured Harris.
+
+George said Mesopotamia was too much out of our way, but that the
+Berlin-Dresden route was quite practicable.  For good or evil, he
+persuaded us into it.
+
+"The machines, I suppose," said George, "as before.  Harris and I
+on the tandem, J.--"
+
+"I think not," interrupted Harris, firmly.  "You and J. on the
+tandem, I on the single."
+
+"All the same to me," agreed George.  "J. and I on the tandem,
+Harris--"
+
+"I do not mind taking my turn," I interrupted, "but I am not going
+to carry George ALL the way; the burden should be divided."
+
+"Very well," agreed Harris, "we'll divide it.  But it must be on
+the distinct understanding that he works."
+
+"That he what?" said George.
+
+"That he works," repeated Harris, firmly; "at all events, uphill."
+
+"Great Scott!" said George; "don't you want ANY exercise?"
+
+There is always unpleasantness about this tandem.  It is the theory
+of the man in front that the man behind does nothing; it is equally
+the theory of the man behind that he alone is the motive power, the
+man in front merely doing the puffing.  The mystery will never be
+solved.  It is annoying when Prudence is whispering to you on the
+one side not to overdo your strength and bring on heart disease;
+while Justice into the other ear is remarking, "Why should you do
+it all?  This isn't a cab.  He's not your passenger:" to hear him
+grunt out:
+
+"What's the matter--lost your pedals?"
+
+Harris, in his early married days, made much trouble for himself on
+one occasion, owing to this impossibility of knowing what the
+person behind is doing.  He was riding with his wife through
+Holland.  The roads were stony, and the machine jumped a good deal.
+
+"Sit tight," said Harris, without turning his head.
+
+What Mrs. Harris thought he said was, "Jump off."  Why she should
+have thought he said "Jump off," when he said "Sit tight," neither
+of them can explain.
+
+Mrs. Harris puts it in this way, "If you had said, 'Sit tight,' why
+should I have jumped off?"
+
+Harris puts it, "If I had wanted you to jump off, why should I have
+said 'Sit tight!'?"
+
+The bitterness is past, but they argue about the matter to this
+day.
+
+Be the explanation what it may, however, nothing alters the fact
+that Mrs. Harris did jump off, while Harris pedalled away hard,
+under the impression she was still behind him.  It appears that at
+first she thought he was riding up the hill merely to show off.
+They were both young in those days, and he used to do that sort of
+thing.  She expected him to spring to earth on reaching the summit,
+and lean in a careless and graceful attitude against the machine,
+waiting for her.  When, on the contrary, she saw him pass the
+summit and proceed rapidly down a long and steep incline, she was
+seized, first with surprise, secondly with indignation, and lastly
+with alarm.  She ran to the top of the hill and shouted, but he
+never turned his head.  She watched him disappear into a wood a
+mile and a half distant, and then sat down and cried.  They had had
+a slight difference that morning, and she wondered if he had taken
+it seriously and intended desertion.  She had no money; she knew no
+Dutch.  People passed, and seemed sorry for her; she tried to make
+them understand what had happened.  They gathered that she had lost
+something, but could not grasp what.  They took her to the nearest
+village, and found a policeman for her.  He concluded from her
+pantomime that some man had stolen her bicycle.  They put the
+telegraph into operation, and discovered in a village four miles
+off an unfortunate boy riding a lady's machine of an obsolete
+pattern.  They brought him to her in a cart, but as she did not
+appear to want either him or his bicycle they let him go again, and
+resigned themselves to bewilderment.
+
+Meanwhile, Harris continued his ride with much enjoyment.  It
+seemed to him that he had suddenly become a stronger, and in every
+way a more capable cyclist.  Said he to what he thought was Mrs.
+Harris:
+
+"I haven't felt this machine so light for months.  It's this air, I
+think; it's doing me good."
+
+Then he told her not to be afraid, and he would show her how fast
+he COULD go.  He bent down over the handles, and put his heart into
+his work.  The bicycle bounded over the road like a thing of life;
+farmhouses and churches, dogs and chickens came to him and passed.
+Old folks stood and gazed at him, the children cheered him.
+
+In this way he sped merrily onward for about five miles.  Then, as
+he explains it, the feeling began to grow upon him that something
+was wrong.  He was not surprised at the silence; the wind was
+blowing strongly, and the machine was rattling a good deal.  It was
+a sense of void that came upon him.  He stretched out his hand
+behind him, and felt; there was nothing there but space.  He
+jumped, or rather fell off, and looked back up the road; it
+stretched white and straight through the dark wood, and not a
+living soul could be seen upon it.  He remounted, and rode back up
+the hill.  In ten minutes he came to where the road broke into
+four; there he dismounted and tried to remember which fork he had
+come down.
+
+While he was deliberating a man passed, sitting sideways on a
+horse.  Harris stopped him, and explained to him that he had lost
+his wife.  The man appeared to be neither surprised nor sorry for
+him.  While they were talking another farmer came along, to whom
+the first man explained the matter, not as an accident, but as a
+good story.  What appeared to surprise the second man most was that
+Harris should be making a fuss about the thing.  He could get no
+sense out of either of them, and cursing them he mounted his
+machine again, and took the middle road on chance.  Half-way up, he
+came upon a party of two young women with one young man between
+them.  They appeared to be making the most of him.  He asked them
+if they had seen his wife.  They asked him what she was like.  He
+did not know enough Dutch to describe her properly; all he could
+tell them was she was a very beautiful woman, of medium size.
+Evidently this did not satisfy them, the description was too
+general; any man could say that, and by this means perhaps get
+possession of a wife that did not belong to him.  They asked him
+how she was dressed; for the life of him he could not recollect.
+
+I doubt if any man could tell how any woman was dressed ten minutes
+after he had left her.  He recollected a blue skirt, and then there
+was something that carried the dress on, as it were, up to the
+neck.  Possibly, this may have been a blouse; he retained a dim
+vision of a belt; but what sort of a blouse?  Was it green, or
+yellow, or blue?  Had it a collar, or was it fastened with a bow?
+Were there feathers in her hat, or flowers?  Or was it a hat at
+all?  He dared not say, for fear of making a mistake and being sent
+miles after the wrong party.  The two young women giggled, which in
+his then state of mind irritated Harris.  The young man, who
+appeared anxious to get rid of him, suggested the police station at
+the next town.  Harris made his way there.  The police gave him a
+piece of paper, and told him to write down a full description of
+his wife, together with details of when and where he had lost her.
+He did not know where he had lost her; all he could tell them was
+the name of the village where he had lunched.  He knew he had her
+with him then, and that they had started from there together.
+
+The police looked suspicious; they were doubtful about three
+matters:  Firstly, was she really his wife?  Secondly, had he
+really lost her?  Thirdly, why had he lost her?  With the aid of a
+hotel-keeper, however, who spoke a little English, he overcame
+their scruples.  They promised to act, and in the evening they
+brought her to him in a covered wagon, together with a bill for
+expenses.  The meeting was not a tender one.  Mrs. Harris is not a
+good actress, and always has great difficulty in disguising her
+feelings.  On this occasion, she frankly admits, she made no
+attempt to disguise them.
+
+The wheel business settled, there arose the ever-lasting luggage
+question.
+
+"The usual list, I suppose," said George, preparing to write.
+
+That was wisdom I had taught them; I had learned it myself years
+ago from my Uncle Podger.
+
+"Always before beginning to pack," my Uncle would say, "make a
+list."
+
+He was a methodical man.
+
+"Take a piece of paper"--he always began at the beginning--"put
+down on it everything you can possibly require, then go over it and
+see that it contains nothing you can possibly do without.  Imagine
+yourself in bed; what have you got on?  Very well, put it down--
+together with a change.  You get up; what do you do?  Wash
+yourself.  What do you wash yourself with?  Soap; put down soap.
+Go on till you have finished.  Then take your clothes.  Begin at
+your feet; what do you wear on your feet?  Boots, shoes, socks; put
+them down.  Work up till you get to your head.  What else do you
+want besides clothes?  A little brandy; put it down.  A corkscrew,
+put it down.  Put down everything, then you don't forget anything."
+
+That is the plan he always pursued himself.  The list made, he
+would go over it carefully, as he always advised, to see that he
+had forgotten nothing.  Then he would go over it again, and strike
+out everything it was possible to dispense with.
+
+Then he would lose the list.
+
+Said George:  "Just sufficient for a day or two we will take with
+us on our bikes.  The bulk of our luggage we must send on from town
+to town."
+
+"We must be careful," I said; "I knew a man once--"
+
+Harris looked at his watch.
+
+"We'll hear about him on the boat," said Harris; "I have got to
+meet Clara at Waterloo Station in half an hour."
+
+"It won't take half an hour," I said; "it's a true story, and--"
+
+"Don't waste it," said George:  "I am told there are rainy evenings
+in the Black Forest; we may he glad of it.  What we have to do now
+is to finish this list."
+
+Now I come to think of it, I never did get off that story;
+something always interrupted it.  And it really was true.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+
+
+Harris's one fault--Harris and the Angel--A patent bicycle lamp--
+The ideal saddle--The "Overhauler"--His eagle eye--His method--His
+cheery confidence--His simple and inexpensive tastes--His
+appearance--How to get rid of him--George as prophet--The gentle
+art of making oneself disagreeable in a foreign tongue--George as a
+student of human nature--He proposes an experiment--His Prudence--
+Harris's support secured, upon conditions.
+
+On Monday afternoon Harris came round; he had a cycling paper in
+his hand.
+
+I said:  "If you take my advice, you will leave it alone."
+
+Harris said:  "Leave what alone?"
+
+I said:  "That brand-new, patent, revolution in cycling, record-
+breaking, Tomfoolishness, whatever it may be, the advertisement of
+which you have there in your hand."
+
+He said:  "Well, I don't know; there will be some steep hills for
+us to negotiate; I guess we shall want a good brake."
+
+I said:  "We shall want a brake, I agree; what we shall not want is
+a mechanical surprise that we don't understand, and that never acts
+when it is wanted."
+
+"This thing," he said, "acts automatically."
+
+"You needn't tell me," I said.  "I know exactly what it will do, by
+instinct.  Going uphill it will jamb the wheel so effectively that
+we shall have to carry the machine bodily.  The air at the top of
+the hill will do it good, and it will suddenly come right again.
+Going downhill it will start reflecting what a nuisance it has
+been.  This will lead to remorse, and finally to despair.  It will
+say to itself:  'I'm not fit to be a brake.  I don't help these
+fellows; I only hinder them.  I'm a curse, that's what I am;' and,
+without a word of warning, it will 'chuck' the whole business.
+That is what that brake will do.  Leave it alone.  You are a good
+fellow," I continued, "but you have one fault."
+
+"What?" he asked, indignantly.
+
+"You have too much faith," I answered.  "If you read an
+advertisement, you go away and believe it.  Every experiment that
+every fool has thought of in connection with cycling you have
+tried.  Your guardian angel appears to be a capable and
+conscientious spirit, and hitherto she has seen you through; take
+my advice and don't try her too far.  She must have had a busy time
+since you started cycling.  Don't go on till you make her mad."
+
+He said:  "If every man talked like that there would be no
+advancement made in any department of life.  If nobody ever tried a
+new thing the world would come to a standstill.  It is by--"
+
+"I know all that can be said on that side of the argument," I
+interrupted.  "I agree in trying new experiments up to thirty-five;
+AFTER thirty-five I consider a man is entitled to think of himself.
+You and I have done our duty in this direction, you especially.
+You have been blown up by a patent gas lamp--"
+
+He said:  "I really think, you know, that was my fault; I think I
+must have screwed it up too tight."
+
+I said:  "I am quite willing to believe that if there was a wrong
+way of handling the thing that is the way you handle it.  You
+should take that tendency of yours into consideration; it bears
+upon the argument.  Myself, I did not notice what you did; I only
+know we were riding peacefully and pleasantly along the Whitby
+Road, discussing the Thirty Years' War, when your lamp went off
+like a pistol-shot.  The start sent me into the ditch; and your
+wife's face, when I told her there was nothing the matter and that
+she was not to worry, because the two men would carry you upstairs,
+and the doctor would be round in a minute bringing the nurse with
+him, still lingers in my memory."
+
+He said:  "I wish you had thought to pick up the lamp.  I should
+like to have found out what was the cause of its going off like
+that."
+
+I said:  "There was not time to pick up the lamp.  I calculate it
+would have taken two hours to have collected it.  As to its 'going
+off,' the mere fact of its being advertised as the safest lamp ever
+invented would of itself, to anyone but you, have suggested
+accident.  Then there was that electric lamp," I continued.
+
+"Well, that really did give a fine light," he replied; "you said so
+yourself."
+
+I said:  "It gave a brilliant light in the King's Road, Brighton,
+and frightened a horse.  The moment we got into the dark beyond
+Kemp Town it went out, and you were summoned for riding without a
+light.  You may remember that on sunny afternoons you used to ride
+about with that lamp shining for all it was worth.  When lighting-
+up time came it was naturally tired, and wanted a rest."
+
+"It was a bit irritating, that lamp," he murmured; "I remember it."
+
+I said:  "It irritated me; it must have been worse for you.  Then
+there are saddles," I went on--I wished to get this lesson home to
+him.  "Can you think of any saddle ever advertised that you have
+NOT tried?"
+
+He said:  "It has been an idea of mine that the right saddle is to
+be found."
+
+I said:  "You give up that idea; this is an imperfect world of joy
+and sorrow mingled.  There may be a better land  where  bicycle
+saddles are made out of rainbow, stuffed with cloud; in this world
+the simplest thing is to get used to something hard.  There was
+that saddle you bought in Birmingham; it was divided in the middle,
+and looked like a pair of kidneys."
+
+He said:  "You mean that one constructed on anatomical principles."
+
+"Very likely," I replied.  "The box you bought it in had a picture
+on the cover, representing a sitting skeleton--or rather that part
+of a skeleton which does sit."
+
+He said:  "It was quite correct; it showed you the true position of
+the--"
+
+I said:  "We will not go into details; the picture always seemed to
+me indelicate."
+
+He said:  "Medically speaking, it was right."
+
+"Possibly," I said, "for a man who rode in nothing but his bones.
+I only know that I tried it myself, and that to a man who wore
+flesh it was agony.  Every time you went over a stone or a rut it
+nipped you; it was like riding on an irritable lobster.  You rode
+that for a month."
+
+"I thought it only right to give it a fair trial," he answered.
+
+I said:  "You gave your family a fair trial also; if you will allow
+me the use of slang.  Your wife told me that never in the whole
+course of your married life had she known you so bad tempered, so
+un-Christian like, as you were that month.  Then you remember that
+other saddle, the one with the spring under it."
+
+He said:  "You mean 'the Spiral.'"
+
+I said:  "I mean the one that jerked you up and down like a Jack-
+in-the-box; sometimes you came down again in the right place, and
+sometimes you didn't.  I am not referring to these matters merely
+to recall painful memories, but I want to impress you with the
+folly of trying experiments at your time of life."
+
+He said.  "I wish you wouldn't harp so much on my age.  A man at
+thirty-four--"
+
+"A man at what?"
+
+He said:  "If you don't want the thing, don't have it.  If your
+machine runs away with you down a mountain, and you and George get
+flung through a church roof, don't blame me."
+
+"I cannot promise for George," I said; "a little thing will
+sometimes irritate him, as you know.  If such an accident as you
+suggest happen, he may be cross, but I will undertake to explain to
+him that it was not your fault."
+
+"Is the thing all right?" he asked.
+
+"The tandem," I replied, "is well."
+
+He said:  "Have you overhauled it?"
+
+I said:  "I have not, nor is anyone else going to overhaul it.  The
+thing is now in working order, and it is going to remain in working
+order till we start."
+
+I have had experience of this "overhauling."  There was a man at
+Folkestone; I used to meet him on the Lees.  He proposed one
+evening we should go for a long bicycle ride together on the
+following day, and I agreed.  I got up early, for me; I made an
+effort, and was pleased with myself.  He came half an hour late:  I
+was waiting for him in the garden.  It was a lovely day.  He said:-
+
+"That's a good-looking machine of yours.  How does it run?"
+
+"Oh, like most of them!" I answered; "easily enough in the morning;
+goes a little stiffly after lunch."
+
+He caught hold of it by the front wheel and the fork and shook it
+violently.
+
+I said:  "Don't do that; you'll hurt it."
+
+I did not see why he should shake it; it had not done anything to
+him.  Besides, if it wanted shaking, I was the proper person to
+shake it.  I felt much as I should had he started whacking my dog.
+
+He said:  "This front wheel wobbles."
+
+I said:  "It doesn't if you don't wobble it."  It didn't wobble, as
+a matter of fact--nothing worth calling a wobble.
+
+He said:  "This is dangerous; have you got a screw-hammer?"
+
+I ought to have been firm, but I thought that perhaps he really did
+know something about the business.  I went to the tool shed to see
+what I could find.  When I came back he was sitting on the ground
+with the front wheel between his legs.  He was playing with it,
+twiddling it round between his fingers; the remnant of the machine
+was lying on the gravel path beside him.
+
+He said:  "Something has happened to this front wheel of yours."
+
+"It looks like it, doesn't it?" I answered.  But he was the sort of
+man that never understands satire.
+
+He said:  "It looks to me as if the bearings were all wrong."
+
+I said:  "Don't you trouble about it any more; you will make
+yourself tired.  Let us put it back and get off."
+
+He said:  "We may as well see what is the matter with it, now it is
+out."  He talked as though it had dropped out by accident.
+
+Before I could stop him he had unscrewed something somewhere, and
+out rolled all over the path some dozen or so little balls.
+
+"Catch 'em!" he shouted; "catch 'em!  We mustn't lose any of them."
+He was quite excited about them.
+
+We grovelled round for half an hour, and found sixteen.  He said he
+hoped we had got them all, because, if not, it would make a serious
+difference to the machine.  He said there was nothing you should be
+more careful about in taking a bicycle to pieces than seeing you
+did not lose any of the balls.  He explained that you ought to
+count them as you took them out, and see that exactly the same
+number went back in each place.  I promised, if ever I took a
+bicycle to pieces I would remember his advice.
+
+I put the balls for safety in my hat, and I put my hat upon the
+doorstep.  It was not a sensible thing to do, I admit.  As a matter
+of fact, it was a silly thing to do.  I am not as a rule addle-
+headed; his influence must have affected me.
+
+He then said that while he was about it he would see to the chain
+for me, and at once began taking off the gear-case.  I did try to
+persuade him from that.  I told him what an experienced friend of
+mine once said to me solemnly:-
+
+"If anything goes wrong with your gear-case, sell the machine and
+buy a new one; it comes cheaper."
+
+He said:  "People talk like that who understand nothing about
+machines.  Nothing is easier than taking off a gear-case."
+
+I had to confess he was right.  In less than five minutes he had
+the gear-case in two pieces, lying on the path, and was grovelling
+for screws.  He said it was always a mystery to him the way screws
+disappeared.
+
+We were still looking for the screws when Ethelbertha came out.
+She seemed surprised to find us there; she said she thought we had
+started hours ago.
+
+He said:  "We shan't be long now.  I'm just helping your husband to
+overhaul this machine of his.  It's a good machine; but they all
+want going over occasionally."
+
+Ethelbertha said:  "If you want to wash yourselves when you have
+done you might go into the back kitchen, if you don't mind; the
+girls have just finished the bedrooms."
+
+She told me that if she met Kate they would probably go for a sail;
+but that in any case she would be back to lunch.  I would have
+given a sovereign to be going with her.  I was getting heartily
+sick of standing about watching this fool breaking up my bicycle.
+
+Common sense continued to whisper to me:  "Stop him, before he does
+any more mischief.  You have a right to protect your own property
+from the ravages of a lunatic.  Take him by the scruff of the neck,
+and kick him out of the gate!"
+
+But I am weak when it comes to hurting other people's feelings, and
+I let him muddle on.
+
+He gave up looking for the rest of the screws.  He said screws had
+a knack of turning up when you least expected them; and that now he
+would see to the chain.  He tightened it till it would not move;
+next he loosened it until it was twice as loose as it was before.
+Then he said we had better think about getting the front wheel back
+into its place again.
+
+I held the fork open, and he worried with the wheel.  At the end of
+ten minutes I suggested he should hold the forks, and that I should
+handle the wheel; and we changed places.  At the end of his first
+minute he dropped the machine, and took a short walk round the
+croquet lawn, with his hands pressed together between his thighs.
+He explained as he walked that the thing to be careful about was to
+avoid getting your fingers pinched between the forks and the spokes
+of the wheel.  I replied I was convinced, from my own experience,
+that there was much truth in what he said.  He wrapped himself up
+in a couple of dusters, and we commenced again.  At length we did
+get the thing into position; and the moment it was in position he
+burst out laughing.
+
+I said:  "What's the joke?"
+
+He said:  "Well, I am an ass!"
+
+It was the first thing he had said that made me respect him.  I
+asked him what had led him to the discovery.
+
+He said:  "We've forgotten the balls!"
+
+I looked for my hat; it was lying topsy-turvy in the middle of the
+path, and Ethelbertha's favourite hound was swallowing the balls as
+fast as he could pick them up.
+
+"He will kill himself," said Ebbson--I have never met him since
+that day, thank the Lord; but I think his name was Ebbson--"they
+are solid steel."
+
+I said:  "I am not troubling about the dog.  He has had a bootlace
+and a packet of needles already this week.  Nature's the best
+guide; puppies seem to require this kind of stimulant.  What I am
+thinking about is my bicycle."
+
+He was of a cheerful disposition.  He said:  "Well, we must put
+back all we can find, and trust to Providence."
+
+We found eleven.  We fixed six on one side and five on the other,
+and half an hour later the wheel was in its place again.  It need
+hardly be added that it really did wobble now; a child might have
+noticed it.  Ebbson said it would do for the present.  He appeared
+to be getting a bit tired himself.  If I had let him, he would, I
+believe, at this point have gone home.  I was determined now,
+however, that he should stop and finish; I had abandoned all
+thoughts of a ride.  My pride in the machine he had killed.  My
+only interest lay now in seeing him scratch and bump and pinch
+himself.  I revived his drooping spirits with a glass of beer and
+some judicious praise.  I said:
+
+"Watching you do this is of real use to me.  It is not only your
+skill and dexterity that fascinates me, it is your cheery
+confidence in yourself, your inexplicable hopefulness, that does me
+good."
+
+Thus encouraged, he set to work to refix the gear-case.  He stood
+the bicycle against the house, and worked from the off side.  Then
+he stood it against a tree, and worked from the near side.  Then I
+held it for him, while he lay on the ground with his head between
+the wheels, and worked at it from below, and dropped oil upon
+himself.  Then he took it away from me, and doubled himself across
+it like a pack-saddle, till he lost his balance and slid over on to
+his head.  Three times he said:
+
+"Thank Heaven, that's right at last!"
+
+And twice he said:
+
+"No, I'm damned if it is after all!"
+
+What he said the third time I try to forget.
+
+Then he lost his temper and tried bullying the thing.  The bicycle,
+I was glad to see, showed spirit; and the subsequent proceedings
+degenerated into little else than a rough-and-tumble fight between
+him and the machine.  One moment the bicycle would be on the gravel
+path, and he on top of it; the next, the position would be
+reversed--he on the gravel path, the bicycle on him.  Now he would
+be standing flushed with victory, the bicycle firmly fixed between
+his legs.  But his triumph would be short-lived.  By a sudden,
+quick movement it would free itself, and, turning upon him, hit him
+sharply over the head with one of its handles.
+
+At a quarter to one, dirty and dishevelled, cut and breeding, he
+said:  "I think that will do;" and rose and wiped his brow.
+
+The bicycle looked as if it also had had enough of it.  Which had
+received most punishment it would have been difficult to say.  I
+took him into the back kitchen, where, so far as was possible
+without soda and proper tools, he cleaned himself, and sent him
+home.
+
+The bicycle I put into a cab and took round to the nearest
+repairing shop.  The foreman of the works came up and looked at it.
+
+"What do you want me to do with that?" said he.
+
+"I want you," I said, "so far as is possible, to restore it."
+
+"It's a bit far gone," said he; "but I'll do my best."
+
+He did his best, which came to two pounds ten.  But it was never
+the same machine again; and at the end of the season I left it in
+an agent's hands to sell.  I wished to deceive nobody; I instructed
+the man to advertise it as a last year's machine.  The agent
+advised me not to mention any date.  He said:
+
+"In this business it isn't a question of what is true and what
+isn't; it's a question of what you can get people to believe.  Now,
+between you and me, it don't look like a last year's machine; so
+far as looks are concerned, it might be a ten-year old.  We'll say
+nothing about date; we'll just get what we can."
+
+I left the matter to him, and he got me five pounds, which he said
+was more than he had expected.
+
+There are two ways you can get exercise out of a bicycle:  you can
+"overhaul" it, or you can ride it.  On the whole, I am not sure
+that a man who takes his pleasure overhauling does not have the
+best of the bargain.  He is independent of the weather and the
+wind; the state of the roads troubles him not.  Give him a screw-
+hammer, a bundle of rags, an oil-can, and something to sit down
+upon, and he is happy for the day.  He has to put up with certain
+disadvantages, of course; there is no joy without alloy.  He
+himself always looks like a tinker, and his machine always suggests
+the idea that, having stolen it, he has tried to disguise it; but
+as he rarely gets beyond the first milestone with it, this,
+perhaps, does not much matter.  The mistake some people make is in
+thinking they can get both forms of sport out of the same machine.
+This is impossible; no machine will stand the double strain.  You
+must make up your mind whether you are going to be an "overhauler"
+or a rider.  Personally, I prefer to ride, therefore I take care to
+have near me nothing that can tempt me to overhaul.  When anything
+happens to my machine I wheel it to the nearest repairing shop.  If
+I am too far from the town or village to walk, I sit by the
+roadside and wait till a cart comes along.  My chief danger, I
+always find, is from the wandering overhauler.  The sight of a
+broken-down machine is to the overhauler as a wayside corpse to a
+crow; he swoops down upon it with a friendly yell of triumph.  At
+first I used to try politeness.  I would say:
+
+"It is nothing; don't you trouble.  You ride on, and enjoy
+yourself, I beg it of you as a favour; please go away."
+
+Experience has taught me, however, that courtesy is of no use in
+such an extremity.  Now I say:
+
+"You go away and leave the thing alone, or I will knock your silly
+head off."
+
+And if you look determined, and have a good stout cudgel in your
+hand, you can generally drive him off.
+
+George came in later in the day.  He said:
+
+"Well, do you think everything will be ready?"
+
+I said:  "Everything will be ready by Wednesday, except, perhaps,
+you and Harris."
+
+He said:  "Is the tandem all right?"
+
+"The tandem," I said, "is well."
+
+He said:  "You don't think it wants overhauling?"
+
+I replied:  "Age and experience have taught me that there are few
+matters concerning which a man does well to be positive.
+Consequently, there remain to me now but a limited number of
+questions upon which I feel any degree of certainty.  Among such
+still-unshaken beliefs, however, is the conviction that that tandem
+does not want overhauling.  I also feel a presentiment that,
+provided my life is spared, no human being between now and
+Wednesday morning is going to overhaul it."
+
+George said:  "I should not show temper over the matter, if I were
+you.  There will come a day, perhaps not far distant, when that
+bicycle, with a couple of mountains between it and the nearest
+repairing shop, will, in spite of your chronic desire for rest,
+HAVE to be overhauled.  Then you will clamour for people to tell
+you where you put the oil-can, and what you have done with the
+screw-hammer.  Then, while you exert yourself holding the thing
+steady against a tree, you will suggest that somebody else should
+clean the chain and pump the back wheel."
+
+I felt there was justice in George's rebuke--also a certain amount
+of prophetic wisdom.  I said:
+
+"Forgive me if I seemed unresponsive.  The truth is, Harris was
+round here this morning--"
+
+George said:  "Say no more; I understand.  Besides, what I came to
+talk to you about was another matter.  Look at that."
+
+He handed me a small book bound in red cloth.  It was a guide to
+English conversation for the use of German travellers.  It
+commenced "On a Steam-boat," and terminated "At the Doctor's"; its
+longest chapter being devoted to conversation in a railway
+carriage, among, apparently, a compartment load of quarrelsome and
+ill-mannered lunatics:  "Can you not get further away from me,
+sir?"--"It is impossible, madam; my neighbour, here, is very
+stout"--"Shall we not endeavour to arrange our legs?"--"Please have
+the goodness to keep your elbows down"--"Pray do not inconvenience
+yourself, madam, if my shoulder is of any accommodation to you,"
+whether intended to be said sarcastically or not, there was nothing
+to indicate--"I really must request you to move a little, madam, I
+can hardly breathe," the author's idea being, presumably, that by
+this time the whole party was mixed up together on the floor.  The
+chapter concluded with the phrase, "Here we are at our destination,
+God be thanked!  (Gott sei dank!)" a pious exclamation, which under
+the circumstances must have taken the form of a chorus.
+
+At the end of the book was an appendix, giving the German traveller
+hints concerning the preservation of his health and comfort during
+his sojourn in English towns, chief among such hints being advice
+to him to always travel with a supply of disinfectant powder, to
+always lock his bedroom door at night, and to always carefully
+count his small change.
+
+"It is not a brilliant publication," I remarked, handing the book
+back to George; "it is not a book that personally I would recommend
+to any German about to visit England; I think it would get him
+disliked.  But I have read books published in London for the use of
+English travellers abroad every whit as foolish.  Some educated
+idiot, misunderstanding seven languages, would appear to go about
+writing these books for the misinformation and false guidance of
+modern Europe."
+
+"You cannot deny," said George, "that these books are in large
+request.  They are bought by the thousand, I know.  In every town
+in Europe there must be people going about talking this sort of
+thing."
+
+"Maybe," I replied; "but fortunately nobody understands them.  I
+have noticed, myself, men standing on railway platforms and at
+street corners reading aloud from such books.  Nobody knows what
+language they are speaking; nobody has the slightest knowledge of
+what they are saying.  This is, perhaps, as well; were they
+understood they would probably be assaulted."
+
+George said:  "Maybe you are right; my idea is to see what would
+happen if they were understood.  My proposal is to get to London
+early on Wednesday morning, and spend an hour or two going about
+and shopping with the aid of this book.  There are one or two
+little things I want--a hat and a pair of bedroom slippers, among
+other articles.  Our boat does not leave Tilbury till twelve, and
+that just gives us time.  I want to try this sort of talk where I
+can properly judge of its effect.  I want to see how the foreigner
+feels when he is talked to in this way."
+
+It struck me as a sporting idea.  In my enthusiasm I offered to
+accompany him, and wait outside the shop.  I said I thought that
+Harris would like to be in it, too--or rather outside.
+
+George said that was not quite his scheme.  His proposal was that
+Harris and I should accompany him into the shop.  With Harris, who
+looks formidable, to support him, and myself at the door to call
+the police if necessary, he said he was willing to adventure the
+thing.
+
+We walked round to Harris's, and put the proposal before him.  He
+examined the book, especially the chapters dealing with the
+purchase of shoes and hats.  He said:
+
+"If George talks to any bootmaker or any hatter the things that are
+put down here, it is not support he will want; it is carrying to
+the hospital that he will need."
+
+That made George angry.
+
+"You talk," said George, "as though I were a foolhardy boy without
+any sense.  I shall select from the more polite and less irritating
+speeches; the grosser insults I shall avoid."
+
+This being clearly understood, Harris gave in his adhesion; and our
+start was fixed for early Wednesday morning.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+
+
+Why Harris considers alarm clocks unnecessary in a family--Social
+instinct of the young--A child's thoughts about the morning--The
+sleepless watchman--The mystery of him--His over anxiety--Night
+thoughts--The sort of work one does before breakfast--The good
+sheep and the bad--Disadvantages of being virtuous--Harris's new
+stove begins badly--The daily out-going of my Uncle Podger--The
+elderly city man considered as a racer--We arrive in London--We
+talk the language of the traveller.
+
+George came down on Tuesday evening, and slept at Harris's place.
+We thought this a better arrangement than his own suggestion, which
+was that we should call for him on our way and "pick him up."
+Picking George up in the morning means picking him out of bed to
+begin with, and shaking him awake--in itself an exhausting effort
+with which to commence the day; helping him find his things and
+finish his packing; and then waiting for him while he eats his
+breakfast, a tedious entertainment from the spectator's point of
+view, full of wearisome repetition.
+
+I knew that if he slept at "Beggarbush" he would be up in time; I
+have slept there myself, and I know what happens.  About the middle
+of the night, as you judge, though in reality it may be somewhat
+later, you are startled out of your first sleep by what sounds like
+a rush of cavalry along the passage, just outside your door.  Your
+half-awakened intelligence fluctuates between burglars, the Day of
+Judgment, and a gas explosion.  You sit up in bed and listen
+intently.  You are not kept waiting long; the next moment a door is
+violently slammed, and somebody, or something, is evidently coming
+downstairs on a tea-tray.
+
+"I told you so," says a voice outside, and immediately some hard
+substance, a head one would say from the ring of it, rebounds
+against the panel of your door.
+
+By this time you are charging madly round the room for your
+clothes.  Nothing is where you put it overnight, the articles most
+essential have disappeared entirely; and meanwhile the murder, or
+revolution, or whatever it is, continues unchecked.  You pause for
+a moment, with your head under the wardrobe, where you think you
+can see your slippers, to listen to a steady, monotonous thumping
+upon a distant door.  The victim, you presume, has taken refuge
+there; they mean to have him out and finish him.  Will you be in
+time?  The knocking ceases, and a voice, sweetly reassuring in its
+gentle plaintiveness, asks meekly:
+
+"Pa, may I get up?"
+
+You do not hear the other voice, but the responses are:
+
+"No, it was only the bath--no, she ain't really hurt,--only wet,
+you know.  Yes, ma, I'll tell 'em what you say.  No, it was a pure
+accident.  Yes; good-night, papa."
+
+Then the same voice, exerting itself so as to be heard in a distant
+part of the house, remarks:
+
+"You've got to come upstairs again.  Pa says it isn't time yet to
+get up."
+
+You return to bed, and lie listening to somebody being dragged
+upstairs, evidently against their will.  By a thoughtful
+arrangement the spare rooms at "Beggarbush" are exactly underneath
+the nurseries.  The same somebody, you conclude, still offering the
+most creditable opposition, is being put back into bed.  You can
+follow the contest with much exactitude, because every time the
+body is flung down upon the spring mattress, the bedstead, just
+above your head, makes a sort of jump; while every time the body
+succeeds in struggling out again, you are aware by the thud upon
+the floor.  After a time the struggle wanes, or maybe the bed
+collapses; and you drift back into sleep.  But the next moment, or
+what seems to be the next moment, you again open your eyes under
+the consciousness of a presence.  The door is being held ajar, and
+four solemn faces, piled one on top of the other, are peering at
+you, as though you were some natural curiosity kept in this
+particular room.  Seeing you awake, the top face, walking calmly
+over the other three, comes in and sits on the bed in a friendly
+attitude.
+
+"Oh!" it says, "we didn't know you were awake.  I've been awake
+some time."
+
+"So I gather," you reply, shortly.
+
+"Pa doesn't like us to get up too early," it continues.  "He says
+everybody else in the house is liable to be disturbed if we get up.
+So, of course, we mustn't."
+
+The tone is that of gentle resignation.  It is instinct with the
+spirit of virtuous pride, arising from the consciousness of self-
+sacrifice.
+
+"Don't you call this being up?" you suggest.
+
+"Oh, no; we're not really up, you know, because we're not properly
+dressed."  The fact is self-evident.  "Pa's always very tired in
+the morning," the voice continues; "of course, that's because he
+works hard all day.  Are you ever tired in the morning?"
+
+At this point he turns and notices, for the first time, that the
+three other children have also entered, and are sitting in a semi-
+circle on the floor.  From their attitude it is clear they have
+mistaken the whole thing for one of the slower forms of
+entertainment, some comic lecture or conjuring exhibition, and are
+waiting patiently for you to get out of bed and do something.  It
+shocks him, the idea of their being in the guest's bedchamber.  He
+peremptorily orders them out.  They do not answer him, they do not
+argue; in dead silence, and with one accord they fall upon him.
+All you can see from the bed is a confused tangle of waving arms
+and legs, suggestive of an intoxicated octopus trying to find
+bottom.  Not a word is spoken; that seems to be the etiquette of
+the thing.  If you are sleeping in your pyjamas, you spring from
+the bed, and only add to the confusion; if you are wearing a less
+showy garment, you stop where you are and shout commands, which are
+utterly unheeded.  The simplest plan is to leave it to the eldest
+boy.  He does get them out after a while, and closes the door upon
+them.  It re-opens immediately, and one, generally Muriel, is shot
+back into the room.  She enters as from a catapult.  She is
+handicapped by having long hair, which can be used as a convenient
+handle.  Evidently aware of this natural disadvantage, she clutches
+it herself tightly in one hand, and punches with the other.  He
+opens the door again, and cleverly uses her as a battering-ram
+against the wall of those without.  You can hear the dull crash as
+her head enters among them, and scatters them.  When the victory is
+complete, he comes back and resumes his seat on the bed.  There is
+no bitterness about him; he has forgotten the whole incident.
