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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Three Men on the Bummel, by Jerome
+#19 in our series by Jerome K. Jerome
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+Three Men on the Bummel
+
+by Jerome K. Jerome
+
+May, 2000 [Etext #2183]
+
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Three Men on the Bummel, by Jerome
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+This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+from the 1914 J. W. Arrowsmith edition.
+
+
+
+
+
+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
+