+
+"I like the morning," he says, "don't you?"
+
+"Some mornings," you agree, "are all right; others are not so
+peaceful."
+
+He takes no notice of your exception; a far-away look steals over
+his somewhat ethereal face.
+
+"I should like to die in the morning," he says; "everything is so
+beautiful then."
+
+"Well," you answer, "perhaps you will, if your father ever invites
+an irritable man to come and sleep here, and doesn't warn him
+beforehand."
+
+He descends from his contemplative mood, and becomes himself again.
+
+"It's jolly in the garden," he suggests; "you wouldn't like to get
+up and have a game of cricket, would you?"
+
+It was not the idea with which you went to bed, but now, as things
+have turned out, it seems as good a plan as lying there hopelessly
+awake; and you agree.
+
+You learn, later in the day, that the explanation of the proceeding
+is that you, unable to sleep, woke up early in the morning, and
+thought you would like a game of cricket.  The children, taught to
+be ever courteous to guests, felt it their duty to humour you.
+Mrs. Harris remarks at breakfast that at least you might have seen
+to it that the children were properly dressed before you took them
+out; while Harris points out to you, pathetically, how, by your one
+morning's example and encouragement, you have undone his labour of
+months.
+
+On this Wednesday morning, George, it seems, clamoured to get up at
+a quarter-past five, and persuaded them to let him teach them
+cycling tricks round the cucumber frames on Harris's new wheel.
+Even Mrs. Harris, however, did not blame George on this occasion;
+she felt intuitively the idea could not have been entirely his.
+
+It is not that the Harris children have the faintest notion of
+avoiding blame at the expense of a friend and comrade.  One and all
+they are honesty itself in accepting responsibility for their own
+misdeeds.  It simply is, that is how the thing presents itself to
+their understanding.  When you explain to them that you had no
+original intention of getting up at five o'clock in the morning to
+play cricket on the croquet lawn, or to mimic the history of the
+early Church by shooting with a cross-bow at dolls tied to a tree;
+that as a matter of fact, left to your own initiative, you would
+have slept peacefully till roused in Christian fashion with a cup
+of tea at eight, they are firstly astonished, secondly apologetic,
+and thirdly sincerely contrite.  In the present instance, waiving
+the purely academic question whether the awakening of George at a
+little before five was due to natural instinct on his part, or to
+the accidental passing of a home-made boomerang through his bedroom
+window, the dear children frankly admitted that the blame for his
+uprising was their own.  As the eldest boy said:
+
+"We ought to have remembered that Uncle George had a long day,
+before him, and we ought to have dissuaded him from getting up.  I
+blame myself entirely."
+
+But an occasional change of habit does nobody any harm; and
+besides, as Harris and I agreed, it was good training for George.
+In the Black Forest we should be up at five every morning; that we
+had determined on.  Indeed, George himself had suggested half-past
+four, but Harris and I had argued that five would be early enough
+as an average; that would enable us to be on our machines by six,
+and to break the back of our journey before the heat of the day set
+in.  Occasionally we might start a little earlier, but not as a
+habit.
+
+I myself was up that morning at five.  This was earlier than I had
+intended.  I had said to myself on going to sleep, "Six o'clock,
+sharp!"
+
+There are men I know who can wake themselves at any time to the
+minute.  They say to themselves literally, as they lay their heads
+upon the pillow, "Four-thirty," "Four-forty-five," or "Five-
+fifteen," as the case may be; and as the clock strikes they open
+their eyes.  It is very wonderful this; the more one dwells upon
+it, the greater the mystery grows.  Some Ego within us, acting
+quite independently of our conscious self, must be capable of
+counting the hours while we sleep.  Unaided by clock or sun, or any
+other medium known to our five senses, it keeps watch through the
+darkness.  At the exact moment it whispers "Time!" and we awake.
+The work of an old riverside fellow I once talked with called him
+to be out of bed each morning half an hour before high tide.  He
+told me that never once had he overslept himself by a minute.
+Latterly, he never even troubled to work out the tide for himself.
+He would lie down tired, and sleep a dreamless sleep, and each
+morning at a different hour this ghostly watchman, true as the tide
+itself, would silently call him.  Did the man's spirit haunt
+through the darkness the muddy river stairs; or had it knowledge of
+the ways of Nature?  Whatever the process, the man himself was
+unconscious of it.
+
+In my own case my inward watchman is, perhaps, somewhat out of
+practice.  He does his best; but he is over-anxious; he worries
+himself, and loses count.  I say to him, maybe, "Five-thirty,
+please;" and he wakes me with a start at half-past two.  I look at
+my watch.  He suggests that, perhaps, I forgot to wind it up.  I
+put it to my ear; it is still going.  He thinks, maybe, something
+has happened to it; he is confident himself it is half-past five,
+if not a little later.  To satisfy him, I put on a pair of slippers
+and go downstairs to inspect the dining-room clock.  What happens
+to a man when he wanders about the house in the middle of the
+night, clad in a dressing-gown and a pair of slippers, there is no
+need to recount; most men know by experience.  Everything--
+especially everything with a sharp corner--takes a cowardly delight
+in hitting him.  When you are wearing a pair of stout boots, things
+get out of your way; when you venture among furniture in woolwork
+slippers and no socks, it comes at you and kicks you.  I return to
+bed bad tempered, and refusing to listen to his further absurd
+suggestion that all the clocks in the house have entered into a
+conspiracy against me, take half an hour to get to sleep again.
+From four to five he wakes me every ten minutes.  I wish I had
+never said a word to him about the thing.  At five o'clock he goes
+to sleep himself, worn out, and leaves it to the girl, who does it
+half an hour later than usual.
+
+On this particular Wednesday he worried me to such an extent, that
+I got up at five simply to be rid of him.  I did not know what to
+do with myself.  Our train did not leave till eight; all our
+luggage had been packed and sent on the night before, together with
+the bicycles, to Fenchurch Street Station.  I went into my study; I
+thought I would put in an hour's writing.  The early morning,
+before one has breakfasted, is not, I take it, a good season for
+literary effort.  I wrote three paragraphs of a story, and then
+read them over to myself.  Some unkind things have been said about
+my work; but nothing has yet been written which would have done
+justice to those three paragraphs.  I threw them into the waste-
+paper basket, and sat trying to remember what, if any, charitable
+institutions provided pensions for decayed authors.
+
+To escape from this train of reflection, I put a golf-ball in my
+pocket, and selecting a driver, strolled out into the paddock.  A
+couple of sheep were browsing there, and they followed and took a
+keen interest in my practice.  The one was a kindly, sympathetic
+old party.  I do not think she understood the game; I think it was
+my doing this innocent thing so early in the morning that appealed
+to her.  At every stroke I made she bleated:
+
+"Go-o-o-d, go-o-o-d ind-e-e-d!"
+
+She seemed as pleased as if she had done it herself.
+
+As for the other one, she was a cantankerous, disagreeable old
+thing, as discouraging to me as her friend was helpful.
+
+"Ba-a-ad, da-a-a-m ba-a-a-d!" was her comment on almost every
+stroke.  As a matter of fact, some were really excellent strokes;
+but she did it just to be contradictory, and for the sake of
+irritating.  I could see that.
+
+By a most regrettable accident, one of my swiftest balls struck the
+good sheep on the nose.  And at that the bad sheep laughed--laughed
+distinctly and undoubtedly, a husky, vulgar laugh; and, while her
+friend stood glued to the ground, too astonished to move, she
+changed her note for the first time and bleated:
+
+"Go-o-o-d, ve-e-ry go-o-o-d!  Be-e-e-est sho-o-o-ot he-e-e's ma-a-
+a-de!"
+
+I would have given half-a-crown if it had been she I had hit
+instead of the other one.  It is ever the good and amiable who
+suffer in this world.
+
+I had wasted more time than I had intended in the paddock, and when
+Ethelbertha came to tell me it was half-past seven, and the
+breakfast was on the table, I remembered that I had not shaved.  It
+vexes Ethelbertha my shaving quickly.  She fears that to outsiders
+it may suggest a poor-spirited attempt at suicide, and that in
+consequence it may get about the neighbourhood that we are not
+happy together.  As a further argument, she has also hinted that my
+appearance is not of the kind that can be trifled with.
+
+On the whole, I was just as glad not to be able to take a long
+farewell of Ethelbertha; I did not want to risk her breaking down.
+But I should have liked more opportunity to say a few farewell
+words of advice to the children, especially as regards my fishing
+rod, which they will persist in using for cricket stumps; and I
+hate having to run for a train.  Quarter of a mile from the station
+I overtook George and Harris; they were also running.  In their
+case--so Harris informed me, jerkily, while we trotted side by
+side--it was the new kitchen stove that was to blame.  This was the
+first morning they had tried it, and from some cause or other it
+had blown up the kidneys and scalded the cook.  He said he hoped
+that by the time we returned they would have got more used to it.
+
+We caught the train by the skin of our teeth, as the saying is, and
+reflecting upon the events of the morning, as we sat gasping in the
+carriage, there passed vividly before my mind the panorama of my
+Uncle Podger, as on two hundred and fifty days in the year he would
+start from Ealing Common by the nine-thirteen train to Moorgate
+Street.
+
+From my Uncle Podger's house to the railway station was eight
+minutes' walk.  What my uncle always said was:
+
+"Allow yourself a quarter of an hour, and take it easily."
+
+What he always did was to start five minutes before the time and
+run.  I do not know why, but this was the custom of the suburb.
+Many stout City gentlemen lived at Ealing in those days--I believe
+some live there still--and caught early trains to Town.  They all
+started late; they all carried a black bag and a newspaper in one
+hand, and an umbrella in the other; and for the last quarter of a
+mile to the station, wet or fine, they all ran.
+
+Folks with nothing else to do, nursemaids chiefly and errand boys,
+with now and then a perambulating costermonger added, would gather
+on the common of a fine morning to watch them pass, and cheer the
+most deserving.  It was not a showy spectacle.  They did not run
+well, they did not even run fast; but they were earnest, and they
+did their best.  The exhibition appealed less to one's sense of art
+than to one's natural admiration for conscientious effort.
+
+Occasionally a little harmless betting would take place among the
+crowd.
+
+"Two to one agin the old gent in the white weskit!"
+
+"Ten to one on old Blowpipes, bar he don't roll over hisself 'fore
+'e gets there!"
+
+"Heven money on the Purple Hemperor!"--a nickname bestowed by a
+youth of entomological tastes upon a certain retired military
+neighbour of my uncle's,--a gentleman of imposing appearance when
+stationary, but apt to colour highly under exercise.
+
+My uncle and the others would write to the Ealing Press complaining
+bitterly concerning the supineness of the local police; and the
+editor would add spirited leaders upon the Decay of Courtesy among
+the Lower Orders, especially throughout the Western Suburbs.  But
+no good ever resulted.
+
+It was not that my uncle did not rise early enough; it was that
+troubles came to him at the last moment.  The first thing he would
+do after breakfast would be to lose his newspaper.  We always knew
+when Uncle Podger had lost anything, by the expression of
+astonished indignation with which, on such occasions, he would
+regard the world in general.  It never occurred to my Uncle Podger
+to say to himself:
+
+"I am a careless old man.  I lose everything:  I never know where I
+have put anything.  I am quite incapable of finding it again for
+myself.  In this respect I must be a perfect nuisance to everybody
+about me.  I must set to work and reform myself."
+
+On the contrary, by some peculiar course of reasoning, he had
+convinced himself that whenever he lost a thing it was everybody
+else's fault in the house but his own.
+
+"I had it in my hand here not a minute ago!" he would exclaim.
+
+From his tone you would have thought he was living surrounded by
+conjurers, who spirited away things from him merely to irritate
+him.
+
+"Could you have left it in the garden?" my aunt would suggest.
+
+"What should I want to leave it in the garden for?  I don't want a
+paper in the garden; I want the paper in the train with me."
+
+"You haven't put it in your pocket?"
+
+"God bless the woman!  Do you think I should be standing here at
+five minutes to nine looking for it if I had it in my pocket all
+the while?  Do you think I'm a fool?"
+
+Here somebody would explain, "What's this?" and hand him from
+somewhere a paper neatly folded.
+
+"I do wish people would leave my things alone," he would growl,
+snatching at it savagely.
+
+He would open his bag to put it in, and then glancing at it, he
+would pause, speechless with sense of injury.
+
+"What's the matter?" aunt would ask.
+
+"The day before yesterday's!" he would answer, too hurt even to
+shout, throwing the paper down upon the table.
+
+If only sometimes it had been yesterday's it would have been a
+change.  But it was always the day before yesterday's; except on
+Tuesday; then it would be Saturday's.
+
+We would find it for him eventually; as often as not he was sitting
+on it.  And then he would smile, not genially, but with the
+weariness that comes to a man who feels that fate has cast his lot
+among a band of hopeless idiots.
+
+"All the time, right in front of your noses--!"  He would not
+finish the sentence; he prided himself on his self-control.
+
+This settled, he would start for the hall, where it was the custom
+of my Aunt Maria to have the children gathered, ready to say good-
+bye to him.
+
+My aunt never left the house herself, if only to make a call next
+door, without taking a tender farewell of every inmate.  One never
+knew, she would say, what might happen.
+
+One of them, of course, was sure to be missing, and the moment this
+was noticed all the other six, without an instant's hesitation,
+would scatter with a whoop to find it.  Immediately they were gone
+it would turn up by itself from somewhere quite near, always with
+the most reasonable explanation for its absence; and would at once
+start off after the others to explain to them that it was found.
+In this way, five minutes at least would be taken up in everybody's
+looking for everybody else, which was just sufficient time to allow
+my uncle to find his umbrella and lose his hat.  Then, at last, the
+group reassembled in the hall, the drawing-room clock would
+commence to strike nine.  It possessed a cold, penetrating chime
+that always had the effect of confusing my uncle.  In his
+excitement he would kiss some of the children twice over, pass by
+others, forget whom he had kissed and whom he hadn't, and have to
+begin all over again.  He used to say he believed they mixed
+themselves up on purpose, and I am not prepared to maintain that
+the charge was altogether false.  To add to his troubles, one child
+always had a sticky face; and that child would always be the most
+affectionate.
+
+If things were going too smoothly, the eldest boy would come out
+with some tale about all the clocks in the house being five minutes
+slow, and of his having been late for school the previous day in
+consequence.  This would send my uncle rushing impetuously down to
+the gate, where he would recollect that he had with him neither his
+bag nor his umbrella.  All the children that my aunt could not stop
+would charge after him, two of them struggling for the umbrella,
+the others surging round the bag.  And when they returned we would
+discover on the hall table the most important thing of all that he
+had forgotten, and wondered what he would say about it when he came
+home.
+
+We arrived at Waterloo a little after nine, and at once proceeded
+to put George's experiment into operation.  Opening the book at the
+chapter entitled "At the Cab Rank," we walked up to a hansom,
+raised our hats, and wished the driver "Good-morning."
+
+This man was not to be outdone in politeness by any foreigner, real
+or imitation.  Calling to a friend named "Charles" to "hold the
+steed," he sprang from his box, and returned to us a bow, that
+would have done credit to Mr. Turveydrop himself.  Speaking
+apparently in the name of the nation, he welcomed us to England,
+adding a regret that Her Majesty was not at the moment in London.
+
+We could not reply to him in kind.  Nothing of this sort had been
+anticipated by the book.  We called him "coachman," at which he
+again bowed to the pavement, and asked him if he would have the
+goodness to drive us to the Westminster Bridge road.
+
+He laid his hand upon his heart, and said the pleasure would be
+his.
+
+Taking the third sentence in the chapter, George asked him what his
+fare would be.
+
+The question, as introducing a sordid element into the
+conversation, seemed to hurt his feelings.  He said he never took
+money from distinguished strangers; he suggested a souvenir--a
+diamond scarf pin, a gold snuffbox, some little trifle of that sort
+by which he could remember us.
+
+As a small crowd had collected, and as the joke was drifting rather
+too far in the cabman's direction, we climbed in without further
+parley, and were driven away amid cheers.  We stopped the cab at a
+boot shop a little past Astley's Theatre that looked the sort of
+place we wanted.  It was one of those overfed shops that the moment
+their shutters are taken down in the morning disgorge their goods
+all round them.  Boxes of boots stood piled on the pavement or in
+the gutter opposite.  Boots hung in festoons about its doors and
+windows.  Its sun-blind was as some grimy vine, bearing bunches of
+black and brown boots.  Inside, the shop was a bower of boots.  The
+man, when we entered, was busy with a chisel and hammer opening a
+new crate full of boots.
+
+George raised his hat, and said "Good-morning."
+
+The man did not even turn round.  He struck me from the first as a
+disagreeable man.  He grunted something which might have been
+"Good-morning," or might not, and went on with his work.
+
+George said:  "I have been recommended to your shop by my friend,
+Mr. X."
+
+In response, the man should have said:  "Mr. X. is a most worthy
+gentleman; it will give me the greatest pleasure to serve any
+friend of his."
+
+What he did say was:  "Don't know him; never heard of him."
+
+This was disconcerting.  The book gave three or four methods of
+buying boots; George had carefully selected the one centred round
+"Mr. X," as being of all the most courtly.  You talked a good deal
+with the shopkeeper about this "Mr. X," and then, when by this
+means friendship and understanding had been established, you slid
+naturally and gracefully into the immediate object of your coming,
+namely, your desire for boots, "cheap and good."  This gross,
+material man cared, apparently, nothing for the niceties of retail
+dealing.  It was necessary with such an one to come to business
+with brutal directness.  George abandoned "Mr. X," and turning back
+to a previous page, took a sentence at random.  It was not a happy
+selection; it was a speech that would have been superfluous made to
+any bootmaker.  Under the present circumstances, threatened and
+stifled as we were on every side by boots, it possessed the dignity
+of positive imbecilitiy.  It ran:- "One has told me that you have
+here boots for sale."
+
+For the first time the man put down his hammer and chisel, and
+looked at us.  He spoke slowly, in a thick and husky voice.  He
+said:
+
+"What d'ye think I keep boots for--to smell 'em?"
+
+He was one of those men that begin quietly and grow more angry as
+they proceed, their wrongs apparently working within them like
+yeast.
+
+"What d'ye think I am," he continued, "a boot collector?  What d'ye
+think I'm running this shop for--my health?  D'ye think I love the
+boots, and can't bear to part with a pair?  D'ye think I hang 'em
+about here to look at 'em?  Ain't there enough of 'em?  Where d'ye
+think you are--in an international exhibition of boots?  What d'ye
+think these boots are--a historical collection?  Did you ever hear
+of a man keeping a boot shop and not selling boots?  D'ye think I
+decorate the shop with 'em to make it look pretty?  What d'ye take
+me for--a prize idiot?"
+
+I have always maintained that these conversation books are never of
+any real use.  What we wanted was some English equivalent for the
+well-known German idiom:  "Behalten Sie Ihr Haar auf."
+
+Nothing of the sort was to be found in the book from beginning to
+end.  However, I will do George the credit to admit he chose the
+very best sentence that was to be found therein and applied it.  He
+said:.
+
+"I will come again, when, perhaps, you will have some more boots to
+show me.  Till then, adieu!"
+
+With that we returned to our cab and drove away, leaving the man
+standing in the centre of his boot-bedecked doorway addressing
+remarks to us.  What he said, I did not hear, but the passers-by
+appeared to find it interesting.
+
+George was for stopping at another boot shop and trying the
+experiment afresh; he said he really did want a pair of bedroom
+slippers.  But we persuaded him to postpone their purchase until
+our arrival in some foreign city, where the tradespeople are no
+doubt more inured to this sort of talk, or else more naturally
+amiable.  On the subject of the hat, however, he was adamant.  He
+maintained that without that he could not travel, and, accordingly,
+we pulled up at a small shop in the Blackfriars Road.
+
+The proprietor of this shop was a cheery, bright-eyed little man,
+and he helped us rather than hindered us.
+
+When George asked him in the words of the book, "Have you any
+hats?" he did not get angry; he just stopped and thoughtfully
+scratched his chin.
+
+"Hats," said he.  "Let me think.  Yes"--here a smile of positive
+pleasure broke over his genial countenance--"yes, now I come to
+think of it, I believe I have a hat.  But, tell me, why do you ask
+me?"
+
+George explained to him that he wished to purchase a cap, a
+travelling cap, but the essence of the transaction was that it was
+to be a "good cap."
+
+The man's face fell.
+
+"Ah," he remarked, "there, I am afraid, you have me.  Now, if you
+had wanted a bad cap, not worth the price asked for it; a cap good
+for nothing but to clean windows with, I could have found you the
+very thing.  But a good cap--no; we don't keep them.  But wait a
+minute," he continued,--on seeing the disappointment that spread
+over George's expressive countenance, "don't be in a hurry.  I have
+a cap here"--he went to a drawer and opened it--"it is not a good
+cap, but it is not so bad as most of the caps I sell."
+
+He brought it forward, extended on his palm.
+
+"What do you think of that?" he asked.  "Could you put up with
+that?"
+
+George fitted it on before the glass, and, choosing another remark
+from the book, said:
+
+"This hat fits me sufficiently well, but, tell me, do you consider
+that it becomes me?"
+
+The man stepped back and took a bird's-eye view.
+
+"Candidly," he replied, "I can't say that it does."
+
+He turned from George, and addressed himself to Harris and myself.
+
+"Your friend's beauty," said he, "I should describe as elusive.  It
+is there, but you can easily miss it.  Now, in that cap, to my
+mind, you do miss it."
+
+At that point it occurred to George that he had had sufficient fun
+with this particular man.  He said:
+
+"That is all right.  We don't want to lose the train.  How much?"
+
+Answered the man:  "The price of that cap, sir, which, in my
+opinion, is twice as much as it is worth, is four-and-six.  Would
+you like it wrapped up in brown paper, sir, or in white?"
+
+George said he would take it as it was, paid the man four-and-six
+in-silver, and went out.  Harris and I followed.
+
+At Fenchurch Street we compromised with our cabman for five
+shillings.  He made us another courtly bow, and begged us to
+remember him to the Emperor of Austria.
+
+Comparing views in the train, we agreed that we had lost the game
+by two points to one; and George, who was evidently disappointed,
+threw the book out of window.
+
+We found our luggage and the bicycles safe on the boat, and with
+the tide at twelve dropped down the river.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+
+
+A necessary digression--Introduced by story containing moral--One
+of the charms of this book--The Journal that did not command
+success--Its boast:  "Instruction combined with Amusement"--
+Problem:  say what should be considered instructive and what
+amusing--A popular game--Expert opinion on English law--Another of
+the charms of this book--A hackneyed tune--Yet a third charm of
+this book--The sort of wood it was where the maiden lived--
+Description of the Black Forest.
+
+A story is told of a Scotchman who, loving a lassie, desired her
+for his wife.  But he possessed the prudence of his race.  He had
+noticed in his circle many an otherwise promising union result in
+disappointment and dismay, purely in consequence of the false
+estimate formed by bride or bridegroom concerning the imagined
+perfectability of the other.  He determined that in his own case no
+collapsed ideal should be possible.  Therefore, it was that his
+proposal took the following form:
+
+"I'm but a puir lad, Jennie; I hae nae siller to offer ye, and nae
+land."
+
+"Ah, but ye hae yoursel', Davie!"
+
+"An' I'm wishfu' it wa' onything else, lassie.  I'm nae but a puir
+ill-seasoned loon, Jennie."
+
+"Na, na; there's mony a lad mair ill-looking than yoursel', Davie."
+
+"I hae na seen him, lass, and I'm just a-thinkin' I shouldna' care
+to."
+
+"Better a plain man, Davie, that ye can depend a' than ane that
+would be a speirin' at the lassies, a-bringin' trouble into the
+hame wi' his flouting ways."
+
+"Dinna ye reckon on that, Jennie; it's nae the bonniest Bubbly Jock
+that mak's the most feathers to fly in the kailyard.  I was ever a
+lad to run after the petticoats, as is weel kent; an' it's a weary
+handfu' I'll be to ye, I'm thinkin'."
+
+"Ah, but ye hae a kind heart, Davie! an' ye love me weel.  I'm sure
+on't."
+
+"I like ye weel enoo', Jennie, though I canna say how long the
+feeling may bide wi' me; an' I'm kind enoo' when I hae my ain way,
+an' naethin' happens to put me oot.  But I hae the deevil's ain
+temper, as my mither call tell ye, an' like my puir fayther, I'm a-
+thinkin', I'll grow nae better as I grow mair auld."
+
+"Ay, but ye're sair hard upon yersel', Davie.  Ye're an honest lad.
+I ken ye better than ye ken yersel', an' ye'll mak a guid hame for
+me."
+
+"Maybe, Jennie!  But I hae my doots.  It's a sair thing for wife
+an' bairns when the guid man canna keep awa' frae the glass; an'
+when the scent of the whusky comes to me it's just as though I
+hae'd the throat o' a Loch Tay salmon; it just gaes doon an' doon,
+an' there's nae filling o' me."
+
+"Ay, but ye're a guid man when ye're sober, Davie."
+
+"Maybe I'll be that, Jennie, if I'm nae disturbed."
+
+"An' ye'll bide wi' me, Davie, an' work for me?"
+
+"I see nae reason why I shouldna bide wi' yet Jennie; but dinna ye
+clack aboot work to me, for I just canna bear the thoct o't."
+
+"Anyhow, ye'll do your best, Davie?  As the minister says, nae man
+can do mair than that."
+
+"An' it's a puir best that mine'll be, Jennie, and I'm nae sae sure
+ye'll hae ower muckle even o' that.  We're a' weak, sinfu'
+creatures, Jennie, an' ye'd hae some deefficulty to find a man
+weaker or mair sinfu' than mysel'."
+
+"Weel, weel, ye hae a truthfu' tongue, Davie.  Mony a lad will mak
+fine promises to a puir lassie, only to break 'em an' her heart wi'
+'em.  Ye speak me fair, Davie, and I'm thinkin' I'll just tak ye,
+an' see what comes o't."
+
+Concerning what did come of it, the story is silent, but one feels
+that under no circumstances had the lady any right to complain of
+her bargain.  Whether she ever did or did not--for women do not
+invariably order their tongues according to logic, nor men either
+for the matter of that--Davie, himself, must have had the
+satisfaction of reflecting that all reproaches were undeserved.
+
+I wish to be equally frank with the reader of this book.  I wish
+here conscientiously to let forth its shortcomings.  I wish no one
+to read this book under a misapprehension.
+
+There will be no useful information in this book.
+
+Anyone who should think that with the aid of this book he would be
+able to make a tour through Germany and the Black Forest would
+probably lose himself before he got to the Nore.  That, at all
+events, would be the best thing that could happen to him.  The
+farther away from home he got, the greater only would be his
+difficulties.
+
+I do not regard the conveyance of useful information as my forte.
+This belief was not inborn with me; it has been driven home upon me
+by experience.
+
+In my early journalistic days, I served upon a paper, the
+forerunner of many very popular periodicals of the present day.
+Our boast was that we combined instruction with amusement; as to
+what should be regarded as affording amusement and what
+instruction, the reader judged for himself.  We gave advice to
+people about to marry--long, earnest advice that would, had they
+followed it, have made our circle of readers the envy of the whole
+married world.  We told our subscribers how to make fortunes by
+keeping rabbits, giving facts and figures.  The thing that must
+have surprised them was that we ourselves did not give up
+journalism and start rabbit-farming.  Often and often have I proved
+conclusively from authoritative sources how a man starting a rabbit
+farm with twelve selected rabbits and a little judgment must, at
+the end of three years, be in receipt of an income of two thousand
+a year, rising rapidly; he simply could not help himself.  He might
+not want the money.  He might not know what to do with it when he
+had it.  But there it was for him.  I have never met a rabbit
+farmer myself worth two thousand a year, though I have known many
+start with the twelve necessary, assorted rabbits.  Something has
+always gone wrong somewhere; maybe the continued atmosphere of a
+rabbit farm saps the judgment.
+
+We told our readers how many bald-headed men there were in Iceland,
+and for all we knew our figures may have been correct; how many red
+herrings placed tail to mouth it would take to reach from London to
+Rome, which must have been useful to anyone desirous of laying down
+a line of red herrings from London to Rome, enabling him to order
+in the right quantity at the beginning; how many words the average
+woman spoke in a day; and other such like items of information
+calculated to make them wise and great beyond the readers of other
+journals.
+
+We told them how to cure fits in cats.  Personally I do not
+believe, and I did not believe then, that you can cure fits in
+cats.  If I had a cat subject to fits I should advertise it for
+sale, or even give it away.  But our duty was to supply information
+when asked for.  Some fool wrote, clamouring to know; and I spent
+the best part of a morning seeking knowledge on the subject.  I
+found what I wanted at length at the end of an old cookery book.
+What it was doing there I have never been able to understand.  It
+had nothing to do with the proper subject of the book whatever;
+there was no suggestion that you could make anything savoury out of
+a cat, even when you had cured it of its fits.  The authoress had
+just thrown in this paragraph out of pure generosity.  I can only
+say that I wish she had left it out; it was the cause of a deal of
+angry correspondence and of the loss of four subscribers to the
+paper, if not more.  The man said the result of following our
+advice had been two pounds worth of damage to his kitchen crockery,
+to say nothing of a broken window and probable blood poisoning to
+himself; added to which the cat's fits were worse than before.  And
+yet it was a simple enough recipe.  You held the cat between your
+legs, gently, so as not to hurt it, and with a pair of scissors
+made a sharp, clean cut in its tail.  You did not cut off any part
+of the tail; you were to be careful not to do that; you only made
+an incision.
+
+As we explained to the man, the garden or the coal cellar would
+have been the proper place for the operation; no one but an idiot
+would have attempted to perform it in a kitchen, and without help.
+
+We gave them hints on etiquette.  We told them how to address peers
+and bishops; also how to eat soup.  We instructed shy young men how
+to acquire easy grace in drawing-rooms.  We taught dancing to both
+sexes by the aid of diagrams.  We solved their religious doubts for
+them, and supplied them with a code of morals that would have done
+credit to a stained-glass window.
+
+The paper was not a financial success, it was some years before its
+time, and the consequence was that our staff was limited.  My own
+apartment, I remember, included "Advice to Mothers"--I wrote that
+with the assistance of my landlady, who, having divorced one
+husband and buried four children, was, I considered, a reliable
+authority on all domestic matters; "Hints on Furnishing and
+Household Decorations--with Designs" a column of "Literary Counsel
+to Beginners"--I sincerely hope my guidance was of better service
+to them than it has ever proved to myself; and our weekly article,
+"Straight Talks to Young Men," signed "Uncle Henry."  A kindly,
+genial old fellow was "Uncle Henry," with wide and varied
+experience, and a sympathetic attitude towards the rising
+generation.  He had been through trouble himself in his far back
+youth, and knew most things.  Even to this day I read of "Uncle
+Henry's" advice, and, though I say it who should not, it still
+seems to me good, sound advice.  I often think that had I followed
+"Uncle Henry's" counsel closer I would have been wiser, made fewer
+mistakes, felt better satisfied with myself than is now the case.
+
+A quiet, weary little woman, who lived in a bed-sitting room off
+the Tottenham Court Road, and who had a husband in a lunatic
+asylum, did our "Cooking Column," "Hints on Education"--we were
+full of hints,--and a page and a half of "Fashionable
+Intelligence," written in the pertly personal style which even yet
+has not altogether disappeared, so I am informed, from modern
+journalism:  "I must tell you about the DIVINE frock I wore at
+'Glorious Goodwood' last week.  Prince C.--but there, I really must
+not repeat all the things the silly fellow says; he is TOO foolish-
+-and the DEAR Countess, I fancy, was just the WEEISH bit jealous"--
+and so on.
+
+Poor little woman!  I see her now in the shabby grey alpaca, with
+the inkstains on it.  Perhaps a day at "Glorious Goodwood," or
+anywhere else in the fresh air, might have put some colour into her
+cheeks.
+
+Our proprietor--one of the most unashamedly ignorant men I ever
+met--I remember his gravely informing a correspondent once that Ben
+Jonson had written Rabelais to pay for his mother's funeral, and
+only laughing good-naturedly when his mistakes were pointed out to
+him--wrote with the aid of a cheap encyclopedia the pages devoted
+to "General Information," and did them on the whole remarkably
+well; while our office boy, with an excellent pair of scissors for
+his assistant, was responsible for our supply of "Wit and Humour."
+
+It was hard work, and the pay was poor, what sustained us was the
+consciousness that we were instructing and improving our fellow men
+and women.  Of all games in the world, the one most universally and
+eternally popular is the game of school.  You collect six children,
+and put them on a doorstep, while you walk up and down with the
+book and cane.  We play it when babies, we play it when boys and
+girls, we play it when men and women, we play it as, lean and
+slippered, we totter towards the grave.  It never palls upon, it
+never wearies us.  Only one thing mars it:  the tendency of one and
+all of the other six children to clamour for their turn with the
+book and the cane.  The reason, I am sure, that journalism is so
+popular a calling, in spite of its many drawbacks, is this:  each
+journalist feels he is the boy walking up and down with the cane.
+The Government, the Classes, and the Masses, Society, Art, and
+Literature, are the other children sitting on the doorstep.  He
+instructs and improves them.
+
+But I digress.  It was to excuse my present permanent
+disinclination to be the vehicle of useful information that I
+recalled these matters.  Let us now return.
+
+Somebody, signing himself "Balloonist," had written to ask
+concerning the manufacture of hydrogen gas.  It is an easy thing to
+manufacture--at least, so I gathered after reading up the subject
+at the British Museum; yet I did warn "Balloonist," whoever he
+might be, to take all necessary precaution against accident.  What
+more could I have done?  Ten days afterwards a florid-faced lady
+called at the office, leading by the hand what, she explained, was
+her son, aged twelve.  The boy's face was unimpressive to a degree
+positively remarkable.  His mother pushed him forward and took off
+his hat, and then I perceived the reason for this.  He had no
+eyebrows whatever, and of his hair nothing remained but a scrubby
+dust, giving to his head the appearance of a hard-boiled egg,
+skinned and sprinkled with black pepper.
+
+"That was a handsome lad this time last week, with naturally curly
+hair," remarked the lady.  She spoke with a rising inflection,
+suggestive of the beginning of things.
+
+"What has happened to him?" asked our chief.
+
+"This is what's happened to him," retorted the lady.  She drew from
+her muff a copy of our last week's issue, with my article on
+hydrogen gas scored in pencil, and flung it before his eyes.  Our
+chief took it and read it through.
+
+"He was 'Balloonist'?" queried the chief.
+
+"He was 'Balloonist,'" admitted the lady, "the poor innocent child,
+and now look at him!"
+
+"Maybe it'll grow again," suggested our chief.
+
+"Maybe it will," retorted the lady, her key continuing to rise,
+"and maybe it won't.  What I want to know is what you are going to
+do for him."
+
+Our chief suggested a hair wash.  I thought at first she was going
+to fly at him; but for the moment she confined herself to words.
+It appears she was not thinking of a hair wash, but of
+compensation.  She also made observations on the general character
+of our paper, its utility, its claim to public support, the sense
+and wisdom of its contributors.
+
+"I really don't see that it is our fault," urged the chief--he was
+a mild-mannered man; "he asked for information, and he got it."
+
+"Don't you try to be funny about it," said the lady (he had not
+meant to be funny, I am sure; levity was not his failing) "or
+you'll get something that YOU haven't asked for.  Why, for two
+pins," said the lady, with a suddenness that sent us both flying
+like scuttled chickens behind our respective chairs, "I'd come
+round and make your head like it!"  I take it, she meant like the
+boy's.  She also added observations upon our chief's personal
+appearance, that were distinctly in bad taste.  She was not a nice
+woman by any means.
+
+Myself, I am of opinion that had she brought the action she
+threatened, she would have had no case; but our chief was a man who
+had had experience of the law, and his principle was always to
+avoid it.  I have heard him say:
+
+"If a man stopped me in the street and demanded of me my watch, I
+should refuse to give it to him.  If he threatened to take it by
+force, I feel I should, though not a fighting man, do my best to
+protect it.  If, on the other hand, he should assert his intention
+of trying to obtain it by means of an action in any court of law, I
+should take it out of my pocket and hand it to him, and think I had
+got off cheaply."
+
+He squared the matter with the florid-faced lady for a five-pound
+note, which must have represented a month's profits on the paper;
+and she departed, taking her damaged offspring with her.  After she
+was gone, our chief spoke kindly to me.  He said:
+
+"Don't think I am blaming you in the least; it is not your fault,
+it is Fate.  Keep to moral advice and criticism--there you are
+distinctly good; but don't try your hand any more on 'Useful
+Information.'  As I have said, it is not your fault.  Your
+information is correct enough--there is nothing to be said against
+that; it simply is that you are not lucky with it."
+
+I would that I had followed his advice always; I would have saved
+myself and other people much disaster.  I see no reason why it
+should be, but so it is.  If I instruct a man as to the best route
+between London and Rome, he loses his luggage in Switzerland, or is
+nearly shipwrecked off Dover.  If I counsel him in the purchase of
+a camera, he gets run in by the German police for photographing
+fortresses.  I once took a deal of trouble to explain to a man how
+to marry his deceased wife's sister at Stockholm.  I found out for
+him the time the boat left Hull and the best hotels to stop at.
+There was not a single mistake from beginning to end in the
+information with which I supplied him; no hitch occurred anywhere;
+yet now he never speaks to me.
+
+Therefore it is that I have come to restrain my passion for the
+giving of information; therefore it is that nothing in the nature
+of practical instruction will be found, if I can help it, within
+these pages.
+
+There will be no description of towns, no historical reminiscences,
+no architecture, no morals.
+
+I once asked an intelligent foreigner what he thought of London.
+
+He said:  "It is a very big town."
+
+I said:  "What struck you most about it?"
+
+He replied:  "The people."
+
+I said:  "Compared with other towns--Paris, Rome, Berlin,--what did
+you think of it?"
+
+He shrugged his shoulders.  "It is bigger," he said; "what more can
+one say?"
+
+One anthill is very much like another.  So many avenues, wide or
+narrow, where the little creatures swarm in strange confusion;
+these bustling by, important; these halting to pow-wow with one
+another.  These struggling with big burdens; those but basking in
+the sun.  So many granaries stored with food; so many cells where
+the little things sleep, and eat, and love; the corner where lie
+their little white bones.  This hive is larger, the next smaller.
+This nest lies on the sand, and another under the stones.  This was
+built but yesterday, while that was fashioned ages ago, some say
+even before the swallows came; who knows?
+
+Nor will there be found herein folk-lore or story.
+
+Every valley where lie homesteads has its song.  I will tell you
+the plot; you can turn it into verse and set it to music of your
+own.
+
+There lived a lass, and there came a lad, who loved and rode away.
+
+It is a monotonous song, written in many languages; for the young
+man seems to have been a mighty traveller.  Here in sentimental
+Germany they remember him well.  So also the dwellers of the Blue
+Alsatian Mountains remember his coming among them; while, if my
+memory serves me truly, he likewise visited the Banks of Allan
+Water.  A veritable Wandering Jew is he; for still the foolish
+girls listen, so they say, to the dying away of his hoof-beats.
+
+In this land of many ruins, that long while ago were voice-filled
+homes, linger many legends; and here again, giving you the
+essentials, I leave you to cook the dish for yourself.  Take a
+human heart or two, assorted; a bundle of human passions--there are
+not many of them, half a dozen at the most; season with a mixture
+of good and evil; flavour the whole with the sauce of death, and
+serve up where and when you will.  "The Saint's Cell," "The Haunted
+Keep," "The Dungeon Grave," "The Lover's Leap"--call it what you
+will, the stew's the same.
+
+Lastly, in this book there will be no scenery.  This is not
+laziness on my part; it is self-control.  Nothing is easier to
+write than scenery; nothing more difficult and unnecessary to read.
+When Gibbon had to trust to travellers' tales for a description of
+the Hellespont, and the Rhine was chiefly familiar to English
+students through the medium of Caesar's Commentaries, it behoved
+every globe-trotter, for whatever distance, to describe to the best
+of his ability the things that he had seen.  Dr. Johnson, familiar
+with little else than the view down Fleet Street, could read the
+description of a Yorkshire moor with pleasure and with profit.  To
+a cockney who had never seen higher ground than the Hog's Back in
+Surrey, an account of Snowdon must have appeared exciting.  But we,
+or rather the steam-engine and the camera for us, have changed all
+that.  The man who plays tennis every year at the foot of the
+Matterhorn, and billiards on the summit of the Rigi, does not thank
+you for an elaborate and painstaking description of the Grampian
+Hills.  To the average man, who has seen a dozen oil paintings, a
+hundred photographs, a thousand pictures in the illustrated
+journals, and a couple of panoramas of Niagara, the word-painting
+of a waterfall is tedious.
+
+An American friend of mine, a cultured gentleman, who loved poetry
+well enough for its own sake, told me that he had obtained a more
+correct and more satisfying idea of the Lake district from an
+eighteenpenny book of photographic views than from all the works of
+Coleridge, Southey, and Wordsworth put together.  I also remember
+his saying concerning this subject of scenery in literature, that
+he would thank an author as much for writing an eloquent
+description of what he had just had for dinner.  But this was in
+reference to another argument; namely, the proper province of each
+art.  My friend maintained that just as canvas and colour were the
+wrong mediums for story telling, so word-painting was, at its best,
+but a clumsy method of conveying impressions that could much better
+be received through the eye.
+
+As regards the question, there also lingers in my memory very
+distinctly a hot school afternoon.  The class was for English
+literature, and the proceedings commenced with the reading of a
+certain lengthy, but otherwise unobjectionable, poem.  The author's
+name, I am ashamed to say, I have forgotten, together with the
+title of the poem.  The reading finished, we closed our books, and
+the Professor, a kindly, white-haired old gentleman, suggested our
+giving in our own words an account of what we had just read.
+
+"Tell me," said the Professor, encouragingly, "what it is all
+about."
+
+"Please, sir," said the first boy--he spoke with bowed head and
+evident reluctance, as though the subject were one which, left to
+himself, he would never have mentioned,--"it is about a maiden."
+
+"Yes," agreed the Professor; "but I want you to tell me in your own
+words.  We do not speak of a maiden, you know; we say a girl.  Yes,
+it is about a girl.  Go on."
+
+"A girl," repeated the top boy, the substitution apparently
+increasing his embarrassment, "who lived in a wood."
+
+"What sort of a wood?" asked the Professor.
+
+The first boy examined his inkpot carefully, and then looked at the
+ceiling.
+
+"Come," urged the Professor, growing impatient, "you have been
+reading about this wood for the last ten minutes.  Surely you can
+tell me something concerning it."
+
+"The gnarly trees, their twisted branches"--recommenced the top
+boy.
+
+"No, no," interrupted the Professor; "I do not want you to repeat
+the poem.  I want you to tell me in your own words what sort of a
+wood it was where the girl lived."
+
+The Professor tapped his foot impatiently; the top boy made a dash
+for it.
+
+"Please, sir, it was the usual sort of a wood."
+
+"Tell him what sort of a wood," said he, pointing to the second
+lad.
+
+The second boy said it was a "green wood."  This annoyed the
+Professor still more; he called the second boy a blockhead, though
+really I cannot see why, and passed on to the third, who, for the
+last minute, had been sitting apparently on hot plates, with his
+right arm waving up and down like a distracted semaphore signal.
+He would have had to say it the next second, whether the Professor
+had asked him or not; he was red in the face, holding his knowledge
+in.
+
+"A dark and gloomy wood," shouted the third boy, with much relief
+to his feelings.
+
+"A dark and gloomy wood," repeated the Professor, with evident
+approval.  "And why was it dark and gloomy?"
+
+The third boy was still equal to the occasion.
+
+"Because the sun could not get inside it."
+
+The Professor felt he had discovered the poet of the class.
+
+"Because the sun could not get into it, or, better, because the
+sunbeams could not penetrate.  And why could not the sunbeams
+penetrate there?"
+
+"Please, sir, because the leaves were too thick."
+
+"Very well," said the Professor.  "The girl lived in a dark and
+gloomy wood, through the leafy canopy of which the sunbeams were
+unable to pierce.  Now, what grew in this wood?"  He pointed to the
+fourth boy.
+
+"Please, sir, trees, sir."
+
+"And what else?"
+
+"Toadstools, sir."  This after a pause.
+
+The Professor was not quite sure about the toadstools, but on
+referring to the text he found that the boy was right; toadstools
+had been mentioned.
+
+"Quite right," admitted the Professor, "toadstools grew there.  And
+what else?  What do you find underneath trees in a wood?"
+
+"Please, sir, earth, sir."
+
+"No; no; what grows in a wood besides trees?"
+
+"Oh, please, sir, bushes, sir."
+
+"Bushes; very good.  Now we are getting on.  In this wood there
+were trees and bushes.  And what else?"
+
+He pointed to a small boy near the bottom, who having decided that
+the wood was too far off to be of any annoyance to him,
+individually, was occupying his leisure playing noughts and crosses
+against himself.  Vexed and bewildered, but feeling it necessary to
+add something to the inventory, he hazarded blackberries.  This was
+a mistake; the poet had not mentioned blackberries.
+
+"Of course, Klobstock would think of something to eat," commented
+the Professor, who prided himself on his ready wit.  This raised a
+laugh against Klobstock, and pleased the Professor.
+
+"You," continued he, pointing to a boy in the middle; "what else
+was there in this wood besides trees and bushes?"
+
+"Please, sir, there was a torrent there."
+
+"Quite right; and what did the torrent do?"
+
+"Please, sir, it gurgled."
+
+"No; no.  Streams gurgle, torrents--?"
+
+"Roar, sir."
+
+"It roared.  And what made it roar?"
+
+This was a poser.  One boy--he was not our prize intellect, I
+admit--suggested the girl.  To help us the Professor put his
+question in another form:
+
+"When did it roar?"
+
+Our third boy, again coming to the rescue, explained that it roared
+when it fell down among the rocks.  I think some of us had a vague
+idea that it must have been a cowardly torrent to make such a noise
+about a little thing like this; a pluckier torrent, we felt, would
+have got up and gone on, saying nothing about it.  A torrent that
+roared every time it fell upon a rock we deemed a poor spirited
+torrent; but the Professor seemed quite content with it.
+
+"And what lived in this wood beside the girl?" was the next
+question.
+
+"Please, sir, birds, sir."
+
+"Yes, birds lived in this wood.  What else?"
+
+Birds seemed to have exhausted our ideas.
+
+"Come," said the Professor, "what are those animals with tails,
+that run up trees?"
+
+We thought for a while, then one of us suggested cats.
+
+This was an error; the poet had said nothing about cats; squirrels
+was what the Professor was trying to get.
+
+I do not recall much more about this wood in detail.  I only
+recollect that the sky was introduced into it.  In places where
+there occurred an opening among the trees you could by looking up
+see the sky above you; very often there were clouds in this sky,
+and occasionally, if I remember rightly, the girl got wet.
+
+I have dwelt upon this incident, because it seems to me suggestive
+of the whole question of scenery in literature.  I could not at the
+time, I cannot now, understand why the top boy's summary was not
+sufficient.  With all due deference to the poet, whoever he may
+have been, one cannot but acknowledge that his wood was, and could
+not be otherwise than, "the usual sort of a wood."
+
+I could describe the Black Forest to you at great length.  I could
+translate to you Hebel, the poet of the Black Forest.  I could
+write pages concerning its rocky gorges and its smiling valleys,
+its pine-clad slopes, its rock-crowned summits, its foaming
+rivulets (where the tidy German has not condemned them to flow
+respectably through wooden troughs or drainpipes), its white
+villages, its lonely farmsteads.
+
+But I am haunted by the suspicion you might skip all this.  Were
+you sufficiently conscientious--or weak-minded enough--not to do
+so, I should, all said and done, succeed in conveying to you only
+an impression much better summed up in the simple words of the
+unpretentious guide book:
+
+"A picturesque, mountainous district, bounded on the south and the
+west by the plain of the Rhine, towards which its spurs descend
+precipitately.  Its geological formation consists chiefly of
+variegated sandstone and granite; its lower heights being covered
+with extensive pine forests.  It is well watered with numerous
+streams, while its populous valleys are fertile and well
+cultivated.  The inns are good; but the local wines should be
+partaken of by the stranger with discretion."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+
+
+Why we went to Hanover--Something they do better abroad--The art of
+polite foreign conversation, as taught in English schools--A true
+history, now told for the first time--The French joke, as provided
+for the amusement of British youth--Fatherly instincts of Harris--
+The road-waterer, considered as an artist--Patriotism of George--
+What Harris ought to have done--What he did--We save Harris's life-
+-A sleepless city--The cab-horse as a critic.
+
+We arrived in Hamburg on Friday after a smooth and uneventful
+voyage; and from Hamburg we travelled to Berlin by way of Hanover.
+It is not the most direct route.  I can only account for our visit
+to Hanover as the nigger accounted to the magistrate for his
+appearance in the Deacon's poultry-yard.
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Yes, sar, what the constable sez is quite true, sar; I was dar,
+sar."
+
+"Oh, so you admit it?  And what were you doing with a sack, pray,
+in Deacon Abraham's poultry-yard at twelve o'clock at night?"
+
+"I'se gwine ter tell yer, sar; yes, sar.  I'd been to Massa
+Jordan's wid a sack of melons.  Yes, sar; an' Massa Jordan he wuz
+very 'greeable, an' axed me for ter come in."
+
+"Yes, sar, very 'greeable man is Massa Jordan.  An' dar we sat a
+talking an' a talking--"
+
+"Very likely.  What we want to know is what you were doing in the
+Deacon's poultry-yard?"
+
+"Yes, sar, dat's what I'se cumming to.  It wuz ver' late 'fore I
+left Massa Jordan's, an' den I sez ter mysel', sez I, now yer jest
+step out with yer best leg foremost, Ulysses, case yer gets into
+trouble wid de ole woman.  Ver' talkative woman she is, sar, very--
+"
+
+"Yes, never mind her; there are other people very talkative in this
+town besides your wife.  Deacon Abraham's house is half a mile out
+of your way home from Mr. Jordan's.  How did you get there?"
+
+"Dat's what I'm a-gwine ter explain, sar."
+
+"I am glad of that.  And how do you propose to do it?"
+
+"Well, I'se thinkin', sar, I must ha' digressed."
+
+I take it we digressed a little.
+
+At first, from some reason or other, Hanover strikes you as an
+uninteresting town, but it grows upon you.  It is in reality two
+towns; a place of broad, modern, handsome streets and tasteful
+gardens; side by side with a sixteenth-century town, where old
+timbered houses overhang the narrow lanes; where through low
+archways one catches glimpses of galleried courtyards, once often
+thronged, no doubt, with troops of horse, or blocked with lumbering
+coach and six, waiting its rich merchant owner, and his fat placid
+Frau, but where now children and chickens scuttle at their will;
+while over the carved balconies hang dingy clothes a-drying.
+
+A singularly English atmosphere hovers over Hanover, especially on
+Sundays, when its shuttered shops and clanging bells give to it the
+suggestion of a sunnier London.  Nor was this British Sunday
+atmosphere apparent only to myself, else I might have attributed it
+to imagination; even George felt it.  Harris and I, returning from
+a short stroll with our cigars after lunch on the Sunday afternoon,
+found him peacefully slumbering in the smoke-room's easiest chair.
+
+"After all," said Harris, "there is something about the British
+Sunday that appeals to the man with English blood in his veins.  I
+should be sorry to see it altogether done away with, let the new
+generation say what it will."
+
+And taking one each end of the ample settee, we kept George
+company.
+
+To Hanover one should go, they say, to learn the best German.  The
+disadvantage is that outside Hanover, which is only a small
+province, nobody understands this best German.  Thus you have to
+decide whether to speak good German and remain in Hanover, or bad
+German and travel about.  Germany being separated so many centuries
+into a dozen principalities, is unfortunate in possessing a variety
+of dialects.  Germans from Posen wishful to converse with men of
+Wurtemburg, have to talk as often as not in French or English; and
+young ladies who have received an expensive education in Westphalia
+surprise and disappoint their parents by being unable to understand
+a word said to them in Mechlenberg.  An English-speaking foreigner,
+it is true, would find himself equally nonplussed among the
+Yorkshire wolds, or in the purlieus of Whitechapel; but the cases
+are not on all fours.  Throughout Germany it is not only in the
+country districts and among the uneducated that dialects are
+maintained.  Every province has practically its own language, of
+which it is proud and retentive.  An educated Bavarian will admit
+to you that, academically speaking, the North German is more
+correct; but he will continue to speak South German and to teach it
+to his children.
+
+In the course of the century, I am inclined to think that Germany
+will solve her difficulty in this respect by speaking English.
+Every boy and girl in Germany, above the peasant class, speaks
+English.  Were English pronunciation less arbitrary, there is not
+the slightest doubt but that in the course of a very few years,
+comparatively speaking, it would become the language of the world.
+All foreigners agree that, grammatically, it is the easiest
+language of any to learn.  A German, comparing it with his own
+language, where every word in every sentence is governed by at
+least four distinct and separate rules, tells you that English has
+no grammar.  A good many English people would seem to have come to
+the same conclusion; but they are wrong.  As a matter of fact,
+there is an English grammar, and one of these days our schools will
+recognise the fact, and it will be taught to our children,
+penetrating maybe even into literary and journalistic circles.  But
+at present we appear to agree with the foreigner that it is a
+quantity neglectable.  English pronunciation is the stumbling-block
+to our progress.  English spelling would seem to have been designed
+chiefly as a disguise to pronunciation.  It is a clever idea,
+calculated to check presumption on the part of the foreigner; but
+for that he would learn it in a year.
+
+For they have a way of teaching languages in Germany that is not
+our way, and the consequence is that when the German youth or
+maiden leaves the gymnasium or high school at fifteen, "it" (as in
+Germany one conveniently may say) can understand and speak the
+tongue it has been learning.  In England we have a method that for
+obtaining the least possible result at the greatest possible
+expenditure of time and money is perhaps unequalled.  An English
+boy who has been through a good middle-class school in England can
+talk to a Frenchman, slowly and with difficulty, about female
+gardeners and aunts; conversation which, to a man possessed perhaps
+of neither, is liable to pall.  Possibly, if he be a bright
+exception, he may be able to tell the time, or make a few guarded
+observations concerning the weather.  No doubt he could repeat a
+goodly number of irregular verbs by heart; only, as a matter of
+fact, few foreigners care to listen to their own irregular verbs,
+recited by young Englishmen.  Likewise he might be able to remember
+a choice selection of grotesquely involved French idioms, such as
+no modern Frenchman has ever heard or understands when he does
+hear.
+
+The explanation is that, in nine cases out of ten, he has learnt
+French from an "Ahn's First-Course."  The history of this famous
+work is remarkable and instructive.  The book was originally
+written for a joke, by a witty Frenchman who had resided for some
+years in England.  He intended it as a satire upon the
+conversational powers of British society.  From this point of view
+it was distinctly good.  He submitted it to a London publishing
+firm.  The manager was a shrewd man.  He read the book through.
+Then he sent for the author.
+
+"This book of yours," said he to the author, "is very clever.  I
+have laughed over it myself till the tears came."
+
+"I am delighted to hear you say so," replied the pleased Frenchman.
+"I tried to be truthful without being unnecessarily offensive."
+
+"It is most amusing," concurred the manager; "and yet published as
+a harmless joke, I feel it would fail."
+
+The author's face fell.
+
+"Its humour," proceeded the manager, "would be denounced as forced
+and extravagant.  It would amuse the thoughtful and intelligent,
+but from a business point of view that portion of the public are
+never worth considering.  But I have an idea," continued the
+manager.  He glanced round the room to be sure they were alone,
+and leaning forward sunk his voice to a whisper.  "My notion is to
+publish it as a serious work for the use of schools!"
+
+The author stared, speechless.
+
+"I know the English schoolman," said the manager; "this book will
+appeal to him.  It will exactly fit in with his method.  Nothing
+sillier, nothing more useless for the purpose will he ever
+discover.  He will smack his lips over the book, as a puppy licks
+up blacking."
+
+The author, sacrificing art to greed, consented.  They altered the
+title and added a vocabulary, but left the book otherwise as it
+was.
+
+The result is known to every schoolboy.  "Ahn" became the palladium
+of English philological education.  If it no longer retains its
+ubiquity, it is because something even less adaptable to the object
+in view has been since invented.
+
+Lest, in spite of all, the British schoolboy should obtain, even
+from the like of "Ahn," some glimmering of French, the British
+educational method further handicaps him by bestowing upon him the
+assistance of, what is termed in the prospectus, "A native
+gentleman."  This native French gentleman, who, by-the-by, is
+generally a Belgian, is no doubt a most worthy person, and can, it
+is true, understand and speak his own language with tolerable
+fluency.  There his qualifications cease.  Invariably he is a man
+with a quite remarkable inability to teach anybody anything.
+Indeed, he would seem to be chosen not so much as an instructor as
+an amuser of youth.  He is always a comic figure.  No Frenchman of
+a dignified appearance would be engaged for any English school.  If
+he possess by nature a few harmless peculiarities, calculated to
+cause merriment, so much the more is he esteemed by his employers.
+The class naturally regards him as an animated joke.  The two to
+four hours a week that are deliberately wasted on this ancient
+farce, are looked forward to by the boys as a merry interlude in an
+otherwise monotonous existence.  And then, when the proud parent
+takes his son and heir to Dieppe merely to discover that the lad
+does not know enough to call a cab, he abuses not the system, but
+its innocent victim.
+
+I confine my remarks to French, because that is the only language
+we attempt to teach our youth.  An English boy who could speak
+German would be looked down upon as unpatriotic.  Why we waste time
+in teaching even French according to this method I have never been
+able to understand.  A perfect unacquaintance with a language is
+respectable.  But putting aside comic journalists and lady
+novelists, for whom it is a business necessity, this smattering of
+French which we are so proud to possess only serves to render us
+ridiculous.
+
+In the German school the method is somewhat different.  One hour
+every day is devoted to the same language.  The idea is not to give
+the lad time between each lesson to forget what he learned at the
+last; the idea is for him to get on.  There is no comic foreigner
+provided for his amusement.  The desired language is taught by a
+German school-master who knows it inside and out as thoroughly as
+he knows his own.  Maybe this system does not provide the German
+youth with that perfection of foreign accent for which the British
+tourist is in every land remarkable, but it has other advantages.
+The boy does not call his master "froggy," or "sausage," nor
+prepare for the French or English hour any exhibition of homely wit
+whatever.  He just sits there, and for his own sake tries to learn
+that foreign tongue with as little trouble to everybody concerned
+as possible.  When he has left school he can talk, not about
+penknives and gardeners and aunts merely, but about European
+politics, history, Shakespeare, or the musical glasses, according
+to the turn the conversation may take.
+
+Viewing the German people from an Anglo-Saxon standpoint, it may be
+that in this book I shall find occasion to criticise them:  but on
+the other hand there is much that we might learn from them; and in
+the matter of common sense, as applied to education, they can give
+us ninety-nine in a hundred and beat us with one hand.
+
+The beautiful wood of the Eilenriede bounds Hanover on the south
+and west, and here occurred a sad drama in which Harris took a
+prominent part.
+
+We were riding our machines through this wood on the Monday
+afternoon in the company of many other cyclists, for it is a
+favourite resort with the Hanoverians on a sunny afternoon, and its
+shady pathways are then filled with happy, thoughtless folk.  Among
+them rode a young and beautiful girl on a machine that was new.
+She was evidently a novice on the bicycle.  One felt instinctively
+that there would come a moment when she would require help, and
+Harris, with his accustomed chivalry, suggested we should keep near
+her.  Harris, as he occasionally explains to George and to myself,
+has daughters of his own, or, to speak more correctly, a daughter,
+who as the years progress will no doubt cease practising catherine
+wheels in the front garden, and will grow up into a beautiful and
+respectable young lady.  This naturally gives Harris an interest in
+all beautiful girls up to the age of thirty-five or thereabouts;
+they remind him, so he says, of home.
+
+We had ridden for about two miles, when we noticed, a little ahead
+of us in a space where five ways met, a man with a hose, watering
+the roads.  The pipe, supported at each joint by a pair of tiny
+wheels, writhed after him as he moved, suggesting a gigantic-worm,
+from whose open neck, as the man, gripping it firmly in both hands,
+pointing it now this way, and now that, now elevating it, now
+depressing it, poured a strong stream of water at the rate of about
+a gallon a second.
+
+"What a much better method than ours," observed Harris,
+enthusiastically.  Harris is inclined to be chronically severe on
+all British institutions.  "How much simpler, quicker, and more
+economical!  You see, one man by this method can in five minutes
+water a stretch of road that would take us with our clumsy
+lumbering cart half an hour to cover."
+
+George, who was riding behind me on the tandem, said, "Yes, and it
+is also a method by which with a little carelessness a man could
+cover a good many people in a good deal less time than they could
+get out of the way."
+
+George, the opposite to Harris, is British to the core.  I remember
+George quite patriotically indignant with Harris once for
+suggesting the introduction of the guillotine into England.
+
+"It is so much neater," said Harris.
+
+"I don't care if it is," said George; "I'm an Englishman; hanging
+is good enough for me."
+
+"Our water-cart may have its disadvantages," continued George, "but
+it can only make you uncomfortable about the legs, and you can
+avoid it.  This is the sort of machine with which a man can follow
+you round the corner and upstairs."
+
+"It fascinates me to watch them," said Harris.  "They are so
+skilful.  I have seen a man from the corner of a crowded square in
+Strassburg cover every inch of ground, and not so much as wet an
+apron string.  It is marvellous how they judge their distance.
+They will send the water up to your toes, and then bring it over
+your head so that it falls around your heels.  They can--"
+
+"Ease up a minute," said George.  I said:  "Why?"
+
+He said:  "I am going to get off and watch the rest of this show
+from behind a tree.  There may be great performers in this line, as
+Harris says; this particular artist appears to me to lack
+something.  He has just soused a dog, and now he's busy watering a
+sign-post.  I am going to wait till he has finished."
+
+"Nonsense," said Harris; "he won't wet you."
+
+"That is precisely what I am going to make sure of," answered
+George, saying which he jumped off, and, taking up a position
+behind a remarkably fine elm, pulled out and commenced filling his
+pipe.
+
+I did not care to take the tandem on by myself, so I stepped off
+and joined him, leaving the machine against a tree.  Harris shouted
+something or other about our being a disgrace to the land that gave
+us birth, and rode on.
+
+The next moment I heard a woman's cry of distress.  Glancing round
+the stem of the tree, I perceived that it proceeded from the young
+and elegant lady before mentioned, whom, in our interest concerning
+the road-waterer, we had forgotten.  She was riding her machine
+steadily and straightly through a drenching shower of water from
+the hose.  She appeared to be too paralysed either to get off or
+turn her wheel aside.  Every instant she was becoming wetter, while
+the man with the hose, who was either drunk or blind, continued to
+pour water upon her with utter indifference.  A dozen voices yelled
+imprecations upon him, but he took no heed whatever.
+
+Harris, his fatherly nature stirred to its depths, did at this
+point what, under the circumstances, was quite the right and proper
+thing to do.  Had he acted throughout with the same coolness and
+judgment he then displayed, he would have emerged from that
+incident the hero of the hour, instead of, as happened, riding away
+followed by insult and threat.  Without a moment's hesitation he
+spurted at the man, sprang to the ground, and, seizing the hose by
+the nozzle, attempted to wrest it away.
+
+What he ought to have done, what any man retaining his common sense
+would have done the moment he got his hands upon the thing, was to
+turn off the tap.  Then he might have played foot-ball with the
+man, or battledore and shuttlecock as he pleased; and the twenty or
+thirty people who had rushed forward to assist would have only
+applauded.  His idea, however, as he explained to us afterwards,
+was to take away the hose from the man, and, for punishment, turn
+it upon the fool himself.  The waterman's idea appeared to be the
+same, namely, to retain the hose as a weapon with which to soak
+Harris.  Of course, the result was that, between them, they soused
+every dead and living thing within fifty yards, except themselves.
+One furious man, too drenched to care what more happened to him,
+leapt into the arena and also took a hand.  The three among them
+proceeded to sweep the compass with that hose.  They pointed it to
+heaven, and the water descended upon the people in the form of an
+equinoctial storm.  They pointed it downwards, and sent the water
+in rushing streams that took people off their feet, or caught them
+about the waist line, and doubled them up.
+
+Not one of them would loosen his grip upon the hose, not one of
+them thought to turn the water off.  You might have concluded they
+were struggling with some primeval force of nature.  In forty-five
+seconds, so George said, who was timing it, they had swept that
+circus bare of every living thing except one dog, who, dripping
+like a water nymph, rolled over by the force of water, now on this
+side, now on that, still gallantly staggered again and again to its
+feet to bark defiance at what it evidently regarded as the powers
+of hell let loose.
+
+Men and women left their machines upon the ground, and flew into
+the woods.  From behind every tree of importance peeped out wet,
+angry heads.
+
+At last, there arrived upon the scene one man of sense.  Braving
+all things, he crept to the hydrant, where still stood the iron
+key, and screwed it down.  And then from forty trees began to creep
+more or less soaked human beings, each one with something to say.
+
+At first I fell to wondering whether a stretcher or a clothes
+basket would be the more useful for the conveyance of Harris's
+remains back to the hotel.  I consider that George's promptness on
+that occasion saved Harris's life.  Being dry, and therefore able
+to run quicker, he was there before the crowd.  Harris was for
+explaining things, but George cut him short.
+
+"You get on that," said George, handing him his bicycle, "and go.
+They don't know we belong to you, and you may trust us implicitly
+not to reveal the secret.  We'll hang about behind, and get in
+their way.  Ride zig-zag in case they shoot."
+
+I wish this book to be a strict record of fact, unmarred by
+exaggeration, and therefore I have shown my description of this
+incident to Harris, lest anything beyond bald narrative may have
+crept into it.  Harris maintains it is exaggerated, but admits that
+one or two people may have been "sprinkled."  I have offered to
+turn a street hose on him at a distance of five-and-twenty yards,
+and take his opinion afterwards, as to whether "sprinkled" is the
+adequate term, but he has declined the test.  Again, he insists
+there could not have been more than half a dozen people, at the
+outside, involved in the catastrophe, that forty is a ridiculous
+misstatement.  I have offered to return with him to Hanover and
+make strict inquiry into the matter, and this offer he has likewise
+declined.  Under these circumstances, I maintain that mine is a
+true and restrained narrative of an event that is, by a certain
+number of Hanoverians, remembered with bitterness unto this very
+day.
+
+We left Hanover that same evening, and arrived at Berlin in time
+for supper and an evening stroll.  Berlin is a disappointing town;
+its centre over-crowded, its outlying parts lifeless; its one
+famous street, Unter den Linden, an attempt to combine Oxford
+Street with the Champs Elysee, singularly unimposing, being much
+too wide for its size; its theatres dainty and charming, where
+acting is considered of more importance than scenery or dress,
+where long runs are unknown, successful pieces being played again
+and again, but never consecutively, so that for a week running you
+may go to the same Berlin theatre, and see a fresh play every
+night; its opera house unworthy of it; its two music halls, with an
+unnecessary suggestion of vulgarity and commonness about them, ill-
+arranged and much too large for comfort.  In the Berlin cafes and
+restaurants, the busy time is from midnight on till three.  Yet
+most of the people who frequent them are up again at seven.  Either
+the Berliner has solved the great problem of modern life, how to do
+without sleep, or, with Carlyle, he must be looking forward to
+eternity.
+
+Personally, I know of no other town where such late hours are the
+vogue, except St. Petersburg.  But your St. Petersburger does not
+get up early in the morning.  At St. Petersburg, the music halls,
+which it is the fashionable thing to attend AFTER the theatre--a
+drive to them taking half an hour in a swift sleigh--do not
+practically begin till twelve.  Through the Neva at four o'clock in
+the morning you have to literally push your way; and the favourite
+trains for travellers are those starting about five o'clock in the
+morning.  These trains save the Russian the trouble of getting up
+early.  He wishes his friends "Good-night," and drives down to the
+station comfortably after supper, without putting the house to any
+inconvenience.
+
+Potsdam, the Versailles to Berlin, is a beautiful little town,
+situate among lakes and woods.  Here in the shady ways of its
+quiet, far-stretching park of Sans Souci, it is easy to imagine
+lean, snuffy Frederick "bummeling" with shrill Voltaire.
+
+Acting on my advice, George and Harris consented not to stay long
+in Berlin; but to push on to Dresden.  Most that Berlin has to show
+can be seen better elsewhere, and we decided to be content with a
+drive through the town.  The hotel porter introduced us to a
+droschke driver, under whose guidance, so he assured us, we should
+see everything worth seeing in the shortest possible time.  The man
+himself, who called for us at nine o'clock in the morning, was all
+that could be desired.  He was bright, intelligent, and well-
+informed; his German was easy to understand, and he knew a little
+English with which to eke it out on occasion.  With the man himself
+there was no fault to be found, but his horse was the most
+unsympathetic brute I have ever sat behind.
+
+He took a dislike to us the moment he saw us.  I was the first to
+come out of the hotel.  He turned his head, and looked me up and
+down with a cold, glassy eye; and then he looked across at another
+horse, a friend of his that was standing facing him.  I knew what
+he said.  He had an expressive head, and he made no attempt to
+disguise his thought.
+
+He said:
+
+"Funny things one does come across in the summer time, don't one?"
+
+George followed me out the next moment, and stood behind me.  The
+horse again turned his head and looked.  I have never known a horse
+that could twist himself as this horse did.  I have seen a
+camelopard do trick's with his neck that compelled one's attention,
+but this animal was more like the thing one dreams of after a dusty
+days at Ascot, followed by a dinner with six old chums.  If I had
+seen his eyes looking at me from between his own hind legs, I doubt
+if I should have been surprised.  He seemed more amused with George
+if anything, than with myself.  He turned to his friend again.
+
+"Extraordinary, isn't it?" he remarked; "I suppose there must be
+some place where they grow them"; and then he commenced licking
+flies off his own left shoulder.  I began to wonder whether he had
+lost his mother when young, and had been brought up by a cat.
+
+George and I climbed in, and sat waiting for Harris.  He came a
+moment later.  Myself, I thought he looked rather neat.  He wore a
+white flannel knickerbocker suit, which he had had made specially
+for bicycling in hot weather; his hat may have been a trifle out of
+the common, but it did keep the sun off.
+
+The horse gave one look at him, said "Gott in Himmel!" as plainly
+as ever horse spoke, and started off down Friedrich Strasse at a
+brisk walk, leaving Harris and the driver standing on the pavement.
+His owner called to him to stop, but he took no notice.  They ran
+after us, and overtook us at the corner of the Dorotheen Strasse.
+I could not catch what the man said to the horse, he spoke quickly
+and excitedly; but I gathered a few phrases, such as:
+
+"Got to earn my living somehow, haven't I?  Who asked for your
+opinion?  Aye, little you care so long as you can guzzle."
+
+The horse cut the conversation short by turning up the Dorotheen
+Strasse on his own account.  I think what he said was:
+
+"Come on then; don't talk so much.  Let's get the job over, and,
+where possible, let's keep to the back streets."
+
+Opposite the Brandenburger Thor our driver hitched the reins to the
+whip, climbed down, and came round to explain things to us.  He
+pointed out the Thiergarten, and then descanted to us of the
+Reichstag House.  He informed us of its exact height, length, and
+breadth, after the manner of guides.  Then he turned his attention
+to the Gate.  He said it was constructed of sandstone, in imitation
+of the "Properleer" in Athens.
+
+At this point the horse, which had been occupying its leisure
+licking its own legs, turned round its head.  It did not say
+anything, it just looked.
+
+The man began again nervously.  This time he said it was an
+imitation of the "Propeyedliar."
+
+Here the horse proceeded up the Linden, and nothing would persuade
+him not to proceed up the Linden.  His owner expostulated with him,
+but he continued to trot on.  From the way he hitched his shoulders
+as he moved, I somehow felt he was saying:
+
+"They've seen the Gate, haven' t they?  Very well, that's enough.
+As for the rest, you don't know what you are talking about, and
+they wouldn't understand you if you did.  You talk German."
+
+It was the same throughout the length of the Linden.  The horse
+consented to stand still sufficiently long to enable us to have a
+good look at each sight, and to hear the name of it.  All
+explanation and description he cut short by the simple process of
+moving on.
+
+"What these fellows want," he seemed to say to himself, "is to go
+home and tell people they have seen these things.  If I am doing
+them an injustice, if they are more intelligent than they look,
+they can get better information than this old fool of mine is
+giving them from the guide book.  Who wants to know how high a
+steeple is?  You don't remember it the next five minutes when you
+are told, and if you do it is because you have got nothing else in
+your head.  He just tires me with his talk.  Why doesn't he hurry
+up, and let us all get home to lunch?"
+
+Upon reflection, I am not sure that wall-eyed old brute had not
+sense on its side.  Anyhow, I know there have been occasions, with
+a guide, when I would have been glad of its interference.
+
+But one is apt to "sin one's mercies," as the Scotch say, and at
+the time we cursed that horse instead of blessing it.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+
+
+George wonders--German love of order--"The Band of the Schwarzwald
+Blackbirds will perform at seven"--The china dog--Its superiority
+over all other dogs--The German and the solar system--A tidy
+country--The mountain valley as it ought to be, according to the
+German idea--How the waters come down in Germany--The scandal of
+Dresden--Harris gives an entertainment--It is unappreciated--George
+and the aunt of him--George, a cushion, and three damsels.
+
+At a point between Berlin and Dresden, George, who had, for the
+last quarter of an hour or so, been looking very attentively out of
+the window, said:
+
+"Why, in Germany, is it the custom to put the letter-box up a tree?
+Why do they not fix it to the front door as we do?  I should hate
+having to climb up a tree to get my letters.  Besides, it is not
+fair to the postman.  In addition to being most exhausting, the
+delivery of letters must to a heavy man, on windy nights, be
+positively dangerous work.  If they will fix it to a tree, why not
+fix it lower down, why always among the topmost branches?  But,
+maybe, I am misjudging the country," he continued, a new idea
+occurring to him.  "Possibly the Germans, who are in many matters
+ahead of us, have perfected a pigeon post.  Even so, I cannot help
+thinking they would have been wiser to train the birds, while they
+were about it, to deliver the letters nearer the ground.  Getting
+your letters out of those boxes must be tricky work even to the
+average middle-aged German."
+
+I followed his gaze out of window.  I said:
+
+"Those are not letter-boxes, they are birds' nests.  You must
+understand this nation.  The German loves birds, but he likes tidy
+birds.  A bird left to himself builds his nest just anywhere.  It
+is not a pretty object, according to the German notion of
+prettiness.  There is not a bit of paint on it anywhere, not a
+plaster image all round, not even a flag.  The nest finished, the
+bird proceeds to live outside it.  He drops things on the grass;
+twigs, ends of worms, all sorts of things.  He is indelicate.  He
+makes love, quarrels with his wife, and feeds the children quite in
+public.  The German householder is shocked.  He says to the bird:
+
+"'For many things I like you.  I like to look at you.  I like to
+hear you sing.  But I don't like your ways.  Take this little box,
+and put your rubbish inside where I can't see it.  Come out when
+you want to sing; but let your domestic arrangements be confined to
+the interior.  Keep to the box, and don't make the garden untidy.'"
+
+In Germany one breathes in love of order with the air, in Germany
+the babies beat time with their rattles, and the German bird has
+come to prefer the box, and to regard with contempt the few
+uncivilised outcasts who continue to build their nests in trees and
+hedges.  In course of time every German bird, one is confident,
+will have his proper place in a full chorus.  This promiscuous and
+desultory warbling of his must, one feels, be irritating to the
+precise German mind; there is no method in it.  The music-loving
+German will organise him.  Some stout bird with a specially well-
+developed crop will be trained to conduct him, and, instead of
+wasting himself in a wood at four o'clock in the morning, he will,
+at the advertised time, sing in a beer garden, accompanied by a
+piano.  Things are drifting that way.
+
+Your German likes nature, but his idea of nature is a glorified
+Welsh Harp.  He takes great interest in his garden.  He plants
+seven rose trees on the north side and seven on the south, and if
+they do not grow up all the same size and shape it worries him so
+that he cannot sleep of nights.  Every flower he ties to a stick.
+This interferes with his view of the flower, but he has the
+satisfaction of knowing it is there, and that it is behaving
+itself.  The lake is lined with zinc, and once a week he takes it
+up, carries it into the kitchen, and scours it.  In the geometrical
+centre of the grass plot, which is sometimes as large as a
+tablecloth and is generally railed round, he places a china dog.
+The Germans are very fond of dogs, but as a rule they prefer them
+of china.  The china dog never digs holes in the lawn to bury
+bones, and never scatters a flower-bed to the winds with his hind
+legs.  From the German point of view, he is the ideal dog.  He
+stops where you put him, and he is never where you do not want him.
+You can have him perfect in all points, according to the latest
+requirements of the Kennel Club; or you can indulge your own fancy
+and have something unique.  You are not, as with other dogs,
+limited to breed.  In china, you can have a blue dog or a pink dog.
+For a little extra, you can have a double-headed dog.
+
+On a certain fixed date in the autumn the German stakes his flowers
+and bushes to the earth, and covers them with Chinese matting; and
+on a certain fixed date in the spring he uncovers them, and stands
+them up again.  If it happens to be an exceptionally fine autumn,
+or an exceptionally late spring, so much the worse for the
+unfortunate vegetable.  No true German would allow his arrangements
+to be interfered with by so unruly a thing as the solar system.
+Unable to regulate the weather, he ignores it.
+
+Among trees, your German's favourite is the poplar.  Other
+disorderly nations may sing the charms of the rugged oak, the
+spreading chestnut, or the waving elm.  To the German all such,
+with their wilful, untidy ways, are eyesores.  The poplar grows
+where it is planted, and how it is planted.  It has no improper
+rugged ideas of its own.  It does not want to wave or to spread
+itself.  It just grows straight and upright as a German tree should
+grow; and so gradually the German is rooting out all other trees,
+and replacing them with poplars.
+
+Your German likes the country, but he prefers it as the lady
+thought she would the noble savage--more dressed.  He likes his
+walk through the wood--to a restaurant.  But the pathway must not
+be too steep, it must have a brick gutter running down one side of
+it to drain it, and every twenty yards or so it must have its seat
+on which he can rest and mop his brow; for your German would no
+more think of sitting on the grass than would an English bishop
+dream of rolling down One Tree Hill.  He likes his view from the
+summit of the hill, but he likes to find there a stone tablet
+telling him what to look at, find a table and bench at which he can
+sit to partake of the frugal beer and "belegte Semmel" he has been
+careful to bring with him.  If, in addition, he can find a police
+notice posted on a tree, forbidding him to do something or other,
+that gives him an extra sense of comfort and security.
+
+Your German is not averse even to wild scenery, provided it be not
+too wild.  But if he consider it too savage, he sets to work to
+tame it.  I remember, in the neighbourhood of Dresden, discovering
+a picturesque and narrow valley leading down towards the Elbe.  The
+winding roadway ran beside a mountain torrent, which for a mile or
+so fretted and foamed over rocks and boulders between wood-covered
+banks.  I followed it enchanted until, turning a corner, I suddenly
+came across a gang of eighty or a hundred workmen.  They were busy
+tidying up that valley, and making that stream respectable.  All
+the stones that were impeding the course of the water they were
+carefully picking out and carting away.  The bank on either side
+they were bricking up and cementing.  The overhanging trees and
+bushes, the tangled vines and creepers they were rooting up and
+trimming down.  A little further I came upon the finished work--the
+mountain valley as it ought to be, according to German ideas.  The
+water, now a broad, sluggish stream, flowed over a level, gravelly
+bed, between two walls crowned with stone coping.  At every hundred
+yards it gently descended down three shallow wooden platforms.  For
+a space on either side the ground had been cleared, and at regular
+intervals young poplars planted.  Each sapling was protected by a
+shield of wickerwork and bossed by an iron rod.  In the course of a
+couple of years it is the hope of the local council to have
+"finished" that valley throughout its entire length, and made it
+fit for a tidy-minded lover of German nature to walk in.  There
+will be a seat every fifty yards, a police notice every hundred,
+and a restaurant every half-mile.
+
+They are doing the same from the Memel to the Rhine.  They are just
+tidying up the country.  I remember well the Wehrthal.  It was once
+the most romantic ravine to be found in the Black Forest.  The last
+time I walked down it some hundreds of Italian workmen were
+encamped there hard at work, training the wild little Wehr the way
+it should go, bricking the banks for it here, blasting the rocks
+for it there, making cement steps for it down which it can travel
+soberly and without fuss.
+
+For in Germany there is no nonsense talked about untrammelled
+nature.  In Germany nature has got to behave herself, and not set a
+bad example to the children.  A German poet, noticing waters coming
+down as Southey describes, somewhat inexactly, the waters coming
+down at Lodore, would be too shocked to stop and write alliterative
+verse about them.  He would hurry away, and at once report them to
+the police.  Then their foaming and their shrieking would be of
+short duration.
+
+"Now then, now then, what's all this about?" the voice of German
+authority would say severely to the waters.  "We can't have this
+sort of thing, you know.  Come down quietly, can't you?  Where do
+you think you are?"
+
+And the local German council would provide those waters with zinc
+pipes and wooden troughs, and a corkscrew staircase, and show them
+how to come down sensibly, in the German manner.
+
+It is a tidy land is Germany.
+
+We reached Dresden on the Wednesday evening, and stayed there over
+the Sunday.
+
+Taking one consideration with another, Dresden, perhaps, is the
+most attractive town in Germany; but it is a place to be lived in
+for a while rather than visited.  Its museums and galleries, its
+palaces and gardens, its beautiful and historically rich
+environment, provide pleasure for a winter, but bewilder for a
+week.  It has not the gaiety of Paris or Vienna, which quickly
+palls; its charms are more solidly German, and more lasting.  It is
+the Mecca of the musician.  For five shillings, in Dresden, you can
+purchase a stall at the opera house, together, unfortunately, with
+a strong disinclination ever again to take the trouble of sitting
+out a performance in any English, French, or, American opera house.
+
+The chief scandal of Dresden still centres round August the Strong,
+"the Man of Sin," as Carlyle always called him, who is popularly
+reputed to have cursed Europe with over a thousand children.
+Castles where he imprisoned this discarded mistress or that--one of
+them, who persisted in her claim to a better title, for forty
+years, it is said, poor lady!  The narrow rooms where she ate her
+heart out and died are still shown.  Chateaux, shameful for this
+deed of infamy or that, lie scattered round the neighbourhood like
+bones about a battlefield; and most of your guide's stories are
+such as the "young person" educated in Germany had best not hear.
+His life-sized portrait hangs in the fine Zwinger, which he built
+as an arena for his wild beast fights when the people grew tired of
+them in the market-place; a beetle-browed, frankly animal man, but
+with the culture and taste that so often wait upon animalism.
+Modern Dresden undoubtedly owes much to him.
+
+But what the stranger in Dresden stares at most is, perhaps, its
+electric trams.  These huge vehicles flash through the streets at
+from ten to twenty miles an hour, taking curves and corners after
+the manner of an Irish car driver.  Everybody travels by them,
+excepting only officers in uniform, who must not.  Ladies in
+evening dress, going to ball or opera, porters with their baskets,
+sit side by side.  They are all-important in the streets, and
+everything and everybody makes haste to get out of their way.  If
+you do not get out of their way, and you still happen to be alive
+when picked up, then on your recovery you are fined for having been
+in their way.  This teaches you to be wary of them.
+
+One afternoon Harris took a "bummel" by himself.  In the evening,
+as we sat listening to the band at the Belvedere, Harris said, a
+propos of nothing in particular, "These Germans have no sense of
+humour."
+
+"What makes you think that?" I asked.
+
+"Why, this afternoon," he answered, "I jumped on one of those
+electric tramcars.  I wanted to see the town, so I stood outside on
+the little platform--what do you call it?"
+
+"The Stehplatz," I suggested.
+
+"That's it," said Harris.  "Well, you know the way they shake you
+about, and how you have to look out for the corners, and mind
+yourself when they stop and when they start?"
+
+I nodded.
+
+"There were about half a dozen of us standing there," he continued,
+"and, of course, I am not experienced.  The thing started suddenly,
+and that jerked me backwards.  I fell against a stout gentleman,
+just behind me.  He could not have been standing very firmly
+himself, and he, in his turn, fell back against a boy who was
+carrying a trumpet in a green baize case.  They never smiled,
+neither the man nor the boy with the trumpet; they just stood there
+and looked sulky.  I was going to say I was sorry, but before I
+could get the words out the tram eased up, for some reason or
+other, and that, of course, shot me forward again, and I butted
+into a white-haired old chap, who looked to me like a professor.
+Well, HE never smiled, never moved a muscle."
+
+"Maybe, he was thinking of something else," I suggested.
+
+"That could not have been the case with them all," replied Harris,
+"and in the course of that journey, I must have fallen against
+every one of them at least three times.  You see," explained
+Harris, "they knew when the corners were coming, and in which
+direction to brace themselves.  I, as a stranger, was naturally at
+a disadvantage.  The way I rolled and staggered about that
+platform, clutching wildly now at this man and now at that, must
+have been really comic.  I don't say it was high-class humour, but
+it would have amused most people.  Those Germans seemed to see no
+fun in it whatever--just seemed anxious, that was all.  There was
+one man, a little man, who stood with his back against the brake; I
+fell against him five times, I counted them.  You would have
+expected the fifth time would have dragged a laugh out of him, but
+it didn't; he merely looked tired.  They are a dull lot."
+
+George also had an adventure at Dresden.  There was a shop near the
+Altmarkt, in the window of which were exhibited some cushions for
+sale.  The proper business of the shop was handling of glass and
+china; the cushions appeared to be in the nature of an experiment.
+They were very beautiful cushions, hand-embroidered on satin.  We
+often passed the shop, and every time George paused and examined
+those cushions.  He said he thought his aunt would like one.
+
+George has been very attentive to this aunt of his during the
+journey.  He has written her quite a long letter every day, and
+from every town we stop at he sends her off a present.  To my mind,
+he is overdoing the business, and more than once I have
+expostulated with him.  His aunt will be meeting other aunts, and
+talking to them; the whole class will become disorganised and
+unruly.  As a nephew, I object to the impossible standard that
+George is setting up.  But he will not listen.
+
+Therefore it was that on the Saturday he left us after lunch,
+saying he would go round to that shop and get one of those cushions
+for his aunt.  He said he would not be long, and suggested our
+waiting for him.
+
+We waited for what seemed to me rather a long time.  When he
+rejoined us he was empty handed, and looked worried.  We asked him
+where his cushion was.  He said he hadn't got a cushion, said he
+had changed his mind, said he didn't think his aunt would care for
+a cushion.  Evidently something was amiss.  We tried to get at the
+bottom of it, but he was not communicative.  Indeed, his answers
+after our twentieth question or thereabouts became quite short.
+
+In the evening, however, when he and I happened to be alone, he
+broached the subject himself.  He said:
+
+"They are somewhat peculiar in some things, these Germans."
+
+I said:  "What has happened?"
+
+"Well," he answered, "there was that cushion I wanted."
+
+"For your aunt," I remarked.
+
+"Why not?" he returned.  He was huffy in a moment; I never knew a
+man so touchy about an aunt.  "Why shouldn't I send a cushion to my
+aunt?"
+
+"Don't get excited," I replied.  "I am not objecting; I respect you
+for it."
+
+He recovered his temper, and went on:
+
+"There were four in the window, if you remember, all very much
+alike, and each one labelled in plain figures twenty marks.  I
+don't pretend to speak German fluently, but I can generally make
+myself understood with a little effort, and gather the sense of
+what is said to me, provided they don't gabble.  I went into the
+shop.  A young girl came up to me; she was a pretty, quiet little
+soul, one might almost say, demure; not at all the sort of girl
+from whom you would have expected such a thing.  I was never more
+surprised in all my life."
+
+"Surprised about what?" I said.
+
+George always assumes you know the end of the story while he is
+telling you the beginning; it is an annoying method.
+
+"At what happened," replied George; "at what I am telling you.  She
+smiled and asked me what I wanted.  I understood that all right;
+there could have been no mistake about that.  I put down a twenty
+mark piece on the counter and said:
+
+"Please give me a cushion."
+
+"She stared at me as if I had asked for a feather bed.  I thought,
+maybe, she had not heard, so I repeated it louder.  If I had
+chucked her under the chin she could not have looked more surprised
+or indignant.
+
+"She said she thought I must be making a mistake.
+
+"I did not want to begin a long conversation and find myself
+stranded.  I said there was no mistake.  I pointed to my twenty
+mark piece, and repeated for the third time that I wanted a
+cushion, 'a twenty mark cushion.'
+
+"Another girl came up, an elder girl; and the first girl repeated
+to her what I had just said:  she seemed quite excited about it.
+The second girl did not believe her--did not think I looked the
+sort of man who would want a cushion.  To make sure, she put the
+question to me herself.
+
+"'Did you say you wanted a cushion?' she asked.
+
+"'I have said it three times,' I answered.  'I will say it again--I
+want a cushion.'
+
+"She said:  'Then you can't have one.'
+
+"I was getting angry by this time.  If I hadn't really wanted the
+thing I should have walked out of the shop; but there the cushions
+were in the window, evidently for sale.  I didn't see WHY I
+couldn't have one.
+
+"I said:  'I will have one!'  It is a simple sentence.  I said it
+with determination.
+
+"A third girl came up at this point, the three representing, I
+fancy, the whole force of the shop.  She was a bright-eyed, saucy-
+looking little wench, this last one.  On any other occasion I might
+have been pleased to see her; now, her coming only irritated me.  I
+didn't see the need of three girls for this business.
+
+"The first two girls started explaining the thing to the third
+girl, and before they were half-way through the third girl began to
+giggle--she was the sort of girl who would giggle at anything.
+That done, they fell to chattering like Jenny Wrens, all three
+together; and between every half-dozen words they looked across at
+me; and the more they looked at me the more the third girl giggled;
+and before they had finished they were all three giggling, the
+little idiots; you might have thought I was a clown, giving a
+private performance.
+
+"When she was steady enough to move, the third girl came up to me;
+she was still giggling.  She said:
+
+"'If you get it, will you go?'
+
+"I did not quite understand her at first, and she repeated it.
+
+"'This cushion.  When you've got it, will you go--away--at once?'
+
+"I was only too anxious to go.  I told her so.  But, I added I was
+not going without it.  I had made up my mind to have that cushion
+now if I stopped in the shop all night for it.
+
+"She rejoined the other two girls.  I thought they were going to
+get me the cushion and have done with the business.  Instead of
+that, the strangest thing possible happened.  The two other girls
+got behind the first girl, all three still giggling, Heaven knows
+what about, and pushed her towards me.  They pushed her close up to
+me, and then, before I knew what was happening, she put her hands
+on my shoulders, stood up on tiptoe, and kissed me.  After which,
+burying her face in her apron, she ran off, followed by the second
+girl.  The third girl opened the door for me, and so evidently
+expected me to go, that in my confusion I went, leaving my twenty
+marks behind me.  I don't say I minded the kiss, though I did not
+particularly want it, while I did want the cushion.  I don't like
+to go back to the shop.  I cannot understand the thing at all."
+
+I said:  "What did you ask for?"
+
+He said:  "A cushion"
+
+I said:  "That is what you wanted, I know.  What I mean is, what
+was the actual German word you said."
+
+He replied:  "A kuss."
+
+I said:  "You have nothing to complain of.  It is somewhat
+confusing.  A 'kuss' sounds as if it ought to be a cushion, but it
+is not; it is a kiss, while a 'kissen' is a cushion.  You muddled
+up the two words--people have done it before.  I don't know much
+about this sort of thing myself; but you asked for a twenty mark
+kiss, and from your description of the girl some people might
+consider the price reasonable.  Anyhow, I should not tell Harris.
+If I remember rightly, he also has an aunt."
+
+George agreed with me it would be better not.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+
+
+Mr. and Miss Jones, of Manchester--The benefits of cocoa--A hint to
+the Peace Society--The window as a mediaeval argument--The
+favourite Christian recreation--The language of the guide--How to
+repair the ravages of time--George tries a bottle--The fate of the
+German beer drinker--Harris and I resolve to do a good action--The
+usual sort of statue--Harris and his friends--A pepperless
+Paradise--Women and towns.
+
+We were on our way to Prague, and were waiting in the great hall of
+the Dresden Station until such time as the powers-that-be should
+permit us on to the platform.  George, who had wandered to the
+bookstall, returned to us with a wild look in his eyes.  He said:
+
+"I've seen it."
+
+I said, "Seen what?"
+
+He was too excited to answer intelligently.  He said
+
+"It's here.  It's coming this way, both of them.  If you wait,
+you'll see it for yourselves.  I'm not joking; it's the real
+thing."
+
+As is usual about this period, some paragraphs, more or less
+serious, had been appearing in the papers concerning the sea-
+serpent, and I thought for the moment he must be referring to this.
+A moment's reflection, however, told me that here, in the middle of
+Europe, three hundred miles from the coast, such a thing was
+impossible.  Before I could question him further, he seized me by
+the arm.
+
+"Look!" he said; "now am I exaggerating?"
+
+I turned my head and saw what, I suppose, few living Englishmen
+have ever seen before--the travelling Britisher according to the
+Continental idea, accompanied by his daughter.  They were coming
+towards us in the flesh and blood, unless we were dreaming, alive
+and concrete--the English "Milor" and the English "Mees," as for
+generations they have been portrayed in the Continental comic press
+and upon the Continental stage.  They were perfect in every detail.
+The man was tall and thin, with sandy hair, a huge nose, and long
+Dundreary whiskers.  Over a pepper-and-salt suit he wore a light
+overcoat, reaching almost to his heels.  His white helmet was
+ornamented with a green veil; a pair of opera-glasses hung at his
+side, and in his lavender-gloved hand he carried an alpenstock a
+little taller than himself.  His daughter was long and angular.
+Her dress I cannot describe:  my grandfather, poor gentleman, might
+have been able to do so; it would have been more familiar to him.
+I can only say that it appeared to me unnecessarily short,
+exhibiting a pair of ankles--if I may be permitted to refer to such
+points--that, from an artistic point of view, called rather for
+concealment.  Her hat made me think of Mrs. Hemans; but why I
+cannot explain.  She wore side-spring boots--"prunella," I believe,
+used to be the trade name--mittens, and pince-nez.  She also
+carried an alpenstock (there is not a mountain within a hundred
+miles of Dresden) and a black bag strapped to her waist.  Her teeth
+stuck out like a rabbit's, and her figure was that of a bolster on
+stilts.
+
+Harris rushed for his camera, and of course could not find it; he
+never can when he wants it.  Whenever we see Harris scuttling up
+and down like a lost dog, shouting, "Where's my camera?  What the
+dickens have I done with my camera?  Don't either of you remember
+where I put my camera?"--then we know that for the first time that
+day he has come across something worth photographing.  Later on, he
+remembered it was in his bag; that is where it would be on an
+occasion like this.
+
+They were not content with appearance; they acted the thing to the
+letter.  They walked gaping round them at every step.  The
+gentleman had an open Baedeker in his hand, and the lady carried a
+phrase book.  They talked French that nobody could understand, and
+German that they could not translate themselves!  The man poked at
+officials with his alpenstock to attract their attention, and the
+lady, her eye catching sight of an advertisement of somebody's
+cocoa, said "Shocking!" and turned the other way.
+
+Really, there was some excuse for her.  One notices, even in
+England, the home of the proprieties, that the lady who drinks
+cocoa appears, according to the poster, to require very little else
+in this world; a yard or so of art muslin at the most.  On the
+Continent she dispenses, so far as one can judge, with every other
+necessity of life.  Not only is cocoa food and drink to her, it
+should be clothes also, according to the idea of the cocoa
+manufacturer.  But this by the way.
+
+Of course, they immediately became the centre of attraction.  By
+being able to render them some slight assistance, I gained the
+advantage of five minutes' conversation with them.  They were very
+affable.  The gentleman told me his name was Jones, and that he
+came from Manchester, but he did not seem to know what part of
+Manchester, or where Manchester was.  I asked him where he was
+going to, but he evidently did not know.  He said it depended.  I
+asked him if he did not find an alpenstock a clumsy thing to walk
+about with through a crowded town; he admitted that occasionally it
+did get in the way.  I asked him if he did not find a veil
+interfere with his view of things; he explained that you only wore
+it when the flies became troublesome.  I enquired of the lady if
+she did not find the wind blow cold; she said she had noticed it,
+especially at the corners.  I did not ask these questions one after
+another as I have here put them down; I mixed them up with general
+conversation, and we parted on good terms.
+
+I have pondered much upon the apparition, and have come to a
+definite opinion.  A man I met later at Frankfort, and to whom I
+described the pair, said he had seen them himself in Paris, three
+weeks after the termination of the Fashoda incident; while a
+traveller for some English steel works whom we met in Strassburg
+remembered having seen them in Berlin during the excitement caused
+by the Transvaal question.  My conclusion is that they were actors
+out of work, hired to do this thing in the interest of
+international peace.  The French Foreign Office, wishful to allay
+the anger of the Parisian mob clamouring for war with England,
+secured this admirable couple and sent them round the town.  You
+cannot be amused at a thing, and at the same time want to kill it.
+The French nation saw the English citizen and citizeness--no
+caricature, but the living reality--and their indignation exploded
+in laughter.  The success of the stratagem prompted them later on
+to offer their services to the German Government, with the
+beneficial results that we all know.
+
+Our own Government might learn the lesson.  It might be as well to
+keep near Downing Street a few small, fat Frenchmen, to be sent
+round the country when occasion called for it, shrugging their
+shoulders and eating frog sandwiches; or a file of untidy, lank-
+haired Germans might be retained, to walk about, smoking long
+pipes, saying "So."  The public would laugh and exclaim, "War with
+such?  It would be too absurd."  Failing the Government, I
+recommend the scheme to the Peace Society.
+
+Our visit to Prague we were compelled to lengthen somewhat.  Prague
+is one of the most interesting towns in Europe.  Its stones are
+saturated with history and romance; its every suburb must have been
+a battlefield.  It is the town that conceived the Reformation and
+hatched the Thirty Years' War.  But half Prague's troubles, one
+imagines, might have been saved to it, had it possessed windows
+less large and temptingly convenient.  The first of these mighty
+catastrophes it set rolling by throwing the seven Catholic
+councillors from the windows of its Rathhaus on to the pikes of the
+Hussites below.  Later, it gave the signal for the second by again
+throwing the Imperial councillors from the windows of the old Burg
+in the Hradschin--Prague's second "Fenstersturz."  Since, other
+fateful questions have been decide in Prague, one assumes from
+their having been concluded without violence that such must have
+been discussed in cellars.  The window, as an argument, one feels,
+would always have proved too strong a temptation to any true-born
+Praguer.
+
+In the Teynkirche stands the worm-eaten pulpit from which preached
+John Huss.  One may hear from the selfsame desk to-day the voice of
+a Papist priest, while in far-off Constance a rude block of stone,
+half ivy hidden, marks the spot where Huss and Jerome died burning
+at the stake.  History is fond of her little ironies.  In this same
+Teynkirche lies buried Tycho Brahe, the astronomer, who made the
+common mistake of thinking the earth, with its eleven hundred
+creeds and one humanity, the centre of the universe; but who
+otherwise observed the stars clearly.
+
+Through Prague's dirty, palace-bordered alleys must have pressed
+often in hot haste blind Ziska and open-minded Wallenstein--they
+have dubbed him "The Hero" in Prague; and the town is honestly
+proud of having owned him for citizen.  In his gloomy palace in the
+Waldstein-Platz they show as a sacred spot the cabinet where he
+prayed, and seem to have persuaded themselves he really had a soul.
+Its steep, winding ways must have been choked a dozen times, now by
+Sigismund's flying legions, followed by fierce-killing Tarborites,
+and now by pale Protestants pursued by the victorious Catholics of
+Maximilian.  Now Saxons, now Bavarians, and now French; now the
+saints of Gustavus Adolphus, and now the steel fighting machines of
+Frederick the Great, have thundered at its gates and fought upon
+its bridges.
+
+The Jews have always been an important feature of Prague.
+Occasionally they have assisted the Christians in their favourite
+occupation of slaughtering one another, and the great flag
+suspended from the vaulting of the Altneuschule testifies to the
+courage with which they helped Catholic Ferdinand to resist the
+Protestant Swedes.  The Prague Ghetto was one of the first to be
+established in Europe, and in the tiny synagogue, still standing,
+the Jew of Prague has worshipped for eight hundred years, his women
+folk devoutly listening, without, at the ear holes provided for
+them in the massive walls.  A Jewish cemetery adjacent,
+"Bethchajim, or the House of Life," seems as though it were
+bursting with its dead.  Within its narrow acre it was the law of
+centuries that here or nowhere must the bones of Israel rest.  So
+the worn and broken tombstones lie piled in close confusion, as
+though tossed and tumbled by the struggling host beneath.
+
+The Ghetto walls have long been levelled, but the living Jews of
+Prague still cling to their foetid lanes, though these are being
+rapidly replaced by fine new streets that promise to eventually
+transform this quarter into the handsomest part of the town.
+
+At Dresden they advised us not to talk German in Prague.  For years
+racial animosity between the German minority and the Czech majority
+has raged throughout Bohemia, and to be mistaken for a German in
+certain streets of Prague is inconvenient to a man whose staying
+powers in a race are not what once they were.  However, we did talk
+German in certain streets in Prague; it was a case of talking
+German or nothing.  The Czech dialect is said to be of great
+antiquity and of highly scientific cultivation.  Its alphabet
+contains forty-two letters, suggestive to a stranger of Chinese.
+It is not a language to be picked up in a hurry.  We decided that
+on the whole there would be less risk to our constitution in
+keeping to German, and as a matter of fact no harm came to us.  The
+explanation I can only surmise.  The Praguer is an exceedingly
+acute person; some subtle falsity of accent, some slight
+grammatical inaccuracy, may have crept into our German, revealing
+to him the fact that, in spite of all appearances to the contrary,
+we were no true-born Deutscher.  I do not assert this; I put it
+forward as a possibility.
+
+To avoid unnecessary danger, however, we did our sight-seeing with
+the aid of a guide.  No guide I have ever come across is perfect.
+This one had two distinct failings.  His English was decidedly
+weak.  Indeed, it was not English at all.  I do not know what you
+would call it.  It was not altogether his fault; he had learnt
+English from a Scotch lady.  I understand Scotch fairly well--to
+keep abreast of modern English literature this is necessary,--but
+to understand broad Scotch talked with a Sclavonic accent,
+occasionally relieved by German modifications, taxes the
+intelligence.  For the first hour it was difficult to rid one's
+self of the conviction that the man was choking.  Every moment we
+expected him to die on our hands.  In the course of the morning we
+grew accustomed to him, and rid ourselves of the instinct to throw
+him on his back every time he opened his mouth, and tear his
+clothes from him.  Later, we came to understand a part of what he
+said, and this led to the discovery of his second failing.
+
+It would seem he had lately invented a hair-restorer, which he had
+persuaded a local chemist to take up and advertise.  Half his time
+he had been pointing out to us, not the beauties of Prague, but the
+benefits likely to accrue to the human race from the use of this
+concoction; and the conventional agreement with which, under the
+impression he was waxing eloquent concerning views and
+architecture, we had met his enthusiasm he had attributed to
+sympathetic interest in this wretched wash of his.
+
+The result was that now there was no keeping him away from the
+subject.  Ruined palaces and crumbling churches he dismissed with
+curt reference as mere frivolities, encouraging a morbid taste for
+the decadent.  His duty, as he saw it, was not to lead us to dwell
+upon the ravages of time, but rather to direct our attention to the
+means of repairing them.  What had we to do with broken-headed
+heroes, or bald-headed saints?  Our interest should be surely in
+the living world; in the maidens with their flowing tresses, or the
+flowing tresses they might have, by judicious use of "Kophkeo," in
+the young men with their fierce moustaches--as pictured on the
+label.
+
+Unconsciously, in his own mind, he had divided the world into two
+sections.  The Past ("Before Use"), a sickly, disagreeable-looking,
+uninteresting world.  The Future ("After Use") a fat, jolly, God-
+bless-everybody sort of world; and this unfitted him as a guide to
+scenes of mediaeval history.
+
+He sent us each a bottle of the stuff to our hotel.  It appeared
+that in the early part of our converse with him we had,
+unwittingly, clamoured for it.  Personally, I can neither praise it
+nor condemn it.  A long series of disappointments has disheartened
+me; added to which a permanent atmosphere of paraffin, however
+faint, is apt to cause remark, especially in the case of a married
+man.  Now, I never try even the sample.
+
+I gave my bottle to George.  He asked for it to send to a man he
+knew in Leeds.  I learnt later that Harris had given him his bottle
+also, to send to the same man.
+
+A suggestion of onions has clung to this tour since we left Prague.
+George has noticed it himself.  He attributes it to the prevalence
+of garlic in European cooking.
+
+It was in Prague that Harris and I did a kind and friendly thing to
+George.  We had noticed for some time past that George was getting
+too fond of Pilsener beer.  This German beer is an insidious drink,
+especially in hot weather; but it does not do to imbibe too freely
+of it.  It does not get into your head, but after a time it spoils
+your waist.  I always say to myself on entering Germany:
+
+"Now, I will drink no German beer.  The white wine of the country,
+with a little soda-water; perhaps occasionally a glass of Ems or
+potash.  But beer, never--or, at all events, hardly ever."
+
+It is a good and useful resolution, which I recommend to all
+travellers.  I only wish I could keep to it myself.  George,
+although I urged him, refused to bind himself by any such hard and
+fast limit.  He said that in moderation German beer was good.
+
+"One glass in the morning," said George, "one in the evening, or
+even two.  That will do no harm to anyone."
+
+Maybe he was right.  It was his half-dozen glasses that troubled
+Harris and myself.
+
+"We ought to do something to stop it," said Harris; "it is becoming
+serious."
+
+"It's hereditary, so he has explained to me," I answered.  "It
+seems his family have always been thirsty."
+
+"There is Apollinaris water," replied Harris, "which, I believe,
+with a little lemon squeezed into it, is practically harmless.
+What I am thinking about is his figure.  He will lose all his
+natural elegance."
+
+We talked the matter over, and, Providence aiding us, we fixed upon
+a plan.  For the ornamentation of the town a new statue had just
+been cast.  I forget of whom it was a statue.  I only remember that
+in the essentials it was the usual sort of street statue,
+representing the usual sort of gentleman, with the usual stiff
+neck, riding the usual sort of horse--the horse that always walks
+on its hind legs, keeping its front paws for beating time.  But in
+detail it possessed individuality.  Instead of the usual sword or
+baton, the man was holding, stretched out in his hand, his own
+plumed hat; and the horse, instead of the usual waterfall for a
+tail, possessed a somewhat attenuated appendage that somehow
+appeared out of keeping with his ostentatious behaviour.  One felt
+that a horse with a tail like that would not have pranced so much.
+
+It stood in a small square not far from the further end of the
+Karlsbrucke, but it stood there only temporarily.  Before deciding
+finally where to fix it, the town authorities had resolved, very
+sensibly, to judge by practical test where it would look best.
+Accordingly, they had made three rough copies of the statue--mere
+wooden profiles, things that would not bear looking at closely, but
+which, viewed from a little distance, produced all the effect that
+was necessary.  One of these they had set up at the approach to the
+Franz-Josefsbrucke, a second stood in the open space behind the
+theatre, and the third in the centre of the Wenzelsplatz.
+
+"If George is not in the secret of this thing," said Harris--we
+were walking by ourselves for an hour, he having remained behind in
+the hotel to write a letter to his aunt,--"if he has not observed
+these statues, then by their aid we will make a better and a
+thinner man of him, and that this very evening."
+
+So during dinner we sounded him, judiciously; and finding him
+ignorant of the matter, we took him out, and led him by side-
+streets to the place where stood the real statue.  George was for
+looking at it and passing on, as is his way with statues, but we
+insisted on his pulling up and viewing the thing conscientiously.
+We walked him round that statue four times, and showed it to him
+from every possible point of view.  I think, on the whole, we
+rather bored him with the thing, but our object was to impress it
+upon him.  We told him the history of the man who rode upon the
+horse, the name of the artist who had made the statue, how much it
+weighed, how much it measured.  We worked that statue into his
+system.  By the time we had done with him he knew more about that
+statue, for the time being, than he knew about anything else.  We
+soaked him in that statue, and only let him go at last on the
+condition that he would come again with us in the morning, when we
+could all see it better, and for such purpose we saw to it that he
+made a note in his pocket-book of the place where the statue stood.
+
+Then we accompanied him to his favourite beer hall, and sat beside
+him, telling him anecdotes of men who, unaccustomed to German beer,
+and drinking too much of it, had gone mad and developed homicidal
+mania; of men who had died young through drinking German beer; of
+lovers that German beer had been the means of parting for ever from
+beautiful girls.
+
+At ten o'clock we started to walk back to the hotel.  It was a
+stormy-looking night, with heavy clouds drifting over a light moon.
+Harris said:
+
+"We won't go back the same way we came; we'll walk back by the
+river.  It is lovely in the moonlight."
+
+Harris told a sad history, as we walked, about a man he once knew,
+who is now in a home for harmless imbeciles.  He said he recalled
+the story because it was on just such another night as this that he
+was walking with that man the very last time he ever saw the poor
+fellow.  They were strolling down the Thames Embankment, Harris
+said, and the man frightened him then by persisting that he saw the
+statue of the Duke of Wellington at the corner of Westminster
+Bridge, when, as everybody knows, it stands in Piccadilly.
+
+It was at this exact instant that we came in sight of the first of
+these wooden copies.  It occupied the centre of a small, railed-in
+square a little above us on the opposite side of the way.  George
+suddenly stood still and leant against the wall of the quay.
+
+"What's the matter?" I said; "feeling giddy?"
+
+He said:  "I do, a little.  Let's rest here a moment."
+
+He stood there with his eyes glued to the thing.
+
+He said, speaking huskily:
+
+"Talking of statues, what always strikes me is how very much one
+statue is like another statue."
+
+Harris said:  "I cannot agree with you there--pictures, if you
+like.  Some pictures are very like other pictures, but with a
+statue there is always something distinctive.  Take that statue we
+saw early in the evening," continued Harris, "before we went into
+the concert hall.  It represented a man sitting on a horse.  In
+Prague you will see other statues of men on horses, but nothing at
+all like that one."
+
+"Yes they are," said George; "they are all alike.  It's always the
+same horse, and it's always the same man.  They are all exactly
+alike.  It's idiotic nonsense to say they are not."
+
+He appeared to be angry with Harris.
+
+"What makes you think so?" I asked.
+
+"What makes me think so?" retorted George, now turning upon me.
+"Why, look at that damned thing over there!"
+
+I said:  "What damned thing?"
+
+"Why, that thing," said George; "look at it!  There is the same
+horse with half a tail, standing on its hind legs; the same man
+without his hat; the same--"
+
+Harris said:  "You are talking now about the statue we saw in the
+Ringplatz."
+
+"No, I'm not," replied George; "I'm talking about the statue over
+there."
+
+"What statue?" said Harris.
+
+George looked at Harris; but Harris is a man who might, with care,
+have been a fair amateur actor.  His face merely expressed friendly
+sorrow, mingled with alarm.  Next, George turned his gaze on me.  I
+endeavoured, so far as lay with me, to copy Harris's expression,
+adding to it on my own account a touch of reproof.
+
+"Will you have a cab?" I said as kindly as I could to George.
+"I'll run and get one."
+
+"What the devil do I want with a cab?" he answered, ungraciously.
+"Can't you fellows understand a joke?  It's like being out with a
+couple of confounded old women," saying which, he started off
+across the bridge, leaving us to follow.
+
+"I am so glad that was only a joke of yours," said Harris, on our
+overtaking him.  "I knew a case of softening of the brain that
+began--"
+
+"Oh, you're a silly ass!" said George, cutting him short; "you know
+everything."
+
+He was really most unpleasant in his manner.
+
+We took him round by the riverside of the theatre.  We told him it
+was the shortest way, and, as a matter of fact, it was.  In the
+open space behind the theatre stood the second of these wooden
+apparitions.  George looked at it, and again stood still.
+
+"What's the matter?" said Harris, kindly.  "You are not ill, are
+you?"
+
+"I don't believe this is the shortest way," said George.
+
+"I assure you it is," persisted Harris.
+
+"Well, I'm going the other," said George; and he turned and went,
+we, as before, following him.
+
+Along the Ferdinand Strasse Harris and I talked about private
+lunatic asylums, which, Harris said, were not well managed in
+England.  He said a friend of his, a patient in a lunatic asylum -
+
+George said, interrupting:  "You appear to have a large number of
+friends in lunatic asylums."
+
+He said it in a most insulting tone, as though to imply that that
+is where one would look for the majority of Harris's friends.  But
+Harris did not get angry; he merely replied, quite mildly:
+
+"Well, it really is extraordinary, when one comes to think of it,
+how many of them have gone that way sooner or later.  I get quite
+nervous sometimes, now."
+
+At the corner of the Wenzelsplatz, Harris, who was a few steps
+ahead of us, paused.
+
+"It's a fine street, isn't it?" he said, sticking his hands in his
+pockets, and gazing up at it admiringly.
+
+George and I followed suit.  Two hundred yards away from us, in its
+very centre, was the third of these ghostly statues.  I think it
+was the best of the three--the most like, the most deceptive.  It
+stood boldly outlined against the wild sky:  the horse on its hind
+legs, with its curiously attenuated tail; the man bareheaded,
+pointing with his plumed hat to the now entirely visible moon.
+
+"I think, if you don't mind," said George--he spoke with almost a
+pathetic ring in his voice, his aggressiveness had completely
+fallen from him,--"that I will have that cab, if there's one
+handy."
+
+"I thought you were looking queer," said Harris, kindly.  "It's
+your head, isn't it?"
+
+"Perhaps it is," answered George.
+
+"I have noticed it coining on," said Harris; "but I didn't like to
+say anything to you.  You fancy you see things, don't you?"
+
+"No, no; it isn't that," replied George, rather quickly.  "I don't
+know what it is."
+
+"I do," said Harris, solemnly, "and I'll tell you.  It's this
+German beer that you are drinking.  I have known a case where a
+man--"
+
+"Don't tell me about him just now," said George.  "I dare say it's
+true, but somehow I don't feel I want to hear about him."
+
+"You are not used to it," said Harris.
+
+"I shall give it up from to-night," said George.  "I think you must
+be right; it doesn't seem to agree with me."
+
+We took him home, and saw him to bed.  He was very gentle and quite
+grateful.
+
+One evening later on, after a long day's ride, followed by a most
+satisfactory dinner, we started him on a big cigar, and, removing
+things from his reach, told him of this stratagem that for his good
+we had planned.
+
+"How many copies of that statue did you say we saw?" asked George,
+after we had finished.
+
+"Three," replied Harris.
+
+"Only three?" said George.  "Are you sure?"
+
+"Positive," replied Harris.  "Why?"
+
+"Oh, nothing!" answered George.
+
+But I don't think he quite believed Harris.
+
+From Prague we travelled to Nuremberg, through Carlsbad.  Good
+Germans, when they die, go, they say, to Carlsbad, as good
+Americans to Paris.  This I doubt, seeing that it is a small place
+with no convenience for a crowd.  In Carlsbad, you rise at five,
+the fashionable hour for promenade, when the band plays under the
+Colonnade, and the Sprudel is filled with a packed throng over a
+mile long, being from six to eight in the morning.  Here you may
+hear more languages spoken than the Tower of Babel could have
+echoed.  Polish Jews and Russian princes, Chinese mandarins and
+Turkish pashas, Norwegians looking as if they had stepped out of
+Ibsen's plays, women from the Boulevards, Spanish grandees and
+English countesses, mountaineers from Montenegro and millionaires
+from Chicago, you will find every dozen yards.  Every luxury in the
+world Carlsbad provides for its visitors, with the one exception of
+pepper.  That you cannot get within five miles of the town for
+money; what you can get there for love is not worth taking away.
+Pepper, to the liver brigade that forms four-fifths of Carlsbad's
+customers, is poison; and, prevention being better than cure, it is
+carefully kept out of the neighbourhood.  "Pepper parties" are
+formed in Carlsbad to journey to some place without the boundary,
+and there indulge in pepper orgies.
+
+Nuremberg, if one expects a town of mediaeval appearance,
+disappoints.  Quaint corners, picturesque glimpses, there are in
+plenty; but everywhere they are surrounded and intruded upon by the
+modern, and even what is ancient is not nearly so ancient as one
+thought it was.  After all, a town, like a woman, is only as old as
+it looks; and Nuremberg is still a comfortable-looking dame, its
+age somewhat difficult to conceive under its fresh paint and stucco
+in the blaze of the gas and the electric light.  Still, looking
+closely, you may see its wrinkled walls and grey towers.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+
+
+Harris breaks the law--The helpful man:  The dangers that beset
+him--George sets forth upon a career of crime--Those to whom
+Germany would come as a boon and a blessing--The English Sinner:
+His disappointments--The German Sinner:  His exceptional
+advantages--What you may not do with your bed--An inexpensive vice-
+-The German dog:  His simple goodness--The misbehaviour of the
+beetle--A people that go the way they ought to go--The German small
+boy:  His love of legality--How to go astray with a perambulator--
+The German student:  His chastened wilfulness.
+
+All three of us, by some means or another, managed, between
+Nuremberg and the Black Forest, to get into trouble.
+
+Harris led off at Stuttgart by insulting an official.  Stuttgart is
+a charming town, clean and bright, a smaller Dresden.  It has the
+additional attraction of containing little that one need to go out
+of one's way to see:  a medium-sized picture gallery, a small
+museum of antiquities, and half a palace, and you are through with
+the entire thing and can enjoy yourself.  Harris did not know it
+was an official he was insulting.  He took it for a fireman (it
+looked liked a fireman), and he called it a "dummer Esel."
+
+In German you are not permitted to call an official a "silly ass,"
+but undoubtedly this particular man was one.  What had happened was
+this:  Harris in the Stadgarten, anxious to get out, and seeing a
+gate open before him, had stepped over a wire into the street.
+Harris maintains he never saw it, but undoubtedly there was hanging
+to the wire a notice, "Durchgang Verboten!"  The man, who was
+standing near the gates stopped Harris, and pointed out to him this
+notice.  Harris thanked him, and passed on.  The man came after
+him, and explained that treatment of the matter in such off-hand
+way could not be allowed; what was necessary to put the business
+right was that Harris should step back over the wire into the
+garden.  Harris pointed out to the man that the notice said "going
+through forbidden," and that, therefore, by re-entering the garden
+that way he would be infringing the law a second time.  The man saw
+this for himself, and suggested that to get over the difficulty
+Harris should go back into the garden by the proper entrance, which
+was round the corner, and afterwards immediately come out again by
+the same gate.  Then it was that Harris called the man a silly ass.
+That delayed us a day, and cost Harris forty marks.
+
+I followed suit at Carlsruhe, by stealing a bicycle.  I did not
+mean to steal the bicycle; I was merely trying to be useful.  The
+train was on the point of starting when I noticed, as I thought,
+Harris's bicycle still in the goods van.  No one was about to help
+me.  I jumped into the van and hauled it out, only just in time.
+Wheeling it down the platform in triumph, I came across Harris's
+bicycle, standing against a wall behind some milk-cans.  The
+bicycle I had secured was not Harris's, but some other man's.
+
+It was an awkward situation.  In England, I should have gone to the
+stationmaster and explained my mistake.  But in Germany they are
+not content with your explaining a little matter of this sort to
+one man:  they take you round and get you to explain it to about
+half a dozen; and if any one of the half dozen happens not to be
+handy, or not to have time just then to listen to you, they have a
+habit of leaving you over for the night to finish your explanation
+the next morning.  I thought I would just put the thing out of
+sight, and then, without making any fuss or show, take a short
+walk.  I found a wood shed, which seemed just the very place, and
+was wheeling the bicycle into it when, unfortunately, a red-hatted
+railway official, with the airs of a retired field-marshal, caught
+sight of me and came up.  He said:
+
+"What are you doing with that bicycle?"
+
+I said:  "I am going to put it in this wood shed out of the way."
+I tried to convey by my tone that I was performing a kind and
+thoughtful action, for which the railway officials ought to thank
+me; but he was unresponsive.
+
+"Is it your bicycle?" he said.
+
+"Well, not exactly," I replied.
+
+"Whose is it?" he asked, quite sharply.
+
+"I can't tell you," I answered.  "I don't know whose bicycle it
+is."
+
+"Where did you get it from?" was his next question.  There was a
+suspiciousness about his tone that was almost insulting.
+
+"I got it," I answered, with as much calm dignity as at the moment
+I could assume, "out of the train."
+
+"The fact is," I continued, frankly, "I have made a mistake."
+
+He did not allow me time to finish.  He merely said he thought so
+too, and blew a whistle.
+
+Recollection of the subsequent proceedings is not, so far as I am
+concerned, amusing.  By a miracle of good luck--they say Providence
+watches over certain of us--the incident happened in Carlsruhe,
+where I possess a German friend, an official of some importance.
+Upon what would have been my fate had the station not been at
+Carlsruhe, or had my friend been from home, I do not care to dwell;
+as it was I got off, as the saying is, by the skin of my teeth.  I
+should like to add that I left Carlsruhe without a stain upon my
+character, but that would not be the truth.  My going scot free is
+regarded in police circles there to this day as a grave miscarriage
+of justice.
+
+But all lesser sin sinks into insignificance beside the lawlessness
+of George.  The bicycle incident had thrown us all into confusion,
+with the result that we lost George altogether.  It transpired
+subsequently that he was waiting for us outside the police court;
+but this at the time we did not know.  We thought, maybe, he had
+gone on to Baden by himself; and anxious to get away from
+Carlsruhe, and not, perhaps, thinking out things too clearly, we
+jumped into the next train that came up and proceeded thither.
+When George, tired of waiting, returned to the station, he found us
+gone and he found his luggage gone.  Harris had his ticket; I was
+acting as banker to the party, so that he had in his pocket only
+some small change.  Excusing himself upon these grounds, he
+thereupon commenced deliberately a career of crime that, reading it
+later, as set forth baldly in the official summons, made the hair
+of Harris and myself almost to stand on end.
+
+German travelling, it may be explained, is somewhat complicated.
+You buy a ticket at the station you start from for the place you
+want to go to.  You might think this would enable you to get there,
+but it does not.  When your train comes up, you attempt to swarm
+into it; but the guard magnificently waves you away.  Where are
+your credentials?  You show him your ticket.  He explains to you
+that by itself that is of no service whatever; you have only taken
+the first step towards travelling; you must go back to the booking-
+office and get in addition what is called a "schnellzug ticket."
+With this you return, thinking your troubles over.  You are allowed
+to get in, so far so good.  But you must not sit down anywhere, and
+you must not stand still, and you must not wander about.  You must
+take another ticket, this time what is called a "platz ticket,"
+which entitles you to a place for a certain distance.
+
+What a man could do who persisted in taking nothing but the one
+ticket, I have often wondered.  Would he be entitled to run behind
+the train on the six-foot way?  Or could he stick a label on
+himself and get into the goods van?  Again, what could be done with
+the man who, having taken his schnellzug ticket, obstinately
+refused, or had not the money to take a platz ticket:  would they
+let him lie in the umbrella rack, or allow him to hang himself out
+of the window?
+
+To return to George, he had just sufficient money to take a third-
+class slow train ticket to Baden, and that was all.  To avoid the
+inquisitiveness of the guard, he waited till the train was moving,
+and then jumped in.
+
+That was his first sin:
+
+(a)  Entering a train in motion;
+
+(b)  After being warned not to do so by an official.
+
+Second sin:
+
+(a)  Travelling in train of superior class to that for which ticket
+was held.
+
+(b)  Refusing to pay difference when demanded by an official.
+(George says he did not "refuse"; he simply told the man he had not
+got it.)
+
+Third sin:
+
+(a)  Travelling in carriage of superior class to that for which
+ticket was held.
+
+(b)  Refusing to pay difference when demanded by an official.
+(Again George disputes the accuracy of the report.  He turned his
+pockets out, and offered the man all he had, which was about
+eightpence in German money.  He offered to go into a third class,
+but there was no third class.  He offered to go into the goods van,
+but they would not hear of it.)
+
+Fourth sin:
+
+(a)  Occupying seat, and not paying for same.
+
+(b)  Loitering about corridor.  (As they would not let him sit down
+without paying, and as he could not pay, it was difficult to see
+what else he could do.)
+
+But explanations are held as no excuse in Germany; and his journey
+from Carlsruhe to Baden was one of the most expensive perhaps on
+record.
+
+Reflecting upon the case and frequency with which one gets into
+trouble here in Germany, one is led to the conclusion that this
+country would come as a boon and a blessing to the average young
+Englishman.  To the medical student, to the eater of dinners at the
+Temple, to the subaltern on leave, life in London is a wearisome
+proceeding.  The healthy Briton takes his pleasure lawlessly, or it
+is no pleasure to him.  Nothing that he may do affords to him any
+genuine satisfaction.  To be in trouble of some sort is his only
+idea of bliss.  Now, England affords him small opportunity in this
+respect; to get himself into a scrape requires a good deal of
+persistence on the part of the young Englishman.
+
+I spoke on this subject one day with our senior churchwarden.  It
+was the morning of the 10th of November, and we were both of us
+glancing, somewhat anxiously, through the police reports.  The
+usual batch of young men had been summoned for creating the usual
+disturbance the night before at the Criterion.  My friend the
+churchwarden has boys of his own, and a nephew of mine, upon whom I
+am keeping a fatherly eye, is by a fond mother supposed to be in
+London for the sole purpose of studying engineering.  No names we
+knew happened, by fortunate chance, to be in the list of those
+detained in custody, and, relieved, we fell to moralising upon the
+folly and depravity of youth.
+
+"It is very remarkable," said my friend the churchwarden, "how the
+Criterion retains its position in this respect.  It was just so
+when I was young; the evening always wound up with a row at the
+Criterion."
+
+"So meaningless," I remarked.
+
+"So monotonous," he replied.  "You have no idea," he continued, a
+dreamy expression stealing over his furrowed face, "how unutterably
+tired one can become of the walk from Piccadilly Circus to the Vine
+Street Police Court.  Yet, what else was there for us to do?
+Simply nothing.  Sometimes we would put out a street lamp, and a
+man would come round and light it again.  If one insulted a
+policeman, he simply took no notice.  He did not even know he was
+being insulted; or, if he did, he seemed not to care.  You could
+fight a Covent Garden porter, if you fancied yourself at that sort
+of thing.  Generally speaking, the porter got the best of it; and
+when he did it cost you five shillings, and when he did not the
+price was half a sovereign.  I could never see much excitement in
+that particular sport.  I tried driving a hansom cab once.  That
+has always been regarded as the acme of modern Tom and Jerryism.  I
+stole it late one night from outside a public-house in Dean Street,
+and the first thing that happened to me was that I was hailed in
+Golden Square by an old lady surrounded by three children, two of
+them crying and the third one half asleep.  Before I could get away
+she had shot the brats into the cab, taken my number, paid me, so
+she said, a shilling over the legal fare, and directed me to an
+address a little beyond what she called North Kensington.  As a
+matter of fact, the place turned out to be the other side of
+Willesden.  The horse was tired, and the journey took us well over
+two hours.  It was the slowest lark I ever remember being concerned
+in.  I tried one or twice to persuade the children to let me take
+them back to the old lady:  but every time I opened the trap-door
+to speak to them the youngest one, a boy, started screaming; and
+when I offered other drivers to transfer the job to them, most of
+them replied in the words of a song popular about that period:
+'Oh, George, don't you think you're going just a bit too far?'  One
+man offered to take home to my wife any last message I might be
+thinking of, while another promised to organise a party to come and
+dig me out in the spring.  When I mounted the dickey I had imagined
+myself driving a peppery old colonel to some lonesome and cabless
+region, half a dozen miles from where he wanted to go, and there
+leaving him upon the kerbstone to swear.  About that there might
+have been good sport or there might not, according to circumstances
+and the colonel.  The idea of a trip to an outlying suburb in
+charge of a nursery full of helpless infants had never occurred to
+me.  No, London," concluded my friend the churchwarden with a sigh,
+"affords but limited opportunity to the lover of the illegal."
+
+Now, in Germany, on the other hand, trouble is to be had for the
+asking.  There are many things in Germany that you must not do that
+are quite easy to do.  To any young Englishman yearning to get
+himself into a scrape, and finding himself hampered in his own
+country, I would advise a single ticket to Germany; a return,
+lasting as it does only a month, might prove a waste.
+
+In the Police Guide of the Fatherland he will find set forth a list
+of the things the doing of which will bring to him interest and
+excitement.  In Germany you must not hang your bed out of window.
+He might begin with that.  By waving his bed out of window he could
+get into trouble before he had his breakfast.  At home he might
+hang himself out of window, and nobody would mind much, provided he
+did not obstruct anybody's ancient lights or break away and injure
+any passer underneath.
+
+In Germany you must not wear fancy dress in the streets.  A
+Highlander of my acquaintance who came to pass the winter in
+Dresden spent the first few days of his residence there in arguing
+this question with the Saxon Government.  They asked him what he
+was doing in those clothes.  He was not an amiable man.  He
+answered, he was wearing them.  They asked him why he was wearing
+them.  He replied, to keep himself warm.  They told him frankly
+that they did not believe him, and sent him back to his lodgings in
+a closed landau.  The personal testimony of the English Minister
+was necessary to assure the authorities that the Highland garb was
+the customary dress of many respectable, law-abiding British
+subjects.  They accepted the statement, as diplomatically bound,
+but retain their private opinion to this day.  The English tourist
+they have grown accustomed to; but a Leicestershire gentleman,
+invited to hunt with some German officers, on appearing outside his
+hotel, was promptly marched off, horse and all, to explain his
+frivolity at the police court.
+
+Another thing you must not do in the streets of German towns is to
+feed horses, mules, or donkeys, whether your own or those belonging
+to other people.  If a passion seizes you to feed somebody else's
+horse, you must make an appointment with the animal, and the meal
+must take place in some properly authorised place.  You must not
+break glass or china in the street, nor, in fact, in any public
+resort whatever; and if you do, you must pick up all the pieces.
+What you are to do with the pieces when you have gathered them
+together I cannot say.  The only thing I know for certain is that
+you are not permitted to throw them anywhere, to leave them
+anywhere, or apparently to part with them in any way whatever.
+Presumably, you are expected to carry them about with you until you
+die, and then be buried with them; or, maybe, you are allowed to
+swallow them.
+
+In German streets you must not shoot with a crossbow.  The German
+law-maker does not content himself with the misdeeds of the average
+man--the crime one feels one wants to do, but must not:  he worries
+himself imagining all the things a wandering maniac might do.  In
+Germany there is no law against a man standing on his head in the
+middle of the road; the idea has not occurred to them.  One of
+these days a German statesman, visiting a circus and seeing
+acrobats, will reflect upon this omission.  Then he will
+straightway set to work and frame a clause forbidding people from
+standing on their heads in the middle of the road, and fixing a
+fine.  This is the charm of German law:  misdemeanour in Germany
+has its fixed price.  You are not kept awake all night, as in
+England, wondering whether you will get off with a caution, be
+fined forty shillings, or, catching the magistrate in an unhappy
+moment for yourself, get seven days.  You know exactly what your
+fun is going to cost you.  You can spread out your money on the
+table, open your Police Guide, and plan out your holiday to a fifty
+pfennig piece.  For a really cheap evening, I would recommend
+walking on the wrong side of the pavement after being cautioned not
+to do so.  I calculate that by choosing your district and keeping
+to the quiet side streets you could walk for a whole evening on the
+wrong side of the pavement at a cost of little over three marks.
+
+In German towns you must not ramble about after dark "in droves."
+I am not quite sure how many constitute a "drove," and no official
+to whom I have spoken on this subject has felt himself competent to
+fix the exact number.  I once put it to a German friend who was
+starting for the theatre with his wife, his mother-in-law, five
+children of his own, his sister and her fiance, and two nieces, if
+he did not think he was running a risk under this by-law.  He did
+not take my suggestion as a joke.  He cast an eye over the group.
+
+"Oh, I don't think so," he said; "you see, we are all one family."
+
+"The paragraph says nothing about its being a family drove or not,"
+I replied; "it simply says 'drove.'  I do not mean it in any
+uncomplimentary sense, but, speaking etymologically, I am inclined
+personally to regard your collection as a 'drove.'  Whether the
+police will take the same view or not remains to be seen.  I am
+merely warning you."
+
+My friend himself was inclined to pooh-pooh my fears; but his wife
+thinking it better not to run any risk of having the party broken
+up by the police at the very beginning of the evening, they
+divided, arranging to come together again in the theatre lobby.
+
+Another passion you must restrain in Germany is that prompting you
+to throw things out of window.  Cats are no excuse.  During the
+first week of my residence in Germany I was awakened incessantly by
+cats.  One night I got mad.  I collected a small arsenal--two or
+three pieces of coal, a few hard pears, a couple of candle ends, an
+odd egg I found on the kitchen table, an empty soda-water bottle,
+and a few articles of that sort,--and, opening the window,
+bombarded the spot from where the noise appeared to come.  I do not
+suppose I hit anything; I never knew a man who did hit a cat, even
+when he could see it, except, maybe, by accident when aiming at
+something else.  I have known crack shots, winners of Queen's
+prizes--those sort of men,--shoot with shot-guns at cats fifty
+yards away, and never hit a hair.  I have often thought that,
+instead of bull's-eyes, running deer, and that rubbish, the really
+superior marksman would be he who could boast that he had shot the
+cat.
+
+But, anyhow, they moved off; maybe the egg annoyed them.  I had
+noticed when I picked it up that it did not look a good egg; and I
+went back to bed again, thinking the incident closed.  Ten minutes
+afterwards there came a violent ringing of the electric bell.  I
+tried to ignore it, but it was too persistent, and, putting on my
+dressing gown, I went down to the gate.  A policeman was standing
+there.  He had all the things I had been throwing out of the window
+in a little heap in front of him, all except the egg.  He had
+evidently been collecting them.  He said:
+
+"Are these things yours?"
+
+I said:  "They were mine, but personally I have done with them.
+Anybody can have them--you can have them."
+
+He ignored my offer.  He said:
+
+"You threw these things out of window."
+
+"You are right," I admitted; "I did."
+
+"Why did you throw them out of window?" he asked.  A German
+policeman has his code of questions arranged for him; he never
+varies them, and he never omits one.
+
+"I threw them out of the window at some cats," I answered.
+
+"What cats?" he asked.
+
+It was the sort of question a German policeman would ask.  I
+replied with as much sarcasm as I could put into my accent that I
+was ashamed to say I could not tell him what cats.  I explained
+that, personally, they were strangers to me; but I offered, if the
+police would call all the cats in the district together, to come
+round and see if I could recognise them by their yaul.
+
+The German policeman does not understand a joke, which is perhaps
+on the whole just as well, for I believe there is a heavy fine for
+joking with any German uniform; they call it "treating an official
+with contumely."  He merely replied that it was not the duty of the
+police to help me recognise the cats; their duty was merely to fine
+me for throwing things out of window.
+
+I asked what a man was supposed to do in Germany when woke up night
+after night by cats, and he explained that I could lodge an
+information against the owner of the cat, when the police would
+proceed to caution him, and, if necessary, order the cat to be
+destroyed.  Who was going to destroy the cat, and what the cat
+would be doing during the process, he did not explain.
+
+I asked him how he proposed I should discover the owner of the cat.
+He thought for a while, and then suggested that I might follow it
+home.  I did not feel inclined to argue with him any more after
+that; I should only have said things that would have made the
+matter worse.  As it was, that night's sport cost me twelve marks;
+and not a single one of the four German officials who interviewed
+me on the subject could see anything ridiculous in the proceedings
+from beginning to end.
+
+But in Germany most human faults and follies sink into comparative
+insignificance beside the enormity of walking on the grass.
+Nowhere, and under no circumstances, may you at any time in Germany
+walk on the grass.  Grass in Germany is quite a fetish.  To put
+your foot on German grass would be as great a sacrilege as to dance
+a hornpipe on a Mohammedan's praying-mat.  The very dogs respect
+German grass; no German dog would dream of putting a paw on it.  If
+you see a dog scampering across the grass in Germany, you may know
+for certain that it is the dog of some unholy foreigner.  In
+England, when we want to keep dogs out of places, we put up wire
+netting, six feet high, supported by buttresses, and defended on
+the top by spikes.  In Germany, they put a notice-board in the
+middle of the place, "Hunden verboten," and a dog that has German
+blood in its veins looks at that notice-board and walks away.  In a
+German park I have seen a gardener step gingerly with felt boots on
+to grass-plot, and removing therefrom a beetle, place it gravely
+but firmly on the gravel; which done, he stood sternly watching the
+beetle, to see that it did not try to get back on the grass; and
+the beetle, looking utterly ashamed of itself, walked hurriedly
+down the gutter, and turned up the path marked "Ausgang."
+
+In German parks separate roads are devoted to the different orders
+of the community, and no one person, at peril of liberty and
+fortune, may go upon another person's road.  There are special
+paths for "wheel-riders" and special paths for "foot-goers,"
+avenues for "horse-riders," roads for people in light vehicles, and
+roads for people in heavy vehicles; ways for children and for
+"alone ladies."  That no particular route has yet been set aside
+for bald-headed men or "new women" has always struck me as an
+omission.
+
+In the Grosse Garten in Dresden I once came across an old lady,
+standing, helpless and bewildered, in the centre of seven tracks.
+Each was guarded by a threatening notice, warning everybody off it
+but the person for whom it was intended.
+
+"I am sorry to trouble you," said the old lady, on learning I could
+speak English and read German, "but would you mind telling me what
+I am and where I have to go?"
+
+I inspected her carefully.  I came to the conclusion that she was a
+"grown-up" and a "foot-goer," and pointed out her path.  She looked
+at it, and seemed disappointed.
+
+"But I don't want to go down there," she said; "mayn't I go this
+way?"
+
+"Great heavens, no, madam!" I replied.  "That path is reserved for
+children."
+
+"But I wouldn't do them any harm," said the old lady, with a smile.
+She did not look the sort of old lady who would have done them any
+harm.
+
+"Madam," I replied, "if it rested with me, I would trust you down
+that path, though my own first-born were at the other end; but I
+can only inform you of the laws of this country.  For you, a full-
+grown woman, to venture down that path is to go to certain fine, if
+not imprisonment.  There is your path, marked plainly--Nur fur
+Fussganger, and if you will follow my advice, you will hasten down
+it; you are not allowed to stand here and hesitate."
+
+"It doesn't lead a bit in the direction I want to go," said the old
+lady.
+
+"It leads in the direction you OUGHT to want to go," I replied, and
+we parted.
+
+In the German parks there are special seats labelled, "Only for
+grown-ups" (Nur fur Erwachsene), and the German small boy, anxious
+to sit down, and reading that notice, passes by, and hunts for a
+seat on which children are permitted to rest; and there he seats
+himself, careful not to touch the woodwork with his muddy boots.
+Imagine a seat in Regent's or St. James's Park labelled "Only for
+grown-ups!"  Every child for five miles round would be trying to
+get on that seat, and hauling other children off who were on.  As
+for any "grown-up," he would never be able to get within half a
+mile of that seat for the crowd.  The German small boy, who has
+accidentally sat down on such without noticing, rises with a start
+when his error is pointed out to him, and goes away with down-cast
+head, brushing to the roots of his hair with shame and regret.
+
+Not that the German child is neglected by a paternal Government.
+In German parks and public gardens special places (Spielplatze) are
+provided for him, each one supplied with a heap of sand.  There he
+can play to his heart's content at making mud pies and building
+sand castles.  To the German child a pie made of any other mud than
+this would appear an immoral pie.  It would give to him no
+satisfaction:  his soul would revolt against it.
+
+"That pie," he would say to himself, "was not, as it should have
+been, made of Government mud specially set apart for the purpose;
+it was nor manufactured in the place planned and maintained by the
+Government for the making of mud pies.  It can bring no real
+blessing with it; it is a lawless pie."  And until his father had
+paid the proper fine, and he had received his proper licking, his
+conscience would continue to trouble him.
+
+Another excellent piece of material for obtaining excitement in
+Germany is the simple domestic perambulator.  What you may do with
+a "kinder-wagen," as it is called, and what you may not, covers
+pages of German law; after the reading of which, you conclude that
+the man who can push a perambulator through a German town without
+breaking the law was meant for a diplomatist.  You must not loiter
+with a perambulator, and you must not go too fast.  You must not
+get in anybody's way with a perambulator, and if anybody gets in
+your way you must get out of their way.  If you want to stop with a
+perambulator, you must go to a place specially appointed where
+perambulators may stop; and when you get there you MUST stop.  You
+must not cross the road with a perambulator; if you and the baby
+happen to live on the other side, that is your fault.  You must not
+leave your perambulator anywhere, and only in certain places can
+you take it with you.  I should say that in Germany you could go
+out with a perambulator and get into enough trouble in half an hour
+to last you for a month.  Any young Englishman anxious for a row
+with the police could not do better than come over to Germany and
+bring his perambulator with him.
+
+In Germany you must not leave your front door unlocked after ten
+o'clock at night, and you must not play the piano in your own house
+after eleven.  In England I have never felt I wanted to play the
+piano myself, or to hear anyone else play it, after eleven o'clock
+at night; but that is a very different thing to being told that you
+must not play it.  Here, in Germany, I never feel that I really
+care for the piano until eleven o'clock, then I could sit and
+listen to the "Maiden's Prayer," or the Overture to "Zampa," with
+pleasure.  To the law-loving German, on the other hand, music after
+eleven o'clock at night ceases to be music; it becomes sin, and as
+such gives him no satisfaction.
+
+The only individual throughout Germany who ever dreams of taking
+liberties with the law is the German student, and he only to a
+certain well-defined point.  By custom, certain privileges are
+permitted to him, but even these are strictly limited and clearly
+understood.  For instance, the German student may get drunk and
+fall asleep in the gutter with no other penalty than that of having
+the next morning to tip the policeman who has found him and brought
+him home.  But for this purpose he must choose the gutters of side-
+streets.  The German student, conscious of the rapid approach of
+oblivion, uses all his remaining energy to get round the corner,
+where he may collapse without anxiety.  In certain districts he may
+ring bells.  The rent of flats in these localities is lower than in
+other quarters of the town; while the difficulty is further met by
+each family preparing for itself a secret code of bell-ringing by
+means of which it is known whether the summons is genuine or not.
+When visiting such a household late at night it is well to be
+acquainted with this code, or you may, if persistent, get a bucket
+of water thrown over you.
+
+Also the German student is allowed to put out lights at night, but
+there is a prejudice against his putting out too many.  The larky
+German student generally keeps count, contenting himself with half
+a dozen lights per night.  Likewise, he may shout and sing as he
+walks home, up till half-past two; and at certain restaurants it is
+permitted to him to put his arm round the Fraulein's waist.  To
+prevent any suggestion of unseemliness, the waitresses at
+restaurants frequented by students are always carefully selected
+from among a staid and elderly classy of women, by reason of which
+the German student can enjoy the delights of flirtation without
+fear and without reproach to anyone.
+
+They are a law-abiding people, the Germans.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+
+
+Baden from the visitor's point of view--Beauty of the early
+morning, as viewed from the preceding afternoon--Distance, as
+measured by the compass--Ditto, as measured by the leg--George in
+account with his conscience--A lazy machine--Bicycling, according
+to the poster:  its restfulness--The poster cyclist:  its costume;
+its method--The griffin as a household pet--A dog with proper self-
+respect--The horse that was abused.
+
+From Baden, about which it need only be said that it is a pleasure
+resort singularly like other pleasure resorts of the same
+description, we started bicycling in earnest.  We planned a ten
+days' tour, which, while completing the Black Forest, should
+include a spin down the Donau-Thal, which for the twenty miles from
+Tuttlingen to Sigmaringen is, perhaps, the finest valley in
+Germany; the Danube stream here winding its narrow way past old-
+world unspoilt villages; past ancient monasteries, nestling in
+green pastures, where still the bare-footed and bare-headed friar,
+his rope girdle tight about his loins, shepherds, with crook in
+hand, his sheep upon the hill sides; through rocky woods; between
+sheer walls of cliff, whose every towering crag stands crowned with
+ruined fortress, church, or castle; together with a blick at the
+Vosges mountains, where half the population is bitterly pained if
+you speak to them in French, the other half being insulted when you
+address them in German, and the whole indignantly contemptuous at
+the first sound of English; a state of things that renders
+conversation with the stranger somewhat nervous work.
+
+We did not succeed in carrying out our programme in its entirety,
+for the reason that human performance lags ever behind human
+intention.  It is easy to say and believe at three o'clock in the
+afternoon that:  "We will rise at five, breakfast lightly at half-
+past, and start away at six."
+
+"Then we shall be well on our way before the heat of the day sets
+in," remarks one.
+
+"This time of the year, the early morning is really the best part
+of the day.  Don't you think so?" adds another.
+
+"Oh, undoubtedly."
+
+"So cool and fresh."
+
+"And the half-lights are so exquisite."
+
+The first morning one maintains one's vows.  The party assembles at
+half-past five.  It is very silent; individually, somewhat snappy;
+inclined to grumble with its food, also with most other things; the
+atmosphere charged with compressed irritability seeking its vent.
+In the evening the Tempter's voice is heard:
+
+"I think if we got off by half-past six, sharp, that would be time
+enough?"
+
+The voice of Virtue protests, faintly:  "It will be breaking our
+resolution."
+
+The Tempter replies:  "Resolutions were made for man, not man for
+resolutions."  The devil can paraphrase Scripture for his own
+purpose.  "Besides, it is disturbing the whole hotel; think of the
+poor servants."
+
+The voice of Virtue continues, but even feebler:  "But everybody
+gets up early in these parts."
+
+"They would not if they were not obliged to, poor things!  Say
+breakfast at half-past six, punctual; that will be disturbing
+nobody."
+
+Thus Sin masquerades under the guise of Good, and one sleeps till
+six, explaining to one's conscience, who, however, doesn't believe
+it, that one does this because of unselfish consideration for
+others.  I have known such consideration extend until seven of the
+clock.
+
+Likewise, distance measured with a pair of compasses is not
+precisely the same as when measured by the leg.
+
+"Ten miles an hour for seven hours, seventy miles.  A nice easy
+day's work."
+
+"There are some stiff hills to climb?"
+
+"The other side to come down.  Say, eight miles an hour, and call
+it sixty miles.  Gott in Himmel! if we can't average eight miles an
+hour, we had better go in bath-chairs."  It does seem somewhat
+impossible to do less, on paper.
+
+But at four o'clock in the afternoon the voice of Duty rings less
+trumpet-toned:
+
+"Well, I suppose we ought to be getting on."
+
+"Oh, there's no hurry! don't fuss.  Lovely view from here, isn't
+it?"
+
+"Very.  Don't forget we are twenty-five miles from St. Blasien."
+
+"How far?"
+
+"Twenty-five miles, a little over if anything."
+
+"Do you mean to say we have only come thirty-five miles?"
+
+"That's all."
+
+"Nonsense.  I don't believe that map of yours."
+
+"It is impossible, you know.  We have been riding steadily ever
+since the first thing this morning."
+
+"No, we haven't.  We didn't get away till eight, to begin with."
+
+"Quarter to eight."
+
+"Well, quarter to eight; and every half-dozen miles we have
+stopped."
+
+"We have only stopped to look at the view.  It's no good coming to
+see a country, and then not seeing it."
+
+"And we have had to pull up some stiff hills."
+
+"Besides, it has been an exceptionally hot day to-day."
+
+"Well, don't forget St. Blasien is twenty-five miles off, that's
+all."
+
+"Any more hills?"
+
+"Yes, two; up and down."
+
+"I thought you said it was downhill into St. Blasien?"
+
+"So it is for the last ten miles.  We are twenty-five miles from
+St. Blasien here."
+
+"Isn't there anywhere between here and St. Blasien?  What's that
+little place there on the lake?"
+
+"It isn't St. Blasien, or anywhere near it.  There's a danger in
+beginning that sort of thing."
+
+"There's a danger in overworking oneself.  One should study
+moderation in all things.  Pretty little place, that Titisee,
+according to the map; looks as if there would be good air there."
+
+"All right, I'm agreeable.  It was you fellows who suggested our
+making for St. Blasien."
+
+"Oh, I'm not so keen on St. Blasien! poky little place, down in a
+valley.  This Titisee, I should say, was ever so much nicer."
+
+"Quite near, isn't it?"
+
+"Five miles."
+
+General chorus:  "We'll stop at Titisee."
+
+George made discovery of this difference between theory and
+practice on the very first day of our ride.
+
+"I thought," said George--he was riding the single, Harris and I
+being a little ahead on the tandem--"that the idea was to train up
+the hills and ride down them."
+
+"So it is," answered Harris, "as a general rule.  But the trains
+don't go up EVERY hill in the Black Forest."
+
+"Somehow, I felt a suspicion that they wouldn't," growled George;
+and for awhile silence reigned.
+
+"Besides," remarked Harris, who had evidently been ruminating the
+subject, "you would not wish to have nothing but downhill, surely.
+It would not be playing the game.  One must take a little rough
+with one's smooth."
+
+Again there returned silence, broken after awhile by George, this
+time.
+
+"Don't you two fellows over-exert yourselves merely on my account,"
+said George.
+
+"How do you mean?" asked Harris.
+
+"I mean," answered George, "that where a train does happen to be
+going up these hills, don't you put aside the idea of taking it for
+fear of outraging my finer feelings.  Personally, I am prepared to
+go up all these hills in a railway train, even if it's not playing
+the game.  I'll square the thing with my conscience; I've been up
+at seven every day for a week now, and I calculate it owes me a
+bit.  Don't you consider me in the matter at all."
+
+We promised to bear this in mind, and again the ride continued in
+dogged dumbness, until it was again broken by George.
+
+"What bicycle did you say this was of yours?" asked George.
+
+Harris told him.  I forget of what particular manufacture it
+happened to be; it is immaterial.
+
+"Are you sure?" persisted George.
+
+"Of course I am sure," answered Harris.  "Why, what's the matter
+with it?"
+
+"Well, it doesn't come up to the poster," said George, "that's
+all."
+
+"What poster?" asked Harris.
+
+"The poster advertising this particular brand of cycle," explained
+George.  "I was looking at one on a hoarding in Sloane Street only
+a day or two before we started.  A man was riding this make of
+machine, a man with a banner in his hand:  he wasn't doing any
+work, that was clear as daylight; he was just sitting on the thing
+and drinking in the air.  The cycle was going of its own accord,
+and going well.  This thing of yours leaves all the work to me.  It
+is a lazy brute of a machine; if you don't shove, it simply does
+nothing:  I should complain about it, if I were you."
+
+When one comes to think of it, few bicycles do realise the poster.
+On only one poster that I can recollect have I seen the rider
+represented as doing any work.  But then this man was being pursued
+by a bull.  In ordinary cases the object of the artist is to
+convince the hesitating neophyte that the sport of bicycling
+consists in sitting on a luxurious saddle, and being moved rapidly
+in the direction you wish to go by unseen heavenly powers.
+
+Generally speaking, the rider is a lady, and then one feels that,
+for perfect bodily rest combined with entire freedom from mental
+anxiety, slumber upon a water-bed cannot compare with bicycle-
+riding upon a hilly road.  No fairy travelling on a summer cloud
+could take things more easily than does the bicycle girl, according
+to the poster.  Her costume for cycling in hot weather is ideal.
+Old-fashioned landladies might refuse her lunch, it is true; and a
+narrowminded police force might desire to secure her, and wrap her
+in a rug preliminary to summonsing her.  But such she heeds not.
+Uphill and downhill, through traffic that might tax the ingenuity
+of a cat, over road surfaces calculated to break the average steam
+roller she passes, a vision of idle loveliness; her fair hair
+streaming to the wind, her sylph-like form poised airily, one foot
+upon the saddle, the other resting lightly upon the lamp.
+Sometimes she condescends to sit down on the saddle; then she puts
+her feet on the rests, lights a cigarette, and waves above her head
+a Chinese lantern.
+
+Less often, it is a mere male thing that rides the machine.  He is
+not so accomplished an acrobat as is the lady; but simple tricks,
+such as standing on the saddle and waving flags, drinking beer or
+beef-tea while riding, he can and does perform.  Something, one
+supposes, he must do to occupy his mind:  sitting still hour after
+hour on this machine, having no work to do, nothing to think about,
+must pall upon any man of active temperament.  Thus it is that we
+see him rising on his pedals as he nears the top of some high hill
+to apostrophise the sun, or address poetry to the surrounding
+scenery.
+
+Occasionally the poster pictures a pair of cyclists; and then one
+grasps the fact how much superior for purposes of flirtation is the
+modern bicycle to the old-fashioned parlour or the played-out
+garden gate.  He and she mount their bicycles, being careful, of
+course, that such are of the right make.  After that they have
+nothing to think about but the old sweet tale.  Down shady lanes,
+through busy towns on market days, merrily roll the wheels of the
+"Bermondsey Company's Bottom Bracket Britain's Best," or of the
+"Camberwell Company's Jointless Eureka."  They need no pedalling;
+they require no guiding.  Give them their heads, and tell them what
+time you want to get home, and that is all they ask.  While Edwin
+leans from his saddle to whisper the dear old nothings in
+Angelina's ear, while Angelina's face, to hide its blushes, is
+turned towards the horizon at the back, the magic bicycles pursue
+their even course.
+
+And the sun is always shining and the roads are always dry.  No
+stern parent rides behind, no interfering aunt beside, no demon
+small boy brother is peeping round the corner, there never comes a
+skid.  Ah me!  Why were there no "Britain's Best" nor "Camberwell
+Eurekas" to be hired when WE were young?
+
+Or maybe the "Britain's Best" or the "Camberwell Eureka" stands
+leaning against a gate; maybe it is tired.  It has worked hard all
+the afternoon, carrying these young people.  Mercifully minded,
+they have dismounted, to give the machine a rest.  They sit upon
+the grass beneath the shade of graceful boughs; it is long and dry
+grass.  A stream flows by their feet.  All is rest and peace.
+
+That is ever the idea the cycle poster artist sets himself to
+convey--rest and peace.
+
+But I am wrong in saying that no cyclist, according to the poster,
+ever works.  Now I come to reflect, I have seen posters
+representing gentlemen on cycles working very hard--over-working
+themselves, one might almost say.  They are thin and haggard with
+the toil, the perspiration stands upon their brow in beads; you
+feel that if there is another hill beyond the poster they must
+either get off or die.  But this is the result of their own folly.
+This happens because they will persist in riding a machine of an
+inferior make.  Were they riding a "Putney Popular" or "Battersea
+Bounder," such as the sensible young man in the centre of the
+poster rides, then all this unnecessary labour would be saved to
+them.  Then all required of them would be, as in gratitude bound,
+to look happy; perhaps, occasionally to back-pedal a little when
+the machine in its youthful buoyancy loses its head for a moment
+and dashes on too swiftly.
+
+You tired young men, sitting dejectedly on milestones, too spent to
+heed the steady rain that soaks you through; you weary maidens,
+with the straight, damp hair, anxious about the time, longing to
+swear, not knowing how; you stout bald men, vanishing visibly as
+you pant and grunt along the endless road; you purple, dejected
+matrons, plying with pain the slow unwilling wheel; why did you not
+see to it that you bought a "Britain's Best" or a "Camberwell
+Eureka"?  Why are these bicycles of inferior make so prevalent
+throughout the land
+
+Or is it with bicycling as with all other things:  does Life at no
+point realise the Poster?
+
+The one thing in Germany that never fails to charm and fascinate me
+is the German dog.  In England one grows tired of the old breeds,
+one knows them all so well:  the mastiff, the plum-pudding dog, the
+terrier (black, white or rough-haired, as the case may be, but
+always quarrelsome), the collie, the bulldog; never anything new.
+Now in Germany you get variety.  You come across dogs the like of
+which you have never seen before:  that until you hear them bark
+you do not know are dogs.  It is all so fresh, so interesting.
+George stopped a dog in Sigmaringen and drew our attention to it.
+It suggested a cross between a codfish and a poodle.  I would not
+like to be positive it was NOT a cross between a codfish and a
+poodle.  Harris tried to photograph it, but it ran up a fence and
+disappeared through some bushes.
+
+I do not know what the German breeder's idea is; at present he
+retains his secret.  George suggests he is aiming at a griffin.
+There is much to bear out this theory, and indeed in one or two
+cases I have come across success on these lines would seem to have
+been almost achieved.  Yet I cannot bring myself to believe that
+such are anything more than mere accidents.  The German is
+practical, and I fail to see the object of a griffin.  If mere
+quaintness of design be desired, is there not already the
+Dachshund!  What more is needed?  Besides, about a house, a griffin
+would be so inconvenient:  people would be continually treading on
+its tail.  My own idea is that what the Germans are trying for is a
+mermaid, which they will then train to catch fish.
+
+For your German does not encourage laziness in any living thing.
+He likes to see his dogs work, and the German dog loves work; of
+that there can be no doubt.  The life of the English dog must be a
+misery to him.  Imagine a strong, active, and intelligent being, of
+exceptionally energetic temperament, condemned to spend twenty-four
+hours a day in absolute idleness!  How would you like it yourself?
+No wonder he feels misunderstood, yearns for the unattainable, and
+gets himself into trouble generally.
+
+Now the German dog, on the other hand, has plenty to occupy his
+mind.  He is busy and important.  Watch him as he walks along
+harnessed to his milk cart.  No churchwarden at collection time
+could feel or look more pleased with himself.  He does not do any
+real work; the human being does the pushing, he does the barking;
+that is his idea of division of labour.  What he says to himself
+is:
+
+"The old man can't bark, but he can shove.  Very well."
+
+The interest and the pride he takes in the business is quite
+beautiful to see.  Another dog passing by makes, maybe, some
+jeering remark, casting discredit upon the creaminess of the milk.
+He stops suddenly, quite regardless of the traffic.
+
+"I beg your pardon, what was that you said about our milk?"
+
+"I said nothing about your milk," retorts the other dog, in a tone
+of gentle innocence.  "I merely said it was a fine day, and asked
+the price of chalk."
+
+"Oh, you asked the price of chalk, did you?  Would you like to
+know?"
+
+"Yes, thanks; somehow I thought you would be able to tell me."
+
+"You are quite right, I can.  It's worth--"
+
+"Oh, do come along!" says the old lady, who is tired and hot, and
+anxious to finish her round.
+
+"Yes, but hang it all; did you hear what he hinted about our milk?"
+
+"Oh, never mind him!  There's a tram coming round the corner:  we
+shall all get run over."
+
+"Yes, but I do mind him; one has one's proper pride.  He asked the
+price of chalk, and he's going to know it!  It's worth just twenty
+times as much--"
+
+"You'll have the whole thing over, I know you will," cries the old
+lady, pathetically, struggling with all her feeble strength to haul
+him back.  "Oh dear, oh dear!  I do wish I had left you at home."
+
+The tram is bearing down upon them; a cab-driver is shouting at
+them; another huge brute, hoping to be in time to take a hand, is
+dragging a bread cart, followed by a screaming child, across the
+road from the opposite side; a small crowd is collecting; and a
+policeman is hastening to the scene.
+
+"It's worth," says the milk dog, "just twenty-times as much as
+you'll be worth before I've done with you."
+
+"Oh, you think so, do you?"
+
+"Yes, I do, you grandson of a French poodle, you cabbage-eating--"
+
+"There!  I knew you'd have it over," says the poor milk-woman.  "I
+told him he'd have it over."
+
+But he is busy, and heeds her not.  Five minutes later, when the
+traffic is renewed, when the bread girl has collected her muddy
+rolls, and the policeman has gone off with the name and address of
+everybody in the street, he consents to look behind him.
+
+"It IS a bit of an upset," he admits.  Then shaking himself free of
+care, he adds, cheerfully, "But I guess I taught him the price of
+chalk.  He won't interfere with us again, I'm thinking."
+
+"I'm sure I hope not," says the old lady, regarding dejectedly the
+milky road.
+
+But his favourite sport is to wait at the top of the hill for
+another dog, and then race down.  On these occasions the chief
+occupation of the other fellow is to run about behind, picking up
+the scattered articles, loaves, cabbages, or shirts, as they are
+jerked out.  At the bottom of the hill, he stops and waits for his
+friend.
+
+"Good race, wasn't it?" he remarks, panting, as the Human comes up,
+laden to the chin.  "I believe I'd have won it, too, if it hadn't
+been for that fool of a small boy.  He was right in my way just as
+I turned the corner.  YOU NOTICED HIM?  Wish I had, beastly brat!
+What's he yelling like that for?  BECAUSE I KNOCKED HIM DOWN AND
+RAN OVER HIM?  Well, why didn't he get out of the way?  It's
+disgraceful, the way people leave their children about for other
+people to tumble over.  Halloa! did all those things come out?  You
+couldn't have packed them very carefully; you should see to a thing
+like that.  YOU DID NOT DREAM OF MY TEARING DOWN THE HILL TWENTY
+MILES AN HOUR?  Surely, you knew me better than to expect I'd let
+that old Schneider's dog pass me without an effort.  But there, you
+never think.  You're sure you've got them all?  YOU BELIEVE SO?  I
+shouldn't 'believe' if I were you; I should run back up the hill
+again and make sure.  YOU FEEL TOO TIRED?  Oh, all right! don't
+blame me if anything is missing, that's all."
+
+He is so self-willed.  He is cock-sure that the correct turning is
+the second on the right, and nothing will persuade him that it is
+the third.  He is positive he can get across the road in time, and
+will not be convinced until he sees the cart smashed up.  Then he
+is very apologetic, it is true.  But of what use is that?  As he is
+usually of the size and strength of a young bull, and his human
+companion is generally a weak-kneed old man or woman, or a small
+child, he has his way.  The greatest punishment his proprietor can
+inflict upon him is to leave him at home, and take the cart out
+alone.  But your German is too kind-hearted to do this often.
+
+That he is harnessed to the cart for anybody's pleasure but his own
+it is impossible to believe; and I am confident that the German
+peasant plans the tiny harness and fashions the little cart purely
+with the hope of gratifying his dog.  In other countries--in
+Belgium, Holland and France--I have seen these draught dogs ill-
+treated and over-worked; but in Germany, never.  Germans abuse
+animals shockingly.  I have seen a German stand in front of his
+horse and call it every name he could lay his tongue to.  But the
+horse did not mind it.  I have seen a German, weary with abusing
+his horse, call to his wife to come out and assist him.  When she
+came, he told her what the horse had done.  The recital roused the
+woman's temper to almost equal heat with his own; and standing one
+each side of the poor beast, they both abused it.  They abused its
+dead mother, they insulted its father; they made cutting remarks
+about its personal appearance, its intelligence, its moral sense,
+its general ability as a horse.  The animal bore the torrent with
+exemplary patience for awhile; then it did the best thing possible
+to do under the circumstances.  Without losing its own temper, it
+moved quietly away.  The lady returned to her washing, and the man
+followed it up the street, still abusing it.
+
+A kinder-hearted people than the Germans there is no need for.
+Cruelty to animal or child is a thing almost unknown in the land.
+The whip with them is a musical instrument; its crack is heard from
+morning to night, but an Italian coachman that in the streets of
+Dresden I once saw use it was very nearly lynched by the indignant
+crowd.  Germany is the only country in Europe where the traveller
+can settle himself comfortably in his hired carriage, confident
+that his gentle, willing friend between the shafts will be neither
+over-worked nor cruelly treated.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+
+
+Black Forest House:  and the sociability therein--Its perfume--
+George positively declines to remain in bed after four o'clock in
+the morning--The road one cannot miss--My peculiar extra instinct--
+An ungrateful party--Harris as a scientist--His cheery confidence--
+The village:  where it was, and where it ought to have been--
+George:  his plan--We promenade a la Francais--The German coachman
+asleep and awake--The man who spreads the English language abroad.
+
+There was one night when, tired out and far from town or village,
+we slept in a Black Forest farmhouse.  The great charm about the
+Black Forest house is its sociability.  The cows are in the next
+room, the horses are upstairs, the geese and ducks are in the
+kitchen, while the pigs, the children, and the chickens live all
+over the place.
+
+You are dressing, when you hear a grunt behind you.
+
+"Good-morning!  Don't happen to have any potato peelings in here?
+No, I see you haven't; good-bye."
+
+Next there is a cackle, and you see the neck of an old hen
+stretched round the corner.
+
+"Fine morning, isn't it?  You don't mind my bringing this worm of
+mine in here, do you?  It is so difficult in this house to find a
+room where one can enjoy one's food with any quietness.  From a
+chicken I have always been a slow eater, and when a dozen--there, I
+thought they wouldn't leave me alone.  Now they'll all want a bit.
+You don't mind my getting on the bed, do you?  Perhaps here they
+won't notice me."
+
+While you are dressing various shock heads peer in at the door;
+they evidently regard the room as a temporary menagerie.  You
+cannot tell whether the heads belong to boys or girls; you can only
+hope they are all male.  It is of no use shutting the door, because
+there is nothing to fasten it by, and the moment you are gone they
+push it open again.  You breakfast as the Prodigal Son is generally
+represented feeding:  a pig or two drop in to keep you company; a
+party of elderly geese criticise you from the door; you gather from
+their whispers, added to their shocked expression, that they are
+talking scandal about you.  Maybe a cow will condescend to give a
+glance in.
+
+This Noah's Ark arrangement it is, I suppose, that gives to the
+Black Forest home its distinctive scent.  It is not a scent you can
+liken to any one thing.  It is as if you took roses and Limburger
+cheese and hair oil, some heather and onions, peaches and soapsuds,
+together with a dash of sea air and a corpse, and mixed them up
+together.  You cannot define any particular odour, but you feel
+they are all there--all the odours that the world has yet
+discovered.  People who live in these houses are fond of this
+mixture.  They do not open the window and lose any of it; they keep
+it carefully bottled up.  If you want any other scent, you can go
+outside and smell the wood violets and the pines; inside there is
+the house; and after a while, I am told, you get used to it, so
+that you miss it, and are unable to go to sleep in any other
+atmosphere.
+
+We had a long walk before us the next day, and it was our desire,
+therefore, to get up early, even so early as six o'clock, if that
+could be managed without disturbing the whole household.  We put it
+to our hostess whether she thought this could be done.  She said
+she thought it could.  She might not be about herself at that time;
+it was her morning for going into the town, some eight miles off,
+and she rarely got back much before seven; but, possibly, her
+husband or one of the boys would be returning home to lunch about
+that hour.  Anyhow, somebody should be sent back to wake us and get
+our breakfast.
+
+As it turned out, we did not need any waking.  We got up at four,
+all by ourselves.  We got up at four in order to get away from the
+noise and the din that was making our heads ache.  What time the
+Black Forest peasant rises in the summer time I am unable to say;
+to us they appeared to be getting up all night.  And the first
+thing the Black Forester does when he gets up is to put on a pair
+of stout boots with wooden soles, and take a constitutional round
+the house.  Until he has been three times up and down the stairs,
+he does not feel he is up.  Once fully awake himself, the next
+thing he does is to go upstairs to the stables, and wake up a
+horse.  (The Black Forest house being built generally on the side
+of a steep hill, the ground floor is at the top, and the hay-loft
+at the bottom.)  Then the horse, it would seem, must also have its
+constitutional round the house; and this seen to, the man goes
+downstairs into the kitchen and begins to chop wood, and when he
+has chopped sufficient wood he feels pleased with himself and
+begins to sing.  All things considered, we came to the conclusion
+we could not do better than follow the excellent example set us.
+Even George was quite eager to get up that morning.
+
+We had a frugal breakfast at half-past four, and started away at
+five.  Our road lay over a mountain, and from enquiries made in the
+village it appeared to be one of those roads you cannot possibly
+miss.  I suppose everybody knows this sort of road.  Generally, it
+leads you back to where you started from; and when it doesn't, you
+wish it did, so that at all events you might know where you were.
+I foresaw evil from the very first, and before we had accomplished
+a couple of miles we came up with it.  The road divided into three.
+A worm-eaten sign-post indicated that the path to the left led to a
+place that we had never heard of--that was on no map.  Its other
+arm, pointing out the direction of the middle road, had
+disappeared.  The road to the right, so we all agreed, clearly led
+back again to the village.
+
+"The old man said distinctly," so Harris reminded us, "keep
+straight on round the hill."
+
+"Which hill?" George asked, pertinently.
+
+We were confronted by half a dozen, some of them big, some of them
+little.
+
+"He told us," continued Harris, "that we should come to a wood."
+
+"I see no reason to doubt him," commented George, "whichever road
+we take."
+
+As a matter of fact, a dense wood covered every hill.
+
+"And he said," murmured Harris, "that we should reach the top in
+about an hour and a half."
+
+"There it is," said George, "that I begin to disbelieve him."
+
+"Well, what shall we do?" said Harris.
+
+Now I happen to possess the bump of locality.  It is not a virtue;
+I make no boast of it.  It is merely an animal instinct that I
+cannot help.  That things occasionally get in my way--mountains,
+precipices, rivers, and such like obstructions--is no fault of
+mine.  My instinct is correct enough; it is the earth that is
+wrong.  I led them by the middle road.  That the middle road had
+not character enough to continue for any quarter of a mile in the
+same direction; that after three miles up and down hill it ended
+abruptly in a wasps' nest, was not a thing that should have been
+laid to my door.  If the middle road had gone in the direction it
+ought to have done, it would have taken us to where we wanted to
+go, of that I am convinced.
+
+Even as it was, I would have continued to use this gift of mine to
+discover a fresh way had a proper spirit been displayed towards me.
+But I am not an angel--I admit this frankly,--and I decline to
+exert myself for the ungrateful and the ribald.  Besides, I doubt
+if George and Harris would have followed me further in any event.
+Therefore it was that I washed my hands of the whole affair, and
+that Harris entered upon the vacancy.
+
+"Well," said Harris.  "I suppose you are satisfied with what you
+have done?"
+
+"I am quite satisfied," I replied from the heap of stones where I
+was sitting.  "So far, I have brought you with safety.  I would
+continue to lead you further, but no artist can work without
+encouragement.  You appear dissatisfied with me because you do not
+know where you are.  For all you know, you may be just where you
+want to be.  But I say nothing as to that; I expect no thanks.  Go
+your own way; I have done with you both."
+
+I spoke, perhaps, with bitterness, but I could not help it.  Not a
+word of kindness had I had all the weary way.
+
+"Do not misunderstand us," said Harris; "both George and myself
+feel that without your assistance we should never be where we now
+are.  For that we give you every credit.  But instinct is liable to
+error.  What I propose to do is to substitute for it Science, which
+is exact.  Now, where's the sun?"
+
+"Don't you think," said George, "that if we made our way back to
+the village, and hired a boy for a mark to guide us, it would save
+time in the end?"
+
+"It would be wasting hours," said Harris, with decision.  "You
+leave this to me.  I have been reading about this thing, and it has
+interested me."  He took out his watch, and began turning himself
+round and round.
+
+"It's as simple as A B C," he continued.  "You point the short hand
+at the sun, then you bisect the segment between the short hand and
+the twelve, and thus you get the north."
+
+He worried up and down for a while, then he fixed it.
+
+"Now I've got it," he said; "that's the north, where that wasps'
+nest is.  Now give me the map."
+
+We handed it to him, and seating himself facing the wasps, he
+examined it.
+
+"Todtmoos from here," he said, "is south by south-west."
+
+"How do you mean, from here?" asked George.
+
+"Why, from here, where we are," returned Harris.
+
+"But where are we?" said George.
+
+This worried Harris for a time, but at length he cheered up.
+
+"It doesn't matter where we are," he said.  "Wherever we are,
+Todtmoos is south by south-west.  Come on, we are only wasting
+time."
+
+"I don't quite see how you make it out," said George, as he rose
+and shouldered his knapsack; "but I suppose it doesn't matter.  We
+are out for our health, and it's all pretty!"
+
+"We shall be all right," said Harris, with cheery confidence.  "We
+shall be in at Todtmoos before ten, don't you worry.  And at
+Todtmoos we will have something to eat."
+
+He said that he, himself, fancied a beefsteak, followed by an
+omelette.  George said that, personally, he intended to keep his
+mind off the subject until he saw Todtmoos.
+
+We walked for half an hour, then emerging upon an opening, we saw
+below us, about two miles away, the village through which we had
+passed that morning.  It had a quaint church with an outside
+staircase, a somewhat unusual arrangement.
+
+The sight of it made me sad.  We had been walking hard for three
+hours and a half, and had accomplished, apparently, about four
+miles.  But Harris was delighted.
+
+"Now, at last," said Harris, "we know where we are."
+
+"I thought you said it didn't matter," George reminded him.
+
+"No more it does, practically," replied Harris, "but it is just as
+well to be certain.  Now I feel more confidence in myself."
+
+"I'm not so sure about that being an advantage," muttered George.
+But I do not think Harris heard him.
+
+"We are now," continued Harris, "east of the sun, and Todtmoos is
+south-west of where we are.  So that if--"
+
+He broke off.  "By-the-by," he said, "do you remember whether I
+said the bisecting line of that segment pointed to the north or to
+the south?"
+
+"You said it pointed to the north," replied George.
+
+"Are you positive?" persisted Harris.
+
+"Positive," answered George "but don't let that influence your
+calculations.  In all probability you were wrong."
+
+Harris thought for a while; then his brow cleared.
+
+"That's all right," he said; "of course, it's the north.  It must
+be the north.  How could it be the south?  Now we must make for the
+west.  Come on."
+
+"I am quite willing to make for the west," said George; "any point
+of the compass is the same to me.  I only wish to remark that, at
+the present moment, we are going dead east."
+
+"No we are not," returned Harris; "we are going west."
+
+"We are going east, I tell you," said George.
+
+"I wish you wouldn't keep saying that," said Harris, "you confuse
+me."
+
+"I don't mind if I do," returned George; "I would rather do that
+than go wrong.  I tell you we are going dead east."
+
+"What nonsense!" retorted Harris; "there's the sun."
+
+"I can see the sun," answered George, "quite distinctly.  It may be
+where it ought to be, according to you and Science, or it may not.
+All I know is, that when we were down in the village, that
+particular hill with that particular lump of rock upon it was due
+north of us.  At the present moment we are facing due east."
+
+"You are quite right," said Harris; "I forgot for the moment that
+we had turned round."
+
+"I should get into the habit of making a note of it, if I were
+you," grumbled George; "it's a manoeuvre that will probably occur
+again more than once."
+
+We faced about, and walked in the other direction.  At the end of
+forty minutes' climbing we again emerged upon an opening, and again
+the village lay just under our feet.  On this occasion it was south
+of us.
+
+"This is very extraordinary," said Harris.
+
+"I see nothing remarkable about it," said George.  "If you walk
+steadily round a village it is only natural that now and then you
+get a glimpse of it.  Myself, I am glad to see it.  It proves to me
+that we are not utterly lost."
+
+"It ought to be the other side of us," said Harris.
+
+"It will be in another hour or so," said George, "if we keep on."
+
+I said little myself; I was vexed with both of them; but I was glad
+to notice George evidently growing cross with Harris.  It was
+absurd of Harris to fancy he could find the way by the sun.
+
+"I wish I knew," said Harris, thoughtfully, "for certain whether
+that bisecting line points to the north or to the south."
+
+"I should make up my mind about it," said George; "it's an
+important point."
+
+"It's impossible it can be the north," said Harris, "and I'll tell
+you why."
+
+"You needn't trouble," said George; "I am quite prepared to believe
+it isn't."
+
+"You said just now it was," said Harris, reproachfully.
+
+"I said nothing of the sort," retorted George.  "I said you said it
+was--a very different thing.  If you think it isn't, let's go the
+other way.  It'll be a change, at all events."
+
+So Harris worked things out according to the contrary calculation,
+and again we plunged into the wood; and again after half an hour's
+stiff climbing we came in view of that same village.  True, we were
+a little higher, and this time it lay between us and the sun.
+
+"I think," said George, as he stood looking down at it, "this is
+the best view we've had of it, as yet.  There is only one other
+point from which we can see it.  After that, I propose we go down
+into it and get some rest."
+
+"I don't believe it's the same village," said Harris; "it can't
+be."
+
+"There's no mistaking that church," said George.  "But maybe it is
+a case on all fours with that Prague statue.  Possibly, the
+authorities hereabout have had made some life-sized models of that
+village, and have stuck them about the Forest to see where the
+thing would look best.  Anyhow, which way do we go now?"
+
+"I don't know," said Harris, "and I don't care.  I have done my
+best; you've done nothing but grumble, and confuse me."
+
+"I may have been critical," admitted George "but look at the thing
+from my point of view.  One of you says he's got an instinct, and
+leads me to a wasps' nest in the middle of a wood."
+
+"I can't help wasps building in a wood," I replied.
+
+"I don't say you can," answered George.  "I am not arguing; I am
+merely stating incontrovertible facts.  The other one, who leads me
+up and down hill for hours on scientific principles, doesn't know
+the north from the south, and is never quite sure whether he's
+turned round or whether he hasn't.  Personally, I profess to no
+instincts beyond the ordinary, nor am I a scientist.  But two
+fields off I can see a man.  I am going to offer him the worth of
+the hay he is cutting, which I estimate at one mark fifty pfennig,
+to leave his work, and lead me to within sight of Todtmoos.  If you
+two fellows like to follow, you can.  If not, you can start another
+system and work it out by yourselves."
+
+George's plan lacked both originality and aplomb, but at the moment
+it appealed to us.  Fortunately, we had worked round to a very
+short distance away from the spot where we had originally gone
+wrong; with the result that, aided by the gentleman of the scythe,
+we recovered the road, and reached Todtmoos four hours later than
+we had calculated to reach it, with an appetite that took forty-
+five minutes' steady work in silence to abate.
+
+From Todtmoos we had intended to walk down to the Rhine; but having
+regard to our extra exertions of the morning, we decided to
+promenade in a carriage, as the French would say:  and for this
+purpose hired a picturesque-looking vehicle, drawn by a horse that
+I should have called barrel-bodied but for contrast with his
+driver, in comparison with whom he was angular.  In Germany every
+vehicle is arranged for a pair of horses, but drawn generally by
+one.  This gives to the equipage a lop-sided appearance, according
+to our notions, but it is held here to indicate style.  The idea to
+be conveyed is that you usually drive a pair of horses, but that
+for the moment you have mislaid the other one.  The German driver
+is not what we should call a first-class whip.  He is at his best
+when he is asleep.  Then, at all events, he is harmless; and the
+horse being, generally speaking, intelligent and experienced,
+progress under these conditions is comparatively safe.  If in
+Germany they could only train the horse to collect the money at the
+end of the journey, there would be no need for a coachman at all.
+This would be a distinct relief to the passenger, for when the
+German coachman is awake and not cracking his whip he is generally
+occupied in getting himself into trouble or out of it.  He is
+better at the former.  Once I recollect driving down a steep Black
+Forest hill with a couple of ladies.  It was one of those roads
+winding corkscrew-wise down the slope.  The hill rose at an angle
+of seventy-five on the off-side, and fell away at an angle of
+seventy-five on the near-side.  We were proceeding very
+comfortably, the driver, we were happy to notice, with his eyes
+shut, when suddenly something, a bad dream or indigestion, awoke
+him.  He seized the reins, and, by an adroit movement, pulled the
+near-side horse over the edge, where it clung, half supported by
+the traces.  Our driver did not appear in the least annoyed or
+surprised; both horses, I also, noticed, seemed equally used to the
+situation.  We got out, and he got down.  He took from under the
+seat a huge clasp-knife, evidently kept there for the purpose, and
+deftly cut the traces.  The horse, thus released, rolled over and
+over until he struck the road again some fifty feet below.  There
+he regained his feet and stood waiting for us.  We re-entered the
+carriage and descended with the single horse until we came to him.
+There, with the help of some bits of string, our driver harnessed
+him again, and we continued on our way.  What impressed me was the
+evident accustomedness of both driver and horses to this method of
+working down a hill.
+
+Evidently to them it appeared a short and convenient cut.  I should
+not have been surprised had the man suggested our strapping
+ourselves in, and then rolling over and over, carriage and all, to
+the bottom.
+
+Another peculiarity of the German coachman is that he never
+attempts to pull in or to pull up.  He regulates his rate of speed,
+not by the pace of the horse, but by manipulation of the brake.
+For eight miles an hour he puts it on slightly, so that it only
+scrapes the wheel, producing a continuous sound as of the
+sharpening of a saw; for four miles an hour he screws it down
+harder, and you travel to an accompaniment of groans and shrieks,
+suggestive of a symphony of dying pigs.  When he desires to come to
+a full stop, he puts it on to its full.  If his brake be a good
+one, he calculates he can stop his carriage, unless the horse be an
+extra powerful animal, in less than twice its own length.  Neither
+the German driver nor the German horse knows, apparently, that you
+can stop a carriage by any other method.  The German horse
+continues to pull with his full strength until he finds it
+impossible to move the vehicle another inch; then he rests.  Horses
+of other countries are quite willing to stop when the idea is
+suggested to them.  I have known horses content to go even quite
+slowly.  But your German horse, seemingly, is built for one
+particular speed, and is unable to depart from it.  I am stating
+nothing but the literal, unadorned truth, when I say I have seen a
+German coachman, with the reins lying loose over the splash-board,
+working his brake with both hands, in terror lest he would not be
+in time to avoid a collision.
+
+At Waldshut, one of those little sixteenth-century towns through
+which the Rhine flows during its earlier course, we came across
+that exceedingly common object of the Continent:  the travelling
+Briton grieved and surprised at the unacquaintance of the foreigner
+with the subtleties of the English language.  When we entered the
+station he was, in very fair English, though with a slight
+Somersetshire accent, explaining to a porter for the tenth time, as
+he informed us, the simple fact that though he himself had a ticket
+for Donaueschingen, and wanted to go to Donaueschingen, to see the
+source of the Danube, which is not there, though they tell you it
+is, he wished his bicycle to be sent on to Engen and his bag to
+Constance, there to await his arrival.  He was hot and angry with
+the effort of the thing.  The porter was a young man in years, but
+at the moment looked old and miserable.  I offered my services.  I
+wish now I had not--though not so fervently, I expect, as he, the
+speechless one, came subsequently to wish this.  All three routes,
+so the porter explained to us, were complicated, necessitating
+changing and re-changing.  There was not much time for calm
+elucidation, as our own train was starting in a few minutes.  The
+man himself was voluble--always a mistake when anything entangled
+has to be made clear; while the porter was only too eager to get
+the job done with and so breathe again.  It dawned upon me ten
+minutes later, when thinking the matter over in the train, that
+though I had agreed with the porter that it would be best for the
+bicycle to go by way of Immendingen, and had agreed to his booking
+it to Immendingen, I had neglected to give instructions for its
+departure from Immendingen.  Were I of a despondent temperament I
+should be worrying myself at the present moment with the reflection
+that in all probability that bicycle is still at Immendingen to
+this day.  But I regard it as good philosophy to endeavour always
+to see the brighter side of things.  Possibly the porter corrected
+my omission on his own account, or some simple miracle may have
+happened to restore that bicycle to its owner some time before the
+end of his tour.  The bag we sent to Radolfzell:  but here I
+console myself with the recollection that it was labelled
+Constance; and no doubt after a while the railway authorities,
+finding it unclaimed at Radolfzell, forwarded it on to Constance.
+
+But all this is apart from the moral I wished to draw from the
+incident.  The true inwardness of the situation lay in the
+indignation of this Britisher at finding a German railway porter
+unable to comprehend English.  The moment we spoke to him he
+expressed this indignation in no measured terms.
+
+"Thank you very much indeed," he said; "it's simple enough.  I want
+to go to Donaueschingen myself by train; from Donaueschingen I am
+going to walk to Geisengen; from Geisengen I am going to take the
+train to Engen, and from Engen I am going to bicycle to Constance.
+But I don't want to take my bag with me; I want to find it at
+Constance when I get there.  I have been trying to explain the
+thing to this fool for the last ten minutes; but I can't get it
+into him."
+
+"It is very disgraceful," I agreed.  "Some of these German workmen
+know hardly any other language than their own."
+
+"I have gone over it with him," continued the man, "on the time
+table, and explained it by pantomime.  Even then I could not knock
+it into him."
+
+"I can hardly believe you," I again remarked; "you would think the
+thing explained itself."
+
+Harris was angry with the man; he wished to reprove him for his
+folly in journeying through the outlying portions of a foreign
+clime, and seeking in such to accomplish complicated railway tricks
+without knowing a word of the language of the country.  But I
+checked the impulsiveness of Harris, and pointed out to him the
+great and good work at which the man was unconsciously assisting.
+
+Shakespeare and Milton may have done their little best to spread
+acquaintance with the English tongue among the less favoured
+inhabitants of Europe.  Newton and Darwin may have rendered their
+language a necessity among educated and thoughtful foreigners.
+Dickens and Ouida (for your folk who imagine that the literary
+world is bounded by the prejudices of New Grub Street, would be
+surprised and grieved at the position occupied abroad by this at-
+home-sneered-at lady) may have helped still further to popularise
+it.  But the man who has spread the knowledge of English from Cape
+St. Vincent to the Ural Mountains is the Englishman who, unable or
+unwilling to learn a single word of any language but his own,
+travels purse in hand into every corner of the Continent.  One may
+be shocked at his ignorance, annoyed at his stupidity, angry at his
+presumption.  But the practical fact remains; he it is that is
+anglicising Europe.  For him the Swiss peasant tramps through the
+snow on winter evenings to attend the English class open in every
+village.  For him the coachman and the guard, the chambermaid and
+the laundress, pore over their English grammars and colloquial
+phrase books.  For him the foreign shopkeeper and merchant send
+their sons and daughters in their thousands to study in every
+English town.  For him it is that every foreign hotel- and
+restaurant-keeper adds to his advertisement:  "Only those with fair
+knowledge of English need apply."
+
+Did the English-speaking races make it their rule to speak anything
+else than English, the marvellous progress of the English tongue
+throughout the world would stop.  The English-speaking man stands
+amid the strangers and jingles his gold.
+
+"Here," cries, "is payment for all such as can speak English."
+
+He it is who is the great educator.  Theoretically we may scold
+him; practically we should take our hats off to him.  He is the
+missionary of the English tongue.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+
+
+We are grieved at the earthly instincts of the German--A superb
+view, but no restaurant--Continental opinion of the Englishman--
+That he does not know enough to come in out of the rain--There
+comes a weary traveller with a brick--The hurting of the dog--An
+undesirable family residence--A fruitful region--A merry old soul
+comes up the hill--George, alarmed at the lateness of the hour,
+hastens down the other side--Harris follows him, to show him the
+way--I hate being alone, and follow Harris--Pronunciation specially
+designed for use of foreigners.
+
+A thing that vexes much the high-class Anglo-Saxon soul is the
+earthly instinct prompting the German to fix a restaurant at the
+goal of every excursion.  On mountain summit, in fairy glen, on
+lonely pass, by waterfall or winding stream, stands ever the busy
+Wirtschaft.  How can one rhapsodise over a view when surrounded by
+beer-stained tables?  How lose one's self in historical reverie
+amid the odour of roast veal and spinach?
+
+One day, on elevating thoughts intent, we climbed through tangled
+woods.
+
+"And at the top," said Harris, bitterly, as we paused to breathe a
+space and pull our belts a hole tighter, "there will be a gaudy
+restaurant, where people will be guzzling beefsteaks and plum tarts
+and drinking white wine."
+
+"Do you think so?" said George.
+
+"Sure to be," answered Harris; "you know their way.  Not one grove
+will they consent to dedicate to solitude and contemplation; not
+one height will they leave to the lover of nature unpolluted by the
+gross and the material."
+
+"I calculate," I remarked, "that we shall be there a little before
+one o'clock, provided we don't dawdle."
+
+"The 'mittagstisch' will be just ready," groaned Harris, "with
+possibly some of those little blue trout they catch about here.  In
+Germany one never seems able to get away from food and drink.  It
+is maddening!"
+
+We pushed on, and in the beauty of the walk forgot our indignation.
+My estimate proved to be correct.
+
+At a quarter to one, said Harris, who was leading:
+
+"Here we are; I can see the summit."
+
+"Any sign of that restaurant?" said George.
+
+"I don't notice it," replied Harris; "but it's there, you may be
+sure; confound it!"
+
+Five minutes later we stood upon the top.  We looked north, south,
+east and west; then we looked at one another.
+
+"Grand view, isn't it?" said Harris.
+
+"Magnificent," I agreed.
+
+"Superb," remarked George.
+
+"They have had the good sense for once," said Harris, "to put that
+restaurant out of sight."
+
+"They do seem to have hidden it," said George.  "One doesn't mind
+the thing so much when it is not forced under one's nose," said
+Harris.
+
+"Of course, in its place," I observed, "a restaurant is right
+enough."
+
+"I should like to know where they have put it," said George.
+
+"Suppose we look for it?" said Harris, with inspiration.
+
+It seemed a good idea.  I felt curious myself.  We agreed to
+explore in different directions, returning to the summit to report
+progress.  In half an hour we stood together once again.  There was
+no need for words.  The face of one and all of us announced plainly
+that at last we had discovered a recess of German nature
+untarnished by the sordid suggestion of food or drink.
+
+"I should never have believed it possible," said Harris:  "would
+you?"
+
+"I should say," I replied, "that this is the only square quarter of
+a mile in the entire Fatherland unprovided with one."
+
+"And we three strangers have struck it," said George, "without an
+effort."
+
+"True," I observed.  "By pure good fortune we are now enabled to
+feast our finer senses undisturbed by appeal to our lower nature.
+Observe the light upon those distant peaks; is it not ravishing?"
+
+"Talking of nature," said George, "which should you say was the
+nearest way down?"
+
+"The road to the left," I replied, after consulting the guide book,
+"takes us to Sonnensteig--where, by-the-by, I observe the 'Goldener
+Adler' is well spoken of--in about two hours.  The road to the
+right, though somewhat longer, commands more extensive prospects."
+
+"One prospect," said Harris, "is very much like another prospect;
+don't you think so?"
+
+"Personally," said George, "I am going by the left-hand road."  And
+Harris and I went after him.
+
+But we were not to get down so soon as we had anticipated.  Storms
+come quickly in these regions, and before we had walked for quarter
+of an hour it became a question of seeking shelter or living for
+the rest of the day in soaked clothes.  We decided on the former
+alternative, and selected a tree that, under ordinary
+circumstances, should have been ample protection.  But a Black
+Forest thunderstorm is not an ordinary circumstance.  We consoled
+ourselves at first by telling each other that at such a rate it
+could not last long.  Next, we endeavoured to comfort ourselves
+with the reflection that if it did we should soon be too wet to
+fear getting wetter.
+
+"As it turned out," said Harris, "I should have been almost glad if
+there had been a restaurant up here."
+
+"I see no advantage in being both wet AND hungry," said George.  "I
+shall give it another five minutes, then I am going on."
+
+"These mountain solitudes," I remarked, "are very attractive in
+fine weather.  On a rainy day, especially if you happen to be past
+the age when--"
+
+At this point there hailed us a voice, proceeding from a stout
+gentleman, who stood some fifty feet away from us under a big
+umbrella.
+
+"Won't you come inside?" asked the stout gentleman.
+
+"Inside where?" I called back.  I thought at first he was one of
+those fools that will try to be funny when there is nothing to be
+funny about.
+
+"Inside the restaurant," he answered.
+
+We left our shelter and made for him.  We wished for further
+information about this thing.
+
+"I did call to you from the window," said the stout gentleman, as
+we drew near to him, "but I suppose you did not hear me.  This
+storm may last for another hour; you will get SO wet."
+
+He was a kindly old gentleman; he seemed quite anxious about us.
+
+I said:  "It is very kind of you to have come out.  We are not
+lunatics.  We have not been standing under that tree for the last
+half-hour knowing all the time there was a restaurant, hidden by
+the trees, within twenty yards of us.  We had no idea we were
+anywhere near a restaurant."
+
+"I thought maybe you hadn't," said the old gentleman; "that is why
+I came."
+
+It appeared that all the people in the inn had been watching us
+from the windows also, wondering why we stood there looking
+miserable.  If it had not been for this nice old gentleman the
+fools would have remained watching us, I suppose, for the rest of
+the afternoon.  The landlord excused himself by saying he thought
+we looked like English.  It is no figure of speech.  On the
+Continent they do sincerely believe that every Englishman is mad.
+They are as convinced of it as is every English peasant that
+Frenchmen live on frogs.  Even when one makes a direct personal
+effort to disabuse them of the impression one is not always
+successful.
+
+It was a comfortable little restaurant, where they cooked well,
+while the Tischwein was really most passable.  We stopped there for
+a couple of hours, and dried ourselves and fed ourselves, and
+talked about the view; and just before we left an incident occurred
+that shows how much more stirring in this world are the influences
+of evil compared with those of good.
+
+A traveller entered.  He seemed a careworn man.  He carried a brick
+in his hand, tied to a piece of rope.  He entered nervously and
+hurriedly, closed the door carefully behind him, saw to it that it
+was fastened, peered out of the window long and earnestly, and
+then, with a sigh of relief, laid his brick upon the bench beside
+him and called for food and drink.
+
+There was something mysterious about the whole affair.  One
+wondered what he was going to do with the brick, why he had closed
+the door so carefully, why he had looked so anxiously from the
+window; but his aspect was too wretched to invite conversation, and
+we forbore, therefore, to ask him questions.  As he ate and drank
+he grew more cheerful, sighed less often.  Later he stretched his
+legs, lit an evil-smelling cigar, and puffed in calm contentment.
+
+Then it happened.  It happened too suddenly for any detailed
+explanation of the thing to be possible.  I recollect a Fraulein
+entering the room from the kitchen with a pan in her hand.  I saw
+her cross to the outer door.  The next moment the whole room was in
+an uproar.  One was reminded of those pantomime transformation
+scenes where, from among floating clouds, slow music, waving
+flowers, and reclining fairies, one is suddenly transported into
+the midst of shouting policemen tumbling yelling babies, swells
+fighting pantaloons, sausages and harlequins, buttered slides and
+clowns.  As the Fraulein of the pan touched the door it flew open,
+as though all the spirits of sin had been pressed against it,
+waiting.  Two pigs and a chicken rushed into the room; a cat that
+had been sleeping on a beer-barrel spluttered into fiery life.  The
+Fraulein threw her pan into the air and lay down on the floor.  The
+gentleman with the brick sprang to his feet, upsetting the table
+before him with everything upon it.
+
+One looked to see the cause of this disaster:  one discovered it at
+once in the person of a mongrel terrier with pointed ears and a
+squirrel's tail.  The landlord rushed out from another door, and
+attempted to kick him out of the room.  Instead, he kicked one of
+the pigs, the fatter of the two.  It was a vigorous, well-planted
+kick, and the pig got the whole of it; none of it was wasted.  One
+felt sorry for the poor animal; but no amount of sorrow anyone else
+might feel for him could compare with the sorrow he felt for
+himself.  He stopped running about; he sat down in the middle of
+the room, and appealed to the solar system generally to observe
+this unjust thing that had come upon him.  They must have heard his
+complaint in the valleys round about, and have wondered what
+upheaval of nature was taking place among the hills.
+
+As for the hen it scuttled, screaming, every way at once.  It was a
+marvellous bird:  it seemed to be able to run up a straight wall
+quite easily; and it and the cat between them fetched down mostly
+everything that was not already on the floor.  In less than forty
+seconds there were nine people in that room, all trying to kick one
+dog.  Possibly, now and again, one or another may have succeeded,
+for occasionally the dog would stop barking in order to howl.  But
+it did not discourage him.  Everything has to be paid for, he
+evidently argued, even a pig and chicken hunt; and, on the whole,
+the game was worth it.
+
+Besides, he had the satisfaction of observing that, for every kick
+he received, most other living things in the room got two.  As for
+the unfortunate pig--the stationary one, the one that still sat
+lamenting in the centre of the room--he must have averaged a steady
+four.  Trying to kick this dog was like playing football with a
+ball that was never there--not when you went to kick it, but after
+you had started to kick it, and had gone too far to stop yourself,
+so that the kick had to go on in any case, your only hope being
+that your foot would find something or another solid to stop it,
+and so save you from sitting down on the floor noisily and
+completely.  When anybody did kick the dog it was by pure accident,
+when they were not expecting to kick him; and, generally speaking,
+this took them so unawares that, after kicking him, they fell over
+him.  And everybody, every half-minute, would be certain to fall
+over the pig the sitting pig, the one incapable of getting out of
+anybody's way.
+
+How long the scrimmage might have lasted it is impossible to say.
+It was ended by the judgment of George.  For a while he had been
+seeking to catch, not the dog but the remaining pig, the one still
+capable of activity.  Cornering it at last, he persuaded it to
+cease running round and round the room, and instead to take a spin
+outside.  It shot through the door with one long wail.
+
+We always desire the thing we have not.  One pig, a chicken, nine
+people, and a cat, were as nothing in that dog's opinion compared
+with the quarry that was disappearing.  Unwisely, he darted after
+it, and George closed the door upon him and shot the bolt.
+
+Then the landlord stood up, and surveyed all the things that were
+lying on the floor.
+
+"That's a playful dog of yours," said he to the man who had come in
+with the brick.
+
+"He is not my dog," replied the man sullenly.
+
+"Whose dog is it then?" said the landlord.
+
+"I don't know whose dog it is," answered the man.
+
+"That won't do for me, you know," said the landlord, picking up a
+picture of the German Emperor, and wiping beer from it with his
+sleeve.
+
+"I know it won't," replied the man; "I never expected it would.
+I'm tired of telling people it isn't my dog.  They none of them
+believe me."
+
+"What do you want to go about with him for, if he's not your dog?"
+said the landlord.  "What's the attraction about him?"
+
+"I don't go about with him," replied the man; "he goes about with
+me.  He picked me up this morning at ten o'clock, and he won't
+leave me.  I thought I had got rid of him when I came in here.  I
+left him busy killing a duck more than a quarter of an hour away.
+I'll have to pay for that, I expect, on my way back."
+
+"Have you tried throwing stones at him?" asked Harris.
+
+"Have I tried throwing stones at him!" replied the man,
+contemptuously.  "I've been throwing stones at him till my arm
+aches with throwing stones; and he thinks it's a game, and brings
+them back to me.  I've been carrying this beastly brick about with
+me for over an hour, in the hope of being able to drown him, but he
+never comes near enough for me to get hold of him.  He just sits
+six inches out of reach with his mouth open, and looks at me."
+
+"It's the funniest story I've heard for a long while," said the
+landlord.
+
+"Glad it amuses somebody," said the man.
+
+We left him helping the landlord to pick up the broken things, and
+went our way.  A dozen yards outside the door the faithful animal
+was waiting for his friend.  He looked tired, but contented.  He
+was evidently a dog of strange and sudden fancies, and we feared
+for the moment lest he might take a liking to us.  But he let us
+pass with indifference.  His loyalty to this unresponsive man was
+touching; and we made no attempt to undermine it.
+
+Having completed to our satisfaction the Black Forest, we journeyed
+on our wheels through Alt Breisach and Colmar to Munster; whence we
+started a short exploration of the Vosges range, where, according
+to the present German Emperor, humanity stops.  Of old, Alt
+Breisach, a rocky fortress with the river now on one side of it and
+now on the other--for in its inexperienced youth the Rhine never
+seems to have been quite sure of its way,--must, as a place of
+residence, have appealed exclusively to the lover of change and
+excitement.  Whoever the war was between, and whatever it was
+about, Alt Breisach was bound to be in it.  Everybody besieged it,
+most people captured it; the majority of them lost it again; nobody
+seemed able to keep it.  Whom he belonged to, and what he was, the
+dweller in Alt Breisach could never have been quite sure.  One day
+he would be a Frenchman, and then before he could learn enough
+French to pay his taxes he would be an Austrian.  While trying to
+discover what you did in order to be a good Austrian, he would find
+he was no longer an Austrian, but a German, though what particular
+German out of the dozen must always have been doubtful to him.  One
+day he would discover that he was a Catholic, the next an ardent
+Protestant.  The only thing that could have given any stability to
+his existence must have been the monotonous necessity of paying
+heavily for the privilege of being whatever for the moment he was.
+But when one begins to think of these things one finds oneself
+wondering why anybody in the Middle Ages, except kings and tax
+collectors, ever took the trouble to live at all.
+
+For variety and beauty, the Vosges will not compare with the hills
+of the Schwarzwald.  The advantage about them from the tourist's
+point of view is their superior poverty.  The Vosges peasant has
+not the unromantic air of contented prosperity that spoils his vis-
+a-vis across the Rhine.  The villages and farms possess more the
+charm of decay.  Another point wherein the Vosges district excels
+is its ruins.  Many of its numerous castles are perched where you
+might think only eagles would care to build.  In others, commenced
+by the Romans and finished by the Troubadours, covering acres with
+the maze of their still standing walls, one may wander for hours.
+
+The fruiterer and greengrocer is a person unknown in the Vosges.
+Most things of that kind grow wild, and are to be had for the
+picking.  It is difficult to keep to any programme when walking
+through the Vosges, the temptation on a hot day to stop and eat
+fruit generally being too strong for resistance.  Raspberries, the
+most delicious I have ever tasted, wild strawberries, currants, and
+gooseberries, grow upon the hill-sides as black-berries by English
+lanes.  The Vosges small boy is not called upon to rob an orchard;
+he can make himself ill without sin.  Orchards exist in the Vosges
+mountains in plenty; but to trespass into one for the purpose of
+stealing fruit would be as foolish as for a fish to try and get
+into a swimming bath without paying.  Still, of course, mistakes do
+occur.
+
+One afternoon in the course of a climb we emerged upon a plateau,
+where we lingered perhaps too long, eating more fruit than may have
+been good for us; it was so plentiful around us, so varied.  We
+commenced with a few late strawberries, and from those we passed to
+raspberries.  Then Harris found a greengage-tree with some early
+fruit upon it, just perfect.
+
+"This is about the best thing we have struck," said George; "we had
+better make the most of this."  Which was good advice, on the face
+of it.
+
+"It is a pity," said Harris, "that the pears are still so hard."
+
+He grieved about this for a while, but later on came across some
+remarkably fine yellow plums and these consoled him somewhat.
+
+"I suppose we are still a bit too far north for pineapples," said
+George.  "I feel I could just enjoy a fresh pineapple.  This
+commonplace fruit palls upon one after a while."
+
+"Too much bush fruit and not enough tree, is the fault I find,"
+said Harris.  "Myself, I should have liked a few more greengages."
+
+"Here is a man coming up the hill," I observed, "who looks like a
+native.  Maybe, he will know where we can find some more
+greengages."
+
+"He walks well for an old chap," remarked Harris.
+
+He certainly was climbing the hill at a remarkable pace.  Also, so
+far as we were able to judge at that distance, he appeared to be in
+a remarkably cheerful mood, singing and shouting at the top of his
+voice, gesticulating, and waving his arms.
+
+"What a merry old soul it is," said Harris; "it does one good to
+watch him.  But why does he carry his stick over his shoulder?  Why
+doesn't he use it to help him up the hill?"
+
+"Do you know, I don't think it is a stick," said George.
+
+"What can it be, then?" asked Harris.
+
+"Well, it looks to me," said George, "more like a gun."
+
+"You don't think we can have made a mistake?" suggested Harris.
+"You don't think this can be anything in the nature of a private
+orchard?"
+
+I said:  "Do you remember the sad thing that happened in the South
+of France some two years ago?  A soldier picked some cherries as he
+passed a house, and the French peasant to whom the cherries
+belonged came out, and without a word of warning shot him dead."
+
+"But surely you are not allowed to shoot a man dead for picking
+fruit, even in France?" said George.
+
+"Of course not," I answered.  "It was quite illegal.  The only
+excuse offered by his counsel was that he was of a highly excitable
+disposition, and especially keen about these particular cherries."
+
+"I recollect something about the case," said Harris, "now you
+mention it.  I believe the district in which it happened--the
+'Commune,' as I think it is called--had to pay heavy compensation
+to the relatives of the deceased soldier; which was only fair."
+
+George said:  "I am tired of this place.  Besides, it's getting
+late."
+
+Harris said:  "If he goes at that rate he will fall and hurt
+himself.  Besides, I don't believe he knows the way."
+
+I felt lonesome up there all by myself, with nobody to speak to.
+Besides, not since I was a boy, I reflected, had I enjoyed a run
+down a really steep hill.  I thought I would see if I could revive
+the sensation.  It is a jerky exercise, but good, I should say, for
+the liver.
+
+We slept that night at Barr, a pleasant little town on the way to
+St. Ottilienberg, an interesting old convent among the mountains,
+where you are waited upon by real nuns, and your bill made out by a
+priest.  At Barr, just before supper a tourist entered.  He looked
+English, but spoke a language the like of which I have never heard
+before.  Yet it was an elegant and fine-sounding language.  The
+landlord stared at him blankly; the landlady shook her head.  He
+sighed, and tried another, which somehow recalled to me forgotten
+memories, though, at the time, I could not fix it.  But again
+nobody understood him.
+
+"This is damnable," he said aloud to himself.
+
+"Ah, you are English!" exclaimed the landlord, brightening up.
+
+"And Monsieur looks tired," added the bright little landlady.
+"Monsieur will have supper."
+
+They both spoke English excellently, nearly as well as they spoke
+French and German; and they bustled about and made him comfortable.
+At supper he sat next to me, and I talked to him.
+
+"Tell me," I said--I was curious on the subject--"what language was
+it you spoke when you first came in?"
+
+"German," he explained.
+
+"Oh," I replied, "I beg your pardon."
+
+"You did not understand it?" he continued.
+
+"It must have been my fault," I answered; "my knowledge is
+extremely limited.  One picks up a little here and there as one
+goes about, but of course that is a different thing."
+
+"But THEY did not understand it," he replied, "the landlord and his
+wife; and it is their own language."
+
+"I do not think so," I said.  "The children hereabout speak German,
+it is true, and our landlord and landlady know German to a certain
+point.  But throughout Alsace and Lorraine the old people still
+talk French."
+
+"And I spoke to them in French also," he added, "and they
+understood that no better."
+
+"It is certainly very curious," I agreed.
+
+"It is more than curious," he replied; "in my case it is
+incomprehensible.  I possess a diploma for modern languages.  I won
+my scholarship purely on the strength of my French and German.  The
+correctness of my construction, the purity of my pronunciation, was
+considered at my college to be quite remarkable.  Yet, when I come
+abroad hardly anybody understands a word I say.  Can you explain
+it?"
+
+"I think I can," I replied.  "Your pronunciation is too faultless.
+You remember what the Scotsman said when for the first time in his
+life he tasted real whisky:  'It may be puir, but I canna drink
+it'; so it is with your German.  It strikes one less as a language
+than as an exhibition.  If I might offer advice, I should say:
+Mispronounce as much as possible, and throw in as many mistakes as
+you can think of."
+
+It is the same everywhere.  Each country keeps a special
+pronunciation exclusively for the use of foreigners--a
+pronunciation they never dream of using themselves, that they
+cannot understand when it is used.  I once heard an English lady
+explaining to a Frenchman how to pronounce the word Have.
+
+"You will pronounce it," said the lady reproachfully, "as if it
+were spelt H-a-v.  It isn't.  There is an 'e' at the end."
+
+"But I thought," said the pupil, "that you did not sound the 'e' at
+the end of h-a-v-e."
+
+"No more you do," explained his teacher.  "It is what we call a
+mute 'e'; but it exercises a modifying influence on the preceding
+vowel."
+
+Before that, he used to say "have" quite intelligently.
+Afterwards, when he came to the word he would stop dead, collect
+his thoughts, and give expression to a sound that only the context
+could explain.
+
+Putting aside the sufferings of the early martyrs, few men, I
+suppose, have gone through more than I myself went through in
+trying to I attain the correct pronunciation of the German word for
+church--"Kirche."  Long before I had done with it I had determined
+never to go to church in Germany, rather than be bothered with it.
+
+"No, no," my teacher would explain--he was a painstaking gentleman;
+"you say it as if it were spelt K-i-r-c-h-k-e.  There is no k.  It
+is--."  And he would illustrate to me again, for the twentieth time
+that morning, how it should be pronounced; the sad thing being that
+I could never for the life of me detect any difference between the
+way he said it and the way I said it.  So he would try a new
+method.
+
+"You say it from your throat," he would explain.  He was quite
+right; I did.  "I want you to say it from down here," and with a
+fat forefinger he would indicate the region from where I was to
+start.  After painful efforts, resulting in sounds suggestive of
+anything rather than a place of worship, I would excuse myself.
+
+"I really fear it is impossible," I would say.  "You see, for years
+I have always talked with my mouth, as it were; I never knew a man
+could talk with his stomach.  I doubt if it is not too late now for
+me to learn."
+
+By spending hours in dark corners, and practising in silent
+streets, to the terror of chance passers-by, I came at last to
+pronounce this word correctly.  My teacher was delighted with me,
+and until I came to Germany I was pleased with myself.  In Germany
+I found that nobody understood what I meant by it.  I never got
+near a church with it.  I had to drop the correct pronunciation,
+and painstakingly go back to my first wrong pronunciation.  Then
+they would brighten up, and tell me it was round the corner, or
+down the next street, as the case might be.
+
+I also think pronunciation of a foreign tongue could be better
+taught than by demanding from the pupil those internal acrobatic
+feats that are generally impossible and always useless.  This is
+the sort of instruction one receives:
+
+"Press your tonsils against the underside of your larynx.  Then
+with the convex part of the septum curved upwards so as almost--but
+not quite--to touch the uvula, try with the tip of your tongue to
+reach your thyroid.  Take a deep breath, and compress your glottis.
+Now, without opening your lips, say 'Garoo.'"
+
+And when you have done it they are not satisfied.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+
+
+An examination into the character and behaviour of the German
+student--The German Mensur--Uses and abuses of use--Views of an
+impressionist--The humour of the thing--Recipe for making savages--
+The Jungfrau:  her peculiar taste in laces--The Kneipe--How to rub
+a Salamander--Advice to the stranger--A story that might have ended
+sadly--Of two men and two wives--Together with a bachelor.
+
+On our way home we included a German University town, being wishful
+to obtain an insight into the ways of student life, a curiosity
+that the courtesy of German friends enabled us to gratify.
+
+The English boy plays till he is fifteen, and works thence till
+twenty.  In Germany it is the child that works; the young man that
+plays.  The German boy goes to school at seven o'clock in the
+summer, at eight in the winter, and at school he studies.  The
+result is that at sixteen he has a thorough knowledge of the
+classics and mathematics, knows as much history as any man
+compelled to belong to a political party is wise in knowing,
+together with a thorough grounding in modern languages.  Therefore
+his eight College Semesters, extending over four years, are, except
+for the young man aiming at a professorship, unnecessarily ample.
+He is not a sportsman, which is a pity, for he should make good
+one.  He plays football a little, bicycles still less; plays French
+billiards in stuffy cafes more.  But generally speaking he, or the
+majority of him, lays out his time bummeling, beer drinking, and
+fighting.  If he be the son of a wealthy father he joins a Korps--
+to belong to a crack Korps costs about four hundred pounds a year.
+If he be a middle-class young man, he enrols himself in a
+Burschenschaft, or a Landsmannschaft, which is a little cheaper.
+These companies are again broken up into smaller circles, in which
+attempt is made to keep to nationality.  There are the Swabians,
+from Swabia; the Frankonians, descendants of the Franks; the
+Thuringians, and so forth.  In practice, of course, this results as
+all such attempts do result--I believe half our Gordon Highlanders
+are Cockneys--but the picturesque object is obtained of dividing
+each University into some dozen or so separate companies of
+students, each one with its distinctive cap and colours, and, quite
+as important, its own particular beer hall, into which no other
+student wearing his colours may come.
+
+The chief work of these student companies is to fight among
+themselves, or with some rival Korps or Schaft, the celebrated
+German Mensur.
+
+The Mensur has been described so often and so thoroughly that I do
+not intend to bore my readers with any detailed account of it.  I
+merely come forward as an impressionist, and I write purposely the
+impression of my first Mensur, because I believe that first
+impressions are more true and useful than opinions blunted by
+intercourse, or shaped by influence.
+
+A Frenchman or a Spaniard will seek to persuade you that the bull-
+ring is an institution got up chiefly for the benefit of the bull.
+The horse which you imagined to be screaming with pain was only
+laughing at the comical appearance presented by its own inside.
+Your French or Spanish friend contrasts its glorious and exciting
+death in the ring with the cold-blooded brutality of the knacker's
+yard.  If you do not keep a tight hold of your head, you come away
+with the desire to start an agitation for the inception of the
+bull-ring in England as an aid to chivalry.  No doubt Torquemada
+was convinced of the humanity of the Inquisition.  To a stout
+gentleman, suffering, perhaps, from cramp or rheumatism, an hour or
+so on the rack was really a physical benefit.  He would rise
+feeling more free in his joints--more elastic, as one might say,
+than he had felt for years.  English huntsmen regard the fox as an
+animal to be envied.  A day's excellent sport is provided for him
+free of charge, during which he is the centre of attraction.
+
+Use blinds one to everything one does not wish to see.  Every third
+German gentleman you meet in the street still bears, and will bear
+to his grave, marks of the twenty to a hundred duels he has fought
+in his student days.  The German children play at the Mensur in the
+nursery, rehearse it in the gymnasium.  The Germans have come to
+persuade themselves there is no brutality in it--nothing offensive,
+nothing degrading.  Their argument is that it schools the German
+youth to coolness and courage.  If this could be proved, the
+argument, particularly in a country where every man is a soldier,
+would be sufficiently one-sided.  But is the virtue of the prize-
+fighter the virtue of the soldier?  One doubts it.  Nerve and dash
+are surely of more service in the field than a temperament of
+unreasoning indifference as to what is happening to one.  As a
+matter of fact, the German student would have to be possessed of
+much more courage not to fight.  He fights not to please himself,
+but to satisfy a public opinion that is two hundred years behind
+the times.
+
+All the Mensur does is to brutalise him.  There may be skill
+displayed--I am told there is,--but it is not apparent.  The mere
+fighting is like nothing so much as a broadsword combat at a
+Richardson's show; the display as a whole a successful attempt to
+combine the ludicrous with the unpleasant.  In aristocratic Bonn,
+where style is considered, and in Heidelberg, where visitors from
+other nations are more common, the affair is perhaps more formal.
+I am told that there the contests take place in handsome rooms;
+that grey-haired doctors wait upon the wounded, and liveried
+servants upon the hungry, and that the affair is conducted
+throughout with a certain amount of picturesque ceremony.  In the
+more essentially German Universities, where strangers are rare and
+not much encouraged, the simple essentials are the only things kept
+in view, and these are not of an inviting nature.
+
+Indeed, so distinctly uninviting are they, that I strongly advise
+the sensitive reader to avoid even this description of them.  The
+subject cannot be made pretty, and I do not intend to try.
+
+The room is bare and sordid; its walls splashed with mixed stains
+of beer, blood, and candle-grease; its ceiling, smoky; its floor,
+sawdust covered.  A crowd of students, laughing, smoking, talking,
+some sitting on the floor, others perched upon chairs and benches
+form the framework.
+
+In the centre, facing one another, stand the combatants, resembling
+Japanese warriors, as made familiar to us by the Japanese tea-tray.
+Quaint and rigid, with their goggle-covered eyes, their necks tied
+up in comforters, their bodies smothered in what looks like dirty
+bed quilts, their padded arms stretched straight above their heads,
+they might be a pair of ungainly clockwork figures.  The seconds,
+also more or less padded--their heads and faces protected by huge
+leather-peaked caps,--drag them out into their proper position.
+One almost listens to hear the sound of the castors.  The umpire
+takes his place, the word is given, and immediately there follow
+five rapid clashes of the long straight swords.  There is no
+interest in watching the fight:  there is no movement, no skill, no
+grace (I am speaking of my own impressions.)  The strongest man
+wins; the man who, with his heavily-padded arm, always in an
+unnatural position, can hold his huge clumsy sword longest without
+growing too weak to be able either to guard or to strike.
+
+The whole interest is centred in watching the wounds.  They come
+always in one of two places--on the top of the head or the left
+side of the face.  Sometimes a portion of hairy scalp or section of
+cheek flies up into the air, to be carefully preserved in an
+envelope by its proud possessor, or, strictly speaking, its proud
+former possessor, and shown round on convivial evenings; and from
+every wound, of course, flows a plentiful stream of blood.  It
+splashes doctors, seconds, and spectators; it sprinkles ceiling and
+walls; it saturates the fighters, and makes pools for itself in the
+sawdust.  At the end of each round the doctors rush up, and with
+hands already dripping with blood press together the gaping wounds,
+dabbing them with little balls of wet cotton wool, which an
+attendant carries ready on a plate.  Naturally, the moment the men
+stand up again and commence work, the blood gushes out again, half
+blinding them, and rendering the ground beneath them slippery.  Now
+and then you see a man's teeth laid bare almost to the ear, so that
+for the rest of the duel he appears to be grinning at one half of
+the spectators, his other side, remaining serious; and sometimes a
+man's nose gets slit, which gives to him as he fights a singularly
+supercilious air.
+
+As the object of each student is to go away from the University
+bearing as many scars as possible, I doubt if any particular pains
+are taken to guard, even to the small extent such method of
+fighting can allow.  The real victor is he who comes out with the
+greatest number of wounds; he who then, stitched and patched almost
+to unrecognition as a human being, can promenade for the next
+month, the envy of the German youth, the admiration of the German
+maiden.  He who obtains only a few unimportant wounds retires sulky
+and disappointed.
+
+But the actual fighting is only the beginning of the fun.  The
+second act of the spectacle takes place in the dressing-room.  The
+doctors are generally mere medical students--young fellows who,
+having taken their degree, are anxious for practice.  Truth compels
+me to say that those with whom I came in contact were coarse-
+looking men who seemed rather to relish their work.  Perhaps they
+are not to be blamed for this.  It is part of the system that as
+much further punishment as possible must be inflicted by the
+doctor, and the ideal medical man might hardly care for such job.
+How the student bears the dressing of his wounds is as important as
+how he receives them.  Every operation has to be performed as
+brutally as may be, and his companions carefully watch him during
+the process to see that he goes through it with an appearance of
+peace and enjoyment.  A clean-cut wound that gapes wide is most
+desired by all parties.  On purpose it is sewn up clumsily, with
+the hope that by this means the scar will last a lifetime.  Such a
+wound, judiciously mauled and interfered with during the week
+afterwards, can generally be reckoned on to secure its fortunate
+possessor a wife with a dowry of five figures at the least.
+
+These are the general bi-weekly Mensurs, of which the average
+student fights some dozen a year.  There are others to which
+visitors are not admitted.  When a student is considered to have
+disgraced himself by some slight involuntary movement of the head
+or body while fighting, then he can only regain his position by
+standing up to the best swordsman in his Korps.  He demands and is
+accorded, not a contest, but a punishment.  His opponent then
+proceeds to inflict as many and as bloody wounds as can be taken.
+The object of the victim is to show his comrades that he can stand
+still while his head is half sliced from his skull.
+
+Whether anything can properly be said in favour of the German
+Mensur I am doubtful; but if so it concerns only the two
+combatants.  Upon the spectators it can and does, I am convinced,
+exercise nothing but evil.  I know myself sufficiently well to be
+sure I am not of an unusually bloodthirsty disposition.  The effect
+it had upon me can only be the usual effect.  At first, before the
+actual work commenced, my sensation was curiosity mingled with
+anxiety as to how the sight would trouble me, though some slight
+acquaintance with dissecting-rooms and operating tables left me
+less doubt on that point than I might otherwise have felt.  As the
+blood began to flow, and nerves and muscles to be laid bare, I
+experienced a mingling of disgust and pity.  But with the second
+duel, I must confess, my finer feelings began to disappear; and by
+the time the third was well upon its way, and the room heavy with
+the curious hot odour of blood, I began, as the American expression
+is, to see things red.
+
+I wanted more.  I looked from face to face surrounding me, and in
+most of them I found reflected undoubtedly my own sensations.  If
+it be a good thing to excite this blood thirst in the modern man,
+then the Mensur is a useful institution.  But is it a good thing?
+We prate about our civilisation and humanity, but those of us who
+do not carry hypocrisy to the length of self-deception know that
+underneath our starched shirts there lurks the savage, with all his
+savage instincts untouched.  Occasionally he may be wanted, but we
+never need fear his dying out.  On the other hand, it seems unwise
+to over-nourish him.
+
+In favour of the duel, seriously considered, there are many points
+to be urged.  But the Mensur serves no good purpose whatever.  It
+is childishness, and the fact of its being a cruel and brutal game
+makes it none the less childish.  Wounds have no intrinsic value of
+their own; it is the cause that dignifies them, not their size.
+William Tell is rightly one of the heroes of the world; but what
+should we think of the members of a club of fathers, formed with
+the object of meeting twice a week to shoot apples from their sons'
+heads with cross-bows?  These young German gentlemen could obtain
+all the results of which they are so proud by teasing a wild cat!
+To join a society for the mere purpose of getting yourself hacked
+about reduces a man to the intellectual level of a dancing Dervish.
+Travellers tell us of savages in Central Africa who express their
+feelings on festive occasions by jumping about and slashing
+themselves.  But there is no need for Europe to imitate them.  The
+Mensur is, in fact, the reductio ad absurdum of the duel; and if
+the Germans themselves cannot see that it is funny, one can only
+regret their lack of humour.
+
+But though one may be unable to agree with the public opinion that
+supports and commands the Mensur, it at least is possible to
+understand.  The University code that, if it does not encourage it,
+at least condones drunkenness, is more difficult to treat
+argumentatively.  All German students do not get drunk; in fact,
+the majority are sober, if not industrious.  But the minority,
+whose claim to be representative is freely admitted, are only saved
+from perpetual inebriety by ability, acquired at some cost, to
+swill half the day and all the night, while retaining to some
+extent their five senses.  It does not affect all alike, but it is
+common in any University town to see a young man not yet twenty
+with the figure of a Falstaff and the complexion of a Rubens
+Bacchus.  That the German maiden can be fascinated with a face, cut
+and gashed till it suggests having been made out of odd materials
+that never could have fitted, is a proved fact.  But surely there
+can be no attraction about a blotched and bloated skin and a "bay
+window" thrown out to an extent threatening to overbalance the
+whole structure.  Yet what else can be expected, when the youngster
+starts his beer-drinking with a "Fruhschoppen" at 10 a.m., and
+closes it with a "Kneipe" at four in the morning?
+
+The Kneipe is what we should call a stag party, and can be very
+harmless or very rowdy, according to its composition.  One man
+invites his fellow-students, a dozen or a hundred, to a cafe, and
+provides them with as much beer and as many cheap cigars as their
+own sense of health and comfort may dictate, or the host may be the
+Korps itself.  Here, as everywhere, you observe the German sense of
+discipline and order.  As each new comer enters all those sitting
+round the table rise, and with heels close together salute.  When
+the table is complete, a chairman is chosen, whose duty it is to
+give out the number of the songs.  Printed books of these songs,
+one to each two men, lie round the table.  The chairman gives out
+number twenty-nine.  "First verse," he cries, and away all go, each
+two men holding a book between them exactly as two people might
+hold a hymn-book in church.  There is a pause at the end of each
+verse until the chairman starts the company on the next.  As every
+German is a trained singer, and as most of them have fair voices,
+the general effect is striking.
+
+Although the manner may be suggestive of the singing of hymns in
+church, the words of the songs are occasionally such as to correct
+this impression.  But whether it be a patriotic song, a sentimental
+ballad, or a ditty of a nature that would shock the average young
+Englishman, all are sung through with stern earnestness, without a
+laugh, without a false note.  At the end, the chairman calls
+"Prosit!"  Everyone answers "Prosit!" and the next moment every
+glass is empty.  The pianist rises and bows, and is bowed to in
+return; and then the Fraulein enters to refill the glasses.
+
+Between the songs, toasts are proposed and responded to; but there
+is little cheering, and less laughter.  Smiles and grave nods of
+approval are considered as more seeming among German students.
+
+A particular toast, called a Salamander, accorded to some guest as
+a special distinction, is drunk with exceptional solemnity.
+
+"We will now," says the chairman, "a Salamander rub"  ("Einen
+Salamander reiben").  We all rise, and stand like a regiment at
+attention.
+
+"Is the stuff prepared?"  ("Sind die stoffe parat?") demands the
+chairman.
+
+"Sunt," we answer, with one voice.
+
+"Ad exercitium Salamandri," says the chairman, and we are ready.
+
+"Eins!"  We rub our glasses with a circular motion on the table.
+
+"Zwei!"  Again the glasses growl; also at "Drei!"
+
+"Drink!"  ("Bibite!")
+
+And with mechanical unison every glass is emptied and held on high.
+
+"Eins!" says the chairman.  The foot of every empty glass twirls
+upon the table, producing a sound as of the dragging back of a
+stony beach by a receding wave.
+
+"Zwei!"  The roll swells and sinks again.
+
+"Drei!"  The glasses strike the table with a single crash, and we
+are in our seats again.
+
+The sport at the Kneipe is for two students to insult each other
+(in play, of course), and to then challenge each other to a
+drinking duel.  An umpire is appointed, two huge glasses are
+filled, and the men sit opposite each other with their hands upon
+the handles, all eyes fixed upon them.  The umpire gives the word
+to go, and in an instant the beer is gurgling down their throats.
+The man who bangs his perfectly finished glass upon the table first
+is victor.
+
+Strangers who are going through a Kneipe, and who wish to do the
+thing in German style, will do well, before commencing proceedings,
+to pin their name and address upon their coats.  The German student
+is courtesy itself, and whatever his own state may be, he will see
+to it that, by some means or another, his guest gets safely home
+before the morning.  But, of course, he cannot be expected to
+remember addresses.
+
+A story was told me of three guests to a Berlin Kneipe which might
+have had tragic results.  The strangers determined to do the thing
+thoroughly.  They explained their intention, and were applauded,
+and each proceeded to write his address upon his card, and pin it
+to the tablecloth in front of him.  That was the mistake they made.
+They should, as I have advised, have pinned it carefully to their
+coats.  A man may change his place at a table, quite unconsciously
+he may come out the other side of it; but wherever he goes he takes
+his coat with him.
+
+Some time in the small hours, the chairman suggested that to make
+things more comfortable for those still upright, all the gentlemen
+unable to keep their heads off the table should be sent home.
+Among those to whom the proceedings had become uninteresting were
+the three Englishmen.  It was decided to put them into a cab in
+charge of a comparatively speaking sober student, and return them.
+Had they retained their original seats throughout the evening all
+would have been well; but, unfortunately, they had gone walking
+about, and which gentleman belonged to which card nobody knew--
+least of all the guests themselves.  In the then state of general
+cheerfulness, this did not to anybody appear to much matter.  There
+were three gentlemen and three addresses.  I suppose the idea was
+that even if a mistake were made, the parties could be sorted out
+in the morning.  Anyhow, the three gentlemen were put into a cab,
+the comparatively speaking sober student took the three cards in
+his hand, and the party started amid the cheers and good wishes of
+the company.
+
+There is this advantage about German beer:  it does not make a man
+drunk as the word drunk is understood in England.  There is nothing
+objectionable about him; he is simply tired.  He does not want to
+talk; he wants to be let alone, to go to sleep; it does not matter
+where--anywhere.
+
+The conductor of the party stopped his cab at the nearest address.
+He took out his worst case; it was a natural instinct to get rid of
+that first.  He and the cabman carried it upstairs, and rang the
+bell of the Pension.  A sleepy porter answered it.  They carried
+their burden in, and looked for a place to drop it.  A bedroom door
+happened to be open; the room was empty; could anything be better?-
+-they took it in there.  They relieved it of such things as came
+off easily, and laid it in the bed.  This done, both men, pleased
+with themselves, returned to the cab.
+
+At the next address they stopped again.  This time, in answer to
+their summons, a lady appeared, dressed in a tea gown, with a book
+in her hand.  The German student looked at the top one of two cards
+remaining in his hand, and enquired if he had the pleasure of
+addressing Frau Y.  It happened that he had, though so far as any
+pleasure was concerned that appeared to be entirely on his side.
+He explained to Frau Y. that the gentleman at that moment asleep
+against the wall was her husband.  The reunion moved her to no
+enthusiasm; she simply opened the bedroom door, and then walked
+away.  The cabman and the student took him in, and laid him on the
+bed.  They did not trouble to undress him, they were feeling tired!
+They did not see the lady of the house again, and retired therefore
+without adieus.
+
+The last card was that of a bachelor stopping at an hotel.  They
+took their last man, therefore, to that hotel, passed him over to
+the night porter, and left him.
+
+To return to the address at which the first delivery was made, what
+had happened there was this.  Some eight hours previously had said
+Mr. X. to Mrs. X.:  "I think I told you, my dear, that I had an
+invitation for this evening to what, I believe, is called a
+Kneipe?"
+
+"You did mention something of the sort," replied Mrs. X.  "What is
+a Kneipe?"
+
+"Well, it's a sort of bachelor party, my dear, where the students
+meet to sing and talk and--and smoke, and all that sort of thing,
+you know."
+
+"Oh, well, I hope you will enjoy yourself!" said Mrs. X., who was a
+nice woman and sensible.
+
+"It will be interesting," observed Mr. X.  "I have often had a
+curiosity to see one.  I may," continued Mr. X.,--"I mean it is
+possible, that I may be home a little late."
+
+"What do you call late?" asked Mrs. X.
+
+"It is somewhat difficult to say," returned Mr. X.  "You see these
+students, they are a wild lot, and when they get together--And
+then, I believe, a good many toasts are drunk.  I don't know how it
+will affect me.  If I can see an opportunity I shall come away
+early, that is if I can do so without giving offence; but if not--"
+
+Said Mrs. X., who, as I remarked before, was a sensible woman:
+"You had better get the people here to lend you a latchkey.  I
+shall sleep with Dolly, and then you won't disturb me whatever time
+it may be."
+
+"I think that an excellent idea of yours," agreed Mr. X.  "I should
+hate disturbing you.  I shall just come in quietly, and slip into
+bed."
+
+Some time in the middle of the night, or maybe towards the early
+morning, Dolly, who was Mrs. X.'s sister, sat up in bed and
+listened.
+
+"Jenny," said Dolly, "are you awake?"
+
+"Yes, dear," answered Mrs. X.  "It's all right.  You go to sleep
+again."
+
+"But whatever is it?" asked Dolly.  "Do you think it's fire?"
+
+"I expect," replied Mrs. X., "that it's Percy.  Very possibly he
+has stumbled over something in the dark.  Don't you worry, dear;
+you go to sleep."
+
+But so soon as Dolly had dozed off again, Mrs. X., who was a good
+wife, thought she would steal off softly and see to it that Percy
+was all right.  So, putting on a dressing-gown and slippers, she
+crept along the passage and into her own room.  To awake the
+gentleman on the bed would have required an earthquake.  She lit a
+candle and stole over to the bedside.
+
+It was not Percy; it was not anyone like Percy.  She felt it was
+not the man that ever could have been her husband, under any
+circumstances.  In his present condition her sentiment towards him
+was that of positive dislike.  Her only desire was to get rid of
+him.
+
+But something there was about him which seemed familiar to her.
+She went nearer, and took a closer view.  Then she remembered.
+Surely it was Mr. Y., a gentleman at whose flat she and Percy had
+dined the day they first arrived in Berlin.
+
+But what was he doing here?  She put the candle on the table, and
+taking her head between her hands sat down to think.  The
+explanation of the thing came to her with a rush.  It was with this
+Mr. Y. that Percy had gone to the Kneipe.  A mistake had been made.
+Mr. Y. had been brought back to Percy's address.  Percy at this
+very moment -
+
+The terrible possibilities of the situation swam before her.
+Returning to Dolly's room, she dressed herself hastily, and
+silently crept downstairs.  Finding, fortunately, a passing night-
+cab, she drove to the address of Mrs. Y.  Telling the man to wait,
+she flew upstairs and rang persistently at the bell.  It was opened
+as before by Mrs. Y., still in her tea-gown, and with her book
+still in her hand.
+
+"Mrs. X.!" exclaimed Mrs. Y.  "Whatever brings you here?"
+
+"My husband!" was all poor Mrs. X. could think to say at the
+moment, "is he here?"
+
+"Mrs. X.," returned Mrs. Y., drawing herself up to her full height,
+"how dare you?"
+
+"Oh, please don't misunderstand me!" pleaded Mrs. X.  "It's all a
+terrible mistake.  They must have brought poor Percy here instead
+of to our place, I'm sure they must.  Do please look and see."
+
+"My dear," said Mrs. Y., who was a much older woman, and more
+motherly, "don't excite yourself.  They brought him here about half
+an hour ago, and, to tell you the truth, I never looked at him.  He
+is in here.  I don't think they troubled to take off even his
+boots.  If you keep cool, we will get him downstairs and home
+without a soul beyond ourselves being any the wiser.
+
+Indeed, Mrs. Y. seemed quite eager to help Mrs. X.
+
+She pushed open the door, and Mrs. X, went in.  The next moment she
+came out with a white, scared face.
+
+"It isn't Percy," she said.  "Whatever am I to do?"
+
+"I wish you wouldn't make these mistakes," said Mrs. Y., moving to
+enter the room herself.
+
+Mrs. X. stopped her.  "And it isn't your husband either."
+
+"Nonsense," said Mrs. Y.
+
+"It isn't really," persisted Mrs. X.  "I know, because I have just
+left him, asleep on Percy's bed."
+
+"What's he doing there?" thundered Mrs. Y.
+
+"They brought him there, and put him there," explained Mrs. X.,
+beginning to cry.  "That's what made me think Percy must be here."
+
+The two women stood and looked at one another; and there was
+silence for awhile, broken only by the snoring of the gentleman the
+other side of the half-open door.
+
+"Then who is that, in there?" demanded Mrs. Y., who was the first
+to recover herself.
+
+"I don't know," answered Mrs. X., "I have never seen him before.
+Do you think it is anybody you know?"
+
+But Mrs. Y. only banged to the door.
+
+"What are we to do?" said Mrs. X.
+
+"I know what _I_ am going to do," said Mrs. Y.  "I'm coming back
+with you to fetch my husband."
+
+"He's very sleepy," explained Mrs. X.
+
+"I've known him to be that before," replied Mrs. Y., as she
+fastened on her cloak.
+
+"But where's Percy?" sobbed poor little Mrs. X., as they descended
+the stairs together.
+
+"That my dear," said Mrs. Y., "will be a question for you to ask
+HIM."
+
+"If they go about making mistakes like this," said Mrs. X., "it is
+impossible to say what they may not have done with him."
+
+"We will make enquiries in the morning, my dear," said Mrs. Y.,
+consolingly.
+
+"I think these Kneipes are disgraceful affairs," said Mrs. X.  "I
+shall never let Percy go to another, never--so long as I live."
+
+"My dear," remarked Mrs. Y., "if you know your duty, he will never
+want to."  And rumour has it that he never did.
+
+But, as I have said, the mistake was in pinning the card to the
+tablecloth instead of to the coat.  And error in this world is
+always severely punished.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+
+
+Which is serious:  as becomes a parting chapter--The German from
+the Anglo-Saxon's point of view--Providence in buttons and a
+helmet--Paradise of the helpless idiot--German conscience:  its
+aggressiveness--How they hang in Germany, very possibly--What
+happens to good Germans when they die?--The military instinct:  is
+it all-sufficient?--The German as a shopkeeper--How he supports
+life--The New Woman, here as everywhere--What can be said against
+the Germans, as a people--The Bummel is over and done.
+
+"Anybody could rule this country," said George; "_I_ could rule
+it."
+
+We were seated in the garden of the Kaiser Hof at Bonn, looking
+down upon the Rhine.  It was the last evening of our Bummel; the
+early morning train would be the beginning of the end.
+
+"I should write down all I wanted the people to do on a piece of
+paper," continued George; "get a good firm to print off so many
+copies, have them posted about the towns and villages; and the
+thing would be done."
+
+In the placid, docile German of to-day, whose only ambition appears
+to be to pay his taxes, and do what he is told to do by those whom
+it has pleased Providence to place in authority over him, it is
+difficult, one must confess, to detect any trace of his wild
+ancestor, to whom individual liberty was as the breath of his
+nostrils; who appointed his magistrates to advise, but retained the
+right of execution for the tribe; who followed his chief, but would
+have scorned to obey him.  In Germany to-day one hears a good deal
+concerning Socialism, but it is a Socialism that would only be
+despotism under another name.  Individualism makes no appeal to the
+German voter.  He is willing, nay, anxious, to be controlled and
+regulated in all things.  He disputes, not government, but the form
+of it.  The policeman is to him a religion, and, one feels, will
+always remain so.  In England we regard our man in blue as a
+harmless necessity.  By the average citizen he is employed chiefly
+as a signpost, though in busy quarters of the town he is considered
+useful for taking old ladies across the road.  Beyond feeling
+thankful to him for these services, I doubt if we take much thought
+of him.  In Germany, on the other hand, he is worshipped as a
+little god and loved as a guardian angel.  To the German child he
+is a combination of Santa Clans and the Bogie Man.  All good things
+come from him:  Spielplatze to play in, furnished with swings and
+giant-strides, sand heaps to fight around, swimming baths, and
+fairs.  All misbehaviour is punished by him.  It is the hope of
+every well-meaning German boy and girl to please the police.  To be
+smiled at by a policeman makes it conceited.  A German child that
+has been patted on the head by a policeman is not fit to live with;
+its self-importance is unbearable.
+
+The German citizen is a soldier, and the policeman is his officer.
+The policeman directs him where in the street to walk, and how fast
+to walk.  At the end of each bridge stands a policeman to tell the
+German how to cross it.  Were there no policeman there, he would
+probably sit down and wait till the river had passed by.  At the
+railway station the policeman locks him up in the waiting-room,
+where he can do no harm to himself.  When the proper time arrives,
+he fetches him out and hands him over to the guard of the train,
+who is only a policeman in another uniform.  The guard tells him
+where to sit in the train, and when to get out, and sees that he
+does get out.  In Germany you take no responsibility upon yourself
+whatever.  Everything is done for you, and done well.  You are not
+supposed to look after yourself; you are not blamed for being
+incapable of looking after yourself; it is the duty of the German
+policeman to look after you.  That you may be a helpless idiot does
+not excuse him should anything happen to you.  Wherever you are and
+whatever you are doing you are in his charge, and he takes care of
+you--good care of you; there is no denying this.
+
+If you lose yourself, he finds you; and if you lose anything
+belonging to you, he recovers it for you.  If you don't know what
+you want, he tells you.  If you want anything that is good for you
+to have, he gets it for you.  Private lawyers are not needed in
+Germany.  If you want to buy or sell a house or field, the State
+makes out the conveyance.  If you have been swindled, the State
+takes up the case for you.  The State marries you, insures you,
+will even gamble with you for a trifle.
+
+"You get yourself born," says the German Government to the German
+citizen, "we do the rest.  Indoors and out of doors, in sickness
+and in health, in pleasure and in work, we will tell you what to
+do, and we will see to it that you do it.  Don't you worry yourself
+about anything."
+
+And the German doesn't.  Where there is no policeman to be found,
+he wanders about till he comes to a police notice posted on a wall.
+This he reads; then he goes and does what it says.
+
+I remember in one German town--I forget which; it is immaterial;
+the incident could have happened in any--noticing an open gate
+leading to a garden in which a concert was being given.  There was
+nothing to prevent anyone who chose from walking through that gate,
+and thus gaining admittance to the concert without paying.  In
+fact, of the two gates quarter of a mile apart it was the more
+convenient.  Yet of the crowds that passed, not one attempted to
+enter by that gate.  They plodded steadily on under a blazing sun
+to the other gate, at which a man stood to collect the entrance
+money.  I have seen German youngsters stand longingly by the margin
+of a lonely sheet of ice.  They could have skated on that ice for
+hours, and nobody have been the wiser.  The crowd and the police
+were at the other end, more than half a mile away, and round the
+corner.  Nothing stopped their going on but the knowledge that they
+ought not.  Things such as these make one pause to seriously wonder
+whether the Teuton be a member of the sinful human family or not.
+Is it not possible that these placid, gentle folk may in reality be
+angels, come down to earth for the sake of a glass of beer, which,
+as they must know, can only in Germany be obtained worth the
+drinking?
+
+In Germany the country roads are lined with fruit trees.  There is
+no voice to stay man or boy from picking and eating the fruit,
+except conscience.  In England such a state of things would cause
+public indignation.  Children would die of cholera by the hundred.
+The medical profession would be worked off its legs trying to cope
+with the natural results of over-indulgence in sour apples and
+unripe walnuts.  Public opinion would demand that these fruit trees
+should be fenced about, and thus rendered harmless.  Fruit growers,
+to save themselves the expense of walls and palings, would not be
+allowed in this manner to spread sickness and death throughout the
+community.
+
+But in Germany a boy will walk for miles down a lonely road, hedged
+with fruit trees, to buy a pennyworth of pears in the village at
+the other end.  To pass these unprotected fruit trees, drooping
+under their burden of ripe fruit, strikes the Anglo-Saxon mind as a
+wicked waste of opportunity, a flouting of the blessed gifts of
+Providence.
+
+I do not know if it be so, but from what I have observed of the
+German character I should not be surprised to hear that when a man
+in Germany is condemned to death he is given a piece of rope, and
+told to go and hang himself.  It would save the State much trouble
+and expense, and I can see that German criminal taking that piece
+of rope home with him, reading up carefully the police
+instructions, and proceeding to carry them out in his own back
+kitchen.
+
+The Germans are a good people.  On the whole, the best people
+perhaps in the world; an amiable, unselfish, kindly people.  I am
+positive that the vast majority of them go to Heaven.  Indeed,
+comparing them with the other Christian nations of the earth, one
+is forced to the conclusion that Heaven will be chiefly of German
+manufacture.  But I cannot understand how they get there.  That the
+soul of any single individual German has sufficient initiative to
+fly up by itself and knock at St. Peter's door, I cannot believe.
+My own opinion is that they are taken there in small companies, and
+passed in under the charge of a dead policeman.
+
+Carlyle said of the Prussians, and it is true of the whole German
+nation, that one of their chief virtues was their power of being
+drilled.  Of the Germans you might say they are a people who will
+go anywhere, and do anything, they are told.  Drill him for the
+work and send him out to Africa or Asia under charge of somebody in
+uniform, and he is bound to make an excellent colonist, facing
+difficulties as he would face the devil himself, if ordered.  But
+it is not easy to conceive of him as a pioneer.  Left to run
+himself, one feels he would soon fade away and die, not from any
+lack of intelligence, but from sheer want of presumption.
+
+The German has so long been the soldier of Europe, that the
+military instinct has entered into his blood.  The military virtues
+he possesses in abundance; but he also suffers from the drawbacks
+of the military training.  It was told me of a German servant,
+lately released from the barracks, that he was instructed by his
+master to deliver a letter to a certain house, and to wait there
+for the answer.  The hours passed by, and the man did not return.
+His master, anxious and surprised, followed.  He found the man
+where he had been sent, the answer in his hand.  He was waiting for
+further orders.  The story sounds exaggerated, but personally I can
+credit it.
+
+The curious thing is that the same man, who as an individual is as
+helpless as a child, becomes, the moment he puts on the uniform, an
+intelligent being, capable of responsibility and initiative.  The
+German can rule others, and be ruled by others, but he cannot rule
+himself.  The cure would appear to be to train every German for an
+officer, and then put him under himself.  It is certain he would
+order himself about with discretion and judgment, and see to it
+that he himself obeyed himself with smartness and precision.
+
+For the direction of German character into these channels, the
+schools, of course, are chiefly responsible.  Their everlasting
+teaching is duty.  It is a fine ideal for any people; but before
+buckling to it, one would wish to have a clear understanding as to
+what this "duty" is.  The German idea of it would appear to be:
+"blind obedience to everything in buttons."  It is the antithesis
+of the Anglo-Saxon scheme; but as both the Anglo-Saxon and the
+Teuton are prospering, there must be good in both methods.
+Hitherto, the German has had the blessed fortune to be
+exceptionally well governed; if this continue, it will go well with
+him.  When his troubles will begin will be when by any chance
+something goes wrong with the governing machine.  But maybe his
+method has the advantage of producing a continuous supply of good
+governors; it would certainly seem so.
+
+As a trader, I am inclined to think the German will, unless his
+temperament considerably change, remain always a long way behind
+his Anglo-Saxon competitor; and this by reason of his virtues.  To
+him life is something more important than a mere race for wealth.
+A country that closes its banks and post-offices for two hours in
+the middle of the day, while it goes home and enjoys a comfortable
+meal in the bosom of its family, with, perhaps, forty winks by way
+of dessert, cannot hope, and possibly has no wish, to compete with
+a people that takes its meals standing, and sleeps with a telephone
+over its bed.  In Germany there is not, at all events as yet,
+sufficient distinction between the classes to make the struggle for
+position the life and death affair it is in England.  Beyond the
+landed aristocracy, whose boundaries are impregnable, grade hardly
+counts.  Frau Professor and Frau Candlestickmaker meet at the
+Weekly Kaffee-Klatsch and exchange scandal on terms of mutual
+equality.  The livery-stable keeper and the doctor hobnob together
+at their favourite beer hall.  The wealthy master builder, when he
+prepares his roomy waggon for an excursion into the country,
+invites his foreman and his tailor to join him with their families.
+Each brings his share of drink and provisions, and returning home
+they sing in chorus the same songs.  So long as this state of
+things endures, a man is not induced to sacrifice the best years of
+his life to win a fortune for his dotage.  His tastes, and, more to
+the point still, his wife's, remain inexpensive.  He likes to see
+his flat or villa furnished with much red plush upholstery and a
+profusion of gilt and lacquer.  But that is his idea; and maybe it
+is in no worse taste than is a mixture of bastard Elizabethan with
+imitation Louis XV, the whole lit by electric light, and smothered
+with photographs.  Possibly, he will have his outer walls painted
+by the local artist:  a sanguinary battle, a good deal interfered
+with by the front door, taking place below, while Bismarck, as an
+angel, flutters vaguely about the bedroom windows.  But for his Old
+Masters he is quite content to go to the public galleries; and "the
+Celebrity at Home" not having as yet taken its place amongst the
+institutions of the Fatherland, he is not impelled to waste his,
+money turning his house into an old curiosity shop.
+
+The German is a gourmand.  There are still English farmers who,
+while telling you that farming spells starvation, enjoy their seven
+solid meals a day.  Once a year there comes a week's feast
+throughout Russia, during which many deaths occur from the over-
+eating of pancakes; but this is a religious festival, and an
+exception.  Taking him all round, the German as a trencherman
+stands pre-eminent among the nations of the earth.  He rises early,
+and while dressing tosses off a few cups of coffee, together with
+half a dozen hot buttered rolls.  But it is not until ten o'clock
+that he sits down to anything that can properly be called a meal.
+At one or half-past takes place his chief dinner.  Of this he makes
+a business, sitting at it for a couple of hours.  At four o'clock
+he goes to the cafe, and eats cakes and drinks chocolate.  The
+evening he devotes to eating generally--not a set meal, or rarely,
+but a series of snacks,--a bottle of beer and a Belegete-semmel or
+two at seven, say; another bottle of beer and an Aufschnitt at the
+theatre between the acts; a small bottle of white wine and a
+Spiegeleier before going home; then a piece of cheese or sausage,
+washed down by more beer, previous to turning in for the night.
+
+But he is no gourmet.  French cooks and French prices are not the
+rule at his restaurant.  His beer or his inexpensive native white
+wine he prefers to the most costly clarets or champagnes.  And,
+indeed, it is well for him he does; for one is inclined to think
+that every time a French grower sells a bottle of wine to a German
+hotel- or shop-keeper, Sedan is rankling in his mind.  It is a
+foolish revenge, seeing that it is not the German who as a rule
+drinks it; the punishment falls upon some innocent travelling
+Englishman.  Maybe, however, the French dealer remembers also
+Waterloo, and feels that in any event he scores.
+
+In Germany expensive entertainments are neither offered nor
+expected.  Everything throughout the Fatherland is homely and
+friendly.  The German has no costly sports to pay for, no showy
+establishment to maintain, no purse-proud circle to dress for.  His
+chief pleasure, a seat at the opera or concert, can be had for a
+few marks; and his wife and daughters walk there in home-made
+dresses, with shawls over their heads.  Indeed, throughout the
+country the absence of all ostentation is to English eyes quite
+refreshing.  Private carriages are few and far between, and even
+the droschke is made use of only when the quicker and cleaner
+electric car is not available.
+
+By such means the German retains his independence.  The shopkeeper
+in Germany does not fawn upon his customers.  I accompanied an
+English lady once on a shopping excursion in Munich.  She had been
+accustomed to shopping in London and New York, and she grumbled at
+everything the man showed her.  It was not that she was really
+dissatisfied; this was her method.  She explained that she could
+get most things cheaper and better elsewhere; not that she really
+thought she could, merely she held it good for the shopkeeper to
+say this.  She told him that his stock lacked taste--she did not
+mean to be offensive; as I have explained, it was her method;--that
+there was no variety about it; that it was not up to date; that it
+was commonplace; that it looked as if it would not wear.  He did
+not argue with her; he did not contradict her.  He put the things
+back into their respective boxes, replaced the boxes on their
+respective shelves, walked into the little parlour behind the shop,
+and closed the door.
+
+"Isn't he ever coming back?" asked the lady, after a couple of
+minutes had elapsed.
+
+Her tone did not imply a question, so much as an exclamation of
+mere impatience.
+
+"I doubt it," I replied.
+
+"Why not?" she asked, much astonished.
+
+"I expect," I answered, "you have bored him.  In all probability he
+is at this moment behind that door smoking a pipe and reading the
+paper."
+
+"What an extraordinary shopkeeper!" said my friend, as she gathered
+her parcels together and indignantly walked out.
+
+"It is their way," I explained.  "There are the goods; if you want
+them, you can have them.  If you do not want them, they would
+almost rather that you did not come and talk about them."
+
+On another occasion I listened in the smoke-room of a German hotel
+to a small Englishman telling a tale which, had I been in his
+place, I should have kept to myself.
+
+"It doesn't do," said the little Englishman, "to try and beat a
+German down.  They don't seem to understand it.  I saw a first
+edition of The Robbers in a shop in the Georg Platz.  I went in and
+asked the price.  It was a rum old chap behind the counter.  He
+said:  'Twenty-five marks,' and went on reading.  I told him I had
+seen a better copy only a few days before for twenty--one talks
+like that when one is bargaining; it is understood.  He asked me
+'Where?'  I told him in a shop at Leipsig.  He suggested my
+returning there and getting it; he did not seem to care whether I
+bought the book or whether I didn't.  I said:
+
+"'What's the least you will take for it?'
+
+"'I have told you once,' he answered; 'twenty-five marks.'  He was
+an irritable old chap.
+
+"I said:  'It's not worth it.'
+
+"'I never said it was, did I?' he snapped.
+
+"I said:  'I'll give you ten marks for it.'  I thought, maybe, he
+would end by taking twenty.
+
+"He rose.  I took it he was coming round the counter to get the
+book out.  Instead, he came straight up to me.  He was a biggish
+sort of man.  He took me by the two shoulders, walked me out into
+the street, and closed the door behind me with a bang.  I was never
+more surprised in all my life.
+
+"Maybe the book was worth twenty-five marks," I suggested.
+
+"Of course it was," he replied; "well worth it.  But what a notion
+of business!"
+
+If anything change the German character, it will be the German
+woman.  She herself is changing rapidly--advancing, as we call it.
+Ten years ago no German woman caring for her reputation, hoping for
+a husband, would have dared to ride a bicycle:  to-day they spin
+about the country in their thousands.  The old folks shake their
+heads at them; but the young men, I notice, overtake them and ride
+beside them.  Not long ago it was considered unwomanly in Germany
+for a lady to be able to do the outside edge.  Her proper skating
+attitude was thought to be that of clinging limpness to some male
+relative.  Now she practises eights in a corner by herself, until
+some young man comes along to help her.  She plays tennis, and,
+from a point of safety, I have even noticed her driving a dog-cart.
+
+Brilliantly educated she always has been.  At eighteen she speaks
+two or three languages, and has forgotten more than the average
+Englishwoman has ever read.  Hitherto, this education has been
+utterly useless to her.  On marriage she has retired into the
+kitchen, and made haste to clear her brain of everything else, in
+order to leave room for bad cooking.  But suppose it begins to dawn
+upon her that a woman need not sacrifice her whole existence to
+household drudgery any more than a man need make himself nothing
+else than a business machine.  Suppose she develop an ambition to
+take part in the social and national life.  Then the influence of
+such a partner, healthy in body and therefore vigorous in mind, is
+bound to be both lasting and far-reaching.
+
+For it must be borne in mind that the German man is exceptionally
+sentimental, and most easily influenced by his women folk.  It is
+said of him, he is the best of lovers, the worst of husbands.  This
+has been the woman's fault.  Once married, the German woman has
+done more than put romance behind her; she has taken a carpet-
+beater and driven it out of the house.  As a girl, she never
+understood dressing; as a wife, she takes off such clothes even as
+she had, and proceeds to wrap herself up in any odd articles she
+may happen to find about the house; at all events, this is the
+impression she produces.  The figure that might often be that of a
+Juno, the complexion that would sometimes do credit to a healthy
+angel, she proceeds of malice and intent to spoil.  She sells her
+birth-right of admiration and devotion for a mess of sweets.  Every
+afternoon you may see her at the cafe, loading herself with rich
+cream-covered cakes, washed down by copious draughts of chocolate.
+In a short time she becomes fat, pasty, placid, and utterly
+uninteresting.
+
+When the German woman gives up her afternoon coffee and her evening
+beer, takes sufficient exercise to retain her shape, and continues
+to read after marriage something else than the cookery-book, the
+German Government will find it has a new and unknown force to deal
+with.  And everywhere throughout Germany one is confronted by
+unmistakable signs that the old German Frauen are giving place to
+the newer Damen.
+
+Concerning what will then happen one feels curious.  For the German
+nation is still young, and its maturity is of importance to the
+world.  They are a good people, a lovable people, who should help
+much to make the world better.
+
+The worst that can be said against them is that they have their
+failings.  They themselves do not know this; they consider
+themselves perfect, which is foolish of them.  They even go so far
+as to think themselves superior to the Anglo-Saxon:  this is
+incomprehensible.  One feels they must be pretending.
+
+"They have their points," said George; "but their tobacco is a
+national sin.  I'm going to bed."
+
+We rose, and leaning over the low stone parapet, watched the
+dancing lights upon the soft, dark river.
+
+"It has been a pleasant Bummel, on the whole," said Harris; "I
+shall be glad to get back, and yet I am sorry it is over, if you
+understand me."
+
+"What is a 'Bummel'?" said George.  "How would you translate it?"
+
+"A 'Bummel'," I explained, "I should describe as a journey, long or
+short, without an end; the only thing regulating it being the
+necessity of getting back within a given time to the point from
+which one started.  Sometimes it is through busy streets, and
+sometimes through the fields and lanes; sometimes we can be spared
+for a few hours, and sometimes for a few days.  But long or short,
+but here or there, our thoughts are ever on the running of the
+sand.  We nod and smile to many as we pass; with some we stop and
+talk awhile; and with a few we walk a little way.  We have been
+much interested, and often a little tired.  But on the whole we
+have had a pleasant time, and are sorry when 'tis over."
+
+
+
+
+
+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of Three Men on the Bummel, by Jerome
+
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